Nope, my utility does not allow partial connects. And my smart meter reads at 15 minute (possibly even shorter) intervals. It is clear from the reg's, if you are connected, its their party. Like I said before, could not find the completely offgrid thing in the regs. I still believe that is possible, it just my installer did not want to risk me blaming them if it was in there. Especially given I've heard the city can and will charge a grand a day if you are out of compliance with "occupancy" rules. What is particularly bad in my view is that even in a blackout and if you had a battery, they would still pay you 9c for the juice from your battery and charge you the variable 12+ rate to consume it during the blackout. Crazy eh? Really stupid in my view. At least your utility does what I'd expect. If you push power into the grid, your basically a generator and should be paid like one. If you consume your own power, well, its yours and should be free. The other smart thing I see your utility doing is ToD billing. It encourages you to use the battery to shift usage into their peak times to avoid the high rates. A friend has an EV and has had one for years. And his attitude towards charging is he charges when convenient. Why should he care since they don't give him a break to charge at non-peak times. Like I said, I view my utility as one of the dumbest on the planet. And they did not used to be. They used to act pretty smart when I installed the first system. They were ahead of the curve. I guess not just tech co's are enshitifying. Utilities can too.

Well modern economies, but very true and often overlooked. If you look at the malaise of the late 70's/80's it was oil price shock that tanked the economy. Cheap energy means cheap cost of production, product delivery etc. It is woven everywhere into the economy.

I just redid mine as well on a roof redo. The original ones (20 years ago) probably never paid me back. It was more then per watt though. Your problem though is likely your utility can change the deal anytime they wish. Mine did, and partially why the original panels never paid me back. I was counting on net, and the utility changed to Value of Solar. IE, 9c/kwh generated. Period. Problem is I am paying them about 3c net now for power generated by my panels. And that 9c could go lower. It started at 12. On the redo I considered going off grid. My installer suggested that city code forbade that. Apparently also common. I read the code and couldn't find it, but I'm no expert in bldg codes. Other fun facts I discovered in my battery research were that over I think it was 15KWH I needed the fire dept's approval. And if they were on an interior garage wall, a bollard was required in front of the battery. Rules.

Agree, reminiscent of cig companies targeting kids (remember the camel characters) and booze companies too. It really isn't all that different than a drug dealer giving away samples to get people hooked. At least with booze and cigs, kids had to bypass the legal methods of obtaining the product. I'd say all Denmark is trying to do is put the same friction into social media that we put into booze and cigs.

Schools have started to require kids lock up their devices during the school day. They are given locked down devices to use during school. The primary reason schools have been switching to this no cell phone policy is precisely that kids were spending their day on social media instead of doing school. A friend has taught for a couple decades and I was just amazed about the behavior and how schools were not permitted to clamp down. I kept telling him the pendulum is going to swing back from kids get to do whatever they want during the day back to more restrictions. And probably eventually too restrictive, it is normal human behavior to toss back and forth like a ship in high seas. The pendulum has started to swing back. His school now requires phones locked away at beginning of day and returned at end of school. He is pretty happy about it. At least now he doesn't have to compete with their social media feed.

I have noticed though China has some very long combined mileage vehicles. This one, https://interestingengineering... as an example is 820 miles combined range. Amazing. And for around 30 grand. Another https://cleantechttps//interes... claims 1300 miles. And buick will offer an MPV with 1320KM (820mi) this year. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Felectriccarsreport.com... I expect for the China customer segment with rural sparse infrastructure requirements, these super high range offer security from running out of power.

If you add the word "hotel" to anything 10X the price. Have you ever drank/ate anything out of the hotel minifridge? Hotel restaurants are usually very overpriced for what they are. The hotel isn't stupid. You are sort of like their prisoner, and every service from gym access to toiletries to parking to ... is charged accordingly. And truly the irony is that the lower end of hotels are usually the ones that do have some freebies like wifi or basic breakfast.

I'd agree except it is pretty clear trump would pardon or vacate any fine against a right winger org. Look at how he pardoned the Dem from South Tex fully expecting him to flip to an R. And then was pissed (surprise surprise) he did not. There will probably be follow on revenge charges against the guy from DOJ for his insubordination and this time sent off to El Salvador for the sentence. He is brown after all. Frankly my biggest concern is this revenge style politics filters into the next Dem pres and we start oscillating uncontrollably with positive feedback. The middle damping factor is disappearing on both sides.

I've mentioned this before. Depends greatly on where you live. There are jurisdictions in the US that require you are grid tied. Mine is one. It is a fairly perverse rate structure, not even an incentive to shift power with a battery to peak times. The only incentive for battery is they do seem to have more and more trouble keeping the lights on. Austin is pretty stupid in the way they set it up. Cal I think is smarter where they incentivize battery with ToD billing/usage. I don't know if they do the forced grid connect thing there.

I think you missed the line, "persisted even after the researchers controlled for GPA, college attended, major, and other pre-graduation characteristics. " They corrected for the binge drink crowd.

As the poor kid at graduation, what I learned as a poor kid was you can't make a mistake. And you don't have time to do the social thing nearly as much as the kid who isn't worried about if they can afford next semester. I watched other poor kids peel off as some issue or other came up. Health, a bad grade, lost scholarship, ... And I also watched well to do kids be on academic probation and stick around.

And I'll add those social networks reinforce the nepo thing that the upper crowd enjoys. As one example, a friend was well connected. He was a bit of a drunk in school, well maybe more than a bit, more like the lampshade guy at the party. Family got him a job at an uncle's company.

Yep, I find the argument over mars or venus just dumb. It will be at least decades and maybe a century before we achieve the sort of knowledge necessary to transmute either into something livable if then. It could turn out the place to be is a Saturn moon. If we'd just learn how to be more like coyotes or almost any other wild predator animal that self regulates its population to available resources. Instead we look more like rabbits or lemmings.

Yep, ask Marjorie how that worked out for her.

Really this. And worse, the first world has now decided AI generated slop produced with mind boggling amounts of electricity is essential. Check with any state/city/jurisdiction. They are literally throwing people under the bus to allocate juice to these things. I just got a bulletin in my juice bill telling me to buckle up for the likelihood of mandatory electricity curtailments and that I should prepare for extended outages. The capital markets are tossing trillions at nvid, tsmc etc to obtain the parts. Meanwhile trump is tariffing food and tossing out the people who would harvest it in the US.The outcome is not looking good. While the UN is suggesting humans (well non-entitled ones) not eat meat, the AI's are feasting on coal power.

Speaking of a smart raccoon, https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tmz.com%2F2025%2F12%2F03... Really surprising, I'd think hard liquor would not be a taste for an animal. Beer yes, hard liquor?

I stumbled on some jewelry shopping channel and every single item was "a deal", "must have", "special", ... I can't believe people don't realize that not everything can be the "best deal ever".