"Teflon" ski wax (fluoro-wax) contains PFOA impurities, which is that same problematic chemical. It's expensive to remove so most manufacturers don't bother.
Veritasium seems to be frequently wrong or at least incomplete. I empathise, it’s hard to make definitive statements like that, but maybe at some point it’s better not to if you’re not sure and more about entertainment than anything else.
Why leave off “or incomplete” when people can see it directly above what you misquoted? But sure, plenty of examples here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38779199. You can search on Google for Veritasium wrong (or misleading, incomplete, etc.) if you’d like more examples.
The YouTube video in your link refers to a single Veritasium video regarding their coverage of Waymo autonomous driving. But I feel the entire video is invalidated by the fact that Veritasium clearly mentions that their video is sponsored by Waymo. As a viewer I already know that there will be bias because of this declaration. Veritasium isn’t hiding it, so what’s the issue?
On HN I’d hope to read insightful comments instead of ones making strong statements without justification and asking others to Google for examples. If you’re too lazy to type out them out it’s probably better not to post at all; this is not Reddit.
The video was just one example from the linked thread, which was why I linked to the thread not the video. I don't see the benefit of copying all that text here when it's already there, I'm sorry to have to say. You're certainly welcome to believe that there's a good excuse every time he's incomplete or wrong, although I personally don't. I think it's because it's first and foremost entertainment content.
How am I misquoting you? If you meant to say that Veritasium is frequently incomplete then just say that. No need to add the frequently wrong part at all. You’re implying something much stronger than what you intended; just to sway people’s opinion. But I didn’t need to write this because as you say people can just read your bias.
You've misquoted by turning "Veritasium seems to be frequently wrong or at least incomplete" into "Veritasium seems to be frequently wrong" in order to lecture me that saying only that he's frequently wrong is overstating things, and that I should have said incomplete. Which I did - in the non-misquoted version. But of course, you don't need my participation to have debates with imaginary versions of people in your head so I'll leave you to it.
It's not like this is going unnoticed either, though.
The International Ski Federation (FIS) now bans fluorinated wax in all their competitions, and this wax is explicitly called out alongside cookware in much of the legislation that's going around in places like CA/CO for PFAS bans.
You forgot rain. Maybe one day people will remember we're just sharing one small planet, the air, the water, the food supplies, ... all the shit you dump/burn ends up in your food or water eventually
That article's only citation is a review paper, and it doesn't answer my question or substantiate your claim. It only covers how much PFAS is found in rainwater, and not how it got there.
The sources cited includes https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2020.116685, which is paywalled, but the snippet of the conclusion that is shown indicates that a possible major cause is industrial emissions:
> As local sources were determined to be significant, the results imply that local action can have an impact on PFAS contamination in precipitation. A three-way ANOVA model determined that functional group, chain length, and location were significant predictors of PFAS concentrations
If you can get the full text I'd be very interested in reading about it.
Sure, its probably at its highest concentrations right where its being manufactured or used heavily, but in the end its migrating just about everywhere.
> n Figure 1B, the levels of PFOS in rainwater are shown to often exceed the US EPA drinking water health advisory for PFOS, except for two studies conducted in remote regions (in Tibet and Antarctica).
I don't think there are a lot of industrial emissions in Antarctica.
But still a lot of things do, pesticides following the rain cycles is a good example. We're killing the biodiversity and ourselves with it. We already almost entirely rely on synthetically amending fields with petrol byproducts to feed ourselves, tomorrow we might have to manually pollinate crops when insects won't be enough to do the job.
PFAS are a problem, co2 is a problem, but we have dozens of other very big problems that are partially, if not entirely, obscured
> Nearly 50% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber–Bosch process. Thus, the Haber process [enabled] the global population to increase from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7.7 billion by November 2018.
Future archaeologists will wonder that we first fouled our nest from edge to edge with lead in gasoline, and then there's that radioactive layer, and following immediately after the forever chemicals layer.
