2024 April 23

Contrail Shadow X Image Credit & Copyright: Fatih Ekmen

Explanation: What created this giant X in the clouds? It was the shadow of contrails illuminated from below. When airplanes fly, humid engine exhaust may form water droplets that might freeze in Earth’s cold upper atmosphere. These persistent streams of water and ice scatter light from the Sun above and so appear bright from below. On rare occasions, though, when the Sun is near the horizon, contrails can be lit from below. These contrails cast long shadows upwards, shadows that usually go unseen unless there is a high cloud deck. But that was just the case over Istanbul, Türkiye, earlier this month. Contrails occur all over planet Earth and, generally, warm the Earth when the trap infrared light but cool the Earth when they efficiently reflect sunlight. The image was taken by a surprised photographer in the morning on the way to work.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240423.html

nathanielbuildsatesseract

Thinking about getting into whig history as way to be edgy online. Not sure what that says about the state of my mental health or the intellectual landscape.

nathanielbuildsatesseract reblogged

theopjones

eightyonekilograms

Every time ACX commenters talk about romance and especially polyamory, it's like listening to the student who clearly didn't do the reading and is bullshitting their way through the report.

#this is how i felt reading the threads about dating docs

nathanielbuildsatesseract reblogged

theopjones

raginrayguns

from scott aaronson’s comments section

choia:

Not sure how your Hebrew skills are, but I would like to refer you to a facebook post by an energy economics expert (his day job) where he explains that nuclear power stations are not economical for more than a decade now, and that’s one of the reasons why not many of them are being built world wide.

I think you’ll enjoy it as he gives all details and calculations.

https://www.facebook.com/Chu.Tziel/posts/10159074058773593

Scott:

choia #4: The reason why nuclear is so expensive is almost entirely

(1) unimaginable amounts of regulation, holding nuclear to an orders-of-magnitude higher safety standard than oil or coal or anything else, and

(2) all the innovation that never happened and all the good people driven away from the field because of that regulation.

Nuclear could have, and would have, saved civilization from climate change, were it not for the antinuclear turn that started in the 1970s. For more see the book Where Is My Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall, which I recently read and am hoping to blog about soon.

Raoul Ohio:

Scott #12:

I hope you are joking. Otherwise I will be worrying that the pressure is getting to you.

Scott:

Raoul Ohio #27: No, I really do view the abandonment (or better, strangling) of nuclear energy and the subsequent climate crisis as one of the great tragedies of human history, I’m tired of beating around the bush or equivocating about it, and I invite anyone to explain why I’m mistaken.

raginrayguns