ejb999

I am really intrigued by using sand for energy storage - what I don't get (not my field) is given a typical 2000sf house, located in the colder part of the country as an example, how much heat could be stored for how long? i.e. is it even feasible to use solar panels to power resistance heaters all spring/summer/fall, to save up enough heat to keep a house warm for the entire winter? if so, how many panels would you need and how big a sand battery would it take.

I am not planning on doing this, but explaining it on a scale that I can relate to would be helpful, because I know, for example, that said house can store a winter's worth of heat in a 1000 gallon oil tank, or small woodshed big enough for 6 cords of wood.

So they should wait until after the food supply becomes contaminated, then study the problem for a few years and only then pass a law to regulate it?

Yea, but at least you get to pay thru the nose for it. </sarc>

thats a good point - if you are over a certain age, getting back to a FT career is going to be hard - ageism is real in this industry.

I am someone who has 'done my own thing' for more than 35 years at this point - i.e. direct contracting with my own clients, occasionally working on some 'side' project I hope I could sell, and even took a FT position here and there when the right opportunity came along.

My feeling is it has not hurt my career at all, and more likely made it better - having your own company, with your own clients and working on lots of things you learn lots of skills you likely won't learn grinding it out for mega-corp year after year.

Other big bonus is, on my resume - there are no gaps - I was either on someone else's payroll (for me less than 5 years of my 35 years of work) or doing my own thing - I never had a recruiter or hiring manager question 'gaps' - on paper I was 100% employed at all times, which is easy to say if you have your own little corp - even if you were technically idle at times.

IMO if you have some money to get thru thru for a while (i.e. you won't be homeless if you don't get a check every two weeks), this is the perfect economy for doing your own thing.

tariffs and or new taxes on the chips imported from other countries would have served that same purpose - without the need for more billions of corporate welfare.

If the culture is blameless than the CEO's should benefit from that blameless culture as well - (I disagree with this though).

Quite a logical leap to say that everyone in a corp deserves to be held 'blameless' except the CEO - imo, you can't have it both ways.

I disagree - if 'everything can be a process' we wouldn't need human judgement anywhere - and clearly we clearly still do need humans in the loop - and the reality is the judgement of humans is not all created equal. Some are better than others.

Why wouldn't you want to punish people who are at fault, especially if there is a pattern of problems or gross negligence that causes harm?

Same here, never understood the march towards 'blameless' culture - if someone is to blame, they should be blamed; if there is a pattern of mistakes they should be shown the door as quickly as possible.

because under 18 is not an adult legally speaking, and 18+ is?

Not sure I understand - you expect some one/some company to invest billions and billions of dollars to create internet access in places that where it doesn't exist and then give away the service?

Who would, or could, do that?

I agree - for a while it was my only option, and I would have paid 10X what they charged to have it. Now I have other options (FTTH), but was quite happy with Starlink while I had it installed.

>>But I bet that housing has comparatively gone down in value in less popular areas.

You would lose that bet.

Other than a few places where the town/city as literally being abandoned (i.e. towns in the middle of nowhere were the last factory has shut down) - home process have gone up everywhere in the last 3-4 years, and pretty dramatically so.

Did 9-11 happen because of bitcoin? Not sure I understand your point?

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair

I have no hope that the people who created the very tools that led to these problems, are in anyway going to try and solve this problem.

>>In the current environment, cost inflation is not a problem anymore.

Everyone person who lives paycheck to paycheck, and is barely keeping their head above water as the cost of everything continues to skyrocket disagrees with you.

Good luck telling them that "cost inflation is not a problem anymore".

I can't speak to how things are in Denmark, but without a doubt the situation for young people (especially those looking to rent or buy a house ) HAS changed dramatically for the worse in the USA.

If you are rich and own multiple houses or other expensive assets, they appreciate even faster during times of high inflation…compare that to a young working class couple hoping to someday buy their first house which continually gets farther out of reach…which ones are most hurt by inflation?

That is such a bizarre statement I have a hard time believing you actually mean it. I think you would be hard pressed to find any/many 'working class' people who enjoy watching the cost of goods and services go up faster than their salaries.

The rich benefit from inflation - especially if they have lots of assets like real estate that have increased dramatically in value.

People don't compare how well they were off 40 years ago vs today, they remember how things were in recent history - i.e. 3-4 years ago and then decide if they are better or worse off.

Inflation is a killer for the poor and most of the middle class - and a boon for the wealthy (who own appreciating assets) - everyone I know who is not wealthy enough to not care, is feeling it.

people will complain about anything - in my very little town, about 25% of the roads are not paved. People would move into town, buy a house on a dirt road and then come to the town council to complain that their road was not paved.

you mean other than the rampant inflation we are seeing now - and will almost certainly get worse - everything is fine?

and yet INTC has been in business for decades, profitable the whole time, producing chips without this grotesque handout of taxpayer monies.

They have already used their excess profits - many $10's of billions of dollars in recent years, for stock buybacks, but apparently they really, really need this money from taxpayers to stay a going concern.

I guess in your mind it is not possible for both things to be bad? As long as we have the bogeyman of the DOD budget, any money spent that is even a penny less than the DOD budget is OK, is that how you see things?

I don't care if companies buy back stock - but if they can afford to buy back stock, they don't need or deserve my tax money to operate.

I just don't get it - the country has over $34 Trillion in debt already and we are handing out money to mega-rich corporations who don't need the money (among other things we waste money on).

This is not going to end well - our kids and grand kids will be paying for it.

So where do the animals pay their taxes so they have some place to live after we make it economically un-feasible to keep land undeveloped by taxing raw land out of existence?

If you haven't already tried, consider getting a steroid injection directly into your affected wrists by an orthopedist.

Had CTS many years ago, couldn't even hold a lightweight briefcase in my hand - and the pain was miserable - a single injection into the bad wrist and now 20 years later I am still pain free.

Not sure if it would work as well in all cases, but it was life-changing for me.

weight bearing exercises and a proper diet.

I think its the later - I have always understood grip strength to be an easy to measure proxy for your overall health; no harm in doing only grip strength exercises, but the better way is to lead a healthy and active life where your good grip strength is side effect of all the activities you do.

Watching TV all day on the couch drinking beer and potato chips - but with a grip exerciser in your hand is probably not going to give you much of a benefit.