Kneecap have been getting massive publicity because of their pro-palestine/anti-genocide stance. I haven't listened to much to their latest stuff, but I should re-explore them.

Since they generally report in a shorter format, they tend to not provide much context.

On the one hand, one could say this tends towards less bias, but on the other, context is absolutely critical to assessing a situation.

I think they have their place in the news cycle, and they are a useful source. I think that if they report an event you can be confident it has occurred, BUT they are very, very good at putting spin in only a few words, e.g. "murdered" vs "killed". They also leave out extremely important context when it doesn't fit their narrative/bias/click farming.

I am extremely critical of Reuters. But if they are one source amongst many they are useful. Particularly if you look at local news sources or other Reuters news snippets for context around the event.

The others have put good descriptions of why calories are an accurate measurement for food energy.

However, you are absolutely correct that calories are not a perfect measurement, and different types of foods are not one to one replaceable. 1500 calories of sugar is NOT the same as 1500 calories of protein!

Burning the food produces a reasonable and useful approximation of the available energy.

Does the human body burn food? Of course not. We transform food into useful components and then pump them around the body to be used by cells.

If you eat 1500 calories of protein, your body will use some of those calories simply as proteins, rather than breaking them down into energy (via sugar). Which means you will have less food-energy in your system and are more likely to run a deficit.

Again with protein, the transformation of protein into sugars which can be used as energy takes energy, so you end up with a smaller amount of calories actually being available.

TL;DR Calories are not perfectly interchangeable. However, they are our best, and most useful, quick way of approximating energy intake from food.

I don't think so.

Even out at Mars you already have significantly diminished solar incidence.

I think that past Saturn you probably start to have so little incoming solar energy that it's almost impossible to retain it.

EDIT:

Saturn receives around 1% of the solar irradiance of earth.

Pluto receives 0.064%. less than 1W/m2.

With a radius of 1188km, the absolute maximum incident solar energy is 3.8E12 W. (Assuming no efficiency loss as the angle of incidence decreases due to curvature)

The radiating surface is the full sphere, and using Earth's black body temperature of 254K.

Therefore, Pluto would be radiating approximately 5.67E-8 x 254^4 x 4 x pi x 1188000 ^2 = 7.38 E14.

In other words, you would need to retain at least 99.5% of all energy emitted by pluto. Mirrors reflect around 95% of visible light, and infrared is even more difficult to reflect.

Interesting article, clearly written with an extreme bias.

It definitely makes some extravagant claims that are not thoroughly backed up.

This definitely doesn't belong in TIL. It is not an established fact, and if it is an established fact, a medium article from a strongly biased author is not a reliable source for it.

TIL the US committed mass war crimes in Korea resulting in a 20% population reduction is maybe more apt. But it still requires a better source than this article. Such as an academic paper or article which includes references to reliable sources.

Everything has a cost. Usually of the same type as what you are buying.

You can usually reword security/stability as a type of freedom. The freedom to have a guaranteed income usually costs some of the freedom to choose where/when/how you work. For example.

You might say that you will pay for the freedom to not have school shootings with the freedom to have free access to guns. You lose one freedom to gain another.

You are correct that to some degree they are antonyms, but I would say that it's freedom vs stability. It's just that security is a type of stability.

If you break them down more mathematically freedom is represented as infinite possible trajectories, which is in other words a very unstable position. In order to increase stability you must reduce the possible trajectories.

He did it twice. And it was very clear.

I would add that I think checking out and joining smaller instances is also a great opportunity. Distributes the user load across servers and being one of fewer voices in an instance means you have a bigger say in who you federate with. You also get to be a third party instance to most of the big drama and don't get judged just for your instance as much

Edit: also, if you like your instance, contribute to it!

Lots of great software already posted, but with some complaints about windows inefficiencies I can't believe no one has posted:

Microsoft PowerToys https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

Basically, it's a suite of tools that windows devs have made to make their lives easier while working in windows. Some features have made it into actual windows releases over the years, but most not.

It has an always on top, batch rename, customisable window snapping, better search, keyboard key remapper, mouse across multiple devices, colour eyedropper, and many many more.

Absolute must have for anyone that uses windows regularly.

I think the only time martial law can be seen as reasonable is in an outright state of war. And even then, only when it's existential.

It's kind of inherently the antithesis of democratic values.

I'm so annoyed at coverage of these issues and the economy as a whole. Journalists have to use the biggest numbers they can to make people think it's important.

Ok a 64% reduction in profits is not good. But that also means that the company is still profitable and wants to fire the thousands of people, and in so doing harm the local economy, that gave it massive profits for decades.

A 64% reduction in profits cannot be the company making a loss. Yet the article claims that BMW and Mercedes are "also making similar large losses".

Shareholders have been robbing employees blind for decades, and the second it gets a little bit less profitable we have to fire thousands of people?

And yes, I understand there must be some consideration of future proofing costs against a shrinking consumer base, but such drastic measures are solely aimed at preservation of shareholder dividends and value (see Boeing).

https://www.khanacademy.org/

Helped me get through my engineering degree. Absolutely the best maths education I've ever seen.