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Captainant

Burnt Ends
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Posts posted by Captainant

  1. 16 minutes ago, Goredho said:

    I agree 100% with #1 and #2.  I disagree about #3.  Trump's public displays of leadership during covid were about what you could expect from a reality TV star running a superpower during a no-shit global crisis, but covid was going to come to the US and kill a million plus no matter who was in the white house.  And for all of his public fumbling, Trump largely allowed "the deep state" to do what they had planned for this scenario.  Even if he just kind of left a lot of the actual response to the states, lockdowns and mask mandates happened, and a vaccine got developed and deployed in a pretty astonishing feat of governmental and industrial cooperation.  A lot of lives were saved as a result of those efforts directed primarily by federal technocrats like Fauci and other public health officials below the federal level.  Neither Trump or Biden had much to do with it.

    Counterpoint: we know that trump KNEW covid was airborne and highly infectious in February 2020. He actively downplayed the danger and fueled a fucking litany of conspiracy theories with health consequences we are still dealing with today. Fauci and the rest of the pandemic response happened in spite of trump, and were frequently undercut by him

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  2. 8 hours ago, Gil Bang said:

    the stock market is 100% bullshit.   It went from providing financing to growing businesses, to a bunch of fucks in expensive suits inventing bullshit to increase their bonuses. 

    But what if I showed you a chart with a line going up and called you a socialist?

  3. 26 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:

    My buddy in Houston got one of these plans after he got his Tesla and started charging it and deep cooling at night.

    I didn’t quite give him the savings he was after.

    So he got two of the Tesla batteries installed (solar panels were back ordered)

    He’d charge his car, batteries, and get his house down to like 65 at night. Use the battery during the day. His bill dropped by at least half.

    They finally got his solar panels in and installed them.

    It’s a rare month where he pays anything for electricity…. Which is nuts to say in Houston, Tx.

    I don’t know what his ROI is for what he dropped…. But his feeling that he’s hacked the system gives him something that’s hard to quantitate. 

    This is the dream, he'll have decent power resiliency when ERCOT inevitably shits the bed again and leaves the state dark

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  4. 1 minute ago, fattyflattie said:

    LOL  EvErYoNe I dIsAgReE wItH iS a FaScHiSt!!!!1!1

    Cant wait to stop paying for the college of fucking lol deadbeats.  Bonus to replace a long tooth justice or two with some younger blood.

    You literally just said you want things to"swing hard" the other way from Biden. You let me know the predominant theme among the hard right. I hear they're very fine people. 

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  5. 8 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

    I don't have FSD, but instead the level below I guess.  Driving on long road trips on interstates and such is quite lovely.  One hand on the wheel and being able to eat or not pay 100% attention for a while is nice.  I don't know if I'll ever get to the point of trusting it to exit or even switch lanes on its own, but taking curves and adaptive cruise is worth it to me.  I'm sure other cars are doing this now too, or catching up quickly.

    Hell the adaptive cruise control in my 2019 Jeep will maintain a follow distance and keep you between the lines with it's relatively unsophisticated ACC. It does use cameras and some radar sensors though so it's got more data to work with than a Tesla in some ways

  6. 56 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

    Not going to lie.  When I saw the green avatar, a silly news take, and TikTok, I wondered to myself if you were branching out from financials.  Slight surprise to see it was a completely different poster.  

    Notably not denying the fascist preference. And again repeating your lie of my ever posting a TikTok as a source. From a dude with a green avatar lol. 

    Keep on telling yourself lies and enjoy your fabricated worldview. It certainly makes voting for trump again easier

  7. 1 hour ago, Doc Sam Beckett said:

    You'd bet 50/50 that your average human driver would mow down 4 out of 4 kids inching on the edge of a crosswalk who happened to dash across?? No fucking way. Most drivers would have stopped. The kid didn't dash out from behind a car, it was standing at the edge of the crosswalk. I'd bet that 75% of drivers playing on their phones would have taken caution 

    In Houston, yeah I'd prolly put it below 50/50 lol

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  8. 1 hour ago, High Plains Drifter said:

    I don't know anything about O'Dowd. But if FSD can't avoid hitting a kid in those circumstances, it absolutely should not be released to the general public. 

    IMO I'm less upset about hitting a pedestrian in a tricky scenario - I'd bet 50/50 that your average human driver would do just as poorly - but the fact that the car wasn't even aware that hit it something is a HUGE problem. Any closed loop decision making should be doing OODA - orient, observe, decide, act. If it's just deciding and acting to keep rolling without observing that it just pancaked a (simulated) child... That is nowhere close to SAE level 3 automation or even road safe for the public.

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  9. 12 minutes ago, elfenix said:

    there’s various plans in the competitive areas with “free” nights/weekends. Back when Griddy was around I’d watch the electric rate fall to 0 (or negative) late at night.

     

    consumers probably should be less insulated from the cost-at-the-moment without going full Griddy.  Getting charged the same rate all day doesn’t discourage waste.

    I've got one of those renewable plans with free nights and weekends, and while the metered usage is higher than I'd like, we mostly time-shift our power hungry tasks (mainly laundry) to nights and weekends and it definitely makes an impact on our monthly bill

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  10. 5 minutes ago, Newdoc said:

    Or we need to reduce and meet in the middle. Sounds like I need to bite the bullet and look into home solar.

    I really do think home solar + energy storage is going to be the answer. You can charge your battery up overnight for pennies on the dollar when grid demand is low, and then use your panels during the day with the battery available as additional capacity during the hot part of the day. It would remove a hell of a lot of strain from our grid, but would require government incentives to make economical.

