I’m guessing (hoping) you’re joking here and having a laugh at us all taking you too seriously. But I’ve seen enough of lemmy to doubt that.

If your accelerationist ideology is unironically promoting nuclear holocaust as its self-evidently ideal endgame, you’re long overdue for your “are we the baddies” moment. Maybe (definitely) stay off social media for a bit as you re-examine how you got here and who’s lied to you along the way.

Based on Drew Builds Stuff:

• Stuff Made Here, applying high technology and robotics to low-stakes challenges.
• The Thought Emporium (Also on Nebula). One day, they’re artificially aging whiskey with ultrasound, the next, the host is editing his own genes to remove lactose intolerance.

Based on the intersection of building and the great outdoors:

• Quiet Nerd, who’s been building a lot of camping equipment lately.

Some shots in the dark, based on exploration and documenting the unseen:

• Exploring the Unbeaten Path, urban exploration with some unique locations.
• Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t, identifying plants.

Based on Baumgartner Restoration:

• Hand Tool Rescue, a channel where they lovingly restore antique tools and machines.

Beyond All Reason is my favorite RTS at the moment. I enjoyed Planetary Annihilation (despite its flaws), and BAR provides the same sense of exponential growth, escalation, and strategic pivots.

One of my favorite things about the game is that it’s not ridiculously APM-intensive. The controls have a learning curve, but they enable you to “fire and forget” most of your tasks.

If you want to get a sense for the game before diving in, Brightworks does some good casting for both competitive and community-level games. https://www.youtube.com/@BrightWorksTV

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap is one of my favorite games of all time. It’s the last isometric Zelda game, and they made it a swan song. The main quest it pretty short, but it’s the sort of cozy game where doing the sidequests just feels right.

In the game, you shrink down to the size of a mouse to traverse rafters and explore tiny temples and float on lillypads. It’s the sort of thing that would be no big deal in a 3D game, but is wildly ambitious in 2D. Not only do they pull it off, but they fill the environments with lush, lived-in detail that springs to life when you shrink down and look at it up close. The art style still sticks with me after 20 years.

Also, forget all the “hey, listen” stuff, your sidekick Ezlo just sasses you the entire time. It’s great.

Lets drop this whole “lesser of two evils” thing […] it certainly doesnt work with comparing governments.

I think it is deeply unwise to take that to heart.

I grew up deep in the American Midwest, surrounded by Evangelical-leaning Christian fundamentalism. Out there, committing one sin was considered as bad as committing a hundred (see also: Matt 5, James 2:10). They dropped the whole “lesser of two evils” thing, and you know what happened? They treated gays the same way they treated murderers, because the two sins were equally easy to condemn. They put rapists in pulpits because in their eyes, molesting a child was just as easy to forgive as ogling an adult.

When you tell people to reject nuance in ethics, that there is no “greater evil,” you remove 90% of their moral compass. They become pliable and easily manipulated by whoever can seize power or respect (see also: Trump).

Every person has flaws, and every system, government, or ideology created by people is likewise flawed. If we refuse to judge the severity of those flaws, refuse acknowledge that there are lesser evils in government, then we claim our own ideologies are no better than fascism – after all, both have their sins, and we just claimed that all sins are equal.

$1.9m/MW is dirt cheap for nuclear, about one fifth the cost of a new site and about the same as the capital cost for wind+storage. This is due to recomissioning being cheaper.

I am seeing rumbles about already seeking additional funding from the state, so we’ll see if this project gets hit with the cost overruns that plague new construction.

Nebula link, for those looking.

Gives me these kinda vibes.

Hard disagree.

This week, I’m designing a circuit which would traditionally use relays, but I’m considering IGBTs instead. IGBTs weren’t designed for my industry, but they’re so cheap (thanks to quadcopters) that I can just overspec them and get the job done despite the lack of optimization.

Grid scale energy storage was already being researched before the EV boom – remember when people stopped talking about vanadium-flow? EV batteries undercut stationary-optimized batteries in $/kWh because EVs are lucrative enough to drive the research that much harder. Without the EV industry as the incubator for competing battery tech, stationary storage would still cost what it did in 2010.

In the USA, out of every economic sector, transportation creates the most GHG emissions [EPA1], and the majority of that is from passenger vehicles [EPA2]. Significant portions of the industrial sector’s emissions come from refining automotive fuel [EPA3]. US total GHG emissions are down around 20% from their peak in 2005, but almost all of that has come from the electrical power sector [CBO1][CBO2]. Vehicular pollution has dramatic direct health impact on top of GHG emissions [HSPH].

Transport emissions are the long pole in the tent for the US. Solutions to that will be the focal point of US climate strategy for the next decade. Barring the demolition of the majority of US housing to re-establish walkability, our two best solutions are EVs and public transit.

EVs cut lifecycle emissions by about 55-60%. [UCS][ANL][MIT][ICCT][BNEF][CB][MIT][IEA]

Public transit cuts lifecycle emissions by… about 55-60%. [IEA][AFDC][USDOT]

Neither is a magic bullet. Both get their asses kicked by bicyles (and to a lesser degree, microcars). Both get better with increased passengers per vehicle. Both can be fueled with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both can be manufactured with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both take surprisingly equivalent amounts of raw resources and energy. EVs need batteries that are carbon-intensive under current practices, but rail needs large quantities of steel which is equally carbon-intensive under current practices.

