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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B.
@nebulousmenace.bsky.social
460 followers 390 following 4.2K posts
Rarely shuts up about sustainable energy. (Also likes TTRPGs, art, history, weird science, sound of own voice; anti-AI) he/him Fascism is bad, mmmkay?
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 3h
I have a possibly similar theory about noncoms and blue collar managers- 2 packs a day + 8 cups of coffee..."I didn't do well in school"...
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 4h
AI realization:
Hollywood writer is asked if he'd like to use AI to solve a tricky problem and he says he'd prefer to suck-start a glock.
And I realized: "do you want the averaged idea of 50 shitty people" is offered to you every day in Hollywood.
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 4h
"Do you rent and there's a dishwasher but it's stenchy butt?"
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Reposted by Sandy B.
propublica.org
ProPublica @propublica.org · 4h
Kristi Noem, while governor of South Dakota, supplemented her roughly $130,000 salary by secretly accepting $80,000 donated to a political nonprofit she was affiliated with, records show.

She never disclosed this income on federal ethics forms.

(Published June)
Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations
A dark money group paid $80,000 to Noem’s personal company when she was governor of South Dakota. She did not include this income on her federal disclosure forms, a likely violation of ethics requirem...
www.propublica.org
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 4h
Listen to Pitbull's Fireball. The grammar. He was doing that rhyme scheme * before Imagine Dragons and he's gonna be doing it after they're gone.
* "what rhymes with thunder? Thunder. Perfect."
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Reposted by Sandy B.
hillarymonahan.bsky.social
Hillary Monahan @hillarymonahan.bsky.social · 5h
The @peculiarityshop.bsky.social is 11 LGBTQIA+ misfits who make sparkly stuff. The store is 20% off in hopes of homing a few more spooky pieces you may ABSOLUTELY NEED.

Highlights! Mute thread as needed.

Nibs! Art nouveau. NNNGH. $18.40 ($4 flat US ship)

www.peculiarityshop.com/product-page...
Nibs' The Goddess in the Grove | Peculiarity Shop
These earrings from Nibs make me think of walking through a cemetery in the gloaming. Components: Oxidized brass, czech glass, electroplated steel hooks Lead/nickel free.
www.peculiarityshop.com
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 6h
I only ran into edgy Medusa once and I disliked the book enough to stop reading it about page 50. Probably the technique, not the subject.
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 6h
Everything in Europe is farther north than you'd think. (London, farther north than Montreal. For instance.) Checking, Athens is 2 degrees south of Philadelphia. (And significantly farther from the equator than Capetown, South Africa.) So my inexpert guess is "it's the dark, not the cold."
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 12h
... I'm not stopping you.
nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 12h
Heather Cox Richardson pointed out something from his speech to the flag officers: it sounded a LOT like he was blindly repeating back what his doctor said about going down stairs carefully. I can't get that out of my head.
www.mediaite.com/media/news/t...
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 12h
>the AI bubble bursting
For a sec I thought that was present tense. Darn it!
nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
Not all of them! Just *checks notes*
...
... Gimme a minute here...
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
If he could have reproduced the results, we probably coulda built it.
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
There was a guy that was trying to use it for generating electricity off your water heater. I wanted to do something FAR MORE INSANE that ran at "silver melts here" temperatures. There was a guy who credibly said he could build it. Probably for the best I don't have money; I'm a terrible salesman.
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
www.theatlantic.com/video/index/... From 2015. Solar panels got maybe eight times cheaper since then.
How to Build a Tornado
A Canadian inventor believes his tornado machine could solve the world's energy crisis. The only problem? He has to prove it works.
www.theatlantic.com
nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
(You know those 1-meter-square Fresnel lenses they sell ? That get hot enough to melt concrete? That's clearly step 1. Concentrating Solar Thermal runs about 600 deg. C .)
nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
... Aren't you glad you asked? I could keep going. I just went to stand up and thought "But orbiting solar!" (Terrible idea to build. Probably great idea if the goal is to get money from business majors.)
nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
12. How could I forget OTEC? I love OTEC! Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. The tropical surface water is blood heat, the tropical deeps are near-freezing, let's build a weird-fluid steam turbine that runs on that heat difference. Maybe it'll generate enough electricity to run the pumps! OR MORE!
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
11. Hydro energy (tidal, wave)- people keep trying. They corrode. Stuff grows on them. They are supposed to work by getting hit by tons of water every second... the sea is not your friend.
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
10. Lots of other nonbattery energy storage schemes: underground cave pumped hydro, various rock based gravity storage (railcars, cranes, ski lifts, One Huge Rock), flywheels, pressurizing old gas wells, various heat pump schemes. Some were obvious scams. Some may still work.
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
9. I really like Compressed Air Energy Storage but they built like two of 'em in the 1970-1990 time period and there was no need for them at the time. Now batteries are much cheaper.
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
8. Lots of clever designs for solar panels, all of which lost out to the dumb simple ones getting insanely cheap really fast. "We split the light and send it to two different solar cells that handle different wavelengths" was really clever. Solyndra was not OBVIOUSLY stupid. Concentrators, also.
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
7. Ultracapacitors . I can't find it but 10-15 years ago some guy got investment money from GM for a capacitor that could store so much charge you could drive hundreds of miles on it. I would bet a car that it was a scam from day zero, but I have no proof.
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
6. Many types of batteries for hundreds of years: self-delusion, scam artistry, bad measurements. "As soon as a man discovers the secondary battery it brings out his latent capacity for lying"- T. Edison
Some may have been workable but didn't make it through the VC valley of death. Not most.
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nebulousmenace.bsky.social
Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 13h
5 1/2 . Thermionic power. I totally believe you could do this one and if I had millions to waste I'd have built a benchtop unit and tried selling to gas turbine manufacturers. It involves quantum mechanics AND thermodynamics, so ... vaguely related to how old vacuum-tube TVs work.
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