Texas just isn't prepared for these kinds of temperatures. They had natural gas pipelines freeze up. "Temperatures are low enough to trigger so-called freeze-offs, when wells shut down because of liquids freezing inside pipelines." https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2021/02/12/30202...
There are plenty of technologies to drain off water and other condensates in cold temperatures. Oilfield operations are 12 month affairs in Pennsylvania, Ohio, even North Dakota and Manitoba, which are routinely much colder than Texas is right now. They have to weigh if reliability is worth the extra cost of planning for a two or three days every decade event.
1) Billionaires would love if the poors were distracted. 2) Religious bigots would be upset if Gays or Muslims or atheists were ever happy. Thus fact two will prevent the first group from getting their way.
Author asks for "Strava for reading". Goodreads already has this functionality. You show off which books you have read, rate and review them, and set goals for books read per year, then compare with your 'friends'.
The implementation is a constant source of complaints here and other places, but it does have the basic idea the author wishes for.
With gerrymandering, the ruling party will pack voters in districts by party. Instead of competitive districts, one party districts are formed, and more extreme candidates win primaries. That's how you end up with really objectionable people being elected instead of centrists, and compromise becomes near impossible.
I'd rather ask someone "in contact with aliens" a math question, where we could check the answer, than a question about the direction of technology which 1) gives them a binary choice (easier to fake), and 2) could result in some labs burning years of time, even if they don't blow themselves up.
"Inertial. Magnetic will be more inefficient at higher power levels, because a particle you haven't discovered yet will dampen the reaction if you use magnetic confinement. Ultimately it's because the string coupling parameters for the 3rd-dimension/8th-dimension interaction are stronger than for the 5th-dimension/7th-dimension interaction". It's an explanation that looks like probable made-up baloney, but can you be sure? Can you (or anyone) disprove it?
"YInMn Blue’s appeal stems in part from its high opacity, which means you don’t need to apply much of it to get a good coating."
This! I've noticed that blue exterior house paint, even with an expensive primer, just doesn't cover very well. This stuff seems about 100 times too expensive for that application.
There are plenty of technologies to drain off water and other condensates in cold temperatures. Oilfield operations are 12 month affairs in Pennsylvania, Ohio, even North Dakota and Manitoba, which are routinely much colder than Texas is right now. They have to weigh if reliability is worth the extra cost of planning for a two or three days every decade event.