691–700 of 933 posts
Is the policy now to "harvest whatever we can ASAP" without any regard or consideration for the future or the environment?
Given the degree of corruption and criminality, a more appropriate metaphor might be "smash and grab".
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It's not a majority at all. it's a manipulating minority.
It was a majority of voters. If you include all of the non-voters as tacitly consenting to it, then it's an overwhelming majority. That's not entirely accurate; quite a few non-voters were prevented from voting in one way or another. But most non-voters chose not to vote. Quite a few were explicit about having some disagreement with the primary opponent and concluded that the two sides are equivalent.
I read up recently on the history of the fall of the roman empire and it was fascinating how eerily similar it was to the current state of the US. Overwhelmed by corruption and wars they make stupider and stupider decisions on ever larger scales, ever more frequently. And the population grows ever more cynical, eventually opting for authoritarianism before eventually the center can't hold any more and it all collapse…
In my opinion, it was always crazy to build a wind farm in the most scenic part of the Pacific coast. The neo-industrialist in me thinks it would have been cool to see that driving the 1. But you can hardly call dredging and filling all that open ocean habitat conservationist.
I don't care how energy efficient it is. It's dystopian and depressing.
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> Never attribute to stupidity what can be attributed to self-interest. Interesting. Sounds like a counter-point to Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". I use Hanlon's quite a bit to explain nonsense I see day to day, but this is a better one in some ways. It shift the conclusion of "but if only they were shown the right way" to "they know what they are doing an…
I enjoy your thinking! Reflecting further... Hanlons razor is about motive and "size of mental models". Stupidly small, or comprehensively large. This other thing you note seems to be about scale being low or high. Individually fine-grained, or collectively coarse-grained. I suspect mistaking either dimension can result in grossly misinterpreting a situation. The lowest, most fine-grained level of individual self-int…
Now I wonder if depending on the scale, one model is better suited. Or maybe they both can be modified based on the scale.
Maybe self-interest is easier to reason about than the interests of a group. Conflicting self-interests can lead to compromises that result in what looks stupid in the end.
> Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement posted on X that Americans deserve an energy system built on common sense and not one dependent on "costly subsidies". I agree. This is why we are building offshore wind and not subsidizing fossil fuels, right?
I know it's not what you wanted to start here with this comment. But the silly, tangential, petty bickering in this thread goes a very long way to explain our failure to act to stop the catastrophe we've known was coming since the 80s.
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Oh that's not nearly the amount of fossil subsidies. Some say it's $31b/yr direct. If you factor in indirect costs like climate damage, health expenses, oil wars, etc, it's much higher. Renewables are much, much cheaper regardless of a little incentive, if there are any left. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/09/fossil-f...
It’s kind of amazing and horrifying at the same time that a democratic country like the U.S. is doing all these shenanigans like blocking clean zero carbon energy, while a communist authoritarian country is massively moving towards clean energy. Based on what our media and our education system teaches us, one would have assumed that common sense and sound logic would prevail in a democracy, but rather what we see is…
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Where are you getting 25-30k from? A standard split that can handle 25m2 is 1-2k, with one in each bedroom you’re fine
Yes that is a split A/C, which is also a form of heat pump, that's not really what people refer to as heat pumps by default in Europe. A heat pump is normally an air-to-water system here, which drives either radiators or heated floors. Heating with an A/C is practically unknown in most of Europe and definitely not the desired choice for most people here (even though it would make sense).
Kitchen, dining, bathroom, three or four bedrooms.
I’ve never seen a split system in a bathroom, but I’ve definitely seen freezing cold bathrooms, or bathrooms with a radiant heater on the wall or heat lamps on the ceiling, which occasionally get left on all day and destroy electricity bills.
Ducted systems almost always extend to the bathroom, and almost always cost AU$15,000 or more to install.
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No, we're not expecting someone else to stop it. We voted for this. The evil is not imposed on us. It is us. Not everyone, but a majority. The minority is looking for ways to stop it, but it requires getting literally everyone else to work together. Which means any disagreement among them results in a loss, and more of the same evil.
It's not a majority at all. it's a manipulating minority.
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No, we're not expecting someone else to stop it. We voted for this. The evil is not imposed on us. It is us. Not everyone, but a majority. The minority is looking for ways to stop it, but it requires getting literally everyone else to work together. Which means any disagreement among them results in a loss, and more of the same evil.
Roughly 1/3 voted for the winner, 1/3 for the loser, and the rest didn’t vote. A majority did not choose this.