Not saying it's a good approach to solving the problem, but surely you'd want to do the filtering at the water utility level. It would be a lot more cost effective that way.
It probably can't be effectively filtered at utility scale. There are only a small number of effective filtration methods and they basically coalesce to either distillation or reverse osmosis, neither of which is effective at utility scale. The other side of that is that both methods concentrate contaminates when removing them, and distillation puts some contaminates into the air, which means neither is a panacea even at residential scale.
The largest reverse osmosis plant in the world produces 165MGD of water, which is less than is required for any of the top 10 largest US cities, while primarily being used purely for desalination (SWRO). At the levels of filtration and membrane size required for removal of PFAS, it would nearly be impossible to cost effectively filter 200MGD+ of water for a major city.
That the way the parent comment is written evokes fear unnecessarily.
There are no definite provable effects of exposure of PFAS - in fact our current knowledge of them is so bad that if you use google and find a list of effects on the body from exposure of PFAS the list is endless and full of things that are unrelated, which is obviously impossible and nonsense.
Machine-learning has been used in scientific research for a decade?
Is there something new?
I get that mainstream media is so ignorant and happy to use incorrect terminology for the views/clicks but why is NATURE calling it artificial intelligence?
This is it. The project of DOGE was always to centralize all the disparate parts of the government to make it easier to control all of its functions by a smaller team
This is a pretty silly manifestation of that power but it's a sign of things to come. The fact that they were able to change government websites, email signatures, and more within minutes after the shutdown should scare us
It says:
The altered email messages included language saying: "Thank you for contacting me. On September 10, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse of appropriations, I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume."
I don't like that it includes "I" and "me" because it looks like someone is putting words in the employee's mouth. I wouldn't consider that factual.
Yes. I also hate this "is it factual" question because it ignores the underlying problem.
It could still be factual and read "Senate Republicans have blocked voting on S 2882" instead, or more extreme "Registered Republicans have lower education rates than democrats". Just because something is factual does not mean it is not a political statement, and one that would not have been made by the employee whose communication was changed. Let's all not play dumb here.
The DOE already had a standard auto-responder text, which also included "I" and "me". The text was changed - and a handful of employees are making a stink of it. They didn't get a choice in messaging either way. In fact, the ending is nearly identical between the two.
“Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of HR 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations.”
Come on. The message is overtly political (blaming democrats for the shutdown when republicans control the presidency + the house + the senate) and 100% of the people pretending it’s not would be outraged if the same thing was posted under a different administration.
They don’t “control” the Senate. You need 60 seats in the Senate if the other party is willing to filibuster everything, and boy howdy are both parties willing to these days. If the GOP did have 60 seats, then they’d be able to pass that clean bill over the filibuster of the Democrats.
I didn’t say they have a filibuster proof majority in the senate, ‘control’ is just a bare majority because at that point you can bring up whatever legislation you want for votes.
The Republicans can end the shutdown today. They don't want to, they're letting it continue and that's their choice. They need 0 Democratic or independent votes to pass the funding bill if they change the rules, which requires a simple majority vote and they have that.
The longer the government is shut down, the better excuse/cover the executive branch has to permanentely layoff and shutdown departments. Democrats are going to lose this standoff either way...
I disagree. I think the fact that Democrats let Trump have a blank check-book for his first term was a massive mistake.
We went from having government shutdowns all the time due to the rampant spending to just covering up the fact that he's blowing through more money than presidents do in 8 years. It leads to a perception that he's actually fiscally responsible.
At this point, either political party pretending to care at all about fiscal responsibility is absolutely hilarious.
The standoff is about a component of the Affordable Care Act that is expiring. Democrats don't have the footing to win this battle - so the longer the standoff holds the worse outcome they can expect. Trump's administration seems to have wanted this shutdown... and Democrats walked right into the landmine.
Can you elaborate on which part you believe isn't true?
The bill already passed the House. The Democrats have a minorotiy in the Senate. 60 votes are required to pass the bill - and Democrats are holding it up, deliberately for political reasons.
