The Future is Electric

Amazon is reportedly working on a television adaptation of the Culture, having acquired the rights to Consider Phlebas, the first book in the series of ten. Elon Musk names the SpaceX autonomous barges that catch his descending reusable rocket stages after intelligent ships from the series. This is a podcast version of the article of the same name in the TFIE Medium publication.

Pro-nuclear advocates have a few go-to cliches in their rhetorical kitbag. A big one is that the public has an irrational fear of nuclear energy and it’s led to nuclear shutdowns and excessive regulation. Let’s examine the historical record of nuclear generation to see if it's true. This is a podcast version of the article of the same name in the TFIE Medium publication.

Official statements on the costs of the Fukushima nuclear disaster don’t capture all the costs. When a full accounting is done, the total cost will be closer to a trillion USD than not. That’s $2 billion USD for each of the roughly 500 nuclear reactors operating on Earth today. This is a podcast version of the article of the same name in the TFIE Medium publication.

If the US PWR fleet and their owners could convince regulators to the fleet to bid on day-ahead reserves and draw up new contracts to support it, they could keep more reactors running producing low-carbon electricity longer in the face of competition from cheap gas, wind, and solar. This is a podcast version of the article of the same name on the TFIE Medium publication.

Actual conservatives are poorly represented by parties that are branded as conservative in many countries right now, which is where the problem arises. This is a podcast version of the article of the same name in the TFIE Medium publication.

Nixon was contained by a party which still had integrity despite his early efforts, but his efforts led, through many other culpable leaders, to Trump having no opposition from within the shell of the party he burrowed into like a vulture on a rotting corpse. This is a podcast version of the article by the same name in the TFIE Medium publication.

It’s a game a lot of conservatives are playing these days, trying to pretend that other liberals aren’t really liberals, a No True Scotsman inversion that’s fairly consistent through the Intellectual Dim Web and many young male conservatives today. This is a podcast version of the article of the same name in the TFIE Medium publication.

It’s no longer possible for the developed world to use the developing world as its landfill site and recycling facility. AMP Robotics is at the forefront of systems which are allowing us to sort our own waste more effectively. This is a podcast version of the article of the same name in the TFIE Medium publication.

Regardless of anything else, the primary glue that holds our buildings, bridges, and infrastructure together is going to become more expensive in a low-carbon world. This has fairly significant implications for the cost to build most of the infrastructure we depend on. This is a podcast version of the article of the same name in the TFIE Medium publication.

New Brunswick Power and through them the rate payers of the province of New Brunswick are out at minimum $13 million spent on an obviously non-viable technology. Their due diligence failed. This is a podcast version of the article of the same name on the TFIE Medium publication.