I'm not sure they're that closely related to eels. I've had eel in a Chinese restaurant and I didn't find it as good as squid and octopus.

The article I read say they approximated squid, if less chewy. IMHO squid and octopus don't really have a strong flavor -- they really just represent whatever they are cooked in (the Greeks seem to have a flair for them, oil and herbal seasoning).

In fact, I think a lot of people could be served tripe if you cooked it like squid and never know the difference.

One of the great ironies of our modern era is the simultaneous effort to reduce technology consuming westerners to the level of subsistence farmers in the name of ecology and to turn subsistence farmers into technology consuming westerners in the name of development.

I suspect that much of the crud in a gas tank mostly remains in suspension as the car is driven. The more fuel in the tank and the more it is driven, the greater the dispersion. It can settle out when stopping and a low fuel level can increase the concentration.

They are a delicacy in France and could probably be used as dog food or a protein enhancer for other food stocks.

But it seems like a kind of superficial gimmick. And most SF doesn't deliver any culture at all - art, music, religion, politics, etc - unless it directly relates to the plot.

What we need is someone who will do for SF what Tolkien did for fantasy.

Are they basically just remanufacturing the recovered cells into some kind of standardized battery pack with a standardized charging and usage interfaces?

I'm curious why this isn't done now if there's value in the cells vs. a more material-based recycling that uses them as input into creating new cells. I'd wager the argument is basically economic -- the cost of some other kind of battery input (new alkaline cells or "good" Li cells or whatever) is cheaper/better than these kinds of cells.

The article mentioned that this was meant for places off the grid, so I'd assume they're using something like solar to charge the cells.

If that's the case, then there's nothing really wasted, since the sun will shine anyway.

Back in the 1980s it occupied a more unique space, offering what seemed to be much more of true centrist position, equally critical of the left and the right. At some point it seemed to slide from that position into a more left wing position and losing the intelligence that the center gave it.

But it's not alone, the National Review has crapped out, too, becoming the print edition of Fox News with a little sophomore-level pseudo intellectualisn sprinkled on top after the death of Buckley.

The reduction in hours is exactly what France did several years ago in an attempt to decrease unemployment and it didn't work. The comment about reductions in hours not increasing unemployment was related to the French experience.

I still think the cost factor for hiring more employees vs. paying overtime is still cheaper for overtime. I think there are a lot aspects in finding and training employees that have second order effects (like, draining a manager's time from management tasks) which have costs associated with them that are hard to measure.

It may work in some simple labor environments and in some specific kinds of firms have a labor structure built around temporary and seasonal labor but it's much harder in white collar environment like IT.

And when it's done, it's very expensive. I work for an IT consultancy -- we're far from "high end" so it's not unusual that when we are called in for a project it's less about the specialized knowledge involved and more about the on site IT not having the time to do the project. But we often bill $180/hr for 40-50 hour projects -- that's more than double (maybe triple even) the overtime pay the onsite would people get if they just worked "overtime" on the project.

I work as an IT consultant and it's less about total hours than when those hours are. I would rather have 50 hours in a 5 day week if they are contiguous hours than 40 hours during a work week with only 5 extra hours thrown in at random all hours of the night and weekend.

It's chaotic scheduling and short, just-enough-to-ruin-my-time-off hours that's more annoying than extra hours.

And I remember this quote which is apocryphally attributed to Soviet-era workers:

"They can never pay me less than I can work."

I think economists have debunked the idea that working hours are zero sum and that reducing them (eg, to 35 hours a week from 40) gets you more jobs.

I would assume it would be much cheaper to pay 1.5x for extra time than to hire more employees. More employees means benefits and additional work resources (desks, phones, computers, office space, supervisory time, etc).

I think the blue collar OT incentives are mostly about low pay to begin with -- they don't make much money to begin with, so the OT is seen as welcome additional income. With otherwise well-paid white collar workers, there would be less of an incentive but that's highly individual -- I'm sure there are many people with kids in college, people that want a new car, etc would love the extra pay.

I think you're right, but with nickel-iron batteries space becomes an issue with the capacities and output power you want for a single family household.

What does 75 kWh of nickel-iron batteries look like and can you draw 10kW peak from them?

Lame duck sessions are the ideal time to get controversial bills passed. Lame ducks can vote on anything they want without giving a shit about constituents, contributions, or their caucus. They can vote their conscience, such as it is, without any concerns of political liability. He might get enough lame duck support to create a groundswell of support plus the public PR necessary to sway returning legislators who were otherwise on the fence or even opposed.

He's also taking advantage of the (at least as of today, until the next batch of nude celebrities comes out) the current wave of unpopularity with law enforcement generally. "A child will die" is laughable in most cases, but it's possible that right now many people might look at that and say "Yeah, when you choke them or shoot them for writing on the sidewalk with chalk." Sympathy for the police isn't real high right now.

The primary downsides are the length of the lame duck session and the lame ducks who don't bother showing up for roll calls. The session length can be mitigated by lame duck support that moves the bill forward enough that it can be easily resurrected in the next session without starting all over again.

+1, wooshie