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Cake day: October 20th, 2023

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  • We already do this at every steam based power plant in the world (basically everything but hydro, PV, and wind) and it’s done much more efficiently. Doing this stuff with tiny gadgets on micro generators like ICE vehicles is a pretty inefficient implementation, especially as it adds weight to already heavy vehicles, decreasing efficiency and safety, and increasing tire and brake wear. The only place I can imagine this being useful is very heavy vehicles that for some reason still have to be using diesel like long haul trucks/busses, diesel freight trains etc and the like. And EVEN then you’re looking at major issues with economy. If you increase the weight of a truck by 2 percent to give it a 2% increase in fuel efficiency, you are hurting not helping. 2% comes off of your GCVWR margins and suddenly you need 51 trucks instead of 50 trucks to transport a given load, not only increasing your fuel use by 2% but also increasing vehicle maintenance and tire and brake pollution by 2%

    Edit: I’m not saying relatively miniaturized energy recovery systems don’t have a future, but I’m dubious it’s in transport or handheld devices. At least for the foreseeable future. Infrastructure scale however has always been a major application for energy recovery development, stirling engine, steam turrbine and TE development keeps getting further pushed to eek efficiency out of power stations, power plants, substations, emergency generators, maybe even HVAC systems and other building scale applications.




  • The SSN is supposed to just be a number that you give your employers and the IRS so that your social security (the USs blanket retirement savings/pension system) contributions get logged correctly to you and then when you retire you can use that number to get the social security benefits that you paid into. The number has ended up being used for all sorts of things because the USA is slightly broken because it is SORT OF a unique ID number for each US citizen, except of course that it wasn’t intended to be that, SSNs are only supposed to be used from first social security contribution (first paycheck) to last social security payout (death) so naturally they can just be recycled.






  • There are too many responses here to reply to all of them individually so I’m just going to post some quotes here, more in response to other comments than the OP, but perhaps also a perspective to consider for OP as well.

    “That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”

    • George Orwell

    And the shockingly only increasingly relevant full quote from one of the founders of the Black Panthers party:

    “Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it’s off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.”

    • Huey Newton

    I’d really ask more people to consider their position of privilege, to be less afraid of state sanctioned or enabled violence of all forms than some crazy neighbor with guns who was likely failed many times by that very state to have come to this point. Please just consider the counterpoint, that armed minorities are harder to oppress, and that far, far more people have been killed by state sanctioned and enabled violence, than by access to firearms by “the common people”.

    I’m not telling anyone that they’re wrong, I’m just asking that you really internalize and consider this perspective. Thank you for reading and thinking.



  • Finland has very similar access to guns, yes it has much fewer total guns but that is much fewer people having many guns, they have a very similar percentage of homes with at least 1 firearm in them as the US currently does. It is actually a myth that they control the ammo, they control their military ammo, not their hunting/personal ammo. Switzerland is not THAT far behind though they I believe do have tighter restrictions on ownership. Also the percentage of households with at least 1 gun in it has remained mostly unchanged in the US for the last 60+ years, and the types of guns available have also remained largely unchanged, intermediate caliber semi automatic mag fed rifles have been shockingly cheaply available in the US since the M1 Carbine became available as military surplus after WW2. Something other than “availability of firearms” is very different now to explain the gun violence (it’s mostly culture and systemic poverty).