AliSaket

joined 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Agreed, the balance isn't easy to find, but it's not a law of nature either. How it has (had?) been handled though, it robs us all of great racing. If you think back to the great duels this year, they weren't because the drivers all aggressively raced to the apex, forcing off of and risking collisions with other drivers. And then there's the old story of: imagine if there was grass or gravel out there, I assure you, that they both would have behaved very differently.

Obviously there’s a difference between being forced off and putting yourself in a silly position where you run out of track

There's already the notion, that when locking up for example, then you aren't fully in control of your car anymore and at least for collisions, that assigns you blame. So one could generalize that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

Yes we've seen a lot of this. That's exactly the point. These problems aren't new and the calls for change aren't either. In fact, Alonso warned of exactly this behavior and the problems that come with it years ago.

To the point of allowing a collision to happen, I'm reminded of a somewhat different situation of 2019, but one which should have been a slam dunk penalty: Leclerc forcing off Hamilton in the braking zone of the second chicane in Monza. The implication of the stewards' reasoning was that because there was no contact, there wasn't a time penalty. And there was only no contact, because Lewis took to the grass to avoid the collision. So yes, this problem has also existed for a long time and yes, inconsistent ruling makes it only worse. The fact remains though, that under the current regs, you can get away with throwing your car in somewhere and counting on the other driver to avoid a collision.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Basically waving by Sainz into T1 would tell us otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Never forget that in 2016 13% of Trump voters voted for Obama in 2008/12. Maybe the Democratic Party can share some blame, instead of just shaming the voters.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago

Look, I get what you are saying and even agree to a certain degree. Yet, the premise here is that one of both parties is opposed to genocide, which is false. For the affected voter group, who are getting shamed for making the crime of crimes their litmus test, both people are trying to make more holes albeit of different sizes.

So, what would you do? I would probably throw both of them over board ;)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I'm familiar with First-Past-The-Post voting and the spoiler effect. I'm also familiar with choosing to vote for whom you'd prefer to fight when elected. We are dealing with the crimes of crimes here and I can absolutely understand anyone whose family is affected to not want to take an active role in their killing. Especially since the campaign has not signaled to that voter block, that they are seen or heard. The best example is denying a Palestinian-American a shortened and cleared speech at the DNC. It could have been only a ceremonial thing, less weight than lip-service, but they opted for exclusion instead, i.e. the opposite.

My main point though: How can this party not be clearly ahead of that menace to democracy and its institutions? This one voter block should not be the deciding thing. Overlooking the agency of the Democratic Party in this and putting full blame on the people rubs me very anti-democratic. Implying them to be immature and other forms of voter shaming is not making a good case either.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I did say that I live in a democracy with more parties, not that it does not include elections where there is the "first past the post" principle, so I'm familiar with the spoiler effect.

Trump is worse on genocide Although that might be true in some sense, please try to understand the people affected here. If your family is the one affected, it doesn't get more dead, than dead. I'm not saying, I would vote the same way, but I can understand not wanting to actively vote for killing your family.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago (13 children)

I get the logic you put forth. Yet as someone who lives in a more diverse democracy (although it has been getting dangerously more polarized in the recent decades), I'm always baffled by this presumption that a candidate deserves someone's vote by default.

In this case, let's say there aren't any other parties on the ballot other than the Democrats and Republicans. In Michigan specifically you have a voter group, that says that they cannot vote for genocide especially if it is against their own families or people that look like them. And both parties are either promising the continuation thereof or have been engaged in it and have been excluding anything related to addressing it, or people representing that voter group, from their campaign. So the presumption, that if there wasn't a Green Party to vote for that they would be coming out to vote for the Democrats is imho just flawed. They might just as likely stay home.

What I find even more baffling is that this party can't seem to clearly outperform the even more clearly dangerous candidate to democracy. The Arabic or Muslim population in Michigan should not be this decisive for the outcome, if the Democrats were able to actually persuade voters to turn out by delivering an attractive policy plan, thereby earning the votes, instead of just arrogantly thinking, they're entitled to them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I would add, that they don't only claim and propagate the self-defense narrative, but also the dehumanization of Arabs/Muslim which is necessary for genocide and combine it with another propaganda technique called Accusation in a mirror, whereby you accuse the other of what you are already guilty of or intend to do. Which makes self-defense and genocide almost a necessity. Analyzing other genocides, this technique was also employed in the Armenian and Rwandan genocides as well as by the Nazis. In the Palestinian/Lebanese case it has been done for decades but was really ramped up after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation. From 40 beheaded oven babies and systemic rape as a weapon, to seeing every civilian as a combatant, these debunked claims serve only to further demonize and dehumanize the civilian populations and in the same breath make it necessary to kill them. And when checked, there's a story of a beheaded Lebanese baby in the 1980s, beheaded babies in Gaza, rape in prison camps with electrified metal rods and compulsory military service for almost everyone young in Israel. Who knows what else there is, since journalists were and are targeted and the health ministry doesn't exist anymore in any real sense.

