FinishingDutch @ FinishingDutch @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Well, here in the Netherlands we definitely need far more energy in the near future. We’re moving away from natural gas for heating and fossil fuels are going away in favor of electric vehicles. Add in things like heat pumps, more people getting airconditioning, data centers and other growing energy needs.

Basically, right now we have ‘just about’ enough electricity available, but soon it won’t be. We already import quite a bit of energy from other countries, which makes us inherently vulnerable.

Nuclear plants are expensive and take a long while to build. Which is why I hold politicians responsible for not pushing them through years ago. The best time to build a nuclear plant was ten years ago. The second best time is today.

Even the link itself mentions how it’s not really a good metric to use as it doesn’t factor in whole lot of externalities. I.e coal is cheaper, but when it creates air pollution that shortens your lifespan, is it worth the tradeoff? Nor does it factor in things like energy density: a nuclear power plant is far smaller than the amount of land needed to put up enough wind turbines to match its output.

Basically… LCOE looks like a neat gotcha, right up until you look past that first diagram.

https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2022/nuclear-wasted-why-the-cost-of-nuclear-energy-is-misunderstood

Absolutely that’s scary. Heck, we’re seeing the effects of it every day. If more nuclear means less coal and other polluting options, I’m all for it.

I’ve got solar panels on my roof, and being Dutch windmills are in my blood. But I’m also not blind to the reality that both wind and solar will only get you so far. And there’s already a lot of opposition to wind farms - they ruin the view, endanger birds and there’s health concerns due to noise and shadow projection.

If we just build even one nuclear powerplant, we could basically just… not do wind. And we’d have pleeeenty of power for the coming energy transition, change to electric vehicles, etc.

But noooo… nuclear is scary. Especially to the people who only cite Fukushima and Chernobyl in regards to safety. That’s the same as banning air travel because of 9/11 and the Tenerife disaster. Nuclear power is safe, cheap and we owe it to the planet to use it wisely instead of more polluting alternatives.

Pretty much this, yes.

There’s also the complexity of approach procedures that they need to follow in order to mitigate noise complaints. Back in the old days, they’d just fly from radio beacon to radio beacon, with look-out-the-window navigation for the final approach.

These days, lots of airports are within or close to cities, which means a much more complex routing and specific altitude and speed restrictions. GPS made that possible; they’re simply too much workload for pilots.

So yeah, in emergency situations where GPS fails completely, there’s going to be some changes to procedures needed in order to make that work. They’d also need to increase separation between planes in order to prevent problems.

The simple solution is: nobody should fuck around with GPS since we literally all benefit from it.

That doesn’t sound good. Just the past week I read about it showing up in dolphins, walruses, now cats…

I can avoid the first two just fine. But cats is cause for concern.

It’s interesting that your return rate for cans is worse than for bottles.

There's actually an interesting historical reason for that. We've had bottle deposit here since the days of glass bottles. The bottles would be sold, consumed, brought back, cleaned and refilled. Glass is great for that. The bottle deposit was generally set at 1 guilder. This was the currency we used before the Euro.

If you did your weekly shopping in say, 1995, you'd return your bottles and get a ticket. If you returned 10 bottles, that would be 10 guilders. Now, a FULL cart of groceries for a decent sized family would cost you a 100 guilders max in those days. So that bottle deposit took a nice chunk off that grocery bill. As a result, we had and still have a large percentage of bottle returns. It's ingrained in people to bring back those large bottles since they've always done it.

Now, with cans... there's a bit of a problem. The deposit for large bottles is 25 cents, but the deposit for cans and small bottles is 15 cents. That's not a whole lot, especially considering how much the price of groceries has skyrocketed. Basically, the bottle deposit isn't really a good incentive in terms of monetary value. It only really makes sense if you collect larger amounts of them, like the homeless.

They ARE planning to increase the bottle deposit - make it 50 cents in fact - as a way to incentivize people to bring them back. That will 'probably' work to an extent, but most people dislike the system for other reasons than the monetary value. And if those other issues aren't fixed, raising the bottle deposit only annoys them further.

