sampo

> I've never understood the opposition to nuclear power.

Part of it was a Soviet psyop to get Western citizens to oppose West's nuclear weapons. Encourage people to oppose nuclear in general, both nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

> this an industrial monoculture tree farm

That's how it looks like in the photos and videos and maps, yes.

https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012304991.html

https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/miljardeja-euroja-ja-tuh...

https://www.tervareitti.fi/artikkelit/googlen-datakeskus-tul...

https://www.google.com/maps/@64.8361982,26.1427786,6855m/

> 250K trees sounds like a lot

In this case, it's 3.3 sq-km (or 1.3 sq-miles) of forest.

• You wouldn't need this kind of permit for clear-cutting 3.3 sq-km of forest, if the forest stays as forest (i.e. you will plant with tree seedlings)

• You need this permit when the land use changes (from forest to build area)

• The subcontractor might not have known that they are clear-cutting without all permits, or at least they might have plausible deniability

• The decision makers of the town of Muhos want the data center, as it bring jobs and taxable income

• The town building inspector had given a green light for Google to proceed

• Finland is, still, a high-trust society. Punishment for this kind of wrong-doing is likely lenient (some relatively small fines), the shame of having been sentenced in court is supposed to be the main deterrent in itself

• Thus, it might make financial sense for Google to cut corners and proceed faster, even if it means they end up paying some fines

• Unless the bad publicity ends up costing more than the saved project time

> it could have implications on all modern public key based cryptography

Here's a nice low-budget scifi movie about this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_Salesman_(2012_film...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgeyHkP6i3g (full movie)

> As a non-physicist, QM only clicked for me when I learned the linear algebra of one- and two-qubit systems and observables on those systems

Before quantum computers, the only reason to learn quantum mechanics was so that you could learn to explain the electron orbitals of the hydrogen atom. And after that proceed to understand how other atoms and other matter works.

And for this you need vector calculus, partial differential equations, Schrödinger equation, orthogonal functions (spherical harmonics, Laguerre polynomials) (with hint of the theory of Hilbert spaces).

The idea that someone would like to learn the basic principles of QM without applying it to solve the 3-dimensional probability distribution of electrons around the atomic nucleus, is rather new.

Situation: There are 12 major interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Quantum Bayesianism (QBism): We need to eliminate the interpretational conundrums that have beset quantum theory. A quantum state should not be thought to offer a description or representation of physical reality – instead it represents the degrees of belief an agent has about the possible outcomes of measurements.

Situation: There are 13 major interpretations of quantum mechanics.

https://xkcd.com/927/

I started to read from "3.1 The Ultraviolet Catastrophe" and this sentence

"The number of different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, N(λ)dλ, with wavelengths in a small interval between λ and λ + dλ, (dλ means a small interval in wavelength) can be shown to be proportional to 1/λ⁴."

doesn't make sense. It should not talk about a number of wavelengths, but the number of allowed standing-wave modes (number of eigenmodes that a mathematical solution to the electric field in the relevant situation has) in the small wavelength interval.

> Have people moved on from Fortran 77?

Apparently not. Fortran 90 standard was published 35 years ago, in 1991. But a majority of comments in this thread are about FORTRAN 77. It's like the last 35 years didn't happen at all.

> "Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says

Of course they new. Even if we exclude what Joseph Fourier (in 1824) [1] and Svante Arrhenius (in 1896) [2] wrote about carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect, after [3] in 1967 and [4] in 1979, everybody who followed this branch of science, knew.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fourier#Discovery_of_th...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_ef...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_Equilibrium_of_the_Atm...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charney_Report

> Exxon conducted cutting-edge climate research

I disagree.

This is where cutting edge academic research was already 10 years earlier:

1967: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/24/3/1520-04...

1969: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/8/3/1520-045...

The reports in your link start from 1977 and they are just summaries of public research. They are well done, but lots of people with engineering and/physics training would be able to read published research and write summary reports.

Let's look at the first one: https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Jam...

The actual, original science is properly referenced in the end in "Bibliography" (pdf page 15).

