Small question (perhaps dumb on my part as I haven't slept yet), do these desalination system remove other chemicals such as PFAS, arsenic, lead? I think I read that they use nanofiltration membranes to remove almost everything. How about molecules that are smaller than water (H₂O)? Do they get filtered?
Xavier
joined 2 years ago
It depends on the definition of intelligence as there are many kind/type/sort/category of intelligences and every psychologist, neuroscientist, philosopher, linguist, ethnologist, educator and a multitude of other specialist will all have their own preferred way to differentiate, categorize, regroup and make hierarchies or diagrams of all matter of intelligence and the different aspects of cognition.
Then there is general intelligence (g factor or general intelligence factor) which counterintuitively affects “intelligence” less as it increases, coined as Spearman's law of diminishing returns (SLODR):
Tucker-Drob (2009) found that a general factor accounted for approximately 75% of the variation in seven different cognitive abilities among very low IQ adults, but only accounted for approximately 30% of the variation in the abilities among very high IQ adults.
Hence, very loosely akin to current CPUs/GPUs limits (terrible comparison, I know), there's only so much Gigahertz we can push silicon based CPUs, there is only so many transistors we can smash together into a smaller and smaller space, there is only so much distance/area to carry tiny and fragile signals from one end of the CPU to another before it become undistinguishable from background noise, there is only so much power we can feed a tiny CPU before it reaches thermal saturation and there's only so many cores and/or modules we can add before most of it remain dormant/barely used in day to day operations.
Now, concerning your hypothetical button, let suppose there is no such "diminishing return", one could gladly continuously sit/walk/sleep on the button for more "intelligence", but to keep up the brain and entire nervous system will have to drastically change just to handle all this increased intelligence. At some point even the brain volume will start to be affected and the brain would outgrow its cranium. All of it will probably excruciatingly painful and accompanied with a cocktail of neurological disorders since the brain keeps rewiring itself as it evolves.
Neat question indeed. 😆
The established publishing “vampires” such as :
RELX plc (the abomination created from merging Reed International and Elsevier)
John Wiley & Sons (another gluttonous monstrosity acquiring anything and everything on its path)
etc…
Will never let go of their grip on their oligopoly unless suitable legislation is in place forcing publicly funded research, studies, discoveries or developments to remain within the confines of public domain in perpetuity (or freely accessible national/academic archives in case of predefined sensitive research).
Eh. 🙄
What a sad state of affairs.
***Not-so-***surprisingly, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission does not actually have any mandate to help foster competition or protect competition. They, at best, constantly pretent to be able to do that.
Source: Our Mandate, Mission and What We Do
It focuses on achieving policy objectives established in the Broadcasting Act, Telecommunications Act and Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL)
We do not intervene in newspapers, magazines, the quality and content of TV and radio programs or the retail rates for most communication services.
(emphasis mine)
Anybody can get cheaper internet access pretty much anywhere else on the planet (even Antarctica or even lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, obviously not underwater... not yet at least, but once that is also available it will probably end up being cheaper than Canada).
Unfortunately, once we reach a point where one half of the country is burning and being smothered by heavy forest fire smoke while the other half of the country is drowning from weekly once-in-a-thousand-year flash floods and the freak hurricane that went out of track and is on its way to make landing on Nova Scotia, we might perhaps collectively agree to finally actually maybe do something about it.
It will probably far too late far too little, and everybody will be too angry looking for their favorite menu du jour scapegoat to burn at the stake for all their misfortune and their nostalgia for the good old times.
We are currently too busy with balancing inflation and deflation, the housing crisis, the international geopolitical chain of powder keg situation, the opioid crisis, the mental health crisis, the skyrocketing cost of living, the nearshoring of manufacturing, the collapse of fisheries and illegal fishing, the prevalence and soaring increase of misinformation without any repercussions, the constant and multifaceted foreign interference by several countries/organizations and private individuals, the numerous environmental issues (from untested insecticides/herbicides, invasive species, innumerable toxic spills/burial/contamination of soil/groundwater/rivers/lakes, pollution, etc.), the constant lack of qualified personnel in every fields in every provinces and territories (teachers, doctors, nurses, judges, daycare attendants, technicians, specialist, etc.), the reconciliation with aboriginals, the accelerating increase of undocumented migrants, the lack of access to basic necessities in our remote regions/villages/reserves, the list of urgent requests that need immediate and continued attention is endless.
