Technology Connections - You are being misled about renewable energy technology.
4mon 18d ago by piefed.world/u/negativenull in solarpunk@slrpnk.net from www.youtube.com
Amazing video by Technology Connections. It's a long one, but don't miss his 30 minute angry rant at the end.
Thanks for mentioning the last 30 minutes, but for additional clarity, there is a fake ending 30 minutes before the actual ending. Please watch those last 30 minutes!
Damn that last 30 minutes went HARD. I got chills.
Good clarification!
Love the rant
I will always upvote technology connections, I have watched so many videos of his about things I would have thought i couldn't care less about and enjoyed them all!
This!!!
My highlight was the non lightening brake lights on electric cars when they are recuperating
That pisses me off to no end. The car knows how fast it is going, it has to show you. Just make the lights come on based on deceleration, regardless of how it happens. It doesn't even need dedicated hardware. It's just lazy coding and development.
What video was that? I think I haven't seen that one.
Great video. Completely breaks down the argument. You already knew this of you had been paying attention. Oil/gas for electricity generation in any form is DOA. It is insanely more expensive than solar + battery.
Not to mention destructive to the environment and politically fraught with issues.
To think if our government went all in it could provide dirt cheap limitless energy that would not cause lung disease or wars is staggering.
But the rich would be only 0.987 as wealthy
they'd probably be more wealthy from their heavy investments in renewable energy, which is more profitable than fossil fuels btw
it's the same story as weed legalization, it only happens after the current established powers have given themselves enough time to secure the new playing field.
Wondering now if paradoxically accelerating global warming increases stock ROI in renewables as the perceived value of renewable energy increases with the perceived/predicted level of global warming.
No, they are just after power, not money. They have a darwinist ideology to push.
It's capitalism, power is wealth by definition. These are compatible concepts.
By perceived value i mean speculation.
They use the aesthetics of capitalism to intellectualize and explain why we should not question their supremacy.
In reality, capitalism does not in any way justify monopolization of natural resources, or the large-scale destruction of the environment.
Capitalism is the ideology of thr petit-bourgeoisie, not the actual bourgeoisie. They are just social-darwinists.
I do not understand what this adds to the concept of capitalism other than introducing the term "social darwinism".
There is no difference between "the aesthetics" of capitalism and its actualization, and neither base a capitalist's actions in regard to benefitting society beyond "the market". Capitalism is simply the current method of accruing power for someone to push their personal ideology on others. It just happens that the most effective method to exploit capitalism is to reject any sense of empathy or consideration for anything external or internal, especially flesh and blood humans because they are the only real threat to your power.
At a certain point of wealth inequality under capitalism it becomes more efficient to make everyone else poorer than to acquire more wealth.
Yeah, and that's certainly an effective strategy from the very moment an inequality exists at all.
Let me try to rephrase this, so that maybe it makes sense. The point I'm trying to make is that social-darwinism is not an extension of capitalism, they're two different things but with aesthetic overlap.
Capitalism aims to optimize work, by naturally rejecting inefficient ways to do things. The production line wins over the workshop. It's about things and processes, not about people directly.
Social-darwinism is about rejecting people. To refuse people the space to thrive or reproduce. To push them to the edge of society until they die from exposure or suicide or simply that their bloodline ends when they can't support their families over the course of generations. Thus the noble classes dominate by right, and whoever is unsuccessful deserves to die and rot.
I see no point in making a differentiation between mechanism and the methodology to which that mechanism enables the most exploit.
I disagree with your thought that capitalism optimizes work. It either ensures work is done many times over in parallel (competition) or arbitrarily based on the whims of the owner class (olig/monopoly), and that alternative/more efficient means are snuffed out where a more profitable option exists. It's an unstable and inefficient system that relies on civil expenditure (bail outs, infrastructure, etc) to function.
The capitalist system that requires you labor to for food and shelter is exactly the same mechanism that rejects people, pushes them out, exposes them, and props up the wealthy class. Your "Social Darwinism" is a fundamental consequence capitalism, not an unrelated ideology that just happens to exist simultaneously. Capitalism drives people to do [more] evil. Then they rationalize their behavior to protect their ego and power.
I'm not making the claim that capitalism optimizes work, it's the claim that liberals make. I think it's important to actually study and understand what other people believe, and as I stated before the idea of capitalism does not allow destruction or monopolization of natural resources, or to block others from using natural resources in a responsible manner (which was the core problem with feudalism).
The point is that billionaires are not liberals, and they don't believe in capitalism.
I'm not arguing whether capitalism is a flawed theory of economics which naturally leads to either fascism, social darwinism, or some third thing. I'm arguing that billionaires actually do believe in social darwinism, which is a different thing than liberalism or capitalism.
I think you're conflating liberalism with capitalism, which isn't really accurate.
Capitalism can exist without liberalism, and this does lead into fascism, but that's still capitalism.
No, I'm literally giving examples of how Adam Smith defined the foundations of capitalism, which both liberals and so-called conservatives normally favor as their preferred economic theory, and how these foundations contrast with a different philosophy favored by different people.
Anyway, I'm done beating a dead horse here.
