89 Comments

Don't go out after dark. It's not safe.

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LOL!! My fathers career as a multilingual engineer planted m6 family in Europe from 1957 to 1972, with a two year intermission as Honeywell’s liaison at the Pentagon … of all his European clients, he found only the French to be difficult as in arrogant. The joke he loved to tell was, “ We landed on the Moon, the French intend to top that by landing on the Sun….how? ( In a French accent) “ At night of course! “ 😂

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Honk.

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Helpful perhaps to remember that it is we the people in our Billions who hold the real power and wealth for those who otherwise believe they rule over us. We must look past the fake power of an “elite” and understand true power is in the hands of we the people. The fight is where it has always been - against tyranny. It is so typical for fascism to arise all around us and at once so we believe we are trapped. We are not trapped, the “elites” are. We are under epic, psychopathic distortions.

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80% of electricity in France is nuke. About 10% comes from hydro & géothermique and 2% or so from wind and solar the rest gas.

France has for decades had more generating capacity than demand and so is a net exporter of electricity via the European interconnecter. It’s nuclear fleet has never run at maximum efficiency for this reason, and up until a decade or so ago and the climate doom, the French were being encouraged to use more. Then we (I used to live there) were urged to use less, despite reactors running below output.

It is true some of the reactors are near end of life, some are shut down for repairs, and Macron plans to have more built - he’s going to renationalise EDF - but the street lights thing is like masks for CoVid, theatre to instil a feeling of crisis and softening people up for general power cuts to save the Planet.

And most of France’s gas was LPG or LNG from Algeria and Libya, so using the Russian situation as an excuse is bovine fæces.

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The Dutch shut down the Groningen natural gas field fairly recently. I believe the reason given was earthquakes associated with the wells. It was a major source of gas for Western Europe. We'll see if those wells get restarted now.

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you can't just say "hey, we're going to cut the supply to save the earth for the future, but you can freeze or starve to death right now." you have to prepare other sources of energy or other means of running an economy and that takes years.

you can't say to farmers "no more nitrogen fertilizer for you. go out of business and let them eat crickets (which will become an endangered species the moment they become a staple dietary choice). i know lots of farmers that don't use nitrogen fertilizer. they grow organically on smaller acreage and sell at local farmers markets, buyers clubs and to near by restaurants. i agree that more land should be turned over into that kind of production. but let's be real, it takes time and you can't force it without causing a catastrophe.

so sure, stop penalizing organic farmers. phase out the subsidies. in this country, most BigAg couldn't exist without federal support. but to just say BOOM, we gotta go green overnight and if you lose your life's work and your family starves and your town implodes, fuck you? what kind of government is that? you want the willing cooperation of your people.

i thought france was all nuclear. why are they having this problem? and isn't macron in trouble now for something having to do with uber?

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Oh this sham of a 🤡 show needs to come to an abrupt halt.. Are people that ignorant that they can't see through the B.S.?

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Does anyone think you can stop this?

I think its going to get way worse.

The crap is hitting the fan.

Covid just moved this up 10 -15 years

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What insanity. And turning out the lights at night, in the cities, the roads? Watch the crime increase.

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Should help with lockdown-compliance.

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Very true.

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And the impact on electricity for turning out street lights -- virtually zero. The impact on Fear...virtually infinite. They could have chosen 100 things better for this, but chose the one guaranteed to cause the most unease. These are all hateful people, through and through

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North Korea anyone?

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wait till they bring back the masks!

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You’ll have to mask up to save on AC costs. Or something.

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Hahaha

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The fucking masks.

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so who else is shopping for candles and wood burners?

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I already heat our house almost entirely with a wood stove, and I've been storing up backup lighting and old-school human-powered tools for several years now. I saw the writing on the wall and planned accordingly. When the greenouts hit, I'll be inconvenienced, but not all that much.

