Sorry, I suppose I’m a bit too used to idiots going off about the smoke plume caused by the rocket carrying an Earth observation satellite or such. When there’s anything to be gained, the costs of the endeavour should be measured up to that. Here there’s no gain for anybody (unless one of those fuckers onboard has enough braincells to be able to appreciate the overview effect enough to affect their future behaviour for the better), so it’s a net negative no matter how much the cost for the planet is. My intent was not to excuse anything about this.

To copy paste an earlier reply of mine:

I was talking about the direct emissions of launching a rocket. The indirect emissions are obviously vastly larger and might as well include everything in the wider economy that enables stuff like this. Just maintaining the necessary industrial capacity is already a huge strain on the planet. That’s what I’m after with these comments. The rich fucker joyride is a largely inconsequential yet overtly visible result of a bloated system hiding in plain sight. The aerospace sector as a whole is just the tip of the iceberg of a global industrial society in ecological overshoot.

I was talking about the direct emissions of launching a rocket. The indirect emissions are obviously vastly larger and might as well include everything in the wider economy that enables stuff like this. Just maintaining the necessary industrial capacity is already a huge strain on the planet. That’s what I’m after with these comments. The rich fucker joyride is a largely inconsequential yet overtly visible result of a bloated system hiding in plain sight. The aerospace sector as a whole is just the tip of the iceberg of a global industrial society in ecological overshoot.

Yes, the comment I replied to is technically right in that there are some tiny countries out there. Or they would be, if the rocket in question would’ve been a vastly larger rocket that burned a carbon containing fuel. The New Shepard tourist joyride is tiny for a rocket and its exhaust is water vapour.

I hate rich fucks as much as anybody, but this particular vehicle uses liquid hydrogen and oxygen for propellant.

The spacex superheavy is the biggest rocket stage around and has somewhere around 1.7 million kg of methane in it at launch. That results in about 4.7 million kg (4675t) of CO2 when it’s burned. That’s the same as the yearly emissions of 338 average americans, or 962 people at the global average.

Rockets are big, flashy and make a lot of smoke, but the numbers really don’t amount to much when compared to the sheer scale of more mundane economic activities.

I hate ai slop with a burning passion. This channel on the other hand is actual ai art.

I’m guessing that it’s not that simple. They’d need the associated ground infrastructure and an increase in budget to cover the maintaining of it all.

Or a night shift. I’m on my way home after one right now and I’ve been awake since yesterday afternoon, so about eighteen hours.

How do you think the hunter-gatherers got their food? They didn’t drive around delivering berries to each other while worrying about credit scores.

The difference between a sauna and an oven is that the heat is transferred from the heater into the air by pouring water onto hot stones, which then boils off and carries its heat and humidity into the air. The rocks have to be hot and have sufficient heat storage capacity to also stay hot even if more water is thrown at once. Having a hidden main heater would be a huge hassle to get the humidity right with some automated system, while also taking away the fun of throwing the water yourself.

Since the hot steam rises up, the benches should be up high enough that people can ideally get their feet above the surface of the stove. Hot air rises up, but the temperature gradient isn’t completely smooth. The rising steam mixes the air around a bit, so below that the air doesn’t mix all that well and the heat drops much faster the lower you get.

In this one, your entire lower half is in that significalntly colder air and the vast space above you is where the heat escapes to, far from your skin where it’s no use to anyone.

Sure looks nice, but that sauna can’t produce an adequate heat. The benches are way too low and the heater is utterly undersized. One’s feet would be getting cold even with a heater five times the volume of that one.

Also yeah they should try having less money.

My gaidar (generative ai radar) is going off.

I think a good old shitass paint illustration would be preferable. The message itself is good enough to deserve at least that.

The horse probably couldn’t handle the weight of the cow. Both animals might get pissed at you for trying to coax them into this.

Capitalism has a tendency to eat everything it can. This includes the political system. The US is just ahead of the curve in this.

Not only does it help with hearing, but with sight as well. Two eyes looking horizontally at an object produce a dataset for the brain to process, but the depth perception is constrained to working in the horizontal plane. Tilting the head expands this into the third dimension, providing a lot more for the brain to work with.

Beautiful.

Identity is just something our brains invent to better make sense of the world. It doesn’t exist as anything other than a thought. You are the universe and the universe is me. The only thing that goes away when anything “dies”, is the illusiory and self-imposed border between the “individual” and the rest of it all.

“What is an ocean, but a multitude of drops?”

• Cloud Atlas

Definitely one of my favourite quotes.

On Time and Water by Andri Snær Magnason. A bit more philosophically inclined book about the subject.

Humans can already fit through way too small holes.

A wiki article about a particularly gory diving bell incident. No graphic images, but still not exactly light reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin#Diving_bell_accident

Plenty of current and future Earth observation satellites are at risk as well.