Republicans can end the filibuster in the Senate with a simple majority after which they can pass the funding bill with a simple majority. But of course, they won't do that since it opens up other bills to be passed with a simple majority too in the future. So it's not factual.
It’s weird to me that any Democrat would be rooting for the nuclear option right now. After losing so badly last year, after demographic trends continue to degrade their ability to win majorities in either house or in to win in most swing states, and with Trump improving his numbers even in blue states last year. Democrats are currently daring Republicans to eliminate their last resort option to block anything, even though they should not be confident that the DNC will ever be in a position to benefit from this new power later themselves.
I think shutdowns are usually pretty stupid, but I’m not reading for “nuclear option” to be the way this one gets resolved.
While I'd prefer to get the first legislative crack at it, I am extremely convinced that the filibuster is poison to our country.
Congress cannot pass anything meaningful except one omnibus spending bill each year via budget reconciliation, which has arcane rules around flat budget impact after 10 years. Since congress can't do anything, we naturally move more and more of the details of federal governance to executive agencies and executive orders. While not all of this is bad, it has a few horrible effects.
First, the supreme court is more willing to interfere with executive action, amplifying its power as it finds reason to protect actions by the favored party and cancel actions by the disfavored party. Increasing the power of the supreme court shifts federal power towards an unelected branch that is the slowest to adjust to changing voter preference.
Second, as more power within the executive gets concentrated specifically with the president we enable more and more federal action at the whims of exactly one person. This exposes us to the current situation, where Trump is unfettered in how he wields the executive branch rather than guiding it and having its power distributed across the executive branch.
And we've also got the general popular dissatisfaction with congress and the democratic process because they can't get shit done. A country that has an enormously unfavorable opinion of congress is more primed for collapse into anti-democratic governance.
Yes, if we didn't have the filibuster then the GOP could pass all sorts of nightmare legislation. But I'd prefer legislation enabled through the will of the people to this slow collapse into authoritarianism.
> Since congress can't do anything, we naturally move more and more of the details of federal governance to executive agencies and executive orders.
It's really interesting how wildly different this is than parliamentary systems where Parliament is the ultimate authority and the executive's tenure simply ends if they lose the 'confidence' of a plurality in Parliament.
Instead we have a useless legislature as you described, and an executive whose claim to all this additional power is actually quite dubious, yet that executive controls nearly everything. I don't think a swing to the other party changes this, either (not that the DNC is capable of winning elections enough to ever hold the kind of power the GOP now has). I think from now on, the President will rule by executive action, and use creative avenues like rulings from friendly courts to vaguely legitimize this power.
An equally true statement is that republicans didn’t pass a spending bill that could attract 60 votes in the Senate. But in either case, Republicans are the majority in both houses, they write the bills and have the responsibility to write bills that can be passed and signed.
And it’s a small thing, but this is very obviously a hatch act violation and silly me, I feel like the President should be beholden to our laws.
Which part of the statement is false or campaigning? Is it not true Democrats have blocked the passage of the bill? Of course it is.. and people should know that, shouldn't they?
‘People should be lied to by the government out of political convenience’ is a theory I guess. Though not one I’d endorse.
It’s equally true that “Senate republicans failed to put forth a spending CR that could attract 60 votes” or “Senate republicans failed to pass filibuster reform to only require 50 votes on spending measures.” Are equally true statements yet somehow they didn’t make the autoresponders. Weird.
Absolutely! All those things could correctly be said, and maybe that’s what would be said now if the Democrats had won the last presidential election! Instead, they ran a candidate who was so unpopular she dropped out before Iowa last time she ran. The DNC still hasn’t processed this reality, though.
The point that everyone is so keen to miss is that those are fine statements to make by political parties or candidates and wholly inappropriate and obviously illegal ones to make by government employees and websites.. That there are two valid opposing ‘truths’ which can be wielded to bludgeon a political opponent is exactly why we made it illegal for the government to make these type of statements.
Turning all of our apolitical institutions into megaphones for the party in power is an absolute nightmare and is illegal for a reason.
