This propagation delay does not really matter as long as neighboring power plants are synchronized with each other.
Yes, east coast and west coast are out of phase, but only to a perfect observer who can see phase value on both coasts instantly (without a propagation delay). However in reality information about the phase cannot travel faster than speed of light, so to any real observer anywhere between east and west coasts both sides appear to be in sync.
When breaking with engine, the kinetic energy of movement is converted to heat not via friction (like breaks do) but via compressing air in cylinders which does not cause extra wear on anything.
Perhaps since this practice got exposed, other countries became less willing to cooperate. With such a treaty in place it will be more difficult to say no.
Perhaps “random fluctuations” are as much random as Brownian motion. I.e. there is cause and effect on a finer level (yet not possible to probe with current techniques), however a large number of interacting particles renders analytical prediction infinitely complex task.
I believe this comment is not directed to people who are trying to create something, but to people who feel entitled/special because they are trying to create something they perceive as improvement for humanity.
Can be also luck on first try, while all subsequent attempts are "regression towards the mean" as Kahneman puts it.
However I agree with the idea that being motivated by the process of creation is more robust than being totally goal-oriented, especially when chance of achieving a goal is low and it may take many unsuccessful attempts before producing a hit.
It is not a big deal as long as seemingly identical file names are treated by OS as different.
Unicode normalization is not the only problem here, e.g. Latin 'a', 'e', 'T' are exactly the same as Cyrillic 'а', 'е', 'Т' in most fonts which makes it possible for two files to have seemingly same names even in some 8-bit encodings.
Wonder if anyone is going to do the opposite - try to buy off pro-global-warming professor to produce exaggerated doomsday prediction - and what the outcome is going to be.