Category: Uncategorized

$5.3T Energy Subsidy waste

Subsidies for coal, oil and natural gas were $5.3T worldwide in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP). Undercharging for global warming accounts for 22% of the subsidy, air pollution 46%, broader vehicle externalities 13%, supply costs 11%, and general consumer taxes 8%. China was the biggest subsidizer ($1.8T), followed by the United States ($0.6T), and Russia, the European Union, and India (each with about $0.3T). Eliminating subsidies would have reduced global CO2 emissions by 21% and fossil fuel air pollution deaths 55%, while raising revenue of 4%, and social welfare by 2.2% of global GDP. The figure likely exceeds government health spending across the world, estimated by the World Health Organization at 6% of global GDP, but for the different year of 2013. They correspond to one of the largest negative externality ever estimated.

Hyperbole and a Half

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things that Happened , by Allie Brosh, is an honest-to-goodness summer read. You will rip through it in 3 hours, tops. But you’ll wish it went on longer, because it’s funny and smart as hell. I must have interrupted Melinda 12 times to read to her passages that made me laugh out loud.

The book consists of brief vignettes and comic (in both senses of the word) drawings about Brosh’s young life (she’s in her late 20s). It’s based on her wildly popular website.

Brosh has quietly earned a big following even though, as her official bio puts it, she “lives as a recluse in her bedroom in Bend, Oregon.” The adventures she recounts are mostly inside her head, where we hear and see the kind of inner thoughts most of us are too timid to let out in public. Despite her book’s title, Brosh’s stories feel incredibly—and sometimes brutally—real.

Immune system cloaking

Researchers has come up with a way to reduce immune-system rejection of implantable devices used for drug delivery, tissue engineering, or sensing. Previous research found that smooth surfaces, especially spheres, are better — but counterintuitively, larger spheres actually work better at reducing scar tissue. “We realized that regardless of what the composition of the material is, this effect still persists, and that made it a lot more exciting because it’s a lot more generalizable”.

Criminal lawyers

The New Mexico Law Review just published an issue dedicated entirely to Breaking Bad. It features 8 articles that analyze the illegal acts committed on the show, their real-world parallels, and the consequences attached. Some of the greatest legal minds in New Mexico (and the country) came together to examine how Walter White would look to a jury, how the war on drugs affects peripheral citizens like Skyler, and whether Heisenberg could have stayed legit by fighting for his stake in Grey Matter in the courts.

CSI Cyber

cop shows are some of the dumbest material tv has to offer, and this one is among the worst.

I only 2 short months, CSI: Cyber has quickly become one of the most magnificently absurd police procedurals being aired by a major television network. To be fair, its problems are mostly a matter of circumstance: It’s actually just about as brain-dead as any other CSI series, but this go-round comes off especially bad since it was ostensibly designed specifically to follow technology-related fictional crimes. As a result, the gap between the content of the show and the knowledge it is supposedly built upon is much more dramatic than any other major Jerry Bruckheimer undertaking of the past few decades.