Nuclear Power Folk Beliefs

There's two fundamental "concepts" that define the mindscape of the vast majority of people: 

• first and foremost absolutely nobody knows what they are doing, 
• "folk beliefs" arise in that vacuum.

Swindlers take advantage of this conceptual landscape on a daily basis. Political, religious, and commercial swindlers con people into doing things that are against their best interests all the time so most of the things people believe are utter nonsense.

There are some great really obvious folk beliefs from history, or even the present day that show how it works. One great one is the concept of "puppy pregnancy" from India. It's basically a folk understanding of the disease rabies. Another really persistent and quite old one is the idea that "god will strike me down". That is a person who commits some kind of crime, like lying, will be zapped by the current day sky god. In ancient greece the sky god was Zeus who zapped people with thunderbolts. Current day people believe in jew Zeus.

Anyway, professional liars take advantage of people's reliance on folk beliefs. They seed concepts into the public, who then repeat them as folk tales, and then the concept becomes "true".

One example of that is nuclear power industry shills managed to convince many "conservatives" that nuclear power is the cheapest source of electricity generation mainly via social media and it has zero downside risk. The sales pitch for nuclear power made to liberals is totally different--for them nuclear power is super "green" because it's zero emissions (no CO2).

The main problem nuclear power has is it is impractical to build a new nuclear power plant. Society is too stupid and incompetent to build one today plus it's prohibitively resource/cost intensive. The only way the nuclear industry will manage to build another new nuke plant is with massive subsidies, that is, taxpayer support, so it requires an enormous con job.

The folk belief conservatives have is the government prevents the construction of new nuclear power plants. This is essentially the libertarian fantasy about society... that is, the government is the source of all problems. The libertarians believe if the government vanished, somehow everything would be great. The people are at least as bad as the government, and really the leadership of the society is just a reflection of "the people". It's greedy because the people are greedy. It's stupid because the people are stupid, etc... 

I think the sales pitch to liberals about nuclear power doesn't really work, except on people like John Kerry or other government officials who possibly get bribe money from the industry to support the "green" story about nuke plants.

What's the "truth" about electricity generation? Industrial society is messy and "unsustainable" overall. There's just least worst options. Nuclear power is by far the worst option for generating electricity. Its cost is a good signal about that. The time scale for decommissioning nuclear power plants is on the order of multiple human lifetimes, while whole nations and economic systems, like the USSR, came and went in less than one human lifetime.

It seems like the wisest course of action for people is to reduce consumption of everything, including energy, mainly to free themselves from supporting the industrial beast and have better lives, but people should probably do it slowly as well to avoid massive social and economic disruption as people shift into different economic activities that focus on thrift and efficiency.

Life as a Strava Segment

The past few months I've been using the Strava web site/phone app. It's basically a fitness activity tracking site. Its best/most famous feature is virtual "races". There are myriad strava segments scattered throughout my area. The segments are just sections of road or trail that are marked out by GPS. The fastest rider on the segment is the "King of the Mountain". The site keeps records of anyone who does the segment.

It's fun to test myself with Strava. I was surprised I'm still pretty "fast" even though I haven't been training to race the bike like I used to--I don't have the time to ride 10+ hours a week anymore and now that I'm in my 50s recovery from hard efforts is pretty slow so I'd probably get sick or injured if I tried. In spite of that, on some of the segments I'm in the top 5%, and on a handful I'm in the top 10 out of hundreds of riders.

It's a pretty hollow "achievement" though, even though it's also very gratifying to get a good time. Lots of amateur sport achievement is like that. People work their asses off to be good runners or triathletes or cyclists, but compared to world class athletes, they suck, and they'll never even come close to that level of performance. 

In fact, almost every sport is categorized to give people the illusion of winning. For example, I participated in "B" or low category races and could win or place a few times a year. Then I participated in "A" category races but would just be hanging on for dear life. When I was younger, I possibly had the physiology to compete in higher category local races, but didn't have the time or inclination to do the next level training, and certainly wasn't even close to the level of national or world class riders.

Life is structured a lot like amateur sports or Strava. A lot of the activities people do as a profession are about as meaningful as trying to be a KOM on a strava segment. The economy is so byzantine and diverse that there are endless variations on types of work, so an individual can pursue their "career" and get various achievements and awards that encourage them to keep cranking away.

Trump Shot--C'mon

Supposedly Trump was "shot" in the ear by a gunman on a roof.

The pictures look kind of fake. His ear is just bloody. I think if a bullet from a rifle touched an ear, it'd rip a chunk off at minimum.

But who knows? Maybe he was shot by a lone gunman.

I don't think anyone will really be able to provoke a civil war in the US through such machinations. At least I hope not. Imagine people going to war over the two loser Presidential candidates!

Democrat Partisans Didn't Realize Biden Had Dementia in 2020

Back in 2020 it was obvious Biden wasn't playing with a full deck, but for a democratic partisan it was preferable to have no-brains Biden as President versus clown Trump.

