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12:20 AM
What a difference a monsoon makes.
The desert is green and blooming all around.
 
@Robusto It's just 73 here, after an earlier 90 or so.
 
Still 80 here.
Still humid. I rode early enough that it was still overcast and cool, though.
I'm going to do 50 miles again tomorrow, and the humidity will only go down to 35% by the time we're done.
 
Yuck.
Hotter air holds more water than colder air. So if the moisture stays the same the relative humidity is inversely proportional to temperature changes.
 
Hmm, that's true, but then why does the humidity go down as the day warms up?
 
I explained that.
Give a certain absolute amount of water in the air at a particular temperature.
 
12:35 AM
 
When the temperature goes up and no water is added to the system, the RELATIVE humidity goes down.
Because the warm air COULD hold more.
 
Ah, OK.
wunderground doesn't add the qualifier, they just call it humiidty.
 
Tsk.
 
But I suppose everything is relative.
 
Not temperature.
The dip in temperature close to "now" corresponds to a jump in relative humidity.
When the red plot on the left goes up, the red plot on the right goes down, and vice versa.
Look at the flat-lined long dip on the left red plot line.
It is just like the same-shaped one at the same date on the right plotline, but inverted.
 
12:40 AM
Yes. I get it.
And 100% relative humidity means if the temperature goes down it should rain.
 
No, dew.
Rain requires something to grab hold off in the air. Dust.
We had a touch of rain from this. Not that anybody who doesn't live here would ever count as rain-rain, but it does.
That's in thousandths of an inch. :)
Well, it's in inches, but you know.
 
Did you get a lot of rain over the past couple of weeks?
 
Our average for June is around an inch, but I don't know that we got that. Our May average is around two inches and I think we got three.
 
We beat your June score, definitely. But we were in arrears in that respect. Until the monsoon came, we had been 78 days without measurable precipitation.
 
12:55 AM
Denver got 1.7" in June.
Not sure here.
@Robusto April was dead dry here. It's not supposed to be that way.
They haven't posted our June totals yet.
 
Looks like we got about 2.5" in June.
 
I wouldn't knock it.
 
2.38" to be exact.
Hence the blooming desert.
Forests are still stressed, though they are recovering somewhat.
 
Tennessee is still suffering.
But they probably call it a drought when it hasn't rained for a few days there. :)
 
In Seattle it's a drought if it hasn't rained for a few hours.
 
1:05 AM
They have no worse than moderate drought there right now, although abnormally dry conditions are widespread. They don't know what it's like.
 
@tchrist Yeah, fuck their "abnormally dry." We've been having severe to epic drought here for years now.
 
That's drought.
From here.
 
Indeed.
 
Only a tiny fragment of the state is at D0.
 
1:07 AM
Saw that.
 
@tchrist Are you sure that's the right link? I'm getting a 404.
 
Yep, MS.Net does need its .aspx.
 
Boulder County is at D0 in the western third at elevation, D1 in the eastern two-thirds on the flat.
Utah is suffering badly. Did you see the pieces in the NYTimes about all that?
> Of major U.S. cities, Salt Lake has among the lowest per-gallon water rates, according to a 2017 federal report. It also consumes more water for residential use than other desert cities — 96 gallons per person per day last year, compared with 78 in Tucson and 77 in Los Angeles.
They're doing this to themselves.
 
Yes.
 
1:17 AM
> Homes around Salt Lake boast lush, forest-green lawns, despite the drought. And not always by choice.

In the suburb of Bluffdale, when Elie El kessrwany stopped watering his lawn in response to the drought, his homeowners’ association threatened to fine him. “I was trying to do the right thing for my community,” he said.
Idiots. Bloody fucking idiots.
You live in a desert. You don't get to do that.
You will completely kill your community this way. And all the life that relies on that.
 
And they keep creating golf courses. Because that's the good life. No water to drink or bathe in, but plenty of green fairways and greens for the rich fucks to diddle away their Saturday afternoons.
 