Seriously - how can you possibly defend something like this: https://www.hud.gov/
They’re facts. What’s wrong with them? Democrats did shut down the government. One party currently wants a clean CR and the other, the minority, wants to advance their agenda as a condition of not forcing a shutdown. This is an exact reversal of what the republicans did years ago and we all mocked them for it.
"The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government" is a 'Fact' you think is appropriate to be displayed via a popup to every visitor on HUD.gov?
"The radical left has chosen to shut down the United States government in the name of reckless spending and obstructionism." is an appropriate message for Treasury.gov when it's illegal to use Federal resources for political messaging?
TBH I agree that one is too much. The ones that say "Democrats blocked H.R. whatever which was a clean CR" are fine though. Perhaps someone with at least half a clue okayed that kind of phrasing, and then people got carried away writing the more ridiculous ones knowing it would curry favor with Trump.
Always finding a way to blame the Republicans... last time they were in the minority and were blamed for shutting down the government. Now they're in the majority and you still want to blame them for shutting down the government.
To summarize, you want to blame the oppositition for not passing your flavor of a spending bill, ie. one that suits your politics. Elections have consequences - and the longer Democrats drag this out the more excuse the executive branch will have to permanentely lay off people and shutdown departments.
Whoever’s to blame (the party that controls all three branches), it’s still wildly inappropriate and illegal to put political messaging on Federal websites (www.hud.gov for one glaring example) and in email signatures.
> To summarize, you want to blame the oppositition for not passing your flavor of a spending bill, ie. one that suits your politics.
Seems a bit like projection when your summary is based on your weird assumption for who I would’ve blamed previously.
> Elections have consequences - and the longer Democrats drag this out the more excuse the executive branch will have to permanentely lay off people and shutdown departments.
That’s not how any of this works.. the Executive branch doesn’t have the constitutional ability to shut down departments or lay people off when they’re congressional mandated. This level of political science ignorance is a big part of how we got here.
Elections do have consequences and if Republicans feel that they have a mandate to kill USAID or any other department, they can pass a spending bill that zeroes it out. The President doesn’t get to decide to not spend those funds after Congress has authorized them.
It’s inconceivable to me that people don’t understand how much this line of thought and the associated actions have broken our government in ways that are going to be very difficult to undo.
> have broken our government in ways that are going to be very difficult to undo.
The cowardice of both parties to never balance the budget in the last 50 years (Except Clinton!) has done more damage, arguably, in miring us in permanent debt.
I suspect the people who are fine with the government shutting down and who are fine with questionably legal tactics to do away with departments like USAID, feel that even though these things are probably legally wrong, they’re better than just continuing to piss away more and more of future generations’ money, money that we don’t have.
I think the greatest sin involved in all of this is the government’s ridiculous magical, thinking that they can set tax policy and spending policy independently of each other. In my opinion, one of the two should be a fixed function of the other. Either we agree on our tax rates and government benefits, automatically adjust to fit in the budget, or we agree on what we’re going to spend, and taxes automatically adjust to match — either way it should be something everyone can calculate before the bill is voted on.
They control the government in all ways that it's possible to control the government. They *are* the government, so everything the government does is their fault, tautologically. We're not stupid (I hope).
It is not true that Democrats blocked H.R.5371. The bill was voted on unlike say when Republicans block a bill by sending the representatives home instead of voting on say an Epstein related issue. (Recent vote was 55-45 [1] which not every R voted yay).
The lapse in appropriations cannot singular be pointed at H.R.5371.
If Republicans had stuck to their campaign promises of a balanced budget then we wouldn't be in this situation as we wouldn't need additional borrowing.
Less politically, if 60+ people had input into the bill then it would've passed. Can't be upset that somebody didn't vote for something they didn't have input in.
Only 50 votes are needed in the Senate to pass any legislation (per constitution). The whole 60-votes is a requirement that any point can be changed by the Senate and has been recently for federal judges.
