Ascii needs seven bits, but is almost always encoded as bytes, so every ascii letter has a throwaway bit.

Wait till you here about every ascii letter. . .

Okay, so you switch to solar/wind/nuclear or some other semi CO2 free source. Now you take CO2 free energy away from someone that now will have to use co2 generating energy instead.

Not sure if this makes climate capture any less baloney, but energy, especially renewables isn’t a 0 sum thing. A country with good renewables often generates more elecricity then it can handle and there’s a negative price for electricity at those times.

If you can choose when you use elecricity, you definitely aren’t forcing someone else to use CO2 intensive energy.

I don’t think that makes a big change to your overall point, but it’s an interesting feature of renewable energy so I figured it was worth saying.

Thanks! Somehow missed that, but I still don’t really understand the details, like how and whyit incorporates generative AI, and if these are for Netflix or for Netflix ad customers.

I can’t tell from the article what the AI side of this is? Are Netflix offering to make adverts for customslrs using AI? Are they just showing adverts in general from customers, including AI generated ones?

I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong, but I’ve read the article twice and still don’t know 😂

I’m just curious, but taking Elon’s ahem “politics” out of it, what kind of price would you start thinking about the cybertruck? Would you choose it over another electric pickup?

Thanks for sharing! This.makes me think of how vacination existed as cultural knowledge in Asia and Africa way before modern medicine adopted it.

Interesting, although I’d be even more interested to know how it varies across countries, the gender differences in France are pretty different to say, Norway or Saudi Arabia.

I don’t disagree, but I think it’s worth acknowledging that the US government could very easily regulate things so that Tesla are responsible for the financial burden they’re putting on the world when they inevitably scrap these vehicles.

That doesn’t address a bunch of other problems, but changing the global system of resource allocation is a hard thing, and making companies have some semblance of financial responsibility for destroying the planet is an easy thing that any government could do tomorrow. Just like how capitalism will (and did) inevitably result in child labour, but that can be (and was) outlawed directly.

I’m not trying to undermine your point about capitalism btw, just make the case that even within the constraints capitalism has, companies are getting away with an outrageous amount of destructive behavior.

Most big groups have monthly “welcome sessions” that are a great way to feel things out if you’re not sure.

Lacking the scifi vibes of solarpunk, but I massively recommend joining your local greenpeace (or friends of the earth, extinction rebellion etc, depending on location) group!

I’ve only attended a few events so far, so not an expert or anything, but meeting with an IRL community based on protecting the environment is really great for making a difference, but also mental health in avoiding doomerism.

Cool, that’s so interesting how different placescan be! Thanks for zharing. In my mid 30s too but my experience in the UK is the opposite, that last one you shared (we call induction hobs) is common now, but gas cookers have been considered the standard, plus like 95%+ of all houses are heated by gas boilers.

That’s probably true in the UK too for gas fireplaces. What do people use for hobs mostly? I would have guessed that at least 10 years or so ago that would almost always be a gas stove in SE USA, but that’s coming from complete ignorance.

Wait really? Where abouts do you live? I’m in the UKand gas hobs, boilers and fireplaces are pretty much the standard.

Can’t pretend I’d be sad to see them crash out completely, although it does make me feel a little uneasy for repairability of existing Teslas.

Nazi or no nazi, it isn’t gonna be good for the planet to have a whole bunch of cars deemed irrepairable, although my guess is a buy out would stop that happening.

Musk was courting democrats until he fell out with them over labour rights. I think his “republican phase” started due to pushing for less workers rights in the US, so that he can make cheaper cars.

That was obviously a long time ago, before X and DOGE, he’s clearly in a delusional hate bubble at this point and expecting rationally explainable actions is unfortunately too big an ask.

I definitely get your point. I think it was pretty lousy wording from me to start with, and I should have said that those are pretty big levers to impact climate change rather than underplaying them as “slightly adressing”.

I don’t think any country has done enough, but countries that have put measures in place climate change are miles ahead of those that haven’t. Compare New Zealand, or Sweden, to the USA.

To be clear as well, I’m not advocating incrementalism, I’m advocating that we do everything to adress climate change, and we’re specifically talking about just one thing. Saying we shouldn’t bother using the levers we have because they don’t solve the whole problem is like saying you’re not going to call the fire brigade because they won’t get there in time to save the whole house.

Not to absolve capitalism, but it’s pretty easy to add market incentives to at least slightly address climate change. The concept of “externalities” has been around for a while, where something has a net social impact outside of its sale. It’s normally solved with taxes and levies.

The real issue seems to be nobody havong the appetite to even attempt the most basic solutions to the problem, mainly thanks to lobbying.

I don’t think “not true” is fair- I have a soure if you’d like to hear it from someone more authorative than some random internet person (unfortunately I think it might be behind a paywall)[0]

Either way, that’s cool! I’m surprised you can build flexible packaging from that, but I’d be really, really surprised if you can use something that crude to fit the other niches of plastic like building technology, clothing, etc.

[0] https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2025/04/23/are-microplastics-harming-your-health

Yup! Those things are easy (comparatively) to recycle because they’re single material items, so the process is:

• clean
• break down / melt
• rebuild

“Plastic” is thought of as a single material, but even vegetable packaging will be made of around 5-10 different polymers, so for it to be valuable, you need to break it down back to those original polymers.

It’s not a issue with recycling as a whole, its specific to plastic as a material.