For anyone with an interest in chemistry, I recommend the scientific paper.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec6413

Trying to think of critiques:

• the wavelength of light necessary to “charge up” pyrimidone is fairly short (300 nm, UVB ultraviolet light)

• the quantity of UVB light on Earth’s surface is limited (it is mostly absorbed by the ozone layer)

• however, one can artificially produce ultraviolet light from solar electrical power, or figure out molecules that charge with UVA or even blue light, which would be perfect

Positive aspects:

• pyrimidone looks simple, synthesis probably is not hard
• it is solid at room temperature
• it lasts long when charged
• it is compatible with a water environment when energy needs releasing

Addition of hydrochloric acid (HCl) to Dewar pyrimidone (107 mg in 0.46 ml of water) increased the solution temperature to 100°C and induced boiling within 1 s, demonstrating rapid macroscopic heat transfer to an environmentally benign medium under ambient conditions.

Subsequently, the solution can be neutralized with an alkaline chemical, pyrimidone can be “recharged” and the cycle repeated. The summary of the article does not mention how many cycles it endures. I would be good to know that.

IMHO, with this sum, Ukraine can finance enough drone production to saturate and overwhelm Russia’s air defense regularly, and regularly bomb industries which the Russian war effort relies on, with enough drones to disable them.

It is unlikely that Russia will stop producing drones and doing the same, but starting from this summer, it will take damage to strategically important places on a weekly basis, and might run out of money to finance things.

If one looks at polls from “levada.ru”, Putin’s popularity is already dropping at a rapid rate for some months. Hopefully this will accelerate.

The remaining question is: how exactly will the war end? Hopefully with negotiations, but other scenarios are possible. It could be economic crisis, strikes and protests in Russia. Or a coup. But it could also be escalation to weapons of mass destruction. The role of Ukraine’s allies should be to deter Russia from using that last option.

This was an interesting read.

Especially his speculation that lack of a clear constitution (Basic Law was adopted as late as 1994 and is not a full-fledged constitution) and lack of clear borders contributed to Israel’s fall into the current state.

Too generous US “security assistance” certainly helped. If you can solve a problem with bombing without worrying about getting bombed, you may start thinking of war as a normal thing.

Failure to contain the populist extreme right is another stumbling block. If there had been no Netanyahu (and his corruption scandals, and the court cases awaiting him domestically, filed a considerable time before the ones awaiting abroad), things might be different.

Ultimately, I would say: Israel failed to install brakes, and failed to contain its greed for power and land. It had too much cooperation and still has too much cooperation.

I don’t know if there’s a reasonable way out.

I’m really happy that Hungarians got their wannabe president-for-life kicked out peacefully. :)

Regarding Russia - Putin’s popularity is in a clear downward dive, but a dive from very high altitude (he has built a formidable propaganda machinery and brainwashed people severely) so it will take time. His regime currently has almost full control of Internet use in Russia, so the only channels which can operate freely are VPN tunnels to services hosted abroad (Telegram being most popular). I hope self-organizing mesh networks will also offer a challenge in cities, but that remains to be seen.

Sadly, unlike Orban, Putin has also rebuilt the system so that he can order arbitrary violence (e.g. poisonings). As a result, most likely in Russia, when time comes, it will be bloody. But there’s a positive thing about Putin: he’s old and might just die one day (or touch the wrong door handle without gloves, if others near him decide he’s too old), opening an avenue for peaceful change.

Trump will be kicked out, I’m 95% sure of that. But Americans will have to rethink the role and authority of the president quite soon after that. And I mean limiting it.

If the French embassy does not manage to resolve this, given her age, sadly I think ICE will detain her to death.

Whoever snitched (it’s obvious from the article) should experience big setbacks in life.

Heyva Sor is real and if you can, I am sure they welcome any help. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_Red_Crescent

adding they would need to build up their own nuclear capability, costing billions of euros

Billions of euros is not a big sum for nuclear weapons. If others ask politely, maybe France or the UK will give a few tips about making them cheaper. Sweden may also have some recipes in the bottom drawer of canceled stuff. Ukraine does very likely possess most of the required knowledge to recreate Soviet designs.

OP, you have just spammed the same post to 9 communities. The document you posted is from year 2016. I should note that a few things have changed since them. Iran has massacred over 1000 protesters during the Mahsa Amini rebellion. Iran has supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Iran has had a war with Israel (but I can’t really blame them, since escalation was mutual). And most recently, Iran has massacred what’s likely several thousand protesters during the past few days.

I should note that Iranian people, all of them, also have plans. The US isn’t the only organization on Earth with ability to plan things, and attempt to fulfill their plans.

