For context on fusion reactors I recommend edx's plasma physics and fusion course. From that it seemed fusion reactors that give a net power surplus, maybe, are just not possible in such confined envs on earth. 80 years of incredibly smart people with billions chasing the problem, with the first Tokamak reactor going back the 60s. Even ITER, the world's most expensive scientific endeavor ever, is still a question mark if it will work.
Would love to be convinced otherwise to be hopeful of confined fusion reactions on Earth.
The parameters that go into the efficiency/gain of a power plant are well known: gain goes up as radius to the power of 1.3, and magnetic field strength to the fourth power.
ITER was conceived in an era of much lower-field superconducting magnets, so it had to increase the size instead. This massive size has been the big cost and schedule driver.
However, since ITER was designed there have been big advances in the production of high-magnetic-field superconductors. These are really recent - ReBCO tapes have only started to be sold by commercial producers in the last year or two. With higher fields, we can get performance equal to or better than ITER at much smaller size (and hence price). This specific effort is an MIT project, relying heavily on MIT research in building magnets with the new superconductors.
Shelling out our industrial/manufacturing economy for a "services economy" + big government/welfare economy has ended the middle class; meanwhile the political class (and media) have consolidated into a front group for an increasingly hidden ruling class/aristocracy, who like the companies behind shell companies are pretty hard to identify and lampoon.
This of course would be an intriguing book to read should someone dare to write it.
An aside, but I constantly hear that The U.S.'s industrial/manufacturing sector has been gutted, but I also constantly hear that we're manufacturing more than ever before. What's going on? Is it an absolute number vs. a proportion of GDP issue? Or is it employment vs. production output (output being higher per employee now because of automation)?
It was (at least when I looked at this circa 2012, it might have changed since then) largely an artifact of Boeing and Intel: both produced fantastically expensive physical items from factories that were highly sought at by the rest of the world and had amazing profit margins. But were just two companies (vulnerable to management mistakes) and both didn't employ that many people to actually make their stuff. E.g. in 1953 steel alone in the US employed 650,000 people, and now Intel and Boeing combined employ 250,000 people worldwide, the vast majority of whom are engineers/back office types, not actually working on the factory floor.
So the deal is basically that we're producing more goods than ever, even as % of GDP, but the proportion of our labor force that's involved in that production has cratered. Got it, thanks!
Discourse degraded or maybe it's the coordination of thought made possible from the consolidation of media and the internet, that's made it now possible to target those who seem to threaten the ruling class and their ways.
Just FYI no death has been officially linked to a "rioter", no firearms have been found in connection with it. Sites like ZH are tracking all this, because to many it smells like yet another staging of political capital.
> “No firearms have been found in connection with it”
This takes moments to search, skipping all the news sites, fake or otherwise, and going to sources:
“Grand Jury ... Indictment ... Count One: On or about Jan 6 2021, within the District of Columbia, Christopher Alberts did carry and have readily accessible, a firearm, that is, a Taurus G2C semi-automatic handgun, on the US Capitol Grounds and in any of the Capitol Buildings.”
Also had a “large capacity ammunition feeding device”.
Separately, the police officer who died is now suspected to be linked to a particular assailant, but through bear spray not fire extinguisher:
“The F.B.I. has pinpointed an assailant in its investigation into the death of Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who was injured while fending off the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol last month and later died, according to two law enforcement officials briefed on the inquiry.”
“The F.B.I. opened a homicide investigation into Officer Sicknick’s death soon after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Investigators initially struggled to determine what had happened as he fought assailants. They soon began to suspect his death was related to an irritant, like mace or bear spray, that he had inhaled during the riot. Both officers and rioters were armed with such irritants during the attack.”
“In a significant breakthrough in the case, investigators have now pinpointed a person seen on video of the riot who attacked several officers with bear spray, including Officer Sicknick, according to the officials. And video evidence shows that the assailant discussed attacking officers with the bear spray beforehand, one of the officials said.”
It does not say it’s a rioter, exactly, only that the person was on video of the riot, and discussed attacking officers beforehand.
Hmm, one could also have a small or regular capacity ammunition feeding device?
But your point, I didn’t initially consider they would use that to mean magazine, I guessed they meant the gizmo one might use to feed ammo rapidly into a magazine without getting one’s thumb tired, sometimes called a speed loader.
Seems silly to call it something else, but perhaps they needed a term that was a superset of magazine and anything else someone might come up with to hold more than a regular mag.
> But according to the new filing, Munchel and his mother took the handcuffs from within the Capitol building — apparently to ensure the Capitol Police couldn't use them on the insurrectionists — rather than bring them in when they initially breached the building.
A nitpick, I'm living in one of these countries that "eradicated Covid" and the frankly obvious truth is they didn't, their borders were completely open for months after covid was detected and spreading like fire, and they never adapted the widespread testing and mortality classification regimes like the US did.
I don't know, anecdotally, relationships broke down with me and other stakeholders, and I ended up leaving the company, after I pushed hard for an amazing candidate, the first to ever ace my interviews, whereas said other stakeholders wanted a certain diversity candidate, who while I enjoyed meeting didn't do that well. The funny thing is in SF it's the bro-y white guy CEOs who push the wokeness the hardest. Almost feels performative. SF needs to solve these problems if they want to be a tech mecca.
