Bruh I’m comfortable building my own PCs and that still sounds way more effort than just buying an external optical drive with USB interface.

I dunno if it’s “family sharing” or some other thing, but I can play games from my sister’s library through some means that I set up a couple of years ago.

Nobody wants energy stored for months. Whatever storage is used needs to get through temporary decreases in efficiency. In places that use solar, that means from one afternoon to the next morning. In places that use wind, it means until the wind picks up. We’re talking storage on the order of tens of hours at the most.

The fantastic thing about renewables is how much they lend themselves to a less centralised model. Solar collector? Sure, why not‽ Rooftop solar on people’s houses? You bet! Geothermal? If local conditions are favourable to it, absolutely!

Instead of a small number of massive power plants that only governments or really large corporations can operate individuals can generate the power for themselves, or companies can offset their costs by generating a little power, or cities can operate a smaller plant to power what operations in their city aren’t handled by other means. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.

This contrasts with nuclear. SMRs could theoretically do the same thing, but haven’t yet proven viable. And traditional plants just put out way too much power. They’re one-size-fits-all by definition, and only have the ability to operate alongside other modes with the other modes filling in a small amount around the edges.

• Tor, from Old English torr, meaning hill.
• Pen, from Celtic *penn, meaning hill.
• How, from Danish hoh, meaning hill.
• Hill, from English hill, meaning hill.

^{Unfortunately, it’s not actually a real official name for a hill, though it could be…}

Nuclear doesn’t mean anti-renewable, both can exist.

Not easily, for the reasons explained in my reply to @[email protected].

The people who I talk to who are pro nuclear seem very well informed

I doubt it, because the science itself is against nuclear. Evidence says it would be too expensive and take too long to deliver compared to renewables.

You can’t cut the red tape. The red tape is why we’re able to say nuclear is safe.

the weird part is most people do think nuclear fusion plants are a good thing and can solve stuff. But they have almost all of the downsides nuclear fission plants have in terms of red tape, complexity and cost

Huh? Nuclear fusion doesn’t have any downsides or upsides. Because it doesn’t exist. We’ve never been able to generate net power with fusion. (No, not even that story from a couple of years ago, which only counted as ‘input’ a small fraction of the total energy used overall. It was a good development, but just one small step on the long journey to it being practical.)

Being anti-nuclear was a poor stance to have 20, 30 years ago. At that time, renewables weren’t cost effective enough to be a big portion of our energy generation mix, and we should have been building alternatives to fossil fuels since back then if not earlier. But today, all the analysis tells us that renewables are far cheaper and more effective than nuclear. Today, being pro-nuclear is the wrong stance to take. It’s the anti-science stance, which is why it has seen a recent rise among right-wing political parties and media organisations.

First, no, that’s not what I said. If you’re only going to be arguing in bad faith like that this will be the last time I engage with you.

Second, baseload power is in fact a myth. And it becomes even worse when you consider the fact that nuclear doesn’t scale up and down in response to demand very well. In places with large amounts of rooftop solar and other distributed renewables, nuclear is especially bad, because you can’t just tell everyone who has their own generation to stop doing that, but you also don’t want to be generating more than is used.

Third, even if you did consider it necessary to have baseload “until we have adequate storage”, the extremely long timelines it takes to get from today to using renewables in places that don’t already have it, spending money designing and building nuclear would just delay the building of that storage, and it would still end up coming online too late.

I used to be a fan of nuclear. In 2010 I’d have said yeah, we should do it. But every time I’ve looked into it over the last 10 years especially, I’ve had to reckon with the simple fact that all the data tells us we shouldn’t be building nuclear; it’s just an inferior option to renewables.

Safe, sure. Efficient? Not even close.

It’s far, far more expensive than renewable energy. It also takes far, far longer to build a plant. Too long to meet 2030 targets even if you started building today. And in most western democracies you wouldn’t even be able to get anything done by 2040 if you also add in political processes, consultation, and design of the plant.

There’s a reason the current biggest proponents of nuclear energy are people and parties who previously were open climate change deniers. Deciding to go to nuclear will give fossil fuel companies maximum time to keep doing their thing. Companies which made their existence on the back of fossil fuels, like mining companies and plant operators also love it, because it doesn’t require much of a change from their current business model.

By jove you’ve got it! I must make haste and alert the Director of this ingenuous new strategum at once!

To me, the word sexting implies very explicitly sexual content. If it’s with a minor, far more mild content could still be inappropriate.

In Australia I don’t think teachers are underpaid, but schools are absolutely underfunded. Which can often mean teachers end up spending personal money on school resources, which means their actual effective pay isn’t as good as it looks from the outside.

They also work way longer hours than is reflected in their contract.

stress balls in funny shapes and things like that.

Got pulled into the office for using my own money on that one lol

Next time don’t buy squishy dicks for work colleagues.

What is the difference between a hesitation and a censure?

We can see 5, and there’s one that we can presume is covered up by the child nearest the camera.

There’s also a single line (that doesn’t form a point of the star, because you need two lines to meet to form a point) coming out at the top left.

Yeah I mean, I know dogs come in a wide range of sizes, but I feel like default dog is a lot bigger thanks default chicken.

I don’t know anyone that owns a dinosaur

I do. It’s somewhat more common with people living in more rural areas than in the city, but I’d guess they’re the third most popular pet after cats & dogs.

How does it make you feel to know that a bunch of the best players (not the top 2, but a few of the top 20 and even more of the rising stars) weren’t even born when Age 2 first came out?

Yeah I agree. Age of Empires is one of my favourite gaming franchises, but I’ve never really been able to get into RTS games outside of it, although I’ve tried. I had a bit of fun with Warcraft 3, but it never really clicked with me properly, and others I’ve tried I didn’t really even enjoy.

Well that’s not quite true. I also loved Battle for Middle Earth 2. But I’ve never played it online at all, and obviously it’s completely unavailable in any legal form today, so it’s hard to really count it.

But still yeah, absolutely love the Age games. The DEs have been handled so brilliantly, and I am enormously excited for Age of Mythology: Retold, since AoM was my favourite part of the franchise.

a screenshot of Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire

I’m not certain, but based on the green headwear I think it might be Emerald, actually.