Meme - Jonas Kristiansen Nรธland @JonasNoeland: "๐ ๐๐ฎ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐ซ ๐๐ง๐๐ซ๐ ๐ฒ – ๐ ๐๐จ๐ฐ๐๐ซ๐ก๐จ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ ๐๐จ๐ซ ๐๐๐จ๐ง๐จ๐ฆ๐ข๐ ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ฐ๐ญ๐ก! According to @IMFNews , nuclear energy has a significantly higher GDP impact per $ spent than renewables & fossil fuels. #EnergyTransition #GreenMultipliers ➡️https://sciencedirect.com/science/articl"
"GDP impact per $1 spent. Nuclear $4.11. Renewable $1.19. Fossil $0.65
Nicoletta Batini, Mario Di Serio, Matteo Fragetta, Giovanni Melina & Anthony Waldron, "Building back better: How big are green spending multipliers?", Ecological Economics 193 (2022) 107305; see Tables 2 and 4 (pp. 8-9)."
Of course, climate change hystericists were pretending that there was no source for this, even though the source was literally listed
Commentary: Don’t dismiss the fury over Fukushima’s water - "There’s zero risk to human life from releasing Fukushima’s contaminated water at sea under the plan proposed by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). Drinking a glass of it directly from the outflow pipe would expose you to about as much radiation (from trace quantities of the hydrogen isotope tritium) as you’d get from eating a dozen bananas. Once further diluted in the vast waters of the Pacific, the radioactivity decreases to homoeopathic levels. The 1.3 million metric tonnes of water that TEPCO needs to get rid of sounds like a lot - but the Pacific Ocean holds roughly 500 billion times that amount. At the same time, Japan of all countries should be empathetic in dealing with the sometimes irrational opposition that nuclear energy can generate. For decades, US nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers visiting local ports had to give authorities 24 hours’ notice so that geiger checks could be carried out - despite more than 1,000 dockings passing without incident. A 20-minute unapproved arrival in 2001 prompted the country’s foreign minister to temporarily call off such visits. In the 1960s, even agreed visits often prompted thousands of demonstrators to turn out."
From 2023
Meme - "GERMANY *power outlet*
FRENCH NUCLEAR POWER *Germany plugged into France power outlet*"
Disclose.tv on X: "NEW - German Chancellor Merz - "German federal governments had previously decided to phase out nuclear energy. The decision is irreversible. I regret that, but that's how it is.""
Guy BOOK IS LIVE! || CHECK BIO on X - "Someone needs to coin a name for this strategy of asymmetry. “We can let illegals in, but we can’t kick them out” “We can phase out nuclear, but we can’t phase it in” The faux irreversibility of bad decisions"
Whyvert on X - ""There are eight endowed chairs for nuclear research, but 173 endowed chairs for gender research" in Germany. Possibly related: an extractive institution extracts resources from society to benefit one small group, often stifling innovation and long-term economic growth."
Ursula von der Leyen on X - "The nuclear tech race is on. Europe has everything it needs to lead. We have half a million highly-skilled workers in nuclear. We have the ambition to move at speed and scale. For Europe to be a global hub of next-generation nuclear energy."
Hilarious from a German
Hans Mahncke on X - "It took me less than two minutes to find the roll call for Germany’s reckless and idiotic decision to shut down all nuclear power plants. Of course, Ursula von der Leyen voted for it. She is absolutely shameless, parading a false air of credibility over total hypocrisy."
John Fingleton on X - "Britain needs nuclear power. Our nuclear projects are the most expensive in the world and among the slowest. Regulators and industry are paralysed by risk aversion. This can change. For Britain to prosper, it must. Earlier this year, the Prime Minister appointed me to lead a Taskforce to set out a path to getting affordable, fast nuclear power Britain. Our final report today sets out 47 recommendations, among them:
- Creating a one-stop shop for nuclear approvals, to end the regulatory merry-go-round that delays projects at the moment.
- Simplifying environmental rules to avoid extreme outcomes like Hinkley Point C spending £700m on systems to protect one salmon every ten years, while enhancing nuclear's impact on nature.
