BeautifulMind

@BeautifulMind@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is where windfall taxes come back into basic utility. Also it becomes the basis for antitrust action on price collusion if all the sellers coordinate

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists find a simple way to destroy 'forever chemicals' — by beheading them⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  …you really do need to be specific. Otherwise, it sounds like you’re claiming that “the production processes” (of what, everything? all products in the entire economy?) require PFOAs- and that’s plain bullshit.

  Yes, there are some products for which there aren’t equivalent inputs, and you don’t need to be vague and generalize over all of productive everything in the economy in order to make that point- but given the opportunity to be specific, you specified “production of base chemicals that are used in various other follow-up products” and that’s not a straight or specific answer to a direct question.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists find a simple way to destroy 'forever chemicals' — by beheading them⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  there is no other material known to withstand the temperatures and pressures needed in the production processes?

  Production of what, exactly?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A New York Times copyright lawsuit could kill OpenAI⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is there a possible way that both the NYT and OpenAI could lose?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Electric school buses are a breath of fresh air for children | Nearly $1B in federal funding could help clean up the unequal health impacts of diesel pollution.⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ok, that’s fair. The point I wanted to make upthread was that these sorts of impossible things are regularly made to work when making it work is worthwhile. Most of the ‘but this is a limitation of the technology’ talk here (about how EVs can’t work in the cold, etc) is defeatist bullshit that ignores that really if you want it to work it can be made to work

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Electric school buses are a breath of fresh air for children | Nearly $1B in federal funding could help clean up the unequal health impacts of diesel pollution.⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The main thing is that electric is the same way,

  No, the larger point is that it’s a struggle to make diesel work at +20F if you don’t do the things to make it work, and yet these things can be made to work reliably at -50F. The obstacle isn’t the limitations of the technology, it’s whether or not the cost curve makes sense. Electric can be made to work cheaply, if it’s important to you that it work- just like it’s possible to make that diesel turn over at -50F

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Electric school buses are a breath of fresh air for children | Nearly $1B in federal funding could help clean up the unequal health impacts of diesel pollution.⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I grew up and rode the bus to school in Iowa.

  I rode the bus in Alaska. The buses ran well below -50f. It turns out that it’s not that hard to keep your batteries and oilpans heated if you bother putting plug-in heaters (literally, electric blankets for the purpose) in your fleet vehicles, winterize your vehicles, and plug them in when it’s cold.

  I get that it’s uncommon to be that cold-prepared in places that don’t expect to see temperatures below -20 for more than a few days in a given calendar year- at some point, it makes sense to just call it off when it’s that cold. After all, do all (or even most of) the kids have proper clothes to deal with real cold?

  Really cold weather can be adapted to, it’s just that when you don’t need it that often it makes sense not to spend the resources doing it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Electric school buses are a breath of fresh air for children | Nearly $1B in federal funding could help clean up the unequal health impacts of diesel pollution.⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For those of you who haven’t been in a school bus in years, do you remember how loud they are? Reducing diesel pollution is a win, but being in a less-noisy environment for however long each day is also a win.

  As a cyclist and occasional user of public transit, I really like the idea of most buses eventually being at least plug-in hybrid-electric if not entirely battery electric. I’m curious about the mass difference between a diesel, diesel-electric, and battery-electric bus (after all, the heavier the vehicle, the harder it is on the road). I expect some of the fuel-and-maintenance-cost-savings from the bus fleet will have to go to road maintenance in the end, but I’d rather spend money that way (locally) than spend it on pumping fresh hot carbon out of foreign wellheads

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Counterspell this⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Simple jinx should cause most firearms to fail or jam In a universe where guns exist and level-1 wizards can cast magic missile/fireball and cantrips like firebolt, setting fire to things (like gunpowder), my bet is that low-level magic users aren’t going to be trumped by steampunk-grade tech that easily

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla boosts pay for U.S. factory workers as UAW momentum builds⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That means its working

• On Tyrannysnyder.substack.com ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨aboringdystopia@lemmy.world⁩ | ⁨1⁩ ⁨comment⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Also, the doors actually open.⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Also, the doors actually open.⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do we have an internal monologue?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  One interesting corollary to the bicameral mind theory is that our brains have multiple sentient centers to them- that in turn might explain that feeling of struggling with a decision and being able to see the same thing from more than one point of view. It also explains why different parts of the brain light up in different situations

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The four houses dads belong to.⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I landed in DeWalt when their cordless devices became as good as/better than corded tools; I standardized on their battery platform only for them to abandon my battery and roll out a new (incompatible) one. Shortly thereafter my batteries bricked and it seems the business model is to force consumers to buy new tools every so often

  FML I hate it that they’re all proprietary and incompatible

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fear Mongering About Range Anxiety Has To Stop — CT Governor Calls Out EV Opponents⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ehhh. For the range-anxious until charging infra catches up, there can be PHEVs.

  I’ve been excited to have my next vehicle be a BEV for a while now, but having rented a Tesla while on vacation in Michigan (where the infra wasn’t exactly good for it) I understand why people might have reservations about jumping in with both feet. Also now that I’ve interacted with the vehicles and got a better idea of Tesla as a company, I won’t be buying one.

