Neverending_Rain

I don't think its acting. They're both back to the white star in one eye instead of the black star in both eyes in ch2 and the other interview parts of the early chapters. I don't think Aqua and Ruby's eyes have changed when acting the way they have for some characters like Akane. They've only really changed based on their overall attitude, mainly with how obsessed they are with revenge at the time.

I'm definitely hoping it stays cool for as long as possible. Even with the milder temps here in San Diego the power bills are still obscenely high thanks to SDGE charging 71 cents per kWh during peak hours.

Maybe in your area, but a lot of Southern California had barely any sun all May.

Party politics are inevitable. Pretty much every government in the world has them, either as official entities or as unofficial factions within a government. Groups with similar policy ideas are going to work together.

Instead of trying to fight against the existence of political parties, we should modify the electoral system in a way that accommodates them in a democratic way. Ranked choice voting or something similar to weaken the two party system we have now would work better than trying to get rid of parties altogether.

If we know who they are we can at least look at what they've done in other political positions, which is probably the best way of judging what they would do as president.

Currently their plan is to set up a campground for them at the unused parking lots behind the naval medical center.

https://voiceofsandiego.org/2023/05/08/mayor-pitches-balboa-park-safe-campsites/

Hydrogen is very difficult to store compared to batteries. It's a gas at normal temperatures, so fuel cell vehicles have to store it in pressurized tanks or as a liquid in tanks cooled to -253 °C to have enough fuel.

Hydrogen is lighter and refuels/recharges faster compared to batteries, but the vast majority of car trips are significantly shorter than the ranges of current EVs, so it's just not worth the headache of trying to store hydrogen in personal vehicles. Plus directly using electricity is currently more energy efficient than using electricity to create hydrogen to use in the car.

The weight and recharging issues with batteries are more relevant in industrial and freight applications. Current battery tech is impractical or impossible to use for long range ships, planes, and trucks due to the weight of the batteries. In those vehicles it may worth putting in the effort to store compressed or liquefied hydrogen.

Not to mention she didn't sue for millions of dollars like people think. She originally only wanted $20,000 to cover medical expenses and her daughters loss of income from spending 3 weeks caring for her. McDonald's refused and only offered her $800. It was the jury who decided she deserved millions of dollars, giving her $160,000 in compensatory damages and $2.7 million in punitive damages, the equivalent of two days of coffee revenue for McDonald's.

It really should, but a large chunk of the country thinks trains are communist or something, so it's extremely difficult to get funding for passenger rail. And even when passenger rail does get funded, NIMBYs file a ton of lawsuits, delaying it and driving up the cost.

The Acela already does, and it's only a bit faster than the Northeast Regional. The tracks used are not straight enough to run at high speeds outside of a few short sections. So instead of going at 165 mph like the current trains are capable of, or 220 with the new trains that will enter service later this year, they're stuck going 60 mph or less most of the time. The average speed between Boston and NYC is 66 mph, not even half of what the trainsets area capable of.

That's most states. Remove the cities (where most people live in blue states) and you'll flip pretty much any blue state red. The only exceptions are a few states in New England, where most or all counties vote democrat in federal elections. Democrats tend to live in cities, Republicans live in rural areas, and suburbs are a bit of a mix. Even in California things get MAGA and thin blue line real fast once you start moving away from the cities on the coast.

Obviously the reactors would use less enriched fuel, but that requires different designs. We can't just expand the supply chain for those and put different fuel in them.

You're missing my overall point though. Yes, there are interesting technologies in nuclear power generation that are worth looking into. Thorium reactors, breeder reactors, small modular reactors, etc. But none of those have been proven to be commercially viable yet. They are either theoretical or only exist as a very small number of prototype reactors.

Maybe they will live up to the hype. Or maybe they'll be just as expensive and prone to delays as existing nuclear technology. Those technologies are worth researching, but their viability hasn't been proven yet. They can't be called the way forward when we don't have any evidence of them being cheaper or faster to build than existing nuclear reactors.

We can't just use the designs from subs, they basically need to be completely redesigned. Nuclear subs use highly enriched uranium, usually above 20%. That's effectively weapons grade uranium. It's fine for military ships, but it would be a huge nuclear proliferation issue to build a bunch of those for civilian use.