- Limiting the ability of spurious legal challenges to delay nuclear projects, which adds huge cost and delay throughout the supply chain.
- Approving fleets of reactors, so that Britain’s nuclear industry can benefit from certainty and economies of scale.
- Directing regulators to factor in cost to their behaviour, and changing their culture to allow building cheaply, quickly and safely.
- Changing the culture of the nuclear industry to end gold-plating and focus on efficient, safe delivery.
If the government adopts our report in full, it will send a signal to investors that it is serious about pro-growth reform and taking on vested interests for the public good. A thriving British nuclear industry producing abundant, affordable energy would be good for jobs, good for manufacturing, good for the climate, and good for the cost of living. And it could enable Britain to become an AI and technology superpower. Britain can be a world leader in this new Industrial Revolution, but only if it has the energy to power it. Our report is bold, but balanced. Our recommendations, taken together and properly implemented, will forge a clear path for stronger economic growth through improved productivity and innovation. This is a prize worth fighting for. https://gov.uk/government/pub"
bernoulli_defect on X - "SpaceX’s founding story is 2002 Elon calculating all the commodity prices of the steel, carbon fibre, propellant, etc for building a rocket and realising they only made up 2% of the price. He noticed the capacity for 50x cost savings and went on to realise them. I’ve ran similar numbers for British nuclear and found something similar: the concrete, copper cable, steel, and so on add up to ~£100m per GW of capacity, while Hinckley point C is costing ~£10B/GW. Transformative regulatory and industry changes that can make nuclear the cheapest and most reliable energy source in history are possible, and this is the first report I’ve read that understands this potential while also offering good first step recommendations for the industry at large."
Germany's Merz calls nuclear phaseout 'serious strategic mistake' - "German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called Berlin’s exit from nuclear energy a "serious strategic mistake" and criticized previous governments for hastily shutting down the country's last atomic reactors. Speaking at a business conference in Saxony-Anhalt late Wednesday, Merz directed sharp criticism at the energy policies of his predecessors, including former Chancellor Angela Merkel, for creating the world's costliest energy transition... He added: "We're now making the most expensive energy transition in the entire world. I don't know of a second country that makes it as difficult and as expensive for itself as Germany does. We set ourselves a goal that we now have to correct, but we simply don't have enough energy generation capacity.” During last year's election campaign, Merz heavily criticized the Green Party for pursuing what he called "ideologically motivated" energy policy, calling it inefficient and too expensive. Rather than advocating for a return to conventional nuclear operations, he argued that Germany should explore new-generation nuclear technology – specifically, small modular reactors."
How ignorant. Doesn't he know that renewables are the cheapest way to generate electricity?
Meme - Melanie Vogel @Melanie_Vogel_: "Sex is good but have you tried having your country shutting down its last nuclear power plants in 30 mn?"
The Spectator Index: "Germany's Chancellor Merz says it was a 'serious strategic mistake to phase out nuclear energy'."
Meme - Melanie Vogel @Melanie_Vogel_: "Sex is good but have you tried having your country shutting down its last nuclear power plants in 30 mn?"
Dispropaganda @Dispropoganda: ""Sex is good, but have you tried destroying the environment by shutting down 0 emissions nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal?" - The "Greens"."
Drew Pavlou ๐ฆ๐บ๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ฆ๐น๐ผ on X - "French nuclear power carries the entire continent of Europe on its back Imagine the world if Boomers never sabotaged nuclear energy."
Meme - Office of Nuclear Energy I US Department of Energy @GovNuclear: "THAT'S IT? This is what 20 years' worth of spent nuclear fuel looks like safely stored at the former Maine Yankee nuclear plant. The plant generated 119 billion kilowatt hours of reliable power from 1972-1996, which is enough to power half a million homes each year."
Shocking moment nuclear chemist 'ate uranium' to prove it was harmless - "A nuclear chemist once 'ate uranium' while on camera to prove the substance was harmless. The nuclear industry is certainly a much-talked-about one ever since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 which caused disruption across the entire globe. But before all of that, nuclear chemist Galen Winsor toured the Northwest of the US for the conservative John Birch Society, where he would share theories on the over-regulation of the industry... Winsor died at the age of 82 in 2008, some 20 years after consuming the uranium oxide. His cause of death was not revealed in his obituary."
