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Comment Threads

• Moz commented on Unsustainable Interstellar Civilization, Hotspot Colonies, and Dwarf Culture
  Australia, which have extremely variable climates) didn't go in for productivity I don't know about California, but Australia is also known for the "vanishing colony" problem. Europeans (and possibly others) would arrive, set up, do well for a few years then a ship would arrive and ... no colony. Generally no sign of war, sometimes a few starving survivors, and invariably the rains hadn't come, or the bushfire had, or both. Even today morons and dickheads* talk about farming the great northern plains and how modern technology can overcome trivial obstacles like lack of water and infertile soils. Soils...
• Trottelreiner commented on Unsustainable Interstellar Civilization, Hotspot Colonies, and Dwarf Culture
  At least part of the variation in food reaction might be stress mediated; stress inhibits bowel movement, which might lead to bacterial overgrowth, which might lead to bacterial toxins and H2S inhibiting normal cell function in intestines, which might lead to less water absorption, which might lead to diarrhea. Hello IBS (Added fun: organic thiol somehow, blood or whatever reaching my brain and my sense of smell. But I digress). Actually, quite a few spices stimulate bowel movement, so it's not that clear what's recreational and what's medicinal....
• RonaldP commented on Unsustainable Interstellar Civilization, Hotspot Colonies, and Dwarf Culture
  And mind you, that's decades without much support, there is a system installed in the 1930s in the Death Valley area of California that is powered by hydro, and it's still going. So, no over charge issues, no maintenance.... and they keep going. So NiFe has it's points....
• Moz commented on Unsustainable Interstellar Civilization, Hotspot Colonies, and Dwarf Culture
  Here's another "Australian languages" article that suggests 250 languages plus innumerable dialects with some comments on how hard it is to re-discover the details: https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-tasmanias-aboriginal-people-reclaimed-a-language-palawa-kani-99764 The great thing about those sorts of stamp-collecting exercises is the discussions about what constitutes a distinct language and what are mere dialects ("define planet", anyone?). Spanish, Portuguese, Italian... just dialects of Latin, right :) And when you only have a few transliterated words recorded, good luck even counting major language groups....
• Damian commented on Unsustainable Interstellar Civilization, Hotspot Colonies, and Dwarf Culture
  I periodically explain to people that it's like saying "european" or "asian"... few would expect a Spaniard to speak Sami, or someone from Vietnam feel at home in Khazakstan. Quite so, my point was that when you say European or Asian in relation to cultures, people know what you're talking about since there is a mostly shared majority set of influences and values across the diverse specific cultures. While the extremes edges might seem radically different to each other, there is a continuum between them. Add to that the understanding that Australia is and has been remarkably homogenous in terms...