Ok it is your choice fully, and is in my opinion a good choice, but as a non American I thought of this funny hypothetical question.

So even during the first civil war you were against the Republican party?

Well I was not even focused on the USA in my reasoning of why in Mexico it is a bad thing to extend the democratic process to the election judicial branch of government or generally every decision to the public.

The USA has issues in their democratic elections, gerrymandering in certain states being one, the electoral college giving most or all the electoral votes to the winner and not a portion in relation to votes, propaganda being openly discussed on “entertainment” news channels. Then there is even lobbying that is allowed, politicians being able to buy and sell stock based on insider information, paid speaking events.

And the ruling by elites will in any system be an issue, even oppression by the majority can be an issue, that is usually why you have a good constitution, that lays the foundation of how government should work, the different spheres and how it should protect the most vulnerable in society. It has mechanisms to protect against an interest group gaining power to basically twist the system to their will and finally the last resort is the democratic vote of the people to ensure accountability.

After these mechanisms have failed there is no pretty answer on how to easily get back to a fair system. In my country South Africa, where we had a system that disenfranchised the majority of the population, I am glad that we had a bloodless coup d’etat and now we have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, but even that wasn’t enough again from a connected small majority from almost ruling the country. Luckily in our last election, in the first time in 30 years the ruling party lost their majority and now we have a 10+ party coalition ruling majority government, and in my opinion things are going good, but we know how fragile our democracy is and try to be as engaged as citizens can be.

Agree, but there are many flavours of it. For example we began the discussion on how Mexico extended their democracy to now include the judicial branch of government, others can be how they vote, for example electoral college in USA, ranked choice voting in some European countries like France or my country, South Africa, we have proportional representation and cannot even vote for our president

This example was exactly the issue Socrates had with democracy actually, saying that a demagogue would be elected as a president or leaders of government the majority of the time. His solution was just as vague, so let’s just say there is no perfect system yet. All have their benefits and drawbacks.

Look it is messy, my feeling is you vote or don’t vote for a party based on their policy and track record, but after elections they have the will of the people to act, so they should then focus on the technical issues of government by being guided by their election promises, policy and the country’s constitution to ensure that minorities aren’t discriminated against for example.

This example was exactly the issue Socrates had with democracy actually, saying that a demagogue would be elected as a president or leaders of government the majority of the time. His solution was just as vague, so let’s just say there is no perfect system yet. All have their benefits and drawbacks.

Look it is messy, my feeling is you vote or don’t vote for a party based on their policy and track record, but after elections they have the will of the people to act, so they should then focus on the technical issues of government by being guided by their election promises, policy and the country’s constitution to ensure that minorities aren’t discriminated against for example.

My opinion is, not based on Mexico, that the public is uninformed in the majority of decisions. Basically delegating power to the common person, especially technical decisions to the public will mean the most popular choice will win mostly, not the best choice. That is basically populism in a nutshell. Imagine you had to choose in this example a food policymaker, the one is the charismatic Willy Wonka that will say he wants everyone to eat sweets all the time, he wants you to eat whatever you want to eat, give you choices by subsidising all the sweets, worse he will attack Dr. Grouch, because he wants to tell you what to eat, force additional taxes on sweets to try and guide people to eat more gross vegetables, in fact basically force you, the poorest to have no choice but to eat these “healthy” foods. And unfortunately Dr. Grouch will agree, he wants you to eat "healthy food because in a couple of years you and your children will reap the benefits.

Well it’s too far for Netanyahu to turn around now. He is being rewarded politically and I feel like he has already put all his chips into the destroy Hamas and Hezbollah, no matter the collateral. The sad truth is that October the 7th basically was a golden ticket for Netanyahu politically.

I think it is the crash of Tesla, its evaluation is based on being a silicon tech startup, not as an automobile company. So when the shares finally fall in line with other car manufacturers valuation, shit is going to hit the fan. And I think he knows he needs a government bailout and sanctions on foreign EVs specifically to price the competition out of the market. His entire empire is basically being propped up by the Tesla share price. He needs to go all in, it is survival mode for him right now

I do not really use journals for my daily work. But usually I have a quarterly project I tackle and then search if someone in the industry has researched the issue or something similar. So you usually get to read the abstract or executive summary and then have the option to get access.

My employer/company usually after I send motivational letter does pay. I also have a reoccurring yearly subscription to two professional bodies and their journals, even the one I specialise makes their research available for free and the other one usually has a month or so delay before it is free and available, usually to edit it and make it look nice.

But professional organisations and journals also need to be funded, and like my industry (mining) really invests in them because the knowledge from them benefits them. The journals do not fully guarantee quality papers, sometimes a malicious actor slips through and is usually redacted, but usually journals live on their brand of producing quality papers that can be used by the industry to improve it overall. And for this they do need a bit of resources.

But I also sympathize with OP because certain journals can make their barrier to entry prohibitive. If Nature Journal in this instance chooses to become a for profit entity I can see how this might stifle future progress especially for smaller players in the industry where cost margins are extremely tight and basically gives unfettered access to the giants to gain an edge.

South Africa, you can read up on us if you want to learn about a country that really fucked up its energy supply, but that is a different story.

You do need a baseload, this is not something an argument of saying we do not really need a baseload can wish away, industries that run 24/7 like a smelting operation where if you cannot shutdown, or hospitals or traffic lights, there is a certain percentage of baseload that has to be generated.