Noah Smith is too down on nuclear energy - "radiation is held to the As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) standard, which makes it essentially impossible for nuclear to be cost-competitive. Suppose I had a design for a cost-effective nuclear reactor, and I said I should be allowed to build it, because electricity is good and air pollution is bad. The regulator is going to look at it and say, “Well, that reactor seems awfully cheap to build, why not add a bunch more features to make the radiation levels even lower?” And then I will say, “That would be hideously expensive in a way that is net bad for public health, because it leads to more burning of fossil fuels and worse air pollution.” But the regulator comes back and says, “We’re not using a cost-benefit framework, we’re using ALARA.” And I say, “That doesn’t make sense, coal ash is radioactive — you are creating more radiation by raising my costs.” And the regulator says, “I don’t regulate coal plants, I regulate you — ALARA!” As Jason Crawford writes, “any technology, any operational improvement, anything that reduces costs, simply gives the regulator more room and more excuse to push for more stringent safety requirements, until the cost once again rises to make nuclear just a bit more expensive than everything else. Actually, it‘s worse than that: it essentially says that if nuclear becomes cheap, then the regulators have not done their job.” This is a deeply dysfunctional regulatory paradigm, and it reflects the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s origins in 1974 legislation that was explicitly motivated by a belief that the old Atomic Energy Commission was too friendly to the industry."
Cynical Publius on X - "RE: General Flynn. In the Soviet Union, Communist China, Pol Pot's Cambodia and in other tyrannical communist states, innocent people routinely plead guilty to crimes they never committed so that their families would not be murdered. Consider that under the justice system created by Barack Obama, basically the same scheme was implemented."
Students 'drugged' in class ahead of gaokao - "the school confirmed the liquid being bumped into the veins of their third grade students was in fact amino acid to supply energy. A solution normally used in acutely ill people in a hospital setting. The school's administrative officer surnamed Xia said students were offered the injection to help improve their physical condition and energy supply ahead of the gaokao. The school decided to administer the fluids in the classroom to save study time. According to Gao Pingqiang, director of supervising office of the school, the pre-gaokao injection has become very popular over the years and some micro bloggers also said they had the injection and it helped them perform better for the highly-pressured exam that determines which university a student can attend. Gao believes injecting amino acid has no harmful effects, can help relax students and refused to stop offering the fluids. "The school will not suspend the injection and we will continue if students want it," said Gao."
From 2012
Chris M. Walker | Facebook - "Boston Market conquered America with 1,200 locations. Then they changed one thing on their menu… …now only 16 stores remain
1985: Boston Chicken opens with one simple concept. Fresh rotisserie chicken for busy families who want healthy takeout dinner. They dominated this specific need better than anyone. By 1990, families were obsessed. Boston Chicken offered something grocery stores couldn’t: hot, fresh rotisserie chicken ready to take home for dinner. No competition came close to their quality and speed. By 1996, Boston Chicken reaches 1,200 locations nationwide. They own the rotisserie chicken market completely. Customers drive past McDonald’s and KFC just to get their chicken. The brand is unstoppable. Then CEO Scott Beck makes a fatal decision. He rebrands “Boston Chicken” to “Boston Market.” The plan: expand beyond chicken to capture more meal occasions and grow revenue faster. The kitchen becomes a nightmare. Instead of mastering rotisserie chicken, staff now juggles multiple proteins. Quality drops across all dishes. Service slows down. The simple concept becomes complex chaos. The consequences hit fast. Sales per location drop. Profit margins shrink. Customer loyalty weakens.
1998: Boston Market files for bankruptcy with massive debt. McDonald’s buys the bankrupt chain in 2000 for pennies. Even McDonald’s can’t fix the identity crisis. Sells to private equity in 2007. Multiple owners try to save it. All fail for the same reason. Meanwhile, Chick-fil-A owns chicken completely. They never expanded beyond their core chicken sandwich. 5,000+ locations prove focus wins over menu multiplication every time. Your biggest competitive advantage might be the thing you’re tempted to move past. Your one great product might be the only thing your customers actually want. Stop listening to people who tell you that growth means doing more. Start thinking like Chick-fil-A. Find your one thing. Do it better than anyone alive. Say no to everything that pulls you away from it. And never let anyone convince you that focus is a limitation. Sometimes the businesses that win forever are the ones that refuse to change what already works. Because when you try to be everything to everyone, you become nothing to anyone. Think Big."
