Sydney to Melbourne High Speed Rail Investigation | Australian HSR
  • sonori sonori 2d ago 100%

    Typically this channel includes the airport arrival wait already, which is where the fifty min difference comes from, and the city to city times is to account for time taken to get to and from the city center from the airport terminal.

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  • Solar panels between railway tracks?
  • sonori sonori 2d ago 100%

    Typically not for more than a few hours when it comes to in service track, and management actively despises those maintenance windows even when it’s necessary to the continued existence of the track, much less a third party startup.

    There is a reason why even when the entire track and ballest on a main line are wiped out by a natural disaster it will usually be up and running again in a few days.

    As such I would expect any non experimental contracts between the startup and the railway to come with not insignificant financial penalties if they interfere with service, such as requiring a shutdown of the track for repairing the panels being subjected to said harsh environment, thusly either delaying fixing the panels for the next scheduled major maintenance window in a few years or else like most railway inspections doing the work an an active line between trains.

    When the competition is a large open field of dirt that can be accessed at any time for maintenance, can leave the panels up for decades, is centrally located for easy grid access, and requires far less frequent cleaning, I just don’t see how this startup is going to outperform.

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  • Solar panels between railway tracks?
  • sonori sonori 2d ago 100%

    Don’t forget that maintaining all this means people working directly in the track trying to fix high voltage electrical issues while dodging trains and hoping dispatch doesn’t forget about them, or that ballast(the gravel between the ties) needs to be renewed regularly, much less all the things like realignment and rail grinding that use specialized machinery that needs to go right in the space between the rails.

    This means that those panels are going to have to be removed and installed often, at best vastly increasing wear and tear on them as compared to a fixed installation, and adding the risk that a failure in the pickup/deployment process could scrap a significant number of panels if not caught immediately.

    Or that the hard part of installing solar panels is the wireing, inverting, and grid interconnection, all of which are just made that much harder by having to have electricians doge trains.

    Look, if there really is absolutely no possible available space, like say desert, farmland, roofs, parking lots, yards, fences, well just put the panels up on a simple metal frame over the railway, maybe even integrate the catenary hangers if your feeling daring.

    This at least provides some benefit to running the railway by keeping snow and leaves off the tracks to some extent while also keeping the panels out of the way of running the railroad.

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  • In the California desert, residents are struggling with the influx of massive solar projects
  • sonori sonori 2d ago 75%

    But have you considered how much worse the poor NIMBY’s views out their windows will be, why you might even see something more interesting than desert, the horror./s

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  • is this correct?
  • sonori sonori 2w ago 100%

    If it is it’s not current, as the storm has dropped to a category 3 as it neared land. We were up to 171mph a few days ago as it was building though, so it may just be a forecast from around then.

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  • Study shows EV owners have bigger carbon footprint than average because they are wealthier
  • sonori sonori 2w ago 100%

    Ya, if the article is using Finish survey data than it’s definitely ridiculous to talk about it being powered by coal, I had assumed that given the article’s presentation they were at least looking at gobal statistics.

    Given the the title of the paper they got this from, if they are not getting paid by an oil company somewhere already they really should work on collecting the free money for the work they are already doing.

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  • Study shows EV owners have bigger carbon footprint than average because they are wealthier
  • sonori sonori 2w ago 100%

    Technically, it’s not wrong that worldwide the largest method of electricity generation is coal, but it does tend to be far smaller and shrinking in the richer western nations with lots of EV’s people are probably thinking of, even before getting to the whole electricity is on track to be made carbon neutral a lot sooner than gasoline thing.

    I’m actually very impressed that Finland managed to avoid the ‘clean LNG’ that North America got sold on, good work.

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  • Study shows EV owners have bigger carbon footprint than average because they are wealthier
  • sonori sonori 2w ago 100%

    Generations? The average American passenger vehicle is 14 years old, so if tomorrow all new cars were electric, you would have haved car transport emissions within 15 years, and be at a 75 percent reduction within the first generation. Cut out fossil fuel subsidies so people are paying the 8 or so dollars per gallon it actually costs for gas and incentivize US manufacturers to actually build affordable cars and you’ll see much quicker adoption that what normal wear and tear causes.