Yes.
> If the Great Salt Lake, which has already shrunk by two-thirds, continues to dry up, here’s what’s in store:

The lake’s flies and brine shrimp would die off — scientists warn it could start as soon as this summer — threatening the 10 million migratory birds that stop at the lake annually to feed on the tiny creatures. Ski conditions at the resorts above Salt Lake City, a vital source of revenue, would deteriorate. The lucrative extraction of magnesium and other minerals from the lake could stop.
 
Yes, but God wouldn't let that happen to the faithful.
Just say a few prayers. That will fix it.
 
Las Vegas is a problem.
 
Los Angeles is a problem
 
1:24 AM
> 2012 — Sources of Water for Las Vegas​​ The average household in Southern Nevada uses about 222 gallons of water per day. This has recently dropped from using 314
What the hell?
 
All I know about water planning I learned from the movie Chinatown
 
In any event, the Law of the River is a big problem. These southern jerks think they get to take all our water.
 
@Robusto Which one?
Is there a Greek god of water?
Oh duh there's Poseidon, and uh the river god and the naiads or something
 
@tchrist Las Vegas is actually pretty good about conservation, strangely enough.
 
which one is the river god?
Achelous
Potamoi
Google is giving back a lot
 
1:27 AM
@Mitch The opposite of the naiad is the dryad, which are obviously land-dwellers because they are dry.
 
obvs
Diana Nyad - occupational determinist
 
Unless the Compact can find a way to conserve 2 to 4 million acre-feet of water by August, the Feds are going to come down hard and make big changes that will piss everybody off. Colorado itself uses only 2.2 million acre-feet of water per year.
 
ya know it's not people watering their lawns or even washing machines and dishwashers
or at least not usually
 
Because otherwise you get Lake Powell and Lake Mead no longer able to produce electricity and going dead-pool next year.
 
it's the manufacturers
 
1:30 AM
80% of that water is used by agriculture, not for people. And mostly in the southern basin.
 
tell them to cut back
 
It's not the people at all. It's agriculture.
jinx.
 
thery're the one's creating trash by pushing packaging onto the consumer
oh yeah, uh, agriculture
that's probably more
 
Jul 7, 2021 at 1:18, by Robusto
@tchrist I heard 1500 gallons per pound of almonds. Very wasteful.
 
but same idea, it's businesses, not homeowners
 
1:31 AM
> Without major cutbacks in water use, the nation’s two largest reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — are in danger of reaching critically low levels.

On June 14, Bureau of Reclamation commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton came to a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing with a prognosis, a goal and a threat.

Touton finished her remarks with the threat. If the seven states that rely on the Colorado River can’t cut their own use, the federal government is prepared to do it for them, Touton said. She gave a 60-day deadline to craft a deal.
 
The Aral sea
pretty much doesn't exist anymore
just a sliver of brackish water
of its former size
 
Owen's Lake was killed by Floyd Dominy.
> The Colorado River’s big reservoirs are at record lows. Lake Mead sits at 28% of its capacity, and Lake Powell is at 27% capacity. They’re both projected to drop further as the year progresses.

Touton set the goal to keep them from dropping to levels where hydropower production ceases and where it becomes physically impossible to move water through the dams.

“Between 2 and 4 million acre-feet of additional conservation is needed just to protect critical levels in 2023,” Touton said.

To compare, the entire state of Colorado uses about 2.2 million acre-feet from the river each year.
We can't help them. They already drained our basins last year to help the wastrels down south.
 
Is the Salton Sea still there? Or isn't that a 'new' area of water?
 
@Mitch It's a problem. Big one. Almost gone.
 
1:34 AM
scary
 
There's the Aral Sea. What's left of it.
 
but lots of new real estate
 
@Mitch That's drying up too. But when it was formed it was filled from fresh water. What a waste.
 
also now that the permafrost is melting, more viable land up north
 
1:41 AM
Great Salt Lake too I see
isn't somewhere getting the water that's not going there?
The North Atlantic from runoff from the Greenland icesheet
 
The Great Salt Lake is just drying up. It's not useful for irrigation or other freshwater uses. It's going away because there's not enough moisture feeding it to keep it alive.
 
oh
 
The freshwater that does feed into it has been appropriated for other uses.
 
