My recollection is you need to “talk” to each animal once a day, every day.

This report makes clear that the tripling target is ambitious but achievable – though only if governments quickly turn promises into plans of action. (emphesis mine)

Appreciate your view point.

My understanding is that the US is a net fossil fuel exporter with ~10% of exports going to China (source: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=727&t=6). So that aspect of your argument should probably be reworked.

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Relevant text:

Ukrainian crews say the fundamental problem is that the Abrams were built for advances aided by air power and artillery, which Ukraine lacks.

Russia, meanwhile, continues to make heavy use of drones in its attacks, which the Abrams struggle to defend against.

Just finished V Rising. I really liked it. For those who don’t know and are curious, it’s one of those games where, if you can’t beat a boss, you just have to get better. There’s some small things that make a fight easier, but it basically comes down to you understanding the enemy and learning to play better.

No particular order, but it seems I hit quite a few different genres.

• Starcraft
• Stardew Valley
• Subnautica
• Final Fantasy Tactics
• Infamous
• Hades
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
• Halo 2
• Super Smash Brothers Melee
• Rome: Total War

Fixed. Thank you.

Relevant Section on the genetics:

For the study, the researchers took blood from five of the cats, which had been adopted, and conducted a DNA test on four of the felines, which turned up no genetic mutations associated with white fur.

They then performed a whole genome sequencing for two of the cats, and this step turned up a deletion in what’s called the KIT gene, which can encode whether white will turn up in a feline’s coat (scientists have also connected variations in the KIT gene to piebald patterns in various animals like horses and mice.)

“In summary, comparative data from other species and genotype segregation analysis support the newly discovered KIT region deletion as potentially being a cause of salmiak coat color in cats,” the researchers conclude.

Relevant section of the article where it lays out what has been changing and what still needs to change:

… graft has been all but exterminated in some of the worst affected areas - for instance, government services such as issuing passports, permits and licences.

He also tells the BBC that significant progress had been made in reforming education and police.

Problem areas

Mr Kalmykov admits, however, that the government has been less successful in eradicating corruption in using natural resources (e.g. in mining and forestry), regulating monopolies and in large infrastructure projects.

“Progress has been slowest where big interests and big players meet,” he says.

According to him, “in the next five-ten years the government should focus on cleansing the judiciary, which will make the general system of public administration healthier”.

Relevant sections of the article:

The EU Council finalized the agreement earlier on May 21, which would provide Ukraine with between 2.5 billion and 3 billion euros ($2.7-3.26 billion) annually, with most of it allocated to Kyiv’s military needs.

The European Commission then announced later in the day that the “resources will be available to support Ukraine starting from July 2024, with bi-annual payments.”

The distribution will be reviewed on an annual basis.

My understanding is that some of the benefits China would get from invading Taiwan is the control of Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor industry. So making it public knowledge that any invading force (i.e. China) would not be able to take over their production capabilities is a small deterrent.

Good news we are increasing the percent from renewables. The pace leaves something to be desired though:

• 23 years to increase 12% (2000 to 2023, 18% to 30%)

• 12 years to increase 10% (2011 to 2023, 20% to 30%)

• 6 years to increase 5% (2017 to 2023, 25% to 30%)

Based on the charts and write up, it seems like China is the main driver of us even making significant progress.

I’d like to be optimistic but 6 years to go 5% will have us totally renewable in 84 years (2023+[6x14]=2107).

To add on to what NegativeInf said and linked, “0.25” is a weird way to say a quarter of a day. It makes more sense, to me, that the zero at the front was left off and it should read “0.25-6 hr per day”.

I think this information was already posted a week or so ago, but if you haven’t seen it yet the relevant text is:

Chinese battery giant CATL, supplier to some of Australia’s biggest grid-scale project developers, has unveiled a new containerised battery energy storage system promising a one-third increase in energy density, a 20% reduction in overall footprint and a longer service life.

Stored in a 20-foot TEU container, the mass producible Tener has a 6.25 MWh capacity which CATL says represents a 30% increase in energy density per unit area and a 20% reduction in the overall project footprint.