Of the above non-exhaustive list of priorities, every Canadian will have their own order of priorities and their particular pet peeves on what is important/urgent and what is unnecessary/superfluous. Nobody can agree, everyone wants to delay and put on ice whatever they perceive as personally non-beneficial or not pertinent from their point of view.
The reality is that we have to accomplish all of them and so much more simultaneously. We could if we decide to cooperate/trust/verify without hindering each other.
Whether that happens or not only time will tell. The hyperobject that is Climate Change is not waiting for anyone.
Wow, thank you for expanding my vocabulary in ways I did not imagine possible.
I did not need to know that 🤢.
Perhaps it may come as a surprising opinion but I have met and known a lot of great Americans that are kind and polite to a fault while knowing some Canadians that are petty warmongering ignoramus.
Nevertheless, I can understand that I probably haven't met enough Americans from every States to have an overview of the ignoramuses that exist accross the border (beyond what is depicted, often exaggerated, in the media and memes — excepting the whole neverending Trump & Friends saga). Not that I absolutely want to meet them either, I have enough to deal with easily Facebook duped and misinformed relatives and sometimes colleagues.
I somehow felt like sharing my general experience after seeing that funny comparison of perceptions.
Sad to see another country descending into perpetual civil war and slowly turning into a failed state (hopefully not, and I'm completely wrong).
The people deserve better, but old power cannot let go of their darn solid gold toilet (metaphor).
Good for them for fighting back, but it should not have gone this far. As too many innocent are being sacrificed.
Please freeze your credit file at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. It's free and you can unfreeze it anytime you want (or whenever you judge its a valid credit check for something you actually requested yourself).
Whether you have a low/medium/good/perfect credit score and are satified with the credit cards and mortgage/loans you already have or lived without ever having a credit card and loans, it is of utmost importance to freeze your credit files to preempt any future identity theft from becoming a life upending disaster.
Some helpful links:
American Express | How to Freeze Your Credit at All 3 Bureaus—For Free
Federal Trade Commission | What To Know About Credit Freezes and Fraud Alerts
For the fellow Canadians reading this, freezing your credit file has been enshrined in law in Québec since February 2023. I have frozen mine on the first week of February. However, I am unaware of the availability of that option in other provinces, please check with your bank or provincial service bureau (equivalent to Services Québec here) or directly contact Equifax and TransUnion.
Hmm… some interesting things to perhaps review :
In total, these four provinces provided at least CAD 2.5 billion in fossil fuel subsidies in fiscal year (FY) 2020/21 and 1.5 billion in FY 2021/22 (as of December 2021)
Source: Blocking Ambition: Fossil fuel subsidies in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador by the International Institute for Sustainable Development
based on recent data from governments and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the leading research organization analysing data on fossil fuel subsidies in Canada, there is a conservative estimate: the combined federal, provincial, and territorial fossil fuel subsidies in Canada total at least $4.8 billion annually in 2018 and 2019, and most were given by provincial and territorial governments. Federal subsidies tend to take the form of grants, but provincial and territorial subsidies are often from tax programs such as waivers and breaks as well as uncollected or under-collected resource rents or royalties
Source: Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Canada: Governance Implications in the Net-Zero Transition by the Canada Climate Law Initiative
These are simply about explicit funding by different government bodies in Canada. However, there are larger implicit annual subsidies (externalities born by government, society and the environment which tend to be completely ignored by most vested interest) of:
US$ 36 billion
Source: IMF Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data: 2023 Update; annex III. Total (Explicit and Implicit) Subsidies
Compared to the portion of government funding received by CBC•Radio-Canada annual report (2022-2023, p.27) :
Government funding: This year, operating funding was $1,174.9 million, capital funding recognized in income was $92.9 million and working capital was $4.0 million
I dont mind cutting funding/subsidies where there is inefficiency/mismanagement. However, shouldn't we start with the most obvious mismanagement? Why does our government pay subsidies (not loans, not investments, not shares, which I completely excluded for my comparison above) for large very profitable multi-national corporation?
I wish there was a cheap simple laser engraver that could just “burn” black the surface of generic bulk printer paper. As in an inkless monochrome printer.
A bit like How to Cut, Score, and Engrave Paper With a Laser but without the need to use dedicated laser cutter.
With the explosion of interest in 3D printing, machining and laser cutters, I'm just eager to get hold of a printer like that and forever give up on liquid ink and toners of all sorts.