I guess like the Colorado and Amu Darya
 
 
1 hour later…
2:46 AM
> At its peak in 1957, the Aral Sea produced more than 48,000 tons of fish, representing roughly 13 percent of the Soviet Union’s fish stocks
 
That is a lot.
 
Dike Kokaral is a 12 km long dam across a narrow stretch of the former Aral Sea, splitting off the North Aral Sea (also called "The Small Sea") from the area that once contained the much larger South Aral Sea ("The Large Sea"). The dike is conserving the dwindling waters of the Syr Darya river and maintaining (and attempting to revive) the damaged ecology of the North Aral Sea, at the expense of sealing the fate of the larger South Aral. Work was completed in August 2005, with help from the World Bank. Dike Kokaral is named after the Kokaral peninsula (an island until the 1960s), which would connect...
 
The effects of that dike are rather less impressive when the overall picture is presented.
 
3:07 AM
Any chance the sea can regain its former extent?
 
3:20 AM
There was a project in the USSR to reverse the flow of rivers that drain into the Arctic
This would have sustained the Aral Sea
The Northern river reversal or Siberian river reversal was an ambitious project to divert the flow of the Northern rivers in the Soviet Union, which "uselessly" drain into the Arctic Ocean, southwards towards the populated agricultural areas of Central Asia, which lack water.Research and planning work on the project started in the 1930s and was carried out on a large scale in the 1960s through the early 1980s. The controversial project was abandoned in 1986, primarily for environmental reasons, without much actual construction work ever done. == Development of the river rerouting projects... ==
> In the US, expert opinion was divided with some endorsing this project. The physicist Glenn Werth, of the University of California's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, stated that it was "both safe and economical".
Oh, no. The Caspian Sea
Not the Aral Sea
 
I used to think I knew the difference between a lake and a sea. The older I get, the less I can see the terms being used distinctly.
 
> A lake is enclosed on all sides by land and does not connect to a larger water body like an ocean, while a sea connects to an ocean.
 
Professional ice hockey player Fedotov wanted to transfer to a foreign team. He was detained, and sent to serve in the army. Rumors are that he is being sent to Novaya Zemlya.
 
3:35 AM
EEK!
> Open and closed lakes refer to the major subdivisions of lakes – bodies of water surrounded by land. Exorheic, or open lakes drain into a river, or other body of water that ultimately drains into the ocean. Endorheic basins fall into the category of endorheic or closed lakes, wherein waters do not drain into the ocean, but are reduced by evaporation, and/or drain into the ground.
> A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake.[1] Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much larger oceans, they do form part of the Earth's water cycle.
> The sea, connected as the world ocean or simply the ocean, is the body of salty water that covers approximately 71 percent of the Earth's surface. The word sea is also used to denote second-order sections of the sea, such as the Mediterranean Sea, as well as certain large, entirely landlocked, saltwater lakes, such as the Caspian Sea.
Yeah, I have no fricking idea.
I always thought a lake wasn't a part of the ocean, but that a sea was so.
> The sea is the interconnected system of all the Earth's oceanic waters, including the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Southern and Arctic Oceans.[1] However, the word "sea" can also be used for many specific, much smaller bodies of seawater, such as the North Sea or the Red Sea.

There is no sharp distinction between seas and oceans, though generally seas are smaller, and are often partly (as marginal seas or particularly as mediterranean seas) or wholly (as inland seas) bordered by land.[2] However, the Sargasso Sea has no coastline and lies within a circular current, the North Atlantic Gyre
The Sea of Galilee is a lake. Why of course it is.
So is the Dead Sea.
And the Salton Sea.
And the Mormon Sea.
I once convinced myself that the Caspian was indeed a sea, and now I read that it's an endorheic lake.
And apparently freshwater-vs-saltwater doesn't work either.
The Sea of Galilee is freshwater.
Great Salt Lake clearly is not.
 
