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The Fediverse
  • I've been missing an alternative to Facebook that I can use for non-anonymous planning of events and communication in hobby groups etc. and I had never heard of any of the "Facebook-type" federated stuff before!

    Now I just need to convince a bunch of people that this is viable to use without being the annoying guy...

  • Ukraine just held its first Pride event in years despite Russia's continued invasion
  • The point is exactly that they're trying. Despite the parade being attacked, the democratically elected government, and the police as an institution are supporting them. That is the essence of working towards freedom of expression and progress: The fact that the people in the parade are permitted by the government to express themselves, and protected by the government when they do so, even if popular opinion may be against them.

  • Michigan middle school coach allegedly choked student with shirt in incident caught on surveillance video - ABC News
  • I absolutely agree that newspapers shouldn't be allowed to label someone as a criminal before they have been sentenced. My point is that there's a difference between reporting indisputable facts about an event, and reporting that those facts make someone a criminal.

    Reporting that "Video shows person X shooting person Y". Is different from reporting "Person X committed murder by shooting person Y", because in the second case you are reporting that they committed a crime, when they may be acquitted of murder in court for any number of reasons. Reporting that "Person X allegedly shot and killed person Y according to this video" makes it seem like there's any doubt about whether that happened.

  • Michigan middle school coach allegedly choked student with shirt in incident caught on surveillance video - ABC News
  • I see the point, but still think it's a misuse of the word "alleged". There is no doubt here that the teacher was strangling the kid: That part is on video, and is true whether or not they're convicted of a crime for it. Whether the strangling was a crime, or whether there were mediating circumstances that make it not a crime is what remains to be determined.

    I just think we should be able to separate between "person allegedly committed a crime", which needs to be proven in court, or "person did XYZ and there is video evidence and multiple independent eyewitnesses accounts of it", which shouldn't need to be proven in court.

  • How and why did humans start consuming chicken eggs?
  • Exactly! I mean.. some reptiles eat eggs, so we could be talking about something that happened before our ancestors had developed the concept of an ass. I don't think it's far-fetched to think that eating eggs may be as old a concept as eggs themselves. In that case, the first egg-eaters evolved alongside the first egg-layers, and were eating proto-eggs before even the modern egg existed.

    Imagine if zebras started evolving very tough placentas over time, and the foals started lying around in them for a couple days before popping out: Lions would keep eating newborn zebras, and no single lion generation would notice that they were slightly different from 1000 years prior. Give that development a million years or whatever and you now have egg-laying zebras and egg-eating lions!

  • How and why did humans start consuming chicken eggs?
  • I would go even further: Our primitive ancestors likely descended from proto-humans that descended from primates that were already foraging eggs. Some modern apes and other mammals eat eggs as well, we've likely been eating eggs since hundreds of thousands of years before the first human evolved.

    In a sense, that line of though is interesting: When we think of "observing other animals eating something, and then deciding to eat it", we're almost implicitly forgetting that we are descendants of exactly those types of animals, that "just know" what is safe to eat, and that some of the knowledge we have about food is potentially passed down from even before the first primates evolved.

  • xkcd #2940: Modes of Transportation
  • I'm here to say that if there's snow, skis win on practicality. Almost every winter, there's at least one day when you will have some people skiing to work in Oslo, a city of 700 000 inhabitants, with a metro system. Because when there's 10 cm of snow in the streets, skis are the quickest and easiest way to get anywhere.

  • How Python Compares Floats and Ints: When Equals Isn’t Really Equal
  • I have to admit: If you (semi-)regularly use floating point comparisons in programming, I don't know why you would ever expect 0.1 + 0.2 == 0.3 to return true. It's common practice to check abs(a - b) < tol, where tol is some small number, to the point that common unit-testing libraries have built-in methods like assertEqual(a, b, tol) specifically for checking whether floats are "equal".

  • Unless you've got a better plan in the next 6 months, grab a fucking bucket
  • In a lot of countries you can be held legally accountable for not helping someone, and your negligence leads to death or injury. I think that's quite similar to refusing to vote, when voting can save lives.

    Your vote does effectively pass to the next person in line, because you not voting means their vote becomes a larger proportion of the total. By not voting you are blindly accepting the will of others, without using your possibility of affecting the outcome.