    Of course that isn’t going to happen tomorrow in the US, but you are also going to have a lot of vehicles already sold in the decades prior and which tend to stay on the road longer.

    Compared to the fifteen or so years it takes to build a single light rail line, much less intercity high speed rail, and you are not going to be able to replace half of all car traffic in a single build cycle, much less reach 75 percent within thirty years, by which point you’re trying to replace all traffic in the very small towns and unincorporated areas that even nations renowned the world over for their public transit connectivity often struggle to reach.

    Does the US need to build more mass transit, yes. Can it do so faster than it already buys new cars, no.

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  • Study shows EV owners have bigger carbon footprint than average because they are wealthier
  • sonori sonori 2w ago 100%

    There are, with the federal government alone paying 7k on most EVs sold in the US. The problem is that they are neoliberal flat subsidies applied at the point of sale that needed Republican support to enter law and as such companies just tack on 7k to the price customers are willing to pay anyway.

    What we need is to incentivize manufacturers to focus on bringing down costs by focusing on things like LFP batteries and smaller vehicles, but manufacturers are currently incentivized to make larger vehicles because people are willing to pay a lot more than the added space cost to make, thusly increasing margins. At the very least making the full subsidy only available on vehicles under 25k, with a decreasing subsidy for vehicles under 50k would probably help, but you would need to be ready and willing to call manufacturers on their near certain attempts to get around it.

    Some actual price wars between manufacturers would help too, but US auto manufacturers will fight tooth and nail to forestall that possibility.

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  • Study shows EV owners have bigger carbon footprint than average because they are wealthier
  • sonori sonori 2w ago 100%

    The problem is that to effectively fight climate change you need to cut emissions in five to ten years, and not fifty to a hundred, and in a nation where even a solidly blue locality openly dedicated to fighting climate change can take ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars to open a bus lane, it should not come as a surprise that many people with the resources to do so are choosing an imperfect solution now rather than running for office so they can get a bus line to their neighborhood in a few decades.

    This is before we get to the fact that even nations which world leading public transport systems known for connecting to every small village and house still have plenty of cars and highways, people just don’t try and use them to for every trip in a dense city and plenty of people can get by without owning a car at all. We need to eliminate all emissions, not just city emissions, and we needed to do so ten years ago.

    Yes north america needs more common, frequent, and reliable mass transit and the fact that the richest country in the world’s mass transit is in such a state is a national disgrace, but that is not opposed to the quick elimination of oil burning cars but rather should be done in parallel to them.

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  • https://youtu.be/MPyJBJTHyO0?si=Ou_AN7PYA1aKaynA

    A detailed three hour video essay by Tantacrul on the rise, and soon after numerous privacy and foreign influence scandals, within one of the largest tech companies in the world, and how a website where you could talk with old classmates brought about everything from a vast decline in mental health to ethnic cleansing.

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    B.C. Housing warned about project issues but kept quiet: FOI docs
  • sonori sonori 3w ago 100%

    But outsourcing them to an collection of independent bureaucracies(companies) is so much more ‘efficient’ than one bureaucracy just building what it needs to.

    Besides, the government owning and developing housing would just be a huge cost to the taxpayers given how unprofitable it is to own or sell real-estate. Why the government might even build enough to actually house all the people waiting on public housing and then rent out the surplus out at below market rates but above cost in order to help fund the service, and that sounds like it could cut into the profit margins of the poor landlords.

    Nope, far better to make a deal where the government assumes the risk for the project if a project fails, and the corporations get to take all the extra profit if a project succeeds./s

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  • Simple connector for single conductor 0.75mm² (18 AWG) that will remain connected under tension while being spooled
  • sonori sonori 3w ago 100%

    Depending on how frequently it needs to be connected and how much tension it needs to hold, it might be worth taking a look at some Wago connectors, as i’ve generally been impressed by how well they hold. Not really an option if the connection needs to be regularly connected and disconnected, but if it’s just occasional it could be an option.

    Outside of that I would second Aubeynarf’s suggestion, but don’t have much personal experience with them.

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  • Norway is mulling building a fence on its border with Russia, following Finland's example
  • sonori sonori 3w ago 100%

    Well, the actually wealthy and well off people will just hire an immigration lawyer and fly there while keeping some wealth, and not working their way from dangerous predicament to predicament one step at a time, often dying in the process.

