BR0QM @Br0qm@qoto.org

To celebrate that September will always kind of feel like the start of a new school year to me, I wrote about a recent study that used an art heist-themed game to show that curiosity-driven exploration helps you retain information better. #science #memory #studytips #WroteThis https://www.forbes.com/sites/evaamsen/2023/09/07/curiosity-driven-exploration-makes-things-more-memorable/?sh=434b3baa6108

The new documentary "A storm foretold" by Christoffer Guldbrandsen is simply jaw dropping.

Sure, we all knew, the people around Trump were grifters, but Guldbrandsen follows Roger Stone around the clock, as Stone is planning the January 6 coup attempt.

The calls to violence, the planning with The Proud Boys, Stone pressuring Trump for a pardon — everything.

This documentary is so important, the democrats should stop buying ads, and buy the rights to it and have it stream everywhere.

♥️ = 6/6

The biggest US companies are badly trailing their #Chinese counterparts when it comes to generating income from #solar, #wind, #nuclear and other types of #renewable #energy – chart @climate http://tinyurl.com/ypz2nswy

Climate-changing human activity could lead to 1 billion deaths over the next century, according to new study

"If global warming reaches or exceeds two degrees Celsius by 2100, University of Western Ontario's Joshua Pearce says it is likely that mainly richer humans will be responsible for the death of roughly one billion mainly poorer humans over the next century."

https://phys.org/news/2023-08-climate-changing-human-billion-deaths-century.html

#climatechange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateJustice #systemchange #ecosocialism @SRTurtleIsland

Labor Day Reminder:

#Bidenomics has helped deliver a #GreatAmericanComeback

Elon Musk has just agreed with the viciously anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok after it requested he release "all communications" from private organizations "who have pushed to censor certain accounts" on Twitter.

Musk responded by indicating he will do so in a "giant data dump" that he estimates will happen next week.

If he carries this out, the world's richest man who receives billions from the US government will almost certainly be putting private people in some real danger.

Good morning!

In the wake of the Barbie Movie trailer I am reminded of the Barbie Liberation Organization from the early 1990s: this video about what they did is worth a brief view:

https://youtu.be/eMHMf9y-27w

Not focusing on any of the benefits at all? Just saying "capitalism bad"?
QT: https://thinktanki.social/@nitin/111001950631674175

"it’s all about the policy environment people live in." "Centuries-old settlement patterns — and the attitudes they spawned about government — are to blame for differences in longevity between red southern states and bluer parts of the country." https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/09/01/america-life-expectancy-regions-00113369

This is interesting.
A published paper suggests that our ancestors almost went extinct between 930 000 and 813 000 years ago. During this 117 000 years the population size is estimated at less than 1300 individuals.

Ice age, unfavourable hunting, and generally tough times are assumed the cause.

I’m not qualified to judge the techniques used to arrive at this estimate, but I find that very interesting.

Some details. Text on this diagram in the paper which is, DOI: 10.1126/science.abq7487.

Fig. 5. Schematic diagram of human population size history. Both African (light green) and nonAfrican (light blue) populations are presented. The width of the boxes represents the effective population size (i.e., the number of breeding individuals) with naturally occurred fluctuations. The occurrence time of the out-of-Africa dispersal and the divergence between African and non-African populations are indicated. The gray-shaded time duration indicates the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition between 1250 and 700 kyr BP. The red arrow indicates the peak of glaciation during the transition (i.e., the 0.9 Ma event). The ancient severe bottleneck inferred in this study is highlighted. The gap in the available African hominin fossil record and an indicative chronology for H. erectus, the LCA, and H. sapiens are shown. The estimated time period in which two ancestral chromosomes (chromosome, Chr.) fused to become one is also shown on the right.

Ok, Let’s talk about #hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (#FCEV) as an alternative to Battery Electric Vehicles (#BEV).

A FCEV uses the same electric motors as BEVs but gets its power from chemically reacting H₂ with O₂ from the air in a way that produces an electric current - a fuel cell. None of this is new technology Fuel Cells were a mature and reliable power source by the time the Apollo program was landing people on the moon. The issue with fuel cells is the same as with Enteral Combustion Engines(ICE) they are most efficient in a very narrow energy band great if the goal is to power the life support on a space craft, but not for the extremely variable loads needed to drive a car.

For this reason, FCEVs are hybrids with the same Li batteries as BEVs and ICE Hybrids like the Prius. Like ICE Hybrids they use the battery to accelerate and as storage for regenerative breaking with the fuel cell providing a constant recharge.

Why I’m skeptical of FCEVs

1) Greenwashing Hydrogen. FCEV advocates will point out that the only tailpipe emission is water vapor. The question is where does the hydrogen come from. By far the least expensive way to produce hydrogen gas is to crack the hydrogen atoms off of petrochemical hydrocarbons. As a mater of basic chemistry it takes far less energy to crack hydrocarbons than it does to electrolize water. And unlike the electrical grid where technologies like solar, wind and nuclear are already deployed and becoming an increasing share of our electric grid. Processes to produce hydrogen from water at anything close the the cost to strip it off fossil fuels is in the same development stage as cold fusion. at least for the next decade green hydrogen will be a premium product only available to the wealthiest buyers.

