That’s a terrible ping 😂

Silver buckshot is how I describe it

Actions speak louder than words sort of thinking here, which I’m inclined to believe.

At the very least, politicians who have changed their stances on issues they voted or worked towards in the past should make reversing those changes part of their agenda. Shows good faith, and is beholden to other branches of the government at that point.

For me it was performance. Google Chrome consistently couldn’t handle the tab loads I would put on it after around 2022, despite my computer not really showing signs of degradation.

Since switching to FF, I can run the same amount of tabs with almost not hiccups or stuttering - what I’d experience with Chrome. Hell, Chrome would crash randomly and I’d lose all my tabs and would have to reload them.

Plus, sometimes to fix Chrome’s poor performance I’d shut the program down entirely, upon re-launch the browser wouldn’t even remember all of the tabs/windows I just closed (it used to). So, if I was doing research on something, Chrome would just not open certain windows back up after a hard reset, even if I CTRL + SHIFT + T and I check history. Madly infuriating.

FF opens all windows and tabs upon hard reset, no questions asked. Plus, the compatibility between PC and mobile is awesome: I can load up a tab from my phone that’s on my PC super easily, which makes things useful for when I want to share web content with friends or family.

I seem to have woken up from my slumber of tolerating Chrome, and chose a better service instead.

Nebula is a good alternative

Correct, but companies prefer to minimize costs to maximize profit, so if a large portion of their total markets changes rules, companies will likely adjust so that their products are all the same for all markets. A similar thing will probably happen with Apple once the USB-C thing goes into effect in the EU, affecting US and other markets.

Rollie Williams and Nicole Conlan from Climate Town on YT talked about this on their podcast, The Climate Denier’s Playbook, a few weeks ago.

Car companies, at least domestic ones, are subverting fuel economy rules by making cars “like trucks” due to a loophole in the code about Light Duty vehicles (SUVs are light duty trucks and hence get around requirements that other, smaller light duty vehicles have imposed on them).

It’s the same reason we see bigger and bigger trucks that look like tanks and that you can’t see children from. Those bigger vehicles require bigger engines to move, hence more greenhouse emissions.

Sync has been my alternative coming from RiF. Very clean experience

This reminds me of how certain universities in the US allow space for Student Senate representatives so that the student body directly has influence on the outcomes of the university. Great idea really

Yeah this is why I still use at least 1 Google Translate extension in addition to the FF one. Need my Chinese man

Oh I see, so it’s like a merry-go-round, and everyone wants to have their money returned with more than they borrowed so that not only can they have some left over for themselves, but to also pay back those they themselves borrowed money from in order to lend in the first place. Recursive lending/borrowing up until the central banks, like you said.

Risky stuff. If any single entity along that lending/borrowing chain/network flops, it can send shockwaves to everyone else, all the way back to the central bank.

Thanks for the 2 cents.

And it’s most costly to increase interest rates not because those directly affect the investors, but because those interest rates affect the borrowers since the borrowers will need to make more and more money to be able to pay back the initial injection + interest.

If borrowers don’t think they can pay back, then they probably won’t borrow in the first place. If they do borrow but don’t make enough to pay back those loans + interest, then the investor loses out.

And if borrowers don’t borrow in the first place, then investors sit on their money when they could theoretically inject it into other businesses so they can earn on what they own, and not just let their assets stagnate (or decay). To investors, this might also be perceived as a loss.

Do I have that right?

The killing will continue until morale improves

Great point. You need concrete for wind, solar, and li-ion battery storage too (including pumped hydro), but out of those I’d say pumped hydro is the only one that remotely compares in the amount of concrete needed for construction.

So purely looking at the emissions from materials needed to build these power sources, renewables have the edge due to less concrete. These emissions might show up elsewhere in raw material extraction like with silicon for solar, and then the rare earth metals needed for generators in wind, all the lithium/nickel/cobalt needed for batteries, etc., but I want to say that the Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) from places like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US or the International Energy Agency (IEA) worldwide have taken that into account and still show that renewables + storage are cheaper on a carbon basis compared to fossil fuels and nuclear.

Yeah, the argument of nuclear crumbles when you start to peak behind the curtain of operation. Still, renewables have the same problem.

