For many years, I have used Japanese aftershave. There are a few common brands, often found in hotels (or in good onsen), and while I think they are mainly a thing for the older male (hey, that's me now!), it seems enough older males must use it for the product to be readily available in supermarkets, pharmacies, etc. (For the younger male, the skin care and hair care product range is much broader than it is in Australia, and there are some very mild versions of aftershave, not obviously alcohol based, for them, too.) The thing I like about that country's aftershave is that they are not overpowering - even the initially stronger smelling ones are definitely not lingering, but give the nice, bracing astringent sensation that leaves the skin feeling very clean, especially in summer. (In winter, I might moisturise instead - at least if the weather is super dry.)
But - I didn't realise until this Christmas just how comprehensively the "cheap-ish alcohol based aftershave" market has collapsed in Australia. This may sound odd, but I thought I would buy my son a bottle of some "classic", since he has never used after shave. (OK, I suppose I could gift one of my Japanese bottles - but that's already mine!)
As far as I can tell, after visiting Chemist Warehouse, a couple of supermarkets, and a couple of independent pharmacies, about the only "old school" brand of aftershave still more-or-less available is Blue Stratos. I'm not even sure how old it is - an internet search first indicated that an Australian company has been making it since 2002, but elsewhere someone says it was released in 1976. (It is, by the looks, made by different companies around the world.)
Now, sure, you can get at the supermarket a few brands of after shave "balms", but if you live in a humid climate, the alcohol based end to a shave is far more desirable. Whatever happened to plain old Old Spice, for example? It's not be found anywhere on the shelves. I see now that I can buy it online from Chemist Warehouse, but I am sure it wasn't on the shelf. I saw something of (ugh) Brut in a pharmacy, but it was always crassly overpowering, and I didn't even check if it was aftershave or something else.
Now, yes, I am aware that Chemist Warehouse has a substantial section of men's colognes, and amongst them there is one or two which are sold as aftershaves. But they are more expensive European brands, and anything in that entire section is always overpowering in the "hairy man who wants to be smelt from across the room" kind of way. I mean, what do they put in these colognes that make them impossible to remove even after a couple of washings with soap? This time, I thought that surely a company like Reebok wouldn't sell a cologne that was too strong, but I sprayed a tiny spray (from a tester bottle, of course) onto the back of my hand and then was still smelling it there 4 hours later after several hand washing attempts to remove it. Awful.
I would presume Australia is just following the lead of other Western nations, America in particular? Oddly, given the number of varieties of Lynx deodorant/body spray on the supermarket shelf, which I think is the local equivalent of the often joked about Axe body spray in the US, the problem seems not to be young men don't want to smell - it's more that they want to smell too much. At least after exercise, or something? But, I don't know, I still associate strong male cologne smells with men of my age (or older) - I don't really recall noticing such a smell from a 20 something guy. Then again, it's not that I am ever socialising with them. Maybe if I went to a nightclub I would learn.
But yeah, I used to use Old Spice, maybe not daily, but often, as a young man, and its attraction was the mildness of the smell. I really can't remember now when I stopped using it. Maybe about 23 years ago, when I first went to Japan?
By the way, there is probably a story to be told as to how men's aftershave came to be popular in Japan at all - given that I have noticed in other Asian countries (Singapore, Malaysia) that any form of male aftershave is virtually non-existant. One might think that the relatively less expansive amount of facial hair to be found on many Eastern Asian men would be the reason (as shaving might not be a daily necessity for all) - but of course, Japanese men can have the same feature. Was it the American post war occupation that set them on the path of aftershave? And what is the situation in Korea, I wonder? (Even more intense preoccupation with young men's skin and hair care than Japan, I presume, but what about aftershave?)
Anyway, I bought the (very cheap) Blue Stratos aftershave, and, as I recall, it's not a bad smell (although I don't think I ever used it myself; just smelt it in the past and thought it was OK.) He's used it and seems to thinks it's OK, but is wondering how it will affect his moisturising regime. Young men these days!
