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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: December 9th, 2023

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  • This comment is getting downvoted, and I don’t oppose nuclear, but I do think it’s worth noting that the nuclear energy sector has still under-priced the costs of nuclear waste management, transportation, and storage. Engineers don’t have practical methods of building storage containers and buildings that can last as long as the half-life of nuclear waste (1,000-10,000 year), and the long tail of storage costs has not been priced into the cost. Typically, this does end up being paid for by taxpayers over the course of many years. No energy generation system is without downsides, but it’s worth acknowledging them.


  • If you get a paywall, a paywall-free link is here: https://archive.ph/hoaIs

    My take on this story: dragging this reactor out of mothballs is expensive and risky, and operating at 50+ year old reactor is risky. The company that owns admits it isn’t even solvent enough to run it, much less ensure the risks of operating it. Microsoft and the 3 Mile Island owner are basically asking for a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer subsidy for an enterprise—so-called AI—that eliminates jobs and is used more for revenge porn and deepfakes than it is for any societal good. This is a bad deal.

















  • fpslem@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldGreat new club
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    11 days ago

    If you’re ordinary and you never get enough sleep, I have just the place for you. New York’s hottest nap club is “Off to Dreamland!” Located in the heart of Queens at the corner of Sleep Street and Sleepytime Drive, this converted mattress store park was the ceremony spot for a lengendary nap taken by Adam Conover when he was a boy. This place has everything: body pillows, comforters, blankies, cuddle buddies, sleep masks, and CPAP machines. And be sure to hit the converted traincar section and lean your head on the shoulder of MTA Chair Janno Lieber, the celebrity sleeper in residence.







  • fpslem@lemmy.worldtoToday I Learned@lemmy.worldTIL about Aviation biofuel
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    18 days ago

    Aviation biofuel is mostly a distraction. Any serious effort to decarbonize the transportation industry would focus on a scalable system, presumably high-speed rail.

    (And whoever is thinking about being a smartass, don’t you dare come at me with bullshit about trans-ocean flights, they obviously can’t be take by train, but biofuel is still utterly incapable of supplying even only ocean flights. It’s not ever going to be a viable product. We’d be better off trying to scale up carbon capture than try to use all our arable land to grow crops for fuel.)




  • fpslem@lemmy.worldtosolarpunk memes@slrpnk.netDensity saves nature
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    20 days ago

    Don’t forget the huge energy savings (heating/cooling, transportation, infrastructure) by having denser housing. It isn’t just a measurement of “I can see trees,” but all the daily human activities that have a reduced environmental impact in denser development. It’s counter-intuitive, but rural areas that are “nearer to nature” are often worse for the environment.

    There is probably a break-even point, I don’t think everyone living in skyscrapers is ecologically ideal and I wouldn’t want to live there anyway. But medium-density development with multi-unit (shared wall) buildings allows huge energy costs, while also making public transit more viable and providing a tax base that actually pays for its own infrastructure.



  • fpslem@lemmy.worldtoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldLow Cost Mini PCs
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    21 days ago

    Thanks for the rec! I also love that you presume that there will be a next time, cuz, uh, that’s accurate. These little boxes are powerhouses, I probably want one for a TV set-top box now that all the TV boxes (Roku, Amazon Fire, even Android TV and soon Apple TV) are riddled with ads.





  • fpslem@lemmy.worldtoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldLow Cost Mini PCs
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    21 days ago

    Beelink and Minisforum are legit

    I wish I knew a lot of this when I first started shopping for a mini PC. I ended up with a Beelink model that I’m quite happy with, but it seems almost luck that I didn’t pick another one, and I would have liked a “reputable brand” search function.