There are a ton of factors I can barely touch on here, so here’s a rapid-fire overview. Public transit offers unique advantages from an urbanist perspective and the liveability of cities [ST], but that’s objectively different from sustainability. The US has such low average ridership/occupancy that our busses have more emissions per passenger mile than our cars [AFDC1][AFDC2], and that was before the pandemic – it’s even worse now [NCBI]. Low ridership can be partly attributed to the incompatibility of American suburbs with public transit – which could be a major roadblock because 2/3rds of Americans own detatched homes [FRED], representing $52t [PRN] in middle-class wealth that they will likely defend with voting power. Climate solutions will need to maneuver around this voting bloc. I personally think individual EVs and intercity rail are complementary technologies – the more cheap (short-ranged) EVs are out there, the more people will lean on public transit for long trips. Heavy rail gets way better efficiency per vehicle mile than light rail or commuter rail and I have no clue why [APTA][ORNL], but I’m not as impressed by light rail as I expected to be. Since public transit and personal transport leverage different raw resources and face different challenges to adoption, we will achieve the most rapid decarbonization if we do both at the same time.

TL;DR

This is a huge, huge question, and anything short of a dissertation would fail to answer it objectively. My best answer is that the most effective solutions to climate change are diverse, engaging multiple technologies in parallel. EVs are a piece of the puzzle, but not a one-size-fits-all solution.

it’s actually really easy to figure it out for yourself if you know where to look.

Yeah, but different people interpret legislation differently, and the gramatically literal interpretation isn’t always the “right” one. So it would be smart to also include links to any cases or precedents based on them.

Also nihilism is fucking [redacted], I’m not sure why you are attributing that to me.

To recap:

There’s nothing I can do unless I want to become a hunter gatherer. […] there’s no way around doing infinitely more harm by living […] morally it’s a drop in an ocean of wrong. […] it’s not a moral question, same with the other stuff

If you had just said that you don’t bother boycotting because your effort is currently being spent in more productive activities, then I would’ve given an upvote and left. But that’s not exactly what you said. You said that any attempt at improving society through personal morality (short of removing yourself from it) is pointless due to the scale of the harm society inflicts. Even if you didn’t mean it, that’s what you stated, so that’s the point I’ve been disagreeing with over here.

The stance that personal morality should have no place in the shaping of society (and that the common man’s fight to improve society is irrelevant and naive due to the scale of the ultimate victory of the strong over the weak) is a paraphrasing of Nietzsche’s disavowal of “slave morality.” The stance that a person should only advocate for things that help them personally is a paraphrasing of Nietzsche’s ideal of “master morality.” If you don’t want people associating you with that philosophy, you should be careful not to repeat it.

there’s no way around doing infinitely more harm by living

morally it’s a drop in an ocean of wrong.

Then why did you bother joining your co-ops? Why bother engaging with local political candidates? Why bother with locally-sourced food and clothing? Isn’t it just delusion to fight against an infinite foe?

I think the answer is that you don’t truly believe what you’re telling us. I think you pretend to be a Friedrich Nietzsche nihilist because that suits the aesthetics of anarchy, but deep down you’re a Victor Frankl nihilist. Just like the rest of us, you want to put one more drop in the bucket because whether or not it makes a difference to the cosmos, it makes a difference to you.

Toyota’s been promising that solid state batteries are just around the corner for about 13 years now. They keep bumping the goalposts back every few years.

Mass transit is the only way that is sustainable

EVs cut lifecycle emissions to about 45%. [UCS][ANL][MIT][IEA]

Public transit cuts lifecycle emissions to… about 45%. [IEA][AFDC][USDOT]

Neither is a magic bullet. Both get their asses kicked by bicyles. Both get better with increased passengers per vehicle. Both can be fueled with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both can be manufactured with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both take surprisingly equivalent amounts of steel, aluminum, and glass.

Public transit offers unique advantages from an urbanist perspective and the liveability of cities, but that’s objectively different from sustainability.

Exactly. Hertz vocally blames higher repair costs and long repair times for the Teslas that make up the bulk of their EV fleet. Other EV manufacturers don’t share those problems.

So let me get this straight. VW’s US sales (EVs in particular) have failed to meet expectations because people don’t like their overdependence on buggy, outsourced software.

…and VW’s response is to outsource even more software while incorporating a technology base known for being unreliable.

I’m trying out some FOSS games.

Mindustry. I expected Mindustry to be a Factorio clone, but it’s uniquely fast-paced and messy. I find it difficult to tell the buildings apart, though, so I may have to hunt down a graphics mod.

Beyond All Reason. I really enjoyed Planetary Annihilation, so this seems like a natural pick. I’ve barely sunk my teeth into it, but I’m impressed so far.

Huh. I had to google it, but you’re right – body wash isn’t technically soap, it’s detergent. So it’s less likely to leave a film, particularly in hard water.

You learn something new every day.

Fashion accessories. For most fashion (not workwear), the expensive stuff is made from the same material and in the same factories as the cheap stuff, they just market it harder.

Body wash. It’s watered-down soap. Just buy a bar of soap.

Amazon Prime. Amazon used to be space-age Sears. Now it’s just Aliexpress. Fake reviews and bribery are rampant, dangerously nonfunctional products get top recommendations, used and broken products get resold as new while untouched returns get thrown into landfills, Amazon Basics violates IP, and they’re putting ads in Prime Video now.

Microwaves and space heaters. The boxes may try to convince you otherwise, but the amount of heat these devices can deliver is bottlenecked by the power outlet. Every 1100W microwave is just as effective as the others. If you’re paying more, it’s for looks and for features you’ll never use like popcorn mode.

Electronics, for most people. Most people won’t get more use out of a new $1500 phone than a last-gen model from the same manufacturer for $500. Do you really want a $200 smart coffee maker, or a $20 dumb coffee maker with a $10 plug-in timer?

Software. Obligatory FOSS plug. I don’t blame people for sticking to what’s familiar, but if you have the time and energy to spare tinkering, most software out there has a good free or open-source equivalent these days. At least for personal use. In my use case, LibreOffice beats Microsoft Word, Photopea beats Photoshop, and Google Sheets beats Excel.