I used to be strictly materialist and atheist. Now I’m pretty spiritual. Don’t necessarily follow a religion and don’t support bigotry but yeah, I’m fairly spiritual now. This is a recent development and I never thought I’d be here like 5 years ago.
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And America is doing it again. While I think Iran’s government is even more evil, a war is not the right thing to do.
I used to be anti-nuclear energy until I learned a bunch of science and engineering behind it. Turns out things are less scary when you know more about them.
Edit: I also learned that it’s okay, and usually preferable, to not have a strong opinion about things that you don’t know about.
Frankly, the second one is the bigger deal.
The main problem with nuclear power is that it’s the most expensive form of electricity. People who say otherwise are only looking at the cost of running the generator, rather than including all the true costs involved in generating each watt, which is called the “Levelized Cost Of Electricity” (LCOE)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
So there’s no reason to build any new nuclear generators now that renewables+storage are the cheapest form of electricity, and are also the easiest and fastest to build.
The problem is that LCOE is an imperfect metrics that does not take into account storage properly for grid with high percentage of renewables (that requires significantly more battery storage than current 4h window considered in LCOE). LCOE also does not account completely for time effects associated with matching electricity production to demand. There is no clear metric for this, given that the cost depends on the structure of the grid itself and is specific for each country, but the Wikipedia article you posted show in the graph a very incorrect picture. Renewable (solar and wind) + storage is in the $80–150/MWh range, while nuclear is $130–200+/MWh range. It is worth noticing that nuclear cost is very high in Europe and US but can be actually very cheap (reason why china, the world leader on renewable is also world leader on new power plants). Estimation for new Chinese nuclear is at $62/MWh (https://www.renewable-ei.org/en/activities/column/REupdate/20240927.php)
All measures are imperfect, that doesn’t mean it’s totally meaningless and should be disregarded. And it also seems like you’re referencing outdated data, as the cost of battery storage seriously decreased in 2025. But by any measure i can find, nuclear is significantly more expensive than renewables+storage. Regarding China, their data is generally not trustworthy on any topic, but yes I’m sure nuclear can cost a lot less there than elsewhere when you can steamroll over the citizens that would be effected by a powerplant’s construction, operation, and waste storage.
I’m not an expert in this at all, but I believe that private capital isn’t investing their own money in new nuclear construction, and that tells the whole story about the cost per watt of nuclear. If nuclear was cheaper per watt after all costs were considered then private capital would be building new nuclear, but they aren’t, so that means it clearly isn’t.
EDIT
I just looked at your link and it pretty clearly says the opposite of everything you said. Quote from the intro of your article:
[renewable energy] largely prevails over nuclear in China, the United States, and Europe – the world’s three largest power systems, as well as in Japan.
And
New wind and solar projects are much cheaper than new reactors.
I have never disputed that in general solar+storage is cheaper, I am disputing the data in that Wikipedia article that make it looks like it is 20 times cheaper. It is not that much cheaper, and china build lot of nuclear because grid diversification is more valuable then just making it cheaper. Production cost and energy price are independent variables and nuclear bring energy price down as it stabilizes the grid.
Storage cost is going down, but storage demand by energy produced is going up as you need much more storage then just peak hour demand as you are shutting down load following power plant generator like coal, nuclear and gas.
The link I shared is to provide the reference to $62/MWh stated above.
LCOE also does not account completely for time effects associated with matching electricity production to demand
I am unsure why you bring this up seeing as how nuclear power can not react due to load demand and instead only provides base load power, which means other power sources are required to keep up with transient demand.
Nuclear cannot manage fast transient, but for that we have gas peaker and batteries. But nuclear can indeed work in load following mode, with most modern nuclear power plant being able to reduce the amount of power significantly and circle during the day. The French fleet, for example is required to cycle between 20% and 100% twice a day, within 30 minutes. Modern reactors ramps up at 5% each minute.
