Hamartiogonic

@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EU military chief says it would make sense to put European troops in Greenland, Welt reports⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds like a recipe for disaster. By the time Americans realize their home land has turned into a tyrannical dictatorship, it’s already too late to fix that. Democracy would have given them a peaceful way to do it, but they didn’t use it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EU military chief says it would make sense to put European troops in Greenland, Welt reports⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Somehow the voters didn’t see it that way. I just don’t get it how that was even possible. Didn’t the voters already know what kind of person he is?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Solar power surpasses coal in EU for first time⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Totally forgot about hydrogen. Using that technology in cars has proven to be possible in Norway, so clearly that’s an option too. When energy production exceeds demand, it makes sense to dump that energy into hydrolysis, and later use that hydrogen when the opposite happens. You could use that with industrial scale solutions and cars as well, so that seems like viable strategy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Solar power surpasses coal in EU for first time⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  China and Europe are probably going to be fully electric sooner than the rest of the world. Getting there is already quite a task for the entire production chain. Ramping it up will take decades, and I’m still not entirely sure we even have the resources for it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Solar power surpasses coal in EU for first time⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll take Germany as an example to see if the numbers make sense.

  Annual electricity consumption in Germany is about 512 TWh/year, which means they use about 1.4 TWh every day. Let’s assume that all of it is produce by renewable means, and about 50% of the daily energy demand needs to be buffered in grid energy storage to balance the intermitent nature of renewable energy production. This means you would need about 701 GWh of storage capacity in total. If we assume that the each car has about 100 kWh of storage capacity, you would need about 7 million cars like that. The population of Germany is about 83 million, so roungly 1 car per 12 people should do the trick.

  It’s nothing crazy like 20 cars per one person. on the contrary, it looks surprisingly doable, given that Germany already has abouto 49 million cars registered. However, producing millions of batteries using NMC or NCA technology is a bottle neck. LFP would be cheaper, but it still requires lithium. Meeting the demands of one country is entirely doable, but the rest of the world uses electricity too. Would there be enough lithium for all the LFP batteries we would need? Estimating that is very tricky due to the way mineral exploration works, but let’s not dive into that rabbit hole today.

  Anyway, using the existing battery chemistries to take steps in this direction should be worth it because transportation and electricity production are major sources of CO2 emissions. I still don’t think these technologies are quite enough to meet the demand. We really need to develop some alternate energy storage solutions that don’t depend on relatively rare elements like lithium and cobalt. For example, sodium, magnesium, sulfur, oxygen would be great alternatives if we just figure out how to make viable batteries out of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Solar power surpasses coal in EU for first time⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  EV batteries are not ideal for grid energy storage due to:

  • Unnecessary features: High energy density is essential for vehicles but not for stationary grid storage. That feature doesn’t come for free, so why pay for it if you don’t need it. An industrial scale grid energy facility could be located outside the city where land is cheap. Who cares if the facility takes as much space as a paper mill or a mine site.

  • Cost efficiency: EV batteries are expensive per unit of capacity. Grid storage requires massive amounts of cheaper alternatives. Various industries need a lot of energy, so the storage demand is also massive. This means that a battery facility of functional size that uses normal NMC batteries is going to cost a fortune. Cheaper alternatives such LFP would make more sense.

  • Material scarcity: The rare materials used in EV batteries (like lithium) would be challenging to scale up for grid-level storage needs. Households are only a small slice of the pie, while factories and other types of industries take the rest, so we really need to use materials that are dirt cheap and easily available.

  Current NMC and NCA batteries used in cars should be good enough for the energy needs of a single house, but the rest of society needs an industrial scale solution. There are several technologies that look promising, but they aren’t quite production ready just yet. I’m really looking forward to seeing how redox flow batteries develop in the future. There are also some interesting battery chemistries such as sodium-ion, oxygen, magnesium-ion, and lithium-sulfur.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Solar power surpasses coal in EU for first time⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There are some interesting early pilot projects where long term energy storage is being tested.

  Current EV batteries are not even close to being suitable for grid energy storage, so we need something completely different for that. It’s probably going to take a long time before anything viable gets mass produced, which means that at the moment we’re stuck with internment renewables and fossil fuels.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3033: Origami Black Hole⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Keep folding until you hit Fe or Ni.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3031: Time Capsule Instructions⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Inside the fourth box: Do not open unless this box is inside the other boxes and all the lids are closed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Belgium will ban sales of disposable e-cigarettes in a first for the EU⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Many years ago, I went to see a doctor. He smelled like he had just smoked a pack of cigarettes during his last break. I found it very difficult to take any of his words seriously since the smell was so disturbing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Taliban leader bans windows overlooking women's areas⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s exactly what I thought until I read the headline for the third time. The autocorrect in my head seems to be highly biased.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Caffeine content in filter coffee brews as a function of degree of roast and extraction yield⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That was an interesting article to read, and it looked pretty scientific too. Using Fahrenheits and splines totally sticks out, but the rest looks pretty good to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists find lesser mealworm's potential to combat plastic waste⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe one day plastic processing plants could use larvae to eat the waste. We’re already using microbes in this way, so why not extend the same idea to larger creatures.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3004: Wells⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Fair enough. We’re going to assume it’s completely safe until proven otherwise. Vulcanologists can tell you that the viscosity can be pretty high, so there could be a choking hazard though. Further study would be needed to determine the exact nature of potential hazards.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3004: Wells⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Be careful though. If you keep on digging deeper and deeper, you’ll find magma. That’s not a bad deal either, because you can use that heat to run a geothermal power plant.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3001: Temperature Scales⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  At least that follows some mathematical logic. Mohs scale of hardness is pretty close to pT scale in that sense, but there’s no mathematics or logic involved. It’s just a list of standard materials that define specific points on the scale. When you compare the results with a more logical scale, it looks neatly non-linar at first glance, but the closer you look, the less sense it makes. It’s just a list of exceptions to whatever rule you may have had in mind.

