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Comment Re:Shocking! Indeed! :-) (Score 1) 109

Me from 2000: https://dougengelbart.org/coll...
        "Powertech -- Twenty years to widespread fuel cells, PV, wind, microturbines, etc.
  Source: My general reading in this area, like my previous post on energy issues. ..."

The referenced energy post by me from 2000: https://dougengelbart.org/coll...
        "The current land area used in the US related to fossil fuel mining, refining, storage, and distribution is roughly 1% of the US land area. So, it is not fair to say renewables would use a similarly large amount of area and disregard this amount of space used by conventional techniques. For example, the area under existing power lines in the US (for right of ways - a huge expanse) is sufficient to generate all electric power used in the US if it was covered with photovoltaics. ... Recent advances in photovoltaics (especially combining light collection of visible spectrum piped to interiors with power conversion of remaining wavelengths) may soon make them much more competitive. ...
        There are no easy answers, but remember the incredible number of people who use energy (all of us) and the large numbers of people who are already involved with the energy industry in some way. So, there are many people to implement solutions. Don't be too overwhelmed by large numbers and costs. If fossil fuel and nuclear solutions were fairly priced today in terms of external costs like tax subsidies, environmental damage, and military requirements, we would see an immediate switch to alternatives and more energy efficient technology.
          For that reason, I am quite hopeful for our energy future -- especially if developing countries can be given advanced technology, rather than having them simply duplicate the current antiquated American fossil fuel infrastructure. Unfortunately, the politics and finances of development often entail developing nations being sold the technology that no one wants anymore in the developed world (like for example DDT or old nuclear reactor and dam designs).
        We need to figure out ways to prevent that from happening with energy technology the same way it has happened in the past with other technologies. ..."

Me from 2010: https://groups.google.com/g/op...
        "As I've said before, if you look at the exponential growth of renewables, in twenty to thirty years we will be completely running off renewables. This [questionable "Net Energy Limits and the Fate of Industrial Society"] report is like a report in the 1980s saying there is no way that most people will own cell phones because only about a million people a year are buying cell phones and it would take seven thousand years for everyone to get a cell phone at that rate. But now half the Earth's population does have cell phones? What happened? Exponential growth."

Ray Kurzweil also predicted exponential solar growth back in 2000 or so.

So yeah, who would have thunk it?

I mean, it's not like there might have been financial incentives for industry groups to provide misleading predictions, right?
"Why Does the IEA Always Underestimate Solar Energy's Rapid Growth?"
https://247wallst.com/energy/2...
        "Using data from the agency's World Economic Outlook (WEO) for 13 of the past 16 years, Hoekstra graphed the actual growth of solar PV installation (the thick black line on the following chart) against the IEA predictions from the WEO. The starting point for each year's new prediction moves higher and in some years sharply higher. Hoekstra notes that "every single time since the future of photovoltaics was first predicted in the IEA WEO in 2002, the WEO has assumed the sector would hardly grow or even contract, even though this runs contrary to the observed reality."
        Because the IEA's WEO is a widely used source for policy makers around the world, consistently underestimating the growth of solar PV when the data say otherwise discourages investment in solar and can hold back even faster growth. ...
        Hoekstra, in a blog post last June, offers some possible explanations for the IEA's low and inaccurate predictions: ... The IEA could have been captured by the old fossil energy order in terms of thinking or interests. This could be conscious or unconscious. I would guess largely unconscious because I'm a firm believer in Hanlon's razor. ..."

Comment Re:I'm just not interested in more Star Wars (Score 1) 91

I will note that you apparently believe that fans of SW and ST want to have something they loved torn down and destroyed.

Come on, don't do that. This narrative that somehow the new stuff is retroactively ruining your childhood, that it's specifically designed as an insult to your fandom... That's toxic.

Last Jedi is a good example of that. Some people complain that Luke isn't a Marty Stu anymore, he's not just waiting to be unleashed and go defeat the First Order with a laser sword. That would have been a terrible movie. How unsatisfying would it be that all the Rebels needed to do was find the guy who saved them last time, so he could do the same thing again. It would also prove again that the only people who matter are Skywalkers, everyone else is just waiting for them to resolve their issues.

The whole point was that everyone in the Rebellion matters, they all contribute, and The Force isn't just something that a few privileged people can use to shape events on a galactic scale. Rey is revealed to be nobody special at all, just someone who has the opportunity to do something meaningful. Then they blew all that up by writing a movie that was supposedly based on "fan feedback", and it was the worst one of the lot. Undid all the interesting ideas from TLJ.