    Saying that there are no legal requirements for a primary is not a good argument for abstaining from voting in them. By your own arguments, the candidates want votes, and the party wants to nominate a candidate that has wide support. Voting in primaries is, if nothing else, a clear way of signalling what candidates you want.

  • Piracy
  • Possibly a poor translation from my side: I'm referring to the "head office" of the university, i.e. the group of people under the direct leadership of the principal, who have the highest administrative authority at the university.

  • Unless you've got a better plan in the next 6 months, grab a fucking bucket
  • I'm just saying you should consistently vote for the candidate you prefer. That includes voting for the "far-left" (no such thing in US politics) democratic candidates when they pop up. I would also argue that it is never the time to "protest" by not voting, as that just signals that you don't care who wins.

    It's really quite simple: It's always the ideal time to vote for the best (least bad) candidate. It is never the ideal time to abstain from voting because you dislike both candidates, unless you legitimately don't care who wins.

  • Unless you've got a better plan in the next 6 months, grab a fucking bucket
  • No: Every single election where a more left-leaning choice is pitted against a less left-leaning choice is the place to do that. If enough people consistently vote for the more left-leaning choice of the two, politics is pushed to the left.

    By not voting, you are saying that you don't care which candidate wins. In this case, the choice is between a literal fascist and a more or less far-right (globally speaking) candidate. Of the two, one is clearly more left-leaning (less far-right) than the other. So you vote for that one. That's how you make a difference.

  • Unless you've got a better plan in the next 6 months, grab a fucking bucket
  • This is a false equivalence though: In the thought experiment, you denying to split ensures that none of you get anything. In this real-world scenario, you refusing to make a choice between more or less genocide increases the chances of "more genocide" winning. By not making a choice, you aren't punishing the person proposing the deal, you're just allowing someone else to make the choice for you.

    There are elections in which it makes sense to vote against a candidate like Biden: In every election where there is a better choice on the table. That includes primaries, it includes backing candidates opposed to him in local elections, and elections for the house and senate. That is when you make your stand.

    By not voting, in any specific election, you are simply giving up your right to have an impact on the outcome. That means that if the outcome is an increase in people killed, you are responsible, because you had the option to save lives, and chose not to take it.

    By voting for the lesser of two evils, you are not signalling that you accept the lesser evil, but simply that you believe it is the best possible choice of those given. You can signal that you dislike the lesser evil by voting against it when an even lesser evil is on the table (or, preferably, something actually good).

    Also, it's not like "the democrats" tactically choose a candidate that they think the voters will reluctantly accept. The candidate is specifically the person that got the most votes in the primaries. The candidates in the primaries are typically people who got enough votes to be either governor or senator or something previously. By consistently voting for the better candidate in all those elections, you can actually have an impact on the presidential nominee, and signal your beliefs to the political party, without running the risk of having a wannabe dictator become president.

  • Piracy
  • A professor at my university tried that, but the students quite quickly made a huge fuss, got the principals office involved, and the universities lawyers informed said professor that what she was doing was illegal, and that she should stop before she got any more trouble. She stopped.

  • \*Creeper sounds*
  • Drake is fucked, because Kendrick has already dropped the Mr. Morale album, where he raps about his own shortcomings and relationship issues and how he's worked to fix them. Whatever Drake says about him, it's something he's already been open about working to fix.

    Drake on the other hand is just dumbly denying that he's done stuff everyone can see that he's done, or just not addressing what Kendrick is saying at all.

  • A Ukrainian sport plane drone just flew 800 miles (1300 km) into Russia to blow up an oil refinery
  • Long range artillery has pretty hard limits, and once you approach the 100km range, time to target becomes a real issue, even for missiles that can be shot down.

    Modern anti-air hat a range of several hundred km, and has been combat tested. More short-range systems (< 50 km) are in use (with huge success) every day in Ukraine. Of course bombers have also improved, but I wouldn't put money on the bombers having improved relative to the AA.

    Ps. I'm not the person downvoting you, I think you make a decent point, I just disagree :)

  • Kjør debatt: Bør koranbrenning forbys?