It wouldn't be false to have an email signature that says "President Trump was convicted of 34 felonies." Would it be reasonable to automatically update everybody's email response to say this?
Saying Dems are blocking it when the GOP refuses to show up for their jobs and negotiate is a pretty big reach. And calling it “clean” when it doesn’t even balance the budget is just bullshit
Nobody asked why Republicans, which control every branch of government, need Democrats to cooperate with them to pass a budget, which only requires 50% to pass due to the special process for budget bills.
Oh, right. Because they mislabeled the One Big Beautiful Bill as a budget bill, which means they've used up their one special budget bill for the year and now the actual budget bill has to play by the rules for non-budget bills.
What you are referring to with the "50%" is a reconciliation bill (which is what the OBBB was), which requires a simple majority (50% + 1) to pass, and cannot be filibustered.
Appropriations bills are what keep the government open. Reconciliation bills do not have this effect.
The OBBB could not have been an appropriations bill because those are designed to make changes to mandatory spending programs and taxes, while reconciliation bills are for funding discretionary government operations annually.
Reality: the reconciliations bill is whichever bill they say it is. Budget reconciliation is often used for bills that are not actually budget reconciliations. Republicans fucked up this time. Skill issue.
Also reality: there's a government shutdown because the Republicans want a government shutdown (for some reason). They've ignored so many more important laws already, there's no reason they couldn't ignore the filibuster thing, or just continue spending money without having a budget bill (like they are continuing to spend money on Israel and ICE without having a budget)
the very first thing DOGE did way back in February was take command and control over the email systems (so they could also feed into machine-learning)
r/fednews was FULL of warnings about all the unvetted foreign computers being brought in and plugged into the networks, specifically back then to hijack the email servers
remember how they had to harvest all the emails to send out the demands for people to quit?
it's "f-kery" specifically, this has never been done by any other administration, no-one previously would dare, it violates all kinds of laws
> Today, 29 percent of the natural gas extracted in North Dakota is just burned away. This wasted amount represents enough gas to heat half a million homes
Combining the data in the article that was posted (741 ± 61 teragram of carbon annually) with a single Google search about the Bakken fields (4 tons of carbon daily), yields a result that this contribution from the Amazon is 507,534 times larger than the contribution from the Bakken fields.
The misconception here is that the carbon in the Bakken is locked up geologically and essentially removed the biosphere’s carbon cycle but the Amazon is not. Even if the entire Amazon rainforest were to burn it wouldn’t change that. The problem with fossil fuels is that we are added sequestered to our biosphere at rates it cannot adapt to.
So while absolute terms are less it isn’t the same and we should be worried about what OP is discussing
I knew someone would inevitably try to find a way to refocus the blame on America. Thanks for illustrating just how ridiculously wrong it was in this instance.
That last sentence should give you an immediate idea of the scale, and that it’s not going to be near the top. Half a million homes is tiny when we’re talking about the entire globe. Thats like one medium-sized city, and just the heating, not any other energy use. It would be nice to capture that energy instead of wasting it, but there are far bigger fish to fry.
>fun-fact: CIA is currently mucking around in Greenland trying to get rid of people against annexation
That's a very misleading phrasing for what's essentially an influence operation. Your wording of "get rid of people ..." implies there's some assassinations/violence going on, but there's nothing to suggest that's happening. If Republicans/Democrats or even Russia was running an influence operation in the US, nobody would characterize that as "getting rid" of opponents or whatever.
Source that all/most CIA "influence campaigns" involved "assassinations and violence"? Moreover even if we take at face value that CIA always eventually resorts to assassinations/violence, it's dishonest to claim it's "currently" going on with no evidence of it. It's probably safe to say that most military campaigns involve civilian deaths, but it'd be irresponsible to claim right off the bat that the US military is "currently killing civilians" in the absence of a specific incident.
I don't think that's an accurate characterization of either of those articles. It sounds like they're trying to find groups who want to be independent, probably with the goal of artificially propping them up. It's still gross, but not as gross as hunting dissidents.
