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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: April 25th, 2026

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  • I know it’s a distraction but I abhor the way the man speaks.

    “I was informed this morning by the joint chiefs of staff that at so and so time in such and such operating theater we lost communication with blahblah asset. All US service members were recovered safely with no loss of life. We are committed to peace, but if this was, as we believe it to be, a violation of the ceasefire agreement, this provocation cannot go unanswered. I am urgently seeking communications with the leadership of the IRGC and am directing our forces in the region to move to a state of enhanced readiness.”

    • serious
    • sounds like something a Sorkin character would say
    • leaves diplomatic buffer in case it turns out something other than an Iranian missile caused the loss of equipment

    “Army told me IRAN shot down our very fancy helicopter in operating theater, amazing pilots safe but now im mad. I’m gonna bomb them back >:( >:( >:(”

    • unserious
    • less room for backtracking
    • sounds fucking stupid





  • Ironically when it comes to the nature of God Muslims and Mormons couldn’t be farther apart. Like Christians, Mormons believe in the divinity of Christ, i.e. that he is the Son of God (or “Heavenly Father”), but they reject the Trinity, i.e. that God is one substance in three parts*. Mormons instead believe that God is three separate beings of one purpose and will. Muslims are more like Jews in that they don’t think he was the Son of God, but where Muslims think he was a prophet and the Messiah, Jews are… indifferent? Maybe they think he was some smart guy, or maybe he didn’t exist. Nice story, who cares basically. Muslims reject the Divinity of Christ because they reject the Trinity because the oneness of God is a core of their beliefs.

    *the Trinity gets complicated when you start asking different denominations or even different congregations about it. it is a divine mystery, you’re not actually supposed to get it. i didn’t make that up, that is what a lot of christian doctrine actually teaches. but they still argue about it. religion is wild

    **i’m also not a theologian so notes will be accepted







  • Those transmission losses don’t have immediate health and environmental costs, though, and even discounting those there’ll be conversion losses on both ends (e: for chemical energy carriers) if what we want to get out of it is usable electricity from renewables. Dont take my skepticism for poohpoohing btw, this kind of counterintuitive thinking is one of the more fascinating things about economics. Or maybe I just like to argue :P

    I’ll look up the paper, this is an interesting topic.


  • Pipelines are cheap because we already build a lot of them. We already use them to move multiple products. It’s a somewhat generic technology (which is very impressive, dont get me wrong).

    I’d be interested to learn how the capex breaks down for the HVDC lines. Is it labor? Procurement? Those can both be optimized with scale. Expand the qualified workforce and incentivize competition among suppliers. If it’s raw material cost it might be a little harder. I imagine right of way costs are also quite a bit higher owing to the large footprint. But then once you acquire the RoW it stays there in perpetuity. Still, I bet my favorite hat that once you consider the externalities and conversion losses the transmission lines are a clear winner. The electrical grid really only causes fires when its neglected, whereas gas infrastructure leaks constantly.