How is rejecting a candidate soley based on race not racial discrimination?
This is illegal where I live; it is probably why companies never give interview feedback to the interviewees because they make these illegal hiring decisions behind the scenes but then say “it wasn’t a good fit”.
So in general companies will reject people based on race an sex all the time. In fact most of the time when candidates who are not fitting their mold come up. It is super easy to avoid pushback if you plead culture fit as an issue or just judge their responses more strongly. The person who would oversee that won't know what suboptimal solution would really mean, other than unqualified. Maybe they had an unused variable. Maybe they didn't explain themselves.
> I pushed hard for an amazing candidate, the first to ever ace my interviews, whereas said other stakeholders wanted a certain diversity candidate
Your reading of this comment is "other stakeholders rejected an excellent candidate solely based on race". The actual information given was that the commenter really liked one candidate, and the other stakeholders preferred a different candidate who was somehow "diverse". While I think the commenter probably agrees with your interpretation, it seems equally likely to me that their candidate evaluation was bad, and that the other stakeholders did not use diversity as their sole criteria.
Yes, it does technically fit "racial discrimination." However, some people use that simpler term to talk about historic and current power imbalances. In the United States, there were a lot of extra barriers for non-white people. Some still exist, but there's also the self-perpetuating barriers, like how children from poor households are likely to be poor adults. So, if somebody wants to help solve "racial discrimination," being "race blind" would mean letting past wrongs stay wrong.
Where does education fit in in your assumptions ? Even poor people make it up the social ladder thru education. Most of our ancesters were farmers, and most of them very poor too.
In the United States, there were a lot of extra barriers for non-white people
Join us in Alabama! Here, they put up barriers for everyone that wasn't a large landowner or industrialist. This set back descendants of black slaves, but descendants of white sharecroppers were equally caught up in the net. Arguably, the poor whites were worse off - every black guy realized they were being oppressed, but a good number poor whites had the wool drawn over their eyes.
Well I can share my individual perspective as a tall white guy. Sure, I've been through extraordinary struggles and life difficulties in my early adulthood, yet life is still pretty much easy mode just from the privilege.
If you've ever read The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, the best way I can describe it is it almost feels like being ta'veren. Even if I'm having an off-day, not performing well, doing the wrong things, saying the wrong things, I still get the results I need/want and it all works out.
If a company rejects me in favor of diversity, even my struggles are already relatively so easy to resolve that it's just like, good for them, I'll go to the countless other opportunities.
Not saying it's right or wrong, but I feel like the last person who needs a champion.
Sure, that's true. But being tall, attractive, and white, lets you get away with a lot of things were being under 30 and college educated doesn't matter as much.
For me, just growing out my hair and beard, which give away my ethnicity, result in drastically different treatment. Same for attractiveness, if I wear contact lenses and make an effort to look a certain way, life in general becomes significantly easier.
The comment opens with "I can share my individual perspective" There's no intent to negate other people's struggles at all.
Here's the hypothesis. If life is like an RPG, then whiteness / being male (in America) is a passive buff you get in character creation, like "+10 Social Points"
Truly, for many people, that still isn't enough to offset the many other debuffs life can bring.
The context of the original post is a hiring manager moralizing only considering candidates from underrepresented groups. I think many people have a deep sense of empathy for the struggles of people trying to climb the economic ladder and starting from a lesser point. I commend Apple for investing in the Propel center in Atlanta and creating a developer program in Detroit as creative ways to alleviate the social problem, but a hiring manager exclusively considering underrepresented minorities is discrimination and will lead to more racial resentment. If we are to work towards an inclusive future it means everyone is included and I really think we'd achieve more by working together than fighting. I think a lot more people have a deep sense of empathy than are given credit for. I'm concerned with the rent seeking behavior that I see and hear instead of a focus on wealth creation and growing the pie for everyone.
I think its great to give personal anecdotes, but I never want to judge an individual person from their group membership. There will definitely be similar experiences across members of a given group.
But if someone who was 'White and Tall' was 'Homeless on Minimum Wage' then that would directly refute the logic that 'Being Tall and White is Easy Mode'.
Just the opposite, it would indicate that 'Being Tall and White is definitely not Easy Mode'.
First - I don't know if this guy originated the term or not, but he's got an eloquent, well-written explanation about what is meant by "straight white male is easy mode for real life": His original post is here[1], along with two follow up articles [2][3]. Definitely worth taking the time to read.
In terms of why life isn't easy for all tall white guys - being tall, and white, and a guy helps but it's not everything. Some example of how it helps: As a white person I've never had to worry about being pulled over by a cop for "driving while white". A couple years ago when videos of cops shooting black people for things like 'driving away from a traffic stop' horrified me. Obviously it's wrong to drive away from a traffic stop but I couldn't imagine a police officer responding with gunshots if I did that. So yes, my race does make my life easier here in the USA.
