• 6 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Before the current political climate I would have said it should be a lot harder to get a weapon (except maybe a long gun), and we need to reduce the quantity at least three orders of magnitude (thousandth).

    But the current political climate really makes it a stark choice. My visceral reaction is that with the gestapo kidnapping people off the street and sending them to remote gulags, the suspension of due process and constitutional rights, political leadership holding themselves above the law …. We really need guns. All of them. For everyone, to defend against tyrants as the gpframers f the constitution intended

    Then I came to my senses. My more considered reaction is the anger, divisiveness, bigotry, and general craziness accepted out in the open, is just going to lead to untold deaths, feuds, more spite and anger, more lawlessness. We need to send Sherman through the south, confiscating all firearms





  • That’s a bit of an edge case but why not? If they earn enough to live the way they want, are secure from immediate financial catastrophe, and can afford some luxuries, then maybe they are wealthy, despite being subsistence

    Meanwhile someone can earn a nice fat six figure salary but be over mortgaged for house and car, not living comfortably, and paycheck to paycheck on the edge of financial disaster. They’re poor, despite it being by their poor choices

    Wealth is freedom from want and financial anxiety







  • I’ve been looking at that decision. My furnace is well beyond its expected life and I’d like to replace it before it dies so it’s not an emergency. I’ve looked at heat pumps and really want to make that choice. The incentives help with the initial cost, at least for a couple more months.

    But then it comes down to gas is cheaper than electricity. If electricity is twice the cost per unit of energy, is it really sufficient for the heat pump to be twice as efficient? How can I rationalize the choice that is not only more expensive to install but more expensive to run?

    And the answer is not sinking yet more money into also doing solar. My house is mostly shaded, and I’m not killing treees just to make this mess work together

    Definitely part of the answer needs to be adjusting subsidies to bring the cost of electricity per unit of energy closer to the cost of gas, or maybe incorporating. The externalized costs would actually be sufficient



  • I’ll agree with we should have started 40 years ago. We knew we should have and we did have sufficient technology to take other paths.

    But I’ll disagree on whether we have the technology now. There was a recent post on Lemmy that in a sunny place like Las Vegas, you could replace 97% of energy generation with renewables and batteries. Cheaper. Not just that you can but that it’s cheaper. We have the technology.

    The challenge is always to bring the cost down. We do have technology to create aviation fuel from green sources. We do have several options for fueling shipping that we know how to do. Even if we’re just making ammonia or hydrogen or green diesel, that is a huge step forward that we have the technology for. The problem is we don’t yet have a compelling economic case to (especially since climate change is externalized, not counted as a cost), nor anyone with the fortitude to make it so


  • Probably. There’s New College in Florida with curriculum controlled by DeSantis and his loyal followers - that should lose accreditation.

    But Trump used the threat of cancelling funding to force Columbia and other schools to change their curriculum.

    That’s why it’s more important than ever for Harvard to keep up the fight. They see that submitting doesn’t make it stop. On the one hand they’re the wealthiest university so can afford it but on the other hand they have so much more to lose. So much research in so many cities, states, countries, covering so many critical issues in so many fields. So many “best and brightest” from all over the world that will no longer come here. This is a huge impact on American science, and scientific reputation, a huge impact on our tech and innovation, a huge impact on legal immigration that makes a difference. As one of the news magazines said, Trump interfering with Harvard is an “own goal” against the us that could take decades, or a generation to recover from.

    So much of the US has been driven by attracting the smartest most capable people from all over the world, and destroying the reputation that brings them here can not be easily rebuilt