The main problem of renewables is that it is intermittent and that fact remains to be solved. I want this solved or at least improved because it is the bottleneck. In fact, it is such a bottleneck that its energy generation factor is noted as 1:10, i.e.: a power plant rated at 100MW, registers as 10MW in comparison to nuclear and hydro (and obviously coal and gas.) So this means that to add a 1MW worth of energy generation to the grid, 10MW must be built.

Another problem that hits wind farms is that when there's wind blowing somewhere, it tends to blow everywhere, or some large area. So suddenly there is too much energy want to flow in to the grid which hits the core of the problem with grids at this point because energy that is inserted into it, must be extracted to the exact same magnitude at the same time. So a 100GW demand must be met by 100.0GW production. Now if 110GW is produced, something _MUST_ consume it, so there are two choices:

1. make someone consume it, i.e., sell it to them. They have to buy it so the price will drop until there are enough buyers and this does not stop at 0, prices will go in to the negative. So the market will pay you to use electricity. The market. Or:

2. shut off the power plants until we are back at 100GW (or whatever can be met by consumption.)

3. there is also a catastrophic third option. If you have a situation where too much energy (read power if you want to) is inserted into the grid, then its frequency will rise, this damages the infrastructure and connected consumers, so they will get disconnected. Read large and broad power outages. These situations are also non-trivial to recover from. I.e.: to "restart the grid" afterwards. See what happened in Spain last(?) year.

How do you run a power plant in a market that demands payment to accept the energy you want to sell? You cannot. So this is the windfarm paradox, feel free to compare to Russel's paradox. It goes something like this:

A windfarm makes money whenever the wind blows because only then does it have energy to sell.

A windfarm cannot make money whenefer the wind blows because then the market price goes to zero.

So a windfarm makes money when the wind blows and does not blow at the same time.

To solve this problem, energy consumption must be made capable of also being intermittent. Either run "factories" intermittently, which might very well be part of the solution. And/ or, have huge accumulation capacity in the grid that can swallow the over generation.

TLDR: renewables is the easy answer but very hard thing to do. The hard answer is the one I have given, together with getting more nuclear going which is difficult and expensive. But.. what can we do?

China is pursuing the strategy you're describing, but there's a reason they're also building nuclear, they're increasing LNG infrastructure, they haven't phased out coal, and they've built a huge amount of oil storage.

Solar and wind can be part of that strategy but it's not so simple, otherwise people would do it

Recall that Taiwan only exists because during the Chinese civil war, the United States provided the KMT with billions of dollars of military and financial aid. The KMT lost the mainland to the CCP (supported by the Soviets) and fled to Taiwan. The U.S. provided $4 billion dollars of aid, worth approximately $50 billion today.

The PRC would have retaken Taiwan decades ago if not for the U.S. guaranteeing Taiwan.

It has always been a legitimacy issue over who is the legitimate heir of the Chinese empire. China is still in a civil war. The communists (CCP) conquered the mainland and the former ruling party of China (KMT) fled to Taiwan. Taiwan is more successful than mainland China per capita on almost every standard economic and human development metric. It exists as a thorn in Beijing's side.

From the PRC perspective, reunification is a matter of national pride, and has nothing to do with semiconductors.

I do wonder if the sudden noise is due in part due to to Peter Thiel's move to Buenos Aries.

There needs to be some set of adults who take this lawless criminal hijacking of the government seriously for what it is.

This is clear as day, not a matter of politics. It's just clear crime. The material evidence is irrefutable and indefensible and it happens multiple times a day.

Literally just yesterday, Germany's public broadcaster released a 26-minute documentary. "The far right's rise: Is Germany at a breaking point?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOk01r2eoc0

The AfD, which became Germany's top-polling political party for the first time last year, is now the clear leader in polls. It may soon win an absolute majority in a German state election.

The far-right is also widely projected to win the 2027 French presidential election:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2027_F...

And Switzerland seriously considered immigration restrictions much harsher than anything contemplated by the US.

It's interesting to see how leftism changes as you cross the Atlantic. In the US it's usually baseless moral self-flagellation; in Europe it's usually baseless moral preening. In neither case do the facts seem to be particularly important.

"we gave you not just one chance to show you're better" is such a fascinating thing for you to say. For years our leaders told you to be less dependent on us. Now you're speaking as though your dependency on us was some kind of favor you were doing for us. It's mind-blowing how out-of-touch you guys can be.

That's a high horse you're sitting on there!

