And they’ll only get better with time. I think It’ll be a little rocky the next four years in the US. But still, they are great. My house is 100% wind powered and I regret not putting solar on 5 years ago

Great points! Wind and solar are far easier to scale. Their main issue is land use, but when applied properly (with appropriate environmental impact assessments) that’s not a major concern on its own, really it’s transiting that power to use centers. Dealing with the individual property rights for a transmission line that doesn’t benefit the person under it is and has been enough to kill energy projects.

In my opinion, nuclear’s strength lies in its energy density. You could replace a coal or gas plant with a nuclear plant. This is an option being explored by a couple companies because it enabled them to use land no one wants that already has the cooling and transmission connections.

I support nuclear and it was a recurring theme in my environmental policy degree, but I am by no means against wind and solar. I think they are fantastic sources. They each have their trade offs. But we will need to make use of everything in the face of climate change.

One small note, nuclear is expensive, however be cautious when researching cost per Wh produced and look for the time scale. Wind and solar projects are often forecasted to run for just 20 years, they can certainly go longer though. Nuclear runs for 50+ years. Cost comparisons always use the lowest time scale. Nuclear obviously has a very high upfront cost that makes it stupid expensive for a 20 year plan, but over 50 it can reach parody or undercut renewables. Renewables are also done a disservice by these same reports by locking them to the low timescales when their leases are easily extended. But leases are also a large expense so renewal does bump the cost. Things get difficult to forecast with those known-unknows, so it’s easier, and more accurate to take the lowest scale and say “this is the cost for 20 years” and let the reader decide if they want to math out the 2.5 multiplier. But then it wouldn’t be accurate to the 20 years since renewal costs and…well, you see why we use the lower scale.

Kyle Hill has done a fantastic job discussing nuclear energy, if anyone is interested in learning more about its viability. https://youtu.be/J3znG6_vla0

Also, I’ll leave this safety study here as well because nuclear safety is, and should be, a top concern.

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

He’s been campaigning for head of the USDOE for years. His time in Oklahoma office has just been bouncing from one GOP hot topic to the next, trying to catch Trump’s eye. This is just another “daddy please” from him. Unfortunately it’ll probably work. But at least the whole US will get to use his brilliance that brought Oklahoma’s education system from 49th all that way to 49.5…

Providing he doesn’t become a dictator, which is certainly probable, his impacts on the environment will be bad, but not catastrophic.

Historically, when the incumbent is out, the president flips to the other party. Businesses plan strategy out for 5-10-20 years. Trump dismantling regulation won’t force them to reconsider their strategy entirely. They’ll use the 4 years as breathing room knowing it’s probable a democratic executive will return in 2029. They’ll slow walk progress, but they aren’t going to abandon everything and start ramping up emissions. They still have to sell products in CA and the 16 states that follow CA emissions rules. We already saw that in 2016, auto makers stayed the course. They enjoyed the extra time to get their fleet MPGs up, but they knew time would eventually out and they’d need to be competitive when that happened.

Trumps “drill baby drill” plan sounds good to idiots, but oil is still subject to supply and demand. They already lease more land than they could ever use. They’ll use trump to buy up leases that would otherwise go to renewables, but they aren’t going to start pumping oil past demand and driving their profits down. Especially considering retaliation tariffs could cut into exports as well.

The IRA benefits red states more than blue and they are already begging GOP leaders to leave it alone. Trump might be able to cut individual tax credits for the middle class. Slow some solar and EV purchases, buy that’ll cut into Elon’s business as well, so maybe he won’t even get that done.

Of course, if he goes full dictator, we’re fucked anyway. But if he stays within the confines of our flawed democracy, and money prefers he do so they can continue to buy laws forever, then there’s a chance his damage will be confined as well.

Well, yes, of course this is assuming he is stopped from going full dictator. That could easily happen, but it would be terrible for the economy so…and I never thought I’d say this…but thankfully deep pocketed lobbyists will mostly be trying to keep the current state of democracy intact. If we go full monarchy, it’s not great for business…

But again, coin flip, end times, and we’re all super fucked anyway so the ACA is the least of our concerns.

Yep, it will be up to 5 republicans in the house to save anything, ACA, IRA, Medicaid, etc. Our only hope is that they remember the blue wave rebuke of Trump in 2018 and choose to be moderate. But they can easily flip the coin the other way and know this is the end times and they need to ram through all the terrible shit fast.

I wouldn’t bet on that gun part*…he wanted to take guns away in his first term through executive action. I doubt two assassination attempts will have mellowed him out in that.

“I like taking guns away early” Trump said. “Take the guns first, go through due process second.”

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/28/trump-says-take-guns-first-and-worry-due-process-second-white-house-gun-meeting/381145002/

You are not correct. There are several forum posts complaining about this issue. One of which is linked below.

You can disable it on your profile, but to switch back and forth you have to stop the car, place it in park, switch to FSD, accept the agreements, re-apply all your personal settings for traffic lights and such. At this point, the double or single pull activation greys out and you are stuck with single pull, all or nothing FSD. When the car screws up and you don’t want FSD anymore, you must again navigate to the autopilot menu and disable it.

