

That’s a false dichotomy. We can also improve our technology while ditching capitalism.


That’s a false dichotomy. We can also improve our technology while ditching capitalism.


Nothing factually wrong with the article, but it has this sound of “this technology will solve all our problems” to it that I find highly problematic. Seven out of nine planetary boundaries are exceeded, climate change just being one of them. And all of them are exceeded because of our wasteful and growth-oriented way of life.


with lfp at about 200 Wh/kg which still is less than Lithium Ion.
LFP is a lithium-ion technology. You probably meant “worse than NMC”, which is another, older, higher density but less safe lithium-ion technology.


Not OP. I’ve been using Ecosia for years and was glad they didn’t do the AI summary shit so far… But a few days ago I got an AI summary on Ecosia as well. I fear they’re also hopping on this train and in that case I’ll look for another search engine.


In other languages that shouldn’t be equal either though, right?
Maybe you meant
if (2){
console.log("nonzero ints are truthy")
}
else {
console.log("no they're not")
}
Which would output
nonzero ints are truthy
and that would actually work in all languages I know. But that’s different from being equal.


It’s not. Just tried in my Browser Console:
2 == true // returns false


Mh, ‘0’ is a nonempty string, so !‘0’ returns false. Then of course !(!‘0’) would return true. I’d absolutely expect this, Python does the same.
And the second thing is just JavaScript’s type coercion shenanigans. In Python
bool('0') # returns True because of nonempty string
bool(int('0')) # returns False because 0 == False
Knowing that JavaScript does a lot of implicit type conversions, stuff like that doesn’t strike me as very surprising.

Whoever wrote this has an extremely outdated technical understanding of renewables and energy storage… or wants to push this outdated understanding out of an economic interest/agenda.
Yes, a stable AC grid needs inertia, which was historically only provided by the generators in gas, coal and nuclear power plants. Yes, inverter-connected systems like batteries and PV plants don’t provide inertia naturally. But there are control algorithms out there which would enable these systems to provide inertia just as well… And they could be going into large-scale rollout at least on new batteries and wind power plants within months if it was required by grid codes or incentivized by a market.
I agree that, whatever exactly happened initially, led to a disconnect of the mostly photovoltaic generation in Spain (not yet outfitted with such synthetic inertia algorithms) and the central European grid where more natural inertia was available. The high local PV surplus no longer exported to Europe led to an enormous increase in the grid frequency. The PV plants disconnected which led to a just as quick decrease of frequency and an automatic disconnect of loads - boom, the grid is dead. So far, their analysis was also what I presented to my students on Tuesday. But drawing the conclusion that renewables are bad just reveals either incompetence or an insidious agenda.
No, it’s not. Not seeing that it’s capitalism is the reductive view. Instead of trying to type down a huge text while I’m tired, I’d like to introduce a 112 year-old text that still seems extremely relevant today:
This passage is kind of an introduction to Rosa Luxemburg’s definition of imperialism. Back then, capitalism was not yet developed in the whole world and she argued that simply because it’s a question of survival for companies, these companies will push for the right to exploit the whole world. And now, 112 years later, I’m pretty sure we can agree that happened. And in the past few decades, when they can’t expand spacially, now it’s all about squeezing every last bit of profit from nature, the workers and the consumers.
Here, we have a point of agreement. The USSR developed into something that was no better than capitalist states. In my opinion, that’s because it’s bureaucracy developed into something very similar to the burgeoisie in capitalism, resource hoarders led by self-interest.
But I believe your answer built on another false dichotomy here. The alternative to capitalism I have in mind isn’t a one-party state with central planning and communist aesthetics. I’m more of a proponent of decentralized power, dismantling the state and people governing their surroundings cooperatively.