I see that Wikipedia has an interesting entry on the history of the Nativity in art, and that's where I get this early Roman example, from the 4th century, indicating that the gift giving part of the season has been key for a long time!
A recent philosophical article takes a view that I would have thought is obvious to those of most religious faith, but it probably bears repeating:
It is widely thought that we have good reason to try to be important.
Being important or doing significant things is supposed to add value to
our lives. In particular, it is supposed to make our lives exceptionally
meaningful. This essay develops an alternative view. After exploring
what importance is and how it might relate to meaning in life, a series
of cases are presented to validate the perspective that being important
adds no meaning to our lives. The meaningful life does need valuable
projects, activities, and relationships. But no added meaning is secured
by those projects, activities, and relationships being especially
significant. The extraordinary life has no more meaning than the
ordinary life.
As everyone knows, she was no anti-vaxxer when Covid started, and the first 7 pages of her submission are really spent justifying her warnings early on about the danger Covid (and long Covid) generally.
It's when she starts talking about the damage vaccination caused her and her wife that it starts sounding questionable. First, it's pretty surprising that both of them should have adverse effects. And secondly, despite her talking about all of the specialists who have confirmed a real problem with both of them, I would like to hear more directly from specialists than from her:
I have had CT pulmonary angiogram, ECG, blood tests, cardiac echogram, transthoracic cardiac stress echo, Holter monitor, blood pressure monitoring and autonomic testing. In my case the injury resulted in dysautonomia with intermittent fevers and cardiovascular implications including breathlessness, inappropriate sinus tachycardia and blood pressure fluctuations.
These reactions were reported to the TGA at the time, but never followed up.
I have spoken with other doctors who have themselves experienced a serious and persistent adverse event including cardiological, rheumatological, autoimmune reactions and neurological consequences. Patients and other members of the community have told me about their stories.
They have had to search for answers, find GPs and specialists who are interested and able to help them, spend large amounts of money on medical investigations, isolate from friends and family, reduce work hours, lose work if they are required to attend in person and avoid social and cultural events.
Look, this is really just my gut reaction, but there is a reliance on anecdote to bolster her argument (and from people who sound like they have a "no one will listen to me" sort of semi-conspiracy mindset) which feels like there are some psychological issues drawn into this.
On the other hand, it's true - I did find myself having some bursts of high blood pressure readings for the first time in my life during this year (they seem to have stopped or reduced now, and I suspected some work stress which has lessened now has helped with that.) I did wonder whether Covid vaccination had any connection with it, and I posted before that some studies indicated that there could be.
But I just get the feeling that with Phelps and her partner, it's more complicated than a direct vaccine side effect.
I've never seen this guy's content before, but the Almighty Algorithm of Google (in its Youtube incarnation) new that I would enjoy this, and I really did:
I have been curious to know more about how harvesting a bit of weed with your spinach could result is hallucinations and other ill health. I see there was a bit more commentary on this yesterday, and I get the feeling that even if the weed is clearly identified, the authorities doubt it is a good idea to publicise it:
Australians are being urged not to seek out
contaminated baby spinach products for a recreational high after more
than 130 people who ate a range of fresh food items suffered symptoms
including hallucinations and delirium.
Symptoms can be severe and include delirium or confusion,
hallucinations, dilated pupils, rapid heartbeat, flushed face, blurred
vision, dry mouth and skin, and fever....
“There are lots of plants that could do this – lots of weeds that are relatives to potato and tomato,” he said.
“This
is likely to be a nightshade. When young, they are just a few dark
green leaves which is probably not that much different to spinach.
You’re harvesting all these leafy greens now at a very young age,
sometimes it can be quite difficult [to identify].”
Summerell said farmers were facing the extra challenge of an explosion
of weeds right across the country after months of rain and floods....
Summerell warned people not to go searching for
the contaminated products or pick and eat weeds they could not identify
in search of a cheap high.