Adam Smith didn't invent capitalism. It's not a philosophy, it was an economic system that emerged from certain material relations. Liberalism, and fascism, are just two of the ideological frameworks that can reproduce capitalism's material base and both of which emerge from the material base of capitalism.
Ah, I see, I guess we don't have to consider what liberals think and how they view the world, because after all we possess the objective truth and their opinions don't matter.
We don't have to consider capitalism to have some kind of doctrine Orthodoxy, as if Adam Smith was a prophet and that deviations from liberalism aren't capitalist. It's still capitalism even if it isn't what Adam Smith envisioned.
Billionaires believe in capitalism, even if they don't believe in liberalism.
You have less power but more wealth than a Mycenean king. You have a more steady diet that is healthier for you, with better healthcare, better housing, more time for leisure, less chance of being robbed or murdered or killed in battle, etc. etc. But the king could have people killed or tortured; he could send people to their deaths; pass judgment in any moral dispute between hundreds of his subjects; etc.
The capitalist elite gladly loses wealth to gain power. And the power a rich person has over someone who must work for them to eat is incomprehensibly greater than the power a rich person has over someone who can eat regardless of whether they work for them. Thanks to ICE and other anti-immigration laws, rich people can effectively keep undocumented migrants as slaves again. What are they going to do? Complain and get themselves sent to a concentration camp?
What do you think a billionaire would rather have? A hundred mansions, ten private jets, twenty yachts, and a thousand unionized employees; or ten mansions, one private jet, two yachts, and a hundred slaves?
Wealth truly is not equivalent to power.
I agree that wealth is not equivalent to power but I continue to assert that it is the fundamental concept of capitalism. It's rule by those who can exploit a market most effectively amassing the greatest amount of capital (by money/property value).
I find wealth in having hobbies and relationships that don't return monetarily on my energy investment. This is incompatible with capitalism. While living under capitalism, i could have the highest quantity of relationships of the highest quality with other humans and it would still be worthless compared to someone with more capacity than me for taking on debt.
I wonder if I'm being misinterpreted here so if it's unclear at this point; i see capitalism as a direct assault on our very humanity and a psychological disease that tears from us our empathy and feeling for one another through the pursuit of "wealth". I despise it.
Except capitalists install Trump, who destroys wealth both for himself and for others. And they put incompetent nepo babies in positions of power where they waste multiple percent of profit. And they give golden parachutes to incompetent CEOs they hired. And they fire personnel only to replace them with consultants that are many times more expensive. And they run their own businesses rather than putting their money in an index fund for hired investors to play with. And they give millions to charities (derogatory) that have no realistic return on investment.
Capitalists burn wealth constantly. Wealth accumulation is not the goal of capitalism, it's the score counter of a game they're playing for the sake of the game, and they will pay anything to keep playing.
Those are just the games they play when they have wealth beyond an imagination of that number being consequential. They don't lose enough to change their status or power. Even when they spend it they just turn it into debt. The bank is happy at 3-5% interest and if you make 7-10% on that borrowed money then blowing the difference doesn't impact you at all.
Except they also play those games when they're the owner of a small company that can easily go bankrupt because of those games, or when they're middle managers engaging in office politics that threatens their steady paycheck, or when they're YUPpies working themselves into an early grave through the grindset, or when they're working class and vote to dismantle working class safety nets.
i don't think they're that far-sighted though it's probably a neat side-effect to them
Mmm... Well i think there are enough of them that think long term to maintain their institutions. The oil industry has been suppressing concerns about climate change and disaster for well over a century now
But what about the coal miners? đ„ș More importantly the coal mine owners, won't somebody please think of them? đ„ș
By pure coincidence, Hank Green released a video about coal on the same day
Also by pure coincidence, Matt Colville released a video explicitly paying homage to Technology Connections the same day, too.
A technology connections video with a 30 minite rant??
watches video
oh.
A technology connections video with a 30 minite rant??
Isn't that just the standard format for technology connections?
Looks at runtime
Oh, this is gonna be a good one!
As someone not from the US, I can't say how much I appreciate the last part of his video. As much as I understand why YouTubers want to "keep politics out of entertainment", it's disappointing and makes me lose interest in some US content because it seems like they are ignoring what's going on around them.
And about the batteries, that's unfortunately an argument I sometimes hear from skeptics. "What are we going to do with all those batteries?" they ask. I explain that they can mostly be recycled and like to ask what are we going to do with all the CO2 in the air, but apparently it's different. Ironically one of those persons is my father, that has a cabin with a solar system that I installed for him. He originally bought a generator but since it's very noisy to run only for some lights, he prefers using the battery bank powered by a few solar panels on the roof. I'd show him this video but he doesn't speak English and it's probably a lost cause anyway.
We can only hope that at least a few people can be influenced by this video; both parts.
For what it's worth, ALL technology connections videos have manually added English closed captions, not auto generated gibberish. It's some of the best captioning work I've ever seen. He actually takes the time to sync them to the auto/video, prevents spoiling jokes/punchlines, and adds an Easter egg at the end of most episodes (usually describing the smooth jazz outro).
You might actually have decent luck using the subtitle translation feature built into YouTube, since it (machine) translates the actual words Alec is saying.