Some ayatollahs plan to keep ruling with an iron fist, killing thousands if needed. Some leftists joined them in revolution decades ago, but were surprised to see that the ayatollahs hijacked state. Those leftists used to blow the ayatollahs up (in scores) decades ago, but had to retreat out of the country. Some king used to rule before the revolution, and surprisingly some people think the king’s son might be a suitable person for a transition government. I notice that he seems intelligent, but I don’t think he’s suitable. He’s just their best known opposition figure currently…

…but of course, talk of a transition goverment is pie in the sky fantasy as long as 12.7 mm flies on streets.

The most pressing problem is that protesters have lost over 10 000 people as prisoners (likely to be excuted as “enemies of god”) and likely several thousand as dead, while the Basij and IRGC have lost less than 100 members.

The most pressing problem is that Iranian protesters aren’t armed, don’t have explosives, don’t have decent communications and most of them don’t know how to improvise weapons, explosives and communications. As a result, they’re getting slaughtered.

There is also a secondary problem. A US president promised to protect them, and it seems they believed him. They shouldn’t have. Even if he intends to do something, they’ll be dead by that time.

I would buy it. :)

Story: I drive a Mitsubishi electric car of generation 0 (MIEV). They have a typical error: a high voltage comparator on the motor controller breaks, stopping the car. The fix involves 1 resistor, and works (you just need dwarves with titanium hands to reach the correct part in less than a whole day). The resistor costs cents. Authorized representatives propose swapping in a 5000 euro motor controller (the remaining value of the car is about 1000 euros).

Easy maintenance is an absolute requirement.

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After thinking about this for a while… I can’t say I agree with that.

Sensors can fail. Some companies may even produce sub-standard sensors or faulty logic. I think it’s OK to tell people that copper and aluminum aren’t allowed on an induction top, and the makers of induction tops seem to think similarly, they just add a sentence “unless equipped with a magnetic base”.

Let’s take a manual of a randomly chosen induction cooker:

https://www.caple.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/C850I-Instruction-manual-May-2017.pdf

Let’s examine what it says:

Cookware made from the following materials is not suitable: pure stainless steel, aluminum or copper without a magnetic base, glass, wood, porcelain, ceramic, and earthenware

On one hand, an aluminum pot won’t heat. On the other hand, aluminum foil will melt, or if placed somewhat closer, catch fire. I think I should be allowed to claim that “aluminum is forbidden” on induction tops and add that “aluminum foil is extra forbidden”.

Will you kindly restore my post? People can downvote it if they don’t like my interpretation, but I don’t think it’s misinformation. It explains some things they might not even know about. I would be sad if people think that ferromagnetism is required for induction heating to happen.

Thanks for correcting.

There seems to be contradictory information on the subject.

Aluminum foil is proven to melt on induction cookers (see attached photo). But that’s because foil is thin.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foil_on_induction_cooktop.jpg

…as for thick aluminum cookware, or copper cookware, I was not implying that they would overheat themselves, I was implying that the induction cooker would overheat its coil attempting to work with them, because they conduct current better than the coil. But perhaps that’s prevented by protection circuits. I can’t test since I don’t have an induction cooker at home.

EM-fields induce current in copper and aluminum perfectly fine, no ferromagnetism is needed. These metals simply conduct the current very well, so no heat appears. Steel and cast iron, having considerable resistance, heats up in a similar field, conducting similar amounts of current.

As an added benefit besides the environmental ones - you can’t blow out a wall and collapse a house with careless use of an induction cooker. :)

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In the “smaller vehicles” part, great obstacles need to be overcome.

I would be content with doing only the parts that are reasonably economical and efficient:

• produce it, store it as a compressed gas
• if CO2 is available, convert it to methane (can be liquefied for distribution) or even bigger molecules
• if there is demand, use it to reduce steel
• if storage maxed (no CO2, no ore to reduce) burn it back to water in a turbine, selling electrical power when the market needs it

Economically, this would likely make ends meet - and keep hydrogen away from consumers (consumers are careless and their systems often faulty, while hydrogen is demanding and dangerous).

I would especially want to comment about:

Norway

A country that swims in oil, and has few other natural resources of comparable value, so indeed nearly all parties support using it.

What example will he bring next, Saudi Arabia?

That aside, Norway has a huge electric vehicle adoption rate. They will sell you oil, but have themselves almost stopped using it.

Chatbots have a built-in tendency for sycophancy - to affirm the user and sound supportive, at the cost of remaining truthful.

ChatGPT went through its sycophancy scandal recently and I would have hoped they’d have added weight to finding credible and factual sources, but apparently they haven’t.