@CowperKettle Also interesting.
 
I guess anything that gets identified as a sea is a sea, and anything that gets identified as a lake is a lake. Neither is anything real, just something people call things, some of which are the same things and some of which are different things, with the words not really lining up clearly.
 
@tchrist Or perhaps both?
A sea because it's salty?
 
But I still think the Salton Sea is a lake, damn it. It isn't connected to the World Ocean.
 
@tchrist Could be a linguistic artefact?
@tchrist Especially if you also speak German...
English sea = Dutch zee = German Meer.
English lake = Dutch meer = German See.
 
3:48 AM
@Cerberus LAKE CONSTANCE IS NOT A SEA!
I know.
 
Is she salty?
 
> The Sea of Galilee (Hebrew: יָם כִּנֶּרֶת, Judeo-Aramaic: יַמּא דטבריא, גִּנֵּיסַר, Arabic: بحيرة طبريا), also called Lake Tiberias, Kinneret or Kinnereth,[3] is a freshwater lake in Israel. It is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth and the second-lowest lake in the world (after the Dead Sea, a saltwater lake),
@Cerberus If you piss her off, sure.
 
Yuck.
 
So the Sea of Galilee is a freshwater lake, and the Dead Sea is a saltwater lake.
waaaaa
 
Better go sleep!
I will.
 
3:51 AM
I think we spell it mere here.
And those are lakes.
@Cerberus Yes, clearly my brain is turning to amber.
Meres and tarns.
> Science will tell you also a mere is a lake without a Thermocline. Without trying to get too technical, a simple way to explain that is, think of a layer of water that separates the rough cold water at the bottom and the calm warm water at the top. It cannot occur until certain depths are in place and the temperature is right in the atmosphere.
@Cerberus I can't believe you can keep all three of those straight this late. :)
> Etymology has played a part here too. The word mere comes from Old English ‘mere’ which meant lake or ‘sea’ in Old Saxon, a broad term for a body of water. Time and many many generations and language differences can make it all more confusing.

Take the Mediterranean Sea for example:

The Dutch say – Middellandse Zee

However the Germans say – Mittelmeer

Plus the Germans call a lake a sea, eg Bodensee or Zell am See in Austria

In language, mere and sea have diversified in time and geography, we just used it a certain way in general. A shallow but large lake.
 
@CowperKettle Um, yes?
The UK has had those in every hotel room since Julius Caesar invaded.
 
Word of the day: grokking (Neural networks achieve perfect generalisation, well past the point of overfitting, in some cases through grokking a pattern in data)
 
4:11 AM
Yes, Heinlein. Stranger in a Strange Land
 
@CowperKettle I have one. It was non metal body though. Used to make water warm in winter in hostel.
 
A neural network able to translate directly, without converting speech into text first.
 
4:39 AM
> Maria Zakharova, Spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia: "The Minsk Agreements provided a chance for Kiev to preserve a Ukrainian state. Zelensky, driven by "westerners", has publicly turned it down. The Kiev regime will get no second chance of this kind".
 
5:02 AM
@CowperKettle All what they and Medvedev are posting are composed by Putin.
 
5:37 AM
I guess this might be true.
 
5:50 AM
@Cerberus Yes. The idea was shelved out of environmental concerns. But what if it's feasible after all? So many people would benefit, in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries.
One does not need to completely shut down these rivers. Some 50% could be diverted, and the rest allowed to discharge into the Arctic.
With modern supercomputers, the outcomes could be recalculated to check the environmental impact. And we know a lot more about the environment than in the 1980s.
 
 
1 hour later…
7:11 AM
> Since February 24, Roskomnadzor, the Russian federal censorship agency, has blocked more than 82,000 Internet resources, including a number of independent media outlets.
Long live VPN
 
The Moscow Times will also be banned?
 