  Doesn’t mean it’s a useless scale. You can totally use it for qualitative assessment of hardness, but steer clear of it when numbers and decimals actually matter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3001: Temperature Scales⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s only fair to give credit when credit is due. Doesn’t mean I like that unit, but I can see where they’re coming from.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3001: Temperature Scales⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You could totally make an extra cursed temperature scale. Randall proposed the °X scale, but maybe we can do better than that. That was pretty cursed because it defines three points based on statistics observed on of Earth and uses linear interpolation to connect the dots.

  I propose an extra cursed system that uses completely fictional values. Let’s take -π as the melting point of unicorns and +GrahamsNumber as the peak temperature in the core of the hypothetical planet Vulcan. Between the two points you can fit any seventh degree polynomial you like in order to get the values that fit your needs. On Wednesdays you can use a sine wave too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3001: Temperature Scales⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s about time we switched to using seconds as the universal time unit. I really hate the messy base 60 conversions we inherited from the Babylonians. Also, month is such a broken unit, and it just makes many calculations unnecessarily complicated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3001: Temperature Scales⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In the Middle East, the winters are brutally cold and the locals suffer. Tourists from colder regions come there to enjoy their winter vacation in December or January, because it’s paradoxically quite warm. They only pack their normal spring clothes because it isn’t really that cold in their opinion. You know, a thin coat, maybe a thin summer beanie. You’ll probably be ok without any mittens. Also, you can wear normal shoes which is nice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3001: Temperature Scales⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t really use the Fahrenheit scale for anything, but when I bump into it, I prefer to think of those values as: 0°F is a cold winter and 100°F is a hot summer weather. Makes sense for the human experience, which makes it a very practical unit. The original definition was more technical than that, but it was also severely limited by the technology at the time, so it had some flaws.

  You also have to look at these units in the proper historical context. Measurements were a complete mess, so having at least something that sort of makes some sense and is somewhat repeatable, is a clear improvement. Both, Fahrenheit and Celcius scales totally addressed those concerns, and that makes them both good enough. Absolute zero and plank temperature weren’t even known back then, so what can you expect.

  When it comes to using these units in serious scientific and engineering applications, you run into problems, but the kelvin scale addresses those pretty well. It’s not exactly elegant, but at least it’s functional. Because of historical baggage, we’re pretty much stuck with these units, but it could be worse.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3001: Temperature Scales⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, well that’s a cultural thing really. Celcius and fahrenheit scales are both quite arbitrary. The kelvin scale uses absolute zero, which totally makes sense, but the other fixed point is pretty arbitrary when you think of it. The fahrenheit scale makes sense for the human experience of weather, while the celcius scale makes sense for generally life on Earth where water plays an important role. Neither of them are particularly universal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3001: Temperature Scales⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  LOL, the original Celsius scale really is 10/0 cursed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #2992: UK Coal⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Clearly illustrates the role of politics and economy. If you want to change things, you should make sure laws and regulations facilitate it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #2987: Tectonic Surfing⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Was it Randall or someone else who mentioned in a speech that infinite patience could be a superpower? Like, when you arrive at the store just when it closes, you would just stand there outside the locked door until it opens again. Anyway, this one connects beautifully with that idea.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #2983: Monocaster⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s also a huge 0-wheels market. Just think how cool wheel-free skates and boards are.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #2978: Stranded⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think we could send robot farmers there to grow some food for the people living in orbit. Maybe low-G carrots could be nicer than the ones grown on earth.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #2978: Stranded⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Humans are very picky. Must have certain amount of gravity, need to see green stuff, can’t handle radiation etc. it’s is if they were built to be on a specific planet and nowhere else.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #2976: Time Traveler Causes of Death⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The universe seems pretty infinite when viewed with our current tools and from our perspective. I would still argue that we can’t really be sure just yet. However, we can say it’s effectively infinite just like a lot of things in physics are effectively massless, effectively frictionless etc. You totally can make your calculations work really well even though your model cuts some corners here and there.

  In many cases, you can even assume the Earth is flat and simple maths still works well enough. However, when you zoom out and start doing more complex calculations, you run into trouble and need to upgrade to a more sophisticated model. I would argue that the current assumption of the universe being infinite can fall into the same category.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #2976: Time Traveler Causes of Death⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If we can’t find the cosmic frame of reference, then how do we know it even exists? Sure, you can assume it exists, and call that a hypothesis. If only someone had a way to test that hypothesis.