To be honest, I’m rather surprised that Meta AI didn’t exhibit much sycophancy. Perhaps they’re simply somewhat behind the others in their customization curve - an language model can’t be sycophant if it can’t figure out the biases of its user or remember them until the relevant prompt.

Grok, being a creation of a company owned by Elon Musk, has quite predictably been “softened up” the most - to cater to the remaining user base of Twitter. I would expect the ability of Grok to present an unbiased and factual opinion degrade further in the future.

Overall, my rather limited personal experience with LLMs suggests that most language models will happily lie to you, unless you ask very carefully. They’re only language models, not reality models after all.

If you think of Kadyrov, he’s visibly very unwell. Watched a video of him condemning a Ukrainian drone strike recently. Barely keeps his eyes open and reads like a robot.

In the first 2 years, we waited for use of armoured vehicles to hit their monthly rate of production. This has largely happened, the reserves of armour that USSR built up have been spent by Russia. Vehicles that still stand in parking lots require deep renovation (slow and costly). So this prediction has largely come true.

In the first 3 years, we waited for Russia’s sovereign wealth fund to empty, ending Putin’s ability to shelter the economy against the cost of war. This now seems to have largely happened, as the central bank is selling reserves of gold. It follows that more appropriate things to sell are scarce.

We also waited for Russia’s inventory of civilian planes and railway locomotives + carriages to degrade due to lack of spare parts. This has not fully come true. Planes fly less, railways transport less, but they smuggle spare parts from third countries.

We have waited for Russia’s oil and gas revenues to fall, and they have fallen, considerably. At current levels, under Ukrainian “sanctions by drone”, Russia has to cut other budget lines to finance the war - and it has cut or frozen other budget lines (social security, health care, education, almost everything - war makes up approximately 40% of the government budget).

We have waited for the wages of soldiers to drop, and for soldiers to understand that inflation will make the money they got worthless. This has only partly happened - several regions have announced that they cannot pay large one-time compensations to people going to war.

We have waited for a crisis in Russia’s economy, and in some sectors there already is a crisis. Purchases of new cars, real estate and agricultural equipment have fallen sharply. Many companies have reduced work weeks (reduced pay), owe employees wages, or cannot service their debts.

If Putin overplays his hand and economy does collapse, this does not automatically mean his replacement. He’s a dictator and has a KGB background, he knows to expect rebellions and can supress them. He knows to expect a coup and may prevent one.

Eventually he’ll be replaced. We can’t influence or predict the personal characteristics of his successor, but whoever replaces him will very surely want to end the war, and doesn’t have to save face while doing that.

However, Levada’s polls - arguably the only polls which could indicate the real state of Russian society - do not indicate the ground shifting yet. They indicate that people are universally tired of the war, but not yet willing to end it by returning land to Ukraine.

For example, the “country is going in the right direction” indicator currently stands at 65%. Surfing on waves of war propaganda, it topped at 75% last year (rising from a low of 48% before the war - explains why Putin needed the war - to secure his own power), but it’s in a downward trend.

So, sadly, propaganda is still working, but it’s not working as well as it used to. In the “battle of the fridge and TV” (for people’s opinion) sadly the TV still prevails.

Interesting article, thank you.

A note about black carbon, however - it requires a carbon based fuel. This launch vehicle (and some others too) used H2 as its fuel. As a result, we can note emissions of zero for black carbon, alumina and chlorine.

The article has one more estimation error relative to this flight. They seem to have estimated 17.5% of the landing pod’s mass to burn up on re-entry. This is a reasonable estimate when re-entering from orbital flight (initial speed at least 7.8 km/s), but the flight in the news article was suborbital: a steep ascent to the Karman line (initial speed of re-entry: very low), followed by a ballistic fall.

As evidenced by photos of the capsule (also available in the news article), nearly none of its mass burnt away. It features no thermal protection tiles on the sides (there could be some under the bottom) and exhibits no visible signs of overheating or mass loss (even the painted text has remained readable).

So, while the article could be accurate in its analysis of solid-fueled and carbon-based launches and orbital re-entries, this flight differs considerably from the analyzed pattern. The capsule didn’t enter orbit, didn’t carry retrograde engines to initiate re-entry, as a result was lighter, and launchable using a relatively small rocket (19 m is really small for a passenger carrying rocket).

As a result, I think they caused very little harmful atmospheric emissions (I would consider water vapour harmless, thermal NOx harmful). Based on this, I would even speculate (based on intuition, no calculations) that during the flight (notes: not during the building of the spacecraft, not during spacecraft fuel production) less pollution was caused than an airliner burning aviation fuel emits over 500 km… maybe 1000 km.

It was just their energy bill that was huge.