Maarten88 (u/Maarten88)

Maarten88 commented on Judge finalizes order for Greenpeace to pay $345M in ND oil pipeline case northdakotamonitor.com/20... · Posted by u/gmays

jcranmer · 11 days ago

Oil companies have a definite history of punching people and then suing them for running into their fist. But I should also point out that Greenpeace is the kind of shitty activist company that also does those kind of tactics, so an oil company suing Greenpeace leaves my priors as "I don't know which side is more likely right in this scenario."

Maarten88 · 11 days ago

> I don't know which side is more likely right in this scenario.

What are the motives? Follow the money? Who profits most might give an indication of who is more likely wrong.

Maarten88 commented on Judge finalizes order for Greenpeace to pay $345M in ND oil pipeline case northdakotamonitor.com/20... · Posted by u/gmays

terminalshort · 11 days ago

Oil companies haven't done a damn thing. We are the cause of global warming. Every time we pump gas into our car, buy anything that came from far away, or use any technology dependent on oil. Blaming oil companies is childish garbage people do to avoid recognizing their personal share of the responsibility.

Maarten88 · 11 days ago

You know the carbon footprint concept was literally created by BP marketing, to place the blame for climate change on society, and distract from all the evil stuff they did to promote more fossil fuel consumption and sabotage climate science.

The Climate Town channel on Youtube has lots of video's on this, such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J9LOqiXdpE

Maarten88 commented on Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court bbc.com/news/live/c0l9r67... · Posted by u/blackguardx

exceptione · 21 days ago

I wish everyone a nice party, but the problem isn't Trump. Its what behind him: the ideologues, the power brokers and their networks, the 0.001%. Plus the masses having been bathing in culture wars for years.

Trump is just good for circus, I would say the GOP can call themselves really lucky with him. His job is to successfully capture media attention, keeping what enables him out of the spotlight. He lacks all qualities, except that one ability to grab the mass media by their pussy. New craziness every day makes good headlines.

Problem is that his enablers are not aligned on all core issues. Yes, you have got the Heritage Foundation which mainly wants to go back to the gilded age with a vast christian lower class. But you also have a circle of people who believe that crashing the US, including the dollar, enables them to build a US like they want. Its a weird coalition of billionaires predating on the millionaires, grifters, christian nationalists, Neo-nazi's like Miller, tech-accelerationists etc.

You should fear the day when Trump isn't needed anymore. MAGA is Trump. GOP will have to shift up ideological gear after him, and it won't be as nice as Trump. Even if internal war breaks out in the GOP, it is too early for a party.

Maarten88 · 21 days ago

> people who believe that crashing the US, including the dollar, enables them to build a US like they want

Yes, it's strange how dumb some rich/succesful people are. As I understand it, no civilization ever has done such a thing. If a civilization and its institutions crash, it remains failed/dysfunctional for a very long time. The only way to improve society is in small steps.

I hope the people who finance this all will wake up to the reality that it may well cost them everything, too.

Maarten88 commented on InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger than steel techcrunch.com/2025/05/12... · Posted by u/LorenDB

chronogram · 10 months ago

Titanium's strength is in its weight: steel's Young modulus is almost twice as high, so you'd have to build rather large bridges to compensate. Titanium is useful where weight is a concern, like things you launch into space. Steel is perfect whenever weight isn't a concern and sometimes still works really well because you get so much strength out of so little which is why there are so many fans of the thin, shock absorbing, steel bike frames.

Maarten88 · 10 months ago

Titanium's advantage is imo not so much its weight, as aluminium is better still in that respect. Titanium is mostly better where corrosion and temperature resistance are important. Relative to weight, high grade steel, titanium and aluminium are about equal in tensile strength.

Maarten88 commented on InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger than steel techcrunch.com/2025/05/12... · Posted by u/LorenDB

kragen · 10 months ago

Liangbing Hu at UMD, checks out. Fantastic find! This should at least be the top comment on this thread to offset the content-free journalist pablum that's linked.

The strength is 483–587 MPa, I seem to see when skimming, which is indeed superior to ASTM A36 structural steel (250MPa yield strength). In Extended Data Figure 1c, they reported the density as 1.3g/cc, a sixth of the density of steel. (Extended data figure 2f plots density against lignin removal percentage.) Of course high-strength steels are stronger, but not six times stronger.

