40 minutes is clearly in the range of doable walks, although if it were a commute I’d do it by bike every time which would shorten it down to 10 minutes, probably.

Is this an American problem that I’m too European to comprehend? If I forget to buy something at the store I literally just walk 4 minutes to the nearest store and buy whatever I forgot. Maybe I’ll even pick it up on the back home on my bike for even less of a time penalty.

The case for an H2 economy is one entirely based on Green H2 made from surplus renewables which are needed most days to have enough renewable energy every day.

Wouldn’t it be more compelling to store it in other types of batteries instead of H2 primarily?

That gas companies know how to build pipelines, distribution, and make metered gas sales to customers is a path for them/employees to remain useful without destroying the planet.

I honestly don’t think H2 is a good idea for these use-cases. H2 distribution is a different beast than natural gas distribution, on top of gas combustion just generally not being particularly good compared to common household electrical counterparts (induction for stoves, electric for ovens, heat pumps for heating buildings and water).

Commercial vehicles has legitimate benefits of lower cost from H2 FCs than batteries. Quicker refuel times. Aviation especially benefits from redesigning planes for H2 for the weight savings. Trains/ships need the power/range. Trucks/cars can use the range extension, and could use H2 as removable auxiliary power for extended range.

I imagine refueling times is not necessarily going to be critical for all types of commercial use-cases.

Aviation struggles with the relatively low energy density in H2.

Trains should essentially always be running on catenaries.

Boats might be able to make use of H2, I’m not super familiar with the issues affecting them.

Long-hail trucking should broadly be replaced by the much more efficient rail shipping.

Cars run pretty much fine on electric as is, I’m not sure the case for making H2 cars is compelling enough to be warranted.

Ammonia and fertilizer is traditional use for H2.

This might be a good niche for H2 to fill.

All in all, I’m still not convinced that large-scale H2 buildouts is a good use of our resources, but there are definitely a few compelling niches that it can fill. We need to be wary of them being co-opted by blue hydrogen fossil fuel companies though, which often seems to be the case today.

I have a generally negative impression of hydrogen because many of the intended use-cases seem to be a cover story for the gas industry to keep existing, which it very much should not be any more.

Do you know any use-cases where hydrogen is truly warranted, outside for example steel production, which I think might be legit?

Also when you account for those batteries the cost is going to shift a bit.

You better be bringing units if you’re going to be claiming this.

Still less than half of the LCOE of nuclear when storage is added: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1475611/global-levelized-cost-of-energy-components-by-technology/

Given that both solar and storage costs are trending downwards while nuclear is not, this basically kills any argument for nuclear in the future. It’s not viable on its face - renewables + storage is the definitive future.

As a counterpoint, I’ve bought loads of really good cycling accessories from AliExpress. It’s not impossible to buy high-quality things from China - this is after all where a large part of everything is manufactured these days - you just have to be careful not to fall for the offers that are just obviously too good to be true.

Uncapped overtime excuses bad management. I get why they’re pissed, this puts a spotlight on how bad they are at management.

Gotta make use of that Force Majeure-clause

ITT: People who did not read the article and just shot from the hip

Some forward thinking - which we all know is most definitely not a thing when it comes to suburban development patterns - would see these installed from the beginning to ultimately save money long term on maintenance and upgrades.

Since the suburbs are an unsustainable Ponzi scheme designed to cram as much money out as possible though, they will go for the cheapest up-front option, total lifetime cost be damned.

The municipality I lived in previously had a really interesting project where they were trying to improve the lifecycle of underground infrastructure.

Instead of digging up the ground, putting in/repairing something/whatever, and then covering it up, they were going to install a permanent ‘infrastructure tunnel’ which could have installations and repairs be done without digging up and covering.

If successful, this kind of seems like what the shipping container did to the shipping industry, an incredible efficiency play.

On account of the election, you can basically be sure that passenger rail will not happen to any extent any time soon. Expect bigger cars and more highways instead, as this is what is outlined in Project 2025.

Incredibly bleak.

Eww.

Square-Cube Law strikes again

Assuming non-wasteful delivery methods, I’d still call that a win as vaping is generally less harmful to the health of the user.

Quitting is of course preferable, but I support harm reduction policies in general

Unironically yes

3 seconds is the guideline I’ve been taught here in Sweden, but yeah. Riding too close is crazy dangerous and I don’t understand why people keep doing it.

Disclaimer: I think the current U.S healthcare system is hilariously bad and should be heavily reformed.

Insurance is not a bad thing, and there is a clear product involved in it. To demonstrate, you can go to a doctor in the U.S and pay in cash for the treatment. As I’ve understood it, you can even negotiate lower prices than the list prices if you are paying in cash. Still, it’s probably going to be expensive to the point of potential financial ruin.

This is the product that insurance offers in any domain it operates - buying your way out of risks you cannot accept. Fundamentally, the concept is sound, albeit very poorly implemented in the case of U.S healthcare.

It’s basically just a bunch of people pooling their money together and having that pool of money pay in the case of an adverse event.

One of the primary alternatives to the mess that is U.S healthcare today is in fact another form of insurance - it’s just that enrollment would be mandatory and as such the risk spreading would be as uniform as possible, along with subsidies for people carrying higher amounts of risk. That’s fundamentally what universal healthcare is in other countries.

It’s implied from the combination of English and the boss being mad about the worker taking their vacation days tbh

It baffles me that people actually take these assertions seriously, especially after having used different software that uses voice input, like Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa or whatever. Those things make some serious mistakes even under ideal circumstances, and you want me to believe that they can accurately overhear things in non-ideal circumstances? I highly doubt it.

Regardless, you can use an ad blocker to make this a moot point - I’ve never experienced anything even close to this, because I never get ads.