And he's spoken about doing it in part to ensure accessibility for the deaf, which I appreciate immensely as someone who grew up watching time delayed black box captions on whatever my mom was watching
I always flick the subtitles on at the end to see how the jazz is described and how he transcribes his bloopers.
Alec is awesome. The content he makes isn't really my cup of tea, but I recognize that that man has some serious game.
I don't find his videos to be entertaining, but they're so educational that I watch them anyway.
The political discussion taboo only serves 2 purposes. 1, keep the stupid comfortable. To them, politics isnât about ideas but about identity and is treated like a religion. You arenât challenging an idea, you are threatening their identity. 2, Donât upset rich people. Everyone discussion politics openly is a threat to the rich. So if you make it taboo to discuss those things you make it so that only those not bound by that taboo may participate.
That rant at the end really sums up my feelings as a Midwestern leftist. Hell the whole thing does honestly. But you treat people right, you make prudent decisions, and you treat labor with dignity and respect.
I also really respect him for accepting when something that had been obvious to him (the value proposition of solar and electrification) turned out to have not been obvious to others so he cut the snark and explained his reasoning. It's an admirable display of character. But also, yeah it had been obvious to me as well.
Probably not my favorite video of his, but definitely rhe one I respect the most
Oh fuck they broke Alec shit's bad
Went from "ehh, its a long video. I'll watch it tomorrow" to "holy fuck..."
I actually stopped watching it at the hour mark because I had to make dinner but then I let it play while I worked and holy shit! This dude for president!
This dude for president!
Can you imagine what he could do? I mean, if he could focus on the President thing and not use his time in office to take apart washing machines and heat pumps.
Technology Connections video in 2020: "This is a Sunbeam Radiant toaster"
Technology Connections video in 2034: "This is an AGM-158C long-range anti-ship missile"
Did they break him...? Or did they set him free? :D
(was going to go with "unleashed" but that carries a different vibe not fitting to this serious cause :) )
I don't think I had ever heard him swear until this video.
Just when I thought I couldn't like him more, he goes and drops this gigabased rant.
TC for U.S president honestly
Or even a governor or senator, he has the right ideas and ability to explain what is happening and what needs to be done
That level of competence would never fly in the US government.
Most governments
I like the guy. Really. But havenât you seen what happens when people from entertainment become president?
Now that I've seen the type of people that seek political positions over a few decades, I would push Alec to run for some sort of local office. He's the exact opposite of the majority of assholes who enter politics.
Like Zelenskyy? Sign me up
His works is way beyond just entertainment though. He talked about this in this very video.
That last 30 minutes earned a new Patreon subscription. I hope this starts a trend.
Sometimes I've been feeling like I'm the weird one for caring about other people and the shit that's been going on. It's really nice to see someone as angry as I am.
I have been watching his videos for years with great enthusiasm.
If I ever meat him, it wonât be a handshake. That rant at the end deserves a hug. I love that antifascist energy that came pouring off him.
"It's time to wake up and smell the fascism!"
"A wind turbine is like an oil derrick that generates eq. 3 gallons of gasoline evry single minute."
Tbh I thought it would be more
Except the wind never runs out. Also we can use the energy from wind turbines 3x as efficiently as we can the energy from a barrel of oil. Carnot is a bitch.
Wind sometimes runs out (as in, calm weather) and wind turbines do eventually run out after a few decades. But, 3 gallons of gasoline-equivalent per minute seemed a bit small for my intuition, so I did some back of the envelope calculations to compare it to pumpjacks for oil.
I'm doing these calculations in metric, because the US traditional units are insane, and nobody should subject themselves to that.
3 gallons is about 11.3L, so 11.3L per minute is 678 L per hour, or about 16 kL of "gasoline-equivalent" per day.
Apparently a pumpjack pumps about 5 to 40 "barrels" of crude oil per day. A barrel is 159 L so that's 795 L to 6360 L per day.
So, the back of the envelope "how much 'energy' does this big mechanical thing produce" seems fairly similar, ignoring a whole lot of complexity.
Anyone willing to share a tl;dw?
EDIT: Okay so I watched the video and here's a tl;dw which by necessity will lack a lot of detail and nuance. The video is in two parts.
The first part, an hour long, is about the slam dunk viability of solar panels as an energy source. In general, but most particularly in comparison to fossil fuel. The presenter underscores the real, deeper meaning of renewable energy sources and addresses many arguments made against solar power especially when it comes to scaling it up and in regards to its ecological impact. ngl, it's pretty jaw dropping, even if I already knew most of this.
I was increasingly frustrated in the first part because I wanted to shout Do You Get Why This Is Not Happening? Do You Get Why This Renewable Energy Future Is Not Happening. So I was relieved to see that he does get it.
The second part, about 30 minutes long, comes after a quick faux end credits. In this portion, he "goes there" and lays out not only why we are not moving into this future we could have, that is already here for us to have (to wit, money interests) but broadens into a reflection and indictment about the overall situation currently in the U.S.A. While dipping into partisan politics, he elucidates his personal operating principle and shows how it is a throughline into that topic. He did it in a way that pulled no punches while remaining, at least IMO, respectful
First hour: Developing a detailed intuition for exactly how solar and wind energy work and what makes them so much better than oil (without mentioning climate change or pollution)
Last 30 min: Establishing a baseline moral framework that everyone can get behind, and explaining that under this framework a revolution against the Trump regime would be entirely justified but at a minimum we absolutely must vote against Republicans in the 2026 and 2028 elections.