    I lys av sakene i Sverige og Danmark har dette blitt dagsaktuelt i Norge også. Jeg vil høre hva folk tenker. Stikkord er:

    • Ytringsfrihet / misbruk av ytringsfrihet
    • Respekt for folks religion / følelser
    • Grensesetting mellom beskyttede og ubeskyttede religioner / følelser
    • Sikring av Norge og nordmenn mot vold og sanksjoner.
    21
    Bare 20 % ønsker vindkraft på land, kun 2 / 79 ordførere sier ja til vindkraft i sin kommune. (artikkel i innlegg)
    e24.no Flere ordførere har lukket døren for vindkraft på land. – Ta debatten på nytt, sier NHO-sjefen.

    Kun to av ti nordmenn ønsker vindkraft på land. NHO-sjef Ole Erik Almlid mener resten må tenke seg om.

    Flere ordførere har lukket døren for vindkraft på land. – Ta debatten på nytt, sier NHO-sjefen.

    Her er jeg helt klart i statistisk mindretall, så jeg håper noen kan fortelle meg hva de tenker. Jeg mener vi helt klart må bygge vindkraft på land hvis vi ønsker å nå noen som helst "klimamål" (altså unngå at verden brenner/drukner). Jeg får alt for ofte inntrykk av at "alle" er enige i at vi må bygge mer fornybar energi, mens de samtidig kjemper med nebb og klør mot de tiltakene som er realistiske, gjennomførbare, og kan fungere.

    Jeg vil gjerne at noen som er imot vindkraft på land opplyser meg litt: Hva mener du vi bør gjøre i stedet? Hvorfor ikke gjøre det i tillegg? Tror du andre tiltak alene er nok? Er det ikke en realitet at det hjelper lite å beskytte lokalmiljøet mot vindkraftutbygging nå, hvis det uansett blir ødelagt av flom, tørke, forsuring av vannet, fremmedarter pga. temperaturendring, jordskred (mer ekstrem nedbør), osv. om 30-50 år?

    Linket artikkel:

    Flere ordførere har lukket døren for vindkraft på land. – Ta debatten på nytt, sier NHO-sjefen.

    Kun to av ti nordmenn ønsker vindkraft på land. NHO-sjef Ole Erik Almlid mener resten må tenke seg om.

    Norge kan ha for lite kraft allerede i 2027.

    Skal vi unngå det, bør det bygges 5–10 terawattimer (TWh) med vindkraft på land. Det slo Energikommisjonen fast i februar.

    Men selv om åtte av ti er enig i at Norge må bygge ut mer fornybar energi, mener kun to av ti nordmenn at det bør gjøres med vindkraft. Det viser en ny undersøkelse fra Næringslivets Hovedorganisasjon (NHO) (se graf nederst i saken).

    Administrerende direktør i NHO, Ole Erik Almlid, mener vi må ta vindkraft-debatten på nytt.

    – Det store løftet som skal gjøres, klarer vi ikke uten vindkraft på land, sier han.

    Vil akseptere vindkraft

    I flere år har motstanden mot vindkraft på land vært sterk. En kartlegging gjort av Nettavisen viste at kun to av 79 ordførere ville si ja til vindkraft i sin kommune. Tall fra Cicero viser at motstanden er fallende, men fremdeles er 35 prosent helt imot vindkraft på land.

    NHOs undersøkelse viser derimot at langt flere er villig til å akseptere det, hvis politikere og næringsliv sukrer pillen (se graf under).

    Vindkraft i industriområder

    NHO spurte nordmenn hva som skal til for å akseptere vindkraft på land. 33 prosent vil si ja hvis vindturbinene blir bygget på områder som allerede er regulert til industri.

    Det er i tråd med Energikommisjonens forslag om å bygge nærvindmøller.

    I tillegg vil nordmenn at vindkraften skal sikre mer inntekter til kommunen og flere arbeidsplasser.

    – Jeg er veldig glad for å se at vindkraft på land har så stor støtte, under gitte forutsetninger. Det viser at bildet kanskje er mer sammensatt enn vi har trodd, sier Almlid.

    Ifølge ham åpner dette et rom for å diskutere vindkraft på lokalbefolkningens premisser, fremfor å avvise det blankt.

    18 prosent vil ikke gå med på det under noen omstendigheter.

    I Møre og Romsdal og Vestland er henholdsvis 28 og 24 prosent av befolkningen helt imot vindkraft. Fem av de 13 områdene NVE har pekt ut for vindkraft ligger helt eller delvis i disse fylkene.

    Ordfører-duell om vindkraft

    Almlid oppfordrer landets mange ordførere og ordførerkandidater til å løfte debatten i årets lokalvalgkamp.

