Interesting Links for 05-09-2024

[andrewducker]

1. The UK's last coal power station is closing at the end of this month

(tags:coal power electricity uk GoodNews environment )

2. More than 20% of people who get Covid take more than 90 days to recover

(tags:pandemic )

3. "I made a documentary about Zelensky - he is funny, fascinating and ruthless"

(tags:Ukraine TV interview documentary )

4. "Debilitating a Generation": Expert Warns That Long COVID May Eventually Affect Most Americans

(tags:pandemic doom )

5. Evidence for sugar addiction: Behavioral and neurochemical effects of intermittent, excessive sugar intake

(tags:sugar addiction )

6. Ukrainian drones now spray 2,500° C thermite streams right into Russian trenches

(tags:drone Russia Ukraine war )

7. Amazon tells delivery drivers they can't sing along to music (or move their lips too much)

(tags:driving music amazon dystopia OhForFucksSake )

Comments

[bens_dad]

7. Signing while driving probably is risky.

If the AI cannot handle singing while driving, then it needs fixing.

[andrewducker]

Thank you, typo fixed!

[armiphlage]

6. Thermite seems to fall under the same restrictions as flamethrowers; only allowed against military targets. Both Ukraine and Russia are signatories to the relevant protocol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Incendiary_Weapons

[andrewducker]

Thank you, that makes sense. I am very glad that there are currently no wars more local to me.

[mountainkiss]

Why does 4 get a doom tag but not 2?

[andrewducker]

Checking the time I saved that link, I was on a bus heading back for home, and possibly distracted by the rush hour traffic.

Viral Doom

[channelpenguin]

We utterly failed the beginner level Pandemic, we will fail bird flu HARD.

With COVID veryone seems to have just given up and accepted that we'll all probably just get sicker and sicker. I guess most already expect that with age too, though.

My throwaway guesstimate in the first months of the COVID pandemic was "ten years off all our lifespans". I think that's still my thought. I wouldn't like to guess on our health spans. Nobody, including me, has really really accepted this though. It's too big, too scary. Ditto bird flu (circulating unchecked in US dairy cows right now, a few human cases most likely from contact with dairy cattle).

And people might wonder why lots of us just can't care about e.g. work any more. In the face of at least that, plus maybe worse from bird flu (and that seems like "when" not "if") motivation to care about things is restricted to what's really important to us.

[foms]

How are this group of people, over here, reconciling (or not) yesterday's #7 (I'd love to see some science-based discussion on this piece about whether Covid is something worth stressing about. - https://inews.co.uk/opinion/why-its-time-to-stop-scaremongering-about-covid-3256990) with today's #2 and #4?

[andrewducker]

I got nothing. I'd really like to see some people on each side discuss it though!

[foms]

I'm very much having a hard time getting out of the cherry-picking, spin, and bias loop. I know which way I lean and that's a problem. I want good faith communication but it feels as though partisanship is considered better faith than empiricism, these days.

[andrewducker]

Agreed.

[agoodwinsmith]

Everyday Amazon makes me proud that I decided to never order anything from them back in 2000. I don't remember precisely, but I think it was their author coercion over e-rights - delisting people both e and paper. Ethics are for suckers, right? Ugh.

[hairyears]

1: So we're down 2,000 MW of electricity generation capacity, now that Radcliffe-on-Soar is closing down for good.

The latest and largest of our onshore windfarms, Shetland Viking, brings 443MW to the table - and will on average contribute 65% of that, being built in one of the windiest places in the British Isles.

It's part of Britain's 8,000 MW of wind farm 'nameplate' capacity, most of which runs at 40-50% overall.

We're a long way short of replacing all the fifty-to-sixty year-old coal and nuclear capacity that's now past end of its operating life; and we haven't been building enough power stations to achieve that for over thirty years.

The overall numbers are difficult to get hold of: but the short version is that we're dependent on imported gas, imported electricity (read: French nuclear power).

With the last of the big coal thermal stations gone, and the last of our AGR and PWR nuclear stations being decommissioned in the coming decade, the interconnector cables and gas lines have a lot to do.

The UK is not self-sufficient in energy (and Radcliffe-on-Soar ran on imported coal) and there's a shortfall looming in the next two decades, far in excess of the gas, nuclear and renewable capacity we're buiding or planning to build.

We will be importing a lot of electricity and gas in the foreseeable future, and we're nowhere near achieving carbon-neutral in our electricity consumption, no matter what you read about our generation.

[andrewducker]

I have some good news for you!
https://www.energylivenews.com/2024/09/03/uk-solar-power-wins-record-backing-in-latest-auction/

And some more https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/uk-biggest-solar-farm-go-ahead-anti-nimby-3264760

We will, of course, need lots more like this.