Some ways that tall, white, male isn't helpful: none of those things directly get me money/wealth. If I grow up poor I'm going to have a tough life no matter how safe I feel around the police. Being tall is nice, and it's great being able to use the top shelf in my kitchen cabinets, but it doesn't put food on the table (at least, not directly).
Similarly, what if one grew up with abusive parents? That can really f*k someone up, and while it's nice not having to worry when I hold hands with my sweetie in public a history of abuse may make it more difficult to find and sustain positive relationships with the women in my life.
So yeah - being tall, and white, and male makes some things easier, but it doesn't fix all the problems for everyone.
never had to worry about being pulled over by a cop for "driving while white"
I was pulled over twice in three days in Los Altos a few years ago for a light being out, both times by non-white officers.
Last spring, I was pulled over in Sunnyvale for expired tags (I paid on time; DMV was horribly behind) by an Asian officer.
While I was politely volunteering my documents and proof of payment, a second unit responded with a Latino officer.
They held me for 45 minutes for what should have been a wave-off. To justify their time, they wrote me a fix-it ticket (which required two trips to the courthouse and 5 months to clear.
Now, I'll wager that if the ethnicities were reversed, the average driver has been sufficiently conditioned by narrative to assume a racist motivation... even if pulled over from behind at night, where it's impossible to know driver ethnicity before the stop.
No? Literally no one is saying that a privilege means that everybody of that demographic has an easy life, you're arguing with a strawman. Anyway, why are you coming onto a HN comment thread to find out what privilege means? So much has been written about this.
"Anyway, why are you coming onto a HN comment thread to find out what privilege means? So much has been written about this."
Surely they know what you think you mean to say about White Privilege, but there's a special kind of authoritarian arrogance in assuming that the notion is settled.
Do White people in Poland, a country with essentially no Black people have White privilege? Or do they only gain privilege when there are sufficient people around them who may not have the same opportunities manifest themselves?
In which case, there clearly is no such thing as 'White Privilege', rather, there are some groups who simply have it harder than others and it's much more rationally described in terms of those who face discrimination, than those who do not.
It's like saying people in the suburbs are 'privileged' to not live in high crime areas, or that kids are 'privileged' to not be bullied in school, or 'privileged' to have access grocery stores nearby.
None of those things are privileges and we'd never describe them as such.
We would always describe those situations wherein a special, negative context applies i.e. 'lives in high crime area' or 'child is bullied' or 'lives 20 miles from the supermarket'.
'White Privilege' is a racist term used by intersectionalists wanting to weaponize issues of race, and project guilt or other groups who frankly have no advantage or privilege, other than in the most narrow of contextualization.
Look, you have completely successfully communicated the fact that you hate the concept of white privilege and believe it is incorrect and, apparently, racist. But these debates are much larger than this comment thread, and you are not going to convince someone that it is a racist or not real here, nor am I going to bother defending the concept in detail here, since there is _so much written_ on the subject that you can peruse at your leisure. Coming in here and loudly rolling your eyes at the concept just makes you seem ignorant; it doesn't make you seem right.
Although for what it's worth, I think you're misunderstanding the term. For instance: "There are millions of 'Tall White Guys' in prison, earning minimum wage, living on the streets. It's really not that much of a privilege." If you believe that it is a valid counterargument against the concept, then you have misunderstood the concept. It is not "the privilege that white people have". It is "the aspect of someone's privilege that comes from their whiteness". One may have many privileges. Being white is one of them. Particularly in America; I can't and wouldn't try to speak to the social dynamics in other countries.
> "It's like saying people in the suburbs are 'privileged' to not live in high crime areas".
> None of those things are privileges and we'd never describe them as such.
The only sense in which those are not privileges is the connotation of the word 'privilege' that it applies to groups of people instead of other categories. They're certainly advantages.
OP literally described their life as easy mode because of their tallness+whiteness+maleness. Maybe you should be arguing with their word choice.
If easy mode can be incredibly difficult...then maybe it shouldn't be called easy mode? Is juggling 40 balls at a time "easy mode" compared to juggling 60 balls at a time? Maybe, but it would be more appropriate to not call juggling 40 balls easy mode
This is something I suspect is happening at a wide scale and will only create resentment. I like to see Apple investing in things like the Propel center in Atlanta and a new coding program for kids and teens in Detroit. Ibram Kendi asserts that Discrimination can create Equity. That may be true in the short term, but will it be a permanent solution?
> SF it's the bro-y white guy CEOs who push the wokeness the hardest. Almost feels performative. SF needs to solve these problems if they want to be a tech mecca.
its like that in vancouver too but with far less money and even far less exits
Same. I remember receiving letters in Japanese at the time of the bankruptcy. I put them on my refrigerator for guests to see because I thought they were amusing. Now it's just depressing to think about.
I'm not sure you read the article. Author is alleging the prime broker/clearing house system regularly "gives out" shares to sell on the market (diluting company's shares) with no transparency in the reconciliation because the main clearing system is privately owned. You're better off reading the full article since my summary is extremely surface level.
Would love to be convinced otherwise to be hopeful of confined fusion reactions on Earth.