“People might be
tempted to go out picking weeds thinking that they’ll get some sort of
high [but] it’s really important to remember yes, there might be a
hallucinogenic side to this, but there’s a whole lot of really horrible
health issues,” he said.
Update: well, that took a while, but it has been named: thornapple. Never heard of it, and kind of surprising that this is the first time it has happened.
I don't know why this crossed my mind recently - oh yeah, I do remember now, but the story is too long to relate here - but I thought "Isn't it odd that generally speaking, it seems Muslims faith does not involve the idea of God ever 'talking' directly into the mind of the believer, it's more about listening to what God wants as teachings mediated via your Imam. Christians, on the other hand, and especially fundamentalist (and American) Christians, are all about thinking that God is causing them directly to think or feel something in their head. One would think that the latter might be potentially more dangerous for society, and the Christian Nationalism movement in the US is full of highly armed people who seem to want to fantasise about killing the evil for God; but on the other hand, Muslim terrorist attacks have obviously been a thing. It's a bit complicated..."
Sherif A. Elfass, Northern Nevada Muslim Community president
In
Islam, the means of communication that can take place between God and
human beings are described by God in the Quran: “And it is not for any
human being that Allah should speak to him except by revelation or from
behind a partition or that He sends a messenger to reveal, by His
permission, what He wills. Indeed, He is Most High and Wise.” (42:51).
Islam teaches us Allah (SWT) spoke directly to Prophets Adam, Moses and
Muhammad (PBUT) only without ever revealing Himself (from behind a
partition). Allah (SWT) spoke to some of the prophets, like Prophet
Ibrahim (PBUH), through revelation that came as dreams. However, the
most common method Allah (SWT) used to communicate to His prophets is
through angels sent as messengers. Since no prophets will come after
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), the communication between Allah (SWT) and human
beings is limited to revelations through dreams.
As for one of the Christians represented in the column, he's a bit cautious:
Steve Bond, lead pastor, Summit Christian Church, Sparks
Yes
… God speaks directly to humans. Over 2,000 times in the Old Testament
there are phrases such as, "And God spoke to Moses" or "the word of the
Lord came to Jonah" or "God said." We see an example of this in
Jeremiah 1:9. "The LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and
said to me, 'Now I have put my words in your mouth.'" Jeremiah claims to
speak specific words God had put into his mouth.
During
the birth of Jesus, God spoke to Mary through an angel; he spoke to
Joseph through a dream; he spoke to the shepherds through an angel and
he spoke to the Magi through a dream. Yes, God speaks!
But now that the Scriptures are complete, any word from God must be
corroborated by the Bible. God’s Word is the plumb-line against which
all new revelation is measured.
In fact the Catholic representative sounds a bit more into affirming the direct line from God to the brain:
Monique Jacobs, director of faith formation, Roman Catholic Diocese of Reno
God
has a long history of speaking directly to humans. In Scripture — Old
and New Testaments — you will see God has made it a priority to
communicate directly with us over the centuries. If you love someone,
you find every opportunity to communicate — it’s no different for God.
Though you may not have experienced this (yet) God doesn’t reserve this
loving, intimate conversation for saints alone. There is a lot of
competition in our lives for the voice of God; the trick is to make time
for quiet: intervals of solitude, hiking or running without earphones,
sitting beside a candle trusting your presence is enough. Breathe. God
is patient, so must we be. We cannot make these encounters happen by
willpower; it is all God’s initiative — our part is the response. Our
heart should be open, expectant; don’t worry about “doing it” right or
imagining the whisper.
The Buddhist rep sounds a bit trippy:
Matthew T. Fisher, Reno Buddhist Center resident priest
Buddhism
is a non-theistic world view, so this is not a central question. But we
can ask if the Light of the universe can be heard? After the Buddha was
enlightened he described a vibrant scene — more beautiful than any he
had ever seen. He called this “being awake,” deeply hearing the world
around him. All sentient beings can reach this state, but we are limited
by biases and narrow habits of thought. This deep hearing of the light
is joyous appreciation of the wondrous gifts the universe offers. Does
the universe talk? Only if we listen.