    If you’re well off, you sure arn’t going to give it all up to a smuggler for an asylum claim.

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  • Norway is mulling building a fence on its border with Russia, following Finland's example
  • sonori sonori 3w ago 100%

    So that’s the one option then, and it’s a good option that a lot of Sunni Syrians (who are not subject to the same religious persecution as converts) take, and as such 30% of the entire nation are refugees or migrants from Palestine and Syria.

    Naturally a small desert country, the influx has caused significant strain on the nations water infrastructure, and with a small economy, limited resources, and limited capital, Jordan is forced to sacrifice 6% of the entire nations GDP on the refugee program. Also worth noting that said national GDP is smaller than just the Norwegian government budget.

    This on top of an already struggling economy, and the fact the nation is dependent on buying foreign food, and the limits placed on foreign dept by international creditors, the nation has been forced to undertake an extreme austerity program in order to prevent mass famine, which has of course further limited economic growth.

    As such not only are people fleeing religious prosecution going to find similar prosecution in Jordan, but the nation is struggling hard to feed its own people and is in no position to take everyone even if it wanted to. As a result it has increasingly turned refugees away, and heavily pushes for non Sunni refugees to go to places where they will actually be safe.

    Since most people arn’t dumb, many take said advice and travel to a nation where they will actually be safe, you know, the whole point of the asylum system.

    The whole reason it needs to be a wealthy land is because the land needs to actually be able to support the refugees for them to all actually be able to go there without trapping the host nation in a cycle of poverty.

    So now that you, as a non Sunni refugee, have been rejected from Jordan, what’s you next suggestion for the nearest safe nation?

    And again I must ask the basic question, why are poor nations expected to sacrifice so much so that the rich ones can do absolutely nothing?

    edit: Or on second thought don’t, this conversation has already drifted so far from the actual subject of border security methods, and going nowhere if I have to explain the baisc idea of why the rich might have to help the poor or why border crossings between unsafe nations might be harder than a road trip within a single nation.

    Going down the list of nations within two hops of Syria and explaining why each in turn may be unsafe for you or turn you away is also going to be exhausting and you can just google it.

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  • Norway is mulling building a fence on its border with Russia, following Finland's example
  • sonori sonori 3w ago 50%

    Given that it’s takes months of work to cross a border for a refugee but it’s only a three day drive from Sochi to the Norwegian border, yes, the number of borders absolutely matters more than physical distance.

    Show me where in article 14 it says that this right only applies the geographically closest nation and all others are except.

    Or, because you keep insisting that there are so very many safe nations with unlimited resources and food for people to wait out the collapse Russia and its puppets with only one nation between them and Syria, list them.

    Note, these nations must not be a theocracy or limit the freedom of religion, not currently be at war, have an effective refuge program that does not limit the number of entrants, and of course not be in need of significant international aid themselves.

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  • Norway is mulling building a fence on its border with Russia, following Finland's example
  • sonori sonori 3w ago 33%

    Again, Norway is actually very close at just two nations away, one of which has regular race riots and has still taken in literally millions of refugees, while the other is the one that installed the regime persecuting them and is fucking Russia.

    Most of the nations that are closer are either filled with religious persecution, so impoverished as to require vast amounts of western food aid just to feed their own people, or are already taking in orders of magnitude more refugees than Norway.

    Why should the aid a nation provides the international community be based solely on geographical proximity? Does this mean that Norway should also not provide any aid to Ukraine, as it is also geographically far away? Why should it only the the poor nations that should do their part to take in people in distress and not the rich?

    When so much of the world is impoverished and struggling to survive itself, why is it so ‘suspicious’ that when people are forced to start over from scratch they might try and do so in the lands of over abundance and where their children don’t have to worry about being beaten to death by a mob or living in Putin’s Russia?

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  • "Initials" by "Florian Körner", licensed under "CC0 1.0". / Remix of the original. - Created with dicebear.comInitialsFlorian Körnerhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearNY
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    Britain Shuts Down Last Coal Plant, ‘Turning Its Back on Coal Forever’
  • sonori sonori 3w ago 100%

    Yep, one of the few, or perhaps only, redeeming qualities of the witch was that she did want to phase out coal in favor of clean energy, mostly for the wrong reasons and being a conservative her idea of helping didn’t really help all that well, but that’s more of a silver lining to her reign that her US contemporary.