That means that they can account for changes in demand. More data here: https://www.nice-future.org/docs/nicefuturelibraries/default-document-library/france.pdf
I know nuclear is expensive, but power generation isn’t the only reason to build nuclear reactors. Nuclear power plants basically prop up nuclear science. Without nuclear power plants, you’re hampering the chances of discovering a breakthrough that could lead to cheaper nuclear energy. And you’re pushing back the timeline on fusion.
Also, medical isotopes used for cancer treatments are created in nuclear reactors.
fusion is a pipe dream at this point; nuclear physics has been so thoroughly researched through CERN and other organizations that it’s utterly unlikely that any big break-throughs are gonna happen anytime in the next 100 years.
the only optimization that could still happen is in the reactor design, that is, in everything except the nuclear physics part. stuff like how do you build cheaper plumbing through a 1 m thick concrete wall … not really exciting stuff.
This doesn’t seem like a good argument. More research into renewable and storage technology can also lead to interesting discoveries useful in other fields.
I’m curious how SMRs will end up affecting overall cost of nuclear as well. Once we get into a unit that can be mass produced rather than tailor making each site, I could see the line going down at least a bit and would also allow us to keep pushing those boundaries.
I used to be strictly against nuclear energy until like 2025 or so.
I recently looked into it again due to a school project and realized that nuclear energy is actually fine. Renewable energy is still better but nuclear energy is fine. The biggest problem with nuclear energy is high cost; And renewable energy is just nuclear energy with the most difficult parts outsourced (to the sun).
I used to believe the centrist idea that America needs a strong Republican Party and a strong Democratic Party.
The GOP actively calls all democrats and liberals enemies, demons, terrorists, etcetera while giving the billionaires all on our public wealth, tax breaks and subsidies.
America does not need the GOP at all.
One issue with this is both are right of center.
And exist in a system that can only support two parties, which means that the most effective strategy is not to convince voters that your pictures are superior but to convince them not to vote for the other party. Cue a race to the bottom.
You’re basically down to 0 strong parties. And really 2 is a minimum, since if there’s more, the other parties can just go around any one or two that are being dumb.
The GOP put itself on the fascist downward spiral when the Federalist society took over.
The Democrats started their slow decline when they put Truman as FDR’s VP. Pushing out the left wing part of the party that gave it massive electoral power for a generation.
Idk why we’ve reached the point where anyone saying they’re anything but an atheist has to specify that they aren’t a bigot. Being religious doesn’t make you a bigot and being atheist doesn’t mean you aren’t one either.
I had a similar 180 though, I used to be an atheist but in the last year or so I pivoted into druidism. Turns out following a religion that focuses on spending time in nature helps to get you out of the house when you’re going though a depressive episode.
Idk why we’ve reached the point where anyone saying they’re anything but an atheist has to specify that they aren’t a bigot
The main issue is that the cohort of people with megaphones broadcasting their spirituality is virtually entirely comprised of profiteers.
Like all such parasites they follow the pattern of establishing out groups for you to despise, simply because it drives engagement better. Same reason all major social media now attempts to shape you into a being of hatred and impulse. It keeps you stressed and activated so you jump at the opportunity when they offer to let you spend money to blow off some of the steam.
Bigotry as a phenomenon has many origins, but wherever it springs from it ultimately doubles as an inherently appealing strategy for those who wish wring dry their community.
At any rate, as we all sit here dying around the same poisoned watering hole, we see these profiteers dressing just like us while actively dumping the poison in. Ashamed, we feel compelled to proclaim, “I am not them! They only wear my clothes!”
Spirituality is an incredibly comfortable and practical “clothing” for many people. You’re absolutely correct in drawing attention to how bad it sucks that the people who embrace that comfort now feel pained to differentiate themselves from the abusers who pervert their fashion
Yeah, I had a world-shaking 180 for spirituality after I read about Zen Buddhism.
I was a really proud atheist and thought all religions were just believing in something supernatural. Until I actually gave an intellectually honest try at understanding them. Most theistic religions I couldn’t get on board with but after I read Three Pillars of Zen, something just clicked and I joined my local sangha. Also begun to understand a bit more about religiosity in general after, though I’m still not a fan of Abrahamic religions in particular.
