The Man Who Wants to Fix the Climate. Can Anyone Stop Him?

Man dumps 120 tons of iron dust in the North Pacific in a bold geoengineering experiment.

Not sure if I’m reading the article correctly (wish it had lingered on this more), but from what I can gather:

  • 2009 had only 1.4 million salmon
  • 2010 was the largest salmon run in over a century, with 34 million
  • The experiment happened in July - August 2012
  • In 2013 the run was over 200 million

Huge if true, why didn’t the article make this clearer?

Towing a Tesla at 70 MPH replenishes battery at fast charger rates (Hacker News link, for comments)

The most spectacular example of regenerative braking are trains that are used in Scandinavia, heavily loaded with iron ore that is transported to the coast:

“In Scandinavia the Kiruna to Narvik electrified railway carries iron ore on the steeply-graded route from the mines in Kiruna, in the north of Sweden, down to the port of Narvik in Norway to this day. The rail cars are full of thousands of tons of iron ore on the way down to Narvik, and these trains generate large amounts of electricity by regenerative braking, with a maximum recuperative braking force of 750 kN. From Riksgränsen on the national border to the Port of Narvik, the trains use only a fifth of the power they regenerate. The regenerated energy is sufficient to power the empty trains back up to the national border. Any excess energy from the railway is pumped into the power grid to supply homes and businesses in the region, and the railway is a net generator of electricity.” (via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerativebrake#Conversion… )

Years ago I visited the Seneca Pumped Storage Generating Station [0] reservoir in person. It’s a massive man-made lake on the top of a small mountain in Pennsylvania, USA. They pump water up to it at night (when there is excess energy in the power grid), and let the water out in the day when the demand for energy is high (turning some turbines on its way down). Prior to visiting I had an intellectual understanding of the concept of pumped storage [1], but I have to admit that it’s one heck of an experience when you see it up close and personal. My thoughts standing at the edge of this massively perfect-circle deep lake full of water: “somebody built that… and it’s one BIG BATTERY”. If you get a chance to visit one of these, I highly recommend it!

Book review: “Feeling Great” by David Burns - LessWrong

I’m now inclined to think that this is the core dynamic of depression and anxiety, and every other symptom is closely related to that dynamic, and every risk factor feeds into this dynamic.

Ribbonfarm Mystifications

So, You Want to Build a House More Efficiently? - Austin Vernon’s Blog

Construction productivity is a topic that has interested me for years. When an engineer sees an inefficient process with no improvement, it ticks them off. Construction is error-prone, expensive, and suffers delays. The government thinks construction productivity has slightly decreased since 1960. It just needs some clever engineering and solutions, but which ones? This post will focus on the ubiquitous single-family home.

The combination of consumer tastes, low dollar value per volume building components, and the complexity of buildings inhibit efforts to scale.

Parse, don’t validate

Good example of functional programming design philosophy

GitHub Copilot · Your AI pair programmer

Scary feeling, seeing this.

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