I’m sympathetic, but if, God forbid, I was a city transit manager, I’d be complaining bitterly about mission creep. More generally, you can always decide to prioritize facilitating social mobility, but it typically comes at a cost of efficiency—and inefficiencies can lead to honked-off citizens voting for the other…

. . . only at the end of it you’re going to pull co2 out of the atmosphere. . .

Indeed. I strongly suspect that if banana/plantain peels had any real culinary use beyond stunt cooking—really questionable bacon imitations, etcetera—we’d be seeing them specified as an ingredient in Central/South American cuisines.

Looks like the recipe relies on process-to-sludge-in-food-processor: “Step 3: Weigh the bananas; you want 11.2 ounces (320 grams). Cut off any extra and refreeze for another use. In a food processor, puree the bananas and peels until smooth. (You may see tiny dark specks of the peel; that’s okay.)“

Bear in mind that the very wealthy do not have a home. They have homes, quite possibly many of them. They can buy a mansion on every continent but Antarctica, plus a spare somewhere boring but geologically stable like South Dakota.

Those “stupid paper definition”s are also known as “laws”.  They’re infamously slow and difficult to change, and selective enforcement brings its own suite of problems.

That’s not the case. There is one impossibility: it would take more energy to split CO2 back into carbon and oxygen than we can ever get from burning the fuel in the first place. That one, thermodynamics is unforgiving about. But capturing the mostly-nitrogen-water-and-CO2 exhaust from a coal-burning plant,…

The report ( https://www.nap.edu/resource/26141/interactive/ ) doesn’t represent the consensus of anyone outside astronomy. It’s the result of surveying astronomers and astrophysicists about priorities for astronomy and astrophysics. (“Members of the astronomical community were invited to submit whitepapers to the…

Eh, it’s less wacky than I thought at first because it turns out carbon dioxide is fairly easy to liquify, and will stay liquid at underground temperatures under typical underground pressures. There’s some work supporting an expected price of $52-60/ton for a coal plant, or $80-90/ton for natural gas: https://royalsoci…

There’s a transitive usage listed at https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/american_english/balk that kinda fits—”[transitive] balk somebody (of something) [usually passive] (formal) to prevent someone from getting something or doing something * She looked like a lion balked of its prey.”. But the…

The radiation problem turns out to be relatively easy to solve, once an atmosphere is in place: a large fission reactor at the L1 point can produce an artificial magnetosphere. https://medium.com/our-space/an-artificial-martian-magnetosphere-fd3803ea600c

Overwhelmed by childcare?  Ask your doctor if Lamashtu is right for you!  ( https://www.haaretz.com/life/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-demons-that-spooked-the-jews-of-babylon-1.5450356 )

The point of the medallion scheme was to limit the number of taxis on the street. Who made money with them how was never the municipalities’ concern... although of course they ended up getting dragged into disputes.

Oops.  San Francisco reformed its medallion program; now there are different kinds, and some CAN be sold from one person to the next--although at a fixed price, rather than going totally free market.  Gruesome details at https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/taxi/medallions .

The distinction is taxis were hailed from the street, by someone yelling “Taxi!” or going to a taxi stand; no coordination with a central HQ needed.

Actually, even small bodies like Earth’s moon can hold an atmosphere for what’s a short time on the astronomical scale, but a long time on a human scale—say, ten thousand years. Wikipedia includes some results of back-of-the-envelope calculations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming#Moon

That’s a common belief about the very wealthy, but there’s essentially no evidence for it. There are a few loudmouthed billionaires with an interest in space—Musk, Bezos, Branson—but the rest, especially the quiet ones like the Walton family, stick to the traditional purchases of real estate, diversified securities…

The city can’t realistically control what price a medallion holder charges someone else in exchange for the medallion. (These aren’t new ones minted by the city; their number is capped and closely regulated, but beyond that, they trade on a free-ish market.)

Technically, Uber and Lyft are liveries rather than taxis; they’re dispatched from a central location in response to a person-who-wants-a-ride contacting headquarters. (Via an app, these days.)  The law fell way behind what new technology enabled.

Blommaert’s response about “modern life” needing “energy” is lifted directly from denier groups like the Texas Public Policy Foundation.