Solar and wind are amazing and I really wish to see these systems play a major role in power generation, but you say the nuclear and coal plants are very inflexible. I do not know who this guy is but Nuclear and coal can very easily ramp up their power generation, both these are basically steam engines, both nuclear and coal can very quickly heat up and generate a lot more steam that powers generators, like an car engine but more accurately a steam train that you give more power to go faster. Solar and wind cannot ramp up on their own, cannot ask the wind to blow harder or the sun to shine brighter suddenly when the system requires it, they need costly backup systems like methane peaker plants or energy storage, be it batteries, pumped hydro, hydrogen electrolysis the list goes on. These things added to solar and wind plants are usually not allocated to the cost of generation, a total cost of generation including these additional backup systems are a better indicator of solar and wind systems cost.

Now what about waste. I agree coal is messy and is causing global warming and needs to be phased out. But nuclear waste is a solved problem, it has been for decades, the spent fuel is usually stored deep underground where it will never interact with the world again. Solar on the other hand, if it costs about $20-$30 to recycle a panel but like $1-$3 to send it to a waste dumps, what do you think will happen to the solar panels. https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-dark-side-of-solar-power Harvard business did an article about how solar recycling has really been a point of weakness, where nuclear we have set guidelines on how to environmentally and safely dispose of nuclear waste currently. I am willing to bet you the environmental impact from pollution from nuclear, including all the disasters will be negligible compared to the waste impact from solar panels and batteries currently.

So my point is not to dismiss solar or wind, really where wind and sunshine are naturally plentiful it will be a waste not to harvest these resources, just like where geothermal resources are available it will be wasteful not to utilise it.

But nuclear, even with its high initial capital cost and long build time, still does provide energy cheaply and will last for a lot longer than solar panels and wind turbines, nuclear can be easily and quickly ramped up or down depending on the load required.

Well one easy one, in my country it is that nuclear plants need to emit zero radiation from their core, like nothing. This is incredibly expensive to achieve, a more sensible value would have been similar or less than normal background radiation.

Nuclear has a lot of advantages that are really low hanging fruit of producing safe clean energy that is perfect for a grids baseload.

Well America and the EU are probably Ukraine’s biggest backers, economically and military aid wise. Thus we have a proxy war again and it is East vs West.

I have seen one, and it was on a school trip in 2004 in Durban where they brought one of the caught great White Sharks and dissected it in front of us kids for “educational” purposes, basically showing us what it has in its stomach, how it has infinite teeth. They use these “educational” dissections as justification for draglines and nets unfortunately.

I actually wrote an email to the new Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment: Dr Dion George, giving my two cents like how draglines and nets are outdated and dangerous to the shark population, how much better methods now exist. I only received an email saying they noted my concern. At least there are organisations really trying to save not only the great White shark but many other marine animals

Sadly through studies, like the one that ended in 2019, we have lost about 90% of our population then. The issue still is the use of draglines along the coast and nets which kill a large number of Sharks like in KZN, and the orcas also chase away some of our white Sharks.

Go look up yourself to see how our population has been decimated

It’s sad that we don’t have great White Sharks anymore

I love Mint 22 so far, it really has matured where my home computer is running Mint is more stable than my work computer running Windows 11, luckily my company uses CrowdStrike so nothing to worry there.

But really I now recommend Mint to my non tech savvy friends and family, as a person who uses Linux should! But joking aside took my sister’s old laptop running Windows 7, slapped a SSD and upped the ram to 8 GB into it with Mint and she has been happy

I understand that Epic funded their project to be an Epic exclusive, but was that a financially sound decision excluding the major market place. Could they not have worked in like a two year or three year exclusive period

Yeah I feel there is a weird history between steam and remedy media. Like I remember when you could one day buy Alan Wake like really cheap since it was being taken off steam. Then the Epic deal making Alan Wake 2 exclusive basically meant they excluded a lot of customers immediately on steam.

If you want to look at a country that solved their power problem with solar, I heard that is exactly what Vietnam did by incentivising the private generation of power, basically buying extra power from people’s solar. But do your own research, not entirely sure of the whole story

Bullshit, South African here. Yes solar has helped, mostly the affluent who can afford to install their own private home/business solar power.

But The huge problem what caused it was the ANC, which in May lost its majority in the elections for the first time since 1994.

The state run power company, Eskom, had been run into the ground by the ANC due to corruption and incompetence. In 1997 a white paper showed there would not be enough power by 2007. The only two power stations they build, the two largest in the world if I am not incorrect has been the subject of the state capture commission due to corruption.

In 2024 when it became clear they might lose majority, they exempted themselves from a government policy, which affects all medium to large businesses, which mandated they had to procure anything like maintenance or supplies through a BEE (black economic empowerment) partner. The idea is good but has been abused as rent seeking by the politically connected. So now they are exempt and the OEMs can directly work to fix and maintain the power stations.

Funny due to the loadshedding, or rolling blackouts, we did not have enough power stations working, and as far as I know we were one, if not the only country reaching our Paris accords targets.

But solar power is here to stay, heck even I want it on my own place, due to the cost of electricity becoming unaffordable, if you take a 10 year loan on a solar system, the cost savings will pay of the system itself. This has led to the affluent that can afford high tariffs prices from Eskom switch to Solar, saving them money, but they were used to subsidise electricity prices for the poor. So now the poor must pay more for electricity.

The government did finally approve the independent power producers bill, finally allowing people other than government to produce electricity, and solar looks like a solid option, since we have lots of Sun and the falling prices. So government is loosing grip on the generation market, allowing the free market to make changes.

But I will say it has been so nice to have had uninterrupted power when I come home, not needing to throw out my freezer food, having a hot shower, being able to prepare food on a hot stove under lights instead of a braai/BBQ.