Tar_alcaran

Tar_alcaran , vor 3 Tagen

Not so much the lack of direct trains, but the cost is what does it for me. For most destinstions in Europe, the train costs more than flying. It's only when you want to go somewhere far from an airport that it gets marginally cheaper, but youre still paying roughly equivalent prices for a much slower trip.

Except for Amsterdam London, which is somehow almost always cheaper by train.

Tar_alcaran , vor 8 Tagen

It's not renewable, but known reserves will power the world for a century, based solely on current average efficiency and not modern improvements

Tar_alcaran , vor 8 Tagen

Hi, I work in waste handling, and I would like to tell you about dangerous materials and what we do with them.

There are whole hosts of chemicals that are extremely dangerous, but let's stick with just cyanide, which comes from coal coking, steel making, gold mining and a dozen chemical synthesis processes.

Just like nuclear waste, there is no solution for this. We can't make it go away, and unlike nuclear waste, it doesn't get less dangerous with time. So, why isn't anyone constantly bringing up cyanide waste when talking about gold or steel or Radiopharmaceuticals? Well, that's because we already have a solution, just not "forever".

Cyanide waste, and massive amounts of other hazardous materials, are simply stored in monitored facilities. Imagine a landfill wrapped in plastic and drainage, or a building or cellar with similar measures and someone just watches it. Forever. You can even do stuff like build a golfcourse on it, or malls, or whatever.

There are tens of thousands of these facilities worldwide, and nobody gives a solitary fuck about them. It's a system that works fine, but the second someone suggests we do the same with nuclear waste, which is actually less dangerous than a great many types of chemical waste, people freak out about it not lasting forever.

Tar_alcaran , vor 8 Tagen

That's uhh, not what that says. One of the two mentions of half life are your body converting cyanide into thiocyanate, which will kill you and depending on your last bowel movement, make your corpse into hazardous waste itself.

The other mention is hydrogen cyanide in air, which is lighter than air and will decompose back into cyanide eventually, scattering it over a large area. Which will technically make it go away from your site, but spreading toxic waste over the countryside is illegal for a reason.

Tar_alcaran , vor 8 Tagen (Bearbeitet vor 8 Tagen)

Oh yeah, you could totally just leave it in a giant pool and ignore it. It'll react, evaporate and eventually break down into cyanide again, rain down, subtly poison the area, react again, evaporate again, etc.

And that's great for the owner of the big pool of cyanide, and very bad for everyone else. Stuff that evaporates doesn't disappear, the cyanide doesn't magically change into cookiedough. You're just spreading it around more.

Tar_alcaran , vor 8 Tagen

I mean, spent fuel is actually quite lethal when not packaged, but you get something like 300-400MWh out of a kilo of fuel. And that's significantly more than I'll use in my lifetime.

I'd gladly keep a kilo of dry-casked spent fuel in my house. It'd make an excellent coffee table or something, if a bit hard to move. I would absolutely not put a lifetime supply of benzene anywhere near my house.

Edit: it would make a shitty coffee table. 1 kilo of uranium oxide is just under 100ml

Tar_alcaran , vor 8 Tagen

In addition to hazardous materials regulations, I also do workplace safety, and this doesn't surprise me at aaaaall. People get really casual around stuff that kills you slowly.

Tar_alcaran , vor 8 Tagen

An unfortunate reality is that while we CAN store things safely, that doesn't mean they always will be.

Tar_alcaran , vor 11 Tagen

But Uhm, it's also true

Tar_alcaran , vor 15 Tagen

In the Netherlands, you need to give permission for someone to check yours, and only credit-providers are allowed to check. I can't look at my neighbor's credit data.

Tar_alcaran , vor 17 Tagen

Unfortunately, "hot" and "sunny" do not fully overlap.

Tar_alcaran , vor 18 Tagen

Unfortunately it only tells countries to make a good effort. But that's better than nothing, and the current policy of doing nothing is at least out of the window.

As someone whose country just put the moronic Farmers party in charge of the environment, this EU law makes me very happy

Tar_alcaran , vor 18 Tagen

The factsheet is vague because it tells countries to find a way to fix a problem. All countries have to come up with a realistic method to improve natural areas, 20% by 2026, 30% need a concrete plan by 2030 and 90% by 2050.

More importantly, there's a requirement that Member States make a significant effort to prevent worsening in the meantime.

What those plans are, is up to the Member States, but they need to be solid and realistic, not the usual vagueness

Tar_alcaran , vor 22 Tagen

As someone in the EU, can you take Hungary with you when you leave?

