So I understand that spin gravity can work in space and that you can use centrifugal force to imitate gravity.
But could you do it on earth? In theory, would there be anything preventing you from just creating a sealed off terrarium that spins enough so that the downward force of the creatures inside if it is 1.1 G?
I’ve heard repeatedly about the potential issue with freshwater shortages coming in the next few decades and it seems so wasteful to let all this freshwater into the Atlantic Ocean. So couldn’t we build a dam to stop all the water from flowing into the ocean or to at least create another great lake?
I know that they temporarily blocked off Niagara Falls when they had to do some repairs in the past, so why couldn’t you just make a permanent dam?
Assuming that, for some reason, you didn’t want to flood and destroy Quebec city along with Montreal, you could build a dam around Cornwall, Canada, and keeping a significant amount of water.
So I asked this question knowing that it’s stupid but I think it’s interesting anyway.
So obviously, we can’t create new tectonic plates or anything like that and that’s not what I’m asking. But humans are capable of affecting tectonic plates through the red distribution of mass. The example I know most confidently is how there is tectonic rebounding on the north and south pole as human caused the climate change has melted billions of tons of ice, causing the ground to rebound.
From my understanding, the melting ice means there’s a red distribution of stress, causing movement to re-distribute the stress. For me that shows that it’s at least theoretically possible.
Anyway, the reason I’m asking this question is because for a fun thought experiment I wondered what would happen if we had spent all the money we have spent on AI instead on digging a very large hole in South Dakota.
Total AI spending has mounted to around $2.5 trillion. If we assume that on average every cubic meter of dirt removed would cost around $20, then we could remove in total 125 billion cubic meters of dirt, or 125 km³.
I found the average depth to bedrock in South Dakota to be around 100 feet or 30 m. So if we only dig 30 m deep, to fill the volume, the hole would have to be around 65 km long and wide.
So all of this math checks out for me the issue is this just feels like such a large amount of area to be excavated that I think it would have second order consequences. If the average cubic meter of dirt weighs 1.7 tons, then on average for every square meter of the bottom of the hole, 51 tons of material would no longer be pressing down on it. And this would be true for 4,225 square kilometers. This just feels like something where it would start to impact the underlying tectonic mechanisms with such a large alleviation of pressure. But I might be wrong.
If any of you would happen to be experts in this, I would love for you to correct me.
So I’m trying to write a very realistic fantasy world without magic and I want to include elves, but I’m trying to find the most realistic way to do that. So I thought what if elves aren’t their own species but just a human ethnic group. After some brainstorming, I came up with a few genetic traits for them, and I wonder if that level of variation is plausible given how varied human ethnic groups already can be.
- Elven Ears: they have ears that tend to be larger than for most humans and they come to a point. This gives them no practical evolutionary advantage, but it isn’t really detrimental.
- body proportions: they tend to be more thin on average, tend to be tall, and fat distribution is a lot more even around the body.
- “agelessness”: trying to make them age slower without them dominating all of their people was hard so instead, it will be the illusion of aging slower. Biologically the age, the same as everyone else, but they are less likely to show some of the most obvious outward signs of it. They are less likely to get wrinkles compared to the average person. Male pattern baldness is less common among them. And their hair tends to lose color later on in life compared to others. But other than these outward appearances, they age like anyone else.
- slow breeding: they are more predisposed towards infertility genetically. It’s not dramatically more, but it is above the baseline level.
So my question really is is this level of genetic divergence for an ethnic group reasonable? Or is this variance too much for them to still be part of the human species?
I’m thinking of starting a run where I start off with the most evil faith and culture possible and I want to know what traits might be best to get that.
For religion, I think cannibalism, sexism, human sacrifice, and religious intolerance are obvious no-brainers. But I’m having a much harder time coming up with what traits I could have for an evil culture. Like being adapted for mountains isn’t really something that is morally relevant. So if you guys could help me design an evil culture, I would love it.
Sidenote: this is only using base game.
Sidenote 2: please don’t just say “French”, whether or not that is correct, It is not what I’m asking.
So I learned a bit about the Trans Atlantic accent and it has made me wonder what a truly average English would look like.
If you were to take the accent features of every self-described English speaker and averaged all of them out, what would it sound like?
So I’ve been playing as Japan in several games and have repeatedly conquered Korea, but no matter what I do I can’t get people from the mainland to move to Korea. No matter how much I try to increase the economic opportunity in Korea and encourage people to move from the mainland, It just never happens. The same thing applies to Taiwan and Manchuria.
What am I doing wrong? Why do they never want to go and colonize?
I admit that this is quite delusional and maybe it’s just part of my undying optimism
I played the entire game and every quest in the main game and the DLC. I counted every single human life. I took throughout the entire game, which was exactly 5137 lives ended at my hand. I personally in game killed nearly one in 1000 people in night city. I have seen the absolute worst of the worst of the city every crime ridden hell scape.
But yet my optimism of the future of the world remains untempered.