Oh absolutely! Dutch politicians tend to suck at actually implementing new rules that work.

I've heard about excellent results in some of the nordic countries like Sweden. From what I understand, you/they have machines where you can easily deposit a large amount of cans/bottles. We don't have those here.

Our Dutch machines are basically retrofitted ones that used to just take in large 1-2 liter bottles. You have to put in one bottle at a time. That wasn't a problem when they only handled big bottles, but now with cans and small bottles, there's issues. For one, it takes ages to deposit cans. Because you have to put one at a time in. This means that if you're stuck behind someone who's depositing two large garbage bags, it's going to take a while. Also, because the cans are rarely really empty, the machines also get very sticky and break down a lot. In some supermarkets, they basically stop fixing the machines on busy days because... it's just too annoying. So this means that it's always a hassle to get your deposit back.

There's also other issues like: cans can't be dented in any way, or it won't read them. And not every machine takes every deposit item. I.e. if you bought it at supermarket A and supermarket B doesn't sell it... they won't take back the item and give back the deposit. (To be clear, they SHOULD, but due to different barcodes, SKU's, old software, that sort of thing... in practice it doesn't really work. It's a YMMV situation). The machines also only really give you a 'deposit ticket', which you can either use to fund your groceries, or (theoretically) return to get cash. So there's a lot of friction in the system between depositing a bottle and getting an actual deposit back.

As for why Swedish homeless don't tear open bags.... maybe you just have nicer homeless people than we do.

Right now in the Netherlands, around 95 percent of large (1-2 liter bottles) are returned, but only around 65 percent of the cans.

The thing with bottle deposits is: it really only annoys the people who generally already do the right thing anyway.

Here in the Netherlands, we expanded bottle deposits to cans and small bottles last year. A 15-25 cent deposit.

It’s causing all sorts of problems: deposit machines are breaking down in record numbers and there’s too few of them. A lot of places sell cans and bottles, but a lot of them don’t take returns. This means that it’s a giant hassle to return the cans and bottles, so a lot of people now just see it as a price increase and don’t bother with the return.

The deposit also causes MORE litter in the streets. How? Because we’ve effectively incentivised the homeless and drug addicts to break open trash bins and search for cans and bottles. They break one open, tear out the trashbag, dump the contents and take the bottles. Which attracts rats, since they leave the rest. My city now regularly looks like a garbage dump.

Meanwhile, some call it a succes because ‘there’s fewer bottles and cans on the streets’, while conveniently ignoring literally all the other trash that now gets dumped on it.

I’d honestly vote today to abolish the deposit scheme. Sounds good on paper, but in practice I’m only seeing downsides.

Probably.

So, we complain to a regulatory body, they investigate, they tell a company to do better or, waaaay down the road, attempt to levy a fine. Which most companies happily pay, since the profits from he shady business practices tend to far outweigh the fines.

Legal or illegal really only means something when dealing with an actual person. Can’t put a corporation in jail, sadly.

No matter what field you’re in, NOBODY wants outside oversight. And certainly not by people who’ve never worked that job.

Considering the current climate of public-police relations in the US, their resistance to oversight is rather understandable.

I honestly don’t mind people discovering Fallout. Heck, I’ve bought and lent copies to people to get them interested in it.

But I’ve also been in gaming since the late ‘80’s, and I’ve seen franchises ruined because developers chased the mass market instead of sticking to what made their games popular in the first place.

People came to Call of Duty for tight, sweet multiplayer matches with a military aesthetic.

Nowadays it’s got silly battle royale modes which let you play as Snoop-Dogg, The Terminator or a Warhammer 40K character. It looks nothing like what the original games were. And as a result, the playerbase has declined and shifted towards casual.

