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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • But then you’re just having another system for storing energy, which probably isn’t very easy to implement. An easier solution if you don’t want to use grid batteries is just to improve housing insulation and schedule heating/cooling for non peak hours, so that you are just using less energy overall. The problem in my mind is that that would require a lot of renovation on older homes, which is just more expensive and slower than adding grid batteries. Don’t get me wrong, those changes should be mandated for newer housing, but expecting it to be implemented in older housing probably isn’t gonna happen.



  • There are plenty of alternatives for lithium batteries, chiefly sodium and a redox flow. Heating/cooling is good as well to store, but not every structure is energy efficient enough that it would make much sense. Good thing to work towards, but grid batteries would probably be faster and easier to implement. I have reservations towards pumped hydropower, in part due to watching how hard it is to decommission a lot of hydroelectric dams these days in US as well as the cost to create the areas to hold the water (a lot of the areas that are geographically advantageous for pumped hydropower tend to be nature reserves or national parks, soo…).



  • Not really a course, but Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a pretty good fanfic made with the intent of teaching critical logic concepts and logical fallacies to the reader. I found it a good read, and even if you might dislike some of the literary choices made (Harry makes fast friends with Malfoy, etc), it does cover most of the stuff in a critical thinking textbook in a somewhat approachable manner. It’s free, and you can read chapter by chapter if you just want to give it a glance.




  • My father has had two heart attacks. The first was a pretty standard one by heart attack standards, required a stint to be put in and two days at the hospital. The cost was ~$40k and after insurance we were left with I think a $4-5k deductible (pretty good county employee insurance). His second one luckily (ha) happened while on the job and required another stint to be put in (he got amazingly lucky, as it was a widow maker of a heart attack) and was covered under his works insurance.

    For reference, I’m healthy and in my late 20s, I pay ~$250 a month through my employer’s health plan, $25 for an office visit, $500 to walk through the doors of the ER, with a $3k in network deductible ($6k out of network). Believe me when I say you are amazingly lucky to have the NHS.



  • I read your argument as being that since we aren’t quantum leaping ahead with technology, it’s a bit of a wash with the pushes for future battery standards. But my point is that this battery update, while not being a 10x in performance, is more likely a 2x and will be viable to scale with pricing decreases as time progresses. I’m in the trucking sector, and one of the things I have noticed about transitioning to electric heavy duties is that a lot of the issues aren’t completely on battery density, but rather that there isn’t an infrastructure that can charge the batteries at high voltage without beefing up the power grid around stations. If you could instead give a cheap enough battery backup to create a buffer that fills up during lower use hours, then a lot more of the solutions for that could charge ev trucks quickly would make more sense (it’s actually what has made the Tesla Semi have such good numbers). It’s stuff like this that actually might push the transition, which has to happen, not waiting for next quantum leap.


  • I mean, lithium cells were used for fringe use cases 20 years ago, now they are seemingly everywhere. The difference with this tech is that they know it’s currently expensive, so are aiming for use cases where the added cost is justifed. Give it 5 years and the tech will more than likely become easier to produce, lowering costs. That and sodium batteries are probably going to dramatically lower cost for grid storage, which should make it easier to have consistent power delivery.



  • Addv4@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldAll junk
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    2 months ago

    It’s a lot more rare for sure. Some still do have nice stuff, but it’s much, much more of shitshow than it used to be. Unfortunately not many independent thrift stores around me, and the few that are generally have nice deals even less often than goodwill.