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[Max™]

I mean, if you go through the steps to get the heavy metals out of panels, why not go through the steps to reprocess waste? It isn't like it just spits out bomb grade material if you do this, you have to purpose build plants to improve the yield of the boomy stuff, after all.

Also: hergidergians has me fully tickled, like a kitten whiskers on your nose.

[Reelya]

Sure, they could reprocess the nuclear waste. That's not the issue. The issue is that it's too expensive. If we want them to do that, we'd need to do something like a big tax on uranium mining or something. Basically, nuclear waste is building up and nobody wants to reprocess it because it's cheaper to just dig up more uranium and keep stockpiling the waste.

On that front however, there are new processes for solar panels that don't use lead at all now. e.g. there's a new process using bismuth instead of lead that gets panels of around 22% efficiency. So we might see laws e.g. that any panel containing the old lead etc needs to be reprocessed when it's used up, meaning people don't chuck them out early, but we can definitely build cleaner panels too.

[Trekkin]

I'm saying a modern nuclear power plant is as bomblike as the pressure cooker in your kitchen, though it's arguably easier to make a pressure cooker blow up. The simple description is a container with hot rocks and water for the most common types, replace the water with molten salts or interesting gas mixtures for some of the newer designs.

Yeah, most of the concerns about "but what if it exploded and the nuclear got out and into my petunias/children" are mostly NIMBY fearmongering, to the point where the geometric constraints on reactor design for safety reasons impinge somewhat on maximal efficiency. (It's not a patch on how inefficient our current refueling regimes are since they're trying to minimize the production of scary things rather than maximize fuel burn, but still.)

That's not to say there aren't concerning reactor designs out there, among them naval reactors with their space constraints and ability to disengage their SCRAM systems, but municipal power reactors just aren't built like that.

[Bumber]

Sure, they could reprocess the nuclear waste. That's not the issue. The issue is that it's too expensive. If we want them to do that, we'd need to do something like a big tax on uranium mining or something. Basically, nuclear waste is building up and nobody wants to reprocess it because it's cheaper to just dig up more uranium and keep stockpiling the waste.

Or wait until the mines start to dry out, I guess. By that point in time, Thorium might be better, though.

Hidden cost of solar is that you also need a bunch of batteries if it's your main energy source. You also need enough land to fit all your solar panels, and that's not effective in a dense city with multi-story apartments.

[Reelya]

Batteries could be a good investment even without solar being around. They reduce base-load requirements.

But also keep in mind, current off-peak pricing is designed to shift load from the daytime to the nighttime. If you "went solar" you could not only abolish that pricing scheme, but also make power cheaper during sunlight hours. And in that scenario, you could be pretty clever with batteries. e.g. consumers could fill up batteries during daylight (cheaper) to use at night (expensive), and save money. And if the electricity company actually provided the batteries to the home-users, then the company could in fact use a little of everyone's battery space to work as some grid backup. e.g. the cost and benefits of the batteries would be shared between utility company and home users, seamlessly.

[Bumber]

Batteries could be a good investment even without solar being around. They reduce base-load requirements.

The standard kind runs the risk of exploding, though. Put them in every home and you increase the risk of fires. There are creative solutions with storing heat and stuff, but you lose efficiency, and therefore require more solar panels.

Point is, it's not really practical to run the whole grid on batteries. It just ends with burning (the midnight) oil because it's more cost effective.

[Reelya]

If we can make biofuel generation cheap enough it would be a good partner for wind and solar, and would work in existing gas plants, if you wanted to go all-renewable.

[Bumber]

If you could use something like algae, I guess. Using standard crops is kind of bad environmentally.

[Kagus]

As an aside, were they actually any more prone to bathing than the usual citizen of those times? I don't remember reading about any particular significance placed on bathing, like with the early Indus cultures (for example). And, I mean... It gets pretty fucking cold up here.

Well, no, depending on the standards you use, just apparently more prone to bathing than the Anglo-Saxons. I was referring to this from John of Wallingford, Abbot of St. Albans (not a bishop. Mea culpa.):
"The Danes, thanks to their habit of combing their hair every day, of bathing every Saturday and regularly changing their clothes, were able to undermine the virtue of married women and even seduce the daughters of nobles to be their mistresses."

As complaints about barbarians go, "damn their seductively superior hygiene" seems an oddly tsundere thing to complain about if they were really all raiders.

Ah, gotcha. Also yes, that's a pretty funny line and concept.

Now, this is pretty much entirely hearsay, but I remember reading one account about how the "Asians have small penises/are bad in bed" stigma first really got traction during the 20's and 30's, when there was an influx of Filipino immigrants. These were described as being "well-dressed, polite, and very skillful dancers", which apparently made them very popular with the ladies... A notion that was significantly less popular with several of the non-pinoy men, who then started trying to do something about it by trashtalking them.

It's hilarious when you think about how the term is rumored to come from the norse languages hitting the roman ear as "bar bar bar" because a bunch of us were exposed to stuff like the muppets chef and they'd be called hergidergians or some shit now.

Wouldn't it be Borkborkian, then?

< 3%

Love is not just some statistic!

[birdy51]

Trump canceled the peace summit with North Korea. Wheee...

[smjjames]

Trump canceled the peace summit with North Korea. Wheee...

It was inevitable.

Also, this kind of thing is usually done after months or even years of lower level dinplomacy and planning, not on a whim.

There were also rumors that Kim was scared to go because he was afraid of a coup.

[Doomblade187]

Trump canceled the peace summit with North Korea. Wheee...

It was inevitable.

Also, this kind of thing is usually done after months or even years of lower level dinplomacy and planning, not on a whim.

There were also rumors that Kim was scared to go because he was afraid of a coup.

Impending DPRK thread title change, I suppose.

[Folly]

Trump's explanation was that NK's recent comment insulting the Veep and threatening to destroy America did not foster a suitable atmosphere for peace.

It seems clear to me that Trump was sweating because he knew that he would screw up the meeting, be unable to close the deal, and fail to get the peace that everyone wanted. So he jumped at the very first excuse he got to call the whole thing off and blame someone else. Better to plunge the world into a war that he can win than to let people see him as a failure.

[Starver]

And wr can deal with lead much better than nuclear waste.

I agree with you, though I'm minded of the payoff of the Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch with Griff being interviewed regarding his Health And Safety claim after driving a nuclear waste truck.

(Can't find a potted YouTube solo snippet for it. May be in the series(/season) 2 episode 2 broadcast.)

[smjjames]

Trump's explanation was that NK's recent comment insulting the Veep and threatening to destroy America did not foster a suitable atmosphere for peace.

It seems clear to me that Trump was sweating because he knew that he would screw up the meeting, be unable to close the deal, and fail to get the peace that everyone wanted. So he jumped at the very first excuse he got to call the whole thing off and blame someone else. Better to plunge the world into a war that he can win than to let people see him as a failure.

Kim seemed to be giving Trump a bit of an out by saying he was afraid of a coup while he was gone.

To note, the thing most favorably viewed about Trump over the past couple of months was his handling of North Korea.

That's now gone.

Which didn’t appear to affect his job approval very much. Mainly it just amounted to ‘glad he isn’t sabre rattling anymore’. Also, iPad keeps insisting on capitalizing sabre for some reason.