As someone in the comments put it: he explains solar and then goes nuclear.
Damn, I love his stuff anyway, but this time I'm looking forward to watching it just to see how he incorporates a call for revolution against his government into a video about solar panels, haha
Its a very reasonable angry pivot that become even more reasonably angry.
The "not mentioning climate change" is key. He hit people where it hurts for everyone (Democrats and Republicans) - not spending money.
I think all the information is pretty well-known in this community, but here's a summary:
- Renewables (specifically solar + batteries) are an inevitable future of energy production due to technological advancements and economies of scale improvements; you should not oppose them but welcome them
- We are at a tipping point where solar + batteries is now the cheapest energy source available
- Land use for solar farms is not a big issue, they are much more energy efficient per unit area than the ethanol corn that currently plagues the US
- Replacing all ethanol corn fields with solar farms would make almost twice as much energy as the US grid is currently producing
- Renewables are better than fossil fuels because they do not require continuous extraction; when a solar panel or battery has been "used up" and is degraded, it can be recycled, whereas fossil fuels can only be burned once after extraction
- The end goal is an almost-closed-loop system for all energy production, similar to what we have with lead-acid batteries already
- Recycling solar panels is relatively easy because they are mostly glass and aluminum, which we know how to recycle well, and we could probably figure out silicon too
- Recycling batteries is a harder problem but possible too if we put some effort in; currently the recycling capacity is lacking because there's not enough batteries being recycled, since most of them are still working fine in EVs sold since the start of EV boom
- Worst-case, we can literally just grind up batteries into battery mush and refine it, same as we do with ores from which the raw materials come in the first place, but likely something better is possible
- Alec describes his personal politics, how he values labor and working-class people, and how he thinks immigrants are hard-working people who need to be welcomed and cared for
- Trump and Republicans as a whole are fascists and lie constantly, which needs to be called out and stopped
- ICE must be abolished and its thugs tried for their crimes
- Democrats are not doing enough, and in fact are pretty bad on some points, but it's still better to vote for them
- People need to organize with their neighbors, care for each other first and foremost, and defend themselves against the government
Alec's personal views are a relief, I think it's a shame he didn't go deeper into them before (IIRC he had a video where he called out right-wing misinfo but stopped short of any direct calls for action). I suppose the contrast between his usual "tech presenter/science explainer" and this clearly righteous political call for action might get through to some people better.
His social media is very political, he's on bluesky.
Hell his YouTube is quite political if you understand the little p politics he expresses. When he talked about elevators and captioning he's been vocally in support of resources going to making the world more accessible to disabled people (and he puts his money where his mouth is, hand captioning all of his own videos). He's mostly been vocal about the need for doing something about climate change. Then there's also the video about algorithms that clearly originates from him being pissed about people wanting to invade Canada.
I'm not enough of a fan to look up other social media, I just occasionally watch some of his videos on topics that are interesting to me. But that's great to hear!
Any mention of nuclear energy and the difference of land and resources required in comparison?
Not directly, but a key point of his thesis is that solar by itself (with batteries) can provide 85% more power than we currently use by only using the land that currently grows corn for biofuel on. He mentions wind as well.
Nuclear has its own lies spread about it that are completely independent of what renewables get and it has its own caveats, so, it does kind of make sense to not really bring it up since that could warrant its own video. Illinois has nuclear power, so, I can't imagine it was an accidental oversight.
I don't think so, but then again it's a long and dense video and I might have missed something
They're lying.
Who's lying, and about what?
Gotta watch the video to find out.
Thanks for the detailed and thorough response
What, exactly, did we expect from someone named "fuckwit_mcbumcrumble"...? lol
Well, a little more bum crumble, if I'm being honest
You're welcome!
Hahahahaha, funny interwebs person being a sarcastic edge! Such fresh comedic material, I've never encountered before
Or maybe for some things, you just shouldn't... you're only hurting yourself in the end
There's a time and place for things, and garnering the wisdom to find the subtleties of that is something you should probably work on
Or continue forth being destructive for the lols and self-gratification, you're hilarious â truly. Enjoy the dopamine hit while it lasts!
Big edit: sorry @fuckwit_mcbumcrumble ... I got whooshed hard. I now see that yes, the tldw is indeed "They're lying". I feel a little dumb now, as I thought you meant the youtuber was lying; not that you had (super) summarized the subject. Very concise tldw, technically lol
Guess the video triggered me into also being tired of people lying, and thought you were being disinformative. My bad friend
Only now do you start feeling the urgency of the situation, when usually apolitical channels have started discussing politics.
"If you've been watching my channel for any length of time, then you should already have a pretty clear understanding of what my personal politics are. If you've been under the impression that I've not been political, you simply don't understand what politics means. I have indeed stayed out of partisan politics and electoral politics, but I've been wearing my personal politics on my sleeve this whole time, and they've not been that subtle."
