the end of the world is like nuclear fission reactors: constantly ten years away

It looks like a really nice board. But, it's just too expensive. I am sure it's fine for lots of industrial purposes in the USA where there's lots of money floating around for such purchases, but in other places and applications people going to use some much cheaper board.

sell it on ebay - with said warning - lots better than junking it,

College courses are getting worse and more expensive. Little of value is learned, while much bullshit propaganda is spread. Meanwhile, people who go into the trades are finding they're paid more, don't have huge college debt, and are generally more content with their jobs. You might say "But, the high-tech jobs that pay really well require a degree". In the 11 years since I got my degree, not a single job I've had required that degree. I basically spent $120,000 and four years for prestige.

Microbial fuel cells are interesting, but they provide extremely little energy. It's actually more useful to run them in reverse, that is, to use a small electric current to enable the bacteria to break down waste more quickly.

This is one of the large number of potential energy sources I researched from 2000-2011 on an amteur basis. My conclusion was that nuclear fission is the best.

When they think you're HiTek, go Low, and a door knocker is pretty Low.

One of the inevitable problems of life is that government only expands. I believe it likely that it will expand at a higher rate soon, so this office space will be in demand.

Pets should not be brought into the office. I am allergic to cats and dogs and many years ago I had one manager started bringing his Irish Setter into the office with him a few days a week. From the moment I stepped through the office door, I could tell if he had brought the dog with him. I grimaced and took some antihistamines. This caused me to be groggy and not perform as well at my sysadmin tasks. At my quarterly review I was asked why my performance had declined, and eventually I let on that I had to take antihistamines because of the dog. Two weeks later, the dog was mysteriously absent but at my annual review a few months later, the same manager gave me a negative performance assessment while the others gave positives, and this prevented me from being moved from contractor to regular employee. I saw the handwriting on the wall and was able to secure a dog-free workplace in less than a week, which paid me twice as much. I will never, ever tolerate any pet at a workplace again, and neither should anyone with my condition be forced to.

I suppose this is obvious, but vegetation already does this, without human intervention. I am surrounded by forest, which is pretty good at the task. I'll just stick with the old methods.

More funding should be dedicated to getting more and newer fission power plant online, and less on fusion research. Fusion may be useful some day, but that's not any time soon. We need power now, and only nuclear fission power plants can provide it cheaply and reliably.

My personal favorite is Elysium's Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor, but there are many other decent designs out there. In addition, existing designs and plants still have many years of life left in them, if only they're allowed to be run.

so we can finally forget about string theory, dark matter, and dark energy? awesome.

The UN has become a a compromised, mostly corrupt organization. It's become worse over time.

If you've done 3D printing, and I know many of you have, you start to realize how useful plastics are. You also start to realize the wide variety of compositions, qualities, quirks, and special 'tricks' needed to get things to work right. We've been intensively using plastics for what, 75 years now? Lots of knowledge and skill has been acquired, as much as great appreciation for the utility and efficiency of their use. Sure, you can curse at cars being mostly plastic now; and get frustrated that soda bottles are thin enough to be more akin to bags, but this is about specific use cases for better or for worse. Plastics are GOOD.

Now, take a look at your rubbish bin. Because metal is recycled here, and paper burned in the woodstove, what remains is mostly paper/plastic mix, paper/metal mix, biological, and PLASTIC. Glass is becoming far less common, but will outlive all of the others in refuse heaps. It sinks in water, so that's why it's now much of a concern, ecologically, but its energy-intensive to make. So return to the plastic. Those shopping bags, recently banned from grocery stores, found much secondary use - as containers and packing material. For some time now, they've been designed to break down under UV radiation. Don't believe me? Take one (if you can still find one), put some stuff in it, and leave in in an attic window where it gets daily sunlight, and wait a year. It will have become practically dust, and will continue to degrade from there.

What about organic degradation of other plastics? Well, it happens, but perhaps too slowly in some respects - but voila! Fungi can break down many other plastic types! see https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2021/11/04/plastic-eating-mushrooms for example. Many plastics can also be safely burned - but not all, and the distinction is important.

But why destroy something so useful? First, re-use! I do this - I find the wide-mouth of peanut jars particularly useful for storing parts. Milk jugs are useful for storing water (as are others), and also for buoys. I've found uses for plastic remnants of old storage boxes and stronger plastics to be easily machined and re-used.

But not all plastic can be utilized by these methods. Instead, much goes into the trash. We used to have a plastics recycling program here, but the processor went bankrupt. How did that happen? In the case of beverage bottles returned for deposit, there is a massive amount of well-known plastic waiting to be re-used. I've recently heard that the majority of this is burned. What a waste! Some might say that the plastic waste stream is too complex to be economically utilized. Oh, really? I recall several decades ago that researchers at Rensselaer (RPI) had invented technology for doing exactly this. Was the ever put into use? If not, why not? In the intervening time, has there not been much ability to improve upon this RPI process, or create a new one?

We don't need to use less plastics, we need put greater thought into the use cycle. The fight against plastics is a luddite movement.

Schaedenfreud. Everything got so expensive in cities that the quality of life was going down. Only the most ritzy of stores could survive, along with a few convenience stores. Also crime, homelessness, and drug abuse were rampant even in areas that had been 'gentrified'. I am most familiar with this happening in Boston but it is common in other cities as well.

neodumbium