    – Ta diskusjonen om det er mulig å ha vindkraft i deres kommune. De som har sagt nei, ta en ny diskusjon. Men gjør det på en ordentlig måte, og gjør det i dialog med befolkningen.

    Almlid tror flere kommuner kan ombestemme seg fordi situasjonen er annerledes nå. Med kraftunderskudd vil strømprisene bli høyere, og allerede nå er det bedrifter som ikke blir etablert fordi de ikke har tilgang til kraften de har behov for.

    Han mener tror flere vil kunne si ja til vindkraft hvis de får mer igjen for det.

    – Jeg har veldig tro på gulrot.

    Positive sider

    NHO representerer bedrifter innen kraftkrevende industri, kraftprodusenter og offshorenæringer som skal elektrifisere. Likevel mener Almlid det er langt flere enn hans medlemsbedrifter som vil nytte godt av vindkraften.

    Han mener politikere og næringslivsledere må bli bedre til å fremheve hvordan vindkraft kan gi noe tilbake til samfunnet. Et eksempel er at utbyggingen kan skape arbeidsplasser og levende lokalsamfunn.

    – Den type utbygging som vindkraft på land innebærer, må gjøres i godt samarbeid med lokalbefolkningen. Og det må gjøres på en måte som sikrer inntekter til kommunen og verner sårbare områder.

    Skjære gjennom

    Men det haster å ta en avgjørelse. Det er fire år til Norge kan gå med kraftunderskudd, og utbygging av vindparker kan ta lang tid.

    Debatt er bra, men til slutt må noen skjære gjennom. Såpass er Almlid tydelig på.

    Han bruker motstanden mot vannkraftutbygging på 1970- og ’80-tallet som eksempel.

    – I dag er alle glade for at vi har vannkraften. Om mange år vil også mange være glade for at vi har både vindkraft, vannkraft og solkraft.

    Vindkraftdebatten krever at næringsliv og politikere tar tydelig lederskap, mener Almlid.

    – Vi må lære av det vi gjorde på åttitallet, da vi synliggjorde hvorfor vannkraften var viktig. Men det viser også at det å skjære gjennom, er viktig for å få til de langsiktige målene man satt, sikre arbeidsplasser og rimelige strømpriser.

    Almlid understreker at det å si nei til vindkraft, også får konsekvenser.

    – Sier vi ja, så har det en kostnad, og da må vi bøte på det best mulig. Men hvis vi sier nei, så har det en kostnad også.

    Nei til atomkraft

    Undersøkelsen viser også stor støtte til utbygging av atomkraft. Almlid har derimot ikke tro på at Norge skal bli en stor atomkraft-nasjon.

    – For å nå 2030-målene, så er ikke atomkraft svaret på kort sikt. Det er for langt frem og kommer til å være kostbart.

    Han vil heller ha mer av alt annet.

    – Svaret på utfordringen som Energikommisjonen har løftet frem, er både og – ikke enten eller. Det er vind på land, vind til havs, mer vannkraft, mer solkraft og mer energieffektivisering.

    9
    What happened to NSFL?

    Back in the day, on other forums than this one, there were tags to differentiate between porn (nsfw) and gore (nsfl). This was nice for people browsing new that had no problem seeing tits, but wanted to avoid degloved hands.

    Throughout the years, the NSFL tag went out of use. What happened?

    41
    Jailbreaking iPhones: what exactly does it entail?

    I remember back in the day when people would "Jailbreak" iPhones, but never really picked up on what they were doing other than that it let them do stuff that those of us with "non-jailbroken" iPhones couldn't do.

    Are they just booting another OS, e.g. android? Also: why haven't I heard of it in a while? Is it not possible on newer iPhones?

    22
    Ola Borten Moe *kan ikke* gå av etter aksjehandelsak (Aftenpostentekst inkludert)

    Det har kommet frem noe jeg ikke var klar over i forbindelse med aksjehandelsaken til Ola Borten Moe: En stortingsrepresentant har (per grunnloven) ikke lov til å trekke seg, men er nødt til å bli sittende ut perioden. Det er (slik jeg forstår det) heller ikke lov å skrive ut nyvalg/oppløse stortinget i løpet av en stortingsperiode, slik som man kan i mange andre land.

