Why do we pipe natural gas into homes?

puts on Technology Connections hat

because heat pumps and green energy weren’t a thing in the US until recently!

heat efficiency is weird. electric heaters are 100% efficient, but 1) they’re only as efficient as the generator, and 2) transmission losses add up. and until recently, most power was generated by coal and natural gas. turning those into electricity is lossy, since lots of energy is lost as waste heat. so why not send the gas you were going to burn for electricity directly to the customer?

heat pumps can be 300-400% efficient, since they move heat - from outdoors, into the home - rather than generating it. they can get >100% efficiency even in cold climates! but stupidly the US never bothered make our air conditioners reversible, or every home would have a heat pump by now.

and with solar/wind (for peak) + nuclear or grid storage (for base) power, we can now get rid of natural gas. …once we give everybody heat pumps. …and shutdown our gas generators. …we should probably get on that.

pragmatically I think reducing meat consumption rather than eliminating it is an easier sell. I’ll admit, I’m too weak of will to become a vegetarian. I’ve been inside a chicken plant, I’ve seen the horrid conditions firsthand. I know the climate change impact. I know my diet is hurting animals and the climate. but I crave meat, and none of the delicious vegan food my partner makes hits the spot.

it’s too hard to forswear every future pot roast, chop and drumstick. I can probably get myself to eat less meat though.

at a museum in the US, a security guard yelled at me for taking a photo of a Miró painting. he pointed to a sign saying that to respect the owner’s copyright, photography was strictly forbidden.

pretty sure I had the legal right to take the photo, but that they had the legal right to trespass me if I kept doing it. :/

fun fact, Mr. Rogers testified at the Supreme Court to save format shifting, in a landmark copyright case:

“I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the ‘Neighborhood’ off-the-air … they then become much more active in the programming of their family’s television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been ‘You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions’ … I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.”

the Court agreed with Mr. Rogers and cited him in the majority Opinion.

they look a lot like old Soviet children’s dolls/characters to me. like Cheburashka and Nevalyashka.

thank you for writing this up. ❤ I’m also trans and spent time in that particular community because I have very intense dysphoria/bdd and found other spaces to be toxically positive. it wasn’t a healthy place, and I picked up more brainworms, but I felt like I could vent and not feel so alone.

it’s really easy for people without crippling dysphoria to sit back and judge you for going to /tttt/. it’s unhealthy, I know it’s unhealthy, but sometimes unhealthy outlets are the only way I can make the hurt get better for a while. I can’t just be all uwu skirt go spinny when my body feels like sewage.

most fascists don’t call themselves fascists. so YouTube censoring the word “fascist” tends to muzzle people calling out fascists, not the fascists themselves. it vexes me.

lemmy.ml (used to?) automatically replace “bitch” with *removed*. I’d see people call themselves a “basic removed” or say “removed please” and it was very confusing. it applied to every message.

“cunt” wasn’t censored, though? or maybe they removed the filter at some point.

I’m not a tankie so I left and never looked back.

Unnatty Light

long live GrapheneOS! also congratulations to her!