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  • Norway is mulling building a fence on its border with Russia, following Finland's example
  • sonori sonori 3w ago 33%

    This all seems like even more reason to be channeling resources into the security needed to stop well equipped Russian saboteurs, as well as systems to better find people who disappeared or traveled to foreign countries after they were welcomed across the border, instead of a fence that does neither.

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  • Norway is mulling building a fence on its border with Russia, following Finland's example
  • sonori sonori 3w ago 33%

    Um, so let’s think about this. Why are people fleeing the Russian military and its operations to secure the power of its chosen allies in Syria not rushing to seek asylum in the country that blew up their homes in the first place? I mean Russia is obviously such a great nation to live in, with its very high standards of living and no possibility of being forced to either join the Russian military or being handed over to the very regime you are claiming asylum from.

    I also didn’t realize that Türkiye and Russia, the two nations between Syra and Norway, represented ‘the whole of Europe and large parts of the Middle East and North Africa’.

    I guess the one poor country already hosting 3.2million refugees is handling it very well, as there have been absolutely no race riots, violence, or mass deportations back to Syria, and we should expect every single refugee to stay there instead of attempting to make a claim in any other nation.

    I also missed that line in the UN declaration of human rights that says you can ignore applying these rights to people if the Russians are also being dicks to them. /s

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  • https://youtu.be/CuRbU9xS63M?si=bhSBffzAWyLD3ceN

    If anyone here is interested in a more technical interview, here are two socialists with doctorates in economics talk about why after two hundred years of talking about fixing the housing market haven’t gotten anywhere.

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    https://youtu.be/-8h72JbCiTw?si=M2S1mXZoqMbi1J2Q

    Not sure if this fits here given it’s more foucued on prek-12 than Academia, but I figure it impacts the students going into college quite heavily and most of the same points still apply.

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    https://youtu.be/8m0TY6i1Kuo?si=SZjGKOTGZ4kjlrny

    Evidently the joints on the flaps still need a little work into not letting gases through, but it seemed to still have enough actuation to keep the spacecraft stable until the engines took over for the landing burn.

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    https://youtu.be/MShnWhUGqHw?si=wfsLXK6CvHO4DWKo

    A detailed discussion of the Shuttle program as well as some ethics in airspace.

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    "Initials" by "Florian Körner", licensed under "CC0 1.0". / Remix of the original. - Created with dicebear.comInitialsFlorian Körnerhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearUS
    Supreme Court allows Idaho to enforce ban on gender-affirming care for minors
    abc11.com

    Party of personal freedom everybody.

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    youtu.be

    Come for the two hour review of Rings of Power by a guy who has elvish on his wedding ring, stay for the Hbomberguy style twist into discussion of the way the far right uses the appearance of media criticism to radicalize vunrable young men and draw them into the manosphere.

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    youtu.be

    - A video about disposable vapes, and how addiction became the goal of every single company on the planet.

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    www.youtube.com

    It’s their first ever attempt to launch a Vulcan, and their launching an lunar lander. Window opens at 1:53 AM EST. Here’s to hoping for a successful launch. Edit: Liftoff at 47:40. We saw a successful launch, translunar injection, and the Peregrine lander successfully powered on before detaching from the Centaur upper stage, which proceeded to relight its engines and complete a burn into a solar orbit at part of its memorial mission. The lunar landing attempt is expected to be on Feb 23, and it is expected to remain operational on the surface of the moon for at least ten days. According to NASA, “-Scientific instruments will study the lunar exosphere, thermal properties of the lunar regolith, hydrogen abundances in the soil at the landing site, magnetic fields, and conduct radiation environment monitoring.” [More](https://youtu.be/Eb2r-Brnq6s?si=Zl_5xK8ErYhe5YEF) on Vulcan and its history.

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    youtu.be

    I don’t think that this has been posted yet, but if not here’s the summary. https://youtu.be/O3F8aTBLLx0?si=GPVB2xtC5wwnSC6V Just the highlights.

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