I had something similar. I grew up catholic and was very devout until I learned some stuff about myself that made me step away for a while. I expected to come back like a year later and join the episcopalians or something, but I wound up an atheist for several years. During that time I was kinda insufferable about it for a while. Then I started exploring pantheism, earth worship, and ancestor devotion because I’d felt I was missing something without religion and lighting candles to talk to my mom helped me cope with how much of my life she doesn’t get to be there for. Later an acid trip and some exploration would help me delve deeper and find the goddess I primarily pray to these days. Somewhere later I started using the Wiccan holidays because they’re really convenient for solar and seasonal observance and meditation. They also help make it so I don’t wonder where the hell the year went.
So yeah, catholic to atheist to pagan. There are many paths up the mountain, find the path that is best for you and makes you better.
Idk why we’ve reached the point where anyone saying they’re anything but an atheist has to specify that they aren’t a bigot
Most “spiritual” people adhere to one of the big organized religions, and those kinda suck in general and are rarely content to leave nonbelievers in peace.
There are LGBT friendly churches run by LGBT Christians. Are they conveniently ignoring certain parts of the Bible? Sure but all Christians do that
so I pivoted into druidism
I think we need a secular form of spirituality (be it heathenism, druidism, paganism, etc), so people can still be spiritually fulfilled, while not following some large-ass church that gets corrupted over time, every damn time.
It helps that most people in “the west” are becoming more and more secular (as far as I can tell).
an atheist has to specify that they aren’t a bigot
Being religious doesn’t make you a bigot
Looking at the entire history of (a) faith-based religion, versus (b) evidence-based science
I have to say:
- learn history
- fuck you, you ignorant evil-enabling asshat
There’s no denying that most of the major religions are rooted in racism, and many still promote hate against certain people.
That being said, “fuck you, you ignorant evil enabling asshat” sure sounds like you are making assumptions and vilifying someone you’ve never met based on one trait that you do not agree with.
Sorry, bro, but you’ve become the monster you’re trying to fight.
Certain units of the Japanese Army conducted a lot of inhumane scientific experiments on human subjects they racially discriminated against during WWII, and the evidence collected was retained by the USA.
I want to note that none of this was valid science, the results were worthless because they prioritized torture and didn’t document their “experiments” and their results properly. Same for medical Nazi “research”.
Though it’s true that you don’t need religion to do evil acts.
the us thought they were getting a deal from the japanese when they conducting biological experiments on chinese people, but they were getting all fluff results
evidence based science conducted the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Let’s infect black people with syphilis and see what happens! They aren’t really people, so are like monkeys so if they die from untreated diseases it’s not a big deal!
scientific practice both past and present is often rife with racism.
but don’t let the facts of the world get in the way of your worship of science as a religion.
Guaranteed that was run by Christian White Racists
Arguing for faith is literally saying “I will believe anything on no evidence, and I think the following…”
Sorry, I stopped listening when you told me you don’t know how to think as an adult
right, anyone who says anything that disproves you is wrong and bad.
clearly throwing tantrums and calling people names is a thing only very mature adults too. toddlers don’t do that… ever
I used to be excited and optimistic about new technologies. Now I’m just jaded.
Israel.
I thought it was complicated but they had a right to the land because of the holocaust, that countries around them should learn to get along with Israel
Now I know founding Israel was a mistake. Explicitly saying it’s a Jewish state will inevitably lead to other groups being suppressed, i.e. Apartheid if not outright genocide. And they are not hated in the region because Muslims and Jews cannot get along, but because Israel was built entirely on stolen land, and they are still in the process of stealing more and genocide those who stand in their way
This is mine, as well. I used to abhor anything negative about Israel. Now I am the one saying presumed abhorrent things.
