Fortunately, Ireland’s woefully inadequate climate policies may help give us a chance to study the phenomenon of AMOC collapse within our lifetimes!
For peat's sake!
Readit Newsmikhailfranco commented on Comparing the Latitude of Europe and America vividmaps.com/comparing-l... · Posted by u/mooreds
mikhailfranco commented on The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia cnn.com/2025/11/12/busine... · Posted by u/andrewl
The lowest value coin still in use is the Uzbek Tiyin (0.01 UZS).
So 1,200,000 Tiyins to the USD.
mikhailfranco commented on What's Behind the Mysterious Ancient Wall in the Gobi Desert? news.artnet.com/art-world... · Posted by u/derbOac
Well, that was pretty anticlimactic. Suggest you go read about a more interesting abandoned city in the Gobi Desert instead:
> Built in 1032, the city thrived under the rule of the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty. It has been identified as the city of Etzina, which appears in The Travels of Marco Polo. ...
> According to a legend of the local Torghut population, in 1372 a Mongol military general named Khara Bator was surrounded with his troops by the armies of the Ming dynasty. Diverting the Ejin River, the city's water source that flowed just outside the fortress, the Ming dynasty denied Khara-Khoto water for its gardens and wells. As time passed and Khara Bator realised his fate, he murdered his family and then himself. After his suicide, Khara Bator's soldiers waited within the fortress until Ming troops finally attacked and killed the remaining inhabitants.
Khara Khoto appears to be on or near the extension of the 'Gobi Wall' into present day China, presumably as part of the same system.
https://cms.interestingengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
The name 'Gobi Wall' seems to refer to the section of the wall within Mongolia. Its garrisons and forts are numbered from G01 at the western end of the section, where the wall crosses the border.
https://cdn.grid.id/crop/0x0:0x0/700x0/photo/2025/05/31/land...
Khara Khoto is about 100 km WSW of G01.
mikhailfranco commented on Map of Near and Middle East Oil 1965 davidrumsey.com/blog/2025... · Posted by u/warrenm
Note Abu Musa, Greater & Lesser Tunb islands are attributed to the Emirates. These were occupied by Iran at the formation of the UAE and remain contested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seizure_of_Abu_Musa_and_the_Gr...
mikhailfranco commented on Map of Near and Middle East Oil 1965 davidrumsey.com/blog/2025... · Posted by u/warrenm
One of the more "recent" developments, not depicted on this map, is the development of the Leviathan gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_gas_field
This is bound to shape the geopolitics of the region.
Turkey claims sectors of the field all around the island of Cyprus.
Egypt has some small hope of reversing its economic decline.
A direct pipeline from the field to Europe, via Greece and Italy is contentious.
Israel invades Gaza to claim offshore resources.
Germany has great bread, how come did the author have a problem to find good bread?
Yes, that's my only issue with the article :)
"moved from Germany to write here "
So missing the good German bread.
Doesn't say where 'here' is.
> ... all believe that the universe is not destined to grow more disorganized forever, but more complex and rich with information.
Maybe it's just a problem of being loose with terminology, but this seems to be contrasting entropy and information content, which is backwards?
The usual handwaving for entropy v. information/complexity is to observe that our universe goes from simple low entropy state (Big Bang) to a simple maximum entropy state (Heat Death).
Both have low information. The complexity rises and falls, peaking somewhere in the middle, as energy from the gravitational field is turned into structure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weyl_curvature_hypothesis
Penrose likes zero initial Weyl curvature because it provides low entropy, but also conformal flatness, thus enabling his CCC theories.
Another consequence is that the Big Bang is not a reversed black hole (white hole). Black holes have high Weyl curvature. The Big Bang is the lowest entropy configuration, but a Black Hole is the maximum entropy configuration (just mass, spin and charges).
mikhailfranco commented on Thai Air Force seals deal for Swedish Gripen jets scmp.com/news/asia/southe... · Posted by u/belter
Which RAF bases are around there? I used to live at the end of the Filton airstrip and I came home one day to a Harrier hovering directly over my house. It moved off towards Filton, but I didn't see where it went. I didn't think about what RAF bases are in the West Country.
Westland-Augusta-Leonardo helicopter company in Yeovil.
RNAS (Royal Naval Air Station) Yeovilton in nearby Ilchester, which has also a fascinating museum of British naval aviation and an old Concorde.
[Fun fact - Yeovilton and Westlands are connected by an old Roman road: A37 Ilchester Road, Vagg Lane, Vagg Hill, Larkhill Road... ]
In an episode of the The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski narrates the seasonal migration (transhumance) of the Bakhtiari tribe of SW Iran. When they get to the raging river, an old man can't make it, so is left on the bank to die.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ztord river crossing at 14-17 mins
This is the same epic migration recorded in the classic Grass
1925 ETHNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTARY FILM " GRASS " MIGRATION OF BAKHTIARI TRIBE OF PERSIA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fVftguHwFc
And the tribe moves on .....
China has thorium, and while less than others [1], it’s better than they do with uranium [2].
> it may be possible to make truly price-competitive MSR electricity with the right modular design
Yes. But probably not in the near term with thorium. This isn’t designed to be cheaper. It’s designed to be more available to China than being dependent on Russian deposits.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/492031a
[2] https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1800.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoneutrino
Economic recoverable reserves are another matter, but there's plenty there.