If the conveyor moves at the same speed as the wheels, it is exactly like attaching an anchor. That isn’t the myth they were testing, but it’s a more interesting myth.

it can’t do that through the wheels- the wheels can only apply a force equal to their rolling resistance and friction in its mechanics.

It can do that if it can spin the wheels fast enough. Picture the ultra-light airplane from the episode with big, bouncy wheels and a relatively weak propeller. If the treadmill was moving 1000 km/h backwards, that little propeller could never match the force due to rolling resistance from the wheels.

The tricky bit is that the air within a few millimeters of the treadmill will move with the treadmill. The air slightly above that will be slightly disturbed and also move a bit in the direction of the treadmill. If you had an extremely long and extremely wide treadmill (say the length and width of a runway) it’s possible that the air at the height of the propeller would be moving along with the treadmill, rather than staying still, or moving with prevailing winds.

But, even in that case, the plane could still take off. All the plane needs to do is move the body of the plane through the air at enough speed to allow the wings to start generating lift. If the air at propeller-height is moving with a treadmill that is moving at take-off speed, the plane might take off with zero forward speed relative to the non-treadmill ground. But, as long as you’re not somehow preventing the propeller from moving the plane through the air, the plane will always be able to take off.

There are videos of planes taking off by themselves in high wind, and videos of VSTOL (very short take-off and landing) planes taking off and landing using only a few metres of runway.

at what point does this become true?

It’s always true.

A stationary aeroplane on a treadmill will obviously move with the treadmill

What do you mean? The plane has its parking brakes on and moves with the treadmill surface? If you don’t have parking brakes engaged and start up a treadmill under a plane, the plane’s wheels will spin and the plane will stay pretty much in one place. Because the wheels are free to spin, initially that’s all that will happen. The inertia of the plane will keep it in place while the wheels spin. Over time, the plane will start to drift in the direction the treadmill is moving, but it will never move as fast as the treadmill because there’s also friction from the air, and that’s going to be a much bigger factor.

I assume an aeroplane moving at like 1 km/h still gets pulled backward by the treadmill.

Moving at 1 km/h relative to what? The surface of the treadmill or the “world frame”? A plane on a moving treadmill will be pulled by the treadmill – there will be friction in the wheels, but it will also feel a force from the air. As soon as the pilot fires up the engine, the force from the engine will be much higher than any tiny amount of friction in the wheels from the treadmill.

but how does it get lift if it is prevented from accelerating from 0 to 1 km/h of ground speed

It isn’t prevented from accelerating from 0 to 1 km/h of ground speed. The wheels are spinning furiously, but they’re relatively frictionless. If the pilot didn’t start up the propeller, the plane would start to move in the direction the treadmill is pulling, but would never quite reach the speed of the treadmill due to air resistance. But, as soon as the pilot fires up the propeller, it works basically as normal. A little bit of the air will be moving backwards due to the treadmill, but most of the air will still be relatively stationary, so it’s easy to move the plane through the air quicker and quicker until it reaches take-off speed.

I think the confusion is that the conveyor belt is running at a fixed speed, which is the aircraft’s takeoff speed. That just dictates how fast the wheels spin, but since the plane generates thrust with its propeller, the wheels just end up having to spin at double takeoff speed. Since they’re relatively frictionless, that’s easy.

The more confusing myth is the one where the speed of the conveyor belt is variable, and it always moves at the same speed as the wheels. So, at the beginning the conveyor belt isn’t moving, but as soon as the plane starts to move, and its wheels start to spin, the conveyor belt movies in the opposite direction. In that case, the plane can’t take off. That’s basically like attaching an anchor to the plane’s frame, so no matter how fast the propeller spins, the airplane can’t move.

The slippery slope thing is definitely an issue. If you have a dishonest, biased moderator (say someone from Fox News) they could really twist things. Even if you have a moderator who is trying as hard as possible to be unbiased, they’re bound to have some unconscious biases. On the other hand, fact checking is a pretty solved problem in reputable media. Not everything can be fact-checked, but even when facts are in dispute, they can often say what the source of the claim is. The problem is that they’re not used to doing it in real time. Proper fact checking often takes hours, not seconds.

Maybe one idea would be to have a rule at the debate saying that if you were planning to cite any statistic at all, you had to provide a source ahead of time to the moderator. They could then pre-emptively fact check all those statistics, and if they came up during the debate, the moderator could instantly fact-check them. If the candidate used a statistic they hadn’t had pre-approved the moderator would interrupt them, just like a judge in a case where a lawyer was trying to talk about something they hadn’t entered into evidence.

Interesting, what’s your first language?

You mean Jamie?