That shit was beautiful. He's fucking mad.
undersells the advantage of solar over corn ethanol land use by a lot. At least 2x. Excluding high energy/equipment cost of fermenting ethanol, overstating mileage, and understating EV mileage. The point of ethanol is purely to pay farmers for useless work, but they can make far more with less work from solar. Corn farmers in US have lost money for 4 consecutive years. Excluding land costs, their costs is $650/acre/year, excluding their time/labour. Cashflow per acre $97 $4/bushel. At 2.5 hours/day for $30/hour, profit before rent-equivalent drops to $22/acre
In Nebraska, solar costs $1/watt to install (before recent permitting BS). China costs $0.50/w (no tariffs, cheaper construction services/equipment). An acre in Nebraska can hold 400kw of solar, and produce 630k kwh/year (edit: correction). It breaks even at 5c/kwh with 5% financing of whole installation (with system paid off in 25 years, even though it keeps producing) including $4000 O&M costs (high, because its washing dust and leaves 1-2 times per week). Every 1c/kwh revenue higher is $6300/acre profit,
Since ethanol is just a gift to farmers/rural land owners. Giving them 2%/financing rate as the gift and 4c/kwh in revenue is the same profit per acre, and at 5c/kwh, massively higher ($6300) profit. For US car drivers, instead of paying $0.12/mile (a 25mpg gasoline car will use 5.4 gallons ethanol/100 miles at $2.20/gallon). 18c/kwh charging for EV means $0.05/mile. Massive cost reduction already, but tariffs and other BS removal can provide significantly more value for farmers and drivers.
God, fuck ethanol. Last I checked it literally took 1.5 gallons of oil/gas to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. It turns more fuel into less fuel and pisses away soil fertility doing it.
I read an article some time ago arguing the purpose of ethanol (and ag subsidies in general) is, consciously or unconsciously, manifest destiny - we have to have a "use" for all the land we stole, we have to do something with it even if that something is a complete waste, because otherwise, people might start asking why we don't give it back. Seems more likely to me all the time.
It's the power of a voting class. Origins are geopolitics of 70s oil crisis. Then vote buying of rural areas. Most of the legislative giveaways were titled "clean air something". There is a food security argument for grains (livestock is a food battery, and ethanol is surplus monetization)
There is a high oil-related cost portion of corn farming. Close to $300 of the $650/acre is fertilizer ($225), tractor fuel, pesticides. The last 4 years of corn farming losses is also during low NG price. The minimal profit before rent-equivalence can go negative at higher NG price, because ethanol is only blended into gasoline when gasoline is expensive, and then corn only bought for cheap when it is not. The US always has a high oil price policy, and geopolitical insecurity to achieve it. Weapons-oil industry is deep state establishment pushing for war and higher oil prices, and more corn helps, and politicians are rewarded with larger bribery war chests.
Energy insecurity for Americans comes from relying on geopolitical manipulated energy subscription to live/operate. Farmers need export markets, which makes it good for them for US to not be hated by all of their markets. US oligarchy is also invested in high electricity prices/profits for incumbents. Datacenter bubble is ideal oligarchism alliance with tech.
The point of my post is that farming/rural areas can be weaned from the oil oligarchy voting block. Much cleaner air argument. Genuine energy security that comes from 0 reliance on future geopolitics/supply chains. Better corn prices if some corn farmers switch to solar. Lower oil prices if less of it is wasted on farming and cars. Lower electricity prices and abundance to fund whatever skynet priority to better kill us all, but without us going broke first.
I think there's absolutely a place for corn ethanol in America. It's called bourbon, and that's about it. Other biofuels are likely necessary for energy density required situations such as aviation, but I strongly suspect that there's better options for that than ethanol
I think there's something wrong with your math did you mean 630MWh/yr?
ty. corrected. original said 630kwh/year
One other thing is if the farm adds some batteries they can sell the electricity at peak times for 20-30c/kwh.
Also if making a fuel (that is also key input for local fertilizer production for neighbour farmers) is important, H2 electrolysis at 5c/kwh input makes $3.50/kg H2. equivalent to above 17.5c/kwh EV charging, excluding the battery charger losses. It is 10x cheaper to move by pipe than it is to move electricity by wire, while also doubling as storage, and even better home energy applications by using waste heat for free hot water. H2 has same 2.4x advantage over ethanol cost, but you can produce an unlimited amount to sell to places that need more energy seasonally, or to blast stuff into space.
If we didn't already have an electric infrastructure, hydrogen pipes would be spreading everywhere.
Renewables transition needs new distribution. Electric grid system in US especially and west in general has extremely poor supply chain for new transformers. If there is an effort in transmission/distribution expansion, an H2 economy is very competitive to electricity. Delivery by truck is feasible for rural homes. If new electric transmission costs 10c/kwh (existing national average charge is about 8c/kwh), then a $2/kg delivery charge is competitive. Pipelines would be 20c/kg, equivalent to 1c/kwh transmission charges.
Policy supports extortionist monopolists with incumbent climate terrorist fuels, and structurally made to stay that way, until we agree on whether war on Minnesotans is good or bad, and can move on to examining structural corruption issues.
Not finished it yet but it annoys me so much that for some reason it is VASTLY cheaper for me to buy a briefcase or two full of batteries for my house than it is for the same to be done in bulk at the scale of the grid.
Just batteries would cut my energy costs to about a third of their current rate by charging them at cheaper off peak prices. Isn't it insane that this is a feature of the current energy market?