@Vikas No, it opens without any VPN help for me
Solar panels on a balcony provide 25% of electricity for a flat in Vienna
I wonder how much power would I get if I install solar panels on my balcony.
There are companies here that install panels, but I think it will be hard to get official permits. Officials here make you pay for anything, even if you wish to install a bathroom sink.
> Transport of goods by rail in June is 6% below the June 2021 level eg-online.ru/news/456926
 
 
1 hour later…
8:36 AM
@CowperKettle Does your balcony get a lot of direct sun? If so do you know how to hook the panels up to your electric feed.
 
8:47 AM
@Xanne There are companies that will do the work for you.
The balcony does get a lot of sun. I wonder if there's a way to install a small and cheap insolation sensor, and gather some data, and calculate how many actual watts a panel would produce))
> Russia’s Finance Ministry proposes to cut spending by 1.6 trillion rubles within next three years.
@Xanne I thought that maybe one could just accumulate the energy in a large battery, and then use the battery to feed a laptop.
A laptop does not consume a lot of energy, especially when you're not into gaming.
 
9:08 AM
Hello guys :)
Can I ask you guys for some advice on my canonical post on ELL? Thanks :)
 
9:26 AM
-1
Q: Canonical post #3 - Passive voice?

DialFrostThere has been a collaboration effort to make a canonical post on passive voice, but it was never posted sadly (asked in 2015), so I would like to give it a try! I understand the amount of effort needed to put into this canonical post, so I ask for anyone's help in trying to make this canonical p...

 
 
1 hour later…
10:29 AM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad ns for domain in answer, username similar to website in answer (69): 'Travel' - Place of articulation of /t/‭ by Alpenature‭ on english.SE
 
 
1 hour later…
11:41 AM
@CowperKettle That looks like a poor angle for solar panels.
Is electricity in Russia expensive?
 
12:02 PM
@FaheemMitha Roughly 6.5 rupees per 1 KWh
 
@CowperKettle Is that Indian rupees?
 
@FaheemMitha I multiplied 4.5 rubles by 1.45
 
@CowperKettle Oh.
 
Our local energy company does not accept rupees yet, unfortunately
 
@CowperKettle Is that the total cost? No extras? No tax?
 
12:05 PM
@FaheemMitha Yes
 
@CowperKettle Supposedly the rupee is convertible to other currencies.
I haven't tried doing so, though.
 
@FaheemMitha For me, it's even cheaper. Because the tariff probably varies a bit
 
@CowperKettle OK.
 
3.59 rubles for 1 KWh during the day hours, a total of 520 rubles per June 2022
 
@CowperKettle Is the cost different during day and night hours?
 
12:08 PM
@FaheemMitha Yes, as you see in the picture, it's 1.71 rubles / 1 KWh in the night hours
Quite cheap.
Some people do their laundry in the night hours.
 
@CowperKettle You forget. I can't read Russian.
 
Ah, sorry
I meant that it could be seen in the picture. The figure 1.71
 
@CowperKettle The image you posted earlier (i.stack.imgur.com/1BFkR.png) is in English, though. But that says 2.43 rubles for night hours.
 
Yes. Probably for my flat the tariff is lower
 
Here it's a flat rate, regardless of the time. But it goes up per Kwh as you use more. A graduated scale? Is that was you call it?
 
12:15 PM
I have an electric stove, so the tariff is 30% lower
I remember when I first replaced all incandescent lamps with energy-saving lamps, the consumption really decreased.
 
@CowperKettle We switched to LED some years ago. But it didn't seem to make so much difference, because the A/Cs dominate the usage.
 
I don't need A/C, because right now, on 4 July, the temperature outside is +12°C
 
@CowperKettle Well, one often needs an A/C here. Not all the time, but most of the time.
 
I had to wear a jacket going outside
 
I suppose in Russia, one more often needs heating.
Which can also be very expensive, I suppose.
 
12:21 PM
The forecasters promise that the day after tomorrow, summer will finally begin in Yekaterinburg.
@FaheemMitha Yes, every room has a heating radiator attached to the main system.
 
Worldwide, the price of electricity varies from 1 to 200: globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices
 
Centralized water heating.
 
@CowperKettle No heating required here, though we do have hot water heaters. Which I think are a bit redundant, though people like to use them. Myself included.
 