No different than the Russians hunting for American dissidents to prop up. Well, a little different in that the Russians hunted for them in the Senate chamber and golf clubs.
Edit - for those who don't get it, Alberta derives most of its wealth from oil. Successive Liberal governments have both restricted our ability to sell oil while taking significant amounts of money from Alberta in transfer payments. Since Alberta has a border with the US, we have pipelines going south. All the while the Canadian economy has been severely under-performing relative to the US government. The last 2 points naturally push Alberta away from Canada towards the US, without any potential political interference.
If you do the math, Alberta would donate even more money if it was a US state. It would owe more federal taxes, and since its population tends younger and well employed, it would get less of it back.
You could say the "benefit" could be that getting approvals for pipelines and higher production of oil might be easier to get in the US. That's really just an "if" though. The Keystone XL pipeline was blocked twice by US government.
What it should have done is adopt Norway's model. It would have half a trillion in savings already if it had, and wouldn't even need oil, as raw investment could finance its budget alone.
But putting all that aside as well. Your average Albertan wouldn't be better off. They'd lose healthcare, education would be more expensive, they'd have a worse retirement fund, and so on. They'd have to pay more tax and get less benefit in return. Plus, there'd be a higher influx of immigrants low balling the jobs and lowering wages.
But it’s not too late to change course. If Alberta seriously committed to a Norway style model now, it could still build a fund big enough to make oil dependence temporary. That alone could justify building pipelines to the coast, use it as a bridge until the Heritage Fund becomes a self-sustaining engine of prosperity. It's a convincing argument for the other provinces, and would be great for Canada overall.
I mean, if you're rich, you can also cross the border and pay US prices. Or hop to Dubai and get it done same day.
I've lived in both Canada and US and to be honest, I never found it was much better in the US for how much you pay, and for which so many people simply can't even afford it. With the exception being urgent care and routine things definitely have less wait time in the US. But most major thing seem comparable, like maybe a little faster in the US, but like I said not to the proportion of how much more you pay. And the treatment itself, quality, how you are cared for, basically the same.
> I hope all these countries understand the vast majority of US population is not okay with this
Where are the protests against the current regime in the US? I see more support rather than outrage. If the US in its current state was any other third-world shithole, you'd be invaded by 2003 US.
Oh god, this CIA meddling in never ends well for anyone. I mean afterwards Americans will make a Hollywood movie claiming that situation was complicated and their intentions were good, but it will end up with some sort of hell.
US ownership would be pointless. The US already has relatively free access to its ally Greenland for military purposes. See for example the US base in Pituffik (formerly Thule). Proposing to annex your allies is a bit rude, to say the least...
If a country other than Denmark was to claim Greenland, either Iceland or Canada would make more sense.
As a Canadian I really can't imagine why we would be a better country for Greenland to be part of then Denmark. Unlike Denmark (and the other nordic countries) we don't have any historical connection to it... nor is it part of our landmass, or really anything else other than vaguely near by.
We're also really not interested in annexing random things.
I meant that geopolitically Canada or Iceland would make more sense, assuming Denmark was out of the picture.
And also glad to hear that random annexations by Canada are currently off the menu. Though who knows if Canada might become "interested" in some bits of Oregon or Maine in the future ;-) These might might not be "really" American....
When American Idiocracy (AI) fatally weakens their southern neighbor would be the time for Canada to conquer their rightful claims. The Burning of Washington will rise again.
I think it even makes sense if it were pursued in a different way. Greenland is looking for full independence but can't really hack it financially without aid. I think the COFA (Compact of Free Association) model that we have with Palau and Marshall Islands would work well.
We get expanded military rights and potentially some mineral/drilling rights, while Greenland gets protection, lots of money, access to USPS domestic rates, and probably increased tourism in addition to the independence they desire. Their citizens could also live and work in the US indefinitely.
I think the Danish intelligence services should apply this model to Hawaii and Guam. It would make a lot of sense. Hawaii and Guam could get better health care on average while being semi independent. The EU could protect both with nuclear weapons.
