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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • And what exactly would that be? Essentially everything has insurance.

    Here’s a list of one type of that kind of disasters where, despite of insurance, various kinds of environmental damage has been left behind which may or may not completely heal, or at least it takes a long, long time.

    Here’s a pretty public different kind of disaster which I guarantee was not 100% covered by insurance either. Here’s another. I’m not building a comprehensive list, there’s just too many and their impacts vary wildly.

    Then there’s the waste management in poorer countries which also cause immeasurable damage to the environment all the time by using a nearby river as a sewage for everything. Here’s one example which made into the headlines back then. And here’s a list of similar examples.

    “they replaced nuclear with coal”

    Go read yourself:

    A 2020 study found that lost nuclear electricity production has been replaced primarily by coal-fired production and net electricity imports. The social cost of this shift from nuclear to coal is approximately €3 to €8 billion annually, mostly from the eleven hundred additional deaths associated with exposure to the local air pollution emitted when burning fossil fuels.

    And remember that the pollution which kills people just because breathing smoke and ash is bad, it’s also radioactive.

    Let’s not see which one’s marginally worse but instead maybe just push something that’s actually good for the planet?

    That would be really nice. We just don’t have the alternatives ready to go for that just yet. Here in Finland, on a good day, renewables produce more than nuclear, but those are exceptions. Feel free to look up the data in finngrid service. There’s currently over 7000MW worth of turbines around but it’s pretty common to have even less than 200MW of wind power in the grid and that unreliability needs to be stabilized with something else.


  • There’s a ton of stuff going on all the time which no amunt of insurance will cover. Modern nuclear generators just can’t blow up like Chernobyl. Fukushima is a bit different, but maybe we shouldn’t build reactors in places where they can be hit by a tsunami in the first place. And even there the environmental impact was somewhat limited.

    And that doesn’t change the fact that shutting down nuclear plants and replacing their energy output with coal caused more radiation in ash and other particles which are spread out of the chimney to the environment as a part of normal operation.


  • And the funny thing is that coal power plants are actually more radioactive to the environment than nuclear power. Sure, accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima change the statistics by quite a lot, but for the absolute majority of nuclear plants they are way less radioactive to the environment than any given coal plant around.

    Also there’s not that many severe nuclear disasters in the history. Coal and other organic fuel plants cause far more casualties globally than nuclear ever did. But maybe it’s easier to accept slow death of a lot of people due to cancer and whatever caused by organic fuel power plant emissions than single large spike when nuclear power (very, very rarely) goes wrong.


  • I totally agree. Setting up an email server is pretty trivial, but setting up a good email server with long lifespan and managing it is another matter. I absolutely recommend doing that, that’s the one front we can take back from the giants if enough people decide to go that route, but it’s not something you should just spin up by following a random youtube tutorial and leave it be.

    I do host my own emails, but I’ve been doing that commercially too for a decade or so and make my living as system administrator, so I’ve cut my teeth on this quite a while ago. You need to understand quite a few things, set up backups, clear your IP from various blocklists every now and then, manage the ever growing spam problem, make sure that no malicious actors can access your systems and so on.

    It is very much doable and at least I personally enjoy the freedom I have for not relying on anyone else on my communications. Go for it, but be prepared to jump in to the deep end without floats.


  • They could at least stop using twitter (and meta). At least here in Finland a ton of public offices, news outlets, radio channels and so on use twitter as a platform to deliver their information and, while it was a decent plan back when twitter wasn’t owned by that clown, that ship has sailed ages ago but their practises haven’t changed a bit. Government ran mastodon instance would be pretty cheap solution to this and it would quarantee that everyone had access to their information without signing up to any service at all.



  • To be honest, their stuff is pretty damn good. It’s a bit like Knipex or Festool. Pretty much the best quality tools around, but their pricing is also premium. No matter the brand, they are really good, but not all of their stuff is really worth the money, but if you’re buying with a company credit card it doesn’t really matter either.

    For a home gamer it’s of course different scenario, but for a company it’s nothing to throw 100+€ for a side cutters since you still need to pay for someone to go and pick them up from a retailer and when you pay the premium they last for a very long time no matter how badly you abuse them so you don’t waste time and money on replacing stuff.