Battlefield is a shell of its former self after they moved away from what made it good. Need for Speed games also suck because they chased the Fast and the Furious trend. Flight Simulator has become too mainstream leading to quality decline because developers chase casual players. And there’s numerous other examples of games moving towards a more casual, wider base. Usually because newcomers think the old gameplay is ‘boring’ or ‘too difficult’. Go talk to some Diablo veterans about their thoughts on IV…

And yes, as someone who’s been with Fallout since 1: 76 should never have been made. Fallout is a single player, story driven experience. And it should stay that way. The mobile game… I’d rather they put that effort into making a proper game.

I’m still conflicted if it’s a good or a bad thing that the show is a hit. On the one hand, it’s nice that people are discovering the great storytelling and adventure that Fallout has to offer.

On the other hand, newcomers tend to… totally ruin the thing you’ve loved for decades. Especially if companies start chasing that group. So let’s all hope this doesn’t lead to watered down cash grabs, but instead lights a fire under development of good new proper Fallout titles. We’re looooong overdue.

Childhood asthma, unfortunately. I was born in 1982 and basically everyone smoked everywhere here in the Netherlands. If you had a birthday, you couldn’t see across the room due to the smoke.

Because of it I had childhood asthma, which cleared up immediately when my parents stopped smoking. In the early 90’s, things got a lot better with smoke-free environments. We eventually got full on smoking bans, thank god. As far as I can tell, it didn’t do any permanent damage.

I still absolutely HATE smokers and smoking. It is and was an antisocial thing and children should never have been exposed to it like we were.

American politics really is one of the dumbest, most corrupt things out there. Good god.

This feels like trying to trick your dog into taking his medicine, by hiding it in its food. So apparently your average US Senator is as dumb as a Golden Retriever if they need this tactic to actually get shit done.

It’s insane that Americans still tolerate this. Clearly they don’t have your best interests as their main focus.

No single bad review ever killed a product. Because we all know that some things are just a matter of opinion, user error, etc. Opinions are like assholes: everyone’s got one. If I’m interested, I’ll read several positive and negative opinions.

But if your product is bad enough to warrant several bad reviews, that’s on you. Should’ve done better research, should’ve made a better product.

Aircraft maintenance is an important and very complex issue. Most of it is carried out by either the end user or specialist aircraft maintainers. Basically, completely seperate companies. An aircraft rarely goes back to the manufacturer; it just wouldn’t be practical.

Think of it like this: if your BMW needs an oil change and new brakes, your local garage performs that maintenance, you don’t ship your entire car back to Germany.

I feel we need to take a closer look at aircraft maintenance procedures and companies in general. Because it feels like that sector is either overworked, cutting costs or otherwise not doing maintenance to the levels required for safe operation. There have been too many ‘minor incidents ‘ in recent years that feel indicative of a larger problem.

Air travel still is the safest form of transport, but since every incident makes the news, it has a large potential to undermine the feeling of safety in travellers.

Speaking for myself… I’d rather fly on a well maintained Airbus A320 rather than a brand new 737.

Boeing is in biiiiiig trouble for sure.

No, as I said it WOULD make the news, obviously. But usually they wouldn’t lead with the aircraft manufacturer in the title. News outlets are really only doing that because Boeing is a ‘hot topic’.

Most people really don’t know or care what brand or type of plane they’re flying on. Heck, most news outlets can’t tell a Boeing 747 from a Piper Cub. But every Boeing incident is now guaranteed to get clicks.

In fairness, I do want to point out that this particular aircraft, N8668A, was built in 2015. This was its first incident. Basically, I’d assume this to be more of a maintenance issue rather than an actual Boeing issue.

Incidents like this now make the news with ‘Another Boeing…’ when usually the media would report ‘Aircraft diverted…’ and not even mention the aircraft type until the second paragraph in. Every Boeing incident now gets put under a magnifying glass.

Don’t get me wrong: Boeing has become a shit company and the people who knowingly put lives at risk for profit need to be lined up against a wall. But this doesn’t really feel like one of those incidents, knowing how often engines are checked and serviced after leaving the factory.

Well that’s… certainly understandable. Not gonna argue that one :D