    Jeg ser at det er gode argumenter både for og mot dette, og er interessert i å høre hva folk synes om det. Bør en politiker kunne trekke seg / utvises fra stortinget hvis de misbruker folkets tillit? Bør det kunne skrives ut nyvalg hvis stortinget går i vranglås og ingen klarer å samle flertall for noe?

    Nedenfor er det Aftenpostens leder har å si om saken:

    Å sitte på Stortinget er ingen straff

    Ola Borten Moe må nok jobbe med motivasjonen. Men han ba om tillit fra velgerne. Da må han stå løpet ut.

    Det kom et lite hjertesukk fra Ola Borten Moe fredag. Han varslet at han går av som statsråd, trekker seg som nestleder i Senterpartiet og ikke stiller ved stortingsvalget i 2025. Men han slipper ikke ut av Stortinget før denne perioden er over.

    Moe virket ikke spesielt motivert for en slags åpen soning på Løvebakken. Det er mulig å forstå. Men hverken hans eget parti eller andre bør lytte til oppfordringen han kom med om å se på dette regelverket på nytt.

    Moe peker på at andre land gir folk mulighet til å trekke seg fra nasjonalforsamlingen.

    Ulike demokratier har forskjellige løsninger både når det gjelder dette og andre ting. Norge skiller seg fra mange andre, også ved at det ikke er mulig å oppløse parlamentet og skrive ut nyvalg. Det er en styrke for det norske demokratiet. Partiene tvinges til å finne løsninger sammen når velgerne har sagt sitt. Det har bidratt til en kultur med brede forlik om viktige saker som blant annet pensjon.

    Plikten til å stå løpet ut for den som velges til Stortinget, er grunnlovsfestet. Unntak er blitt gitt for representanter som får internasjonale toppverv, som da Jens Stoltenberg (Ap) ble generalsekretær i Nato i 2014.

    En generell mulighet til å trekke seg ville ha flere uheldige sider. For velgerne ville det blir mindre forutsigbart hvem de egentlig stemmer på hvis en toppkandidat plutselig kan trekke seg etter valget og noen andre rykker opp. Partier kan fristes til å toppe listen med kjendiser som etterpå finner ut at de har morsommere ting å gjøre enn å sitte i komitémøter og votere til langt på natt, mens andre nyter lyse sommerkvelder i juni.

    En risiko er også at velgernes avgjørelse undergraves. Det kan oppstå press i offentligheten for å få en representant til å trekke seg. Hvis det lages en nødutgang fra Stortinget, kan også partiene få enda mer makt ved at brysomme representanter kan skvises ut.

    Moe sa på pressekonferansen at han er innstilt på å gjøre en jobb de neste to årene for velgerne i Sør-Trøndelag som ga ham tillit i 2021. Det er fullt forståelig om motivasjonen hans akkurat nå ikke er på topp. Men han vil trolig – og forhåpentlig – klare å mobilisere sine sterke sider som politiker igjen.

    Den som har sagt ja til å stille til Stortinget, og som får velgernes tillit, må stå løpet ut. I gode og vonde dager.

    3
    Climbing @lemmy.ml thebestaquaman @lemmy.world
    Getting into trad climbing - any tips?

    I'm getting into trad climbing, after quite a few years of indoor and outdoor sport and bouldering. I'm very aware that trad climbing involves more risk, especially if you climb above your ability and/or are bad/inexperienced at placing runners. Does anyone here have tips on how best to practice protecting a route to the point where you feel safe enough to climb a difficult crux with only trad protection below you?

    0
    Opinions: What is a movie you genuinely like, that is rated below 60% on rotten tomatoes?

    Inspired by the linked XKCD. Using 60% instead of 50% because that's an easy filter to apply on rottentomatoes.

    I'll go first: I think "Sherlock Holmes: A game of Shadows" was awesome, from the plot to the characters ,and especially how they used screen-play to highlight how Sherlocks head works in these absurd ways.

    1.1K
    Deep sea mining - a better alternative? (article in body)
    www.economist.com Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world’s battery-metal shortage

    Taking nickel from rainforests destroys 30 times more life than getting it from the depths

    Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world’s battery-metal shortage

    I'm immediately sceptical to the idea of ruining even more areas of nature than we already are, but at the same time I recognise that if we want to build feasible green energy and storage, we need rare-earth metals and heavy metals. This might be a good alternative to massive deforestation.