It is in some markets. California PG&e has it, Texas is offering subsidies in some cities for it, and I've heard that it's becoming popular in the UK too (octopus iirc).
I forget the exact rates but the time-of-use pricing from PG&E was pretty good. Cheaper rates from 9pm to about 6am. After getting used to it running large appliances like dishwasher and laundry became easy.
Yeah, and borderline extortionate pricing from 2pm-6pm
Well, you're in for a ride. The last half hour is the spiciest.
Ooh nice! Does he have other videos like this or is it all computers and stuff?
He has a lot of videos focused on home appliances. Some that come to mind are toasters, dishwashers, heat pumps, and an entire series on Christmas lights. Breaks everything down with lots of tips for better home use (because no one reads the manuals on thise things).
Lots of great stuff, lots of retro tech and common how it works stuff. His dishwasher video makes it so there is no reason to wash things by hand pretty much ever.
He hasn't done any videos on computers, AFAIK. His channel covers a wide range of topics, from washing machines, car blinkers, heaters, refrigerators, to christmas lights. You can see his backlog here.
AND HEAT PUMPS!!!!
He does more old tech stuff or explains how appliances work. Not really computers. 10/10 channel but I get that the content isn't super captivating for everyone.
I highly recommend the series on the CED and the downfall of RCA. He's also got a number of videos about various cameras which are also great!
Any non-youtube link to watch this? Don't want to deal with Google no more
If you haven't already, try out the LibRedirect extension for your browser. It takes a small amount of configuring, but it is able to redirect you to privacy oriented front ends for most social media platforms including youtube. Once set up, it can automatically take you to an invidious instance whenever you click a youtube link.
Also, you can go to inv.nadeko.net (which is my go-to) from your browser and search all of youtube through it. Same thing as using LibRedirect, it's just the manual version.
If you're on android you can use the NewPipe app. Similar idea as Invidious, it's just a self contained app and not a website.
For tech people: You can host Invidious locally... No google, no ads, no popups.
It's a lot of maintenance. I'm not knocking it, I'm just pointing out how difficult it is.
I hosted a pixelfed server for my city and it cost a few hundred bucks out of my own pocket. It was a test run so I can push my city to move their social media to open-source.
But the constant need to apply spam protection and abuse from visitors, not to mention abuse from users like copyright shit and even CSAM. My expensive side project became a full time job.
Locally!!!
I'm hosting it in my own network. I access it. no one else!!
And I'm doing it, so I can tell you: It's almost no effort hosting Invidious locally for yourself. It just works. And if YouTube breaks something every 2 months, you can usually "docker compose pull; docker compose down; docker compose up" and it works again.
Just in case it is not clear: Invidious is an alternative YouTube frontend. In the backend, it uses YouTube. It's not some kind of Fediverse thing. You cannot upload videos with it / on it and you can be the only user ever using it.
https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
Conclusion: low effort to host locally.
It amazes me how certain people just can't help themselves with CSAM. Disgusting.
My theory is that it's just a handful of people who are using anything free to mirror that content, out of fear of losing it.
I imagine some of them are also just trolls trying to get people in trouble. (Pedophillic trolls, to be clear.) The same way folks just wanna break stuff just to break it. But who fucking knows. Some people are just disgusting and ruin good things.
Emule flashbacks đ€ź
I know it's not the main point of his video, but I really wish he'd looked into the CapEx vs OpEx stuff a bit more.
For example, when talking about how much fuel his car uses in its lifetime vs. the cost of buying solar panels, he makes it clear that the solar panels are a better investment than buying gasoline. But, what he doesn't talk about is the difficulty for a lot of people in coming up with the money up-front to make that investment. Especially if you're poor, finding $25 per week to put gas in your car is easier than spending $3000 up front to put solar panels on your house. I know later he makes the argument that it might not even make sense to put solar panels on your house. But, that up front cost is also there for buying an electric vehicle vs. buying a car with an ICE (fuck ICE). The Nissan Cube he showed had a starting price of $18k when it was last available new in 2014. The Ioniq 5 starts at double that, at more than $36k. As far as I can tell, you can't get a new electric car for less than $30k, whereas the cheapest gas cars are only $23k or so.
A big reason for the status quo is that paying small amounts constantly is possible when you're poor, but paying a big up front cost to go electric isn't. What's worse (and goes with the last half hour of his video), is that we're in this situation because the fossil fuel companies keep getting subsidies, whereas any subsidies for electric cars or photovoltaic panels keeps getting shut down.
Also, I know it's an American channel so it has to use things like "gallons", but please when talking about energy, use Joules, not "kilowatt hours".
My partner does Energy research and Kilowatt hours is a very common unit of measurement she has to deal with. Its not even non-standard. It uses S.I. units, even if I find it odd. Has nothing to do with U.S. customary units Americans use.
Also, I know it's an American channel so it has to use things like "gallons", but please when talking about energy, use Joules, not "kilowatt hours".
Does Europe use joules to measure electricity usage in your home? đ€
Here in Australia we measure the flow of electricity in Kangaroo Hops per Hour.