@jlliagre A nice chart, the tariff given for Russia is realistic
 
@jlliagre When I check my current energy provider, it says €0,58 cents per kWh.
Quite a bit higher than that chart.
 
12:36 PM
@Cerberus Wasn't there a substantial price increase this year?
 
#Worldle #164 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
@jlliagre No USA on the chart?
Haha, never mind. It's there as USA, not United States.
 
@jlliagre Yes, but the figures in the chart are supposed to have been updated this June.
Such extreme energy consumption.
This is only electricity.
Is it perhaps because they use electricity for heating?
I think I use about 1700 kWh.
This is why we are damaging our climate...
 
Wordle 380 4/6

⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜
⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨
🟩⬜🟨🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
 
#Worldle #164 2/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜↖️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
@Cerberus Nope. The chart reflects Dec 2021 prices. It hasn't been updated with the June figures.
 
Ohh.
That explains it, then.
I see I misread.
 
12:50 PM
Wordle 380 5/6

⬜🟩⬜⬜🟨
🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩⬜⬜🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
 
@jlliagre Your fourth guess was a number.
 
@Robusto You bet!
 
1:21 PM
@Robusto and my third guess was also number, but in French :-)
 
1:44 PM
This time-line puts Qatar into perspective from a construction project point of view.
 
2:26 PM
This oak is almost 500 years old.
 
2:59 PM
Nice
Sunset today. There was too much humidity. Increased further by water in fields.
 
3:19 PM
Nice!
 
3:38 PM
@Cerberus My dream: make one toothpick out of that.
 
@Mitch You say the same about Stonehenge?
It used to be what all tourists did, chisel off a splinter of Stonehenge.
 
4:06 PM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, pattern-matching email in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (350): Obsession with the rich and famous‭ by willie mcghee‭ on english.SE
 
 
2 hours later…
6:12 PM
@Cerberus Not many toothpicks. Just one resulting from all that, and nothing else.
 
 
2 hours later…
8:39 PM
One of the things I really like about Sabine Hossenfelder is that her wardrobe is so awful. It's clear she is using her mental faculties for other things.
2
 
 
1 hour later…
9:50 PM
Yet another mass murder. This one to celebrate the birth of our nation.
And Highland Park is heavily Jewish, so I'll give you three guesses as to what kind of person was responsible.
> Gov. J.B. Pritzker called on “all Illinoisans to pray for the families who have been devastated by the evil unleashed this morning in Highland Park, for those who have lost loved ones and for those who have been injured.
Yeah, just what we need: more prayers.
If I were inclined to pray, it would be that the Supreme Court would get their heads out of their asses and stop making the 2nd Amendment the only freedom they really care about upholding.
> Former Obama White House adviser David Alexrod tweeted that someone he knew was at the parade, writing: “A friend took his kids to July 4th Parade in Highland Park today. His son has special needs. When shots rang out, they ran for their lives, the dad pushing his grown son’s wheelchair —which at one point tumbled over. On America’s day, what has become a sickeningly American story.”
Yes. A "sickeningly American" story.
 
10:16 PM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Linked punctuation in body (20): "A" or "the" – what is the difference here? ✏️‭ by MrWillie‭ on english.SE
 
10:39 PM
@CowperKettle I wonder whether that is 1/4th on a good day, or truly 1/4 over the entire year, actually usable electricity at the moment of generation.
There is a reason why solar panels are not normally mounted onto balconies.
Three years of amortisation is extremely fast even for perfectly angled panels.
But I'm no expert.
@tchrist Interesting.
@CowperKettle You don't have a kettle?
@tchrist Perhaps not quite straight.
 
@Robusto When I saw the news flash by, I somehow thought it was the Highland Park in Dallas not the one in Chicago.
 
11:37 PM
@tchrist I grew up near there and went to school with kids from there. So yeah, it's pretty familiar to me. At that time it was mostly Jewish and Italian ethnicities.
 
11:53 PM
@Robusto It's like the first place you hit on the tristate driving south of the border.
 

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