    Since the article is paywalled:

    Pushed by the threat of climate change, rich countries are embarking on a grand electrification project. Britain, France and Norway, among others, plan to ban the sale of new internal-combustion cars. Even where bans are not on the statute books, electric-car sales are growing rapidly. Power grids are changing too, as wind turbines and solar panels displace fossil-fuelled power plants. The International Energy Agency (iea) reckons the world will add as much renewable power in the coming five years as it did in the past 20.

    All that means batteries, and lots of them—both to propel the cars and to store energy from intermittent renewable power stations. Demand for the minerals from which those batteries are made is soaring. Nickel in particular is in short supply. The element is used in the cathodes of high-quality electric-car batteries to boost capacity and cut weight. The iea calculates that, if it is to meet its decarbonisation goals, the world will need to be producing 6.3m tonnes of nickel a year by 2040, roughly double what it managed in 2022. That adds up to some 80m tonnes of nickel in total between now and then.

    Over the past five years most of the growth in demand has been met by Indonesia, which has been bulldozing rainforests to get at the ore beneath. In 2017 the country produced just 17% of the world’s nickel, according to cru, a metals research firm. Today it is responsible for around half, or 1.6m tonnes a year, and that number is rising. cru thinks Indonesia will account for 85% of production growth between now and 2027. Even so, that is unlikely to be enough to meet rising demand. And as Indonesian nickel production increases, it is expected to replace palm-oil production as the primary cause of deforestation in the country.

    But there is an alternative. A patch of Pacific Ocean seabed called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (ccz) is dotted with trillions of potato-sized lumps of nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper, all of which are of interest to battery-makers (see map). Collectively the nodules hold an estimated 340m tonnes of nickel alone—more than three times the United States Geological Survey’s estimate of the world’s land-based reserves. Companies have been keen to mine them for several years. With the coming expiry, on July 9th, of an international bureaucratic deadline, that prospect looks more likely than ever.

    It’s better down where it’s wetter That date marks two years since the island nation of Nauru, on behalf of a mining company it sponsors called The Metals Company (tmc), told the International Seabed Authority (isa), an appendage of the United Nations, that it wanted to mine a part of the ccz to which it has been granted access. That triggered a requirement for the isa to complete rules on commercial use of the deposits. If those regulations are not ready by July 9th—and it seems they will not be—then the isa is required to “consider and provisionally approve” tmc’s application. (The firm itself says it hopes to wait until rules can be agreed.)

    tmc’s plan is about as straightforward as underwater mining can be. Its first target is a patch of the ccz called nori-d, which covers about 2.5m hectares of ocean floor (an area about 20% bigger than Wales). Gerard Barron, tmc’s boss, estimates there are about 3.8m tonnes of nickel in the area. Since the nodules are simply sitting on the bottom of the ocean, the firm plans to send a large robot to the seabed to hoover them up. The gathered nodules will then be sucked up to a support ship on the surface through a high-tech pipe, similar to ones used in the oil-and-gas industry. Mr Barron says that his firm can break even on nodule collection at nickel prices as low as $6,000 per tonne; nickel currently sells for about $22,000 per tonne.

    The support ship will wash off any sediment, then offload the nodules to a second ship which will ferry them back to shore for processing. The surplus sediment, meanwhile, will be released back into the sea at a depth of around 1,500 metres, far below most ocean life. And tmc is not the only firm interested. A Belgian firm called Global Sea Mineral Resources—a subsidiary of Deme, a dredging giant—is also keen, and has tested a sea-floor robot and riser system similar to tmc’s. Three Chinese firms—Beijing Pioneer, China Merchants and China Minmetals—are circling too, though they are reckoned to be further behind technologically.

    As with mining on land, taking nickel from the sea will damage the surrounding ecosystem. Although the ccz is deep, dark and cold, it is not lifeless. tmc’s robot will destroy many organisms it drives across, as well as any that live on the nodules it collects. It will also kick up plumes of sediment, some of which will drift onto nearby organisms and kill them (though research suggests the plumes tend not to rise more than two metres above the seabed).

    Adrian Glover, a marine biologist at the Natural History Museum in London, points out that, because life evolved first in the oceans and only later moved to the land, the majority of the genetic diversity on the planet is still found underwater. Although the deep-ocean floor is dark and nutrient-poor, it nevertheless supports thousands of unique species. Most are microbes, but there are also worms, sponges and other invertebrates. The diversity of life is “very high”, says Dr Glover.