It does help explain why people can be anti immigrant. Just look at what the “immigrant” Israelis are doing to the native Palestinians…
(I’m not anti immigrant)
True, but let’s make extra clear that Palestinian resistance is completely different than typical western anti immigrant sentiment. There have been Jews, Christians and Muslims living there for centuries. The problem is not that Jews live there or even that many of them moved there at once. It’s that Israelis set up their own government where native population literally have fewer rights
At one point I really, truly believed that the internet and social media would be a turning point in human interconnectivity and cultural understanding. The ability to just… talk to someone on the other side of the planet, at will? When we know that exposure to other beliefs and cultures is superb at punching holes in hatred and misunderstanding? Surely this would lead to great things!
Yeah, that was a miss.
Exposure to other is still a fantastic way to grow understanding. But the internet and social media were not a highway to it, and as the “wild west” era of the internet faded and we instead got corporate-governed, algorithm-driven siloization of views, my views on the value of social media changed sharply.
I agree. Though, I think it was less a case of a misguided or overly optimistic view, and more a case of unfettered capitalism driving the Internet into an ideological cesspool. Everything on the internet tends to get a lot shittier once people start making money off of it.
Yes and no. I think I was overly optimistic that people would make use of the possibilities of social media. I have thoughts on why I was mistaken, but ultimately I failed to recognize that a lot of people like their views affirmed and will seek out circles which do so.
At the same time, you’re 100% right: Companies saw an opportunity to drive engagement and reap huge profits with the teeeeensy little side effects of further siloizing viewpoints, distorting reality, and elevating the most extreme positions. It turbocharged everything awful and repeatedly turned sites into cancerous shitholes.
I think all the inter-instance drama on Lemmy shows pretty well that people don’t need money to enter filter bubbles. I don’t think you can even see this comment lol
For some reason, you made me think of 4chan and how it’s always been a cesspool, no capitalism needed. Little did we know how most corporate social media would devolve into “4chan, but with ad-friendly moderation”
You weren’t wrong on that. You just didn’t realize that most people really suck, and sucky people being able to connect easily results in gestures widely.
I remember when scrolling through Facebook, all I saw was updates on my friends and family and pages I chose to follow. Now my feed is full of random posts from pages I didn’t ask to see posts from but the algorithm decided I should.
Conservatism. Used to be a conservative around being 18-20. Then I left it after I saw what giving 2/3rd of the seats to Orbán did in my country. Now I’m not only an anti-fascist, but I also actively oppose conservatism.
When we thought fascism would never come back, we had to learn fascism was just conservatism at its logical extremes.
Bojler eladó !
Sounds like you’ve seen the worst conservatives have to offer.
It’s sad because there are perfectly sane and decent conservatives all around who aren’t out to break the whole system or aggravate you. They just want lower taxes/regulation.
To me, lowering taxes and lessening regulations sounds like “We don’t want to break the whole system or aggravate you. We just want to make the system worse and make life harder for people who don’t have money”.
The way I see it is that we could have lower taxes for working class people by taxing the rich more and reducing corporate welfare. We wouldn’t even have to compromise on our systems. If you’re in favour of those, that’s awesome – I haven’t met very many conservatives who think that way.
But what’s wrong with regulations? Regulations are what stop corporations from cutting corners on health and safety in the name of profits. And we can see from practices around the world that not only does violating these tend NOT to sway public opinion enough that businesses will stop doing harmful things, but they will knowingly do these things and cause harm to people who couldn’t have known any better beforehand.
I grew up with this type of Toilet.
Seated toilets were harder to shit in and I didn’t like them at first, but bidet is a formidable upgrade to hand so I like seated toilets more now.
Oh also I used to be a Matt Walsh fan in highschool and now I hate sexists and overall fascism supporters including my old self with disgust.
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Ok do you squat to poop? You’re not just pooping standing up right?
Yeah that’s a squat pot.
Question for you: I used one of these in Istanbul airport. In a residential building that doesn’t have a meter or more between the floors, is the bathroom only on the ground floor? If I installed one of these on the upper floor in my house, the bowl would stick out of the ceiling of the room below.
To my understanding, apartment or office buildings actually have quite a bit of space between floors. Not a meter, but more than enough.