Native Hawaiians would escape the continued mistreatment:
Lol I realize this is tongue in cheek but Denmark has no ability to administer or protect anything that far away. Nor are those places seeking independence.
But hey, maybe I'm wrong and the Danes will successfully integrate a large group of people that don't share their values. They've already done that, right?
Oh gimme a break. That's one of the largest benefits to COFA and is heavily used by the Marshallese. Greenland on its own is not a first world country - there simply isn't enough population/work and it's a hard existence as detailed in TFA.
You may not want to come here and that's fine, but it's a huge draw and will continue to be. Administrations are fleeting, but the allure of opportunity remains. You're posting on a forum that is somewhat of a monument to exactly that.
EDIT: some of this made a bit more sense prior to your hasty edit
Florida on its own is also not a first world country. This goes for many places and it isn't the flex you make it out to be, the fact that Greenland is part of Denmark which in turn in part of the EU and which the USA through NATO is bound by treaty to defend rather than that threaten to invade is a detail that may have escaped your attention but it matters rather a lot to the rest of the 'first world'.
Florida on its own would absolutely be a first world country with a GDP comparable to Spain or South Korea. Pick a less prosperous state haha it has multiple cities with a greater population than the entire island of Greenland
There is a lot more to being a first world country than you make it out to be. Florida only works because it is part of the USA, if it were not it would not manage.
Denmark is one of the countries with the highest standards of living by any metric possible, consistently ranking among the best countries to live in the world.
The US is not.
Sure, there's allure in going to US if you're from a poor country, or if you have an ambition your country cannot satisfy (some scientists and entrepreneurs will find America only in America, that's true).
Greenlanders are neither of those two categories.
If they don't care moving to Denmark or rest of Europe you can be sure they don't care coming to US either.
The primary threat to Greenland is USA and USA is extremely unreliable country. USA can't sell protection. It may extort or invade or commit some kind of atrocity ... but is not capable of selling protection.
You are talking about getting a colony and stealing their resources.
The Arctic will be the battleground and trade route of the future as it warms. Being associated with the US is preferable to the other options (Russia, China most likely). There won't be an option of the status quo.
Greenland, as part of Denmark, is part of and protected by NATO. As its in the Atlantic it benefits fully from that treaty.
It is also protected by Denmark's membership in the EU and the CSDP by virtue of the EU's collective self defense clause (which protects all of all member states territory, not just the parts in europe).
The status quo - apart from the part where the US is threatening to violate its NATO treaty obligations and invade something it is obligated to protect from invasion - is just fine.
What would that even mean? Especially the use the word 'ownership'?
I think there's zero chance of US long-term influence on Greenland. They simply have no reason to prefer foreign domination, when they can simply be sovereign. I would place independence + EU membership as more probably than any association with the US, and I think them staying within Denmark is much more likely than them becoming independent.
>They simply have no reason to prefer foreign domination, when they can simply be sovereign.
No, they can't. The likes of Palau are (barely) viable as sovereign countries, because at least the geographic size is as small as their populations.
It is absolutely, positively, completely impossible for 50K Greenlanders to by themselves maintain a the world's largest island, even aside from the completely frozen-over aspect. The $600M annual subsidy by Denmark does not include the funds Copenhagen spends on also running Greenland's foreign relations and defense. But in reality, Denmark spends a relative pittance on those things (like "six dog sleds" pittance); the vast majority of the cost of defending Greenland is borne by the US, as has been the case since 1940. Why should the US shoulder the burden without commensurate political power?
I don't think the subsidy is required. The net deficit is small.
Some Swedish regions also have a net deficit relative to other Swedish regions, but that doesn't mean that they don't work out economically. After all, not all economic activity in region is taxed there. A firm in Örnsköldsvik pays their taxes to the Swedish government, and then the Swedish government distributes part back to the region.
It's around 600 million USD per year, on 56836 people. Around $1000 per head. But GDP per capita is $58,498.
They would presumably just cut their government budget if it weren't for the subsidy.
