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Joined 1 month ago
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Cake day: February 21st, 2026

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  • You’re assuming people who don’t care enough to vote are still informed enough to vote, and that’s not true. I know people who oscillate between voting republican and not voting mostly just because they believe what the republican politicians say. Recently, I gave one a series of examples explaining how implementing the “protecting the children” policies actually harmed children, women, or people in general – and they were horrified. It was the first time I ever convinced anyone of anything politically, and I ended up convincing them they weren’t informed enough to vote.

    Maybe I would agree with obligatory voting if we had both ranked voting and a none-of-the-above / random-citizen-lottery option, but choosing between politicians who actively mislead people is a dangerous activity.



  • I’m not gonna pretend to be an expert. I can’t even find the graph I saw – much less verify its integrity. If you’re really curious, I can tell you I once saw a bar graph that had fossil fuels (or maybe it was just coal) as very negative, then solar as barely breaking even, then wind or maybe it was hydro electric as more positive, and nuclear as very very positive. I don’t really want to defend the graph because I can’t even find it to check the axes.

    I will say my undergrad was in material science (actually “nanoscience” but basically material science), and there seemed a lot of semi-open corruption in wafer fabrication (or maybe it was just between Andrew Cuomo and CNSE). I was never really clear on the details, but it made me quite skeptical of anything associated with that field. Life-time is actually one of the big points as the economics teacher I had in undergrad said most solar panels are tossed well before they reach their supposed lifespans – again, I don’t know if that’s actually true.

    To be honest, as I’ve gotten older the independence aspect of solar panels has been what’s appealed to me more than the environmentalism. Not to say I don’t care about the environment. Just that I don’t think green energy is going to be adopted in time to solve the problem, and carbon capture is obvious BS unless it’s biologically based (went into structural biology in grad school, so the biology is closer to my expertise).


  • You know I’ve really come around to solarpunk as a concept.

    I used to genuinely be against solar because the carbon costs barely break even, but the very simple point was made to me that solar panels are an ideal ore for making solar panels – meaning the carbon costs of solar panels goes down once we start recycling them. Add the independence solar panels give people (that punk aspect), and yeah I dig it.












  • Love that quote.

    Yeah, there are definitely a lot of times where money is important as a measure of the logistical practicality, and I actually do respect those practicalities… but some days it feel like the world has been taken over by people more fixated on getting money than making the world better. At the very least, there are other social-constructs worth balancing against the financial considerations.