Or, like me, you can do this once in a safe location, save a second profile for FSD and switch immediately with two clicks from memory.

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/fsd-12-5-4-no-longer-allows-double-click-to-start.334535/

Fully agree. The sort of good news for driving around them is that most of my frustrations come from it being overly cautious and almost getting rear-ended because it decided to stop for a green light or some other odd decision. It’s rare to have it interact poorly with someone that is driving predictably. Like, cut it off without a signal and you have introduced something has not already accounted for. Driving alongside it on the highway, it sees you and knows where you are. But people are unpredictable and it only takes one mistake.

That’s totally fair. I think it depends on the person and what they have going on that day. I remember, or rather do not remember, getting to work in my last car because my brain did the driving task while I was lost in thought. When I’m using lane keep, I feel like I’m hyper aware of what the cars around me are doing and what road changes are coming that I need to manually adjust for. I could see that getting very boring late at night or on empty highways though. Everyone is different and that’s just another element of the equation that the car doesn’t account for.

Yes, I said that…

So you now have to have a second profile* for cruise control and lane keep without FSD.

I agree with that. Adaptive cruise and lane keep do reduce road trip fatigue in my experience. Tesla-bros bought the idea that this would be a fully autonomous car and it’s not. Rather than learning their lesson and using it as a tool, they put their faith in it anyway, weighting the wheel or whatever to get what they paid for regardless of what the car can reliably do.

First, let me clarify I bought my Tesla used, before Musk went full fascist, and autopilot came free. The car was updated to the newest hardware for free, since the original FSD equipment couldn’t do it either.

That out of the way, FSD sucks, and it’s getting worse, not better. When if first come out of beta it was okay. I remember describing it as driving with a teenager, they got the general idea, but would make bad decisions so you had to watch them. Years of updates later and it’s practically unusable to me. It tries to go way under or over the speed limit, it hesitates or slams on the brakes for green lights. It slams on the brakes for cars that pull out with plenty of gap but doesn’t even notice the risky merges. It can not seem to navigate intersections anymore, damn near stopping in the middle of a turn. It actually just updated yesterday and I tried it again, it took me less than 5 miles to disable it again. It is, in my opinion, a hazard to use. I talked to my partner about it and we both agree it didn’t used to be this bad.

Anyway, the stupidest part of all this, is they changed it so it’s either full self driving all the time or not. You want cruise while you’re in traffic because you know it’ll try to cut in front of someone? Silly idiot, no you don’t. So you now have to have a second profile* for cruise control and lane keep without FSD. And the odd thing is that lane keep and cruise are fine. They function like FSD used to. They can drive the highway with no problem and trust me, I do not have much faith in the car so I’m watching it close. It can’t navigate city streets, but neither can FSD…

TLDR, my car was a better deal for me than Tesla. After years of FSD access, it’s bad and getting worse, not better. I can’t believe people pay 5 figures for it and maybe that’s why they feel the need to clip perfect drives or defend it.

You can decide if the steep increase November-January* was Trump or because he lost the election

Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-data

Musk’s attorneys filed documents Wednesday night in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, a federal court, requesting the matter be moved to their jurisdiction

Yep, he’s get these charges moved from State to Federal court so Trump can pardon him.

I know Billionaires going to billionaire and all, but with Elon Musk so obviously having a strong position in Trump’s cabinet, wouldn’t it make sense to advocate against that administration? Elon is going to crush every private space and EV manufacturer in favor of his own companies. Elon is doing his best ‘toddler in a bounce house’ impression at the rallies. No way Bezos is going to compete or overcome Elon’s influence, especially since I doubt Trump will give a single fuck what his cabinet does.

Again, avoiding taxes is all they care about, but damn. Harris might raise his taxes a fraction of a sliver, but at least Blue Origin would get a fair shake at contracts.

You’re right, there are a lot of very liberal people in the ranks. There’s no disputing that. I’m just saying there are plenty of MAGAs around too, more than enough to cause havoc. And if shit starts going south, the GI bill nerds with degrees will head for the door because they have the qualifications to do so. They can stand up for the constitution because they will land on their feet after they get kicked out.

Generalizing myself here, the more conservative a troop is, the more likely the military is all they know. The promise of being special and fighting for the America they believe Trump will give them is more than enough to push some of them over the edge.

Maybe, the chain of command and lawful orders really only work if the participants are willing and there are repercussions. A MAGA general will know who his MAGA Colonels are and so on down the line. Could it be scaled to the entire military, maybe, no one has tried. But could a General, a handful of officers and 20 or so troops be selected as superior MAGA soldiers reporting directly to the president and his appointed chief of staff? I don’t think that’s improbable at all.

He’s been talking about sending the military after Adam Schiff and other “enemies within”. He definitely heard the SCOTUS arguments. If he’s president and he doesn’t get to fire someone, or everyone, I doubt he’ll hesitate to send a military unit to threaten or even kill them. Who’s going to stop him? Would 15-17 senators vote to impeach him? Would he try to kill them too? Did Tuberville’s General Promotion sabotage leave enough slots open for Trump to install his own “Hitler’s generals”?

I would say I’m being alarmist, but the man is on TV saying this is what he will do on day 1. If he wins, everyone, left and right, is fucked.