Hamartiogonic

@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz

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⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3067: SawStart⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:
Cannot be stopped, you say? How about you attach a generator to that blade before you start it.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3066: Cosmic Distance Calibration⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Is there a relevant XKCD about there being a relevant XKCD for everything?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3065: Square Units⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Same goes for volume. People use cubic meters, but I would prefer to use liters instead.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3060: Omniroll⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Oh, so that’s how you make the infinite fractal omniroll. You just need infinite materials, infinite space and infinite time. Shouldn’t be a problem, right?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3060: Omniroll⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Before you ask, it’s 51 layers.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3058: Tall Structures⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
If an unraveling sweater counts as a “tall structure”, then what about the space tether, where NASA used a 20 km long wire?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ukraine isn’t invited to its own peace talks. History is full of such examples – and the results are devastating⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Did you already get the “hate magnet” achievement for having the most downvoted account? If not, you’re definitely getting close.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨USA | ‘Poverty is not a crime’: outrage after California city passes law targeting homeless encampments⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
So it could be seen as a metric that measures the underperformance of the federal government and states, but not each individual city.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨USA | ‘Poverty is not a crime’: outrage after California city passes law targeting homeless encampments⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
IMO the number of homeless people is an indicator for how badly the local government is doing its job.

Oh wait, this news comes from America, so I guess you’re just not capitalizing that capitalism hard enough if you have problems like this. Taking care of people is like communism or something, right.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google changes name of Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America' for US users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
What’s next? Can you relabel Canada as the Hat of America?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Protecting the US from hackers apparently isn't in Trump's budget⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Oh, but you can always have a fake election. That’s how many totalitarian dictatorships work these days. Just follow the example given by North Korea and China. In a system like that, you could technically hack the numbers, but it won’t matter if the people who read the numbers have already decided what they want to see.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hundreds of US government sites go offline⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
My guess is, industrial automation also played a role. Fewer people were needed to get to the same amount of production.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hundreds of US government sites go offline⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
In 2020, people made similar jokes abbot that year being weird, insane or wrong. I guess that was just a warm up.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Panama's president says there will be no negotiation about ownership of canal⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Nowadays I use this rule of thumb: If I hear Trump say something, at least 50% of it is false. Newspapers tend to write about the most outrageous parts, so if you read about Trump saying something, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be all wrong.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EU military chief says it would make sense to put European troops in Greenland, Welt reports⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Keep folding until you hit Fe or Ni.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3031: Time Capsule Instructions⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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.