Otherwise known as kph, or hopperidoos
I pay my European kilowatts in tears and agony
I'm sorry, we pay in tears in my American house as well. We can all be united by our tears <3
No. Why would anybody have an intuitive frame of reference for what a joule is.
This appliance uses 1 kilowatt, running it for an hour is a kilowatt hour. Easy.
*And I can't even find anything suggesting any countries meter electrical bills by the joule so ???
This appliance uses 1 kilowatt. Running it for 1 second uses 1 kJ. Easy.
Are you billed by the hour, or by the month?
By the kilowatt hour per month.
If you're talking about systems that generate and consume power measured in watts. Why would you then convert to joules so that you can say 'this generates ___ joules per hour' when you could just infer kwh from the nameplate wattage. It's an extra conversion for no reason.
Why would I care about "Joules per hour"? What matters is power (Watts), and total energy used (Joules). "Kilowatt hour per month" is just an awkward way of saying "Joules per month"
Because total energy used is not what matters. What matters for most people is how much they have to pay. And they have to pay according to how many hours they were powering their devices with how many kilowatts.
People are â sadly â very uninterested in thinking about energy being indeed energy.
they have to pay according to how many hours they were powering their devices with how many kilowatts
Let's see, power multiplied by time is... energy. So they're paying for the total energy used. If they use 2 kW for their hair dryer and it doesn't even come close to an hour of usage, they have to pay for that too.
It's somewhat a wild assumption that the only electronic appliance a household uses is a hair dryer.
Yes, even wilder is to so blatantly build a strawman.
A kilowatt hour is 3.6 megajoules. It's used for the same reason lightyears are used to measure distances in space, it's easier to say Alpha Centauri is 4.396 light years away than 4.159x10^16 metres.
Astronomy uses special units because the SI units are more than 10 orders of magnitude different. You'd have to use really exotic prefixes like "zetta" or "yotta" if you wanted to keep using metres.
The difference between a kilowatt and a megajoule is just 3 orders of magnitude. You just have to switch from "k" to "M". People are already familiar not only with "M" but with "G" and "T" because of Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes, etc. There's nothing about kilowatt hours that's more intuitive or easy to use.
kilowatt hours ARE more intuitive than watt seconds when talking about something like solar panels, electric cars, and household energy where generation and consumption are better understood on the scale of hours.
No they're not. You're just used to them.
Are you seriously trying to say that if you're talking about a solar panel it makes more sense to talk about how much energy it produces per second than per hour. If you wanted to think about the amount a panel can produce per day are you sitting there thinking about how many seconds of sunlight it will get in a day.
If you want to estimate the energy usage of a 400 watt lighting system during an 8 hour workday you think it's more intuitive to go 400 * 3600 * 8 / 1,000,000 than 400 / 1000 * 8?
The reason seemingly every electrical utility in the world uses kWh is because hours are the more intuitive unit of time for this context.
Are you seriously saying that when you're talking about a solar panel you care about how much energy it produces per hour, not per second, per day, per week, or per year?
If you want to estimate the energy usage of a 400 watt lighting system during an 8 hour workday
Why would you want to do that? And what kind of lighting system in 2026 uses 400 Watts?
Are you seriously saying that when you're using your 2000 watt hair dryer, you want to pretend that you used it for an hour, and then scale that back to the few seconds you actually used it? Are you seriously pretending that your 800 watt microwave oven is on for a full hour at full power while you're heating your nuggets, so it makes sense to think of it in terms of kilowatt hours?
The reason most people think kWh is intuitive is that they're used to it because their electrical utility uses it. It's the same reason that Americans think Fahrenheit is more intuitive, while the rest of the world thinks Celsius is more intuitive. It's why Americans think miles make more sense for measuring distance, while the rest of the world thinks kilometers are easier to use.
You can't scale the energy a solar panel generates per day from the nameplate capacity because you don't get days of uninterrupted sunlight. It doesn't make much sense to try to estimate at a higher resolution either because of clouds.
Why would you want to do that? And what kind of lighting system in 2026 uses 400 Watts?
A commercial one might and because that's the first step to figuring out how much it uses in a 5 day work week, or per month or year.
Are you seriously saying that when youâre using your 2000 watt hair dryer, you want to pretend that you used it for an hour, and then scale that back to the few seconds you actually used it?
No because if you're measuring usage of something in seconds it isn't going to have a meaningful impact on household consumption.
The reason most people think kWh is intuitive is that theyâre used to it because their electrical utility uses it.
Ok even if that is true and they're both equally unintuitive you're the one who wants everyone to switch to an unfamiliar unit for no apparent reason. Why does it make so much more sense to talk about solar and electric car charging on the scale seconds of power than hours that everyone should change units?
figuring out how much it uses in a 5 day work week, or per month or year
In which case you're multiplying by large numbers so it doesn't matter if you start with Joules or kilowatt-hours, so you should start with the SI unit.
Ok even if that is true and they're both equally unintuitive you're the one who wants everyone to switch to an unfamiliar unit for no apparent reason.
The reason is that there is an SI unit for energy, and using the non-standard unit is dumb.
Why does it make so much more sense to talk about solar and electric car charging on the scale seconds of power than hours that everyone should change units?
