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Cake day: January 7th, 2024

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  • You could afford a house and got a free or cheap education

    The state has sold off everything in your lifetime to keep your taxes low, including housing. Which you bought and now own.

    Millennials are generation rent with a government renting back what it sold as taxes rise.

    And the cold war is still going on, what is it about Gen X that makes them think it stopped. Putin is at war in Europe right now. The cold war only ever paused.

    Proxy wars didn’t stop with Vietnam, the cold war didn’t stop with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

    You get to experience the events of the world while being comparatively rich.

    You got to experience the only decade or so without a cold war threat while millennials experience the threat of Russia and an increasing threat from China.

    And millennials were told as children the world would burn if we did nothing. Gen X and the Boomers did nothing.

    Yes it sucks.

    But you had it good, and politically you’ve fucked us recently. After being previously politically apathetic.

    We’ve got a world to repair and it remains to be seen if Millennials will actually move past apathy into fixing it with Gen Z or continuing to fuck it up like Gen Z.



  • It isn’t that simple. Solar power wasn’t economical until China made a push to manufacture at scale.

    Wind power received that push in Europe. Then China and India have joined in.

    Not buying the massive nuclear reactors and buying smaller units could be possible. They exist. Alternative technologies also exist.

    But nuclear generates heat, which we use to heat water into steam. Which drives a turbine to produce AC electricity.

    Massive steam turbines are massive because they are efficient. Multistage turbines range from near 70% efficient for massive ones to 25% efficient for the smallest ones in serious use.

    NTAC-TE is a technology that converts the radiation into electric current. Like solar panels converting the sun’s radiation into electric current.

    NASA uses it in space craft.

    If we can get that working at an efficient rate smaller radioactive units will produce power without the efficiency loss of small steam generators. Then we can talk about small modular nuclear energy.

    Unfortunately every pro nuclear person parrots the same gumf about nuclear being good, therefore we need to build the massive nuclear reactors.

    They only consider talking about any other technology to try and defend nuclear when you point out why they shouldn’t be built anymore.

    So in 20 years, if we stop building massive nuclear reactors with the money, we might be able to complete some research and start building the correct nuclear technology at scale.

    But that 20 years is vital and we need to spend that on carbon reduction now. That’s reducing usage through insulation. That’s renewables being added to the supply directly now. That’s grid level storage to allow us to stop relying on massive steam turbines to hold a steady grid load.

    In 20 years we can talk about nuclear again. Add an additional time for every wasted effort on a reactor like Hinckley C or Olkiluoto 3. Starting out as a thin justification and just economically viable.

    But then spending 400% of their budget meaning carbon reduction would have been much higher investing elsewhere.






  • It remains to be seen what he’s actually done to benefit anyone who gave him anything.

    And he stopped accepting them once he entered the office. We found out because he told us about it all and the mistake of accepting some gifts a bit too late.

    With the only arguable benefits being publicity for the brand it’s not nothing but it really is daft the perspective tricks that have been played with that particular molehill. It’s the press that actually gave the gifters the benefits, not any actions by Starner himself.

    Being given something isn’t proof of being bought. Acting for the person who gave you something is.

    I predict that as the COVID era corruption comes to light his previous job will result in him prosecuting and recovering quite a lot of public money. Sadly I don’t think he will get a result of jail time for anyone. The laws just aren’t in place for that and he can’t get them made retrospectively.

    A UK constitution would be very interesting. But I’d just settle for some actual laws specifically against corruption rather than relying on MPs following conventions and being honourable.

    The shocking thing is that hundreds of millions of pounds worth of corruption through the “fast lane” wasn’t illegal to do. We’ll only be able to recoup from the companies who actually didn’t deliver their contracts.



  • Ross_audio@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.world•*Permanently Deleted*
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    2 years ago

    Look into the maintenance costs of Germany’s 1970s reactors before calling an entire nation brain dead.

    The cost of nuclear today is high and continues for thousands of years. Cost is the entire problem.

    Nuclear power isn’t green, it’s just at the beginning of the cycle where it’s waste is seen as a small problem because there isn’t a lot of it. Like fossil fuels were a century ago.

    Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of suitable places to put nuclear waste so the small amount we already have is already causing problems in Europe. The US being a bigger place may get to that point a little later than us. But nuclear waste stores are already oversubscribed in the UK, Germany, and France.

    Nuclear power is short sighted.

    The money spent should be on renewables and grid storage. Then more efficient heating and insulation.

    Not nuclear, not carbon capture.

    Proponents of nuclear power never look at the total lifecycle cost of a reactor. In fact it’s usually deliberately hidden.

    Nuclear reactors have always been and will always be military technology. They should be funded as military spending.

    By all means put a price on carbon so they can get a better price on energy but the military should be funding the reactors they need and dealing with the waste out of their budgets.






  • “On 31 December 2009, rather than being fully privatised, the mint ceased to be an executive agency and its assets were vested in a limited company, Royal Mint Ltd. The owner of the new company became The Royal Mint trading fund, which itself continued to be owned by HM Treasury. As its sole shareholder, the mint pays an annual dividend of £4 million to the Treasury, with the remaining profits being reinvested into the mint.[58] In 2015, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced a £20 billion privatisation drive to raise funds, with the Royal Mint being up for sale alongside other institutions including the Met Office and Companies House.[55]”

    “Then in 2016, the mint announced plans for Royal Mint Gold (RMG), a digital gold currency that uses blockchain to trade and invest in gold. Operated by CME Group, the technology is to be[out of date?] created by technology companies AlphaPoint and BitGo.[69]”

    Bring it back into public ownership. It’s been partially privatised and the vultures are extracting what they can.

    It’s not completely nonsensical for the government to lose a small margy on making currency. It’s useful and the harder it is to counterfeit the better.

    But both “New Labour” and the Conservatives have a lot to answer for when it comes to our national assets being lost.