    Unfortunately, the government incentives have been going to Chinese cryptominers that moved to Texas after they got kicked out of their home country. 

    Ah well, nevertheless. 

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  11. 1 hour ago, Murfdogg21 said:

    This all could’ve been act 1 of an episode instead of the entire episode. Two episodes left to resolve their fate, the M-count cloning program, and if the brought Ventress back for anything other than a cameo. 

    Up until now, Ventress was presumed dead so I think bringing her back was more about putting a toy back into the toy box. But I can't disagree that there's not that much screentime left to close out the Bad Batch story. I hope they do two 30 minute episodes at least, if not longer

  12. 14 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

    Any of you fellas have to use Barkeepers Friend on your ride.

    https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/threads/bar-keepers-friend-changed-my-cybertrucks-finish.14184/

     

     

    My Cybertruck was delivered with quite a bit of staining on a lot of the panels. It’s looked to be from rain. I tried a bunch of softer cleaners first to get off the stains. Windex, waterless wash, full soap wash, generic stainless polish, etc.

    None of that worked. So I tried some bar keepers friend that many other suggested. I tried it on a small area, and it looked fine. I then tried a door with lots of staining. I let it sit for one minute and then rinsed it off. The first time I applied very lightly and it dulled the stains, but didn’t remove them. The second time I scrubbed just a little more and it completely removed all the stains and created a perfectly uniform panel.

    However, The door is now lighter in color and the finish is a bit more dull / less shiny. I don’t love this effect, but it appears I’m going to have to live with it since I already started. I followed the directions, didn’t let it sit too long and didn’t scrub hard. To help others to do this well and decide if this is for them, I would love some advice or feedback from others if they saw this, or if I did something wrong.

    Pic: BKF used on rear door only

    Important Edit: after finishing the whole truck, I noticed that the front panel in the picture below still doesn’t match the panel in the rear. I am thinking bar keepers friend didn’t change the panel as much as I thought. When both panels were done the same way they still look different. So if my post scared you away, don’t worry too much. The truck looks amazing with all panels done and I do prefer it better now.
     
    Tesla Cybertruck Bar Keepers Friend changed my Cybertruck's finish! IMG_7932
     
    Last edited: Apr 

    It's more likely that the panels are different qualities or runs of stainless, and that's why the owner is seeing different surface finishes between treated panels. I think the acid in the barkeeper's friend is effectively doing a surface passivation - which is something Tesla should have done at the factory - which gives it a higher gloss and improved corrosion resistance properties. 

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  13. Not sure if it goes here or in a cyber attack thread or where, but it's crazy that the 911 system was offline for a while last night in Texas (and a few other states)

    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/911-outage-reported-across-multiple-us-states-officials-say-2024-04-18/

    That system has so many redundancies (on paper at least) it's crazy that it went offline for any period of time 

  14. 42 minutes ago, bolverk said:

    Who are the folks "stubbornly spurning nuclear energy"? It's not like individuals can mount a nuclear reactor on the roof of their house like they do solar panels or that some rancher can cut a deal with a nuclear power plant builder like they would some wind or solar farm developer.

    I believe you live in the Waco area, meaning your electricity provider is Oncor. What's stopping Oncor from building more nukes like they have in Glen Rose? The cost. It's expensive as shit because of all the safety regulations due to the inherent risks of an accident, and building new ones likely wouldn't be profitable. So, are you saying we should get rid of the regulations? Which regulations are especially onerous or unneeded? Are you volunteering to live within a couple of miles of one?

    If these plants can't be built profitably while also being safe, who should build them? A government that doesn't have to worry about direct ROI? Which government, federal or state? Guess what? There aren't good answers to those questions, and there haven't been any for quite a while.

    So, in the meantime, we have these two revolutionary new technologies that are super cheap now that can generate a whole fuck load of power under the right conditions and that don't cause a bunch of air pollution. The problem is just managing the distribution and storage of that power so that it can get to where it needs to be (transmission) when it needs to be (storage).

    Has anyone priced out the cost of a new nuclear power plant versus the transmission lines and batteries we need to continue supplying our energy with renewables? I'd bet Oncor has, and there's a reason why they're not building any today.

    Maybe SMRs will revolutionize the business and solve all our energy problems. I'd be 100% in favor of that. How cool would it be for each town to have one set up next to their water tower? 

    But, then, what the hell do we do with the waste?

    It's not that nuclear reactors are unprofitable - once they're running they just keep churning out power pretty much indefinitely with planned outages. But building and certifying them is immensely costly and full of risk due to the long construction times. This professor has a load of great talks on nuclear energy, but this is a great primer on why we aren't building more big nuke plants

     

    But as you note, SMRs sidestep much of these problems. Waste is easier with them too since each fuel pebble element is it's own dry cask storage (in theory)

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  15. 1 hour ago, Goredho said:

    I have a friend like this, a guy I played sports with and did all the sporty esprit-de-corps things with.  So we've been tight, almost lifelong friends.  He's a self-described libertarian that has gone way down the conspiracy rabbit hole and is now basically working to try to bring about the downfall of the US.  His legitimate business failed and he is rebounding by starting a podcast and writing two books simultaneously "with the help of AI."  It's all aimed at promoting conspiracies and at least indirectly undermining confidence in our governmental institutions.  His social media used to be full of stuff about sports and his kids and real life.  Now it's just a stream of conspiracy nonsense that no one reacts to.  It's like he's posting in a vacuum.

    Hows 8badmofo doing nowadays?

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