Because there's an SI unit for energy, and there's nothing superior about kWh, it just adds to the confusion to have multiple different units that all measure the same thing. You get the stupid situation that Americans have with other units where there's teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, gallons, ounces, etc. all for measuring volume instead of just using L for everything.
fwiw there's a comment by Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca as a top-level reply to the post that I think was intended as a reply to you.
kWh are a metric unit (even if they're not SI), and are extremely common in discussions of household electricity. I wish it weren't the case, the same way I wish countries other than Australia used kilojoules for measuring energy in food instead of (kilo)Calories. But they don't.
I have no clue of kcal, because I always read the numbers in kilojoules. And EU is not a part of Australia :) (And we need to mention the kJ because EU legislation is in effect in Finland where I live)
Oh huh, really? I thought Europe used calories.
Both need to always be printed, with kJ first as that's the official standard. But since in practical terms more people talk about kcal, they've required including that one as well. Here's a photo:
(Also, all foodstuff must have the ingredients and nutritional values in the local language, so I wonder how this package of instant noodles made its way into my pantry!)
Nah americans are very familiar with debt being the country with the most personal debt in the history of the world. If only they took debt for investment not for buying a new truck.
This is entirely on people's lack of trying.
Vime's Boots Theory
It is pretty standard in most electric cars I've been in that it shows the kWh/h as it charges and how many kWh it has charged when complete.
Also your comment reminds me of the Boots economic theory. That poor people pay more overall because keep buying cheap boots yearly rather than spend more once on expensive boots every 10 years like the rich.
A captured government is the problem, the corrupt administration and the purchased opposition can't do anything for you like cheap power and subsidized electric cars because it doesn't help their donors.
Common sense.
it still needs to be explained carefully though
like to a child you still have to explain how to read a clock or how to tie their shoes even though it's common sense. and you have to be patient while explaining it.
I didn't write "common sense" to imply it doesn't need to be explained.
I wrote it to mean that once explained, it clearly is impossible to refute because it's common sense.
My comment was not adversarial.
Nor was theirs.
Both are very neutral and can be interpreted as dissent or assent if you read the right tone into them.
Fairly uncommon, sadly
I've been connected to renewables for over a year now and am quite satisfied with its performance, although I could be much happier if there were less trees lining the line paths causing outages during winters. That being said, when it does go out the line managers are very quick to fix it.
Hello your government is evil, do something
I have watched only a few minutes of this vid so far, as well as the timestamps and I must admit I don't agree with this approach because of something I learned today.
He says around 2 m something like: the strategic US reserve of oil even tho the number of barrels sounds huge, they could sustain the US only a month of our current use. From the context my understanding is that he implies that this is due to casual, everyday-people consumption.
Well, it looks like the Department of Defense is the U.S. governmentâs largest fossil fuel consumer, accounting for between 77% and 80% of all federal government energy consumption since 2001. So why is this huge percentage missing from this long analysis?
Anyways, if he talks about the US military petroleum consumption, please let me know. Or if I got something wrong with this new info I got about the US military, let me know too.
You're right, we shouldn't electrify and should keep using fossil fuels.
I'm really sorry that this is what you got from what I wrote. I definitely don't think we should keep using fossil fuel. On the contrary, I am all in for phasing out extractions and usage.
You should rewatch the video, because you totally have missed his main point
Because this video isn't about the US military, and all you're doing is bean soup leftism.
Cuz the US strategic oil reserve isn't earmarked for the federal government and the share of the military energy usage in the federal energy usage is entirely meaningless tot the oil consumption of the US economy.
Cuz the US strategic oil reserve isnât earmarked for the federal government
According to a factcheck site it looks like the U.S. Oil Reserve Created for Supply Disruptions, Not Strictly Military Use. So maybe your statement is wrong? Otherwise could you share the source you got this from?
the share of the military energy usage in the federal energy usage is entirely meaningless tot the oil consumption of the US economy
I don't understand what you are saying, could you please explain and/or share a relevant link? Btw maybe I should clarify that by talking about "consumption" I was not talking in economic terms, just in the sense of "utilizing".
Come again? I am saying "isn't earmarked for the federal government" and you come up with a fact check saying that it is not earmarked for military use. Which is the same thing.
Also, you are comparing the share of the military in the federal government's energy usage. The government's energy usage is largely electricity, not oil-based, while for the military it is the inverse. Also, the military consumes oil outside of the US economy: the oil consumption of an US Air Force base in say Spain is part of the Spanish economy, not of the US economy. Or at least, the overseas bases consumption will not be pulled from the US strategic oil reserves.
So it is all orthogonal to the US strategic oil reserves what the US military's share in energy consumption of the US Federal Government is.
I am saying âisnât earmarked for the federal governmentâ and you come up with a fact check saying that it is not earmarked for military use. Which is the same thing.
No. âIsnât earmarked for the federal governmentâ is not the same as âisnât earmarked for military use".
Any links to back what you say would be highly appreciated.
Given that the US military is part of the US federal government, yes, that is a difference without a distinction. If it is for general use, per your own source, and not earmarked for the US federal government, then it is by extension not earmarked for the US military either.
You could do worse than to actually watch the whole video and not dragging your dislike of having a military into a conversation that is not about that to begin with. Or as others have put it in a more pejorative way, stop it with the leftist bean soup.