It boils my blood that Republicans would blame Democrats for not sending enough aide during these times, all the while Republicans vote against initiatives drafted up by Democrats to combat these issues specifically.

They use issues like this entirely to rouse their base and keep their support.

Steel decays via rusting as its outer coating is sacrificed to corrosion. Civil features decay as erosion degrades it over time. Wooden power poles decay as their treatment degrades and fungi/insects attack them. Outdoor wiring decays if in direct sunlight due to any sunlight resistive coating degrading over time to UV radiation. Oil used as lubricant in motor vehicles and as insulating fluid in electrical equipment degrades over time due to thermal cycling, oxidation, and moisture.

The point I’m making is that things degrade naturally. Plastic is no exception, although engineers have been able to make certain decisions with it such that constructions can last for decades.

If we can make plastic by default biodegrade naturally, and at a much faster time scale than today’s oxo-degradable and biodegradable alternatives, then it still allows for scientists and engineers to select for plastics that have been specifically engineered for the application via coatings and whatnot, comparable to steel and wood.

It’s possible to do so. We just need to flip the script and make biodegradation the norm and not the exception

Plastics are also used extensively in the electricity sector as insulation for conductors, support structures, etc.

We need our vendors of these products to start addressing this issue, and unfortunately I don’t think this is going to come from the consumer end. Maybe for alternative insulating liquids for transformers and whatnot like with Cargill FR3 or Shell MIDEL products, but clearly more needs to be done. Schneider Electric is a good example of a company leading the way

Thermoelectric cooling where you have a water loop and second stage heat sink is actually very effective. The problem with that however is you can generate temperatures below freezing, which can cause condensation in your device under cooling and lead to internal short circuits. Ideally you’d feed back the temperature of the device under cooling to your second stage heat sink so it can ramp up or down heat transfer

Yes

Yep exactly

I agree: transportation will probably favor hydrogen over batteries.

That being said, to pile on hydrogen, I’m not sure if I like the water demand part of it either. Coastal hydrogen production might make sense if sea water is the feedstock and corrosion/discharge can be released to the source in a manner that doesn’t lead to biodiversity death.

Then again, fossil fuel and mineral based (thermal) energy sources like coal, nat gas, oil, and nuclear all require cold water for cooling purposes. If we transition those sources to hydrogen production (and maybe use in the case of 100% hydrogen fired CCGTs that GE, Siemens, andbMitsubishi are making), there might actually be increased water demand since you have hydrogen + cooling.

It’ll have it’s niche, that’s for sure. But I wouldn’t count it out.

And on the topic of better solutions, I’d love to see vertical underground pumped hydro storage pick up steam (buh dum tss). I don’t see how underground pumped hydro isn’t feasible since we already do geothermal in the same way.

Don’t store it in diatomic form. Ammonia is the common alternative for hydrogen storage and transport, iirc

And even if round trip efficiency is poor, if renewables are in excess, it would be so much better to dump that energy into something that to have to curtail.

In a region like Finland, sand batteries appear to be worthwhile for seasonal storage. Might be an avenue to pursue

Then there’s always green hydrogen as well

Hell yeah it is

In my experience of switching from Chrome to Firefox in the last year thanks to Lemmy, I have to say that using FF for work comes with all sorts of performance issues.

Then again, my specific use case includes having ~10 windows open at ~20 tabs each, sometimes even more. Definitely pushing the limits of the browser lol

deleted by creator

This sounds like a chatGPT post ngl

Doesn’t the first sentence in this post specifically not include “s”? So, not all letters are included?

Wikipedia gives the conventional pangram: “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.

Welcome to the fediverse!

The only games I tend to play these days are the ones that I don’t have to update before playing. Such a nuisance to be always online.

Interesting point about non-conventional cookie practices flagging “privacy-first” users as unique to spying parties. I’d imagine this line of thinking harmonizes with the herd mentality, where if you stand outside of the herd you’re more likely to be spotted and targeted. Makes you wonder what practices users could engage to actually help combat privacy invasion, and which might backfire

There’s energy use, then there’s water use. The water I use per dish goes down the more I load up the dishwasher. The less water I use per dish, the less wastewater I create.

I’d rather load it up fully than run it when it’s convenient. At that point, I might as well just wash by hand but

Dishwashers I can see. Load it up after dinner, then have it run at some point overnight. Could just start it before you go to bed though, so it’s a wash for me really

Good points. There are a variety of houses/buildings built during various periods of time according to various codes and standards, but if you’re within city limits (US/Canada) then your house was probably built after the 70s/80s and has decent insulation. If there is an issue with the central heating in that kind of home, I 100% agree that there’s an issue that you might want a GC to fix. If your house/building is old, or if landlords don’t want to fix shit (and complaints are too much of a hassle), then I can also see that space heating can be a reasonable bandaid: at least until you get out of that situation.

Condensation is something I also forgot. That’s important for you electrical system too. In my experience in electric distribution/collection, usually we’d want to keep termination points around 20/68, but thermostats could drop to as low as 10/50 before kicking in. Certainly keeping a house colder than 10/50 is a bad idea, but between that and normal 20/68 I’d think would be fine. You also have the risk though that your thermostat is a single point of measurement for the system. Other parts of a house might be cooler/warmer, so I’d agree with the advice to keeping your house warmer than 15/59, unless it supports multi-unit dwellings.

Good convo, cheers