As much as the world sucks I still hold onto the belief that it is going to get better for the people inside it. for even the lowest people it will get better. Even though the game says, otherwise, I still believe that as a player have had a measurable good impact on the lives of the people of the city.
I know in universe that a person like me would almost certainly get themselves killed with their optimism to prove the point of the story, but to be honest, I would not care much to die.
Because for me as long as love still lives in night city, a better future is not just possible but guaranteed. And no corporation could ever stop it. It may take decades and it may cost millions of lives, but a world where the average night citizen works 20 hours a week can afford a home off of one income and where crime becomes a rare recurrence is possible
This might just be my very naïve optimism, but I want to see what you guys think of this. Whenever I see dystopian media, I just view it as proof that even if things were significantly worse than our world, things getting better would still be possible.
So I’m trying to calculate the theoretically how big of a hole in the ground humanity could’ve dug if we had spent all the money that we have spent on AI on literally just digging a massive hole in North Dakota.
So I did a bit of research to find how much it costs to dig up one cubic meter of dirt in North Dakota on average and the answer I got was around $60 per cubic meter.
Given that humanity has collectively spent $1.6 trillion on AI, we take that number and divided by 60 and we get 26,666,666,666.7, or around 26.6 km³.
But then I realized that the cost to dig one cubic meter it’s actually probably not that useful. Because that’s for normal stuff or at most it’s a couple hundred cubic meters of dirt. Versus billions of cubic meters of dirt. That could mean that it’s even more expensive because you have to move the dirt farther away than usual or it could be a lot cheaper because machines that are impractical at small scales become very cost-effective at this scale.
So if there’s any engineers that specialize in earth moving, how much would the enormous scale of spending and earth movement affect the cost per cubic meter? More expensive per cubic meter or cheaper? Would this adjusted cost mean that the hole would end up being smaller or would it end up being bigger?
And for this, let’s assume we don’t have to worry about permitting or anything like that.
For very long time, I’ve heard complaints about how this or that type of soil is really annoying to work with. Specifically clay soil here in North Carolina and Sandy soil down in Florida.
But I’ve never heard the opposite about any type of soil
So what types of dirt are the easiest to build on and cause the least headaches? Why are those types so much better?
So I read through the recent dev posts about the Himmler path and I’ve saw some stuff and it’s kind of left me confused
On one hand, a lot of the writing involves Bashing against Christianity as some element to be removed. About how it’s a weakness. A lot of talk about reviving like ancient German heritage, which of course would involve Paganism, and this would fit automatically and historically with the obsession with esotericism in the SS.
On the other hand, there is nothing directly stating any revival of paganism. And in fact, the ideology description for Himmler talks about a non-denominational singular God outside of organized religion. Which, of course, is mutually exclusive with a paganism. and you can read a lot of the anti-Christian sentiment as more anti-religious in favor of a materialistic non-spiritual worldview.
I’m fine with either one, and would love if we get to choose between the two, but which one is it?
This is written as if it were an address to Vaush, but discussion from others is welcomed.
Short version: the vagueness when you say things such as “we are about to hit the wall” personally annoys me, but more importantly, is less useful to the community than giving even vague but concrete predictions. Even if those predictions turn out wrong.
Long version:
I’ll show my cards first and admit my biases. I am much more optimistic about the future than you. I think that climate change will be devastating, but we will manage to adapt to it beyond our current expectations. I believe that at the absolute worst the total death toll up for climate change over the entire 21st century will be just less than 100 million in total even if we do not act perfectly.
I am a strong Reformist and think that socialism will be achieved, mostly through slow back-and-forth progress of two steps forward one step back. I believe that the transition to socialism will be like the transition from feudalism towards capitalism. There will be a wave of progress forward, and then a counter wave backwards, but over many waves each push forward is slightly stronger than the push backwards.
So naturally, we’re not gonna agree on everything and you might call me naïve and you’re probably correct. We disagree here and that makes me biased against you. But I still think what I have to say is correct.
Anyway, with that out-of-the-way, here’s the meat and potatoes of it.
I think you would be better off if you made specific guesses of the future, even though your vagueness is much more likely to be correct.
For a specific example, forgive me if I miss remembering what you have said and I don’t have any specific quote. But you have said and a bunch of ways that the United States, American hegemony, and the American empire are declining or are going to collapse or is doomed. I don’t disagree with that, other than being pedantic about the difference between those terms, but that doesn’t matter really.
The issue I have is that ‘collapse’ is a nebulous term here. This is doubly so because you’ve used terms like American empire and America interchangeably. And a lot of things are very different severities can fit under that one umbrella. For example, the collapse of the American empire could mean the United States’s international influence declines back to what it was during the late 19th and early 20th century where the US is hegemonic over North America and has heavy influence over South America, but doesn’t care much for the rest of the world. That would absolutely be a collapse us hegemony but while that would definitely suck for your average American, most of the fundamentals would not have changed. Food prices might go up quality of life might decline, but there isn’t gonna be mass famine because the economies of two continents are still under one leadership.