The drain pipe of the shitter can be embedded in the floor in some cases, even with seated toilets.
I don’t understand how older or clumsy people use these without falling in their own shit on occasion. I feel like even for a relatively athletic person, the probability of an incident surely approaches one given enough time.
That Trumpers can be reasoned with and redeemed.
I held this belief until Jan 6th, but I’ve only felt more validated that Trump supporters are fundamentally irredeemable monsters who should be treated like hostile terrorists rather than fellow citizens.
I lost that when a family member looked me in the face and told me that flu shots are called “flu shots” because they aren’t actually vaccines. We are in a psychic war, and we are losing
i still think that the people commonly referred to as being “on the right” are reasonable people overall; Just that they use a very different axiomatic system to make reasonings on. If you start with very different goals, of course you can get to very different conclusions. That’s not a logic error though, it’s just a different set of goals.
I used to believe in a woman’s right to choose. Then I got married, and having my wife always pick what we do had gotten us into some really boring shit. I would like to choose from time to time.
I used to believe in a woman’s right to choose.
So eh, what did that entail? You have the right to choose, therefore you must choose?
I have the right to vote, while still having the option to not vote at all, if I so want. Forcing people to vote would just be tyranny.
could be worse. you could choose and she could enjoy it and then hate you for being right. I had an ex who broke up with me for this very reason.
That’s a bullet dodged, if you ask me.
Homophobia was the norm where I grew up in the '80s and '90s. Took me until the late '90s to start questioning that, and probably a year or two more to become completely cleansed of it.
That a dictatorship led by a “good, strong leader” would be enough to fix any country. Held that belief from ages 16-22. With time, I understood that it would devolve into a bad strong leader anyway, especially because any one single person cannot realistically do everything at such a large scale, nor can they ensure that everyone down the chain of command is “good”. Paranoia would seep in, more and more resources would be spent hunting “the bad ones”, innocents would be wrongfully accused either by honest mistake or by malicious enemies.
Nowadays, I really enjoy the idea of “Do not take for yourself any power that you would loathe your worst enemy to have” and I wish it could be applied to all levels of politics.
“Rules for rulers” video from CGP Grey summarizes this nicely. The book it is based on should be mandatory reading.
Damn,
I just read something smart, that is related to politics, on lemmy
Broken clock miracles or something, go figure :)
Israel was justified in their (initial) retaliation for October 7.
Gone so far in the other direction that I now firmly believe Israel should be wiped off the fucking map. Decades of propaganda convinced me they weren’t violent colonizers.
Fuck Israel. From the river to the sea.
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oh yea i thought initially but shortly after found out that it was instigated by bibi for decades, in order to curry continued support for thier expansionism into the MIDDLE EAST. normally the media/people dont pay attention to israels action in gaza prior to oct 7, but when people found out they performed an “unprovoked” invasion plus the timing bennys convictions/ court cases going on is more than a coincidence.
I thought the same until I found out Isreal had killed Palestinian protesters. Then of course Gaza.
Fuck Isreal and all it’s bullshit.
Used to make fun of small cars and “ricers”. Now I have like 3 of them and hate large vehicles.
… why do you have 3 of them?
I have more than 3 but people get mad here if I talk about that. I enjoy fixing up stuff and driving different ones.
The irony there being you now have more car than just a single large vehicle. Although you won’t be driving more than one at once.
1 person who buys a new car (especially anything large) is wasting far far more than I am with my 15 year old cars. I don’t believe in throwaway culture. Plus I hate new cars so there’s that.
I’ll also add that I’m not a menace on the road like Karen road raging in her 8000 lb suv
15 year old cars. I don’t believe in throwaway culture. Plus I hate new cars so there’s that.
When you put it like that, I can actually get behind that. New cars are absurd with all their electronics and non-fixability.
I mean I know I am justifying my hobby. I’m probably just as wasteful as the next person.
To be fair half the cars are the so’s, they have a problem with saving unloved cars too ha