    And würth has reasonable priced tools as well. I have serveral utility knives with break away blades, welding gloves and other stuff around in garage. I could get the cheaper ones too, but even if würth (or knipex) ones are often way more expensive than competition the quality is just so much above anything else that coughing up the cash is really worth it.


  • Without any expertise, I’m going to say that minuscule amounts of radioactive nickel from your CR2032 replacements compared to wasted lithium on pretty much every battery your all current devices have plus single use LiIon-cells on e-cigs, single use toys and whatever is a pretty good improvement. In 100 years or so all that nickel is converted to copper with small amounts of radiation and heat as byproducts, in today’s technology, is pretty good.

    And the radiation is beta-negative. I’m not an nuclear physicist, but if I’m not mistaken your common 3032 cell has enough metal to shield pretty much all of the radiation. Just don’t eat them and maybe stick with li-ion on your wrist watch.



  • You are correct, this is definetly not that big of a deal right now. My license is already valid across EU. However, the process for this has been going on at the background for quite a while and the end goal is to improve road safety and have common rules in all of EU. Increased road safety is obviously a good thing and it also helps people to move around if they want to, so even if it’s not the biggest problems at hand it’s still improvement across the union.



  • Neither can Ukraine.

    True, but Ukraine has played this game pretty well in my opinion. They keep negotiations going, speak nicely about the deal in public and at least in here media represents Ukraine as willing and open of discussion about whatever deal Trump suggests, no matter how bat shit crazy they are.

    I mean, Ukraine isn’t stupid enough to sign off all of their wealth to USA or surrender land without any significant gain. But they can now at least say that they’re willing to discuss about the matter while Russia just bluntly rejects the proposals.


  • Majority of European fighter jets depend on US suppliers for spare parts and maintenance for a start. Same with helicopters. Also, the Europe as a whole has problems on delivering even the most common artillery shells to Ukraine in quantities they would need.

    So, as I mentioned, our military is well capable of stopping Russian invasion at the border, but holding it on the long term requires allies and co-operation. Also, size of the population has very little to do with military capabilities, which was proven by Finns a few decades ago and currently in Ukraine.


  • Another Finnish conscript here. I didn’t vote for the guy, but he’s been pretty good on his job so far. He understands that the orange one has ‘special needs’. And this point of view has been widely reported and discussed too.

    USA, like it or not, is still a (too) big part of effective defence around here as majority of Europe has forgotten what kind of country Russia is and just left their military strenght go down the drain. Our own army is pretty capable of stopping the Russian attack should it happen, but in the long run we need allies and at least for now USA is one of them.

    So, if maintaining that relationship requires some pandering of that orange toddler, then it does. There’s bigger things in the play than showing off with national pride. I don’t like the situation either, but that’s just a part of the game and we need to play with the cards we have.

    At least so far ‘speak nicely and carry a big stick’ -approach seems to work. European stick just is not big enough at the moment that we could rely only on that. And I hope that it changes pretty soon, but it takes a while to change continent wide mindset.


  • Fair point, but basic physics has been a part of our education program for at least 60 years. Also for few years the ‘exchange priced’ or ‘market valued’ electricity has been somewhat popular and on the news, which adds up to the general understanding as if you know your stuff it means quite literal money as your bills are smaller. So, maybe ‘absolutely everyone’ is a bit of a stretch, but in general the majority of adult people understand the concept.

    And also a ton of common folk understand it at least a bit on a deeper level as basic physics is included to studies beyond elementary school regardless on what you study. Sure, not everyone understands (or cares) how 3 phase AC in here adds up to 400V or why you need to have 2,5mm² wires for 16A fuse, but it’s still pretty common that people, specially in a separate house, understand how you can only pull 2300W out of a 10A circuit or 3600W from a 16A one (10 and 16A being the most common fuses in a household in here).




  • I honestly have no idea. From wikipedia:

    Flying Jacob Swedish casserole composed of chicken, whipping cream, chili sauce, bananas, roasted peanuts, bacon and Italian salad seasoning, which is a peculiar seasoning blend available only in Sweden. The dish is baked in an oven and is usually served with rice and a salad.

    That didn’t help much on understanding it. And those are just your regular banans, not the kind you can get from chinese restaurant or something like that.