What celebrity did this Jenny person get medical advice from?

I don't know about that. I mean, we try our best, but I wouldn't say we're good at it.

i've been telling people for a while that the first we'll see of autonomous vehicles in any big way isn't in personal Google-style vehicles, but in the long-haul trucking industry.

Now I know that's true, because it's the only physically possible way to safely haul away the toxic mess that's the fucking Beta shit being sprayed everywhere like something out of a low-budget slashbeta horror flick.

Fuck the Beta,

b&

According to the Census Bureau, there're about 115 million households in the US. Target has basically admitted that the theft amounts to their entire database.

I'd like to think that this would mean the end of the credit reporting rackets; how can anybody even pretend any more that that data is meaningful when this sort of fraud is taking place? But I also wanted to think that the Snowden revelations would have meant the end of the NSA, so clearly I'm not somebody anybody is paying or should pay attention to.

Cheers,

b&

So? Everybody participating n the Stanford Prison Experiment knew it was an experiment, too.

That's the most important lesson learned from the famous psychology experiments of the '50s and '60s: that those sorts of experiments were important to do once, and they should never be done again except in extraordinary and the most carefully controlled of circumstances. The ethical review boards were brought into existence explicitly to ensure that those sorts of experiments were never performed again unless for truly justifiable reasons.

I fail to notice any overwhelming, transcendental purposes in these mockeries of psychological research that warrant their execution.

Cheers,

b&

I can't believe that people still think that these trolley car "thought experiments" are telling them anything novel about human moral instincts.

All they are are less-visceral variations on Milgram's famous work. An authority figure tells you you must kill either the hot chick on the left or the ugly fatty on the right and that you mustn't sound the alarm or call 9-1-1 or anything else. And, just as Milgram found out, virtually everybody goes ahead and does horrific things in such circumstances.

Just look at the videos in question. The number of laws and safety regulations and bad designs of the evil-mad-scientist variety in each scenario are innumerable. They take it beyond Milgram's use of a white lab coat to establish authority and into psychotic Nazi commander territory. In the real world, the victims wouldn't be anywhere near where they are. If they were, there wouldn't be any operations in progress at the site. If there were, there would be competent operators at the controls, not the amateur being manipulated by the experimenter; and those operators would be well drilled in both standard and emergency procedures that would prevent the disaster or mitigate it if unavoidable -- for example, airline pilots trained to the point of instinct to avoid crashing a doomed plane into a crowded area.

The proper role of the experimenter's victims ("subjects") is to yell for help, to not fucking touch critical safety infrastructure in the event of a crisis unless instructed to by a competent professional, to render first aid to the best of their abilities once help is on the way, and to assist investigators however possible once the dust has settled.

Yet, of course, the experimenter is too wrapped up in the evil genius role to permit their victims to even consider anything like that, and instead convinces the victims that they're bad people who'll kill innocents when ordered to. Just as we already knew from Milgram.

How any of this bullshit makes it past ethics review boards is utterly beyond me.

Cheers,

b&

The correct accounting would be that you should be charged retail rates for what you draw out of the grid, but reimbursed only at wholesale rates for what you feed into the grid, like any other power producer who feeds into the grid is paid.

If you had read the second half of my post, you would have learned two facts.

First, for the annual surpluses, that's exactly what happens: I get paid wholesale rates. But not just any wholesale rates; I get paid Palo Verde off-peak average rates for some period of time, less a transmission fee. That's basically the cheapest power there is.

Second, you would have learned that I'm generating the most of my power during the highest peak demands, when they're not only charging customers the highest but oftentimes paying more than they're charging their customers to meet peak demands. (They make up for it during other hours, of course, but we're discussing the time periods when I'm putting more in than I'm taking out.) And and at night when I have my highest draws from the grid, that's when their cheapest baseload generators are idling.

Put those two together, and, even if it weren't for the annual surplus that they credit my account for at bargain-basement wholesale rates, they'd still be profiting hugely from me. Even though it's a kWh-for-kWh credit swap, the kWhs they get from me are the most expensive there are (maximum peak green-generated) and the kWhs I get from them are the cheapest there are (overnight nuclear-generated baseload).

Cheers,

b&

Because they are usually required to pay customers a lot more for feed-in power than they can generate it for, with no allowance for their internal cost overheads, etc.

Absolutely false -- horribly false.

On a day-to-day and month-to-month accounting basis, my utility (Salt River Project in Arizona) gives me a kWh-for-kWh credit. If I generate 20 kWh during the day, use 15 kWh during the day, and another 5 kWh during the night, I have net zero usage.

Surpluses are carried over day-to-day and month-to-month. If I have a net debit at the end of the month, I'm charged the regular rate for that electricity. If I have a surplus, it's carried over to the next month.

Once a year, in the spring, if I have a net surplus, SRP credits my account and resets the surplus to zero. And I generate about half again as much as I consume -- enough to power my not-yet-purchased electric vehicle -- so they credit me a fair amount every year. It's enough to pay the basic connection fee for about half the year, in fact, so I only even pay that for about six months per year.

But.

Rather than crediting me at the $0.12 / kWh typical residential retail rate, or the $0.25+ / kWh they purchase peak summer power (which is when I'm generating most of my surplus electricity), they pay me about $0.02 / kWh.

By my rough back-of-the-envelope calculations, they're now profiting from me almost as much as I used to pay them in total. As in, what used to be their gross receipts from me is now their net.

What business wouldn't be thrilled with such a business model?

So, do please stop spreading the lies of the Koch Brothers. The poor widdle utilities aren't being hurt by the solar meanies -- quite the opposite. They're making money from us, hand over fist.

They're just a bunch of greedy sick fucks who want to roast the goose that's laying the golden eggs, is all.

Cheers,

b&

I live in the Valley of the Sun, and most of the southern half of my roof is covered in solar panels. I generate about half again as much electricity as I consume. This is by design; the plan is to get an electric vehicle in the not-too-terribly-distant future, and my excess generation capacity is enough that I should be able to drive for basically free. And the whole thing will pay itself off in about seven years total; if you remember the Rule of 70, that works out to about a 10% annual rate of return on my investment.

My utility provider is SRP; it was APS who was taking Koch Brothers money to fuck over their customers.

I've got a really good thing going for myself, obviously, but SRP is also making a nice profit off of me. My peak generation coincides with peak demand here. At the same time as they sell my electricity to my neighbors at $0.14 / kWh, they're paying twice that to spool up diesel generators...and they're paying me about $0.02 / kWh for my surplus. And I've signed over all my green credits to them, as well. Sweet deal for both of us, and I'm glad for it to be that way -- that's how good business profits are supposed to work.

If, however, APS's original proposal went into effect and SRP adopted it or something similar for themselves...well, at that point, I'd tell them to fuck off, get a battery system, and drop off the grid entirely. Changing the equation like that would wipe out any financial advantage I get from my investment and hugely profit the utility -- and, remember, I'm already far and away the most profitable customer they have on the block. It would really suck to have to pay again for a battery system; I've got better things I could do with that money. But I'd much rather invest that money in real physical goods that provide me with actual benefits (including, in this case, having the lights stay on should the grid ever go down) than throw gobs of money for no good reason at greedy profiteering corporate CEOs.

I can assure you, if the utilities keep up this sort of thing...well, they'll "protect" their profits for a little while, but it won't be long before people start dropping off the grid in droves. And that will be a bad thing for everybody -- but, most of all, for the utilities.

Cheers,

b&