gandalf_der_12te

Hard-fought victories

I don't think women's rights (especially the right to work) have been "hard-fought" in any way.

Sure there have been protests and riots of women who demanded these rights, but that did jack shit to change the situation. What really changed the situation was the insight of capitalists that they could get more workers, and thus more productive ability, if women joined the workforce. All it took for that is to influence the media to make these new policies seem preferable, and the people accepted it.

Life on Earth feels more and more like the experience of entering a Sweetgreen – beige, spartan and unobtrusive.

That's exactly my style. Literally all my clothing fulfills that criteria. It's either beige, green, or some variation of brown, very spartan, no decorations at all, and very unobtrusive. I think i could go into a forest and fit right into the plants, aesthetically.

diplomacy is made in the sheets

i'd say it's equally likely, and yes, internal combustion engine vehicles are literally madness. it's a miracle anybody actually uses these machines, IMO. they sound insane.

I think it's probably because a lot of students don't see the reward in actually learning stuff anymore.

People are very much feeling this. I talk to lots of people and many (aged 24) say that they feel like they wasted a lot of their time striving for good grades and education while they could have actually enjoyed their lifes, meet friends, enter relationships and have fun. They focused on education because they felt certain that it would lead to a good, well-paying job later in life, which would make it all have been worth it.

Now this is becoming untrue, and people realize they've studied/learned for many years, only to be unemployed because the labor market is increasingly lowering demand.

I guess the thing is that installing batteries at a large scale only really makes sense when you have a lot of excessive solar energy that you want to store, and we're simply not there yet. China produces sth like 10% of its electricity from solar these days, and that's simply not excessive enough to make it worthwhile to store the excess solar energy production. It's all consumed immediately, almost. Only when we hit like 50% solar energy generation, will there be excesses significantly enough to consider storing them, is my guess.

This is from memory, but i think it's approximately accurate, especially in relations to each other:

Li-ion have 280-320 Wh/kg but they have the disadvantage that they're explosive. If you get in an accident and the battery gets damaged, it explodes rather violently, and you don't want that for safety reasons.

Then there's LFP batteries which also contain Lithium as the main ingredient, but they have the advantage that they don't explode when they're damaged. They have 220-250 Wh/kg.

Then there's Na-ion, which also have the advantage of not exploding when damaged, and they have 160 Wh/kg (depending on type, new types with better energy density are being actively researched right now). They have the additional advantage of not containing Lithium (Li), instead they contain Sodium (Na), which is significantly cheaper and more widely available worldwide. So the batteries have the prospect of being much cheaper, especially if produced in large scales, and that's really the main advantage they have.

It's not so much about Wh/kg for stationary applications (like grid stabilization or home storage), instead it's about Wh/$, i.e. how much storage capacity you get per dollar. And that is significantly higher for Na-ion than for Li-ion or LFP.

I have been wondering this ... why don't people open "mattress testers" companies where they basically employ people for sleeping (wage is $0 but it's a "job"). Just to fulfill the work requirements.

Also note that a big reason why countries have a strong interest in producing solar power in their own country is sothat they're not reliant on the energy of foreign countries.

We see pretty clearly in germany how energy dependency from other countries (russia) can take unexpectedly bad turns. That's why countries have a strong incentive to produce energy locally. It's also more efficient (less transport losses). That balances out the slightly lower solar irradiation. But really, the differences in solar irradiation aren't that big.

Yep and i fully expect that the rise of solar power globally will dramatically improve the living conditions of the people in the middle east.

Consider this:

Most wars in the middle east have directly or indirectly been waged because of fossil fuels. It's all about securing the flow of oil from the middle east through military power. Essentially, when the world's reliance on fossil fuels diminishes, then there's not so much a strong reason for the US anymore to interfere with the middle east; which will solve a big part of the problems.

You also need to transport the power to where it's needed, and transporting electricity over vast distances is a bit of a challenge that incurs inefficiencies such as power lost to heat.

More importantly though, if you install the solar panels in Spain, then pipe the electricity to Germany, where it's consumed in factories, then germany would effectively make itself dependent on Spain and every country between spain and germany (for the cables). That's a geopolitical risk, in case an international conflict ever breaks out again.