I was thinking of this scenario as dropping the Internet of the 1990s on a feudal system. If you used the Orwellian spy machine of the 2020s instead, it would probably get pretty dark, just as you said.

Why though? I think the Arab spring says otherwise.

Echo chambers would have been far more effective. Algorithm curated feeds would have amplified all extremes when further. If you think fascism went too far under Mussolini, just think how that would have looked like when everyone is scrolling FearBook and upvoting @ilDuce.

On the other hand, pictures of gulags, famine and concentration camps would have leaked out a lot sooner.

The amazing thing is, people don’t refer to their home country by a two letter acronym.

Awesome 🤩

Living without American software would be fine IMO. American silicon is much harder to replace though.

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The more you read about that period, the more you want to visit all the cities that are currently completely engulfed in chaos and war.

Would it help if you were to revolt, rewrite and rebuild?

That’s just 37 floppy disks of bloat. All you really need is 1.44 MB.

Vienna isn’t even the worst place for solar power. Consider places like Ireland, Scotland or Sweden for example. No wonder why wind, hydro or even tidal power suddenly begins to make a lot more sense. IMO, solar really begins to make sense in Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey. Those places actually get some decent sunshine. Using solar power in Austria should be ok, but it’s not great by any means.

Nearby mountains probably get in the way of building large solar facilities. Maybe you could combine solar power with farming. The panels can provide some shade to more sensitive plants.
See also: Solar Atlas
Sidenote: Iceland and the northern half of Norway, Sweden and Finland aren’t even on the map. I guess Solar Atlas is trying to tell you that you don’t need a fancy map to know that building solar in places like that is a waste of money.

Wait what? Jolla? Not only does that company exist, they are also making phones again? Really wasn’t expecting to see that name ever again.

As a bonus, you won’t ever get invited to any boring events again. It’s a win-win for everyone!

Oh ok. So when the peak of the emission spectrum is in the IR range, the visible color will definitely be closer to red or orange. The amount of blue light emitted in that case will be very low. That’s what the thermometer experiment can definitely demonstrate clearly.

However, if the black body is hot enough that the peak is in the blue wavelength band, then the total IR output should also be pretty high, just like everything else is at that point. I wonder if it’s even higher than in the first example. Would need to calculate that properly… Anyway there will also be a fair bit of UV, so don’t try this at home. Maybe even some x-rays if the arc is hot enough.

As far as traditional carbon-arc lamps are concerned, people at the time wrote that the light was white. Maybe the arc was not hot enough or be perceived as blue. Also, the human eye is not particularly sensitive at those wavelengths, so that could explain some of it too.

LOL. With a poster like that, I expect blue to be a pretty hot color.

Europe - final countdown

Oh-oh, we’re heading for Venus (Venus)
And still, we stand tall
'Cause maybe they’ve seen us
And welcome us all, yeah
With so many light years to go

Wait, what? You’re heading for Venus, and you have many light years to go? This song was clearly written by aliens. I rest my case.

Ok, so white should be the warmest color if you just stick with natural and easy to observe examples. Sunrise can be pretty nice and warm after a cold night though, so in a narrower sense red/orange/yellow could still be considered warm. However, during sunset, it gets cooler again, so the same colors would be cold compared to midday white. It gets a bit messy.

Yeah, these cultural associations can get pretty wild. So, would you wear black or white at a funeral? Depends on the cultural context.

Hmm… I didn’t think about black body radiation that much. The filaments in a toaster really are red/orange/yellow when hot. I wonder what it would take to to squeeze blue out of black body radiation. Theoretically, it should be possible. Probably thousands of degrees… I think we’re moving into plasma physics territory at this point. Regular filaments just wouldn’t be able to handle blue light production. Electric arcs are blue though, and that plasma is pretty hot. Such an edge case, but still…

Those are some pretty solid points! Especially the one about healthy vs. freezing skin tone.