Yes, it’s probably one of those things which people don’t sign with their name and photo - it might burn some bridges and close possibilities for people working under the same label.

In general, it’s my impression that Ukrainian anarchists are materially supportive of like-minded soldiers and morally supportive of draft dodgers.

Thanks, didn’t know about that feature. :) For anyone else - it’s under the “link” button.

Good idea, here it is: :)

https://pads.slrpnk.net/p/zxVQ5m4Krazg47Z35-Xa

I considered the RiseUp Pad, but knowing that pads are editable, I initially decided against - wanted to provide a read-only source.

Ethanol is among the few substances which practically doesn’t burn into CO. It is extremely hard to poison oneself with an ethanol burner.

However, according to an article linked below, burning large amounts of ethanol in a confined space (their experimental space was 48 cubic meters, which would be comparable to a small cabin) can exceed reasonable limits for CO2, nitrogen dioxide and benzene. Sadly, their article summary does not provide the quantity of ethanol that they burned. It is an important parameter of the process.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140903091728.htm

They want it again? Oh well, predictable as a clockwork.

An article from 2020, when Trump & co wanted it last time:

What Is Antifa, the Movement Trump Wants to Declare a Terror Group?

What they failed to learn last time:

Rather, antifa is more of a loose movement of activists whose followers share some philosophies and tactics.

However, even without follies like crypto or overhyped tools like AI… there still is an electricity demand boom coming. All those vehicles need to be charged. Every country is predicting a rise in electricity consumption.

The expansion of renewable production and storage just needs to outpace the expansion of demand.

And that… that’s a field where most conservatives lack any merit - they might ride with the hype or skip the ride on other topics, but sadly appear to be hell bent against renewables. Sadly, the expectation for a conservative politician lately seems to be: if there’s a fossil fuel lobby anywhere nearby, the guy is expected to be found in their pocket.

About methane: dealing with it at the source (oil and gas drilling and mining, waste disposal, etc) is going to far less than dealing with it later in the atmosphere.

Knowledge of how to increase methane oxidation rates in air is good to have, however - in case some geochemical methane source (permafrost, hydrates) gets pushed over the edge and starts outputting more than tolerable.

A big advantage of its sodium cells is also the fact that they can retain more than 92% of their capacity even when operating at -20°C (-4 Fahrenheit) and discharging at those freezing temps.

That is very promising to hear. My current vehicle, which uses first-generation lithium batteries (made on 2011), loses almost half of its range at that temperature, and that is before heating.

Pigs are intelligent and curious creatures, so it’s possible that they would learn this.

However, they might come looking at a ground ambush FPV for other reasons too - most FPV controllers slowly spin their motors when armed, or beep (resonate their motors) to indicate that they’re armed. This could draw attention - pigs might think that a piglet is in trouble and come looking. Hopefully not touching, because on that screenshot, the warhead is also waiting to be touched.

But the killed-to-wounded ratio (as well as the overall loss ratio) is probably very bad for Russians:

• if a front moves slowly, leaving devastated land behind it, those who come across that land, they won’t have infrastructure supporting them
• Ukrainians do not seem hell bent on crawling slowly across devastated land, they either defend or do maneuver warfare… Russians seem to have different priorities, they attack even when the attack is very costly
• these days, any vehicle is a target for FPV drones and must be equipped with powerful electronic countermeasures (which also announce its presence) to survive
• but some FPV drones lock onto targets with machine vision and others are piloted over optical cable, and there’s not much hope against these even with jammers
• so, approximately within 7 km of the front, vehicles are a risky thing to have
• evacuating a wounded person to a distance of 7 km to get him on a vehicle requires non-trivial effort
• if the official tactic is making “meat attacks”, it’s hard to imagine where that effort comes from

So, that effort probably doesn’t happen.

I know of a company in Ukraine making remote operated ground vehicles (“stretcher on tracks”) that can be used to evacuate a person even if they cannot steer the vehicle, but even Ukrainians have few such tools. Russians probably aren’t bothering.

Hydrogen is a nuisance of a gas, though - it has a very wide combustible range of mixtures.

But an airship envelope containing multiple lifting units of hydrogen could be passivated by filling the envelope with a non-combustible gas like helium.

So, there’s a big sausage providing structure and that’s full of helium (or nitrogen, or CO2, or anything else which doesn’t react with hydrogen in normal conditions)… and it contains balloons full of hydrogen. If one of them springs a leak, the leak won’t be going into an environment that supports fire. And if the leak then proceeds into surrounding air, the hydrogen is hopefully diluted beyond its combustible range.

Considerably less expensive than using helium only. But considerably safer than using hydrogen among air.

Sadly, Rojava is incredibly land-locked. It is possible to deliver assistance in various forms (from woolen socks and SDR cards to items one won’t mention on the net) to folks who defend Ukraine… but I don’t know a single organization except Heyva Sor (Red Crescent, humanitarian and medical assistance) that reaches North-Eastern Syria (even Heyva Sor is better than nothing, for all I know they depend on imported antibiotics).

