EVs will help California except when there are forest fires that require mass evacuation and power grid blackouts to avoid setting off more fires at the same time. We need to build adequate power and energy systems to meet all demands under the worst circumstances, inexpensively, not the average demand in average cases.

Seriously, people are looking at this like you should calculate demand based on the average. But there's already case history on how to sort this out, from the telecommunications industry. Look at all the research that has been done on how to meet peak demand for circuits in the phone system years back under the phone system's key load indicator: mother's day, which drives phone calls as everyone calls their mother to wish them well.

The stats math that the engineers of the time figured out was to look at it as a Poisson process, sorting out the stats of how often you need to expect how many phone calls at once at any given time. Then you work to figure out how to serve that load at "nine nines" efficiency: 99.9999999% reliability. That's the electric grid capacity we need at all times.

You just cited data that on its face shows that workers who were unionized were more likely to lose their jobs than those who weren't. I mean, that's the literal statement it makes. How does that support the argument that unions don't accelerate layoffs?

I can maybe understand the idea that workers who are already unionized might have more bargaining power against layoffs than those who aren't. But in a situation where the layoffs happen first, the layoffs look like a sign that the company has more labor than it needs or wants, and is in a better situation than average to be able to afford to lose workers who want to unionize.

We can't go that far. Medical supplies in particular should be disposable and use plastics wherever needed for seals and safety. No used needles, thank you. Making sure we have sterile hermetically sealed bandages, syringes, ultra clean and flexible IV lines, etc. etc. all seem intrinsically worth the cost in use of disposable plastics. Find a way to incinerate them safely, filter the exhaust, and use the energy generated as well, but preventing more disease outbreaks through overly zealous avoidance of disposable plastics simply matters more.

Maybe someday if there are more eco conscious materials that actually outperform plastics (not just nearly equal their performance) we can consider the transition, but in general I want my physicians' medical supplies to be non-biodegradable, long lived, resistant to degradation in all environments, etc.

It wasn't quite what the spokesperson said, or what he meant, but it's what he MEANT to mean. It's perfectly clear.

I think we need to reduce carbon, but going for net zero tin too many industries oo fast seems it's driving a push to an all or nothing gambit that is trending toward failure. A less ambitious and dogmatic goal of say, reducing to 20% of previous carfbon output by some date certain seems much more likely to have a real impact amid current techology and economic realities.

So yeah, let's drop coal and oil-fired plants in favor of natural gas, build solar and wind generation as fast as the grid can absorb it reliably and current supply chain sourcing can provide parts sustainably. At the same time, we should probably stop pushing too hard to eliminate every last natural gas plant until we've proven absolutely that the grid is stable and can support high electric usage cheaply and at a high growth rate commensurate with growing demand and more electrification. Not projected, but proven based on weathering demand surges in both summer and winter months over a period of two to three years. Support plug-in hybrids equally with pure EVs until the charging infrastructure is not only planned, but already built. Start building electric storage capacity, but at a rate that doesn't mean we're trading off strip mining for lithium or cobalt or whatever that will cause our next generation of environmental problems. Also make sure the grid is secure against a Carrington event. And shut the hell up about people's natural gas stoves, home heating, and backup generators, because people just won't tolerate that much authoritarian control of their lives.

This is just like any other engineering problem, we need to take the 80% solution as a win, and try and refine the last 20% later, and if needed, compensate for the 20% with a small amount of environmental geoengineering.

The one thing I've never quite understood is that in the second case, isn't the ball effectively transmitting a random bit of information to both of you? How does that not violate the same principle?

I scoff at your "modern city conveniences." In our suburb, within two to four miles there are three different grocery stores; a home depot; lots of different restaurants including two or three nicer chains (Clydes, Bonefish grill, etc.); any variety of ethnic food with multiple options for Chinese, Thai, Indian, mediterranian, kebabs, etc.; four or five parks, bike trails, swimming pools, a hospital, a couple of different microbreweries, movie theaters, metro stations for direct subway into a major metropolitan city, and just about anything else you could want.

At the same time, I'm less than 30 min from two different locations for stargazing/amateur astronomy with decent dark skies, an international airport, a huge state park with camping, a few wineries, a couple of more rural town areas with open air main streets that are nice to walk around and visit, etc.

I have room to set up a woodworking shop and enough space from neighbors that noise won't bother them, reliable power with buried power lines, high speed fiber optic Internet, 5G wireless, etc.

Then there are things we don't have: rats, major bug infestations, city traffic and noise, and ultra-high mortgates/rent.

Setting aside major/nationally significant museums (which I'm willing to take the 45 min trip downtown for), deep city nightclubs I don't care about at my age, exactly what are these "modern conveniences" you think the suburbs lack?

OK, so first remember millennials are now in their 40s or 30s at youngest. At some point in that time pursuit of night life in the city probably gave way to peace and quiet in the suburbs, a yard for kids to play in, safe neighborhood schools, etc. Now with remote work, you see people looking for that plus (a) reliable high speed Internet (b) reliable cheap electric power (c) good property values for cost. So, yeah, of course it's a thing.

At least, until it was seized by the revolutionaries.

More seriously, it sounds like the biggest threat is probably that the fighters who seized it get themselves sick and many of the people in their immediate vicinity, with stuff that in the first world there are already vaccines against or are at least treatable.

While your milk spoils, your vegetables wilt, and your eggs get cracked, sure. Plus 30 lb/14 kg seems like a lowball number for say 6 or 7 bags of groceries. Sorry, but most of us have no interest in pretending like we live in a third-world country, we put a higher priority on our own families' food safety and quality.

The other question is how much water it uses and how much can be recirculated. At some point or in some locations providing adequate supplies fresh water becomes a harder challenge than safely disposing of toxic solvents, especially if the purity requirements for the water are very high as they might be in electronics production.

Add that to the difference in performance of their transistors, which they don't quantify (but is probably more substantial than they suggest) and this might not be as appealing as it seems.

TI-99-4/A, 1980 vintage. Still runs but that doesn’t mean I actually use it, which kinda makes the question questionable.

Like Indiana's Bill 246 of 1897*, watching the results of California's attempts to implement the legislation will be interesting.






*This legislation declared the value of pi to be 3.

When normal people talk to a 10 year old that hasn't figured out who they're attracted to yet, they think "they haven't finished going through puberty yet." When a Queer theorist talks to the same kid, they think "obviously they're queer." Fundamentally, this is what the big divide in America on this issue is all about.

This. The books assigned to students are pretty horrible, and getting worse, often in the name of "diverse literature." We kind of revolted a bit when a teacher assigned a our son and his class (some of whom already had a history of depression and other challenges) a book about a young kid whose brother was shot and whose father abandons him in the woods. Who thought that was a good idea?

Anyway, in contrast, in younger years our son quickly picked up Brandon Sanderson's "Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians", though, which sometimes seems a little too on point. If you want to get students interested in reading, the key question to ask about a book is probably "What's the quest?" For authors like Stephen King, Brandon Sanderson, Neal Stephenson, JK Rowling, Rex Stout, and many others, it's usually pretty obvious. If he answer isn't apparent, it's not likely it will hold their attention.