Conversations do happen. Just after the Buddha was enlightened, the
highest of Hindu gods, Brahma, encouraged Buddha to go forth and teach.
Though Buddha was reluctant, he was swayed by Brahma’s request. And
sutras recount many gods listening with interest to the Buddha’s
important discourses like the Lotus Sutra.
Just wait until Elon Musk gets to put in brain implants: maybe that will increase the efficiency of communication...
Yes, it's from CGTN, so naturally it's going to be here only to show something positive about China, but I had never thought of the benefits of their type of written language before, so here we go:
I've never read much about GK Chesterton: I did start one of his Christian apologetics books once but gave up, finding the writing style too much hard work. (From memory, it was a bit like Joseph Conrad writing non-fiction.)
There's a long review of a book about him here which makes me glad I haven't bothered too much about his biographic details, as his life seems to have involved an awful lot of political intrigue which seems rather arcane from this distance in time. (By which I mean, you have to have a pretty detailed understanding of early 20th century British politics to follow it fully.)
Anyway, I did learn a few things which are odd and noteworthy:
Sex was not an obvious temptation either. Despite the restrictions she put on his wallet and on his waistline, G.K.
adored his sober, dutiful, unshowy Frances, and was content to be
mothered in his incompetence. But no children came, and Chesterton’s
sister-in-law, Ada – she married his younger brother, Cecil – later
claimed the wedding night had been so ghastly for Frances that their
marriage had remained sexless. This might not be true: Ada had long
nursed a grudge against Frances for taking G.K.
out of the sharp-witted, boastful and heavy-drinking coterie of Fleet
Street pals, where she had met the Chestertons, and off to sober
Beaconsfield.
[To be fair: I see from a paper written for the Australian Chesterton Society, that there is this apparent explanation for their childlessness:
The first eight years of their marriage they tried to conceive. Frances underwent an operation. Then a second. Then a third. There are no medical records as far as what exactly these operations were. After the third, the doctor sadly informed Gilbert and Frances that it was unlikely they would have any biological children.
The source for that is not given, however.]
He had a younger brother, Cecil, who apparently was a very unlikeable fellow:
Ada, writing in 1941, leaves this without comment,
as ungainsayable evidence that Cecil was ‘the most brilliant debater of
his time’. As a child, she adds, he kept pet cockroaches and stacks of
copybooks ‘containing juvenile novels and political theses and economic
systems – the outlines of a Cecilian form of government, which covered
every phase of national life’.
Unpopular at school, Cecil would
monopolise conversations with his ‘contradictory temperament and an
extraordinary belief in his own ability’, his fellow journalist Frank
Harris remembered. It could not have been easy being the little brother
of someone so famous and well-loved, but Cecil was convinced he’d been
overlooked: Leonard Woolf noted the streak of ‘fanatical intolerance’
nourished by a ‘grudge against the universe, the world and you in
particular’.
I didn't realise he only became a Catholic in 1922, at the age of 48. He died aged 62.
Also, and this is not from the book review, but Wikipedia: I knew he was rotund, but didn't realise he was also extremely tall: 6 foot 4.
a.creating an account is not hard, and I think it's a bit ridiculous that so many people are complaining that the basic way it operates is so confusing. Gee, how much does it take to Google up any number of various guides as to how it works?
b. I don't know why more journalists I follow are not already on there, and putting their mastodon address on their twitter profile. It is currently not necessarily easy to find people via search.
c. This, in my short, less than 24 hours, experience is the biggest problem with it as a Twitter substitute - the search function seems very wonky compared to that of the blue bird. Is it always going to be like that, because of the distributed server aspect of it?
But look, overall, it seems to me to have potential.
It just occurred to me that Elon Musk is now running Twitter pretty much like how Sinclair Davidson ran his (alleged) exercise in "free speech" (the old defunct Catallaxy blog): they both claim to defend it [free speech], but not to the extent that you can freely rubbish them or their special friends without knowing when the arbitrary hammer would strike to ban or restrict someone just for annoying them.
