Awesome idea, but I gave it a couple of tries for "software integration" and "integrated" and both times gave me a massive 9x9 grid of disturbing emoji faces peeling off the screen like stickers. Likely broken.
> “We’re building the plane as we fly it,” Haven Wheelock, a program supervisor at a homeless-services provider in Portland who helped put Measure 110 on the ballot, told me. “We tried the War on Drugs for 50 years, and it didn’t work … It hurts my heart every time someone says we need to repeal this before we even give it a chance.”
Saying this is not the logical conclusion one might think it is. It's not a problem where there are only two solutions.
I think it's unwise to constantly associate normal temperature fluctuations with any threat to civilization. If anything, it might be a leading indicator of mass migration. But we shouldn't ignore evidence to the contrary, mass influx of population towards warm areas, like the Sun Belt. If anything, humanity has increased in its capabilities to live in hot temperatures.
Hottest day recorded, likely since 1871 (1), but actually we don't know because the article doesn't offer that information. The Earth has been around much longer though.
> Hottest day recorded, likely since 1871 (1), but actually we don't know because the article doesn't offer that information. The Earth has been around much longer though.
Why does it matter how long the earth has been around? We're not talking about the hottest day of all time (remember that for a long time the earth had a molten crust), we're specifically talking about the hottest recorded day. It sounds like you're putting it as a gotcha when it's just the topic.
Personal computers were considered just toys with very little real-world value for a long time too. And you might be limiting your thinking with VR/AR. Do you or anyone you know use face filters? That's AR. Lots of the rising generation are already stoked in VR/AR. Also Meta Quest 2 has sold 15 million headsets, that's hardly something to scoff at.
Ah, 15 million is more than I would have guessed. I’m admittedly out of the loop on this stuff.
I had a feeling the rising generation is into this, though I would have been too. I suppose what I wonder is if something that appeases that enthusiasm and anticipation can actually be developed. But perhaps for kids and young adults it doesn’t need to be amazing — it just needs to be more immersive than a TV.
My son has a Quest 2 and never uses it, and we got it used in great condition for $250 CAD. That left me feeling like these things are failing to thrive, but it’s very anecdotal.
As someone who grew up in Phoenix and just bought a house here, I've been trying to responsibly educate myself in terms of how big of a crisis this might be. But I've found that a lot of comments, headlines, and judgment calls on this topic are just hilarious. Mainly because it's one of the simplest topics with which to find appropriate historical context and data. I'll show two examples.
Picking apart this particular headline, perhaps a few of us are wondering how close the Colorado River is from drying up? My subjective measurement is that a river drying up would constitute 5% of its average discharge, or even less. The USGS tracks multiple key indicators on the Colorado River, including discharge at certain gauges along the river. From 1952 to 2022, the average is about 5,900 cubic feet per second. The worst year in the history of tracking the Colorado was 21 years ago, 2,417 cubic feet per second, or 40% of average discharge. That's 8 times what I would personally qualify as a dried up river. Compare that to the mighty Mississippi, which averages 208,833 cubic feet per second each year. Now their worst year was 1956, 93,990 cubic feet per second, or 45% of their average discharge. So the Mississippi is statistically fairly as variable in its discharge as the Colorado river, albeit with much more water. And anyway, that's only 9 times my personal qualification. I know these aren't universal measurements, but I hope this allows me to prove a point. The Mississippi River and the Colorado River aren't all that different in variability, and neither of them are even close to drying up. But it's the cities that are closer to the Mississippi River that are actually having water problems -- not Arizona (e.g. Jackson, MS had a water crisis where the National Guard was mobilized to help 150k residents with drinking water just last year). [1]
In the last two decades, the SW has been experiencing extreme drought, and all the while it's one of the fastest growing regions in the US. For example, since the 1950s, Arizona has grown from 700,000 to over 7,000,000, all while using less water. Yep, it's true. Remember that when people point to more neighborhoods, golf courses, and "cities in the desert" as the reason for this 'crisis'. [2]
With all that being said, my personal judgment is that there's a very real drought that is just about to conclude, as seen from recent projections of El Nińo, heavy snowpack and rainfall this winter in the region, and water conservation technology improving at an exponential scale. The Southwest will continue growing, especially due to immigration from South America and Mexico and recent onshoring due to the China/Russia crisis into the next few decades. And the water situation is going to be fine the whole way.
I'm really surprised this article is gaining any sort of traction on this site, as it hardly talks of anything to do with the headline, yet that hasn't dissuaded hundreds of comments discussing their own ideas to answering the question.
All of the food consumed anywhere has to get shipped in because of globalization... Because that's the most efficient thing. And golf courses only use 4 acre feet of water for each acre of golf course. In the grand scheme of half a million acre feet of water that Vegas takes from Lake Mead, it sure is efficient given how worried it makes people who don't even live there.
Phoenix being unlivable is such a fearmongered point. Much of Arizona is already out of extreme drought, and is set up to be extremely livable due to solar & nuclear power plus innovations made in air conditioning and pulling water out of the air.
