• 0 Posts
  • 10 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: September 24th, 2023

help-circle
  • I do audiology research and can tell you right now, short of a cochlear implant -no we can’t. And we are easily about two decades away from anything close. And even then, a CI can’t make music sound as good as your ears. There is no ‘one’ place in the brain you can imput music into. The most dense and easiest place to input the music is in the cochlea, like a cochlear implant does. Every place up the chain then branches out to thousands of connections and makes it harder and harder. And every step higher up that you try to interface into means you are skipping the initial signal generator and lose out on all the needed fidelity. The next step above a CI is an ABI, auditory brainstem inplant. And they sound so bad, just going one stop up from the cochlea, that those users barely can understand speech and only in the best settings. And normally after about a year of auditory therapy with it. Realistically we tell people (the handfull a year who will end up with one) that they should expect to get sound awareness, and that’s it, from their ABI. And now Elon talks about wanting to go another half dozen steps up from that and magically have the fidelity to make it sound like music?? GTFO. This guy is a moron and doesn’t know what he is talking about.



  • I know, right? Like, who the fuck needs democracy and sovereignty? If they didn’t want to be part of Russia, then they should have just said so. Has Velinsky tried talking to the justly elected Putin? This 100 billion could be spent on rebuilding all the housing in Ukrane that was blown up by Russia DEFENDING its self from the Ukrainian troops invading Ukraine. This could be 100 billion dollars in food aid spread around the world in the form of Ukrainian grain shipments that have been stalled or sunk, but Ukraine has CHOSEN to stop shipping their grain by blocking their own barges and trucks.this could have been 100 billion dollars in CLEAN oil that Russia could have been exporting to help the world with energy, but instead will have to rebuild because the plants keep blowing up. If only there was a solution that would let the world move on and spend their money on better things. If only we would just give in to Russia and let them take what they want at the expense of others- then the world would be a better place.







  • I can see that critical thinking isn’t your strong suit, but I’m willing to comment it out with you instead of just down voting.

    If the price of solar is already the lowest -and still dropping- then how is the most expensive option that takes about a decade to implement a better option for right now? This apparent point of diminishing returns is only beginning to manifest in even lower prices than this 2019 chart. And this diminishing returns point is only in the cost of the panels dropping; they are still getting better in technology and improving efficiency while maintaining low prices. If your argument is “solar can’t continue on this trend forever” -no one expects anything to consistently drop almost 90% every decade. Of course it will level out. And when it does, it will STILL be the cheapest option.


  • Huge up front costs.

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx

    “On a levelized (i.e. lifetime) basis, nuclear power is an economic source of electricity generation, combining the advantages of security, reliability and very low greenhouse gas emissions. Existing plants function well with a high degree of predictability. The operating cost of these plants is lower than almost all fossil fuel competitors, with a very low risk of operating cost inflation. Plants are now expected to operate for 60 years and even longer in the future…”

    “World Nuclear Association published Nuclear Power Economics and Project Structuring in early 2017. The report notes that the economics of new nuclear plants are heavily influenced by their capital cost, which accounts for at least 60% of their LCOE. Interest charges and the construction period are important variables for determining the overall cost of capital. The escalation of nuclear capital costs in some countries, more apparent than real given the paucity of new reactor construction in OECD countries and the introduction of new designs, has peaked in the opinion of the International Energy Agency (IEA). In countries where continuous development programmes have been maintained, capital costs have been contained and, in the case of South Korea, even reduced. Over the last 15 years global median construction periods have fallen. Once a nuclear plant has been constructed, the production cost of electricity is low and predictably stable.”

    TLDR: If you weren’t already on the nuke train when it was going, the upfront costs are too much to make it worth it this late in the game. You are better off just getting solar/wind + battery. If you already invested in nuke, then you are good to keep updating them.