I love Lynch's Dune but it's also pretty bad. I think it's beautiful. It was influential in its visual style. Very young me was really fascinated by the depiction of the guild navigator and the reverend mother. But most everything involving the Fremen sucked. Considering the tools he had, I think Lynch made a visually hypnotic film. But the acting and storytelling are confusing to downright laughable for long stretches. To me it's the greatest example of a movie that is awesome and terrible at the same time. Villeneuve's version lacks good dialogue and romance, but is coherent, looks really great, and has excellent action.

If the long-term objective was to make devices that last, to minimize waste and make the most efficient use of the waste that is inevitably generated, then the entire argument as to whether this transition is bad would be mostly a moot point. We'd all know that the transition was purposeful, well-intentioned, and needed, and that the e-waste generated wouldn't be burned in a giant smoldering pit so a guy holding a rag to his face could dig the copper out of the plastic ash with his bare hands.

The removal of dams in the Klamath basin has already been an incredible success in terms of salmon returns. And the recovery of the Elwha has been amazing. Salmon are absolutely critical for the ecosystem in the PNW, and the historic nosedive in the volume of returning salmon should have led to the removal of dams decades ago. Creeks that used to be so full of salmon that one 'couldn't see the water' are starting to get a couple dozen individuals back. This is certainly a native rights issue, but I can't imagine looking at those numbers and not caring, regardless of cultural heritage. The salmon are the primary source of nitrogen for entire landscapes. It's heartbreaking how much damage has been done, and recovery can't happen soon enough. Personally I would welcome nuclear power solutions.

The other day a friend asked my partner and me about what OS we use on our computers, and I joked that we've both been using Linux exclusively for years because we don't do anything productive with them.

Going back even further, things get more debatable, but I would actually call US conservatives and liberals all liberals. We have more socially or economically conservative liberals. Progressives are advocating for some amount of liberal socialism. In this sense, Stalin was a very conservative socialist. But in the US we usually regard socialist policies like public education as the extreme of liberal policies, which doesn't really make a lot of sense.

I would be not at all surprised if a patented drug appears that has the same effects as MDMA. This isn't even a bad thing in some ways, because MDMA is potentially toxic in some respects. With enough FUD and for the right price, people might be convinced to take a safer pharmaceutical formulation of MDMA, perhaps mixed with Viagra, or a similar but more patentable drug.

People in the industrialized world need to use less power per person per day. Everything else is just bumping the problem forward in time. And, that's obviously not going to happen unless there's an economic collapse that makea the great depression look like a blip.

Post which bank it is so I can make sure to never ever do business with them.

The main reason for the high-level decision making around killing natural gas distribution is that ground source heating and cooling is 2-4x more efficient than the direct use of energy. This fluff story is merely shade being cast upon gas ranges as a way to introduce the notion to the consuming public that they might want to start exploring other options.

Staunch prescriptivism like this makes me think, what kind of bubble of privilege does a person have to live in to even have that thought cross their mind? Either they're writing from their country chateau, an ivory tower, or they're fourteen years old and want to show everyone how smart they are.

so long as I get to run the walled garden the kiddos learn their consumer preferences from

If a lot of hydrogen starts leaking into the atmosphere, will it eat up the ozone layer or something? I'm asking in all seriousness, because I wonder whether the problem is simply humans using too much energy, and if it will manifest problematically no matter how we go about it.

Could be a niche spacecraft propellant, in a domain with a rich ammonia source but not much free oxygen. You get a gas and electricity to ionize it so it can push your thing around in space.

Totally wrong older trees grow faster than younger ones "At the extreme, a single big tree can add the same amount of carbon to the forest within a year as is contained in an entire mid-sized tree."

But games aren't important. They are third-rate entertainment, the culture-equivalent of getting dinner at 7-11. Right?