imaqtpie

I dunno what that guy was thinking, but it seems obvious to me that nuclear fusion is the long term solution for energy generation.

Nuclear fission not so much, but it's definitely debatable which has more fundamental flaws between fission and wind/hydro/solar. All renewable energy sources ultimately depend on natural processes which are not reliable or permanent. And they also tend to disrupt the environment to some extent.

Nuclear fission has no such limitations, but instead trades long term risk for short term stability. Basically renewable sources are and always will be somewhat unreliable, and Nuclear fission is the least bad reliable energy source to pair with the renewables. So in the medium term, fission makes a lot more sense than fossil fuels, and in the long term we should be looking to fusion.

Your tone is perfectly fine and you made very good points, thank you for the information.

Why not provide it to everyone else?

Anytime I see a ~~trash~~ post that’s where it comes from 9/10.

It's 40% of the whole Lemmy userbase and activity. They've got their fair share of trolls but come on, the worst? Have you forgotten about redditors?

It's hard to be the biggest, and I think their admins are doing a pretty good job.

I saw a fellow mod outright nazi-ing about ( not “saying things I disagree with” but actual nazi fanboy-ing)

A claim like this typically requires evidence.

NYC is a bad example because it's an extreme outlier in terms of size and density. But the metropolitan area is actually much larger than the urban area; here's a map of all the counties within the NYC metropolitan area.

It covers 8,200 square miles, just slightly less than the area of New Jersey.

Metropolitan areas are quite large and typically include the core city along with the entire surrounding area that is economically and culturally heavily linked with the core city.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area

Here is a map of all the metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the US. Micropolitan areas are essentially defined the same way, except the core urban area of a micropolitan area is <50,000 population, while a metropolitan area has a core city of >50,000 population.

You can see that metropolitan areas include vast areas that are not even remotely urban. Beyond that, there is also a category called the Combined Statistical Area, which often combine multiple metropolitan areas.

Here is a map of LA where the red areas are urban areas, the beige counties are part of the Metropolitan Area, and the yellow counties are part of the CSA.

Greater LA

The CSA for LA is a whopping 34,000 square miles, or slightly larger than the island of Ireland or the state of South Carolina. However, it only contains about 2,300 square miles of urban area. Estimating the urban area is even more of an imperfect science than the metropolitan area, so I'm not sure how they calculated that number.

When people say Greater Boston or Greater Toronto, they are usually referring to the MSA, but might also be referring to the CSA. So the short answer to OP's question is that "Greater" and "Metropolitan" are roughly synonymous. FWIW, I think that metropolitan areas used to be significantly smaller and more urbanized, but they had to modify the definition over time due to trends of suburbanization and decentralization in American city development.

Too soon.

I see your point, but I would argue that in a world with nuclear weapons, climate change, and all sorts of shit that seems to be an existential risk, plus the media barrage, people today aren't exactly feeling safe or comfortable. Hence the desperate hoarding of resources and brutal competition.

Agreed. It just seems more absurd now because of the contrast between our advanced technology and our primitive sociopolitical structures.

Primitive metallurgy was used to create weapons for millennia before it became commonly used for cookware. Technology has always been primarily used as vector for human beings to control and dominate one another, rather than to assist/improve society.

And you were incorrect.

I meant what I said. Most people disagree with the comment, but probably for a wide variety of reasons. It's not a singular reaction, it's multiple reactions to multiple insinuations that all happen to be questionable.