Probably one of the worst examples of fans ruining a franchise. It's never really recovered. Andor was only good because it ignored all that stuff, didn't have any Force stuff in it, just ordinary people trying to make a difference, and not because it's the right thing, but because the Empire hurt them and the people they care about.

Comment Re:the "core fans"? (Score 1) 91

That list just proves the point. Finn isn't trying to beat her, he's trying to diffuse the situation. She can't fly the Millennium Falcon better than Han, in fact the first thing she does is crash it into the ground. At no point does she ever demonstrate particularly good piloting skills, unlike Luke who goes from shooting womp rats to taking down a heavily fortifies Death Star in about a week.

I can't be bothered to go through every point, and I'm not disputing some bad writing decisions, but she is in no way a Mary Sue. She is no way the equal of Kylo Ren either, who dominates in his fight with her in the first movie. She never beat Luke in a 1-on-1 fight either, that simply never happens in the movies.

Comment Re:I'm just not interested in more Star Wars (Score 1) 91

Critic reviews suggest it's not a bad movie at all, but I'll wait for it to come on streaming.

It might be a wonderful film. But relating to what I said, I'm not going to see it.

There have been some duds from Disney, like most of The Mandalorian after season 1, Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka... Giving the fans what they claim to want is usually a recipe for disaster, and it shows with those.

The critic/fans I follow. were liking Mandalorian 1 Didn't like the book of Boba Fett, and were mixed on Ahsoka, a number said it was walking, walking, walking, and thought Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka was okay except that the fight scenes seemed too choreographed and slow. I know a lot of Fans were looking forward to Ahsoka were looking forward to that adaptation, since there wouldn't be sex or race swapping, Which when a person knows the story, it would be admittedly annoying to have, say Stephen Colbert cast as Ahsoka.

But also the fans for SW (and at least half the Trek fans) are extremely toxic and tend to ruin anything that is actually good.

If fans ruin any thing that is actually good, perhaps the SW and Trek universes should go away. And don't forget Tolkien's army of fans, some who have dedicated their academic lives to the study of his writings. Some people say the Tolkien scholar who quit on the Amazon LOTR prequel, saying that they were not respecting the material was toxic.

Andor seems to be an exception, but Acolyte was actually a decent idea, and Last Jedi was probably the only hope the franchise had of moving forward.

I've noted in here that I could have written a good SW version of "The Acolyte" using the premise of lesbian space witches. What was provided was pretty dull stuff.

It's like Meyer said around the time he did Wrath of Khan. The fans don't know what they want until you give it to them. On paper that movie should have sucked - Very little fan service, a sequel to a TV show episode, beloved characters make mistakes or die, Kirk has a son out of nowhere, it's a submarine thriller in space... But it works really, really well. If it was released today, the internet would get wind of Kirk needing glasses, and spend the year leading up to release panning it as the worse thing ever, an insult to their intelligence, not understanding Trek at all, and generally trying to destroy it in every way possible.

I will note that you apparently believe that fans of SW and ST want to have something they loved torn down and destroyed. I think that is odd.

Wrath of Kahn has some things that a lot of modern movies don't have. A good story line, the main characters are aging, but that process is incorporated into the story line, not put there to "subvert expectations". By the time WoK came out, a lot of the 60's fans were going through a bit go aging on their own. It had a conflict, a historical one to boot, as the aging enemies fought one another, Kahn with his incredible intelligence, Kirk with his experience.

And here is something most people overlook. Lighting and sound. Even back in the original ST, they understood lighting. In some of the new stuff, they appear to be stuck in dramatic mode.

Audio - this is a problem with movies in general today. Sound effects way too intense. Foley artists appear to rule the studio. And the dynamic range thing, they are intent at having a conversation almost at the threshold of hearing, followed by an incredibly loud sound. I cannot watch movies with sound in the evening after my wife has gone to bed. I have to put on closed captioning.

Comment Re: the "core fans"? (Score 1) 91

Thrawn is just a bad idea. Yet another guy who is destined for something, born special. A generic Empire baddie with no interesting traits or character arc.

Contrast with, say, Gul Dukat from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Both are Space Fascists, but unlike Dukat, Thrawn isn't likeable and only views his actions as necessary, not morally right. His interactions with the heroes are only as an opponent, a simple villain who they must defeat. His personality is paper thin.

DS9 is some of the best Trek ever made, because it put the writers in charge and didn't try to be popular or pander to what fans wanted. Voyager did, and it ended up being mediocre for the most part. But it had fan service. I'm half expecting Disney to cast Sydney Sweeney and bring back metal bikinis.

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