All this "natural something" and antivax movement certainly is the other direction. Maybe it's subconscious population control, maybe informational warfare... maybe people just got a little detached from reality by not dying all the time, as you suggested.

- It's not commonly transmitted sexually

- It can definitely be transmitted sexually

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatitis_C#Sexual_intercourse

Seems like both HSV-1 and HSV-2 seroprevalences are actually rather low in the Netherlands.

As for STI testing: Serological testing is pretty meaningless regarding infection risk and direct viral detection is only done on visible lesions for differential diagnostics AFAIK. You can shed the virus without lesions, HSV-1 can be contracted without direct mucosa contact, and while HSV-1 is associated with oral herpes and HSV-2 with genital herpes, both types can cause lesions anywhere on the body. Sure someone without positive antibody status very likely can't transmit it, but that's a very small minority of people of relevant age.

I believe talking to Americans about "herpes" can be misleading, as it's weirdly stigmatized over there and people seemingly conflate visible "cold sores", genital herpes and antibody status.

Incidentally, genital herpes and HSV-2 in general is more common in the US, which may be a direct outcome of this cultural dynamic. Due to lower incidences of early oral HSV-1 infections, compared to most western Europe, Americans are more likely to get infected with genital herpes of either type, but in particular HSV-2, too. Prior oral HSV-1 infections are somewhat protective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_herpes_simplex

For the string you could use a chain, or just a thicker rope. A presume a bow string has similar requirements and was available tech. For the frame, spindel/shaft and string, I don't see a problem as they appear to be scalable, not restricted by dimensions/weight much. Wood, natural fibers and steel would do. In theory, medieval people in "The East" had readily access (as in no advanced processing required etc.) to everything needed to make highly elastic rubber (for the original supersonic trebuchet), but it would be an anachronistic material AFAIK. You may conceive a variant using maybe an array of bows for quick release energy storage.

Wood is plenty strong (in relation to weight), but the arm may critically depend on modern materials, as both supersonic trebuchets use specifically advanced materials there (structured titanium and carbon fiber composites IIRC). For a heavier arm, you would probably need a prolonged acceleration phase, which would be doable (for Stanton's trebuchet), but I am not sure the forces wouldn't tear lower strength:weight materials apart, or if a more voluminous arm may be able to overcome the drag. I could see the fat compressed part of the arm being aerodynamically shaped wood (like a wooden propeller; although "aerodynamic" anything may be considered anachronistic), and the thin tensioned part made from a thin band of steel/bow string.

I think, another potential show stopper may be bearings. Not sure you could have the rotational speeds of the arm without precision (ball) bearings and modern lubricants. 2342 RPM would probably the fastest spinning thing at the time. (I wanna see a washing machine gone trebuchet-y, now.)

But really, it would be just a curiosity in medieval times too. What's the point of supersonic speeds in a device you can hardly aim precisely? You could deliver the same or more energy by throwing a heavier projectile at slower speeds, without excessive aerodynamic losses.

It's not a nuclear bomb obviously, but I feel you would be just as dismissive, anyway.

I can say in Germany "9to..." is also applying to cafes, supermarkets, ... pretty much nothing is open before 8 in the morning (with the exception of stuff in train stations), even some supermarkets only open at 9. So there certainly is no "culture" earlier than that. School often starts at 8, so parents frequently start the day at 6 or earlier. Same if you got an hour commuting time etc.. I don't know anybody who would wake up at 4 by choice, tho.

I can only go for a run first thing in the morning. Although, that's more about the empty stomach (and outdoor temperatures in summer). If I got sugar in my blood, food in my stomach, I kinda "crash" very soon and tend to get heart burn. The empty stomach also makes me feel lighter and the slight hunger feels in tune with the overall experience, if that makes sense. Running in the morning doesn't leave me tired, if I've reached the "maintenance level" (got no specific exercise goal, tho). Aerobic exercise has the benefit of giving me overall higher "energy" by making everything slightly less exhausting. And the peaceful calm of an early morning run in the green (city park) is a blissful, almost spiritual experience radiating into the day. That said, running in the evening can be fun, too, because I feel supernaturally fast. I do that too sometimes, if I feel very, very stressed/anxious and need an outlet.

On the other hand, doing strength training blood sugar is an asset, but pushing limits leaves me exhausted and tired no matter what. I presume, it's natural to feel tired, if the body has tissue damage to repair from exercise. The difference is, running can be done effectively (as far as health maintenance is concerned) without excessive tissue damage and inherently pushing limits as much.

Right now the market favors employers, but I think when the sobriety sets in this will rapidly change. Senior devs are gonna get more expensive. Companies should massively invest in education programs.

In any case, battery storage has been shown to be economically feasible already and are as of now operating at scale. And battery tech is only getting better. The worries about grid stability are therefore unwarranted. If you can manage the up and down of wind and solar, you don't need gas energy to stabilize the grid, you got better bad options and the seasonal variation becomes highly predictable. And of course you could e.g. reserve water potential energy generation for winter times.

And as I said, we also need to cut down our energy consumption. Building data centers to undress celebrities is not the direction of survival.

Hydrogen generation, storage, logistics and electricity conversion are all very lossy. Again battery/solar/wind tech is already there and is only getting better. We should absolutely not use hydrogen for anything, where direct electrification/battery storage is possible. We critically need it for things like steel production, but that's a special use case, where it should be made on-site. Let's be real, the only reason anyone in Germany is pushing for hydrogen is because the German "industry" historically sabotaged local solar and storage tech and now try to salvage their obsolete combustion tech. Hydrogen has a lobby, but no future. For similar reasons Russia and USA are putting propaganda efforts into climate denial: China owns battery and solar tech, China owns the energy future. It's sad, but true. There is no one to blame but those legacy economies being all inert, fat and complacent - they got a million chances to win this slow, slow race, which has been advertised a century ago.

I think, projects like these grew out of dunkelflaute moral panic regarding renewable energy. Meanwhile grid battery storage has becomes cheap enough to completely obliterate this concern.

And quite frankly, fertilizer needs in agriculture should be addressed by ecological means anyway. If we want to lower the impact of climate change, we need to get out of this "just throw more energy at it" technology mindset.

Every sentence its own paragraph.

Every second word bold.

Who writes like that?

Is this some kind of stupid SEO/AI crawler optimization?

I had the movie industry in mind, because it demands the largest set of Blender's features. I believe Maya still has/had the edge in animation and particle stuff. Though, AFAIK the main reason is integration and custom tooling built on it, which makes switching to Blender less tempting than sticking up with license fees... which are rather negligible compared to overall operating costs.

I believe, Blender is creeping in with smaller studios, especially anime/cartoon kinda stuff.

I think one of Blender's biggest assets is its wide creative tool set. There is even a useful video editor included. Honestly, it's not far off from being the swiss army knife of digital creative work, a creative operating system. Maybe we get a DAW too at some point :D Anyway, I think that's why Blender will dominate. Anyone starting out got everything they need for "free" (with a consistent UI you only have to learn once), but they still won't outgrow the software professionally either, now. That's totally unique.

There are still some areas where commercial competitors got edge, but Blender covers a wider base, is the more complete/universal software already. Lot's of people prefer Blender's UI. It's also rapidly developing, the competition is not. I am pretty sure it will become industry standard at some point. Maybe not for the big studios, who invested millions into custom pipelines, but anything up and coming.

Role model FOSS project for sure.