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Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell: Egoistic Altruism

TheFreak says...

My brain is moving slow this morning. But it sounds like an argument that wealthy people should stop hoarding wealth and allow more equitable distribution because they'll be better off. But they already have all the wealth in the current system, so you're not incentivizing them to change their patterns.

If you're arguing for a new system that doesn't allow the amassing of wealth by a small percentage of people, you're going to have an uphill battle because money = speech and thus, those with the money have more rights to decide how the system works.

The Truth About The Tesla Semi-Truck

TheFreak says...

So wait...he talks about how important the weight is because it determines the load that can be carried. He does the weight calculations and then immediately starts talking about the cost of the truck and never finishes his weight analysis.

According to his estimation, the weight of the unloaded truck with trailer is 7 tons. If the batteries on a 500 mile truck weigh 8 tons then the total 15 ton vehicle is lighter than the ~17 ton average for a standard semi with trailer. I'd round up for the weight of the motors and since his empty weight calculation seems a tad low. So you can assume the weights of a Tesla truck and stardard truck are at least within spitting distance of each other.

Range is less of an issue since a driver is only allowed to drive a maximum of 11 hours in a 14 hour period. So assuming they drove a solid 11 hours at 60 miles per hour (since that's what the 500 mile range is based on), the standard truck can drive 160 miles further. But if you're driving 11 hours without a break, you're an idiot. And Tesla indicates that a battery can fully charge in under 30 minutes.

Last point, he estimates the battery cost alone will be $108K and $180K but Tesla has set the expected price of the actual trucks as $150K and $180K. Considering a traditional truck runs $80K - $150K, it seems the return on investment for a Tesla truck might be shorter than a traditional truck, given the economy of electric compared fossil fuel.

Great video though. Love all the math.

Traffic flow measured on 30 different 4-way junctions

gramar explaned | exurb1a

TheFreak says...

Aluminium it is. I am fairly convinced.

A piece of me has died. :-p

ChaosEngine said:

No, but I'm wearing one made from Titanium right now.

There's also Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Sodium, Magnesium, Potassium, Calcium, Scandium, Vanadium, Chromium, Gallium, Germanium, Selenium, Rubidium, Strontium, Yttrium, Zirconium, Niobium, Technetium, Ruthenium, Rhodium, Palladium, Cadmium, Indium, Tellurium, Caesium, Barium, Hafnium, Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Thallium, Polonium, Francium, Radium, Actinium, Rutherfordium, Dubnium, Seaborgium, Bohrium, Hassium, Meitnerium, Darmstadtium, Roentgenium, Copernicium, Nihonium, Flerovium, Moscovium, Livermorium, Cerium, Praseodymium, Neodymium, Promethium, Samarium, Europium, Gadolinium, Terbium, Dysprosium, Holmium, Erbium, Thulium, Ytterbium, Lutetium, Thorium, Protactinium, Uranium, Neptunium, Plutonium, Americium, Curium, Berkelium, Californium, Einsteinium, Fermium, Mendelevium, Nobelium,* and Lawrencium.

* oxford comma for life!

gramar explaned | exurb1a

The Way We Get Power Is About to Change Forever

The Way We Get Power Is About to Change Forever

TheFreak says...

Here's a thought experiment:

Imagine a power technology emerging that makes the cost of electricity virtually zero and the supply virtually endless.

Since the emergence of life, the task of survival is the quest for energy in one form or another. Most of the critical advancements by humanity have been driven by the need to acquire, distribute and store energy. When you're sitting at your computer being productive for a paycheck, you are serving the same goal as prehistoric hunter-gatherers, you're just doing it via a much more complex system of acquisition and distribution.

The more efficiently we acquire energy, the less effort it takes to satisfy our individual energy needs and the more time we have for other pursuits such as culture and exploration.

What happens when the effort necessary to acquire a life's worth of energy approaches zero?

Eggs Baked in Hash Browns

TRANSPARENT Solar Panels

The Art of Making a Nixie Tube

So Much CO2 That Trees Can't Save Us

Trump's Budget Explained

AHCA: A Republican Response to The Affordable Care Act

TheFreak says...

Fixes to the ACA should have been happening all along. Annual tweaks and adjustments would have prevented most or all of the problems it's experiencing right now.

Of course, the conservatives in Congress only benefited from letting all those people suffer through the widening cracks in the system.

Even now, it would be easier and more cost effective to fix the system but once again, the conservatives would rather cut off their own nose to spite their face rather than look out for the best interest of the people who trust them to do the right thing.

This TrumpCare is going to explode in the Republican's faces. Hubris is a helluva drug. (And cheaper if you buy it in Canada.)

Obamacare in Trump Country

TheFreak says...

Holy cow!

So anyone with a history of having health insurance over the past decades knows the pain of annual rising costs and plan changes that offer less and less coverage.

But here we have people newly signed up on health care through the ACA, who experience rising costs and deductibles for the first time and believe it's because the program is no good.

It never even occurred to me that all the pre-existing problems in the health insurance industry would be viewed as unique to ACA.

We are ALL unhappy with what's been happening to our health insurance for the past couple of decades...you're experiencing the same pain we've all been dealing with for long before the ACA was created. This didn't start the day you first qualified for health insurance. How did the message get so mixed up?

And wtf!
You've never had a car...here's a car.
"The cost of gas keeps going up....the car you gave me is horrible."

Why don’t Commercial Airplanes have Parachutes?

TheFreak says...

Maybe in the future there will be whole aircraft parachutes on commercial aircraft.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Detachable-Cabin-Commercial-Airline-Safety-System

CrushBug said:

Wow, at first I thought it was going to be a video on why the plane itself doesn't have a huge parachute for landings, so I was really off on this one.



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