sampo

> I've never understood the opposition to nuclear power.

Part of it was a Soviet psyop to get Western citizens to oppose West's nuclear weapons. Encourage people to oppose nuclear in general, both nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

> 250K trees sounds like a lot

In this case, it's 3.3 sq-km (or 1.3 sq-miles) of forest.

• You wouldn't need this kind of permit for clear-cutting 3.3 sq-km of forest, if the forest stays as forest (i.e. you will plant with tree seedlings)

• You need this permit when the land use changes (from forest to build area)

• The subcontractor might not have known that they are clear-cutting without all permits, or at least they might have plausible deniability

• The decision makers of the town of Muhos want the data center, as it bring jobs and taxable income

• The town building inspector had given a green light for Google to proceed

• Finland is, still, a high-trust society. Punishment for this kind of wrong-doing is likely lenient (some relatively small fines), the shame of having been sentenced in court is supposed to be the main deterrent in itself

• Thus, it might make financial sense for Google to cut corners and proceed faster, even if it means they end up paying some fines

• Unless the bad publicity ends up costing more than the saved project time

> As a non-physicist, QM only clicked for me when I learned the linear algebra of one- and two-qubit systems and observables on those systems

Before quantum computers, the only reason to learn quantum mechanics was so that you could learn to explain the electron orbitals of the hydrogen atom. And after that proceed to understand how other atoms and other matter works.

And for this you need vector calculus, partial differential equations, Schrödinger equation, orthogonal functions (spherical harmonics, Laguerre polynomials) (with hint of the theory of Hilbert spaces).

The idea that someone would like to learn the basic principles of QM without applying it to solve the 3-dimensional probability distribution of electrons around the atomic nucleus, is rather new.

I started to read from "3.1 The Ultraviolet Catastrophe" and this sentence

"The number of different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, N(λ)dλ, with wavelengths in a small interval between λ and λ + dλ, (dλ means a small interval in wavelength) can be shown to be proportional to 1/λ⁴."

doesn't make sense. It should not talk about a number of wavelengths, but the number of allowed standing-wave modes (number of eigenmodes that a mathematical solution to the electric field in the relevant situation has) in the small wavelength interval.

> Have people moved on from Fortran 77?

Apparently not. Fortran 90 standard was published 35 years ago, in 1991. But a majority of comments in this thread are about FORTRAN 77. It's like the last 35 years didn't happen at all.

> Most of the lawsuits assert that oil companies should help pay the escalating costs being imposed on the public by climate-fueled extreme weather because they knew the risks their products posed but worked to publicly question climate science and stymie efforts to curb emissions.

"They knew the risks"

Everybody knew the risks. Climate science has been researched at universities and published openly.

If politicians have failed to regulate, and consumers have enjoyed the benefits of (relatively) cheap fuel and energy, why would the fossil energy companies be singled out as the culprits? People wanted the high material standard of living that comes from (relatively) abundant available energy, cheaper and plentiful food that comes from abundant nitrogen fertilizers (made from natural gas). We were all part of this.

> All reviewers, Action Editors and Editors-in-Chief for TMLR are unpaid volunteers.

He is not an unpaid volunteer.

He's an associate professor at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University. He is not paid by the journal, but he is paid a salary by the university, and the university expects that a small part of his academic work is to serve as an editor in academic journals.