  For the moment, given my use cases (I periodically have to drive between western WA and central UT) my next vehicle will likely be a PHEV unless there are real breakthroughs in EVs (fuel cells? swappable battery standards?) or charging infra where I need it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fear Mongering About Range Anxiety Has To Stop — CT Governor Calls Out EV Opponents⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  almost nobody is making Plug-in Hybrids and they cost an absolute fuck ton of money.

  The 2024 Prius prime starts at $33k, is a PHEV www.kbb.com/phev/best-phev-cars/2024/

  BMW, Volvo, Mercedes are also making PHEVs for 2024 model year So are Chrysler, Mazda, Hyundai, Kia, Porsche, Land Rover www.autoweek.com/…/best-plug-in-hybrids/

  There are some really expensive ones on that list, but a half-dozen under $45k

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Moderna’s mRNA cancer vaccine works even better than thought⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  LOL I just remembered that some folks in the anti-covid-vax/maga category have been referring to the mRNA covid vaccines as ‘the cancer vaccines’ based on disinformation that they would ‘interact with your genes’ and ‘give you cancer in 2 years’

  Seeing this headline [Moderna’s mRNA cancer vaccine works even better than thought] I had to look to see if it was the cancer-targeting vaccine or some mouth-breathers talking about the covid ones 😅

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's Time to Ditch Evernote for One of These Alternatives⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I was pretty happy with EverNote until it started to feel like they were ransoming my content against sudden price hikes and enshittifying reductions in basic function Fk those guys

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientist Discover How to Convert CO2 into Powder That Can Be Stored for Decades⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The opportunity, of course, is that it might become feasible to mine the air for carbon (and fold it with added electricity from transient sources like wind/wave/tide/solar) and compete with the folks pumping sequestered carbon from the ground.

  Of course, this wouldn’t compete with the use cases for petroleum that arise in refining the polymers in oil (think of all the plastics and other compounds that come out of the oil industry that aren’t refined fuels). Selling those products is so profitable that for years oil companies have been flaring off excess natural gas at the wellhead to be rid of it instead of spending the money to capture, contain, and ship it to market. On the one hand, if this tech to mine CO2 from the air becomes a competitor, 1 of 2 things happens:

  • 1. Refined fuels become cheap, so cheap that they’ll be flared off as waste instead of captured
  • 2. Petro-based polymers will become more expensive as their subsidy by the sale of refined fuels is undercut by competition

  It’s probably #2, really refined fuels can be considered a waste product of extracting the petrochemicals

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You have now entered manual breathing mode.⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  DANG IT

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Goodbye substack.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ford's CEO says he definitely didn't pay for that viral video of a stuck Cybertruck needing a rescue on a snowy hill⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The couple of seconds’ worth of video I saw told me a few things:

  • the truck had been spinning out for a long time there

  • that situation was going to be tough for most trucks

  • it had terrible traction, possibly a matter of not having all-season or snow-specific tires

  • it appeared to be driving all wheels, can’t say whether or not they were distributing traction or slip intelligently

  • couldn’t tell if anything was high-centering anywhere but it didn’t look it

  • driving in situations like that are why I leave tire chains in my truck

  • the tree sticking out of the back was comical

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #2867: DateTime⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  LOL whenever I have to work with DateTime systems that try to account for every possibility (and fail trying) I am reminded that in some disciplines, it’s acceptable to simplify drastically in order to do ‘close enough’ work.

  I mean, if spherical cows are a thing because that makes the math doable, why not relativity-free date-time measures that are willing to ignore exotic edge cases like non-spherical livestock?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨And this is why I no longer have cable.⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah I remember when the cable tv folks pitched cable like there wouldn’t be ads, vs. public airways that had to be ad-supported because there wasn’t any subscription for it. When they turned cable into ad wasteland I felt that like the fucking betrayal it was

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FBI Labels Anti-Fascists and Anti-Racists as Violent Extremists⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s helpful to remind people that the word Anarchy basically means ‘without hierarchy’, or it describes a condition or ideal characterized by the absence of hierarchical ordering.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is it apparently cool and fine for insurance companies to spend countless billions, trillions of our money constantly buying ad time?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It shouldn’t be, but enough people are either ignorant that it’s a racket or they profit somehow by it that nobody says anything, or they’ll call you a damned commie if you openly question powerful people like that

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Keep in mind that social security is set to run out in 10 years time.⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No, it isn’t. That’s bullshit, a talking point designed to get you to give up on supporting it politically.

  But do you know what would help it in actuarial terms? 2 things:

  • raise the federal minimum wage

  • remove the cap on income subject to the social security tax

  When suppressing wages became a bipartisan affair, it hurt Social Security just as much as it did workers on the low end of the wage scale.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Arizona's solar-over-canal project will tackle its major drought issue⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  With any luck pretty soon they’ll look at alfalfa farming in the desert too

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Feds subpoena Ticketmaster over egregious concert ticket prices — A spokesperson for Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, said the firm doesn't “feel comfortable” sharing information with Congress⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hahahaha yesterday during the pie preparations my daughter and I passed each other as I was heading back to the kitchen and she said, apropos of nothing, “I didn’t just steal any whipped cream, shut up!”

  LOL I didn’t know they’d been looting the whipped cream before that point but bless their hearts it was cute