Interesting Links for 25-10-2016

[andrewducker]

EU set for ‘dirty Brexit’ (tags: europe uk ) EZTV Shuts Down After Hostile Takeover (tags: bittorrent piracy hacking ) Why 538 still give Trump a 14% chance of victory (tags: politics models statistics usa ) How German nuclear scientists reacted to the news of Hiroshima (tags: nuclearweapons wwii history ) Unlocking the secrets of bacterial

Comments

[bart_calendar]

I really don't see why the torries think the EU will negotiate with them at all.

[a_pawson]

The best argument I have heard is that the EU need money. When the UK leaves, they will need to find €10 billion from the other members, and none exactly are keen to increase their contributions right now. The UK will offer to pay even more than we currently do in return for access to the single market and enough control over immigration for the government to be able to sell the idea to the UK electorate.

However, it really depends how crazy our new PM wants to be, The signals at the moment are that they may try to pursue a "hard" Brexit. If the government really is crazy enough to do that, then we are committing economic suicide.

[bart_calendar]

The thing is though the EU doesn't fuck around at all.

Look what they did to Greece.

[andrewducker]

They don't fuck around, but they do also want things. And in the Greece situation Greece owed huge amounts to Europe, and what was happening was that Europe was refusing to compromise on that (stupidly, obviously).

Whereas in this situation Europe are clearly willing to negotiate - they just aren't going to give up any of the four pillars for us. Which seems entirely sensible to me.

[bart_calendar]

Interesting to post that D&D article right after Jack Chick died.

I still think this was one of his best tracts.

https://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

Dark Dungeons

[interactiveleaf]

Have you seen the movie? It's fun.

http://www.darkdungeonsthemovie.com/

[theweaselking]

I pulled that out last night, in celebration.

[ext_2864067]

A Dirty Brexit should definitely be the name of an obscure sexual practice*, and also possibly of a cocktail that references it by innuendo.

*possibly involving an ill-timed withdrawal.

[channelpenguin]

ROFL. *snortle* can I steal this???? My facebook world needs to know!

[resonant]

Pumped storage might not be useful for supplying power, but it might be useful for supplying water.

Most houses in Kosovo and Albania have plastic water tanks on the roof, to gravity-feed water even when the power goes out. If the tanks are large enough to supply a day's water, we could power the house's well pump from a solar panel. No additional plumbing cost, and if you use a brushless DC pump you avoid the cost of a power inverter. The water tank (already paid for) would be much cheaper than using batteries to store the solar power.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, using solar power to do useful work is always a good thing. We just shouldn't expect to get much back from undoing the useful work in this case.

[danieldwilliam]

I don't think I'm surprised that micro-scale pumped storage schemes don't make economic sense. I think it's to do with whatever the geometric function whereby volume increases faster than surface area.

[skington]

Isn't it mostly that utility companies use pumped storage to get around a glut of energy? Whereas small buildings are really unlikely to be have energy surpluses at anything like that sort of scale?

(Also the cost of building big water tanks on the top of buildings needs to be taken into consideration as well.)

[danieldwilliam]

It would be a rare building that would have an energy surplus and which couldn't export that to grid.

I *think* it's more about the best way store a grid sized surplus; one big pumped hydro scheme or lots of smaller ones in buildings.