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Fortunate to live near coal deposits and have a combo stove that covers our heating (and on which cooking could be done). Thousands of acres of public land blocks away should it have to be wood, but if the SHTF I reckon the lack of visible smoke from coal may be safer.

Also blessed with grandfather’s old hand tools. Pretty sure I could whip up gibbets aplenty.

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So when do we do that shit?

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It may come down to that.

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Texas is sweating in the dark now.

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Energy rationing: coming soon to another Western democracy near you.

Our farm's solar grid can't get built fast enough.

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Rona Lockdowns were mere conditioning for Climate Lockdowns. Somehow though they'll keep the internet on so that there isn't immediate revolt in the streets.

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What happens when the diesel runs out?

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Switch back to hot-bulb engines and run them on kerosene is oneoption.

Woodgas generators and engines is another.

Steam too for that matter.

Or horses.

Humans.

The beauty of uranium and oil is extractable energy per unit of mass. There's simply nothing in existence (vailable now) that has a better value. We need to cut power consumtion on one end, that much is true but not for the reason the Green fascists give: we need to cut it to give ourselves time to continue develop more efficient systems and better, new, sources. Also, we need to cut it with measures that doesn't destroy our ability to continue develop more resource-efficient tools for living.

So on one end we can and should amp-up nuclear power, cut back coal to an emergency source, cut back turning oil to plastic - the oil has a greater actual value as fuel than as a material - and some more makroscale efforts. On the other end, make household power production tax-free (not subsidised!), redirect education away from academic careers in social sciences/humanities to practical careers and crafts - knowing how to set up the plumbing in a building is a H*ll of a more useful skill than being able to anal-yse the gender roles in english 16th entury literature...

Right, morning grumble out of the way. Today's culinary delight is pike cooked in a bain-marie, with cream-stewed potatoes, a chives bell peppers and garlic salad and a horse-radish sauce.

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Oh yes, I'm back at your table now!

And I knew you could solve the diesel problem.

I've always wanted a dog-pulled dogcart but that's for after I get my lakeside estate.

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I wanted to do that with our two previous dogs! They were in perfect synch and the same size and weight, and I was searching for a small sulky, the kind you use for harness racing - a light weight one is less than 25 kilos.

Got nixed hard by the wife, that idea. Of course, we were still in the city then. Current dogs are different sized and very different tempers.

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My perfect dogs for mine are far away long gone deeply missed cherished forever never gonna be any like 'em again, ever.

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I feel you (that is the right expression?). I sometimes think I see the old pair when I'm out walking the current two, and then all the emotions coming welling up, including a bit of shame towards the current dogs - it feels unfair to them, if you see what I'm after?

The two old ones' passing ripped a whole in me. I owed them my life, literally. Once, they led me home when I had a PTSD-blackout smack bang in the middle of the city we lived in. One took the lead picking the path, and the other one nudged me in the right direction.

I still wake up crying a couple of times every year, I'm not ashamed to admit.

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😭😭😭😭

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100% feel you too, right here.

It's a grief to me the dogs don't visit me in dreams, but the cat...

...we had to euthanize her 28 years ago, and there's a lot of guilt around her decline, for many complicated reasons (and especially because she was living with my mother), but she has occasionally visited me ever since, speaking perfect English, mind you, and it was the biggest relief when after I moved up here, she did manage to show up too.

I take it as forgiveness and enduring love and am very grateful the cosmos permits it.

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Germans did very well converting their cars to wood gasification after the war when consumer petrol was basically nonexistent.

I agree with 1000% of everything in this comment, which makes me mentally ill.

My god that pike sounds wonderful. I haven't had proper fish in years.

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Ironically, when Sweden started going nuclear in the late 1950s and up through the 1960s and 1970s, the main complaint from the Left was that centrally planned nuclear power would destroy people's personal freedom to construct their own alternatives, by making those unfeasible financiall speaking.

The Left, here at least, was a /very/ different beast back then. Personal freedom from the yoke of capitalism was high on the list, but not at the price of replacing it with the state's yoke or worse - the corporatist one.

