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Comment Re:Sigh. Then again ... (Score 2) 187

Why full nuclear rather than a cost-effective combination of options?

Anyone who says we need to do X to solve climate change is wrong, because there is no one "X" that does it.

We need renewables, nuclear, electrification, synthetic fuels, forestation, mangroves, direct air capture, BECCS, biochar, enhanced rock weathering, cloud enhancement to increase albedo, possibly orbital solar shading, ocean alkalinity enhancement, and more that I don't know about including things maybe no one has yet thought of.

We created this problem through a wide variety of mechanisms, burning many different kinds of fossil fuels in many different contexts, and we're going to need an even wider variety to fix it.

Comment Re: we’re probably gonna bust past 1.8C (Score 1) 187

Everything you list as a solution - it’s all happening. Renewable energy adoption, EVs, electrification, etc. etc. But not fast enough to bend the warming curve.

And even if they happened faster, it still wouldn't be enough. The focus on emissions reduction to the exclusion of everything else is going to kill a lot of people.

The only way we're going to fix this is to get to net negative, and while emissions reduction can help it will never be enough. That being the case, we should be investing a lot into capture and sequestration research.

And, we’ll probably have to geoengineer the planet. Scientists and engineers need to be prepping for this, because we’re gonna need it. It won’t be optional.

Absolutely. We should admit that we're in for some more CO2 rise before we can make it fall, no matter what we do, and invest in geoengineering research focused on techniques to directly reduce insolation and ocean acidification.

None of this is either/or. We need to be doing all of this in parallel: Electrification, renewables, nuclear, and synthetic fuels to reduce burning of fossil fuels, carbon recapture, especially at high-intensity carbon sourced (e.g. cement plants), but also from the atmosphere, and geoengineering to directly cool the planet and increase ocean pH. And we can... but the laser focus on renewables and electrification and renewables is harming the future.

Comment Re:Don't forget a battery (Score 1) 246

Sorry misread your post. You described the backup interface as "something you will need" but I somehow thought you were saying that these plug in panels include it.

A cheap method that I think would work is to add an outlet to the plug-in panel which will continue working during a blackout (as long as the batteries and solar panel can supply power). Is that possible without adding much circuitry?

That seems like it would be relatively easy, and safe as long as no one makes a suicide cord and tries to use it to power the house. I don't know if any of this class of equipment provides it.

Comment Re: Just typical Partisan bullshit (Score 5, Informative) 224

"Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, it’s an initiation... What age should you start to see public executions?"
"We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately."
"You quote Leviticus 19, love your neighbor as yourself. The chapter before affirms God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters... in Leviticus 18, is that thou shall lay with another man shall be stoned to death."
Stoning gay people to death is "God's perfect law"
Trans people are to blame for inflation: "There's a direct connection to inflation and the trans issue. You say, Charlie, come on. They couldn't be further apart. No, they're exactly the same. They're the same in this aspect—when you believe that men can become women, why wouldn't you also believe that you could print wealth? If you believe that someone can change their gender, why wouldn't you also believe that money is wealth?"
Blacks "were actually better in the 1940s. It was bad. It was evil. But what happened? Something changed. They committed less crimes." (yes, despite the Piers Morgan "fact check", while his reasons for believing black people were better off under segregation was unrelated to segregation itself, he very much did repeatedly argue that black people were better off in the 1940s)
"If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’"
Juneteenth: "It is a neo-segregationist federal holiday, is what it is... The entire point of it, as per postmodernists do and deconstructionists, is to subvert July 4."
We should have "just took care of" trans people "the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s and '60s"
"The Haitians that are in Huntsville that are raping your women and hunting you down at night - it’s only gonna get worse.. There will be hundreds of thousands of Haitians brought into Alabama, and they will become your masters."
"Haiti is legitimately infested with demonic voodoo. I’ve talked to missionaries that have gone there and they say they’ve seen the darkest stuff... people levitating and turning into cats at night."
"Jewish donors have a lot of explaining to do.. Because Jewish donors have been the No. 1 funding mechanism of radical, open border neoliberal quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits. This is a beast created by secular Jews. And now it’s coming for Jews.. It’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it."
Calling Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown "affirmative action picks".
Calling the man who attacked Nancy Pelosi's husband with a hammer an "amazing patriot" and called on people to bail out the attacker.
"Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge. "
"Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more."
"MLK was awful. He’s not a good person... We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s."
"Transgenderism and gender 'fluidity' are lies that hurt people and abuse kids." Transgender identity is a "throbbing middle finger to God."
Gun violence as a "cost" to having no gun control: "I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational."
"The 'Great Replacement' is not a theory, it's a reality."
"The great replacement strategy, which is well underway every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different."
"Islam is not compatible with Western civilization."
"Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America."

On and on. Man, such a moderate centrist who never espoused bigotry or promoted violence!