If anyone knows of channels that can get assistance to those people, clues would be welcome.

I hope the HTS and SNA don’t have overlapping interests and listen to different people. They might hold each other in check, at least for a while, and thus prevent restarting of the civil war.

I hope the folks in North-Eastern Syria get a tolerable (or even favourable) political solution - some kind of extended autonomy within Syria.

But the wider context is Erdogan waiting for Trump to make deals with him (and also Israel seems to be trying to ruin its relations with any new government of Syria pre-emptively) - so if I were them, I’d keep drone batteries charged. They have a snowball’s chance in hell.

I did’t cry for the CEO, but also didn’t cheer for the assassin. I don’t know if he was the assassin. Cops seem to think so, but I can’t double-check.

If the assassin’s motive was revenge for someone’s misery or avoidable death, the motive is understandable. People sometimes make such decisions for similar reasons since time unknown.

If the assassin’s political complaint was that the US ranked fourty second in life expectancy among countries, despite ranking first in expense per capita - that is likely true, and should be a big deal as long as it remains so.

(Obviously, it won’t automatically improve from offing a health insurance CEO - many of them are indirectly responsible for many person-years of needless suffering or loss of lives, but there is a socio-economic framework which ensures that their positions get repopulated with their kind of people, so one getting killed can only highlight the problem.)

To any statist wanting to fix their state, I would recommend a tax-based a single-payer healthcare system in an eyeblink.

To other anarchists, I don’t think I’d have to explain the benefits of solidarity and collective bargaining. They’re obvious.

As for the US: not a chance within the next 4 years.

Also relevant: “Always shoot the messenger first.” :)

If news unsettles a person, and there’s a cognitive dissonance upon processing their world model (“everything OK with climate”) and sensory input (“another big freaking hurricane”) then if the person isn’t a model of rational thought and already has a fad for conspiracies…

…one might find it easier to add another conspiracy theory to one’s collection, as opposed to harder steps like refreshing one’s model of how the world functions. :o

Indeed, I have nothing here that would draw 35 kilowatts. :) If I weld, the maximum is 4 kW, if I charge my car, the maximum is about 3.6 kW. By the way, I’ve observed that most of time, the MIEV cruises at around 10 kW - accelerating is a whole different matter of course. :) If I get a bit more, I’ll be happy, but I don’t expect a lot more.

I have no power grid here. Maybe next autumn, but I only asked them to build a laughably small connection of 3 x 6 A, to act as a backup in case my systems are catastrophically broken) so no grid tie. Since it’s a really curious location (no official road either) I wonder if the grid operator actually manages to build it in one year. :)

As for inverters, my setup isn’t new or shiny - there’s a legacy DC-AC (poor choice of brand name from some Taiwanese maker, even I can’t find their website because their name is so generic) 24 V 5 KW inverter. It produces modified sine wave, was too expensive, and the first one that I got developed a fault and was replaced. The replacement has been running my house for the past 5 years. It will retire when I manage to move over to a 48V system voltage.

…and its replacement is a somewhat newer Maximum Solar PIP-4048MS (no longer produced, but they make similar ones). It’s actually less powerful (only 4 kW) but produces a pure sine wave and I bought it used for a really good price.

Although the new(er) inverter can act as a charger (drawing power either from solar or a generator or a power grid) and likely it soon will, I have 3 separate chargers, each for a different panel array. All of them are Maximum Solar PCM60X. I mostly chose them because they have passive cooling and they’ve been working for several years.

They are supposed to have a capacity of 37.5 amp-hours left and I’ll have four stacks in parallel, so I’ll have around 150 amp-hours.

If I multiply that by the average voltage under load (16 cells per stack x 3.85 volts per cell = 60 V, but I might have to compromise and go for 15 cells per stack), I get 150 x 60 = 9000 Wh = 9 kWh. A factory-fresh battery of this sort has a dozen more cells and is supposed to hold 16 kilowatt-hours. Since I drive one of those cars, I know from experience that 9 kWh is a realistic estimate, but I’ll find out the true capacity later.

The proliferation of a new technology typically doesn’t start from poor people.

It starts from fanatics first. I built my first EV. It was crap, I cut it apart and sold the metal (environmental footprint: awful). Then I built my second EV. It drove around 10 000 km, but had to be retired due to metal fatigue (enviromental footprint: neutral at best, lesson learned: big).

I bought my third EV on a crashed vehicle auction. New front axle, stretching the frame back to correct dimensions… I drive it every day, but it’s a crap car that I’d not recommend to my worst enemy. :) Environmental footprint: positive, I can produce fuel for myself from April to October. But if the same vehicle would be used by someone who doesn’t produce (or buy) renewable power, the footprint would be less positive.