The modern debate format is pretty much useless. It’s too bad that the TV networks need the debate more than the candidates need it. Otherwise, the TV networks could impose restrictions like real-time fact checking, moderators who could (and would) mute candidates, tough questions that candidates didn’t like, following up and asking a question again if a candidate dodged a question, and so-on.

The rules are pretty loose (the width can be anywhere between 46 and 91 metres wide), but in practice real pitches are almost always between 64 and 69m wide and between 102 to 106m long. Even with the loosest possible interpretation of the rules, if you had the biggest legal pitch, you could fit at most 2 legal pitches on it if you subdivided it.

It would actually be really interesting for a team looking for an edge to use an extremely unusual pitch shape to make it hard for visiting teams to adapt.

Everyone capable of thought should have opinions.

The full scene if anyone’s interested.

Carl Weathers is an interesting contrast to Arnold. Arnold got his muscles by focusing on how he looked, on bodybuilding. Weathers developed his physique training for professional gridiron football. He played college football, then in the NFL (coached by John Madden) and CFL. Arnold used his unique physique as a way to get into movies without ever training as an actor. Weathers was studying theatre arts while playing college football, and finally finished the degree in 1974 just after retiring from pro football. He went on to get a master of theatre arts later.

Both of them pivoted extremely successfully to comedy later in their careers, with Weathers doing Happy Gilmore and Arrested Development, and Arnold doing his whole variety of comedy movies.

Also, good to know that Weathers loved this scene:

“Predator, the handshake. That’s iconic,” says Weathers, grinning from ear to ear. “The director shot that scene beautifully. And it’s a great movie. You put that movie in the theater today and it works just as well as it did back in 1987.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/baby-carl-weathers-has-a-stew-going

On one hand, Assange is a shitty person. One woman woke up to him sticking his dick in her without her consent and without a condom. On the same trip he’d had sex with a different woman who had also insisted on his using a condom, which he reluctantly did… but then the condom mysteriously broke. While a guest of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was hiding out to duck the Swedish charges, he smeared shit on the walls and refused to bathe. He also helped the Russian GRU interfere in the 2016 Presidential Election, either as a useful idiot or a willing collaborator.

On the other hand, as shitty as he is, he was effectively a journalist. With Wikileaks he released leaked footage of a US helicopter firing on civilians in Iraq. He released reports on corruption by Kenyan leaders. He released internal scientology documents. The world needs journalists who will publish stories about things that powerful people, governments and churches don’t want people to know.

On the other, other hand, at times he hung his sources out to dry, like he did with Bradley / Chelsea Manning.

The plea deal he agreed to is bullshit. The charge of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” was basically encouraging a source to leak information to him. That’s journalism. “Conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information” was again, journalism. He was encouraging whistleblowers to report on wrongdoing by the government.

Even the plea deal is bullshit. He pled to violating the espionage act for… what? He didn’t break into anything himself. He wasn’t given a security clearance which he then violated. He wasn’t even American, in America, or working for the government. He was acting as a journalist receiving information from a whistleblower.

So, IMO, there’s nothing much to celebrate here. A shitty person pled to a bullshit charge, setting a bad precedent for journalism, and is now free. Lose, lose.

How do you define “earsay”?

Another similar “shortcut” I’ve heard about was that a system that analyzed job performance determined that the two key factors were being named “Jared” and playing lacrosse in high school.

And, these are the easy-to-figure-out ones we know about.

If the bias is more complicated, it might never be spotted.

PhD level intelligence? Sounds about right.

Extremely narrow field of expertise ✔️
Misplaced confidence in its abilities outside its area of expertise ✔️
A mind filled with millions of things that have been read, and near zero from interactions with real people✔️
An obsession over how many words can get published over the quality and correctness of those words ✔️
A lack of social skills ✔️
A complete lack of familiarity of how things work in the real world ✔️

Yes, “Bias Automation” is always an issue with the training data, and it’s always harder to resolve than anyone thinks.

When the choice is between status quo and a fascist, status quo isn’t so bad.

If there’s ever a way to undo first-past-the-post, that should be the focus. FPTP requires you to vote strategically to keep the greater evil out, but that frequently means voting for the lesser evil. Get rid of this need to vote strategically and maybe you can have a meaningful choice.

That’s virtua, not virtual.

Yep. Because stealing is a crime that goes back thousands of years. It was an old crime by the time the 10 commandments were written down. Meanwhile, copyright infringement is a new thing that’s maybe a few centuries old at most, and it’s a lot more morally ambiguous. Is it wrong to infringe on a monopoly that the government has given a corporation over the sharing of a tangible expression of an idea? Maybe sometimes? Maybe not other times?

One woman can deliver a baby in an hour, if she’s a doctor or a midwife.