Clearly, as Kodak taught us, companies that don't embrace innovation and change die
Camel Beauty Contest Botox Scandal in Oman (aka "Another Camel Beauty Contest Is Hit By A Botox Cheating Scandal") - "In the gilded arenas of Omani camel pageantry, where the desert wind carries whispers of ancient Bedouin pride and the scent of freshly groomed dromedary, beauty has always been a serious business—less red carpet, more sand-carpeted runway. But this February, at the 2026 Camel Beauty Show Festival in Al Musanaa (with echoes reverberating from Muscat’s judging rings), the pageant’s quest for the perfect camel hit an all-too-familiar hump. Twenty contenders were unceremoniously disqualified from the camel beauty contest after veterinary inspectors discovered they had been, enhanced."
How Did King Edward VII’s Love Chair Work? - "As a young man, the perpetually pleasure-seeking Albert, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) was responsible for commissioning arguably one of the most famous pieces of erotic furniture of all time – the love chair. It took the form of a brocade 'bunk bed' of stacking seats, complete with stirrups to hold the legs of not one, but two different partners. A threesome chair, if you will, designed for a royal with famously gargantuan sexual appetites. King Edward VII's love chair, known as the ‘siรจge d'amour’ in French, epitomised opulence and sensuality. And, possibly more importantly, it allowed the overweight king-to-be to have sex with two women at the same time without crushing them... The famous love chair, kept at the famed Parisian brothel Le Chabanais, allowed the unathletic Bertie to have relations with two women simultaneously, all with the minimum of effort to himself, or risk to them. It also ensured his stomach was kept out of the way... the siรจge d'amour wasn’t the only piece of erotic furniture that the playboy prince kept at Le Chabanais. Another of the future king's favourite diversions was to carouse with multiple women in a luxurious copper bath decorated with a half-woman, half-swan figurehead, filled to the brim with champagne, in which he splashed and cavorted with his multiple female partners. Sounds chilly, but certainly decadent."
How Often Friends Become Lovers - "A new study published in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science suggests that romances, where partners start as friends rather than strangers or acquaintances, are more likely to be the rule than the exception in romantic relationships—and that this fact has been overlooked by decades of research in relationship science... the researchers estimated that 68 percent of romantic relationships start from friendship... approximately 80 percent of published research focused on the “dating an acquaintance or stranger” pathway to romance. Additionally, only a small fraction of studies explored the “friends-first” romantic pathway. “This means that the field of close relationships has only a partial understanding of how romantic relationships actually begin,” stated the researchers... the friends-to-lovers pathway was overwhelmingly rated as the best way to initiate a romance—better than meeting through mutual friends, better than meeting at school or college, and better than meeting at work. Interestingly, people viewed romances initiated online or on a blind date as two of the worst ways to start a romance... only 18 percent of people reported that their friends-first partner intentionally became friends because they were romantically attracted or interested. It was much more common for people to become friends naturally and then become attracted or interested after getting to know each other. On average, friends-first partners were friends for almost two years before becoming romantic partners. Other research suggests that physical attractiveness may play an important role in the friends-to-lovers pathway to romance. A 2015 study found that the more dissimilar couples were on ratings of physical attractiveness, the longer the couples had known each other before entering a romantic relationship. In other words, couples who knew each other for less than a year before dating tended to be equally physically attractive (attractive men with attractive women, not-so-attractive men with not-so-attractive women). Still, couples who had known each other for more than a year before dating showed no evidence of similarity in physical attractiveness."
The Sibling Most Likely To Cause Drama In The Family, According To Research - "A study done by MIT found that second-born children, particularly second-born sons, are the most likely to cause drama... The reasoning for second-born children tending to cause drama? The lack of attention given to them by their parents. As the study showed how parental time investment is higher for first-borns at ages 2-4 and suggested that the arrival of a second-born child extends early-childhood parental investments for first-borns."