Wind turbines break shafts, studs, bolts, lifts, generator step-up (GSU) units, etc. Then you still need oil for all the mechanical systems in a turbine too, which can degrade. Operations can keep up with this though, and in my experience wind can be up and running a lot more frequently with reference to failures that cause downtime compared with maintenance of nuclear with reference to downtime for it.

Same with solar, or even better with solar because the only moving parts with solar are the axis trackers that move panels such that they always point at the sun. Lots more uptime that doesn’t involve radiation exposure, although that concern for operations has probably been designed out as reactor technology has grown up.

Or at least I’d hope…

I think you have a point. Look at how the Oil & Gas industry pivoted to fracking and tar sands after conventional oil started drying up around 2005.

There are deposits out there, probably, and the only time mining companies will consider changing ehat and how they currently mine is if they have a reason to do so,: aka an economic (or governmental) reason.

Still, discovery, technology r&d, and supply chain establishment might take more time than what we have. It’s good that we should keep nuclear and all of this on the table, but it shouldn’t be a priority.

Did you read the quote? 15-20 years, as in decades before 1 nuke plant is built. I agree in that politicians of the past should have led us to a more sustainable and resilient energy future, but we’re here now.

Advanced nuclear should still be 100% pursued to try to get those lead times down and to incorporate things like waste recycling, modularity, etc., but the lead time in decades absolutely means nuclear power might not be something worth doing.

The IPCC puts the next 10-20 years as the most important and perilous for getting a hold on climate change. If we wait for that long by not rolling out emission-free power sources, transit modes, or even carbon-free concrete, etc., then we might cross planetary boundaries that we can’t come back from.

Nuclear is a safe bet and bet worth pursuing. I would argue that, along with that source from the IAEA, old nuclear is note worth it.

Nuclear power is the ONLY form of clean energy that can be scaled up in time to save us from the worst of climate change.

Mmmm I agreed with you until reading this. The 6th IPCC Assessment Report showed us that Wind + Solar + Battery Storage are still a safer bet for rolling out non-fossil fuel energy sources at the fastest rate we can launch them. Nuclear sadly still takes too long to build.

I think there is a space for advanced nuclear, though. Small Modular Reactors, Fast Breeders, and such should be encouraged going forward. The US (and I think UK) each have funds specifically designated to the development of advanced nuclear too.

But old nuclear will take too long to get a hold on emissions. I still think nuclear fits in a well-balanced energy portfolio, but not of the specific technology of the 1950s-1990s.

We’ve had the cure for climate change all along, but fear that we’d do another Chernobyl has scared us away from it.

I mean, Chernobyl is kind of an outdated example. Fukushima would be the more recent one to point at, or even Three Mile Island. Not particularly useful for your argument. Still, I think if people got educated about all 3 of those examples from history, they’ll come out convinced that nuclear is still a safe bet.

Problem is, like I said above, that conventional nuclear takes too damn long to build.

And all of these social media companies really are providing a means for the communication of information within societies. You can do this without “modern day” technology, such as through TV, radio, newspapers, or even word of mouth. Technology in the form of smartphones, the internet, and programs/platforms like Twitter and Mastodon allow us to communicate in ways previously not known to humanity.

So yeah, I agree with you.

Just because something is non-renewable does not mean it is non-sustainable, just like how something being renewable does not mean it is sustainable.

Hydro (or tidal barrage) power is an example of a renewable energy source, but it restricts river flow such that life can’t exist as it naturally has for eons, like fish swimming up/down river, etc., or restricts the flow of minerals and nutrients that feed various niches of river or inlet biodiversity. Those effects on a local ecosystem can lead to other species collapsing elsewhere, which can impact other species, including humans.

Coal power is an example of a non-renewable resource as it depends on minerals that form at much slower rates than on the sorts of time scales humans use those minerals. Coal also leads to deaths of many humans and other species not only in the mining of resources (mine collapses, tailing pond ruptures, lung diseases, etc.), but also in the burning of the minerals via the release of radiation and other particulates that can impact local communities.

Nuclear is, imo, the best non-renewable source we can exercise for human purposes, so we should still pursue it.