@The_Nybbler's banner p

The_Nybbler

If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.

8 followers   follows 0 users  
joined 2022 September 04 21:42:16 UTC

				

User ID: 174

The_Nybbler

If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.

8 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 04 21:42:16 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 174

And there are the obvious ones like not being reliable when the sun don't shine or the wind don't blow, which are real but have had engineers and scientists working on them for decades now with some good work arounds.

They still get handwaved and/or completely ignored in most treatments of the subject outside the trade press. Don't play a drinking game with a rule of "take a drink every time they compare fossil and solar nameplate capacity as if they're equivalent" if you value your liver.

Much like in comedy, timing is everything. That's a thing most people think can't be done. They'll parrot platitudes like "time in the market beats timing the market" and talk about how it's basically impossible to do it.

And much like comedy, most of them are right that they can't do it and neither can their audience. Timing is difficult. I don't think I could do it consistently, which is why I don't day trade. I DID buy as much as I could scrape up (which wasn't much) during the 2008 crash, but that was kinda playing on easy mode.

Landman* really is that popular, huh? Battery tech has only gotten better and cheaper, and the LCOE of renewables even with storage added is competitive with or better than fossil fuels, yet public opinion is backsliding.

I don't believe this. This particular document is clear nonsense. It is assuming only 4 hours storage. Which means you're going to need a LOT of fossil fuel standby capacity -- almost the same as your solar capacity. All you're saving is fuel. If you want to save any capital costs at all, you either need enough battery to cover the longest dark period, or you need to spin up your generators before your battery gets low (which lets you save somewhat on capital costs, but gives higher fuel costs)

Income comes and goes, is the thing. Your income is never guaranteed, credit is an illusion of the false world which will disappear when you need it most, and expenses can scale infinitly.

Nothing is guaranteed. Unless your wealth is in non-perishable food, weapons, and the loyalty of fighting men, you're already in a finance world rather than a primitive physical one -- anything dollar-denominated is. In that world -- which is fortunately the one most of us live in, because it's a lot less harsh than the primitive one -- you don't need any particular amount to not be poor.

Isn't it the more logical view, though?

No. First of all, the idea that those with the most "moral worth" should be the wealthiest is bizarre. You then connect moral worth to "need", which is also rather strange (I guess this borrows from Marx). Then the resulting system is incoherent; as long as you're working you should be wealthy, but if you dare to retire you should not be. You could certainly build a (totalitarian) system based on these ideas, but I don't think the thing would be called "wealth" -- it would be a form of status granted by the state, not an accumulation of value.

If you don't have the income you can't save yourself rich. Contrariwise, if you do, you don't need $75,000 or anything to not be poor -- though you CAN spend yourself poor at any income.

For example, a lot of San Fransisco 50 year olds made way too much money in a software boom, often being head button style changer for Google for 10 years. I don't see this as entitling them to the $1 million they probably saved from that career. Yes, it's how they made their money and got it to be legally recognized as theirs, but morally they did nothing to „deserve“ it.

Since this seems like the subthread for this sort of thing, I'll point out that if they only saved $1M from 10 years at Google, they were absolutely terrible with money.

But also, if you don't think people deserve the wages paid for their labor, you're basically at odds with almost everyone. Even Marx wouldn't say workers didn't deserve their wages.

You could make money on Iran by selling oil futures when they spiked; I think there were several spikes which dropped within a day.

My point is that including the "Biden boom times" in this makes it less likely to be true politically motivated gloating and more likely to be false politically motivated gloating.

Funny, my real net worth dropped during the "Biden boom times" and increased significantly during the first year of Trump's second term, enough that I retired in January.

The previous Iran leadership at least played lip service to working relations with it's Arab neighbors.

The previous Iranian leadership apparently told the KSA and the other Gulf states that if they were attacked by anyone, they'd attack the Gulf states. This was supposed to get those states to discourage attacks by the US, but it apparently had the opposite effect, since the various princes and emirs are not France.

Enough Communism can hold any people down, though. Fortunately Vietnam (unlike North Korea) had insufficient communism.

and then have the gall to get upset that people are thinking its some kind of NeoNazi thing.

Read the thread: He's not upset; he's trolling and winning at it.

I love shooting citizens for lawful reasons

The US used to be "we don't think of you at all" with respect to the EU -- they would do dumb stuff which harmed us but harmed them more (non-tariff barriers, messing with tech companies, buying Russian gas, etc) and the US really wouldn't react much. Under Trump II it's become a more openly adversarial relationship. Spain is almost an open enemy now (and has been since the Madrid bombings) and France is headed that direction.

ETA: Things are changing fast, France is now an open enemy if Bloomberg headlines are to believed.

That Trump's trying to negotiate is certainly the way to bet. But the Euros totally walked into this, and the most basic Trumpology could have told them that.

Vietnam? Sure. Japan... not so much.

Yes, the conservative realizes this and wants to change it by changing incentives.

How are Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and all those other third world countries doing after your carpet bombing?

We never nuked any of them, carpet bombing doesn't work as well. Vietnam's doing pretty well. Iraq... well, better than under Saddam Hussein. Syria's on Putin's plate, and Libya on Europe's.

An actor can probably get "country matters" across, perhaps by breaking accent and rhythm a bit so it's clearly "cunt-ry matters" (whether that's the derivation or not). As for "nothing" meaning "vagina" (or "pussy"), that's likely a recent fabrication.

And certainly all the people complaining about hospice and daycare fraud aren't running their own fraudulent hospices and daycares.

Last time the US used nukes in anger, we bombed the target into the First World.

I don't really subscribe to the word "right" in this case.

When you lose "right", you also lose "should" and also "responsibility".

Personally, I think the USA should have anticipated this, and either ensured it had a mitigation strategy or hold off until it could come up with one.

The US did; the Department of Defense is not, in fact, entirely made up of idiots. There is mitigation, in fact, happening, which is why there's not $200+ oil and lights out everywhere from London to Calcutta.

I actually think that when the protests were happening the American military should have scrambled whatever it had or could to get cooking immediately to help the protests with a decapitation strike.

It's pretty clear that wouldn't have worked. If the Iranian dissidents can't do anything with several layers of the leadership knocked off, they couldn't have done anything with whatever could be scrambled up at the time. The Iranian dissidents are utterly defanged and can be kept down by the Basij and their small arms alone.

Belligerent and water is pretty fungible

No, not at all. Kuwait, for instance, is not a belligerent.

I doubt military bases have dedicated desalination plants so it's just a normal one near a city but we can assume some goes to service members.

Which makes them dual-use infrastructure, which means they are not absolutely protected from attack but rather are subject to the usual rules of proportionality (military advantage vs. collateral civilian damage)

Especially given it will likely not reduce military effectiveness and will inflict a lot of suffering on the civilian population that Trump/the USA is claiming to be fighting to free from their (absolutely awful) government.

As far as I know, the only desalination plant to be hit (allegedly) is on Qeshm Island. Which Iran is currently (and predictably) using as part of their strategem to control the Strait. This makes it an arguably reasonable target on its face, though I do not know enough details to know if it's really a reasonable target. (I also don't know if it was actually hit or if it was, if it was itself collateral damage)

There's plenty who DO believe the drug boats are fishing boats. They're still going on about Andrés Fernando Tufiño Chila.

Neutral or belligerent? Supplying military installations or not?