Like in a housing shortage you’re hoarding property and profiting off it.

Housing shortages are caused by bad government policy: namely, low-density zoning. Direct your anger towards the entity that deserves it, and make them fix their fuck-up.

(Note: I’m not making some kind of Libertarian “all government is bad” argument here. I’m saying that in this specific case, the laws need to be changed.)

By the same argument, replacing the coal fired power plant with wind and solar wouldn’t pose a challenge either.

The point is, you’ve got to compare apples to apples: either coal power vs. desalinization powered by coal, or renewables vs. desalinization powered by renewables. In every case, the pollution produced by the desalinization process (i.e., the brine etc.) is simply added to the pollution produced by whatever means was used to generate the power for it, which means @soEZ’s attempt to compare desalinization to power generation doesn’t make much sense.

It does not really generate toxic waste like coal fired power plants

It generates all the waste associated with the electricity it uses, which is often from coal fired power plants…

…says the guy who clearly doesn’t understand the geologic water cycle.

instead of bending over for unreasonable shitheads in your party.

Why do you think he’d be inclined to do anything other than bend over for himself?

They can build fire removedant systems…

Is the company that makes them headquartered in Scunthorpe?

Sure, regulations such as carbon taxes are necessary to contain negative externalities, but if there’s a demand for cheap products there will be a lowest bidder that will take all market share.

If the taxes are accounting for the externalities well enough, even the lowest bidder will be sustainable.

he also gave $5MM to Sea Shepherds

Enough to get an entire ship named after him!

Less than a week until Dragon*Con!

They were both apparently being broadcast by ABC at the time, too.

My argument applies to any cylindrical projection.

Well played.

I’m just as annoyed by the overuse of the Mercator projection as the next guy, but no, I don’t think we can blame it in this particular instance. Consider the similar case of a day/night map, which pretty clearly reads as 50/50 even when it’s Mercator:

(Upon further scrutiny comparing these two maps, I think the missing Antarctica might be a factor too.)

Also, relevant XKCD.

I’ve been surprised that hasn’t happened already since even before Jan 6.

The name of that island is “South Georgia,” not just “Georgia.”

Nah, exactly 50% “of the world” is closer to Georgia than Georgia because the dividing line forms two perfect hemispheres. It just doesn’t seem like it because more of the world’s land area is closer to Georgia.

The fact that the map fails to color in the oceans doesn’t help, of course.

bicycles won’t solve the climate crisis

Not with that attitude!

More specifically, not with that disingenuous attitude that implies giving folks bicycles and changing nothing else, trying to shame them into using a mode that’s worse for them in order to altruistically help everybody else. Of-fucking-course that’s never gonna work!

Instead, what actually has to change is the zoning laws that shape the built environment the bicycles are operate in. We have to stop limiting density and mandating parking requirements, which not only physically force destinations farther apart (putting fewer within walking or biking distance) and cause the space between to be filled with car-infested asphalt (making walking and biking unpleasant), but also subsidize driving by forcing an oversupply of parking, driving down the price.

Removing the regulations and allowing developers to build as compactly as the market would dictate would cause people to freely choose bicycling because it would become more convenient than driving, and that is what would help solve the climate crisis!

LOL, my faith snapped the better part of a decade ago.

At this point, I’ve realized that they’re deliberately exploiting the charitable attitudes of people like you in order to troll us.

The folks responsible for the sexy costumes, Roddenberry and Theiss, died in 1991 and 1992, respectively.

See also: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheissTitillationTheory

The sexiness of an outfit is directly proportional to the perceived possibility that a vital piece of it might fall off.

This basic theory underwrites Stripperiffic clothing, Impossibly Cool Clothes, and pretty much anything else you stick characters into: what makes clothing sexy is the potential for a catastrophic Wardrobe Malfunction. The Trope Namer is William Ware Theiss, costume designer on Star Trek: The Original Series, who first codified the concept.

…

Though Theiss was a costume designer, according to Inside Star Trek: The Real Story by Herb Solow and Robert Justman, most of the costumes — following this theory — were actually somewhat more modest before being “improved” by Gene Roddenberry.

That’s the thing that annoys me most about Duolingo: if they’re going to show you ads, the least they could do is show you ones in the language you’re trying to learn instead of your native one.