As for the process, they didn't just boil the wood; they boiled it with lye (2.5M, the "food industry chemical") and sodium sulfite (0.4M, technically also a food industry chemical, used for example as an antioxidant in wine) for 7 hours before densifying it with 5MPa for "about a day", removing optimally 45% of the lignin. This is similar to the sulfite chemical wood pulping process that preceded the Kraft paper process, just carried out at high pH and not taken to completion, so in a sense I guess the result is sort of like Masonite, which is also made from cellulose fibers from wood bonded with the wood's natural lignin.

Environmental concerns may be an obstacle; sulfite pulping is nasty. Also presumably to mass-produce the stuff they'll want to find ways to shorten the cycle time, and maybe already have.

The burning question that arises in my mind is why nobody was doing this in 01890, 135 years ago. Sulfite pulping was going gangbusters, building materials were booming, environmental concerns were largely unknown, and there was a rage for everything newfangled, modern, and "scientific". The scientific discipline of strength of materials, needed to calculate the benefits, was already well developed. Mason put Masonite into mass production in 01929, with a process involving autoclaving wood chips at 2800kPa. So what prevented someone from selling Superwood back then? Did nobody try partial alkaline sulfite pulping and pressing the result?

Maarten88 · 10 months ago

> why nobody was doing this in 01890, 135 years ago

Maybe because at that time tropical hardwood was readily available at low cost?

Maarten88 commented on Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals ft.com/content/1201f834-6... · Posted by u/kvee

sgerenser · a year ago

It's not just profits and management. Administrators, nurses, and yes, definitely doctors, get paid far higher in the U.S. than in other countries. Who wants to be the one to say we need to cut staff, and cut wages for nurses and doctors, in order to bring down costs? Just cutting fat from insurance companies, or having the government step in as insurer with no other changes, wouldn't move the needle much.

Maarten88 · a year ago

I'm pretty sure healthcare costs in the US are also higher as a percentage of GDP compared to EU, so higher wages would not explain the difference. Also productivity should be higher?

I think pharmaceutical, hospital, insurance and legal companies take all the money.

Maarten88 commented on Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals ft.com/content/1201f834-6... · Posted by u/kvee

paulsutter · a year ago

The bizarre thing is that the problems are fixable. The federal government already spends more per capita on healthcare than other developed countries, just that our healthcare is so much more expensive and for no good reason.

Maarten88 · a year ago

> much more expensive and for no good reason

There is a good reason: profits and management pay. And greed is good, right?

> the problems are fixable

Fixable in theory. The US would first have to fix the underlying issue, which i.m.o. is government, media and even judicial capture by financial interests. Billionaires are now openly buying "shares" in those. I don't see any sign of it changing anytime soon. It only seems to get worse.

Maarten88 commented on High Levels of Banned PFAS Detected in Hershey's Packaging grizzlyreports.com/hsy/... · Posted by u/nicovank

kyleee · a year ago

On the other hand it’s great to have them investigating all these companies and their widespread misdeeds

Maarten88 · a year ago

The investigating is great, the problem is who is doing it and for what reason.

If the misdeed is done by a non-public or poor company there is no money to be made so they would never even investigate it. And not accepting a payoff that returns more than the short position would be ignoring fiduciary responsibility, so some investigations could disappear.

Maarten88 commented on High Levels of Banned PFAS Detected in Hershey's Packaging grizzlyreports.com/hsy/... · Posted by u/nicovank

tern · a year ago

They're probably being extra careful to protect themselves from defamation lawsuits. I have more trust in the information reading this, because I can assume they're willing to say things that put them at risk of being sued by powerful organizations.

Maarten88 · a year ago

It's very worrying that consumer protection against poisoning in the US comes from a for-profit company that makes money by short selling companies they found to have issues and then covering their back this way against lawsuits, which any less aggressive reviewer would face.

Maarten88 commented on Fisker EVs Hired an IT Spy Who Funneled Millions to N. Korea's Missile Program torquenews.com/1084/fiske... · Posted by u/rmason

Maarten88 · a year ago

With all the anger over illegal immigrants taking US jobs, as a European it surprises me that nobody in the US seems to even mention the idea of punishing the employer for employing illegal workers.

If I want to hire someone (local or remote) as an employer here, I better make sure the worker has a valid working permit. Fines for non-compliance towards the employer are huge, even for a single day of work. All paperwork has to be complete before any work is done. Even when hiring through intermediary companies who guarantee it's all legal, liability and fines remain in place for the ultimate employer if it turns out to be not so.