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[Grim Portent]

presumably robots/safety catches will be utilized?

And then subverted on general principle.

As a general rule, the opponents of progress do not hold views discordant that are with reality so much as they are orthogonal to it. The dangers imposed by hydrogen won't even register with them. What will register is that everyone telling them not to barbecue their hydrogen tank has a STEM job and is therefore a lyin' elitist jerb-tookin' liebruhl to be actively defied, b'gawd angry gurning noises.

And then they will die, and the technoplutocracy will be blamed again, and we're back to square one.

I'm having trouble translating "jerb-tookin"

Job taking.

[Trekkin]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well...yeah. Scientists and technologists keep assuming their biggest problem is apathy when it's actually antipathy, which is part of why they keep wasting everyone's time with outreach. If you let them catch you trying to keep them safe they'll kick over your efforts just to prove they can.

So yes, trying to add more technology to make new technology appear safe is a Sisyphean task; it might have worked decades ago, but Americans don't think that way anymore. It's far more effective to just buy everyone regulating the response to safety concerns and proceed as planned.

[Frumple]

How to know when someone's trying too hard to curry favor: They bring you a "gift" of dozens of human heads.

Honestly, it's stuff like that that's much of why I keep reading shlock isekai et al shite. Most of the time you feel like you should probably regret it (even if you don't, really), and then occasionally you hit authors that are so bad it wraps around to being kinda' okay*, like this abe the wizard thing. 96 chapters in, still not a wizard, but someone just gave the MC a pile of human heads!

* and I guess even more occasionally you just find one that's plain ol' okay without the need to be carried by absurdity or people bludgeoning each other with rivers or somethin'.

E: This one also has a thing where they casually mention this item or that item is made with orc skin, where in the setting orcs are fully sentient, intelligent people who also form a coalition of subraces to create one of the strongest nations on the planet.

Folks, when your people idly use what amounts to human skin as a common, if high end, crafting material, I think you might be on the side of the bad guys. Just throwing that one out there.

[Reelya]

Scary idea. People are bad enough with gasoline - having the average Joe at a hydrogen filling station feels like a recipe for disaster. Despite the drawbacks, conventional batteries feels like a much saner option.

I'd like to point out that the device in question (the aluminium one mentioned on a previous page I believe) isn't some theoretical lab device. It's actually been installed on real vehicles being used in real work environments:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/transportation/alternative-transportation/hydrogen-on-tap-device-trucks-fuel-efficient-vehicles

The city of Carmel, Ind., has trucks for plowing snow, salting streets, and carrying landscaping equipment. But one cherry-red pickup can do something no other vehicle can: produce its own hydrogen.

A 45-kilogram metal box sits in the bed of the work truck. When a driver starts the engine, the device automatically begins concocting the colorless, odorless gas, which feeds into the engine’s intake manifold. This prevents the truck from guzzling gasoline until the hydrogen supply runs out. The pickup has no fuel-cell module, a standard component in most hydrogen vehicles. No high-pressure storage tanks or refueling pumps are needed, either.

Instead, the “hydrogen-on-tap” device contains six stainless steel canisters. Each contains a 113-gram button of an aluminum and gallium alloy. A small amount of water drips onto the buttons, causing a chemical reaction that splits the oxygen and hydrogen contained in the water. The hydrogen releases, and the rest turns into aluminum oxide, a waste product that can be recycled to create more buttons. Back in the garage, the driver can replace spent canisters with news ones to replenish the hydrogen supply.

For storage, the point here is that the volatile component of the fuel is only water, not hydrogen.

[LordBaal]

Scary idea. People are bad enough with gasoline - having the average Joe at a hydrogen filling station feels like a recipe for disaster. Despite the drawbacks, conventional batteries feels like a much saner option.

Why would you say that? Is not like something horrible have happened before with hydrogen? Or have I missed something the last 100 years?

But seriusly, this technology would in fact prevent those huge concentrations of hydrogen an the logistical problems it has all that, instead making it as its needed be it in the vehicle itself or at the refuel station, depending on the desing the engineers choose to go with.

On vehicle you have the thing made on the go, you'll need the water or urine reservoir (maybe it would work even better on long trip buses with bathrooms?) and the aluminum powder, cakes, rods, tablets or whatever to be replaced by you or at service stations every time they run out. I guess a compresor would be needed to feed the fuel cell?

On the refill station would work like the Mirai currently does, only the hydrogen you pump into the vehicle its made at the moment or just beforehand and stored on small tanks, saving the need to make it out of petroleum, natural gas, and transporting it and keeping it on large tanks.

[McTraveller]

What's all this sudden nonsense about murder hornets?

[hector13]

Giant Asian hornets ‘ave been spotted in extreme north-western Washington state.

People be scared, apparently, ‘cause they big and have a particularly potent sting, and they will destroy beehives in a matter of hours to get to the goodies on the inside, and unless someone happens to like Japanese honeybees, this will more than likely devastate the bee population as a result.

[scriver]

Can't you like

EXTERMINATE

[McTraveller]

So how long until we need artificial bees then?  Can we avoid the Black Mirror episode?

[ChairmanPoo]

of course we can! Didn't you hear about the blue whales spotted in the channels of venice?

[Egan_BW]

blue whales have returned to the venice shitwater, nature is healing

[LordBaal]

That photo is tricked rigth?

And I'm sure a worldwide hunt and exterminate hornets program wherever they don't belong would do wonders.

[pikachu17]

That photo is tricked rigth?

And I'm sure a worldwide hunt and exterminate hornets program wherever they don't belong would do wonders.

Apparently, it is.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/whale-venice-canal-photograph/

[Iduno]

What's all this sudden nonsense about murder hornets?

Shitty knock-off killer bees.

[scriver]

But seriously though. It's expensive, sure. But it can be done. If imagine bigass fucking hive-living active predating hornets would be on the easier side of the scale of eradication difficulty. Kill them all.

We've trained for this. We know what we're doing. Don't let all those extinct animals have been killed off in vain. Start the bug hunt today.