alvvayson

Storage tech is indeed the laggard.

The most readily available form of stored energy is still natural gas.

We really need to change our energy pricing and taxation to reward green ways to store energy better.

I really don't understand why Americans support this.

It's a disgrace.

Also, having been on the other side of such a situation: it's not cool to pressure or guilt trip your guests. Either be hospitable and let them do whatever they want, or don't invite them.

If people aren't hungry, then they aren't hungry. Maybe they are on a diet, maybe they misunderstood OP's intention and ate beforehand. Maybe they are recovering from something and don't want to eat too much.

And as for the two that did not showed up. It's a good practice to reconfirm the night before. Sometimes people forget. Sometimes life gets in the way.

If they did reconfirm and still didn't show up and did not have a good excuse, then I would start looking for better friends.

Hope OP has better success next time. I do understand that the situation sucks.

But it's also a situation that, in my opinion, is preventable.

Exactly. Every time the UN does something, people say "they can't enforce it".

Well, that's the whole point of the UN. To resolve things without using force.

It's a good design, designed by people who learned from the horrors of WW2.

It's sad to see how many people nowadays forget those lessons and are itching for global war.

Yep, all the electrical engineers who have chimed in say it looks more like explosives.

A battery would get hot and start a fire. It wouldn't instantly explode like this.

The comment that was liked says to "vote her if not Trump", it doesn't say to vote "Trump if not her".

A very important nuance. A more charitable explanation is that she is trying to get undecided voters. Which is exactly what a presidential candidate is supposed to do.

I agree with this take.

AI will definitely make some white collar jobs way more productive, and thus change the nature of that work and reduce the number of people employed in those jobs.

A good example is translation, where translators are now mostly reviewing translated texts instead of translating from scratch.

This means the ability to read fast and take on the role of editor is what remains important in the remaining jobs for translators.

The only country that can be blamed for destroying Iraqi industry is the USA. Two decades of war, one decade of sanctions and another decade of war (by Saddam against Iran) sponsored by the USA in the 1980s.

Obviously, Iranian industry will outcompete Iraqi industry at this point in history.

Iraq needs to rebuild and they need outside help.

I'm not gonna defend Iranian war mongering. And neither will I defend Turkish war mongering, or IS, USA or Israeli war mongering.

But the only path forward for Iraq is by making peace with the two power brokers in the region: Turkey and Iran.

And that's what the current government is trying to achieve. The Turkey-Iraq corridor and the new port they are building are going to lay the foundation for their future prosperity.

As for Iran, Iran is desperate for allies. It won't be that difficult to find some mutually beneficial relationship with them.

It's more-or-less geographic destiny that Iran and Turkey will become the dominant powers in Western Asia.

They both basically ruled the area for most of history.

The best we (the West) could do is nudge them towards human rights and peace and friendship. For Turkey, that's mostly a done deal.

For Iran, that was exactly what Obama tried to do. And it's also what Iran has been trying to get for the past 25 years.

Iran is inherently on a path towards secularisation and more dovish policies. It's the threat of war by the US and Israel that keeps the defense hawks in power.

Iran, especially, will never fully trust the USA - and for good reason. But they do want better relations with the USA. They just don't want to get burned or bombed.

Thank you. I thought I had checked Wikipedia.

It seems smack in the middle between Eritrea and Yemen.

Does anyone know exactly where in the red sea this is?

I want to know if it's in Yemens territorial waters or not.

The most common and stable society since the dawn of agriculture has been the feudal/slave society.

Countries like China and Bangladesh are basically this type of society.

And even the USA had sharecroppers until very recently.

We have to be very diligent, every waking hour, if we want to preserve our modern western way of life.

And we are horribly failing, by getting sucked into divide&conquer tactics that polarize the working class and thereby neutralize our political power.