Tar_alcaran , vor 26 Tagen

ECR is shit, they're a bunch of eurosceptic, anti-immigration, libertarian conservative nationalists, but they don't hold a candle to ID, who are that, but on steroids.

Tar_alcaran , vor 26 Tagen

Yes but have you considered that brown people are to blame for all these things? And that they are also fictional lies by The Left (tm) to scare you away from the horrible brown people?

Tar_alcaran , vor 26 Tagen

Why the hell are your polling stations open until 23:00?

That's just barely in time to vote after dinner!

Tar_alcaran , vor 26 Tagen

The 2nd biggest fraction is center-left, and the third is mostly-center (although one might argue that one quite a lot)

Tar_alcaran , vor 25 Tagen

Oh yeah, but not if you're only libertarian against laws that tell you not to exploit people or destroy the planet.

Tar_alcaran , vor einem Monat

First, they came for the obviously government-funded data harvesting program, and I said nothing, because I think that's a good thing actually.

Tar_alcaran , vor einem Monat

I mean, the headline is absolute shit, but its in the summary, you don't even have to read more than 3 lines

Tar_alcaran , vor einem Monat

Once more reinforcing that the primary use case for crypto is doing shady and/or illegal shit.

Tar_alcaran , vor einem Monat

I also didn't know that, that's awesome!

Tar_alcaran , vor einem Monat

And you can be sure that if Gazprom is reporting a 7 billion loss, you can be sure they worked as hard as possible to make that number as small as possible. I'm willing to bet a lot of money the actual loss is a lot bigger.

Tar_alcaran , vor einem Monat

As a Dutch person, I'm sorry we elected a bunch of populist conservative bigots. I tried really hard, but a lot of the old racists haven't died yet thanks to the excellent healthcare they're trying to abolish.

Tar_alcaran , vor einem Monat

The real fascists don't want to drive electric, and their voters usually can't afford them.

Tar_alcaran , vor einem Monat

What? OP is a monster! Mods, ban this person immediately!

Tar_alcaran , vor einem Monat

At least the windows are regular rectangles, and there's really only one bend in most of the exterior walls.

Tar_alcaran , vor einem Monat

There are other reasons.

Adding, say, a sixth lane doesn't increase capacity as much as adding a 2nd lane, because traffic jams are generally because of interactions. It's very rarely the straight road that has a capacity problem. Adding a sixth lane adds capacity, but also creates more interactions.

Also, car lanes have a shit capacity, which goes down massively when it's busy. Like you said, mass transit is vastly superior, but even a dedicated bus lane would help. In contested traffic, a car lane transports less than a single bus per hour.

Tar_alcaran , vor einem Monat

Yes, they should be booed when they spread their propaganda in any country.

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

Wait so, let me get this straight. If I'm a company, the optimal process is:

Say nothing, so I get all the subsidies and none of the penalties.

When eventually investigated, stall.

When you can't stall, only provide the good info.

When you hold back the bad info, the EU will simply take public data and averages. Public data that my government will no doubt heavily skew.

How is this not obviously what everyone will do?

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

Also I don't think the public data are all good.

Exactly, so you provide data whenever it's better than the public data, and you don't when it's worse.

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

Right. I fully agree that nobody is going to fix this probably during our lifetimes, but there's a big difference between that and actively making things worse.

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

Couldn't have happened to a nicer companygovernment in a trenchcoat

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

And the Dutch Forum for "Democracy".

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

I would, but they've all been deported to deep inside russia

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

So, after redefining fascism, they're fascist. Got it.

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

It's due to the .ml

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

That's pretty unfair.

Elizabeth Holmes straight up lied about a product that couldn't possibly do what she claimed, and intentionally kept lying about it.

Elon Musk lied about so many products I can't event count them all.

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

As a Dutch person, let me just say:

Suck it, Finland!

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

Ahh the good old conservative right, never missing an opportunity to make things worse for everyone.

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

I would personally put "populist, authoritarian, eurosceptic, anti-immigration, protectionist, deregulation-loving" under "conservative right".

But pretty far right, and only slightly conservative.

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

Veggie crusts are actually pretty good nowadays. Unfortunately, lactose-free cheese is not.

But aren't parmesan and Gouda very low in lactose, because they can be quite old?

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

Literally 1984

Tar_alcaran , vor 2 Monaten

Is that true? I feel like it simply wasn't an option, so people didn't get them.