Musk's behaviour is increasingly erratic and petty: and by the way, if the richest man in the world can't afford a good security minder for him and his family, who can? It seems a significant number of people I like to follow have left Twitter now, as hanging around to be treated by the owner like you're a mere cat toy is degrading.
It has reached the stage that I have to investigate Mastodon. Not that I post tweets, but yes, there really needs to be a general strike against using the site.
I'm a bit surprised, but Sabine Hossenfelder seems to not want to give any encouragement to fusion power skepticism after the "net energy gain" breakthrough announcement from Lawrence Liverpool this week.
And look, I know that I criticise amateur "armchair experts" on matters like climate change and vaccines, so I feel I am at great risk of being called a hypocrite when I now put my own version of amateur assessment on this topic.
But, but: I reckon anyone just has to read a bit more widely to understand that the problem is not just getting fusion to work - it's getting it to ever work in a way that makes economic sense for power generation. I reckon that it's that aspect which no one is asking the pro-fusion researchers to properly discuss and justify. (Sure, the timeframe question comes up - more on that below - but I reckon there is plenty of reason to doubt that it will ever be economically viable.)
I mean (ugh, I know I shouldn't do this appeal to gut reaction, because it feels so much like the same tactics climate "skeptics" use) but look at this photo:
Does this look even vaguely like an easily deployable system for power generation? It's the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore where they made the breakthrough, and of course, it just an experimental set up and it was never meant to be something that would generate useful power. But still, a picture gives an idea of the complexity of this type of fusion set up, so I'm still running with it.
And when you read about the set up, it almost seems that the question should be "how come it took so long to even get to the net energy gain"?
‘Nif is the world’s largest, most energetic laser,’ she explains. ‘It’s 192 separate lasers, each one of which is close to the most energetic in the world. And it’s housed in a building that’s three American football fields wide and 10 storeys tall, which is needed for all the amplifying objects. In fact, it’s the world’s largest optical instrument.’ When it fires, the facility’s beams are amplified by 3070 sheets of phosphate glass doped with neodymium, each weighing 42kg and set at Brewster’s angle, which reduces reflective loss. ‘The idea is we take all of that energy, which comes to about 1.9 megajoules, and focus it down on a target the size of a small ball bearing, about 2mm in diameter.’
As for how long they have been trying to get it to make net energy (and only considering the laser power going in, not the energy needed to make the lasers) Science magazine explains:
So, $3.5 billion and 12 years to get a single event in which the energy of the reaction was about "the equivalent of about three sticks of dynamite." A small energy return on investment, if ever there were one.
The Science article does go on to explain a possible future direction for laser fusion (my bold):
The NIF scheme has another inefficiency, Betti says. It relies on “indirect drive,” in which the laser blasts the gold can to generate the x-rays that actually spark fusion. Only about 1% of the laser energy gets into the fuel, he says. He favors “direct drive,” an approach pursued by his lab, where laser beams fire directly onto a fuel capsule and deposit 5% of their energy. But DOE has never funded a program to develop inertial fusion for power generation. In 2020, the agency’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee recommended it should, in a report co-authored by Betti and White. “We need a new paradigm,” Betti says, but “there is no clear path how to do it.”
Now that NIF has cracked the nut, researchers hope laser fusion will gain credibility and more funding may flow.
[Betti, by the way, is from another research lab.]
About that funding - as everyone who has read anything about this knows, a lot more money is going into tokamak fusion research, in the form of the gigantic and hugely expensive ITER plant being built in France:
However, the leading tokamak device, the ITER reactor under construction
in France, is anything but simple. It is vastly over budget, long
overdue, and will not reach breakeven until the late 2030s at the
earliest. With NIF’s new success, proponents of such laser-based
“inertial fusion energy” will be pushing for funding to see whether they
can compete with the tokamaks.
