Antitoxic9087

I think it is the other way around; easy pirate versions appeared becuz windows was popular, providing access to those who can't afford.

Money is not inheritly bad, just think of it as a tool to make accounting easier.

The problem with capitalism is the unconstrained protection of capital and overreliance of commodification to all sorts of human activities, thus creating unjust hierarchies. Some things might be suitable in a market setup, but most large scale issues concerning many stakeholders need to be managed in a more democratic way by the community. In any of these cases we would still need a convenient way to do accounting, so money will still exist.

Even if we do abolish money in a solarpunk society, the Lagrangian multipliers of whatever optimization goal the community has agreed upon will still be there, so we will just have to account for the active constraints in a more implicit manner. It would be much easier to communicate with each other with the Lagrangian multipliers themselves

We can argue that in a solarpunk society monetary value of stuff and labor becomes more connected with the actual environment and social values they represented. But what does this actually means? In the current capitalist society no economic theory (neoliberal or socialism) can explain economic notion of "value" in a consistent manner (neoliberal theory easily turns into circular reasoning while Marxism theory requires implausible mathematical assumptions), so this is something economists in a solarpunk society has to figure out.

Transgender women athletics are facing a catch 22 situation: If they win it is becuz of their "biological sex" But if they lose then it is becuz of their harmful transition surgeries.

Either way there is a reason to hate them.

I see from this paper that compared with Way et al. (2022), they introduced "learning in operational costs, rather than only in CAPEX", which benefits solar and offshore wind, also "solar power and wind energy see a higher learning rate than previous model versions". So very surprised wind not gaining more.

It is difficult to compare the results of Way et al. (2022) and this paper directly since in the former final and usable energy were reported and here it is electricity that is reported in the text, although from their relative share (both across time and wind vs solar at a given time), the conditions for solar is probably more favorable and wind growth is more constrained in this paper.

(Note: if I recalled correctly, Way et al. were the first to develop this system dynamics model that made learning rates endogenous feedback processes.)

I mean I understand this is modeling a pathway with no further climate policy, but still wind being second cheapest option should gain more share.

Seems too conservative projection for wind energy, but yeah most experts agree solar will be dominant.

Algae are also the preferable bioenergy source compared with using trees.

Inflexibility of conventional power plants is one issue, but for Ireland things have developed to a point I suspect it is no longer the main operational constraint on the grid.

Ireland is an island grid and needs to keep system inertia on its own (HVDC connection with neighbors cannot synchronize Ireland's grid with UK's, let alone continental Europe). This service is traditionally provided by conventional power plants in GW scale grids, but soon when synchronous condenser and inverter-based solutions become norm, there is no reason why 100% instantaneous wind + solar is not possible as shown already in various microgrids.

Similar develop can be observed in other islanded or nearly islanded GW scale grids such as South Australia.

This essay really hit hard as Palestine - Israel conflict continues.

Off point opinion: I do think it is a misconception that there existed a Chinese empire that continuously survive for two millennium. So many dynasties came and left, so many migration of people and reformation of culture, and so many border changes. It is better to view these dynasties not as a continuity but various power seeking clans and families claiming the title of celestial emperor, just as how European noble families claimed the title roman emperor for themselves.