Octopus Overlords

pengo wrote:American 'tent cities' -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnnOOo6tRs8" target="_blank

Paul Roberts wrote:America's new enemy is inertia.

pengo wrote:I hate to be cynical

pengo wrote:As far as resources in oz, iron, coal and uranium seem to be the big money makers atm.

Potholes, cracks, and bumps in the road can cause irreversible damage to your pizza during the drive home from Domino’s. We can’t stand by and let your cheese slide to one side, your toppings get un-topped, or your boxes get flipped. So we’re helping to pave in towns across the country to save your good pizza from these bad roads.

em2nought wrote: ↑Tue Jun 12, 2018 11:32 am Hmm expanding on the Pizza pothole idea, carry bags of pavement repair around in your truck. Patch a hole, take a photo, submit and get compensated. Might be a new concept in cheap road repairs. Better yet, instead of sending out checks get a deduction from your property tax for each repair.

Paingod wrote: ↑Tue Jun 12, 2018 1:29 pm Would you rather have your car go up a rock, or down a pit?

Creating a bounty on pot holes is a horrific idea. Not only from a liability standpoint, but just imagine the people trying to game the system by digging their own holes and then filling them.

Sometime soon, when you spot a pothole in the street, you won't have to swerve around it and curse when your wheel dips in. Instead, you would deliberately drive over it, so the pressure of your car tires will stiffen the little plastic baggie the city dropped in there as a temporary fix. A little non-Newtonian fluid pothole filler could spare your wheel alignment after a harsh winter, saving municipal money and traveler troubles....

...Here's how it could work: Instead of driving around with a mixture of hot asphalt, road-repair crews or even police cars would carry plastic bags full of a water-powder mix (like the non-newtonian cornstarch + water trick). The students plan to patent their idea, so they haven't divulged their recipe, but they say it's biodegradable and even edible. When a city worker comes upon a pothole, he or she would drop a baggie into the hole, and then cover it up with black tape so a driver wouldn't mistake it for an obstacle. When a car drives over it, the fluid behaves like a solid — voila, a filled pothole.

This is because it's a shear-thickening fluid, as ScienceNow explains. Where shear-thinning fluids will squirt and flow when a force is applied, shear-thickening fluids will stiffen up, behaving more like a solid. Like this.

The students have already road-tested their plastic bag trick and say it holds up well, even after a week of continuous use. They are meant to be sturdy enough to last weeks at a time, even in wet and salty-road conditions, until pockmarked roads can be properly filled and smoothed over, the team said.

Pyperkub wrote: ↑Tue Jun 12, 2018 2:48 pm

The students plan to patent their idea, so they haven't divulged their recipe, but they say it's biodegradable and even edible.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Tue Jun 12, 2018 10:34 am When something is both depressing and marketing genius at the same time.

Potholes, cracks, and bumps in the road can cause irreversible damage to your pizza during the drive home from Domino’s. We can’t stand by and let your cheese slide to one side, your toppings get un-topped, or your boxes get flipped. So we’re helping to pave in towns across the country to save your good pizza from these bad roads.

Holman wrote: ↑Tue Jun 12, 2018 5:33 pm

Pyperkub wrote: ↑Tue Jun 12, 2018 2:48 pm

The students plan to patent their idea, so they haven't divulged their recipe, but they say it's biodegradable and even edible.

I see the problem.

There is at least one mechanism by which a sort of soft breakup may be imaginable — and it’s already found within the Constitution. The document introduces the prospect of one state entering into a compact with another. States have created interstate compacts to maintain common standards, like the Driver’s License Compact that 47 DMVs use to exchange knowledge on traffic scofflaws. Most have been used for neighboring jurisdictions to handle common resources, like the Atlantic Salmon Compact that permits New England states to manage fish stocks in the Connecticut River Basin. (Eleven states have signed on to a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, to disregard the Electoral College, but it would require a number equal to 270 electoral votes to take effect.)

Interstate compacts have rarely been applied to controversial topics. Yet to a paralyzed Congress, and a president without any deeply held views about state-federal relations, they could prove an appealing vehicle to restless factions on both the left and the right. It may be time to take the country apart and put it back together, into a shape that better aligns with the divergent, and increasingly irreconcilable, political preferences of its people — or at least to consider what such a future might look like, if for no other reason than to test our own resolve. An imagined trial separation, if you will. Or perhaps in contemplating a future apart we might stumble upon a few ideas for some new way to live together after all.

Holman wrote: ↑Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:20 am And the winner is the America that learns Chinese fastest?

Kraken wrote: ↑Sun Nov 18, 2018 12:40 am Maybe it's time for America to split up. A convoluted scenario involving interstate compacts splits the US into neutral states, a blue federation, and a red federation. Farfetched and long, and you won't agree with some of the author's premises, but it's thought-provoking and entertaining. It's a cool fictional future, at least.

There is at least one mechanism by which a sort of soft breakup may be imaginable — and it’s already found within the Constitution. The document introduces the prospect of one state entering into a compact with another. States have created interstate compacts to maintain common standards, like the Driver’s License Compact that 47 DMVs use to exchange knowledge on traffic scofflaws. Most have been used for neighboring jurisdictions to handle common resources, like the Atlantic Salmon Compact that permits New England states to manage fish stocks in the Connecticut River Basin. (Eleven states have signed on to a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, to disregard the Electoral College, but it would require a number equal to 270 electoral votes to take effect.)

Interstate compacts have rarely been applied to controversial topics. Yet to a paralyzed Congress, and a president without any deeply held views about state-federal relations, they could prove an appealing vehicle to restless factions on both the left and the right. It may be time to take the country apart and put it back together, into a shape that better aligns with the divergent, and increasingly irreconcilable, political preferences of its people — or at least to consider what such a future might look like, if for no other reason than to test our own resolve. An imagined trial separation, if you will. Or perhaps in contemplating a future apart we might stumble upon a few ideas for some new way to live together after all.

Holman wrote: ↑Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:20 am And the winner is the America that learns Chinese fastest?

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Mon Nov 26, 2018 2:25 pm

Holman wrote: ↑Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:20 am And the winner is the America that learns Chinese fastest?

A former HS friend, who grew up in Canada (bilingual French/English) and spent years in America (English with heavy Spanish in many places, including where she lived) who now resides in London (English and whatever the f**k they also speak. French seems likely) has had her children learning Mandarin (or Cantonese. I don't remember which) from an early age.

Now she has lofty expectations for her kids and expects them to be movers and shakers on the world stage, so this is more about getting in on the ground floor vs being able to please the future supreme overlords, but it's still telling that she chose a Chinese language vs. Japanese, or Germany, or even French, which she mostly speaks.

Meh. Chinese languages are kind of outrageously difficult, at least in written form. I'll be dead before it matters, I hope. Good luck, my kids.

If I'm right...

stessier wrote: ↑Mon Nov 26, 2018 7:12 pm

If I'm right...

This is all you need to know to realize you have nothing to fear.

Drazzil wrote: ↑Mon Nov 26, 2018 6:47 pmAs for the next world power? Maybe India, perhaps Brazil.