People living comfortably here in Germany are flocking to extremist parties, because having to wear a mask during a pandemic or minding the rights of other people makes them feel oppressed.
The rise of Hamas was absolutely inevitable given the way people in Gaza were treated. If you're literally fighting for survival and you realize more moderate groups are unable to change anything, you will support extremists out of sheer desparation.
Exactly, people use religion to justify acts that would otherwise be seen as irrational and inhumane. But with religion out of the picture, people will still commit the same atrocities and just try to find other ideologies as justification, such as racism.
Thanks, that was a very good read. It would be interesting to know how many people in Israel share these views, because from far away it seems like everyone is onboard with causing even more suffering and bloodshed as an act of revenge.
Disinformation on X (formerly known as twitter) of all places? Oh my, things are really going downhill if we can no longer trust the information on X (formerly known as twitter).
Gambling, tobacco, alcohol and all sorts of other addictive things are for profit, so why exclude cannabis?
I would advocate for treating other addictions the same way too.
Alcohol and tobacco ads are targeting young people because they're more likely to develop a lifelong addiction if you start them early enough. Gambling machines are set up to make people believe they can beat the system, so they stay hooked.
I just don't think these should be legitimate business models.
My Huawei Mate 10 pro (2017) was the last phone that felt like an upgrade. Everything since then has been better in some respects, worse in others. Just a replacement for a phone that is physically too broken to be used any longer.
I don't think I'll ever spend €1000 or more for a phone anymore, even though I could afford it. I'm just not willing to spend that much money on a phone that offers hardly anything new. Maybe if they finally make a fairphone with a decent camera, I would pay a premium for repairability so I can use it for more than 3 years before it inevitably falls apart...
Growing plants just to use them for energy production is absolutely stupid and incredibly harmful, agreed. But there are types of biomass that are basically waste from food production or forestry. It's not a ton of energy, but it may play a part somewhere.
The fact that Scholz didn't even come to my mind when I thought about the German government says it all. I had no expectations and I was still disappointed.
Demand response just means making use of energy surplus. And we'll have lots of that during spring and summer in the northern hemisphere. Running carbon capture machines only when there's a surplus is a perfect example of demand response.
Oh yes, no argument there. We're already using absolutely huge amounts of hydrogen that are mostly made from fossil fuels right now. Worldwide hydrogen production is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire country of Germany. We'll have to turn that into green hydrogen and use a ton of renewable energy for that. If we make use of surplus wind and solar, it will help a lot with stabilizing the grid.
What I was thinking of was the idea of producing hydrogen through electrolysis, storing it and later turning it back into electricity through fuel cells. And I'm not sure if that will ever be cheaper and more efficient than newer and cheaper battery technologies like sodium ion or redox flow batteries.
First of all, nuclear is anything but reliable. Germany had to supply huge amounts of electricity to France last year because half of their nuclear plants had to be shut down. They would have had major blackouts without support from their European neighbors.
But my main point is that baseload power does not mix with renewable sources at all. Using batteries and other solutions to store renewable energy during times of little wind or sunlight is actually the goal. But that also eliminates the need for baseload.
Baseload was never really a feature anyway, it was a necessity. Nuclear and certain types of coal power plants were unable to follow demand, they had to be run at close to full load all the time, either for technical or for economic reasons. To compensate for that, other more expensive plants had to be used to cover times of higher demand.
Careful what you wish for Donnie...