Recent submissions

Comment · 5 hours ago
Having the authority to sanction a president does not necessarily mean that person has the power to overthrow a president. And the people with the most direct power (military and secret service) lack the authority to use it. Mostly these factors can balance out so that power is not concentrated as much as it seems.
Comment · 6 days ago
I think some hobbies tap into innate abilities more than others. And those tend to show more perceptible and immediate progress and so are more likely to become a regular habit. As a human you already have a facility for recognising things in nature, it is how humans can find food and detect threats. Where as other abilities (like playing a violin) are far less innate.
Comment · 15 days ago
There have often been private deals between renewables and big energy customers but the finances don't always work out how you might expect. Renewable projects are built using debt with interest rates largely based on the likelihood of generating revenue by selling electricity. And because of the long time scale interest can snowball to form a substantial part of the cost. Having a guaranteed customer in the form of a data centre is balanced by the risk that they might go out of business. You are basically coupling the risk of the generator to the risk of the consumer. That is why CfD style schemes are often favoured because it is just a safer source of revenue. Obviously hyper scalers have access to very cheap credit, but they may end up paying more for the electricity.
Comment · 15 days ago
Much easier to do upgrades piecemeal though with solar and wind.
Comment · 15 days ago
Could be seen as a technology demonstrator for interesting military technology. It could offer something akin to turn based warfare where units charge up and make synchronised moves.
Comment · 1 month ago
Wether we like it or not power generation at this scale is political. And whilst the culture war stuff is rubbish we can't escape the fact that these questions exist on dozens of different dimensions and include things like economics, politics, emotional, human factors, the environment etc. ultimately the argument needs to be won rather than settled.
Comment · 1 month ago
Any commercial venture will just become dominated by compounding interest payments on debt. Keeping so much capital tied up for so long without revenue is just too expensive.
Comment · 1 month ago
I don't think Dr salaries are even that high a percent of healthcare spending. Although, maybe better work life balance, lower salary escalation and less debt would help everyone.
Comment · 1 month ago
And high levels of stress can lead people to break rules. People lose the cognitive faculties needed for compliance. Even things that person personally believes and agrees with.
Comment · 1 month ago
Go arounds are not even very common (like 0.3% of landings).
Comment · 1 month ago
But possibly closer to where a lot of people live (towns and suburbs) and able to be more flexible to where they might want to go. Such as having direct flights to a coastal holiday destination rather than needing to connect through a city centre.
Comment · 1 month ago
The dynamic is completely different though. Russian has a culture and acceptance of sacrifice, sometimes in huge number. America is far more transactional and has increasingly treated sacrifice as unacceptable or even contemptable. There is an element of machismo in the way that the politicians talk and behave, but more in terms of executing on a transaction. But in general both sets of leadership are very protected from consequences of war (very unlikely to suffer violence to themselves or their family) so it must all be a bit abstract.
Comment · 1 month ago
Those facilities can be much more modest and can scale up and down depending on location. Particularly for smaller short haul aircraft.
Comment · 1 month ago
But politically and financially it is very challenging to build new capacity in a lot of places.
Comment · 1 month ago
Generally all the weight of the fusaage has to go through the wings anyway so it is structurally more efficient to put weight on the wings in the first place.

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