All that money for possible breakeven by the late 2030's.
Also, the article I first linked to in this post is from Chemistry World, which explains one of the fundamental issues on the economic development of fusion power - the development of suitable materials needed around a fusion reactor:
The greatest problem faced in fusion isn’t achieving the incredible
temperatures required – it’s the materials science required to maintain
that environment long-term. It’s why Jet couldn’t go past a few seconds,
explains Rimini. ‘Jet is based on fairly old copper coils for the
magnetic fields, and the tokamak walls are not actively water-cooled, so
the high fusion period is only designed to run for 10–15 seconds at
most.’
UKAEA has built a new materials research facility at Culham Science
Centre to tackle such problems. One of the staff searching for solutions
is Greg Bailey, a computational nuclear physicist. ‘The copper magnets
get too hot,’ he says. ‘So, in the future, we’re using superconducting
magnets. And hopefully we’ll learn more.’ These material changes have
already happened in the past. ‘Jet actually changed the material of its
walls,’ Bailey says. ‘Initially we’d made the walls out of carbon,
because that made life easier for the experiments. It should have been
perfect, but, actually, it was terrible! We were getting a lot of
tritium retention – we were losing our fuel into the wall, the hydrogen
was drifting inside. So we had to change it.’
The design challenges discovered and solved by Jet are already being
fed into Iter, explains Bailey. ‘What does a material for a reactor need
to be? Resistant to damage [from radiation], it needs to be able to
take the temperatures and extreme environments, and maintain its
mechanical properties during its lifetime. So, in terms of a fusion
reactor, the vast majority is probably going to be steel. The really
interesting bits come inside the vacuum vessels, your housing, because
they’re going to be facing extremes. They need armour, obviously.’
This has resulted in plans for Iter to be covered by 440 ‘blanket’
modules, weighing up to 4.6 tonnes, which cover the steel of the
tokamak’s structure. Neutrons discharged during the reaction the enter
the blanket can be slowed, and their kinetic energy transferred to a
coolant system for another form of power. It’s hoped the blanket can
also be used to solve another issue for reactors: their feedstock.
‘There’s plenty of deuterium on Earth,’ Bailey says, ‘but deuterium
fusion produces much lower energy neutrons; it’s not really a viable
source to make a power plant. And tritium is not naturally occurring.’
To obtain their tritium, the team plans to use lithium with an enhanced
level of lithium-6, which can break apart under neutron irradiation to
produce tritium. Although this is naturally occurring, the problem is
that lithium is already in high demand for its use in lithium-ion
batteries. ‘Frankly, when lithium comes into our reactor, we’re going to
destroy it,’ Bailey says. ‘The fuel is not the problem; it’s how you
produce it.’
This is where the blanket could come in, explains Bailey. ‘A lot of
designs right now are mixing lithium with lead, or lithium with ceramic
and some beryllium in there. The idea is that you get deuterium and
tritium, the fusion reactor turns on, and neutrons produced in the
fusion reactions smash into the blanket and tritium breeding reactions
can occur. We can then extract that tritium to refuel the reactor. And,
obviously, the neutron radiation into the blanket will cause a huge
amount of heating.’ It’s still not perfected yet, but Bailey is
confident the experiments done at Culham will show the way, potentially
in collaboration with the private sector; fusion is already attracting
major investors, including Amazon’s multibillionaire founder Jeff Bezos.
‘If we want to do fusion on an industrial scale we need to start
building that supply chain now,’ says Rimini. ‘We need to start evolving
the industry.’
Obvious questions I have: how long will the "blanket" modules last? How long will a fusion power plant need to be down while they are replaced? At 4.6 tonnes each, and presumably all getting radioactive at the same rate - it's going to be a huge maintenance job, and it's something they are only now trying to work out.
