[Non-political] News that makes you Laugh/Cry/Both...

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Wed Jan 17, 2018 4:31 pm

This is relevant

In Colorado, a Glimpse of Renewables Insanely Cheap Future.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Thu Jan 18, 2018 1:08 am

Yeah, and those are battery storage because industrial-scale battery prices are falling rather fast now, in every open market country. Like in Oz the federal govt. had to put special taxes on the solar and wind plants and directly pay the money from it to the coal plants just to keep them open, few years ago now.

Despite coal prices collapsing, buying coal to make into electricity is no longer economic without special legal protection and state subsidies, because it costs about the same or less to build solar (and vastly less to build wind) and their running costs are many orders of magnitude lower. It's been that way a fair while, but a lot of the markets are fairly well captured by incumbents with their old coal plants.

Anyway, the storage costs are coming down now that it's needed, because the new power going in is all renewable and the coal plants are closing all over. There's a lot of cheaper battery designs that Lithium-ion too when you don't care about weight, but I'm not sure how many of them will get production ramped up for the coming demand.

It may be the concentrators never catch the photovoltaic plus battery setups now, the growth in the industries is crazy and economy of scale is happening.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Jan 19, 2018 7:36 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7eb1DHZ9GQ
Well then . . 50/50 odds of surviving and deleting enough humans to save the species and certain doom on the other side?
Disregarding the possibilities of throwing earth out of orbit and simply shattering the crust.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Jan 19, 2018 7:53 pm

Stahlseele wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7eb1DHZ9GQ
Well then . . 50/50 odds of surviving and deleting enough humans to save the species and certain doom on the other side?
Disregarding the possibilities of throwing earth out of orbit and simply shattering the crust.

If YouTube recommends the stupid nonscience shit to me now I’m holding you personally responsible (maybe replacing domino and Minecraft video recommendations courtesy of my children)

This is how I get ufo crap in my google news feed.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Jan 19, 2018 9:18 pm

i regret nothing!

*snickers*

phlapjackage · Post by **phlapjackage** » Wed Jan 24, 2018 8:37 am

Ursula K Leguin died Jan 22

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:05 am

https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musks-fl ... -just-500/

Only in Fucking America . .
The kids love this shit . .

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Jan 30, 2018 10:38 pm

This is really depressing:

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/regio ... 1801290091

Not the numbers nor the scope of the problem -- I knew all that already. What's depressing is how disorganized and bad at communication the folks calling the shots around that exhibit seemed to be over the weekend.

If your exhibit is going to travel around the country, you should probably rethink the time ratio between a 3-day buildout to a only 4.5 day period open to the public before teardown begins.
Installing an exhibit about the dangers of addiction to painkillers should probably not result in multiple workers requiring medical treatment for their injuries. (I do not know if either injury resulted in a new opiate prescription, but the cynic I me wants to speculate that they did)
Maybe you should know where the next stop on your exhibit's tour is in more detail than "Ohio".
I would like to know how Chris Burden's feels about your knockoff of "The Reason for the Neutron Bomb" in your installation piece illustrating large numbers.
I'm also truly impressed at how all the carvings representing the faces of the victims are chalk white against a black background. It's like nobody involved realized the pre-existing subtext of the difference in media response between the opioid epidemic of the teens and the crack epidemic of the 80s.

tl;dr: The people in charge are incapable of fixing the problem.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Jan 31, 2018 1:28 am

The anti-opioid people have to rely on feels before reals, due to being completely empty-handed on the question of how to treat debilitating chronic pain.

There's also the issue of doctors underprescribing opioids, which forces patients to supplement their prescriptions with illegal sources, or else puts them through a roller-coaster of agony and relief, neither of which is really helpful for avoiding overdose.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Jan 31, 2018 7:33 am

hyzmarca wrote:The anti-opioid people have to rely on feels before reals, due to being completely empty-handed on the question of how to treat debilitating chronic pain.

Don't be silly, there's both cocaine and large quantities of alcohol as options, and it's a well-known fact that these have never caused problems.

(There is of course always research into alternative forms of useful pain relief, last I checked people were looking into cane toads as a solution and China even wanted to import them from Australia. And importing cane toads has never gone badly for anyone.)

There's also the issue of doctors underprescribing opioids, which forces patients to supplement their prescriptions with illegal sources, or else puts them through a roller-coaster of agony and relief, neither of which is really helpful for avoiding overdose.

Starting tomorrow, any level of codeine requires a prescription in Australia, whereas you previously used to be able to buy 40-packs of 15mg codeine/500mg paracetamol over the counter at pharmacies (giving name and address in a generally-not-backed-up-by-ID way and with the pharmacist able to ask what it's for and deny it if they think something is up). People in my quiet "mostly old age pensioners" town have already been emptying pharmacies out to stock up ahead of time (and are probably going to be visiting doctors even more than already because they refuse to do the polite thing and just die already).

