I always want to reply with that chart on every post about some magical new climate technology. Nothing really matters until we stop pulling carbon-based fuels out of the ground and lighting them on fire. That’s it. That’s the only thing that matters. Wind and solar are great but we’re still approving gas/coal/oil projects, at least globally.

It’s like with the water crisis in the American West. They guilt trip individuals into feeling bad about taking showers but it’s like 80% agriculture. And the majority of that is for animal feed. (I’m not saying everyone go vegan. That’s about as unrealistic as asking everyone to stop fucking to keep the population from growing. I’m saying don’t grow alfalfa in the fucking desert and then blame people who bathe.)

Helene’s size shocked me but the storm surge for Katrina was unusually extreme. It was a well organized Category 5 and then weakened to a strong 3 right before landfall. 

To compare with Helene, which was similar in terms of (east to west) diameter but covered much more area overall, with category 4 winds at landfall: the Weather Channel was making a big deal out of the 8ft storm surges. During Katrina, the Mississippi Gulf Coast had a 28 foot storm surge. (The Miss. Gulf Coast isn’t that geographically different from the Fla. big bend region but that plays a role too.)

Helene’s unusual movement speed kept it strong very far inland and caused massive issues in places that rarely see tropical weather. Harvey was the opposite: it stalled over Houston and dumped days of rain on a major metropolis.

I wish we could update the Saffir Simpson scale to something that takes into account more variables. There are other measurements but no storm is identical in terms of damage potential. A category 5 can not even make landfall whereas something like Hurricane Sandy was a category 1 (or equivalent since it wasn’t technically still a hurricane) when it hit NYC and caused massive damage and flooded subway systems. Sometimes, a storm hitting a place that isn’t used to them can knock over all the trees or flood rivers while a similar storm would be nothing to Miami or New Orleans.

Maybe his politics are complicated. Did y’all consider that? That a white South African industrialist who dabbles in eugenics, treats employees like shit, and thinks catturd2 is funny might be a complex enigma?

They really should make the Boeing executives be the first astronauts on this mission.

The 10,000th study to show the same result. Probably need to do a hundred thousand more.

Having a separate, open source JavaScript engine is in everyone’s interests even if they don’t know what they’d lose without the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox. I’m a web developer and Mozilla has protected the open web for all of us and if people understood what they’ve done, they’d all donate.

Google and Microsoft cannot and should not control standards. Mozilla is the conscience of the industry. Support it or you won’t know what you lost.

Imagine how out-of-touch you have to be to represent San Francisco and not realize sincere antiwar protesters exist.

This story should be on every newspaper front page right below war correspondents.

The fact that Harvard bent over for a “donation” is just pathetic. They have a $50bn endowment. What is even the point of having that much money if not to be uncompromising on academic freedom?

As someone who frequently orders one can of soup, this is excellent news.

The comments on that article are really missing the point that leveling a city block to kill a few terrorists almost invariably means you created more terrorists than you killed.

Is it illegal to have house parties in NYC? Why is the NYPD busting up keggers like campus police?