> The tiniest of pieces of plastic, nanoplastics are defined by the researchers as having a diameter of less than one micrometre (one one-thousandth of a metre). Microplastics are between one micrometre and 5 millimetres across.
Isn’t a millimeter one one-thousandth of a meter and a micrometer one one-thousandth of that (or one-millionth of a meter)? I don’t have to reason about objects this small very often so I was trying to make sense of the relative sizes and this threw me off.
Of course mistakes happen, so whatever, hopefully it’s corrected shortly; I’m just surprised to see something so easily check-able as a unit definition get missed in a publication like Nature.
I had the same reaction, but then some cursory searching led me to this discussion on the "Talk" page for Wikiquote's entry on Mussolini which casts some doubt on the accuracy of the attribution and/or translation of this line:
> the various social programs the military has now been implementing
Social programs? You mean the policy of not discriminating based on gender or sexual preference?
> they started scrutinizing the basic, popular political beliefs of many of the recruits
It seems prudent to scrutinize political beliefs that might be incompatible with treating a non-cishet male colleague as an equal (or a superior, as the case may be) or regarding such colleagues with dignity and respect.
> whatever half baked thing (lights, sirens, computer vision, AI, barriers) it is OP is envisioning
Do you think OP should have produced a formal proposal with input from industry experts and detailed cost and risk mitigation figures before submitting a comment on an internet forum?
On a trip from Kristiansand to Oslo in 2011, I noted to the driver of the vehicle in which I was traveling how unusual it seemed to me that no one on the highway was being impatient or aggressive. How remarkable, I proposed, that even the impatience of motorists could be tamed by Norwegian social norms? He chuckled and explained section speed control to me: https://www.vegvesen.no/en/fag/fokusomrader/trafikksikkerhet...
Norway has the lowest per-capita traffic deaths of any European country. Check out the US's traffic death statistics if you need another reason to be disappointed in the outcomes of our domestic policy.
They also only work with frames that have been specially designed to allow fitting a belt, as I understand it. Chains can be easily broken and joined in the shop (or even on the roadside), but not so with belts, so the frame must come apart to get the belt going through the rear triangle, which substantially complicates frame building and design.
I don't mean to suggest this tradeoff isn't worthwhile to people who want clean, low-maintenance bicycle drivetrains for working or commuting, but the extra cost of manufacturing makes it harder to persuade cost-conscious consumers.
> compared to driving to e.g. SoulCycle or a spin class
Radical idea: rather than choosing between a $2,000 stationary bike for your living room or burning a bunch of fossil fuels to move yourself and your 2,000+ pounds of motor vehicle to a gym to ride somebody else's stationary bike, you could just buy an ordinary bike and ride around outside. You could probably even buy a indoor trainer for your ordinary bike as well, for less than the cost of a Peloton.
I mean, you do you, I guess... I just can't comprehend the appeal of paying $2,000 for a bike that doesn't even take you anywhere. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just because an anecdote involving Lance Armstrong was illustrative of this tactical cooperation doesn’t mean that it’s only for Lance and other loathsome cheats and bullies.
As the previous commenter pointed out, it’s common practice to work with a few of one’s opponents in order to beat all the others. Road cyclists’ greatest adversary is aerodynamic drag, which cannot be fought alone as long or as hard as it can be fought in a group of riders cooperating with each other. If you’re in a small breakaway with a few opponents, you and your opponents can choose to cooperate with each other or you can choose to not cooperate and end up falling back into the peloton, within which each rider has much less work to do and consequently tires much less quickly.
> And sure, maybe (maybe) the legal system will penalize the driver, but is it going to change anything? No, because our society has decided that cars are more important and we're not going to curtail our usage of cars at all, and accidents like this are unavoidable because of the nature of cars and ever-increasing traffic.
Yes, this is the problem that is being discussed -- and the problem that we really need to solve, for a host of reasons ranging from public health to climate stability -- and it is a distraction from discussions of this problem (and also, condescending and unnecessary advice) to suggest that the victims of reckless motorists try harder to not be victims.
I can relate to this phenomenon (the “hey this $10 gadget I didn’t know existed but for an ad I saw has actually ended up being super useful to me!” thing), but the problem is that stories that end with me making a purchase with which I was satisfied, from which I got utility commensurate with the cost, are a vanishing minority of stories that begin with me seeing an ad.
In fact, the vast majority of the ads I see I couldn’t tell a story about at all, because I see hundreds or even thousands of ads each day and they’re so fleeting.
But the effects of seeing so many ads isn’t fleeting. Whether the deliberate manipulation of my attention is successful at influencing my behavior to increase the advertiser’s revenue is irrelevant, because my attention being manipulated either way, and relentlessly so, by numerous actors who are competing with each other for space in mind, using tools and techniques so sophisticated as to be heretofore unimaginable... and this results in much less space in mind being left for... me!
Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, two things:
1) that your assertion that environmentalists and public figures in media, politics, and (what we'll call, with marginal disrespect, "pop") science are lacking in humility and unwilling to admit any flaw in their predictions or assertions is a fair assertion, and
2) that they are generally correct in their concern about pollution in general and the effect of carbon emissions on global temperatures and weather patterns in particular, and that this is a risk to the welfare of many people around the world.
Do you suppose that environmental activists are more likely to achieve their important objective of dramatically reducing carbon emissions by admitting even mild uncertainties in the rationale for their position in effort to appeal to educated, reasoned people like you, or by adhering to a steadfast narrative, increasingly accepted by the masses, that anthropogenic climate change is creating a severe risk to the welfare of people the world around?
> The tiniest of pieces of plastic, nanoplastics are defined by the researchers as having a diameter of less than one micrometre (one one-thousandth of a metre). Microplastics are between one micrometre and 5 millimetres across.
Isn’t a millimeter one one-thousandth of a meter and a micrometer one one-thousandth of that (or one-millionth of a meter)? I don’t have to reason about objects this small very often so I was trying to make sense of the relative sizes and this threw me off.
Of course mistakes happen, so whatever, hopefully it’s corrected shortly; I’m just surprised to see something so easily check-able as a unit definition get missed in a publication like Nature.