Rhaedas

I find it difficult to understand what today's Republican party would offer to a black person. (Or any really, but specifically black)

Brings back memories of that one Lost episode with the unstable dynamite.

Also an episode of Grey's Anatomy.

I am familiar with the problems that come with companies who put up traffic light cameras, fudging the parameters to make it catch much more than the blatant running of lights. We had them in our area and they were later removed for that very reason. We don't have cameras for speeding though, so I'm not aware of problems if they're set for speeders that are well over the limit (so you don't trigger a ticket for 66 in a 65).

The only plus from this approach is that it is using already extracted petroleum products to create energy instead of pulling out new carbon sources from the ground. But like others have said, burning plastics is nasty, and would require a huge proof of concept that the emissions are low and not dangerous. Which I guess they skipped over.

Correct, the differences make the analogy good enough to visualize the concept. It does however suffer from the same problem as the balloon one, in which someone can get the impression the expansion has a center. The wiki for the expansion of the universe goes through the various analogies and where they break down.

I would suggest Dr Becky's Youtube channel for a number of excellent videos on the expansion as well as the current problem of getting an accurate measurement of the correct Hubble expansion rate. The James Webb telescope was hoped to solve that dilemma, but we still aren't sure.

At the cluster level it will depend on the velocities and distances. For example, using very rough numbers the current expansion rate means that space between us and the Andromeda galaxy is expanding at 55 km/s. Seems fast until you realize the distance needed to see the effect build to this level. For perspective I found someone's calculation to reduce it to solar system level to end up with ~10 meters/AU/year. But of course at this distance gravity dominates so we can't measure that directly and it may not even be large enough to consider.

A larger and slower moving galactic cluster would be more affected than a tighter one. I don't know what our Local Group would be considered to be, but there are a hundred or so galaxies around us that appear blue shifted, so they are moving towards us even with the expansion.

Seems like the prayers didn't work once again. Maybe next storm?

Good visualization but inaccurate. Space between galaxies in a cluster and even the stars in a galaxy is also growing. The difference is in scale. There's so much distance between galactic clusters and the largest structures of the universe that added up that expansion amount is so much bigger. The balloon analogy with galaxies as dots on the surface is closer since the dots also do grow some, but the balloon would have to be huge to capture a good scale comparison.

Even a hypothetically true artificial general intelligence would still not be a moral agent

That's a deep rabbit hole that can't be stated as a known fact. It's absolutely true right now with LLMs, but at some point the line could be crossed. If and when, how, and by what definition has been a long debate nowhere near resolved.

It's highly possible that AGI/ASI could come about and be both super intelligent and self conscious and still have no sense of morality. But how can we at human levels even comprehend what's possible? There's the real danger, we have no idea what we could be heading towards.

I would guess that hiking or trail maps are probably much more detailed than a road map, so that makes sense that it would still be a thing, although certainly digital versions have made some dent in them. Electronics are a bit more susceptible to the environment and the need for power though, so maybe not as much for those reasons.

Alternate question: do any of you (maybe a bit older than 35) remember the last time you bought an updated paper map for your area, or one for a road trip? They used to be at most checkout lanes in many stores.

I can already hear the "maps on paper? How could you find anything?"