Yes, if the panels were in outer orbit, and mostly powering things outside our planet.

A little simplified energy cannot be destroyed only change form, each time it changes it loses a little bit of energy to heat. Over time that means all energy will become heat.

So the only way to not heat up the earth with energy is to either make sure it doesn’t get to earth, or that we let it out.

Orbital solar cells could keep enough light from reaching earth to cool it, but releasing the energy dirtside would mostly cancel that out. So, we cover the earth orbit with panels and use them to fuel space things.

All of this requires more tech, a lot of resources and time to prepare though. And also a feasible way to store and use that energy in space. Maybe we shoot batteries at a moon base or orbital mining operation?

I’ve already covered this earlier in the thread

Profit, price pressures, inflation are not necessarily meaningful terms in a different system.

What exactly do you mean by that?

In a circular or planned economy, those aren’t really significant measures, neither in a subsistence living context. Which are strategies that have housed all of humanity until the last few hundred years.

In a post-capitalist economy, we might be able to provide the human necessities without exploitation. I don’t know how, but I know it’s not through more capitalism.

Homes have been built for many thousands of years longer than we’ve had those as concepts.

If you include cedar bark as a major construction material then sure. Not knocking cedar bark here - it’s great. But not quite the same investment in time or durability.

As mentioned in the last reply, the Palace of Knossos, as well as the Petra were marvels of craftsmanship and engineering, staggering investments, and have stood for over 2000 years. Would probably have survived longer if maintained properly.

The pyramids, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos, the Taj Mahal, all are landmark (literally) feats for the contemporary technology and societies.

You comparing them with modern construction methods necessitated by capitalism, and with modern technology seems an unfair comparison, as well as circular reasoning.

Profit, price pressures, inflation are not necessarily meaningful terms in a different system.

Homes have been built for many thousands of years longer than we’ve had those as concepts.

Agreed.

But also in groundbreakingly advanced multiresidential complexes, condos, and palaces for thousands of people.

The world will indeed be different if we have different priorities. Capitalism requires high density to sustain the economic engine, other systems might not.

Under capitalism, capitalisming harder is indeed the only solution. I don’t know how to get you to be able to imagine something without assuming capitalism, but humanity and society did indeed thrive even without it.

My point is, if you read “aunt” as “landlord”, my comment is not about the landlords as much as the system.

Without landlords, we’d not have a housing crisis. There would be enough housing for everyone, we have plenty of resources and land to build them. The US, not to mention the world, is still big enough for everyone to have their own plot of land and housing.

How did people live before Capitalism? I’ve read that housing existed before even banking was invented. Somehow there wasn’t a housing crisis back then, until/unless we had exploitation.

You’re not wrong in what you’re saying though. The basic difference of perspective between you and I, I believe, is that you’re viewing this from inside the capitalist system, where landlords do indeed provide a function. But if we’d not have capitalism, we’d still have housing, and with less value extraction/parasitism.

As for the obscure anecdote, let’s instead use the simile of marketing. They add no value to you as a consumer, and if there weren’t so many marketers finding what you need would be easier and cheaper (as there would be no marketing cost). For the capitalist they add value, for the rest of us they’re an ever increasing drain on resources - a parasite.

I don’t know if I’m leftist, but the US spectrum is well right of most of the world.

The question is multi-layered. Your aunt may or may not be a bad person, I don’t know her. Them renting out property may or may not be for good reason, even if they’re doing it to “survive” in the capitalistic economy.

The real issue is that capitalism itself is exploitative, and (depending on where you draw the line) participating may fall under being complicit.

My understanding of parasitism is extracting resources for their own benefit, with little to no benefit for the exploited/system.

The first hint of parasitism is amassing resources they aren’t using for living. Your aunt and husband made surplus money to be able to afford buying the properties. Unless they did that by extracting resources, refining them, working them and making provisions for them to be recycled and ecologically compensated - others will have had to pay the cost. Either by working harder than them, or suffering more than them, for example due to an imbalance of ecology. This is one form of parasitism.

Another perspective of parasitism is inserting themselves as a middle party. Your aunt almost certainly isn’t providing the housing at cost, where rent barely covers their labor and property upkeep. That means they are keeping someone from a home, unless they pay extra to your aunt. Just like a bully.

Now, this doesn’t mean that your aunt has any malicious intent. The point is that the system itself is evil, like a pyramid scheme of bullies, where each layer extracts something from each underlying layer. This is useful for making ventures, but at the cost of ever increasing exploitation and misery. Especially when capitalists are allowed to avoid paying for restoring the exploited, or incentivised to do it more. I’m sure you’ve heard of enshittification.