The new battery also claims to provide zero degradation of capacity over the first five years of use, “a significant advancement”, which CATL says increase the lifespan of batteries.

“Tener is equipped with long service life and zero-degradation cells tailored for energy storage applications, achieving an energy density of 430 Wh/L, an impressive milestone for LFP batteries used in energy storage,” the company says.

A bit disappointing, was hoping for a bigger milestone but this is still a positive.

Relevant Text:

California has set a benchmark for renewable energy, with wind, solar, and hydro providing 100% of the state’s energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days (and counting).

Added context is that it isn’t for the full day, only needs to be part of the day (ex. 15 minutes), where renewables provided all of the electricity needs for the state.

The text is a bit vague about if this is an 80% cut from the total or 80% cut from the remaining, previously cut fees. Good news regardless though.

Article Text:

The [Biden] administration on Thursday finalized a rule that cuts costs for developing solar and wind energy on public lands.

The rule was expected to cut by 80 percent fees that are based on how much energy is produced through the year 2035.

A partial reduction is already in place based on [2022 guidance], but the administration said that the new rule contains further cuts and codifies them into the federal register.

The fee cuts become less dramatic after 2035 and will ratchet down in the following years to be just a 20 percent cut in 2038 and beyond.

The rule also seeks to expand energy production in designated “priority areas” by simplifying the process for issuing new rights to build wind and solar projects.

The administration announced additional milestones alongside the rule, saying that the Interior Department has now given the OK to enough renewable projects on public lands to power 12 million homes.

Interior Secretary [Deb Haaland] told reporters on a press call that the Biden administration has approved more than double the number of renewable energy projects than the Trump administration did during its four years.

“The previous administration did everything they could to hobble our department’s clean energy program, but we’re making up for lost time,” she said.

In addition to the cost cut and milestone, the administration announced that two major solar projects in California were now fully operational.

Besides the additional Norway airplanes, this was new information to me:

The primary bottleneck to the Ukrainian Air Force’s fielding F-16s in quantity is not limited numbers of airframes but how many combat pilots and ground crew Kyiv can spare from the actual war, to train on transition to the F-16, Cavoli said.

According to Ukrainian mil-bloggers, the first six F-16s with pilots and ground crew will reach Ukraine in June or July. Earlier deadlines had predicted the arrival in April or May.

That’s a good point about disease and I think it could be a potential cause of the low genetic prevalence.

I don’t know about your roaming free option. I think if that were true, there would still be wild packs today or there would have been roving dog packs mentioned in historical text (possible but I don’t recall any mention of them). Alternatively, they would have inter-breed with European varieties and had a more significant impact on genetics, but that’s not seen.

While I agree that Europeans liked to remove/exterminate “uncivilized” things, that mostly applies to people. I suspect if the American dogs were significantly useful they would have made use of them.

This conversation allowed me to recall that the plains tribes utilized dogs as pack animals. Then once horses made their way onto the scene those tribes switched from dogs to horses for that role. I’m not sure what other “jobs” American dogs performed but I suspect if they were significantly utilized as pack animals they were probably breed for such and with that niche gone they may not have performed well in other “dog” tasks, compared to European varieties.

To conclude, for American dogs to be such a small percent of the current dog genome, I think, the European varieties had to significantly outlive their American counterparts. Whether because they were replaced by better performing European varieties/horses, because they died from European diseases, or a combination of those options.

After the arrival of Europeans, native American dogs almost completely disappeared, leaving a minimal genetic legacy in modern dog populations.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7116273/

I did not do a very deep dive but it looks like there were “domesticated” dogs in the Americans prior to Europeans, but they were almost completely replaced by their European counterparts. This leads me to believe the European versions were far superior for the intended usage. If the American version was indeed significantly inferior for their intended purposes, they may have been at or below the effectiveness/usefulness levels of semi-domesticated animals, like foxes.

Edit: The_Sasswagon brings up a good point about the effects of potential European diseases on American dogs.