• 4 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I think he does some intentional lying, and he says false shit believing that it is true, but most of what he says is bullshit. And I mean bullshit in the sense that he neither knows nor cares whether it’s a true statement, he just knows that it’s helpful to his goals in the moment, therefore he says it. When he talks about over 20M illegal immigrants entering this year, it’s impossible for him to know a number on that since it obviously isn’t tracked, but I’m sure that it doesn’t matter what the actual number is at all. He just pulls out a big number to scare racist people into getting upset enough to come and vote for the guy who says that it needs to stop, which is him. He doesn’t care that it’s not an accurate number, and because he doesn’t know the real number for sure then it’s impossible to prove that he knows that it’s not actually that number and therefore not a certain lie per se. He gets all of the benefit of lying without any of the attached accountability. He bullshits.




  • I’d rather see a remake/reboot where Culkin plays a character similar to old man Marley, accidentally scaring the kid character as a local urban legend. Similar to the scene in the church in the classic, he could empathize with the kid of the movie by talking about how he once wished that his family left him alone in that time of year too, and he quickly found that he regretted that wish and he missed them terribly. A decent writer could roll with that concept and still make it a great scene where the kid has wise advice to impart so it’s not just a soulless excuse for people to go “hey, that’s OG Kevin!” I’m not that writer, but hopefully a good writer reads this and can get a solid idea together to pitch so I can see that movie in my lifetime.



  • I’m 35. I’ve had some tough times. I’ve struggled and I’m sure I’ll struggle again at some point, but aside from politics and covid, I’ve been in a sort of golden age for like six years, and things have been getting better throughout. There have been some shitty spots, but it’s been joyful in general. There was a time about ten years ago that I truly thought about giving up for good, and I’m really glad that I didn’t. I never thought I’d have so much to live for; I didn’t even think I deserved a shot at it.

    Work hard (but also rest), stay curious, and tell jokes. Joy is possible, but you may need to be the one to provide it, but it pays dividends.



  • I literally knew a girl who said this. She truly had no idea that they were the same thing, but rattled on about wanting it gone while benefiting from it.

    I also knew an older woman who hated Obama and said “he’s arrogant for naming that after himself.” She didn’t believe me that her favorite channel was the one who named it after him unofficially and that its official name was ACA.

    They truly just repeat bullshit until it sticks, and it usually works on the people who don’t bother to diversify their information sources. It’s so goddamn frustrating.



  • Cool. You are accepting my statement that what you are doing and saying is pushing to help the more authoritarian option to win, and your complaint is that I’m not nice about disagreeing with you. I would happily disagree with a general conservative, but you are posing as a supposed leftist who is arguing in good faith on behalf of workers. But you’re not. You’re full of shit, you’re aware of it, and you’re admitting to attempting to bamboozle unsuspecting people, and you’re upset that I don’t have kind words in calling you out for it. I don’t feel the need to be tolerant of the intolerant, and your entire philosophy seems to be all about muddying the waters to help a fascist into power to limit the freedoms of my friends, my family, and people I don’t know but care about nonetheless. So kindly fuck right off.





  • I will proudly support third parties

    You could’ve just stopped there. This is all anybody needs to see to know that nobody should listen to you. In our shitty first past the post system, all this does is pull frustrated people away from the mostly reasonable but imperfect choice. You’re either clueless or intentionally attempting to dissuade people from voting for democrats in order to help trump to win. In this system, a third party candidate cannot fucking win. There is no actual “blue maga” for you to whine about. Stop spreading bullshit. I’m glad your username is so stupid that it’s easy to see on its face that your account’s entire existence is predicated on sowing division or you might actually have a chance at convincing some people. Unfortunately for you, most of the people on lemmy are smarter than the people on reddit. If you actually cared about defending American democracy, you’d shut the fuck up instead of saying this dumbass bullshit that serves only to dismantle what crumbs of democracy we have left, whether your sabotaging words are intentional or not. If you keep posting this braindead shit, then I’ll know for sure that you just want more fascism than we already have. So for the love of all that you are at least claiming to hold dear, shut the entire fuck up about this. Yes, capitalism bad, so actually maybe let’s not hand the country over to donald fucking trump, famous asshole criminal capitalist.



  • Dirty production initiates based on demand. So-called “peaker plants” start up under high demand when cost per megawatt rises. They typically start early in the day as most people wake up and cook breakfast and get ready for work and then shut down after people get home and wind down for bed. More extreme versions of this only fire up for more extreme weather events or when other plants trip offline unexpectedly. If demand is normalized, so too is production, which would phase out dirtier power production like coal and natural gas. As an operator at a combined cycle natural gas power plant, this would force me to find a new job. Which is fine by me. The system needs to be changed to be fixed, even if it causes a little pain for me.

    Think of the grid as a pressurized system. To maintain consistent pressure, demand and supply need to be approximately equivalent. When use is high, the pressure drops so demand goes up to maintain that pressure, so prices per megawatt rise to incentivize power plants to step on the gas pedal to produce more. When use drops off, that production needs to reduce to prevent over pressurization of the grid. With battery storage, that pressure swing diminishes. It’s effectively a pressure regulator.

    Additionally, the home power management system via UPS and inverters does exactly what you’re saying in terms of using it when it’s available. At times of high demand and high cost and low supply, your home could seamlessly switch over to your home battery supply for your energy needs to remove strain on the grid, and this would be attractive to set up through things like proposed tax credits and generally reducing your home energy bill. So at 3pm in an August heat wave, your AC could be battery powered from when you charged while you slept the night before. And you’ll recharge tonight when everybody’s AC has switched off for the most part. All this to say: you’re absolutely right and we already agree, but also we can use emerging tech and legislation to vastly expedite this badly-needed transition.


  • there’s not enough lithium

    I am hopeful that developments in sodium ion battery tech will yield different strategies. The weight and energy densities vs cost and abundance mean that it makes more sense (at this time at least) to reserve lithium ion battery tech for more mobile use cases like handheld devices and EVs, but use sodium ion battery tech for things like grid storage or home energy management solutions. I dream of a day in the next decade or two in which virtually nobody bothers to have a generator for emergency home power and instead opts for a UPS with inverters and chargers hooked up to a home battery, allowing not only emergency power, but a “smart” system to power the home via battery during high grid demand and charge during low demand, normalizing grid supply curves and making power bills cheaper for all. The path to this starts with big scale early adopters like hotels and apartment buildings, which could easily supplement energy needs through solar panels on their large roofs at the same time.

    For all the enshittification we’re seeing across most industries, I am cautiously optimistic that we might be living at the edge of an energy revolution. We may see fucking huge fundamental changes to our energy infrastructure within our lifetimes, and that’s one of the few things I’m excited about for the near future. It’s unfortunate that it’s taking a crisis to force these changes, but it would be a great pivot nonetheless.


  • This is why it’s a good idea to enjoy life a little bit now instead of sacrificing every joy to be able to do it all later. Climb that mountain now while your knees are still capable. Play that video game now while it’s fascinating to you. Learn that language now while you’re cognitive faculties can still serve you. Brew that beer you always wanted to, write that short story you’ve been putting off, teach yourself to paint or bake or play golf now instead of putting it off another year. Strike while the iron is hot or you’ll wish you’d done more with your short time here. You won’t be on your death bed wishing you’d worked more or watched more TV. You’ll wish you’d traveled more or finished that project left undone or spent more time with loved ones, actively living life.