• 4 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2025

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  • I think that it might be fairly popular to instead propose replacing the congressional system with a parliamentary system. Most people generally agree that both parties are bad and that we all just choose our less bad preference because 3rd parties are incapable of winning in nearly all races. For whatever reason, people aren’t unanimously on board with ranked choice voting, so I don’t see a path to nuanced representation in Congress as it exists today.

    Of course, there would probably be a lot of people bitching that the UK uses parliament so why did we fight a war to be independent just to end up using their system. Well, we ended up with a king, so this system didn’t do what it was supposed to do.




  • Yes, we all need to be in agreement about what time it is, but every business has different working hours. Starbucks opens before Staples for a good reason. And Starbucks has a later close time in the summer because there’s more demand later if the sun is still up. If we all change all clocks one way or the other, Starbucks keeps the same schedule relative to the sun and what other people are doing. They don’t strictly stick to the same open and close times if we decided to move the clocks by 6 hours, so there’s no reason to believe that they would if it only moved 1 hour.


  • I guess I just don’t see the point of doing it that way. You’re not wrong, but we’re already on DST so much more, so it’s less disruptive to just keep that in place here. What we call the time is arbitrary, even if it wasn’t always that way. I’d rather just go with DST year round than get stuck bickering over whether standard is the better choice and then pass nothing and keep this dumbass system of changing the clocks in November and March every year, fucking up sleep schedules and causing more car crashes and having confusing computer anomalies because our clocks change but theirs don’t.




  • I think that people are getting sick of fake bullshit artists like Jeffries. I’m optimistic that given a choice between a squeaky clean, media-trained establishment dem and a blue collar, bearded, confident guy preaching the blunt truth about how we’re all getting fucked by the oligarchs, most people pick the latter.

    As the boomers die, the only people left will be the people who have seen only the failures of capitalism and none of the successes. In just the past 20 years, what wins can we point to? Because I can point out the 08 housing crisis recession, minimum wage stagnation, Citizens United in 2010, market monopolization, the European sovereign debt crisis, refusal to lockdown during COVID because of how it would affect the economy, the inflation and supply chain results of mishandling COVID (not to mention the absurd death toll), the current and future results of attacking Iran, and the imminent crash when the AI bubble pops while so much of the market “diversity” is attached to tech companies accruing insane debt for something yet to be proven profitable.

    This shit just ain’t working, and I think that all it takes is a charismatic person pointing that out and then saying “here’s my solution for that…” and they win. Stop smiling. Be pissed. “They’re fucking us. Let me fight them for you. I’m tired of writing to Senators who autogenerate bullshit responses, I’m ready to be the Senator that fixes this shit. Let me represent how pissed off you are at this system that’s fucking the people of our state.”


  • Yeah, it’s far more likely that he wanted a cool tattoo, went to a tattoo place, saw a cool skull, and said “yeah, that one” without knowing that there was lore behind it. And he had it removed. People are allowed to not know everything, people are allowed to make mistakes, and I applaud people who admit their mistakes and seek to correct them.

    Platner had a ton of baggage, some more warranted than others. This one was a nothing burger. But he’s dropped out for a maybe credible real problem, so we let that play out while looking for somebody else to run for Senate. It can’t be that hard to find somebody with a similar message and less baggage. Just somebody who will fight this class war for us, who can reach conservatives with that message, and who hasn’t done any raping. Is that such a high bar?


  • We’re in DST twice as much as we’re in standard time. Keeping DST year round is the option most adherent to “change your schedule, not the clock”. Adjusting winter hours for things is just as viable as adjusting summer hours is, so I’m not understanding why everybody insists on standard time year round and then says that it doesn’t matter what the clock says because you can just change behaviors. Like yeah, we’re saying the same thing, but we barely experience standard time so why would that be the one we pick? There’s less to change if we pick DST.





  • I made the switch from ICE to EV a couple months ago, and it wasn’t really even about climate change. It’s just cheaper and more convenient in terms of fueling, and there’s far less maintenance to keep on top of. It just no longer makes sense to choose ICE (usually) if you already need a new vehicle, can charge at home, and don’t drive more than like 200 miles per day. I just did a road trip in it last month and it really only made the journey maybe 5-10% longer than if I used an ICE vehicle since we needed to stop for food and bathrooms anyway.