When your nation voted poorly last time you picked a homicidal maniac who killed people in death factories. Americans helped you then, at extreme cost.

Trump pumps-and-dumps the world economy, but his approval rating is also below 1/3. Most Americans clearly don't approve, so why should we not trust them?

If all it takes for democratic nations to stop working together is that they elect a crook once, we're all doomed. Many european nations are very close to picking their own "Trumps" in the next elections.

In a democracy, any one crook's influence should be short-lived. That's the whole point of a democracy.

We need to help each other remain democracies, as the alternatives are so much worse.

That said, sometimes help comes in the form of removing the gold to say "you're out of line buddy".

I'm not really sure how you are comparing Trump's US - responsible for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, tearing up the Iranian nuclear deal and then starting a war to reimpose it that has created a global energy crisis, kidnapping Maduro and threatening to invade Greenland, beginning a global trade war, giving up on climate mitigation, nuclear treaties and AI safety - with the UK over the same period.

Liz Truss is not really Trump's equivalent. She achieved exactly nothing in the UK, let alone the world, in her few weeks in office. It's also worth pointing out she didn't win a general election: she became PM via the Conservative Party's internal selection process.

That plan never got implemented.

"On 24 May 1940, Leopold, having assumed command of the Belgian Army, met with his ministers for the final time. The ministers urged the king to leave the country with the government. Prime Minister Hubert Pierlot reminded him that capitulation was a decision for the Belgian government, not for the king, to make. The king indicated that he had decided to remain in Belgium with his troops, whatever the outcome. The ministers took this to mean that he would establish a new government under the direction of Hitler, potentially a treasonous act. Leopold thought that he might be seen as a deserter if he were to leave the country: "He was resolved to remain with his army and amidst his people so as to share their fate."[6] Leopold had long had a difficult and contentious relationship with his ministers, acting independently of government influence whenever possible, and seeking to circumvent and even limit the ministers' powers, while expanding his own."

Iran has exposed many limitations and weaknesses in America's defense capabilities, and it's a fraction of the threat China is.

We have 0 carrier strike groups in the Indo-Pacific right now.

And: it is relevant. You gave away the relevancy yourself. It is called game theory. Games have rules. Break rules see what happens. Or instead be prepared.

Seems like someone broke rules but wasn't thinking through consequences or didn't care about them

It is just leverage.

China is currently trying to take control of the whole South China Sea. They’re in a cold war with the Philippines and Vietnam.

Next it will go for Taiwan.

Then either Siberian or Indian territory with the same “these used to be ours” justifications.

At the same time I think will use shadow fleets to take as much fish stocks from around the world as it can.

Not acting yet is not the same as not being expansionist. With all that “we’ll smash your head on the concrete” rhetoric China’s wolf warriors are very clear on where they’re headed.

And why would they want to default on their debts in this hypothetical future where they've "made it", raking in AI profits from everyone. They would work hard to preserve that world order and not shake things up unnecessarily.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

The second was very clearly a systemic failure out of many factors. Those systemic failures are the point.

Someone writing such answer on a simple online forum statement should seek mental counseling. This is usually a sign of multiple mental disorders.

Localbitcoins facilitated a cash exchange that was extremely useful for people seeking to move money out of repressive regimes and convert it into local currency they could live on.

To your point, that money didn't have to be acquired on Silk Road or something... I used to get paid for work in BTC, and used it to pay rent for a couple years in Argentina by selling it to a dude I'd meet once a month at a Starbucks.

I think it's a tragedy that America elected him twice, and it has already led to chaos among our allies and irreparable harm to the postwar order in which America was the seat of empire after Britain. I think that [the populist brain virus which took hold of America, in 2016 and particularly after covid] was done intentionally by Russia and China who are enemies of America. Is the loss of that order what you are bemoaning?

We are also a country that established itself from European colonies. Every time Argentina or Brazil or Chile or Venezuela or Colombia go through spasms of communist or fascist takeover, Europe takes that as an unsurprising fact, and the bankers keep doing business with them. There is something much more frightening about America reaching some polar political extreme, and it's not simply nuclear weapons (because several very extreme dictatorships have those).

What is scary about it is the same thing that's scary about the AfD in Germany... the idea that we are losing the generational knowledge we built to safeguard some of the world against savagery. In order to believe this, you must also believe that Germany and the US are not already, inherently savage and that some of the order brought by NATO and the postwar order has been a good thing, even up to and including the Cold War.

Then, we can define what is worth saving about America and why it matters.