Certainly the Mormons won’t show up, nor JWs with their watchtower pamphlets./s If there’s one thing Christians love, it’s inviting strangers to dinner. It’s biblical. They will also pray for you and thank God for the good food and company. Some find this “do good always” attitude horrifying, but probably because they’ve never been exposed to good Christians. Remember, most humans are good, even the Christians!
Seems like nuclear power is always the elephant in the room. Wish people that like to post emotional comments about climate change spent similar time pushing for nuclear power. Some change in public sentiment around nuclear power would be much more impactful than “Because of my political opponents, we’re all gonna burn alive!” I tend to think we will need some sort of geoengineering solution, but I think nuclear power has to be part of any effort to reduce emissions. No easy answers.
I mean, I'd be for Germany reactivating some of the nuclear power plants they shut down in the panic after Fukushima. But the lead time on a nuclear plant is long and wind/solar have reached the point where they can be rolled out at similar quantities much quicker and cheaper.
It was a mistake not to go nuclear to get rid of fossil fuel plants 20 years ago. The window for new installations is closing rapidly as renewables improve however.
Nuclear, solar, and hydro all have different production profile, different strengths and weaknesses. They are all complementary, and we're not going anywhere if we don't use all the means at our disposal.
Nuclear definitely has a long lead time (and requires huge initial capital), but it should be built nevertheless, as it is much more efficient than the alternative for base load production. It has also very good synergies with hydrogen production.
Nuclear plants produce stable energy unlike solar and wind, and can also be used for desalination. There are a number of benefits to nuclear that make it desirable beyond what solar and wind can do.
That said, in an effort to become more self sufficient I too will be installing solar panels in the near future.
The problem with nuclear power right now is that we can't build enough of it for it to matter in time. Even if we cut away half the regulatory burden, a plant that's started today would only come online at the end of the decade.
In [0], they give a figure of 5-6 years for actual construction. Add in a year or 2 for regulatory and other delays, and we're looking at 2027-2029-ish before we see a single megawatt of electricity out of them. What's more, there is probably only enough uranium to last about 5 years, if we could wave a magic wand and replace all existing power plants with nuclear [1]. Moreover, the plants themselves also have a finite lifetime of 40-60 years [ibid].
I have a hard time understanding the reasoning why we don't have time to build nuclear plants, but we do have time to build new fossil fueled power plants in order to stabilize the power grid.
What if every time a country decided to build a new fossil fueled power plants, a rule went in to build a new nuclear power plant instead. In terms of climate goals, at worst we prevent the construction of new fossil fueled power plants. At best we arrive in the future with fossil fueled power plants replaced by an alternative that isn't cooking the planet.
If we'd been more sensible on nuclear 20 years ago, it could have made a huge difference. Nuclear plants are very expensive to build, and can take decades from planning to commissioning (at least in the west) - I wonder if it's simply too late for nuclear now?
Why should we create nuclear waste for hundreds or thousands of generations to deal with when we can just expand renewables and phase out coal and gas over the next 20 years?
Planning and constructing a new nuclear reactor takes at least 15 years and it's the most expensive and also dangerous form of energy source.
Just look at Hinkley Point C in the UK where costs exploded and construction was delayed over and over. The cost of £92/MWh (estimated in 2012) is outrageously expensive as well when wind and solar are approaching half. New nuclear reactors make no sense now.
> Planning and constructing a new nuclear reactor takes at least 15 years and it's the most expensive and also dangerous form of energy source.
This is false. Even accounting the few catastrophic failures (including Chernobyl and Fukushima), deaths by nuclear industry can be counted in dozens.
Here is what says Wikipedia about the Fukushima aftermath :
> There were no deaths from radiation exposure in the immediate aftermath of the incident, though there were a number of (non-radiation related) deaths during the evacuation of the nearby population. As of September 2018, one cancer fatality was the subject of a financial settlement, to the family of a former station workman.
There were a few more deaths in Chernobyl but it’s mainly due to the bad management of the cleaning process.
If we include those, the most costly and deadly energy is hydro. Last year a much bigger evacuation than Fukushima occurred in the US because of a dam failure.
It is kind of interesting that almost no one have heard of it, and that it did not make major international news.
Nuclear waste is a lot worse than any other type of waste. It's dangerous for tens of thousands of years and we don't know if we will be able to tell a civilization 10,000 years in the future that the stuff we buried deep in a cave is dangerous.
> Nuclear waste is a lot worse than any other type of waste.
It's really not. It is compact, contained, and isolated. It takes a tiny amount of space compared to any other solution.
> It's dangerous for tens of thousands of years
Some of it is. Most of it isn't. By definition, long-lasting isotopes are the least dangerous.
> we don't know if we will be able to tell a civilization 10,000 years in the future that the stuff we buried deep in a cave is dangerous.
We won't have a civilisation in the next century if we keep fucking it up. It is patently absurd, considering the state of the world, to keep saying that nuclear is the absolute worst. Non-nuclear is what put us in this very situation in the first place.
Per unit volume, sure: A cave full of nuclear waste is worse than a cave full of CO2.
Per energy generated, it's not clear at all to me that the nuclear waste from a country running off nuclear power is worse than the CO2 emissions of running that same country off fossil fuels.
That cave full of nuclear waste has something like "all the waste generated by the UK to date". Enough CO2 to fill a cave is one coal plant running for a few days.
> expand renewables and phase out coal and gas over the next 20 years
Put in a plan to stop building new coal and gas power plants in EU and that strategy would have a bit more support behind it. New coal, gas and oil is the core of the energy strategy for handling grid stability. It will last much longer than 15 years.