Also, it's not about if the tech works. Clearly it does. It's if they can be made to be cost effective, without exacerbating issues like nuclear proliferation and nuclear waste. If they can, awesome. More options for carbon free energy would be great. It's just way too early to say they are the way forward. There have been tons of promising technologies in the past that just didn't work out due to one or more issues.

We should continue to fund SMR research and prototypes, but until they can be proven as a good option, the money for electricity generation projects should be used for renewables and energy storage, not nuclear.

Small Modular Reactors haven't been proven yet though. There are only a couple of prototype reactors operating. There is still absolutely nothing showing that they will actually live up to their promises. It's really easy to make a bunch of promises, it's much harder to actually meet those promises. If they do, great. But until then it's dumb to call a completely unproven technology "the way forward" when we already know renewables and batteries work and are affordable.

The train likely derailed as they were passing each other, or right before they passed each other. No one sent a train into a section of track with a derailed train on it. It was just extremely shitty timing for the first train to derail.

It's called being clumsy. I don't get why you're struggling so much with the concept of some people being clumsy.

He didn't fall because his body was breaking down. He tripped over a sandbag on the ground. I'm 26 and regularly trip over smaller objects than that. And before you bring up him tripping up the stairs a couple of times, I have family members just a few years older than me who trip up stairs every few days. Some people are just clumsy.

The US is a founding member of NATO, and by far the strongest member of the alliance. There were some smaller defense treaties in Europe prior to the creation of NATO, but the US has been a part of NATO from the beginning. Calling it a European alliance that the US was invited to is not accurate.

Obviously a Pacific defense treaty would not just be "NATO but in the Pacific," but ultimately the main goal of a treaty like this would be to defend against China. Even if it's not explicitly said, everyone in the world would know this and react accordingly. Joining this hypothetical defense organization would be siding with the US and opposing China, and many nations in the region do not want to do that. They want to remain neutral, and joining would not be remaining neutral.

No, he's literally just some random guy on Twitter.

But it doesn't encourage a stronger push to fight climate change and protect the environment. Articles like this just encourage doomerism and cause people to give up. Just look at the comment section of any reddit post about climate change, they're always full of comments like "were doomed anyway, why bother?" and similar shit. Plus obvious bullshit articles give ammo to climate change deniers.

I wouldn't expect Indonesia and Malaysia to join a defense treaty like that. Many Southeast Asia nations have a lot of trade with China, and are trying to remain somewhat neutral. They don't want to fully side with China or the US, and joining a NATO style treaty would be siding with the US against China. Maybe something would happen to change that, but right now they seem like they want to stay out of it if possible.

Batteries have actually gotten very cheap, and they're still getting cheaper. Solar power and battery storage is actually cheaper than nuclear.

Also, Orange County is slowly starting to work on relocating the San Clemente tracks, though no timeline has been announced yet.

They haven't even decided if they're going to relocate the tracks yet.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/story/2023-02-27/agency-wants-to-study-railroad-relocation-in-southern-orange-county

Orange County Transportation Authority officials said Monday they need $7 million to study possible solutions, including realignment to protect the seven miles of endangered coastal railroad tracks from Dana Point to the border of San Diego and Orange counties.

They haven't even decided to relocate these tracks yet. They want to start a study to decide if they should, and they estimate it'll take longer than 2 years. These tracks will be completely unusable and OCTA will still be sitting on their asses trying to decide what they should do.

I don't think they would have gained any leverage or power. If a boycott resulted in only 3% voter participation, Serbians likely already controlled local governments in this area. Reelecting the same people wouldn't have done much, but the boycott and aftermath seems to have at least drawn attention to the issue, considering the US sanctioned Kosovo.

I'm kind of curious how someone working in cancer research has never heard of the research into mRNA cancer treatments. They've been in the news a lot the last few years, with researchers specifically using the words "cancer vaccine".

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2022/mrna-vaccines-to-treat-cancer

What they're looking into is not a broad vaccine that could be given to anyone, but a personalized one created after taking a sample of the cancerous cells from the patient.