Now, example time!

I’m sure you’ve thought that air is important for you to survive. And maybe you’ve ever worried that traffic or other pollution might make your air less good for you?

Enter the capitalist! For a small premium we’ll offer your personalised air solution, a nifty little rebreather loaded with purified air you carry with you all day. The price is so reasonable as well, for only $1/day you can breathe your worries away!

Now, producing the apparatus means mining and logging upstream of your town, removing natural air filtering and permanently damaging your environment, but they only charge for the machines and labor. Restoration is Future You’s problem. Selling and refilling the apparatus happens to also produce pollution, making the air worse for everyone. But that makes the apparatus more valuable! Price rises to $2/day.

Competitors arrive, some more successful than others, all leaving ecological devastation and pollution that can’t be naturally filtered. Air gets worse. One brand rises to the top, air is more valuable and lack of competition makes it so that air is now $4/day.

Then an unethical capitalist figures that if we just make the air slightly worse, profits will go up! They don’t want to be evil, but cutting corners when upgrading the production facility means the pollution gets worse. Other adjacent capitalists see that they also can pollute more without consequences. Air gets worse and price increases to 6$/day.

Air is starting to get expensive, rebreather sharing services, one-use air bottles, and home purifyers crop up, increasing pollution and raising costs, air is now $8/day for most people.

People start dying from poor air, new regulations on apparatus safety and mandatory insurance come up, driving prices further to $10/day. You now also need a spare apparatus and maintain it in case your main one breaks down.

Etc.

The point of the example is that through a series of innocuous steps, all making perfect sense within capitalism, you are now paying $300/month more to live than before capitalism, with little real benefit to you, and no real choice to opt out.

Each and every step is parasiting on your life, by requiring you to work harder for that money, and/or suffer more due to pollution and ravaged environment.

The only solution to not work/suffer into an early grave is to have others work on your behalf, perpetuating the parasitic pyramid scheme. This is where your aunt is, is she evil? Probably not. Is her being an active part of an evil system bad? Yes, yes it is. Capitalism bad.

Cats do pant, but also run hotter and enjoy higher temperatures than humans (24-26 °C depending on race).

Also, cats have lots of ways to release heat, cats can arrange their fur to release more heat (or burr it to trap more), they lay on cool ground, they can lick themselves for evaporative cooling, and of course seek shade when it gets hot.

We had a hot summer with temperatures of over 30 °C indoors and I got worried my European shorthair would overheat, got them a gel pad that wicks away heat when laid upon, but they thought it was ridiculous and just laid on the concrete floor in the shade whenever too hot and was super comfy and lazy.

Assuming the same density, about three times as much gravity.

Gravity scales linearly with volume which scales with the cube of the width, (3/2)³ is about 3,4.

Have you seen the numbers? Could you link them?

The only thing I’ve been able to find is 2,2 million “encounters” in a high year, over the whole country.

Germany takes in a million immigrants per year by itself, and has at least a handful of encounters per immigrant to process them. Also has a bunch of encounters with illegal immigrants.

Germany is smaller than Texas.

To be fair, those $46 million will buy quite a few avocodo toasts and lattes

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Oh, that’s easy, for Russia it’s crucial for reasons… it was something about de-nazification, or was it to stop NATO expanding? No, no, it’s to defend against the aggression of The West!

That’s why Russia has to occupy Ukraine!

For Ukraine, they mostly seem to have a bee up their butt about Russian troops occupying, torturing, kidnapping, displacing and murdering Ukrainians on Ukrainian soil.

From the video it seems they were spotted by drones on the way to the deployment site and were under drone surveillance during setup, during which artillery hit.

I have a hard time imagining that the observation drones are that sneaky, so I’d guess it’s another issue of poor battlefield command structure forcing the compromised position

Shh, they’re trying to catch up

Eggselln’t

Because countering Russia has been the US’ primary offer in all deals and bargaining for the last 50 years

Because countering Russia has been the US’ primary offer in all deals and bargaining for the last 50 years?

I’m guessing because a lot of them aren’t clearly marked “Russian state war chest part 12”, but rather things like “Gazprom reserve fund” or “Oligarchs discretionary fund” which would muddy the border between state and private assets.

State assets might be fine to seize to cover state costs, but the legality of seizing the others’ might by grayer.

Check out the Nordics, that’s how they do it over there.