Observation on the concrete -- the huge masses of concrete used as footers for wind turbines are buried, so minimal exposure to the atmosphere. Concrete in nuclear sites, at least the ones I have seen, are mostly above ground and penetrated with voids -- so greater chance of exposure.

GHG went up because of all the gas turbines deployed in a rush during the wind/solar rollout blitz. But it should not be ignored that making the cement for both the nukes and the wind turbines generates huge amounts of GHG. Why I excluded the material fabrication emissions in the discussion. Sadly, no free lunch.

It is a hopeful sign, but I fear any new generation will be gobbled up by the mega-datacenter projecrts and ridding the grid of gas turbines will remain an aspirational goal. Ontario, where I live, is powered largely by a mix of hydroelectric and nuclear, dont think there is any coal left. When the 'green' energy plague rolled in there was an exxplosion of gas turbines for peak and backfill for the inevitable slumps in wind and solar. Track record for nuclear builds and refurbishments has been pretty good -- the last project finished ahead of schedule and under budget. Dont know much about how the other provinces handle it but locally there is a lot of construction and operational knowlege. Wind and solar might be fine for off-grid stuff where the demand can be managed but they are not dispatchable, although the big battery banks do help but bring their own risks. When Ontario went down this road their greenhouse gas production went up... so much for dumping coal.

Of course the carriers want to get rid of the old hard lines. Its physical stuff they have to maintain rather than just bill. On the other hand, when the next disaster hits its likely that the land lines will be the only stuff working. Certainly has been my experience during large scale power failures. Its not just the communications pafh... even IP phones using fibre can do that. Its the central office power that keeps things working. And having the towers be the first thing to drop out when power goes down is not encouraging. Maybe if they worried a bit more about the robustness of their services rather than just the margins...

I deplore these sorts of things, but the reality is that they have been savagely and repeatedly attacked by the US and Israel and have had a lot of damage inflicted on their country. Measures of control are clear attempts by them to reduce the threat and generate some funding to rebuild. And hopefully there will be no more, but given the players and the complete lack of adults in the room, the danger of a Gotterdammerung moment for the Middle east still hangs over the world. And if they had actually had a weapons program, would any of this have happened?

An interesting theory but hiding a demographic detail. Participation in the arts passively and actively is not uniform across all socioeconomic groups but tends to cluster around certain economic and cultural groups. We think one needs early exposure and the resources to become involved -- suggesting perhaps that these folk have a bit more control over their lives leading to lower stress. Have artists and musicians in the family and have seen up close the struggles -- but also the rewards of creating and enjoying the creation of others. Personally, perhaps more exposure as part of the education process might make us all better peoplea. But the question might be which is the tail and which the dog?

The ones I love are the animated ones where there is text printed on the frames and the automatic comments textify the spoken portions. Its entertainment on its own, the mangling of proper names are even random so the same botched rendering hardly ever repeats. An entertainment all by itself. I routinely play youtube at 1.5x, tried 2.0 but the speach compression totally fails at that rate. Just watching stuff for entertainment so really dont care about the accuracy. I prefer words in a row to hearing a talking head... hate falling asleep waiting for them to get to the point. Used to be better, the new and improved would be painful if I cared.

Sure do. All the time -- and I buy Thinkpads specifically because of their repairability and the availability of good service documentation. Have replaced display panels, keyboards and a motherboard. Memory expansions, disk drive swaps are routine. I try to get a 10 year life out of my equipment where possible.

My science teacher and I were the guests of Bell Labs in, I think, 1965, before I graduated high school. Still remember the computer memory with a gas laser burning spots on a chilled slab of material. Might have been a great place to work if my life had let me go down that path. Still have the pictures someplace their publicist took. Memories...

An effective open market depends on accurate and reliable information being available to all participants. The myth is that exists in a form accessible to all -- the reality is that insider information is not publicly available to all, why using it to profit is still (mostly) considered a crime. Quarterly earnings reports are marketing products, not an audit. It is the rare company that does not fine tune what it reports. And emotion rather than analytics drives most investment decisions. My initial reaction to this was 'oh good, maybe they can focus more on growing the business'... but that seems unlikely. Just buys more time for the regretable sacrifices to making the numbers to show up. The spin will continue regardless.

This is increasingly like a cartoon I saw years ago. Kid telling his Dad that when he grew up he wanted to go into organized crime. Without missing a beat his Dad asked 'which... government or private sector'? Makes one wonder if the Chinese are playing catchup with the other big players... Russia, USA, Israel, etc. Everybody seems to be doing it and there is, sadly, no authoritative place one could turn to discrimiate the real from the fake. Thought is that how can any organized society, economy, etc hold together without reliable information?

Remember my Cobol class -- first program failed to compile due to a missing period. All the rest compiled and ran correctly first time. 'perform unnatural-act varying position until husband comes home'... Was a fun thing to code in. And the rigid structure made it easy to parse when a few years later I had to write a tool that would parse embedded SQL expressions in it for conversion to another DML.

Glad that the products of combustion are declining thanks to EVs... We will ignore the effects of the occasional thermal runaway. But EVs, from what I have read, are much heavier than their ICE equivalents and as such have much greater tire wear. And tire particulates are a major contributor to the fine particuates that are a significant driver of urban health problems. So... fixed one problem, made a different one worse. Personally, I would rather take the train -- but in North America that option has been largely eliminated, unlike elsewhere in the developed world.

Reminds me of a prototype laser storage system I saw in 1965 during a guided tour of the Bell labs in Murray Hill. It used lasers to burn spots on a slab of optical material, dont recall any performance or capacity specs -- been a long time. Sure any patents are long expired, but then so is the Murray Hill labs.

For a short while, sure. But who will be available to replenish their wine cellars?