"Not much point in being wealthy, if you don't flaunt it."

Living well and not worring about money doesn't require you to "flaunt" your wealth.

Could also run some World Community Grid tasks on BOINC, that's what I do.

But if you just want to heat your house nothing beats a heat pump for efficiency.

I don't think we should expect to see steady progress toward a climate solution, I think it's going to happen quite suddenly after some combination of the technology to do it getting cheap enough and the climate producing enough "shit's getting real" moments for a large fraction of the first-world population. At that point either we'll get our asses in gear and set up oceanic and atmospheric carbon sequestration megastructures all over the planet with maybe a little SRM sprinkled on top, or we'll be too distracted or impoverished to do anything about it for some silly reason or another and all the disastrous predictions will come true because this is a problem we're collectively too stupid as a species to solve. That's a real possibility.

"Because what use do you have for cash at home?"

Allowance for the kid. Pay the babysitter. Pay the guy who just painted your fence. Repay your sister for the birthday card you gave your elderly mother.

Etc.

Why would they be using the theme from Rocky for this?

It's appropriate in some ways, but it's also an American song.

Wouldn't you want to use Russian music of some kind for a Russian event intended to show off Russian technology?

"if you're a teacher teaching classes of the poverty level non-English speakers, what good does it do to fail them?"

By weeding out the non-performers you can provide the (few?) others who can do the work and learn with an opportunity to do just that.

They could've instead named this thing "Wut is sequential access and why is it bad!?!?"

The objective is to purchase "sustainable" aviation fuel, and thereby increase the demand for same.

That will require investment in the construction of additional capacity to create that fuel, unless there's a large surplus of unused fuel laying around somewhere. If there is, I'm not currently aware of it.

Thank you for posting your extensive, fully researched and well-reasoned argument.

We are thankful for your valuable contribution to this discussion.

'Carbon tax" generally faisl to stimulate a lot of investment in so-called renewable technology because there's no long term assurance that the tax will continue "forever". So an investment with a long term payback potential that could suddenly become a loser if the government changes or someone overhauls their tax policy has to provide a premium return to make investors take on the additional risk.

It's been done.

Look at the AMEX Platinum card for one semi-mainstream example.

There are others.

It's apparently quite frequent, as recounted in this article at least.

https://www.theguardian.com/ga...

If you want to walk out through the "enter" door you need to scan your receipt.

But you can leave by walking through the line past the tills and scan nothing.

So... what's the problem here?

It's also worth noting that NAFTA obliterated Mexico's smaller farmers which massively ramped up illegal migration from Mexico to the US.

Ok, you're crazy. :)

Not really, I guess, but you don't understand how things are manufactured at scale.

There's a minimum number of sales of a product that have to be made in order for the overall production line to be profitable. In some cases that minimum number can be made slightly smaller by increasing the per-unit price of the finished product, but there's also a limit to how much people will pay for something.

"Economy of scale" is a real thing, and some expenses are fixed whether you make lots or a few units. If there's a lack of sales and you're just making a few units, those expenses can kill the entire line.