I mean… good? Why would we want a politician that’s acceptable to him?

Yes, mathematicians first encountered equations which could only be solved with complex numbers in the 16th century.

The Red Green Show

Easy-going comedy with minimal plot, mostly there to tie together an episode of shorter skits. Some Boomer humor, but not too cringe, I think.

Who set those rules? Is there standards body that promulgates them? I remember that social media emerged as a term to describe media on which the users provided the content, rather than traditional gatekeepers like newspapers and TV networks. Wikipedia agrees, using special jargon, distinguishing between monologic and dialogic media models.

Reddit is quintessential social media.

Sir Terry Pratchett tweeted his own meeting with Death.

Cynical? Maybe, but that phrase is taken directly from Israel.

Dammit. At least I was able to maintain the comforting illusion until I got to work.

I’m no expert on whether it’s codified as a work safe practice, nor am I out to convince anybody to get on such a rig. For what it’s worth, I’m just sharing what I’ve learned as a sailor, and what I see here is a lot of folks certain that this is crazy because of their intuition that it’ll tip over easily. With that it of the way…

Based on my intuition, there was simply no way a 747 could even toodle around the tarmac, much less fly, just by blowing some air out the back. Big ones weigh 500 tons! Then, I learned the power of air and lift intimately by putting a specially-shaped piece of Dacron up a metal pole on top of a boat. Experience updated my intuition, and I’m not even slightly nervous about flying anymore.

Similarly, from the other direction, my intuition said that there’s no way a boat could stay upright with parts (mast, cabin, tuna tower, stacks of containers, water park and shopping mall deck, etc.) so high above the waterline, and so little hull beneath it. But I’ve learned intimately the effects of primary stability, and ballast. With my intuition changed, this setup looks fine.

I’ve had the experience, too, of working in a boat yard. At the end of the season, the owner drove the crawler crane onto a barge not much bigger than the one in the image, and we used it to yank boat mooring anchors out of the lake bed. Even a heavy weight on the end of the crane boom barely affected the trim of the barge. I’ve walked on many an EZ Dock section, and experienced that sections like this have immense primary stability, too.

Indeed, by my back of the envelope calculations, that 20’ by 20’ EZ Dock barge would take in the rough range of 75 tons of force to capsize. (Easier to submerge it!) Even with the 32’ lever arm of the scissor lift, that’s still more than 7 tons of lateral force needed to capsize it. I don’t know the numbers on what it takes to capsize the scissor lift itself, but given that I know that the barge is going to stay quite level, and that there’s no lateral force on the scissor lift platform in this scenario, it seems that they’d be fine even without the straps lashing the lift to the barge.

Anyway, I did a reverse image search, and did not find an original source. I have no idea how common this is, but I did find a comment thread from 4 years ago on the red site with comments from a user who said he called a local company that rents out Rotodocks (a very similar product) which claimed that they do it all the time.

Hope that is interesting, and yeah, absolutely, get the numbers from a real engineer before putting yourself in situations like this.

This has got to be rage-bait. Nobody is this fucking dumb, right? Please let me believe it’s rage-bait at least until after breakfast.

EZ Dock is the brand name, and the company even markets its products for use as floating work platforms.

EZ Dock Floating Work Platforms

The manufacturer markets them for carrying equipment.

It may not be the most poetic, but I’m partial to the word holdfast, which is a biological structure that anchors organisms to surfaces. “Hold fast” was an order given to sailors of yore, telling them to grab tightly onto the ship to avoid being washed overboard in storms. The word suggests images of kelp, mussels, or sponges doing the same, determinedly holding fast against the waves, figurative and literal.

They’re called “snout houses,” because the garage makes them look like they have a big, ugly pig snout.

Usually, the answer is racism. In the case of HOAs, though, I’m going to guess that it’s probably racism.

ETA: I looked it up on Wikipedia. The answer is: racism.

What the hell is it with the Sterling Archer window borders? Y’know, where the active window is black, and the inactive windows are slightly darker black?

Sort of meta, but: Alienation.

Buildings plopped down in a rectangle with a standard layout—boxy building with door facing parking lot—with no ornamentation, no contextual clues about what’s inside, and worst, no consideration or design dialogue whatsoever with the surroundings. It’s like a city as Lego set, each building on its own bar plate, and they can be shuffled around in any order. Designers talk about design language, and this style says, “fuck you.”

Food that just shows up at your door after ordering from an app, made by a “ghost kitchen.” Possibly located in one of those boxes-with-a-parking-lot. No connection to other humans. (Or is that a tire distributor’s headquarters? No way to tell.)

Company web sites with no information about who runs the company, or where it is, or much about its connection to the community. The product is probably made on spec by an anonymous Chinese factory, so even if you can talk to somebody, they’re either in a contract call center serving hundreds of companies, or somebody not paid enough to care.

Speaking of low-paid lackeys, the fast food-ification of the landscape. They’re getting rid of dining rooms, so your only human interaction is briefly through a window. If you’re lucky. They’re working on getting rid of that, too. Then, you’re sealed behind a windshield, in cars that get more fortress-like every year, never seeing another human face.

A lot of people say that they’re introverts and hate people and like it this way, but we also have a pandemic of loneliness and poor mental health , so…

EVs don’t put out tailpipe emissions while in operation, sure, but that’s an highly reductive view of the system. The latest numbers I’ve found show that an EV car has about 30% of the total lifecycle CO₂ emissions as an ICE vehicle. That’s production, operation, maintenance, and disposal. A lot better, so if we drastically cut back on the number of vehicle miles traveled, that’d be a win. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, the profusion of cheap EVs in China means that more people can afford them, there will be more vehicles on the road, we double down on automobile infrastructure and lifestyles, and the environment, human health, and long-term sustainability will take a hit. It’s the Jevons Paradox, which says that if we find a way to use a resource more efficiently, we use more of it.

What’s more, the transition to EVs won’t even stop the CO₂ emissions. The emissions will just come from a new source. World-wide, we have a fully-functioning fossil fuel extraction industry. Petrochemicals are the energy and raw material input for so many industrial processes (including the production of EVs), it’s not going to shut down. If we stop using it for fuel in our vehicles, the law of supply and demand means it’ll get cheaper for other uses, which will ramp up. Indeed, our total global CO₂ emissions keep rising.

What’s necessary is to re-design our societal systems to solve a bunch of problems, like the ecological catastrophe of habitat destruction and collapsing insect and bird populations, or the looming fresh water shortages, which don’t get much press because of the climate change issue. Drastically reducing the number of vehicle miles traveled to 10% of the current level would have a much greater impact, even if all of those miles were all done in ICE vehicles, compared to maintaining the current VMT but doing them in EVs. That’s why I don’t agree that EVs are necessary to lower CO₂ emissions from ICE vehicles. It would be really great if we drastically reduced VMT, and did those miles in EVs, but that’s not at all what’s happening.

(I’ve ignored the last-mile logistics issue because it’s small potatoes by comparison.)

It’s a multi-generational problem, so we should start fixing it now. Why is it going to be easier to solve 30-50 years from now? Why should we wait until we’ve transitioned to EVs to start the process? What is it about EVs is going to make that easier?

Yeah, all those losers born in Soweto in 1971 who haven’t used their enormous wealth to fund a bunch of different business ventures. What are they even doing?