The lefty partisan democrats are awful people. They imagine they are "superior" in some mystical way to the typical republican/right leaning person basically because they "believe" the right nonsense, and some person on TV modeled that superior behavior for them.

They're so smart, and have an expert crafted plan for everything, like how to fix global warmaids, or how to tackle the drug problems, or homeless people problems in various cities around the US... All their plans flop and fail, but that doesn't stop them from thinking they're smarter than anyone else.

All those democrats, who are so smart and superior had no clue that joe biden had a soup brain in 2020. The reason they couldn't see it is someone told them what to think about Biden and Trump. They couldn't see with their own eyeballs that the guy lost his marbles and was barely functioning as an adult man. If they could think with their own brain, or see with their own eyes they wouldn't be a partisan in the first place.

Does it matter that Joe Biden is Dementia Man? Not at all. The Roman Empire had the "bad emperors" as early as 50-ish AD, but kept on bumbling along for centuries after that. When is the last time the US had a President that wasn't just some puppet for oligarchs? Maybe McKinley? Woodrow Wilson was a total puppet. No President in my life has rolled back federal powers or the federal budget. They all carry out the same policies. The Trump/Biden years and covid show that in spades. Trump inaugurated the "operation warp speed" boondoggle/corporate giveaway, and Biden was the number one covid vaccine salesman in the world.

Anyway, how long can this all keep going on? I don't really know. I thought for sure the US is heading for a big fall for the last 12 years, but the model was it'll fall off a cliff. I think all the doomsayers who made predictions like that have been shown wrong. The fail mode is a lot different. It's more like some poorly maintained mega-structure that's starting to have obvious problems, like a leaking roof that's too big too fix properly, or some foundation/structural problem, like it's sinking on one side, but the building is still viable. Someday it'll be condemned, but it might be 20 years until that happens.

Regional Government and Taxes: Fuck That!

Cities are maladaptive and seem to suffer from some underlying physical or systemic defect that prevents "economies of scale" from being realized. The claim about cities is they're more "efficient" at providing individuals what they need to live, but that doesn't ever seem to work in practice. The net result is the appetite of the city for resources and money can't be satisfied.

Some cities managed to impose regional taxes and government on adjacent counties to help pay for infrastructure or to subsidize projects that would otherwise be uneconomical. Often these projects are sold as "investments" in the future of the city or the region... If they are good investments, why do they need taxpayer funding? This is a question that can be asked about almost any publicly funded or subsidized endeavor or business:

• If EVs are so great why do they need taxpayer credits?
• If having a for profit sports team in a city is so great why does a stadium need taxpayer funding?
• etc... 

Anyway, it's pretty clear to me that regions like Northeast Ohio should steer clear of taxpayer funding of projects in Cleveland. If the projects are uneconomical without taxpayer funding, they're just uneconomical. Also, any push to build new big infrastructure projects in a rust belt city seems completely insane and out of touch... Cities like Cleveland or Detroit are basically strangled by old failed infrastructure that couldn't be supported by the population that remained after de-industrialization. The lesson from that was to be smaller and more adaptable.

Also, a more important point is the US transitioned from one economic model: brick and mortar and physical infrastructure, to an Internet based model in recent years, so why build more city infrastructure? My local school district voted down a tax levy to build a new public school a few years ago, just before covid hit. The public was a lot wiser than the school board leadership.

A distributed, decentralized model for almost anything will work better than centralized, top down controlled system.

Rust

Most 2000 or later cars have plastic cladding and body panels especially down low near the road. The plastic is durable and doesn't rust, so it's perfect for the application of making the car look clean and shiny for years. However, when it wraps around underneath the body, especially at the tail end of the car, it makes a shelf for salt and rust and dirt to accumulate. That rots out the steel parts of the body rapidly and is actually worse than counterproductive.

The road salt and brine solution to winter driving in snowy places just limits the life of a car to about 10 years. Also the brine runs off and pollutes streams and rivers. You would need a car lift in your garage and would need to obsessively clean the undercarriage of the car every week through the winter to keep the car in great condition for any longer than that.

It's kind of amazing there's no real solution to that problem. As far as I know, there's not even any kind of effort to solve the issue. People are oblivious to it even being a concern in their life until their car rots apart.

When I was in high school, one of my good friends had a dune buggy with a tubular steel frame and no body panels. It was a modular design vehicle. It was trivial to pull the engine from that thing or do any work on it at all because it was all exposed. It's not hard to imagine a car designed on a similar principle that would be super easy to work on, cheap, and very durable and crash worthy. The body panels could all be plastic and bolted on. The whole undercarriage could be covered with plastic panels. The entire car could be easily serviced and repaired.

Holy Shit! Number of Deaths from Fentanyl

 I had no idea there were so many drug overdoses per year in the US. The total number of overdoses is around 100,000 per year, just from fentanyl it's about 73,000 per year.