    Yet in several respects, mining the seabed has a smaller environmental footprint than mining in Indonesia. The harsh deep-sea environment means that, although its inhabitants may be highly diverse, they are not very abundant. A paper published in Nature in 2016 found that a given square metre of ccz supports between one and two living organisms, weighing a couple of grams at most. A square metre of Indonesian rainforest, by contrast, contains about 30,000 grams of plant biomass alone, and plenty more if you weigh up primates, birds, reptiles and insects too.

    But it is not enough to simply weigh the biomass in each ecosystem. The amount of nickel that can be produced per hectare is also relevant. The 2.5m hectares of seabed that tmc hopes to exploit is expected to yield about 3.8m tonnes of nickel, or about 1.5 tonnes per hectare.

    Getting hard numbers for land-based mining is tricky, for the firms that do it are less transparent than those hoping to mine the seabed. But investigative reporting from the Pulitzer Centre, a non-profit media outlet, suggests each hectare of rainforest on Sulawesi, the Indonesian island at the centre of the country’s nickel industry, will produce around 675 tonnes of nickel. (One reason land deposits produce so much more nickel, despite the lower quality of the ore, is because the ore extends far beneath the surface, whereas nodules exist only on the seabed.)

    All that makes a very rough comparison possible. Around 13 kilograms of biomass would be lost for every tonne of ccz nickel mined. Each tonne mined on Sulawesi would destroy around 450kg of plants alone—plus an unknown amount of animal biomass, too.

    Pick your poison There are other environmental arguments in favour of mining the seabed. The nodules contain much higher concentrations of metal than deposits on land, which means less energy is required to process them. Peter Tom Jones, the director of the ku Leuven Institute for Sustainable Metals and Materials, in Belgium, reckons that processing the nodules will produce about 40% less greenhouse-gas emissions than those from terrestrial ore.

    And because the nodules must be taken away for processing anyway, companies like tmc can be encouraged to choose places where energy comes with low emissions. Indonesian nickel ore, in contrast, is uneconomic unless it is processed near where it was mined. That almost always means using electricity from coal plants or diesel generators. Alex Laugharne, an analyst at cru, reckons Indonesian nickel production emits about 60 tonnes of carbon dioxide for each tonne of nickel. An audit of tmc’s plans carried out by Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, a firm based in London, found that each tonne of nickel harvested from the seabed would produce about six tonnes of co2.

    In any case, metal collected from the seabed is unlikely to entirely replace that mined from the rainforest. Battery production is growing so fast that nickel will probably be dug up from wherever it can be found. But if the ocean nodules can be brought to market affordably, the sheer volume of metal available may start to ease the pressure on Indonesian forests. The arguments are unlikely to stay theoretical for long. Mr Barron of tmc aims to start producing nickel and other metals from the seabed by the end of next year.

    Correction (July 6th 2023): An earlier version of this piece said global nickel production would need to reach 48m tonnes per year by 2040, and would total 320m tonnes by 2040. The correct figures are 6.3m tonnes and 80m tonnes. Apologies for the error.

    28
    Linguists: Mathematical writing vs. Typical written language, what's the difference?

    I remember reading somewhere that mathematical symbols make up an "incomplete" written language (or something like that). I commonly formulate problems, or complete sentences using only mathematical symbols. From a linguistic perspective, what separates mathematical symbols from "complete" writing systems?

    0
    ELI5: Quantum entanglement

    What is it, what are its consequences, how does it work, why is it there, why do we care about it?

    14
    Dehydration: How exactly does it kill you?

    I mean, I've heard that you can typically only survive about three days without water, but what exactly causes your body to fail when you dehydrate too much?

    I guess one point is lack of salts (if you sweat a lot) but I'm specifically wondering about lack of water (although a closer explanation about how lack of salts will kill you is also appreciated)

    12
    Whaf do you think of hosting an AMA with John Oliver to make Lemmy/kbin officially a viable Reddit replacement?

    cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/441437

    > He would be the perfect person to AMA as he’s already associated with Reddit revolts, and it would result in tremendous media coverage and mark fediverse as a viable alternative to Reddit. What do you think?

    3
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)TH
    thebestaquaman @lemmy.world
    Posts 16
    Comments 143