One of the roots of european Green parties is personal freedom to create individual solutions to local problems, needs and demands. And the easiest way is making stuff like houshold production tax free, as there's an upper limit to how much a family can produce, create or serve, and sell and that limit is much lower than what any industrial scale venture is at.

Guess they took that one out behind the wood shed...

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Wheats gettin thin

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Wheats gettin thin

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Then, um... rooftop wind farms! Definitely not more nuclear. France hates nuclear power and simply won't have it.

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France has obtained 70-80% of its electricity from nuclear for decades. It only recently decided to decommission some of its plants to show its green credentials but is now having second thoughts.

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France is building more nuke plants for Germany to turn off as we speak. In fact, France is currently supplying Germany with power to offset all the turned off plants. Idiots.

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I immediately dismiss anyone's "environmentalist" credentials if they don't support nuclear power as a realistic plan if one insists on going completely off petrochemicals.

Which is another reason why I know this doesn't have fuck all to do with "saving" anything.

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Amen, nuke is the answer to all our prayers, but it won't stop freedom, and that's what the communists are all about.

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Truly abundant power of any kind is freedom. They WANT us to barely make ends meet and constantly fear scarcity. That's the only road real lasting control lies down.

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Well said.

We are 100% on the same page on this one.

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Agree.

Nuclear is a no brainer compared to other ways of delivering energy.

Nuclear is #1 in every measurable way.

And it's the safest.

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Nuclear is by far the safest. Chernobyl was a non-event. Three Mile Island as well. The Japan disaster was, ironically, caused by safety regulations.

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Exactly

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Nuclear is one of those things where a very good job was done (again, by "environmentalists") of graphically terrorizing cultural memory with images of the worst examples of failure to convince everyone that it is incredibly, apocalyptically dangerous and it has been thus far impossible to rehabilitate its brand despite all the data to the contrary of this reputation.

It's like trying to convince people of the actual number of black men shot by police officers in the US, or the actual proportion of that number to police encounters. An emotional measure has already been taken, and the facts are now meaningless.

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"It's like trying to convince people of the actual number of black men shot by police officers in the US, or the actual proportion of that number to police encounters"

This is the worst!

They've used that crap as a scalpel for over 60 years!

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I mean for the tractors and trucks, though...

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Oh! Sorry. Yeah, they're just fucked.

They should do less farming anyway. It's bad for the Earth.

(In all seriousness? I don't know. I fully expect France will be having a Dutch Farmer Revolt of their own soon.)

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They need to shine up those guillotines! They're surely still in working order, having only been fully retired in the 70s.

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What gives me a little hope for Europe, in contrast with Canada, is that so many people have relatives with living personal memory of the horrors of WWII (rather than just soldiers heading off to war), and they know fer real what the stakes are.

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Eastern Europe remembers communism, power going out mid-surgery, starvation, and those Eastern European EU countries are responsible for EU having to admit nuke and oil are renewables after all, no matter what Germany and France say. Ha.

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A few more years of open door illegal immigration will sort that right out for you. What cultural memory?

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I'm still trying to recover from The Cat with the X-Ray Eyes. Brain not on full working strength yet.

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huh france has more nuc plants than anyone in europe if i recall

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Yep. It was sarcasm.

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ah fuck, its usually me laughing at yanks for missing the sarcasm :/

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Right.

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I've had a run of terrible luck today with people not getting my sarcasm. I'm not sure how to tally the final results of a recent exchange this evening, but I'm pretty sure there's someone out there who believes I support the enslavement and organ harvesting of children and need to be evaluated by a psychiatrist.

(Grammar nerds: should I have put that comma after "evening"? I've looked back at it three times now and it's fucking torturing me.)

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Yes. You're changing subjects.

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I read everything in "voice in my head" and I'd say you could do without the comma, but I have an untamed hand when it comes to punctuation.

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its fine, i am a qualified grammar nazi despite not using it myself

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