It would probably be fine. Furthermore, I don't think Denmark plans on dropping it. They want reasonably strong government services also in this sparsely populated arctic region.
In spite of wanna-be-kings like Putin and Trump, the obvious historical trend is for larger empires and countries to break up into smaller independent ones.
Wild mushroom in some parts of Germany are still radioactive to this day exactly because of this. After Chernobyl, clouds with radioactive particles moved west and then started raining over Germany. Certain species of mushroom tend to accumulate the Caesium-137 from that and these mushroom then get eaten by wild animals. To this day if you sell wild animals that were shot in these areas you have to get them tested. They regularly exceed legal contamination levels deemed safe for human consumption.
> In the last years values of up to several thousand becquerel per kilogram were measured in wild game and certain edible mushrooms. In Germany it is not permitted to market food with more than 600 becquerel caesium-137 per kilogram. [1]
There have been proposals to remediate contaminated agricultural areas by sporulating and harvesting mushroom species that concentrate radiocesium.
What amazes me is the mushroom mycelium are actually sorting out the radioactive material grain by grain, which would be highly impractical any other way.
One of my relatives freaked out the summer after Chernobyl accident happened, when finding some glow-in-the-dark mushrooms in the forest nearby. Upon examination by a pro they turned out to be naturally bioluminescent fungi.
It still happens, actually. Only a few years ago it was extra wet and warm at some mountain passes here, so it grew more mushrooms than normal, and that mushroom absorbs cesium-137 from the ground, which then ends up in the reindeer in bigger concentrations. Just checked, and it went from 201 becquerel per kg meat to 1301 the next year. In 2019, more than 30 years later.
Still below limits for what can be sold and eaten here (3000), but shows how big the fallout was that it still shows up decades later.
It's not easy being a reindeer, the populace where I live recently had to be killed and burned due to a prion disease.
And I vaguely remember an eminent Norwegian professor in the field of radiation said he would buy an extra freezer so he could buy up cheap reindeer meat. The slaughtering was probably unnecessary.
I suspect it’s a matter too of where the radiation accumulates. Looking up the products from Chernobyl:
The body mistakes cesium for potassium, this one I already knew from documentaries about Bikini. Half life of 30 years, but it surprisingly doesn’t bioaccumulate (biological half life of 70 days is not great but isn’t a death sentence). But it does accumulate in soft tissue, so you’re gonna eat it.
Radioactive iodine is a bit scary, but what came from Chernobyl has a half life of 8 days, so I could see how a freezer would be very useful there.
Strontium-90 is the scary one. That is mistaken for calcium. And has an average biological half life of 18 years, but that depends very much on where it got absorbed. Anywhere from 14 days to 49 years. And a 29 year half life, similar to cesium-137. Muscles need calcium to function, but most of it is stored in the bones, so maybe this is what the scientist meant?
Grass contains both calcium and potassium, though the thing about Scandinavian reindeer is that they eat a lot of lichen in the winter. It’s why they are so historically important to the traditional diet. But then Chernobyl happened in the Spring, so the reindeer would be accumulators.
I bet they’ll follow the sports media and, my personal taste in sports media, has recently started to migrate (e.g., Defector editors and contributors).
sorry for a dumb question but are old dead cells still dangerous just sitting around?
I discovered an ancient powerbank the size of a deck of cards that I had not charged in many years, was blown up like a football (imagine an a sealed envelope but full of air)
So that's a dead cell which shouldn't have a charge left but I guess the chemistry is releasing gas?
Scared me, wrapped it in aluminum foil and put it outside asap
If the cell is fully discharged, there isn't much danger because all of the energy that _would_ cause an explosion/fire is gone.
However, a LiPo cell that has entered Spicy Pillow mode (empty or not) can still theoretically burst, leaking or spraying toxic materials everywhere. So you were right to put it outside. Make sure you recycle it appropriately, so that it doesn't go into a landfill and poison the drinking water of our grandchildren someday.
it's in the snow, ground, and water-supply
forever