Anticipating the demise of my factory-made electric microcar, I am however building another EV. Again the footprint is negative, but I need information about how to easily manufacture one, and obtaining information has a cost in resources. :(

Meanwhile, of course, truly rich folks buy fancy and electronics-laden self-driving EVs which some then proceed to crash or mishandle due to lack of clue. People are like that and it will stick out in statistics.

IMHO: if they hadn’t bought an EV, they’d have bought another kind of status symbol and would have used it even more wastefully. What matters more is what the average person can and will do. And how do we influence the auto makers to produce less resource-intensive vehicles?

I have had many encounters with cops, and I decide about the extent of cooperating with them on a case-by-case basis.

• landlord is illegally evicting my mother’s neighbour --> I call cops and they prove how useless they are at prevention, but the matter goes to court and the landlord gets convicted later, and it was my only time to testify in court
• cops accuse me of ignoring their lawful order --> sorry, I was listening to music, didn’t hear nothing, no comment, no comment, I admit nothing (nothing came of it)
• cops intrude into the squat yard without knowing it’s a squat --> “the droids drunken people you look for are elsewhere” --> the cops go elsewhere
• cops raid the squat --> refuse to provide documents until threatened, require cops to provide their own ID, contest every statement and discuss the matter publicly in media
• cops try to steal equipment during a demonstration --> pull the equipment back and yell to them a description of what it is (I assume they thought I was planting a bomb instead of packing up)
• cops want to interview me about illegal demonstrations --> I politely tell them to fuck off, then call back and volunteer for the interview to convey the opinion of other anarchists :D
• a new squat is being established --> establish a security perimeter that is watched with attention and never let cops close
• an attempted squat gets burglarized and set on fire -> inform the fire brigade that a bottle of propane could be present (fortunately it was stolen), the fire brigade had better things to do than involve cops
• a new squat gets burglarized --> pepper spray the burglar and take their tools, without involving cops
• a new squat gets burglarized, episode N --> threaten the burglars and take their tools, without involving cops
• cops try to fall into a hole in ground during a stupid training excercise --> tell the cops not to go there, as they might fall in (leave untold: it would be a major embarrasment for squatters to rescue them)
• the squat is suddenly in the security perimeter of a NATO summit --> find some military lurking in the yard and invite them into the squat so they could be reasonably certain we don’t have anything that shoots down planes :P (runway was about 250 m away)
• a drunken person tries to SWAT me at a street party --> fully explain the situation to the SWAT team and later participate in amateur theatre with cops to get the drunken person safely removed from the police station :o
• one drunken neighbour hits their spouse and when I forbid, hits me --> seeing that the neigbour has already paid for his deed since pepper was 100% effective and he’ll feel extremely bad for many hours, I did not file a complaint to cops, although they were called and showed up
• after two geniuses tried to steal my car, but fled after a warning shot --> I did not involve cops
• after some person attacked his partner and hit her on street --> I pepper sprayed him, and since he took out a knife and attempted to come at me (I evaded, no harm occurred to me), I did call cops and make a complaint, as did the woman he had hit
• cops call me about one neigbour’s car --> I don’t remember anything (I did actually remember, but wasn’t in a mood for helping them repress a neighbour)
• my car gets burglarized --> I ask the cops for info, they have none, I don’t involve them beyond that

…etc.

I think the EU Commission has done a fairly good job of listing the pros and contras of small modular reactors:

https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/nuclear-energy/small-modular-reactors/small-modular-reactors-explained_en

They have some advantages over conventional (large) reactors in the following areas:

• if they are serially manufactured without design chances, manufacturing is more efficient than big unique projects
• you can choose a site with less cooling water
• you can choose a site where a fossil-burning plant used to be (grid elements for a power plant are present) but a renewable power plant may not be feasible
• some of them can be safer, due to a higher ratio of coolant per fuel, and a lower need for active cooling*

Explanation: even a shut down NPP needs cooling, but bigger ones need non-trivial amounts of energy, for example the 5700 MW plant in Zaporizhya in the middle of a war zone needs about 50 MW of power just to safely stay offline, which is why people have been fairly concerned about it. For comparison, a 300 MW micro-reactor brought to its lowest possible power level might be safe without external energy, or a minimal amount of external energy (which could be supplied by an off-the-shelf diesel generator available to every rescue department).

The overview of the Commission mentions:

SMRs have passive (inherent) safety systems, with a simpler design, a reactor core with lower core power and larger fractions of coolant. These altogether increase significantly the time allowed for operators to react in case of incidents or accidents.

I don’t think they will offer economical advantages over renewable power. Some amont of SMRs might however be called for to have a long-term steerable component in the power grid.

Yep. The three networks I don’t have here are:

• public roads (I’m plowing a no mans land which belongs to some folks, but nobody uses their land)
• electrical and fuel networks
• water and wastewater grid

Ordinary mobile phone network. Also I would be uneasy about giving my money to Elon Musk’s companies without a dire need to do so. :)

(Having communications also helps see weather reports, which kind of matter in such conditions. I especially love meteorological radar.)