Interesting Links for 10-08-2020

[andrewducker]

"Love in the Time of Corona". (too soon?)

(tags:pandemic TV relationships )

What kind of haircuts did Vikings have?

(tags:viking hair history )

Switzerland fights heroin with heroin

(tags:heroin drugs addiction Switzerland )

How colour-changing cats might warn future humans of radioactive waste

(tags:nuclearpower cats colour )

Australia will send power from the world's largest solar farm to Singapore and Indonesia via a 3,700 kilometer (2,300 mile) undersea cable

(tags:electricity solarpower Australia Singapore )

Face mask study: Researchers determined which masks are the least and most effective

(tags:pandemic materials )

Shelf life of 21 days or more could save red meat waste

(tags:food meat )

The world is very definitely stranger than I can imagine: Punishment Clown Edition

(tags:wtf children viaPatrickHadfield )

Metal detector user uncovers Scottish Bronze Age artefacts less than 2ft underground

(tags:archeology Scotland )

AmITheAsshole - Asshole percentage by age and sex

(tags:visualisation behaviour gender age )

"Us against the world" - I worry about this kind of thing regularly now I'm a parent. I hope I can rise to the occasion as well as this.

(tags:children parenting comic )

Tory Brexiters turn against the deal they helped secure

(tags:UK Europe conservatives OhForFucksSake )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

Australia have a bright future as an exporter of electricity and, then hopefully, as a place to run energy intensive industries.

I expect that the Sun Cable will turn out to be really, really useful in balancing Australia's grid as it experiences deeper renewable penetration.

Australia produces about 5 times as much electricity as Singapore consumes so being able to punt a meaningful amount of power up to Singapore would allow some scope for some overs and unders in the Australian grid to be managed by exporting.

But I think the long term aim for Australia ought to be build up some energy intensive industries in Australia. They have quite a highly educated population in a highly developed economy and, in the first half of the 21st century, are going to find that their energy costs are low in global terms.

[armiphlage]

There probably isn't anything stopping Australia from using electricity to decompose limestone into cement (perhaps dropping ground limestone into an arc furnace, instead of using coal in a rotary kiln?), and exporting low-carbon cement around the world.

[danieldwilliam]

That sounds useful.

[davidcook]

Had a good laugh at this one, because our current government worships at the altar of coal, and that fact that anyone is highly educated is pretty much happening despite the government, not because of it.
(see, for example, an almost complete lack of support for universities through Covid times, a number of which are laying off staff rapidly)
We have a bright future in renewable energy if we can just get rid of the idiots at the top (and take out NewsCorpse while we're at it ... )

[danieldwilliam]

The coal lobby are strong but I'm not sure they are stronger than economics in the long run. Cheap solar PV, cheap onshore wind and consequently cheap gas in countries to which Australia exports coal are going to undermine its business model.

[andrewducker]

Totally. Coal is going to die because it's not efficient in the modern world.

[danieldwilliam]

It does have some power to distort markets through regulatory capture.

For example it would not surprise me if when solar PV becomes cheaper than Australian retail electricity prices and people and firms start sticking solar panels on everything if the coal industry lobbied for grid access payments or restrictions on dumping domestically generated power on to the grid for grid stability reasons in order to protect their market position.

(Working out when other people were doing this sort of thing used to literally be my job.)

On Tory MPs repudiating the Brexit Deal

[hairyears]

So it seems that the core Brexiteers' plan was always a hard Brexit, and all else was a pretence: and that fits what I know of the current negotiations, which are running into obstacle after obstacle from some unacknowledged figure or committee giving a constant stream of counterproductive directions the UK's negotiating team.

Yes, we've been negotiating in bad faith, just as UKIP and Boris campaigned in bad faith, and the ERG gave those assurances to their fellow-MPs in bad faith.

Steve Peers gives a very sharp analysis, and this one deserves to go viral.