Origins of the "Marsiling Boulder" come to light after 35 years - "The origins of the massive boulder that has been a fixture by the sidewalk at the Woodland Ave 9 junction for the past 35 years have finally come to light. In a recent social media post, Singaporean Cheah Kim Huat shared the backstory of this mysterious rock, which has piqued the curiosity of many over the decades. Taking to Facebook late last month, Mr Cheah detailed the events leading to the boulder’s current resting place. “Sharing this telltale about why this boulder has been lying at Woodland Ave 9 junction for the past 35 years. Yes, I put it there in 1989,” Mr Cheah began, explaining his involvement in a major infrastructure project at the time. Mr Cheah recounted that his team was contracted to lay a 450mm sewer pipe for the new Woodlands zone. The project required them to install the pipe six meters below road level using a pipe jacking method. However, during the tunneling process, their microtunneling cutting head encountered a significant obstacle: a large boulder. To overcome this obstruction, Mr Cheah and his team had to dig a rescue pit to remove the boulder. “After backfilling the rescue pit, our tunneling works continued as required in our contract,” he wrote. The real twist in the story lies in the specifics of the contract under which the work was carried out. According to Cheah, the contract stipulated that the team would only be compensated for removing man-made structures encountered during the tunneling process. Since the boulder was a natural underground formation, it did not qualify for compensation for disposal under the contract terms. “The reason the boulder is still there is because our contract clearly stated that we would only be compensated if our tunneling machine encountered man-made structures in our jacking path. Since the boulder is a natural underground formation, it is not covered in our contract cost for disposal,” Mr Cheah explained."
Lightning rod fashion - Wikipedia - "Lightning rod fashion was a fad in late eighteenth-century Europe after the lightning rod, invented by Benjamin Franklin, was introduced. Lightning rod hats for ladies and lightning umbrellas for gentlemen were most popular in France, especially in Paris. The concept that inspired the fashion was that a lightning bolt would strike the Franklin-designed protective device instead of the person, and then the electricity would travel down a small metal chain into the ground harmlessly. The technology was already used to some extent in France to protect wooden buildings, and was therefore an accepted science concept that developed into a temporary fashion."
automatic rotating stir fryer | Facebook
Woman allegedly stabbed date in retaliation for US drone strike that killed Iranian leader - "Las Vegas police arrested a woman who allegedly stabbed her date she met online in retaliation for the US drone strike that killed an Iranian military leader in 2020. Henderson Police Department charged 21-year-old Nika Nikoubin with attempted murder last Saturday after she allegedly lured a man she met on the dating site Plenty of Fish in bed only to attack him with a knife"
Of course, she only got probation
Jonatan Pallesen on X - "Regrettably, politicians are often worse thinkers than ordinary people. This is because elections unfortunately select for people who are flawed thinkers. The optimal politician is somewhat high IQ but with a broken understanding of the world and a broken sense of logic. The reason for this is that voters hold many misguided folk beliefs about economics and other things. And when you go to vote, you vote for a politician who holds these views as well. For an ordinary person it's easy to hold such beliefs. You rarely think about them or hear arguments about them. Instead you just live your unrelated life and keep holding these beliefs without reflecting much on them. But for a politician it is harder to keep holding these folk beliefs. You have to deal with these issues often in your daily life, and you are constantly presented with other views and arguments about them. So then you have three paths available:
1. Realize that many of your beliefs are wrong, and stop supporting them. Then your political support is lost, and your political career likely over.
2. Realize that many of your beliefs are wrong, but keep supporting them. This may work. But it's easy to risk seeming fake, and you are up against skilled politicians who really do believe their pablum.
3. Never realize that your beliefs are wrong.
This third path is clearly advantaged. But for it to work, you have to be a particularly flawed thinker, unable to update on evidence and reasoning even when confronted with it repeatedly. This will lead to a parliament with many people selected for their inability to reason clearly about how the world works. So they will make bad policy decisions, even beyond the economic folk beliefs that got them elected in the first place."
