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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • Same reason I don’t trust it - imagine rating fking BBC (the literal pro-state violence, austerity supporting, anti-immigration governmental mouth piece as “left-center”)

    It just distorts people’s perception of what political biases are and makes them complacent by relying on an automated bot to do the important work of using your own judgment for what constitutes as moral or justified.

    By letting it platform itself on lemmy, it’s basically inserting itself as the de facto expert on the topic - so for example, people overseas might see BBC rated as left-center and highly factual and start believing that wanting to “secure your borders” is a thing that UK leftist want. Well excuse me if I don’t want a privately owned (even if open source) US company deciding what political views others should have.








  • Here’s some math on that “revolutionary” idea to put things into perspective, as it turns out, it’s pretty underwhelming:

    • If we used ALL the aluminum produced globally in a year (about 65 million tons), we’d get around 7.30 million tons of hydrogen.
    • While that might sound like a lot, it really isn’t… That hydrogen would contain about 8.30 x 10^14 BTUs of energy.
    • Meanwhile, our annual global methane production is sitting pretty at 1.14 x 10^17 BTU.
    • Doing the math, and our “amazing” aluminum-to-hydrogen process gives us a whopping 0.73% of the energy we get from methane…

    And remember, this is assuming we use EVERY SINGLE BIT of aluminum we produce globally!

    Obv hydrogen is “cleaner” than gas, but the point is the scale - this method is a drop in the ocean compared to current energy usage.

    TL;DR: Using ALL the world’s annual aluminum production to make hydrogen would only give us 0.73% of the energy we get from natural gas…

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    For the math nerds, here’s more detail on the chemistry and energy calc:

    • The reaction: 2 Al + 6 H2O → 2 Al(OH)3 + 3 H2
    • Global aluminum production: ~65 million metric tons/year
    • Molar mass of Al = 26.98 g/mol
    • Moles of Al = 65,000,000,000 kg / 0.02698 kg/mol = 2.41 x 10^12 moles
    • H2 produced = (2.41 x 10^12 moles Al * 3) / 2 = 3.62 x 10^12 moles H2
    • Mass of H2 = 3.62 x 10^12 moles * 2.016 g/mol = 7.30 x 10^12 g = 7.30 million metric tons

    BTU Calculation:

    • Energy content of H2 = 113,738 BTU/kg
    • Total energy from H2 = 7.30 x 10^9 kg * 113,738 BTU/kg = 8.30 x 10^14 BTU

    Methane Comparison:

    • Annual natural gas production ≈ 4,000 billion cubic meters
    • Assuming 80% methane content: 3,200 billion cubic meters of methane
    • Energy content of methane ≈ 35,663 BTU/m^3
    • Total energy from methane = 3,200 x 10^9 m^3 * 35,663 BTU/m^3 = 1.14 x 10^17 BTU
    • Ratio: (8.30 x 10^14) /(1.14 x 10^17) = 0.0073 or 0.73%




  • Still let’s not forget the right-wing policies from their manifesto:

    • Increasing military spending by 13 billion

    • Increase police funding

    • More border security force to “stop the boats”

    • Build more prisons

    • Pour money into polluting industries (car gigafactories, steel production, “carbon capture”)

    • Keep oil and gas production in the North Sea for decades, with the only focus on jobs and none on environmental issues.

    So yeah I guess it’s better to have an authoritarian social-ish democratic state than an outright fascist one but that’s not a very high bar and will only work until the climate crisis boils us all alive :)




  • I mean you came in swinging with the whole “but why is Hamas holding hostages in a refugee camp” line which is actual whataboutism when the thread is about the IDF killing over 200 people.

    Why not ask why the IDF doesn’t have procedures in place to prevent civilian casualties? Why not ask why is it impossible to send ground troops instead of carpet bombing Gaza? Why not ask why does Hamas exist in the first place? Is there a single thing you’ll admit the IDF/Israel has done wrong that isn’t somehow the fault of Hamas?

    Your lack of humanity was already showing, but I didn’t think you’d be so unable to retort that you’d just forfeit the debate…


  • You accuse me of whataboutism then you just use it yourself.

    Yes, I don’t think Hamas should be using human shields but I also don’t think Israel should be settling land even before the partitioning of Palestine. (I mean the idea of a foreign state partitioning land they don’t inhabit is insane, but let’s ignore that for the sake of argument)

    How do you not see using civilian encampments as a makeshift human wall just as immoral?

    And we can play the whole who started it first game as much as we want but it doesn’t negate the fact that even after unfavorable borders for Palestine were established - settlers continued to take over land with the support of the IDF - where is the defense in burning homes and expelling Palestinians from land not even within the borders of Israel?? (oh but it was contested territory you see so that gives us the right to massacre people, yes I am very intelligent…)

    Saying Hamas is the reason the IDF is killing civilians completely misses the history of the struggle - what’s next the Nakba was also Hamas’ fault then?