Because this didn't just start a year ago and combined with a sense of entitlement through god (Jewish superiority and god given right to the land which is necessary for Apartheid) as well as the past trauma of genocide against themselves and re-traumatization in everyday life, the rhetoric doesn't have to be impenetrable.

If it wasn't clear after the crimes in Syria, Lybia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam and oh so many more back to WWII where the modern U.N. was established, international law serves predominantly as a weapon to the hegemonic powers to further their interests. The General Assembly is powerless, the courts are ignored and threatened, U.N. peacekeepers, aid workers and doctors can be attacked and slaughtered without repercussions. And the security council is also impotent. As can be seen in the case of Russia, the West has established other means to put political pressure through economic sanctions outside of the U.N. structure. As could be seen in Iraq even offensive military invasions don't require the U.N. as long as you have the weapons and economic power. This isn't to say that the U.N. and international law have no effect at all. Just that they certainly aren't what they are made out to be and the myth of international law and human rights, which are only selectively applied defeat the whole purpose of a right or laws and makes them a privilege and injustice.

Speaking on the moral values that underlie all of this would really go beyond the scope of a forum post and I would argue, that I've already bored and depressed people enough already with this text.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There's two problems with your last post which have to do with physics.

  1. Fuel Cells and the process of hydrolysis have a limit on their efficiency. Just like with ICEs there isn't much potential there.
  2. Between Hydrolysis and the Fuel Cell, there are other lossy processes. Usually the tanks contain pressurized H2 and depending on the usecase even liquid H2. Modern automobile cases use 700-800 bars of pressure. That process is again at around 85% efficiency in a good case. Cooling applications further deteriorate the efficiency and need more energy for storage and/or losses during storage. There are other technologies in research right now, like metal hydride storage, where we'll have to see what exactly they can do (right now we're at the stage where we are promised an all-purpose hype, but mostly through the media and not the ones doing the work)

I'm not disputing that capitalism has it's thumb on the scale; as you've written, the synergy to use H2 derived from natural gas is one effect, but it doesn't stop them from advertising it as green. The physical limits though, one cannot argue with. Their effects would mean a lot more infrastructure that is necessary, with it more materials, which are limited too. Even if possible, we have limited construction capacity, which means that it would take us longer to reach the goal, when time is of the essence. Which leads me to the same conclusion, that where the advantages like power density isn't absolutely necessary or other solutions are not available, use a better solution.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Many reasons. One major factor imho is the belief or illusion to be living in a meritocracy. Which would mean, that someone who's rich has to have earned it and therefore criticism must stem from envy or jealousy. The same belief fuels the ideology of thinking of poor people to just be lazy leeches on society.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It is not only economic cost though. As I've mentioned, materials are also limited (on the same level as: There isn't enough copper to wire all motors needed to replace all cars today with EVs). And it needs alot of surface area compared to the concentrated power plants of the past, which means an even bigger impact on the biosphere (especially if not done on rooftops in cities but in mountain ranges or fields, etc.). Don't get me wrong; solar energy, if done right, is the only source that doesn't interfere with natural cycles and does not increase entropy of the planet (which makes it actually sustainable). Using it inefficiently though, means inefficient use of other resources which are limited. (Not only economic. But on that note: Public infrastructure is always built with costs in mind, because we shouldn't waste tax money, so we can do a better and more comprehensive job with what we have.)

So if there is a more efficient way to store energy for long periods, then it should take precedence over a very inefficient one. This will get complex since it is very much dependent on the local conditions such as sunshine, water sources and precipitation, landscape, temperatures, grid infrastructure and much more. As an engineer, I would throw in though, that if you need this secondary storage, that is not much cheaper, doesn't have some very essential advantage, or doesn't mitigate some specific risk, but is much more inefficient over your primary storage, then the system's design is... sub-optimal to put it mildly.

For the argument of exploring everything: We simply can't. More precisely we could, but it would need much more time, money and resources to arrive at the goal. And since climate catastrophe is already upon us, we don't have that time and need to prioritize. Therefore a technology that has a physical, not human-made, efficiency limit loses priority as a main solution. That doesn't mean, that H2 should not be looked into (for specific purposes, where it is essential or the reuse of existing infrastructure is the better option), but that we have to prioritize different avenues, with which we can take faster strides towards true carbon neutrality.

P.S. it doesn't help, that today's H2 is almost exclusively derived from natural gas.

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