In much of California, it’s not the electric energy costs that are high, it’s the delivery/grid fees. Not that it matters as far as the electricity bill goes, but it’s worth noting.

On my recent bill I paid 16¢/kWh for on-peak electric generation and 49¢/kWh for electric delivery. (There’s a small baseline credit for delivery so it’s a little more complicated, but you get the idea.)

So if someone tries to tell you electricity is expensive because CA is a hippie state with lots of solar, I would be a little skeptical.

Sorta, but the sunrise/set are due predominantly to the rotation of the earth about its axis, not the revolution about the sun.

Yeah I’ve been very happy with them.

No experience with their software, but the service is great — I have an ARM SBC with WireGuard handling my tunnels, and my router does the rest (so my TV/guest SSID/personal SSID/whatever can get routed over Mullvad with no client setup). My DNS forwarders are each routed through a different Mullvad interface too.

You can’t beat

🤔

I mean, isn’t that what ringing is for—asking if they want to talk? It’s ok to decline a call.

They made the decision that would save the most lives, which is their job.

But they lied to the public, which undermines trust; IMHO this was a myopic decision.

As for the people doing what’s best for society, that’s antithetical to American individualism

Can’t speak for everyone, but Flex Alerts in California do indeed work (it’s when we’re asked to reduce energy consumption).

your faith was proven wrong with both masks and toilet paper being bought for resale at predatory prices, or just to maintain personal supplies at the expense of everyone else.

That’s a fallacy/faulty generalization — I’m not saying everyone behaves well, but from my experience, the vast majority do. The pandemic for me was a time where I really felt like we looked out for our fellow people, at least locally.

In 2020 they recommended against face masks for non-healthcare workers. My understanding is that they did this to conserve masks for healthcare workers, as did the WHO. IMHO that was a really shitty thing for them to have done. Presenting all the facts and pleading with the public would, I think, have resulted in higher trust in them as an institution, ultimately saving lives, but that’s just my opinion I guess.

But yeah, completely agree that even then it was more or less well meaning, as opposed to now.

https://www.superbowl-ads.com/1997-tabasco-mosquito/

Best ad ever IMHO (sorry for funky link, YouTube if you prefer).

No dialog, no rampant consumerism (hot sauce is a necessary food), no sex/sexism, no emotional manipulation.

Also, 1.21GW is famously used in Back to the Future.

From link:

NOTE: The script is broken, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE THE SCRIPT NOW. Attempting to run it may get your account flagged stopping you from trying face verification either temporarily or permanently, forcing you to use your ID.

pr: https://github.com/xyzeva/k-id-age-verifier/pull/12

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_for_Norfolk

Given that they specified “caffeinated tea” as also conferring benefit, I would guess it’s the caffeine that’s the active substance here.

Well f2k me, T1L, t4s!

Where energy efficiency isn’t a concern (maybe a blender or a toaster) this sounds nice, but otherwise…well…lots of wasted energy.

(Of course, it all has to be balanced against the cost of manufacturing/disposing.)

Heat pumps want low temperature differences, so I’m not sure you’re going to have much luck getting a heat pump oven to 475F/~250C.

Or, malicious compliance by someone with a moral compass. Best is to somehow leak documents wholesale. But if that’s not possible, I think the next best way to all but guarantee that the information gets out is to do a lousy job censoring, and let “The Internet” do the rest. It also makes the administration look even more stupid, especially in the eyes of technically minded folks.

But yeah, not the best and brightest, that’s certainly a possibility.

Give turnips a shot! Make sure to add a beet so they get that almost neon purple color (ok, really “argon purple”) like you find in middle eastern restaurants.

High frequency is generally bad for transmission line losses, so getting power from A to B is better at lower frequency — DC is a great option here.

If we switched to DC, many things would still flicker though as they would presumably use switching power supplies, but those could be relatively high frequency like you said.

Interestingly, airplanes use 400Hz, as transmission over distance doesn’t matter, and transformers can be made much smaller/lighter.

The history of the smallpox vaccine is fascinating iirc — milk maids, orphans-as-storage+transportation, really crazy stuff.

And after reading about it, one thing that’s neat is that it makes sense. You don’t need to talk about homeopathic “water memory” or whatever, and you don’t even need a solid understanding of biology — the whole thing just kinda…makes sense.

And yet, here we are…

The model certainly works for other things — municipal broadband in the USA is often very well regarded.