There's a complicated 2017 paper here about the materials science challenges for testing and developing suitable materials:
This paper presents a preliminary evaluation of the materials challenges presented by the conceptual design [1] for a Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF) to bridge the development gap between ITER and a demonstration power plant (DEMO). Here the FNSF specifically denotes the concept that has been studied in the recent Fusion Energy System Studies (FESS) supported by the US Department of Energy, also called the FESS–FNSF, which is examining a conventional aspect ratio tokamak. The FNSF is an experimental machine designed to establish the reliable performance of the critical fusion system technologies required in DEMO and power plants. The FNSF horizontal maintenance system [2] allows for periodic removal, examination, and replacement of full power core sectors.
As far as I can tell, this Facility does not exist yet, and won't for some time. This presentation from 2014 seems to indicate that it wouldn't really get going until ITER is up and running - in the 2030's - and the 2017 paper says this:
A minimum 20-year timeframe will be required to accommodate the development of the advanced materials to commercialization and code qualification, development of blanket fabrication technologies, evaluation in non-nuclear integrated test programs, and 14 MeV neutron testing in DONES/A-FNS/IFMIF to validate irradiation performance.
So piecing this together, we're getting the "best hope" for tokamak fusion not likely getting to break even until the late 2030's, during which decade a materials research stage which will take a minimum of 20 years will have started.
Does this sound like commercialisation of fusion power within 20 years? No it doesn't - sounds more like 40 to 50 - if it is possible at all. Because isn't this complicated materials science issue likely to be a key one in the question of whether fusion will ever be economically viable? And we won't even know the answer to that for another 20 to 30 years.
"So not 50 years away anymore, I would say probably 2 decades of concerted effort and it's plausible we have power plants in development"
To her credit, Patricia Karvelis, sounds skeptical "Wow - really - in 2 decades?"
And Ma says "I think so"
I'm sorry, but ever allowing for the qualifiers of "probably" and "plausible", I reckon that that answer is so practically unrealistic as to be deceptive.
I'll come back and add a bit more to this post later...
Update: I had a look at Youtube videos about it, and quickly found one in which a former Secretary of Energy (and nuclear physicist) makes an outlandish claim the he "think[s] we can demonstrate and maybe initially deploy some power plants on the grid within the next decade or so". [!]
Gee, if anyone invests money in the company he's on the board of, based on this type of spruiking, I reckon it would come close to fraud:
More realistically (much, much more realistically) we have an actual former fusion scientist who thinks it's worth pursuing, but he explains in this video from a year ago the huge engineering issues yet to be overcome. He says there is no way we will have fusion by 2040, and everything I have listed above indicates that is correct:
Finally, and I didn't see this coming or realise it until now, but I'm on the side of Elon Musk! Here's a short clip in which he says that sure, fusion will be achievable, but it's just not going to be economically viable as a power source, citing the tritium issue mainly. [I can't embed it, as it's a Youtube short.]
How embarrassing is that, given that he seems to have driven himself nuts by blowing many billions on Twitter? Quite - but hey, if the facts are actually on his side on this issue, so be it.
It was as quick as it was brutal —
captured in just a few seconds of grainy video from a police body
camera. Arriving at the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, two officers
find an intruder and Ms. Pelosi’s husband, Paul, standing calmly, each
with a hand on a hammer that the police demand they drop. Just then, the
video shows, the intruder takes control, wields the weapon over his
head and slams it with full force.
“Mr.
Pelosi was face down on the ground, a pool of blood by his head,” said
Kyle Cagney, one of the two San Francisco police officers who were first
to arrive in the early hours of Oct. 28, during a court hearing on
Wednesday.
As for the mangled initial reporting that Pelosi knew the name of his attacker:
The hearing began with prosecutors
playing a recording of a call that Mr. Pelosi made to 911 shortly after
the intruder woke him up. During the call, Mr. Pelosi speaks calmly but
emphatically, seemingly trying to convey to the operator that he is in
danger but without alarming the intruder threatening his life.
Mr.
Pelosi said on the call that there was “a gentleman here waiting for my
wife to come back.” He told the operator who his wife was, and at one
point the intruder in the background could be heard saying, “The name is
David.”
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