Curious to see what the economics of starship will shake out to be

Those are normal crystalline panels, not tandem

Are there any perovskite/monocrystalline cells in commercial production yet anywhere in the world? I keep seeing a lot of buzz for adding a perovskite layer to crystalline silicon cells, but I’m not seeing any in actual production. Maybe I’ve missed something?

This only works if the bridge is financed as an NFT

Not enough context, impossible to answer this question.

Good job imagining a version that could go 3D

Yeah it’s pretty neat. You can also imagine a version that goes 3D, maybe replicating uneven ground or stairs.

I can understand this idea of anti Zionism from before the state of Israel existed. There were options at that time about how to do things. But now we’re here some 70 years later and we have millions of Jews that have been born and grown up in a Jewish state for generations. So in the context of today’s reality, I’m trying to understand what does anti Zionism mean?

Like does it mean that Israel should continue to exist, but not explicitly be a Jewish state? Or maybe some other change to how it’s administered? Or it should not exist at all? If it shouldn’t exist, then what about the millions of Jews that live there? It’s not clear to me what anti Zionism means today.

What does anti Zionism mean?

The article does a decent job of going into some of the nuance about the different ways the apartheid label might or might not fit things that are thing on. But in the end who cares if we can fit a class of actions into the apartheid label?

Why don’t we just look at the actual actions that are taking place and discuss them for what they are. If Israel levels half of Gaza in intense bombing campaigns that kill tens of thousands of people, then we can see that and discuss what to do about it. Who cares if it doesn’t fit the apartheid label.

I see similar arguments every day now where people are arguing if it’s genocide or ethnic cleansing or apartheid or whatever. What does it change if you’re able to cognitively classify a set of actions with the correct label?

Maybe if you justify your favorite label then you can condemn Israel/Hamas harder, but this doesn’t actually change anything and it doesn’t lead to greater understanding. I’d actually argue that settling on your preferred label actually leads to less understanding. That’s because once you’ve categorized something to your satisfaction, you tend to become more blind to contradictory evidence.

For example, let’s say we all agree that Israel is an “apartheid state”. That label comes with a lot of baggage that’s going to color our views of future actions. We might miss out on changes in Israeli laws or courts or political leadership that contradicts the apartheid label.

Better instead to try and see things clearly as they are instead of trying to force labels onto things. This takes more effort because labels serve as cognitive shortcuts, but the result is a better understanding of what’s actually going on.

That seems like a really low number. According to the article it’s almost half the number of people from a few years ago. And even that seems low considering there should be something like >60 million Russians in the ROC.

1.4 million people is less than 2% of the total number of Russian Orthodox Christians.

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

After the 10/7 Hamas attack, one of the biggest fears that Israel had was that Hezbollah would join and attack Israel from Lebanon. Hezbollah is one of the most serious existential threats to Israel, so it became a priority to prevent them from joining the war with Hamas.

That meant stepped up rocket and drone attacks that was intended to signal strength and serve as a warning to Hezbollah. Of course Hezbollah did the exact same thing with rocket and artillery strikes against Israeli targets, also intending to signal strength. These cross border attacks basically started up immediately after 10/7 by both sides.

The attacks have escalated slightly over time, but have not escalated into full out war. Neither side really wants to go to war right now. Israel is focused with its war in Gaza and wants to keep Hezbollah from joining. Meanwhile it’s the perfect opportunity for Hezbollah to attack while Israel’s attention is split, however that has to be balanced by the fact the vast majority of Lebanese people oppose going to war because it would devastate their country that’s already in the midst of a many-years long economic, political and social crisis. So Hezbollah is effectively prevented from joining the war with Israel by internal Lebanese issues.

Most likely the border attacks will continue as they are without escalating into an all out war that neither side is really prepared for. Unfortunately the immediate result is that entire communities on both sides of the border have become internally displaced. The article mentions ~100,000 Lebanese have fled their homes in the border region. The numbers I’ve seen for Israel are also >100,000 people evacuated from their communities near the border.

I’m sure that’s a part of what’s going on, but to claim that “this is all about oil” is highly reductive. There are many different entities involved with competing interests.

Oops I dropped the laptop.

Oops the hackers encrypted all my data in a ransomware attack.

Oops my credit card expired, so my cloud storage didn’t renew.

Oops I forgot the password to my encrypted thumb drive.

Oops I lost my micro SD card.

Oops I dropped my phone in the toilet.

Oops my photo hosting company went out of business 6 months ago and I forgot to download my photos.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has taken on symbolic importance to many people. In one sense whatever is going on there is not really important for most of the world. It’s some kind of internal conflict/civil war with essentially neighbors beating each other up. But it doesn’t really affect anyone else significantly. And yet everyone has a take on who is right and who is wrong and the thinking is very black and white and absolutist, even if you really don’t know what’s going on or the history behind it or the stakes.

Contrast this with other similar conflicts that most people have no opinion on. Like Ethiopia-Tigray or the ongoing civil war in Myanmar. Most people probably haven’t even heard of this stuff and have no clue as to who is fighting who. Hell, how many people had the barest inkling of who Hamas was a week ago. And now they feel they can take some absolute morally superior position on the issue.

It’s because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become symbolic of who you are. The other conflicts I mentioned have no symbolic meaning or importance to people outside those regions. The Ukraine war is another highly symbolic conflict and that’s why it’s often mentioned in the same breath, but the myriad of other ethnic conflicts going on throughout the world are ignored.

The power of symbolic positions is that they strongly ensure group cohesion. You wear these symbols on your chest like a medal or a placard. They superficially resemble personal opinions, but actually they’re badges of membership. Most people don’t actually think hard about these issues or try to understand deeply what’s going on. Instead they are told what to believe and what to say by people that they trust and identify with. Once it’s clear what the “correct” position is, people will wear it with pride.

Deeply thinking about a complex issue is extremely resource intensive and most people just don’t care that much. We also want to clearly delineate things into categories of good/bad. It’s a natural heuristic that feels good. Once you know a thing is “good” you cheer it on. If a thing is “bad” you loudly denounce it with your peers. If a big thing happens, but you don’t know if it’s good or bad then you feel uncomfortable mental dissonance. Big things can’t just be left in a state of psychological limbo. You need to decide if it’s good or bad. And so we do, collectively.