This is where citizens of a world that has enjoyed the type of civil stability and wealth to allow for caring for nuclear waste sites for roughly 200 years will inform you that they can categorically guarantee that there will be no issues caring for these sites in 500 years.
People don’t want the government to say what they can and can’t do to their own bodies. I can see why people want to draw that particular line in the sand. Despite my personal desire that everyone do the moral, patriotic and practical thing and get vaccinated, I also don’t really want big brother super involved into individuals medical decision making. People should have autonomy over their own body, not the state. It doesn’t seem too unreasonable to think that reducing funding or even eliminating specific state managed health programs might be a great way to curtail such government encroachment and incentivize the massive health care system already in place to do its job so the big brother doesn’t have to step in and break everyone’s freedom.
“reason I just cut in line is because I am, at least somewhat, generally a jerk.”
The research doesn’t support this though. Behavior seems to be mostly a function of the social context, as milgrim learned. We would love to be snowflakes but we are all pretty much the same.
Here’s the definition of populism: “a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.”
Does that not describe both of our political parties?
Self improvement requires not falling into the mindset of blame. It’s “them” destroying the planet, rather than “us” solving the hard problems together. I think only human understanding and mastery of ego will determine the fate of the planet. We can do it, if we work on ourselves first.
Also
-Open source is better for serious work
-Excel is notoriously buggy and shouldn’t be used for anything important, yet it is and the costs are enormous. Many articles on this.
How do I find these movies? Amazon has some old, mostly low quality movies, but nothing good or recent. They got rid of the criterion collection years ago. Sincere question: How does one even find or acquire films today? I’d love to watch a movie, but literally don’t know how to go about it anymore. Netflix is not an answer as most of their content are not movies and basically spam to me.
justwatch.com lets you search and discover what services have what movies.
Alternatively, DIY. As streaming became more popular, optical media and hard drives became far more cheap. Over the last 10-15 years I've ended up with more than 500 movies, all of which I own legally and most of which cost me $5 or less. They get to all of my devices through Plex (I used to use Kodi, which is fine over a LAN if that's all you care about).
A significant number of them aren't available for streaming anywhere at the moment, and plenty more would require obscure services I don't feel a need to pay for. It was a gradual upfront cost, but not that extravagent compared to the cost of paying for a couple of streaming services over that time - to say nothing of the 6-10 I'd have to subscribe to to actually have access to all of it.
In addition to the criterion channel, already mentioned, try MUBI [1]. It’s a cinephile’s dream: a film discovery nearly everyday while also curating the great directors.
One can also find very interesting stuff on YouTube, depending on how good your search skills are, I know that at the start of the pandemic I had discovered a user who was uploading Italian western spaghetti movies in HD format. I think I might also have found something similar for Hong Kong wuxia movies from the 1960s and 1970s but I'm not sure.
My wife and I used to buy a DVD in the second-hand books/new dvd's shop round the corner every Friday for a Friday-night movie viewing. He knew our tastes -- it must be sweet, funny with a happy ending and no adultery or rape -- but the shop closed.
We regularly ask each other "Where's Roman Holiday but with a cute girl instead of Gregory Peck. Audrey Hepburn can stay."? Why all the drama in movies these days? We just wanna see two girls kiss and walk away in the twilight, hand-in-hand. But all we get is drama like Ammonite.
Why isn't there yet a Poser or Daz3D/Blender/MakeHuman/$GAME_ENGINE that combined makes it easy for people to tell tales as movies yet? It should be possible to put everything together in an interface that even a movie producer could understand, which would make it a doddle for ordinary people.
> Why isn't there yet a Poser or Daz3D/Blender/MakeHuman/$GAME_ENGINE that combined makes it easy for people to tell tales as movies yet? It should be possible to put everything together in an interface that even a movie producer could understand, which would make it a doddle for ordinary people.
Okay, seriously? That's a really good idea right there. I personally would lean towards Blender + Godot game engine for such a project, but I'm just hugely in favor of open source in general, so… The thing to make such a tool useful though would be an easily accessible library of actors (character models), animation/movement presets/prefab library, scenery and set dressing, and an interface to tie it all together in a way "which would make it a doddle for ordinary people" as you say. I could see something like that bein' a huge boon for "storyteller" types to get a good start in the media creation arena though.
Yes, right? We've got pretty much all the tech for that, it only needs to be joined up and made accessible. Of course, it would be simple at first, but improveed on later.
And of course, that library... That would be a source of _real_ money.
Amazon has tons of movies but many of them you have to buy/rent a la carte. At least in the US, there's Red Box for mostly recent films. You can also subscribe to Netflix' DVD service--although their back catalog isn't as good as it used to be.
Your local library probably has tons of DVD and Blu-Ray discs (and librarians who can provide recommendations), and maybe free access to an app like Hoopla with classic/highbrow movies.
Friendly plug for kanopy.com. Amazing, changing collection and likely free signup and streaming (monthly-refreshing limit) with your local library card (:
Also/or, your library may give you access to a similar service called Hoopla. I have access to both via my local library, and I find Kanopy’s selection (and picture quality) somewhat better, especially for foreign (non—USA) content.
The TCM channel does a good job of organizing films into categories. I've been watching their Film Noir picks every Saturday night. Lots of fun movies I never knew existed.
I never understood this complaint. There are dozens and dozens of recent, popular (good is subjective) movies on the front page of Amazon, Netflix and HBO Max right now.