I really don't find any "cutting edge research" in those reports. Maybe "cutting edge reading", if we think that being able to follow, read, understand and summarize published research was cutting edge in the late 1970s.

> Most of the lawsuits assert that oil companies should help pay the escalating costs being imposed on the public by climate-fueled extreme weather because they knew the risks their products posed but worked to publicly question climate science and stymie efforts to curb emissions.

"They knew the risks"

Everybody knew the risks. Climate science has been researched at universities and published openly.

If politicians have failed to regulate, and consumers have enjoyed the benefits of (relatively) cheap fuel and energy, why would the fossil energy companies be singled out as the culprits? People wanted the high material standard of living that comes from (relatively) abundant available energy, cheaper and plentiful food that comes from abundant nitrogen fertilizers (made from natural gas). We were all part of this.

> Finally someone of stature in the industry calling this whole fear overblown.

Also Andrew Ng 2 weeks ago:

https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-371

> All reviewers, Action Editors and Editors-in-Chief for TMLR are unpaid volunteers.

He is not an unpaid volunteer.

He's an associate professor at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University. He is not paid by the journal, but he is paid a salary by the university, and the university expects that a small part of his academic work is to serve as an editor in academic journals.

Or Dubai ...

The mentioned book "First Contact: New Guinea's Highlanders Encounter the Outside World" is also a nice read.

https://www.amazon.com/First-Contact-Guineas-Highlanders-Enc...

If you don't mind the new UI (arguably worse than the old), you can see it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/comment/dea5fl...

Swedish electricity generation is 99% low-carbon sources.

> I can't think of a single other instance of academic fraud being pushed to the top of any news site for several days running.

The news cycle about Harvard University president in December 2023 might have been close.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudine_Gay#Plagiarism_invest...

When one's whole career and self-image has been based in academia and then the academic career ends, it can easily give a feeling of failure and worthlessness, even in the most normal circumstances.

I couldn't find statistics about postdocs or tenure-track professors, but this meta-study on PhD students and medical residents gives a suicide attempt rate of 0.8%.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002239562...

Eric S. Raymond opines that now that Microsoft makes its profits mainly from Azure, some product owner in Microsoft will be allowed to enshittify Windows for collection short-term profit, thus paving way for Linux on the desktop.

https://x.com/esrtweet/status/2084605702203424896

You are correct that Czechia, Cyprus and Romania (and France, and Lithuania) send their president to the European Council. But Poland and Portugal, and all other countries, send their prime minister.

22 countries: Prime minister

5 countries: President

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Council#Members

> There are many countries in Europe with a president and a prime minister

In most of those countries, the role of the president is mostly ceremonial and/or has to do with foreign policy outside of EU.

(1) Replace US president with a Commission of Presidents. One from each state (well, EU only has 27 member states). Each Commissioner is appointed by state legislature, not elected. No more presidential elections. This is the EU Commission.

(2) Replace US senate with a meeting of secretaries, or heads of departments from each state. Only one relevant representative from each state. But the senate composition is not fixed. When the senate discusses e.g. agricultural policy, each state sends their secretary of agriculture, of head of their department of agriculture. No more senate elections. This is the EU Council of Ministers (a.k.a. Council of the European Union).

(3) The house is the EU Parliament.

Take the right of legislative initiative away from the congress, and give it to the Commission of Presidents. The Commission writes the bills, and the senate and the house can only approve or disapprove (with comments).

(4) Change the states to follow the European model: The governor is not elected, but appointed by the state legislature, and is called "prime minister". (Except France has a presidential model.)

(5) The president / Commission is like a CEO. To supervise the CEO, we need a board. The heads of states (governors) meet 4 times per year to discuss and set broad and long term goals. This is the European Council.

I think what you've typed is not representative of how EU works.

The Council [1], also known as the Council of the European Union and the Council of Ministers, does not consist of heads of state. The body that consists of heads of state is the European Council [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_European_Union

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Council

> What I don't understand, based on this: https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195775 the votes are the other way around

They voted for "Proposition de rejet". It's written there, but it's in French.