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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Smartphones are far too valuable to our efforts to be left at home. They are the difference between personally observing law enforcement atrocities, and being able to prove them. The media isn’t covering the protests. We need as much video as we can get. We need to be able to coordinate efforts, passing along troop deployments and numbers.

    While our main phones and accounts are probably linked to more information than law enforcement should ever be allowed to touch, burners add too much to our efforts to seriously consider not bringing them.


  • Ideally, that burner phone never goes anywhere near your home or any place you frequent from the time it is acquired until the time it is destroyed.

    Briar is a good messaging app for you and your group. It will work (to some degree or another) over bluetooth even after they shut down the cell towers. Keep posting information about law enforcement deployment numbers and locations.

    Airplanes.live provides unfiltered ADS-B data, useful for identifying and locating law enforcement aircraft, including drones.

    For uploading media, choose overseas fediverse instances for your account, which are not subject to US law, and won’t get shut down or raided by US law enforcement if you upload something they don’t like.

    I’ve been suggesting this everywhere: pick a dozen different protest locations, and share your list with everyone you meet. If and when law enforcement deploys in force at your current location, leave for another. Force them to constantly redeploy to multiple locations.





  • Ah. I see. They are emitting a green light, so I know they’re braking, and it’s OK to cross.

    But, it turns out that they’re planning on turning into a driveway past the intersection, and not into the intersection I am crossing.

    That’s OK. I can check “impersonate a hood ornament” off my bucket list.


    We already have this problem with turn signals: there are circumstances where it would be confusing and dangerous to use them in the manner prescribed by law, and to avoid dangerous ambiguity, they should actually be used much later than the law specifies.



  • “The math is somewhat different” does not give adequate consideration to the importance.

    That 777 I mentioned? The fuel weight on a maximum range flight is more than twice its remaining payload capacity. Fuel weight is the primary consideration you need to be looking at. The efficiency gains from charging batteries (relative to electrically-produced fuel) cannot justify the losses from their constant weight.

    Some estimates say that between electrolysis, transportation and fuel cell conversion it’s almost twice as bad in terms of energy efficiency, so you ultimately need double the energy for the same thing.

    Only twice? Then its not even a contest. I was assuming fuel production was 1/10th as efficient conversion as battery charging.


  • The typical issue with fuel cells is not energy density, it is the fact that you need to waste a lot of energy to regenerate and transport the fuel.

    I’ve never understood that thinking. Yes, it takes energy to produce fuel. So what? We started with a form of energy that couldn’t be stored and transported, and converted it to a form that could be. That’s the entire point.

    So, overall, you’ll need to spend much more energy (= both recurring and upfront costs) compared to running battery-powered transportation if you want to make it a close cycle similar to batteries.

    That’s not actually true.

    A 777 can carry up to 320,000 pounds of fuel, which gives it a 9000 mile range. It will land about 300,000 pounds lighter than it took off.

    Build an electric version of the 777. Put enough batteries on board to make a 9000 mile flight, and it will weigh the same amount on landing as it did on takeoff. It carries the whole load for the whole flight.

    Put that original 777 on the 2600 mile flight from LA to New York, and it doesn’t need a full fuel load. You can drop 200,000 pounds of fuel, and add 200,000 pounds of payload.

    The e777 will still have the same weight of batteries needed for that 9000 mile flight.

    Swap out the batteries with fuel cells, and you can take on an optimal, sub-maximal fuel load for your shorter flights, radically improving total efficiency over batteries.


  • You are defending someone

    Most of the people here are rebutting your general claim that self defense is only available to the unarmed. Those rebuttals don’t constitute support for this woman.

    If you are armed you can force them to leave through threats

    I am making a general comment on your argument, and not specific to this case. Like most of the arguments directed at you in this thread, My comments should not be construed as support for this woman in this particular case.

    You are conflating “threat” and “force”. They are distinct. A “threat” is an attempt to influence the subject’s decision to act, by making them fear a future action. “Force” is a physical action imposed on the subject.

    A threat is something intended to convince the subject to decide to act in a particular way. Force is when the subject’s choices are removed, and their body is physically manipulated against their will.

    Force can also be a threat, but a threat alone is not force. Holding a knife to your neck and demanding your wallet is force (your neck is being physically manipulated against your will) and a threat (you are being coerced into giving up your wallet).

    There are six generalized criteria for defensive force. A person who 1. Reasonably Believes an imperiled person faces a 2. Credible, 3. Criminal, 4. Imminent, 5. Sufficient threat (sufficient = “death or grievous bodily harm”) may use any level of force 6. Necessary to stop that threat.

    When you articulate your arguments about this specific case using the above terminology, you will find that your opinion is shared by the overwhelming majority. There is very little support in this thread for her self defense argument.

    An armed person theoretically has a greater capacity of force than an unarmed person, but threats made be an unarmed person can certainly justify a forceful response by the armed person.


  • Sufficient storage capacity to meet overnight needs is going to be a challenge; storage to meet seasonal production variation is impossible. To make solar feasible, we need to build out sufficient generation capacity to meet our needs in winter. Winter, with, perhaps, 9-hours of mostly overcast skies and low angles over the horizon.

    Imagine the output of that same system in summer: 15 hours of high-angle daylight and mostly clear skies. The summer output of that facility will be at least 400% its winter productions.

    The solar economy needs absurdly massive electrical loads in summer that can be readily shed over winter. We may see fleets of factory ships, loaded with electrolysis equipment, plugging into grids on whichever side of the equator is currently experiencing summer.