On the other extreme, the collapse of the United States could mean that the United States mainland collapses into warlord states in a Syrian style Civil War where half the population starts to death every place in the nation is in a constant state of warfare and all the fundamentals of American life change
I could go a bit further and you even more extreme like if collapse means America becomes like the world of the possess the fallout games where everyone lives in scrap hut, and everyone forgets how to build bricks but I don’t think even you are that pessimistic.
The point is though, those are too wildly different guesses about the future of America which can both be valid interpretations of what you have said. People get to fill in what you actually are saying. If they’re more optimistic like me, they can take your more extreme points as hyperbole and exaggeration. Those in your audience who are more pessimistic, get the fill in the blank by taking everything that might be hyperbole as completely serious.
And regardless of where in the spectrum you lie, this isn’t good for what you’re trying to do.
If you’re more optimistic, like I hope, then people are getting overly terrified and are going to do stupid shit like becoming preppers. When you say stuff like “one day the water is just gonna run out in LA and everyone will die” they won’t know to take that as hyperbole because they don’t have your actual position to compare it to.
But even if you do believe the worst case scenario, which I hope you don’t, and even if what you’re saying is correct completely, which I hope it isn’t, that means that people like me are able to ignore what you’re trying to say in favor of their cope. If you genuinely do think stuff like it’s going to be everyone just dies in LA from lack of water someday or that we’re going to descend into Bethesda fallout style backwardsness, then it’s bad that people interpret what you’re saying lightly. If you’re right then me planning for society to still exist in 30 years is stupid and it’s going to get myself killed. Suddenly prepperism is a lot less stupid and is justified to some extent.
So how do you fix this?
Simple just make a concrete prediction and accept that it’s probably going to be wrong.
Let’s assume a middle ground on what you believe that you think that shit’s gonna get real bad but it’s not going to literally be the end of the world as we know it. You think that the American state is going to decline dramatically and that the capacity for it to help it, citizens will decline markedly, but it will still maintain political sovereignty over the US. That deaths from climate change in America may be upwards of a few million people, maybe a couple percentage points of the US population, but the vast like majority of people will still live. Not saying that you do believe this, but let’s say you did.
You could say something like: “guys I think that over the next like 20 years the government’s gonna help out people a lot less. I think there’s not gonna be food stamps anymore. I don’t think there’s gonna be retirement. I don’t think we’re gonna have minimum wage. I don’t think food will always be readily available. I don’t think like the country is going to collapse, but it’s going to be a really hard time.”
That answer is actually workable! That tells people that they should focus on things like saving up money for a larger cushion for different food prices and that they should be ready to be cut off from government aid, but that they don’t need to form like a militia to protect their town from Raiders.
And even if you’re wrong there and by 2040, there still is food, stamps, and retirement still kind of exists, that’s a lot more helpful for the people you’re trying to advise because enough that was correct to make planning efficient.
Will this mean you get egg on your face when you say that something is gonna get really bad and then it doesn’t get that bad or when your prediction is off by a bit? Yea, but I would argue it’s worth it.
Sorry for the rambling, this is just been a pet peeve of mine
This isn’t about which particular president is the best, but about which series of presidents will lead to the best outcome.
The best is defined by the following
- most able to get rid of segregation and pass as strong of a civil rights act as possible
- most able to improve the economy and these living standards of Americans
- most able to get America out of the “American Malaise” series of traits.
What it says on the tin, which Russian unifier(s) best increase the average standard of living for your average Russian?
Like let’s just say that we have a dragon, but instead of being huge it’s like the size of a medium sized dog. Like 60 pounds in total. And it doesn’t spit fire.
Could that actually exist and fly or is that still too big?
I know Wikipedia is a bad source, but if it is even vaguely reliable, it looks like some parts of the Endo European family are further away from Germanic than others. here’s just some observations.
- Anatolian languages broke off first, so dramatic should be more related to all other Indo European languages than it is to Hittite
- Indo Iranian seems to have broken off next, meaning that Germanic should be closer related to Proto Slavic then it should be to Hindi.
- Greek also broke off early meaning that once again Germanic should be closer to Latin than it is to Greek.
After that point, it’s the splits start to look indistinct. And it’s hard to tell which splits happened when. It kind of looks like they all split at the same time. The kind of appears from the charts that Germanic and Balto-Slavic stayed together for a bit before splitting apart.
So is what I have said correct? That it seems that Balto-Slavic is the closest to the Germanic branch?
I say “Russian” because I mean one of two distinct things I’ll call hard Russian and soft Russian
Hard Russian: the territory of Alaska remains in whole or in part a part of a political policy dominated by Russian culture into the 21st-century.
Soft Russian: Alaska retains strong if not dominant Russian cultural influence into the 21st century
(Example: America buys Alaska, but Russian remains a major first language)
From what I have seen in history, it seems pretty much inevitable that Alaska was going to be taken by either the United States or Canada and eventually become dominated by the Anglo cultures.