With any luck this will cost the government a lot of money in bulk-billing (and the fact that prescribed medication is cheaper than non-prescribed for anyone on any kind of income support such as the elderly and unemployed). Also it totally won't result in people just growing their own opium.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Sat Feb 03, 2018 1:18 pm

https://www.buzzfeed.com/marcusjones/pe ... .xb9RoMyZZ

I don't think this has been posted yet, apologies if I've overlooked it somewhere else.

Lost in court against someone rich and famous and powerful, and his career still is going strong.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Feb 09, 2018 7:02 pm

Old Spice got in on the D&D thing...

http://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/02/09/ ... followers/

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:11 pm

You can argue whether this is politics or not, but it's not about *politicians* so I'll put it here: UK right-wing rag The Sun not so good at reading comprehension.

And I would have thought the author of the article really would be able to relate to a brain-damaged child in the body of a man.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Wed Mar 07, 2018 2:38 pm

Ok, yeah, it's probably that they didn't read the book and just watched derivative movies...but part of me wonders if they've decided on the sort of moral the book ought to be pushing.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Wed Mar 07, 2018 6:42 pm

I still can't believe that this is not a satirical article.

Now, I don't agree that the book is about the Monster being misunderstood. I see it as being about Frankenstein not taking responsibility for his actions and running away. And it's not like the Monster is totally innocent - he goes on murderous rampages in the book. But still, what that article was insane.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:10 pm

Extremely punchable Martin Shkreli sentenced to 7 years in prison for fraud. In addition, he has to forfeit $7.4 million and his unique Wu Tang album. His usual smug demeanor cracked during sentencing, and he broke down crying, apologizing to investors for losing their trust.

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Sat Mar 10, 2018 12:00 am

Find it funny they single out the Wu Tang album.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Mar 10, 2018 12:34 am

Well, I have been told they ain't nothing to fuck with.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 10, 2018 9:00 am

They also singled out his Picasso. Basically, they forced the forfeiture of specific cultural artifacts rather than levying a monetary fine.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Mar 10, 2018 9:20 am

Not that I necessarily disagree, but that may be the first time a Wu Tang Clan album was (implicitly) referred to as a "cultural artifact"

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 12:03 am

Somebody storms youtube's HQ shooting like crazy, luckily the only one they managed to kill was themselves.

So who wants to bet this was because of youtube's recent crackdown on gun videos?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 4:53 am

maglag wrote:So who wants to bet this was because of youtube's recent crackdown on gun videos?

I wouldn't bet against that because I would lose my money. I also wouldn't bet on it because the returns would not be worth it.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 8:06 am

According to some tech news sites i read it was not because of that.
Her Youtube account had been deleted because of $reasons weeks/months ago.
And she had seen google/youtube as one of the fascist dictatorships controlling her every life.
And she appearantly wanted to kill an ex-boyfriend who appearantly works for youtube there.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 9:53 am

One thing to remember about shootings is that the instant they happen the rightwing, with the help of Russian government-sponsored trolls, are going to fill the air with bullshit. They are going to make fake social media accounts and fake screenshots and they are going to share them and plaster them everywhere. Their goals are to spin an early narrative that furthers their propaganda campaign and causes as much confusion in the initial investigation and subsequent reporting as possible, so that people simply distrust everything and instead of trying to stay up to date they just believe whatever they want.

This has happened for every major shooting of the past few years, and it's not going to stop. We have gone past egregiously biased reporting, past "freedom is slavery" doublethink, past lying to the brainwashed base, and taken the Orwellian nightmare to its logical conclusion; the functional death of all truth. The game now is for the truth to become an unknowable quantity for everyone, not just for the people inside the rightwing echo chamber; scream fake news at everyone while manufacturing fake news.

So the correct answer here is it's been less than 24 hours and almost anything we think we know could still plausibly turn out to be someone's fake that briefly caught out an investigator or a journalist. Police are likely still sorting through social media to identify legitimate and fake accounts. And this is the new rule for everything that the rightwing might take an interest in; you don't actually know anything about it until the dust is settled.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 11:37 am

DSMatticus wrote:This has happened for every major shooting of the past few years, and it's not going to stop. We have gone past egregiously biased reporting, past "freedom is slavery" doublethink, past lying to the brainwashed base, and taken the Orwellian nightmare to its logical conclusion; the functional death of all truth. The game now is for the truth to become an unknowable quantity for everyone, not just for the people inside the rightwing echo chamber; scream fake news at everyone while manufacturing fake news.

Which might work for a day or maybe a week, but the truth will eventually come out to anyone who wants it. Now, absolutely they are trying that, but it's only going to really work on those who want to be lied to.