2) Hydrogen storage is hard. To fit enough hydrogen on a moving passenger car for it to have a 300 mile range requires pressures of 10,000psi (700 bar). The kinds of pressure vessels that can safely handle that pressure are expensive, and need regular inspection. Having had to keep a compressed air tank of just 200 psi in a fixed certified, I can tell you that there will be significant costs to regularly inspecting a 10,000 psi tank full of flammable gas that needs to survive a collision with one of the 2023 lineup of full sized puck up trucks.

But that is just the start. Hydrogen leaks. No matter how good you think your valves and fittings are the smallest molecule in the universe stored under huge pressure will find a way out. Ask anyone who has experience in the space industry where hydrogen is already the fuel of choice and they will tell you that hydrogen leaks are just a fact that has to be engineered around. On a vehicle this will be a small annoyance but at a fueling station this will be significant. The farther Hydrogen is transported and the longer it must be stored the higher the losses. There is also the energy factor of compressing that gas. To the best of my knowledge the prodigious amount of work done to pressurize the fuel is never recovered

FCEVs and BEVs both started to be produced about a decade ago, and while Tesla has scaled out its supercharger network world wide in that time. Hydrogen has less than 100 filling stations all in California. While these stations can fill a car in 5 minutes, they can only fill 2 to 5 vehicles before spending an hour refilling their high pressure storage tanks. One could argue that all Hydrogen needs is an eccentric billionaire ready to lose money for a decade building out infrastructure, however I think the infrastructure challenges with hydrogen exceed even Musk levels of ambition.

3) Cost. My M3 already costs noticeably less per mile that the equivalent ICE vehicle. Baring a huge technological leap, hydrogen will always be more expensive. because the least expensive hydrogen is processed out of the same fuel that runs ICE cars and provides less energy per molecule than those hydrocarbons when reacted with O₂ hydrogen cannot help but be a more expensive fuel.

So why are hydrogen FCEV still a thing? Well the vehicles are lighter, fueling times are comparable to gasoline, and the petrochemical industry is desperate for them to succeed. The oil industry can see the writing on the wall as states like California will ban new ICE vehicle sales in 2030. While holding out hope for a green hydrogen future a generation away, they can continue to have a market for their product as gasoline and diesel phase out. “Hydrogen will become the green fuel of the future” explain their sock puppets knowing that dirty hydrogen from their product will always have a price advantage. And to be fair, turning a mobile source into a point source of emissions does provide the opportunity for carbon capture (so called Blue Hydrogen), but all this still add even more cost while BEVs already have a price advantage in their fuel - not to mention that every home in the developed world has the infrastructure to charge BEVs.

Why write all this? Because when you get down to it most of the #FUD being spread around #EV s is coming from FCEV advocates who are trying not to let hydrogen become the betamax of the transition away from ICE transportation. In doing so they are making it harder than necessary for the world to move away from ICE transportation.

References:
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/33408/why-we-still-cant-deliver-on-the-promise-of-hydrogen-cars

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a41103863/hydrogen-cars-fcev/

Tags:
#GreenHydrogen #BlueHydrogen #ClimateCrisis #fossilefuel #greenwashing #Tesla #Toyota #Mirai #electrolysis

#Statistics

President Jimmy Carter is said by his family to be in his final days. My heart goes out to his loved ones and to our nation as a whole, who will have lost a good and decent man. Let his example be a beacon of hope, and let us all exhibit the kind of selflessness, compassion, and kindness he exuded all his days.

Library of Things Co-Lab - Sept 2023

"[Shareables] #Library of Things Co-Lab makes this culture-change movement accessible for every community of resilience. This Co-Lab operates as a resource-sharing hub that guides organizers through the process of incubating and strengthening #libraries of things as a social practice for communities"

https://www.shareable.net/library-of-things-co-lab/

#LibrarySocialism #LibraryOfThings

The Supreme Court Is Corrupt Because It’s Conservative

https://newrepublic.com/article/173228/supreme-court-corrupt-its-conservative

#NewRepublic #SupremeCourtCorruption #ConservativeBias #JudicialActivism #PartisanJustices #ThreatToDemocracy #Politics #News

Native American Families Are Being Broken Up in Spite of a Law Meant to Keep Children With Their Parents
==
In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court just upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Read this new report from @lussenpop that highlights just how important ICWA has been in keeping Native American families together — and how some families are still torn apart despite the law:

#Families #Parents #Children #ICWA #NativeAmerican #SouthDakota #SCOTUS #SupremeCourt

https://www.propublica.org/article/native-american-parental-rights-termination-icwa-scotus?utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

Going to be speaking on a panel for the 2023 #solarpunk conference! called "From Capitalist Realism to a Solarpunk Reality: Theorizing and Building the Infrastructures of a Better Future". Where we challenge the idea of what's 'realistic'. With a Q&A session after the talks!

Our talks will be building off each other's work, blending academic & activist methods, techniques, and thoughts with concrete, real-world examples. These ideas are guided by sociopolitical movements and feminist, queer, and indigenous thought.

A sneak peek into my own talk! I'll be telling a narrative story of how we can build dual power through collective action, with actionable examples mixed in that highlight steps that we can take right now - steps that might snowball into larger change.

Questions motivate students far more than learning outcomes.