Partisan Democrats are Retarded

A few years after Obama was elected, I finally realized the President is a total puppet and both politicial parties are only competent at corruption. It took a few more years until I really purged the residue of the lies and behavioral training that scumbag politicians and media sources inflict on the public, then the democrat mafia went way over the top with the covid scam, I was completely done with the whole circus... Every national election year I just hope a small asteroid will blast DC off the map when all the national politicians are there.

I try to avoid all news about the 2024 presidential election, but I can't help see snippets and headlines about the stupid debates that are already taking place. I realized Joe Biden had soup brains in 2020--now it's soup that's been rotting for 4 years. Joe Biden shows the President is purely a figurehead. The US is run by his handlers and donors right now. Who are those people? What's their agenda?

Joe Biden's soup brain won't stop partisan democrats from voting blue this year, and won't stop them believing that "democracy" is under threat from the cartoon villain Trump. It is bizarre to me to hear full grown adults buy into all the lies they hear about Trump or Biden and "what's at stake" in this election.

The only thing either party cares about is cashing in at taxpayer expense and maybe advancing pet projects that require national level resources, like more jews incorporated promoted wars.

Neither party nor Trump represents a chance at the purging that's really required to make the US a functional representative government. The US is a corporate oligarchy that's currently managed through agencies like the CDC, EPA, FCC, SEC, etc... Corporations literally run those agencies via employees who pretend they don't work for a Bank, Verizon, or Pfizer or whatever while they have a government job. The money interests want an authoritarian style government where any competition is squashed, whether it's competition for public opinion or profits.

I think the GOP partisans are slightly wiser than democrat partisans. The republican partisans at least distrust the government and have some skepticism. The democrats are completely retarded and seem to be boosters of authoritarian measures to inflict their dumb ass ideas on everyone; a handful of those dopes continue to believe the hype around covid in spite of their personal experience. To them, being on the blue team and having the right neo-puritanical beliefs is more important than real world outcomes.

Bike Junk and Round-Up

I'm watching the Tour de France this year mainly through clips posted on YouTube. The live coverage streams through the Peacock service, but it's loaded with commercials, and I typically don't have time to sit in front of the TV for hours to watch the race unfold every day. Anyway, the Tour is a huge marketing blitz for bike manufacturers and a significant amount of the coverage and cycling "journalism" is basically advertising for bike junk.

The cycling hobby is a great example of how pervasive advertising is. I think most people who live in the developed countries of the world exist in a world that's mainly shaped by corporate marketing campaigns.

In recent years, bike makers started to push the concept that fat tires on road bikes are "faster" than the skinny tires road racers used for decades.The lore about the fat tire benefits oozed into the cycling world's consciousness in the past few years. Some of it is pushed by engineers and "scientific" studies of their benefits. Some of the lore might even be true. The main reason its been pushed so hard, though, is it induces people to buy new expensive bikes. Older road bikes were built with narrower openings in the frame and fork, so the fat tires don't fit.

A cyclist who wants that supposed extra boost of fat tire speed won't be able to get it on their old road bike, so they will have to pony up $$$ for a new one that provides ample room for super fat tires. The people who race, or who go after Strava (online virtual competition) segments want every possible advantage. Also, the performance obsessed cyclist will see that the world class racers of the Tour de France are riding fat tires now, so they will pay up to ride a bike that allows for the extra 5 mm of tire material.

It's hard to believe that much of the "fat tire" lore is manufactured to sell bikes. People can't imagine the academic studies about different tire sizes are promoted mainly to sell bikes. They can't imagine all the social media discussion is mainly to sell bikes. they can't imagine all the pro cycling teams make decisions about which bike components they use to promote their sponsors stuff rather than to go as fast as possible.

The thing that's even harder to comprehend is most of the things people think about the world are just old corporate marketing campaigns. Hoardes of people do things all the time that are directly opposed to their personal interest because it benefits some POS corporate douchebag.

I saw a guy hosing down some weeds in some stone hardscaping with Round-Up a couple of days ago. Glyphosate was banned around the world, then finally Bayer/Monsanto pulled it from the direct-to-consumer market a couple of years ago, I think, after they were sued thousands of times by people who got cancer from it. That story didn't ever get into the public consciousness, though.

Obviously, there's a big industry dedicated to killing weeds in lawns and landscaping. How did people decide that they should have a grass-only lawn, or if they have some landscaping like flower beds, that it should be only flowers and mulch and everything else should be eradicated? When they walk through a meadow in a park, they might be pleased by the wildflowers and buzzing and abundant life, but at home they will somehow feel their yard needs to be one species of grass that's kept a specific length all summer. It's actually pretty weird.

What would people be like if their minds weren't basically a corporate product? Would they mow their lawns? Would they spend $1000+ per month to drive a new truck? Would they be happier? It's pretty hard to say.