Comment Re:Right Wing???? (Score 1) 224

Yes, a very "middle of the road" supporter of far-right Tommy Robinson (who has a 17% positivity ranking among Brits). The guy who said "When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them." The guy who described diversity as an "ideological inferno", a "religion" led by "high priests". The guy who was so radical and repressive at Basecamp that at one point 1/3rd of its employees all walked out en masse. Truly, a remarkable centrist of our times!

Comment Re:Always direct quote when your story is about wh (Score 5, Informative) 224

From Wikipedia, judge for yourself. You are right it would have been nice to include this in the summary!

In 2025, Hansson published a blog post[30] expressing support for far-right British activist Tommy Robinson and the 2025 British anti-immigration protests, as well as mourning that London is "no lounger full of native Brits", defining "native Brit" to mean white. Hansson published another blog post[34] in July of 2026 comparing the Romani population of Copenhagen to Denmark's struggles with its wolf population growth, stating that "When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them." Anil Dash and Rebecca Bailey expressed criticism of Hansson's post, decrying its "dehumanizing rhetoric" against the Romani people.[35][36]

Comment Re:Don't forget a battery (Score 1) 246

Sorry misread your post. You described the backup interface as "something you will need" but I somehow thought you were saying that these plug in panels include it.

A cheap method that I think would work is to add an outlet to the plug-in panel which will continue working during a blackout (as long as the batteries and solar panel can supply power). Is that possible without adding much circuitry?

Comment Re:Yay (Score 1) 108

News flash! You don't need a $500 toothbrush with a camera and AI processing. You only need a 25 cent soft bristle tooth brush and a $4 pack of floss picks.

Need? There are lots of things you don't "need". But this seems like something that could legitimately improve my oral hygiene because -- like most people, I suspect -- I don't floss nearly as often as I should. Having it integrated into the brushing process would mean I do it 2-3 times per day, rather than once every few days. Is that worth $500? I guess it depends on how important $500 is to you. I'm not very price-sensitive and I am very lazy.

I'll wait until these have been available for a while and see what the reviews look like... but if the reviews are positive I'd say there's about a 95% chance I'll buy one.

Wanna spend more for better results? Buy a WaterPik.

I have one, and I don't use it enough. It takes time and effort to fill, use and clean up. Did I mention I'm lazy?

Comment Re:A republic, if you can keep it... (Score 0) 233

What would democracy without capitalism look like?

I imagine that it would look like democracy. Unfettered capitalism and democracy are innately incompatible, since democracy is all about diffusing power among the whole population, and capitalism concentrates power into the hands of a few.

The notion that democracy and capitalism are innately incompatible is rather interesting, given that every long-running democracy has a predominantly capitalist economy. There has never been a durable multiparty democracy with a state-owned or centrally-planned economy. Not one! There are several examples of non-democratic nations with capitalist economies, but the complete lack of any successful non-capitalist democracy argues pretty strongly that capitalism is a necessary (though not sufficient) prerequisite for a healthy democracy, which is the opposite of incompatibility.

I did note that you attached the qualifier "unfettered", but has there ever been an example of unfettered capitalism? I'm not aware of one, and it seems fundamentally impossible. Capitalism requires a state to enforce property rights and contract law, and it's hard to think how any state could exist that does those things but doesn't also impose some regulation. If by "unfettered" you mean "lightly regulated" rather than the literal meaning of the word, then it becomes a question of degree but democracies have gone through many cycles of liberalizing and regulating without ceasing to be democracies.

As for your assertion that, "Democratic socialism always ends up quickly abandoning either democracy or socialism." I assume that you're talking about revolutionary governments.

No, in fact most attempts at democratic socialism have been entered peacefully. They tend to begin by election of a socialist leader with enough support to begin nationalizing all or most industry. Examples include the Allende regime in Chile, India's government for much of the latter half of the 20th century, Sweden's Meidner Plan, Venezuela (Chavez' second attempt; his first try was a coup but then he was elected), etc.

Socialist revolutions almost always install non-democratic regimes, though many claimed to be democratic (e.g. the USSR had decades of elections in which every race had only a single candidate, chosen by the nomenklatura).

Comment Re:A republic, if you can keep it... (Score 1) 233

Soviet Russia made a reasonable attempt of it, they had elections and such. In the end, they voted to end the march towards communism.

They did make as good an attempt as anyone... but still had to restrict emigration to prevent their population fleeing the workers' paradise.

The real difficulty is that capitalism is poorly defined. I don't usually use the term (preferring "free markets" or "financing" as more precise, depending on the situation), but in this situation I was citing the opinion of people who have poorly thought out ideas, so they use the word.

Fair, many people do use the term imprecisely.

Comment Re:Don't forget a battery (Score 1) 246

I don't think the cheaper systems contain that "backup interface". The cheapest way I can imagine making that work will be for it to plug into the meter socket (and the meter plugs into it), and I suspect you need help from the electric company to do that. Is there any other way to install it?

I doubt it. Which is why the cheaper devices being discussed won't provide backup power during an outage.

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