    Recycling plastic is almost completely a lie. Very few recycling plants can recycle your water bottle, and it’s incredibly wasteful and costly even if they can. The better choice is to not buy plastic water bottles in the first place, and if you do then reuse them several times, but also you’re just a drop in the bucket compared to industries’ waterfalls, so don’t beat yourself up about it when you’re not perfect.




  • The thing to keep in mind with that 400kWh times 500 cars is that that is the amount of power used over the course of a month, but generated in an hour. My charger at home is set up on the beefiest breaker it can support at 240V 60A (but only using 48A because 80% rule for continuous load) charging at only ~11.5kW. So that 400kWh is trickled out across well over 30 hours.

    It’s a good thing that modern homes are electrifying. Rather than exploding things on site at individual homes, we have power plants do that at scale and send the electricity to the homes, which is more efficient. Even better if wind, solar, or hydro are used. Also, modern electric heat pumps are capable of being effectively like 500% efficient since they are manipulating energy spikes of phase change to move heat instead of making it.

    Idk what you mean by your “place” being 16MW. Do you work at a power plant producing that or a data center using that or something else? In any case, the implication is that that 16MW is a rate of power, so at that continuous rate it would be 16MWh (16,000kWh) moved over the course of that hour. 16,000kWh every hour compared to my car needing an extra 11kWh in those hours that I’m plugged in.

    I’d say that 500-1000MW is pretty average for a power plant that isn’t wind, solar, or hydro. The nuclear plant I worked at before was 2 units, each about 900MW, so 1800MW total. And that plant was built in the 70s, so imagine what we could be doing with modern nuclear innovations if we would just fucking build some new plants. If we assume each home uses 1000kWh in a month with continuous power usage (unrealistic, but easy math to make a point so let me cook), then that one plant from the 70s can power 54,000 homes. Cut it in half to allow for spikes and that’s still 27,000 homes. That plant also just used the bay it was built on for it’s circ water system, so it doesn’t even impact water use by much. Bay water came in, went through heat exchangers to condense steam, and carried that heat back to the bay where a lot of fish enjoyed the warmer water, and the fishers enjoyed the congregation spot lol.


  • Electric cars aren’t as big of a strain on the grid as big oil and gas would have you believe. Most people charge their car at home at slower speeds (compared to DCFC) and usually overnight when there’s less power demand anyway. It’s cheaper and more convenient this way, plus it flattens the duck curve which allows more stable and consistent generational load. I have a longer commute than most at about 90 miles round trip, and my monthly power usage is only up by about 300-400kWh/month. Average in VA is about 1100, but I was a bit below that before the EV at around 900-1000, now around 1300. That sounds like a lot but it really isn’t. The power plant I operate generally puts out about 700MW, or 700,000kW. At that load, my plant could replenish the same commute as my car’s needs for nearly 32,000 cars in only an hour, every hour. My home’s entire month of above average power needs is met in an hour of operation… Along with over 500 homes with identical power needs.

    I can’t argue with you about revoking incentives for solar and wind. What a stupid fucking move. I’m not going to pretend that putting solar panels on my roof could’ve ever achieved net zero for my home, but I could’ve relieved some grid strain during the day while simultaneously investing in cheaper overall energy bills.

    Speaking of cheaper energy bills, the EV also did that for me; electricity bill is $50-60 higher but I now have no reason to stop at a gas pump or pay for oil changes. Before gas prices spiked earlier this year, each commute in my RAV4 cost me about $10 in gas, plus some amount for maintenance that I’ll just ignore for now. My commute when charging at home costs closer to $3.50. I’m saving about $100/month on fueling up. A lot of people have told me they’d never get an EV in a million years, and I get that it’s not for everybody and I’m not forcing it on anybody, but for anybody with the ability to charge at home and who is generally just doing normal commutes and who is already looking to replace their car, I don’t understand the aversion. If cost is the main factor, get a used one like I did since they’re about half price, and stop looking at the luxury/sports models. If range anxiety is a factor, it shouldn’t be one for most people. I limit my charge to 75% battery to extend my car’s battery life, and my commute only drains it to like 30% even while blasting AC, and my car only has a max range of 250 miles when new! I even did a road trip last month and it was fine. I barely did any extra waiting to charge since we were already stopping for food or bathroom breaks anyway, even while my car’s shitty 50kW charge rate (most modern cars can do at least 150, some around 350) left us with much longer charge times!

    There’s a ton of propaganda against EVs, and it really took getting one for me to see how ridiculous so much of it was. Used ones are gonna get more expensive and harder to find as the truth comes out.