> Interesting, but It doesn't answer why a bank would hold a completely vacant building for 15 years.
I had the exact same question before I fully read the article.
This is answered in the article in the "Extend and Pretend" section.
> "And so long as the operator can afford to keep losing $140k per year on the building… they can!"
> [...]
> "The only sticking point here is that the building operator is still losing $140k per year. But remember that, if he gives up, he loses the $4 million he’s already put into the building. Even if he ended up paying $140k per year for 10 years before things turned around, losing $1.4 million is still better than losing $4 million."
Extending the article's example to a scenario where the building was vacant for 15 years, it means the operator was willing to lose $140K per year. In the 15 year scenario, the operator lost $2.1 million ($140K * 15 years) which is still better than losing the $4 million if the operator walked away from the investment.
> Anything that makes owning an empty building a bad investment in all circumstances.
In the final section "This Sucks, What Could We Do About It?", it mentions how adding a vacant store font tax would end up creating more foreclosures. This is the side effect of the financialization of real estate.
If you found this interesting, you should also checkout the Sidekick Notepad from CGP Grey / Cortex [1]. CGP Grey has talked about this before in earlier videos [2] but recently updated a video discussing new designs [3]. The idea of 'Paper Apps' and the 'Sidekick' seem to be in a similar vein.
This video does a good job at explaining how the "UFO" is probably an infrared glare, hiding the hot object behind it, and rotating only because the camera rotates when tracking the target from left to right.
Do you not feel this is an unreasonable expectation? I wouldn’t think we would ever get to the point where phones are only charged once a year. This assumes that power consumption would not increase over time.
The Vice article that is cited by sdiw doesn't mention that the virus came from "bats being eaten.[1]" The article does state "new report points to the original animal source: bats" but nothing about bats being eaten. Maybe I missed something, please let me know. :)
The National Geographic article states the following:
> "[T]he highest prevalence of coronaviruses tend to be extruded by animals through feces, or guano in the case of bats. Coronaviruses not only spread via the air and the respiratory tract, but also if fecal matter comes in contact with another creature’s mouth. Bats aren’t exactly clean, so if one nibbles on a fruit, the food may get contaminated with fecal matter. If the fruit drops to the ground, then it can serve as a viral crossover point for farmed animals like civets." [2]
It seems more likely the virus jumped from the bat to another animal that ate something contaminated with bat guano infected with the virus. That animal was then traded at this market where the virus somehow spread to humans.
This lead me to find the following Wikipedia article on Civets[3]. This mentions how Civets are farmed and fed coffee cherries then the partly digested coffee beans are harvested from the Civets fecal matter. This is purely speculation, but this could be one way that the virus could have spread to humans. A Civet ate a coffee cherry that an infected horseshoe bat had contaminated with guano infected with the virus. The Civet was traded at this market and the virus spread to humans. Once again, this is pure speculation on my part but it shows how there are other mechanisms in which the virus could spread to humans without someone 'eating bats'.
This could also be explained by convergent evolution [1] where a similar trait was created by an independent evolutionary path.
The wiki page for 'High-altitude adaptation' in humans even mentions that adaptation to high altitude arose independently among different highlanders as a result of convergent evolution. [2]
It sounds like the affected Roku doesn't sanitize the bluetooth input and/or incorrectly trusts a bluetooth connection with a certain formatting. Yikes.
> Scratched lightly, but legibly, on an unfinished wall of a house that was being refurbished when the volcano blew is a banal notation in charcoal: “in [d]ulsit pro masumis esurit[ions],” which roughly translates as “he binged on food.” While not listing a year, the graffito, likely scrawled by a builder, cites “XVI K Nov”—the 16th day before the first of November on the ancient calendar, or October 17 on the modern one. That’s nearly two months after August 24, the fatal eruption’s official date, which originated with a letter by Pliny the Younger, an eyewitness to the catastrophe, to the Roman historian Tacitus 25 years later and transcribed over the centuries by monks.
> Massimo Osanna, Pompeii’s general director and mastermind of the project, is convinced that the notation was idly doodled a week before the blast. “This spectacular find finally allows us to date, with confidence, the disaster,” he says. “It reinforces other clues pointing to an autumn eruption: unripe pomegranates, heavy clothing found on bodies, wood-burning braziers in homes, wine from the harvest in sealed jars. When you reconstruct the daily life of this vanished community, two months of difference are important. We now have the lost piece of a jigsaw puzzle.”
I can picture the situation. A construction worker is annoyed because their coworker is off eating and not helping construct a wall. The construction worker vents their frustration by doodling on the unfinished wall. That doodle lasts 2000 years and helps archeologists determine when Mount Vesuvius eruption occurred.
> There's some controversy about the AI's field of vision. A person is restricted to using the small mini map for the "whole view" of the playing area. Whereas AlphaStar can view events without a visual restriction.
That has changed and AI's 'view' is now restricted.
From the FAQ:
> Q. How does AlphaStar perceive the game?
> A. Like human players, AlphaStar perceives the game using a camera-like view. This means that AlphaStar doesn’t receive information about its opponent unless it is within the camera’s field of view, and it can only move units to locations within its view. All limits on AlphaStar’s performance were designed in consultation with pro players.
How many rope bridges have been rebuilt every year for the last 600+ years? I find that extremely interesting.
From the article:
> The Q'eswachaka bridge is woven by hand and has been in place for at least 600 years. [...] The tradition has been passed on from generation to generation with every adult in the communities on either side gathering to bring new life to the crossing. [...] The reconstruction of Q'eswachaka takes place once a year, [...]
Hermetically sealed by definition is airtight, i.e. "excludes the passage of air, oxygen, or other gases". [1] With that said, the diffusion rate depends on both the properties of both the seal and the gas.
> The only viable carbon removal technology yet identified is leaving it in the ground.
The article discusses this point in the second paragraph.
> We're now in "Phase 2" and stopping climate change requires both emission reduction and removing CO2 from the atmosphere. "Phase 2" is occurring faster and hotter than we thought. If we don't act soon, we'll end up in "Phase 3" and be too late for both of these strategies to work.
"Although the Irish had reached and even established a religious community in Iceland before A.D. 800, there is nothing to connect Brendan with this venture. Nor is there any reliable evidence to show that either Brendan or any of his countrymen had ever reached Greenland or America."
I had the exact same question before I fully read the article.
This is answered in the article in the "Extend and Pretend" section.
> "And so long as the operator can afford to keep losing $140k per year on the building… they can!"
> [...]
> "The only sticking point here is that the building operator is still losing $140k per year. But remember that, if he gives up, he loses the $4 million he’s already put into the building. Even if he ended up paying $140k per year for 10 years before things turned around, losing $1.4 million is still better than losing $4 million."
Extending the article's example to a scenario where the building was vacant for 15 years, it means the operator was willing to lose $140K per year. In the 15 year scenario, the operator lost $2.1 million ($140K * 15 years) which is still better than losing the $4 million if the operator walked away from the investment.
> Anything that makes owning an empty building a bad investment in all circumstances.
In the final section "This Sucks, What Could We Do About It?", it mentions how adding a vacant store font tax would end up creating more foreclosures. This is the side effect of the financialization of real estate.