The "new technology vs redundancy before it's even deployed" issue in developing new energy sources

I see that Sabine Hossenfelder and others have videos out about the latest cost blowout, and delays, in the ITER project that is only a research project for fusion, with no prospect of it ever actually being an electricity generator.

For reasons I have outlined before, I am firmly on the sceptic side of fusion energy ever being a practical source of energy.   

But this latest problem did make me think about how it's odd that both high-tech ideas for future energy (fusion, or even new fission reactors) and a much more modest-tech idea (large scale deployment of renewable energy plants which already work, but still have practical problems in replacing old style generators) both share a similar issue:   they are hampered by continual changes in technology that make planning for their development (or deployment) very difficult.

I mentioned in a recent post about how, even over the (nearly) two decades of writing this blog, you can see how ideas for new renewable energy have been floated, sometimes partially developed, and abandoned:  in many cases surpassed by the steady increase in efficiency and manufacturing improvements in the "been around forever, but getting way better all the time" sources (mainly solar panels and wind generators).   And now we are at a point where we know we need renewable energy deployed very rapidly to drop CO2 before we bake the world even further, but the issue of energy storage is still seemingly at the stage "too many ideas", and no one really knows the best way to deploy it for maximum efficiency and best cost outcomes.   A large part of the problem is surely that some ideas (molten salts, hot rocks or sand, chemical flow batteries, etc) will be beaten out of contention by improvements in competing systems, as nearly all storage ideas are still undergoing a lot of development and research and technological improvement.   Hence, it may sound like a good idea to subsidise (say) Tesla powerwalls for domestic use on a massive scale - but I would presume that all battery storage is likely to be better, cheaper and safer in (say) five or ten years time, so just how much money is it wise to spend now on the current model?

On the fusion question, I have seen it said (I presume reliably) that a large part of ITER's problem is that it was designed on the basis of magnet technology current  (I think) a couple of decades ago, but that has been surpassed by big improvements in the field.    Hence it is in one sense already a white elephant, and becoming more white elephant-y every year a cost increase or repair delays its operation.

I would guess that the same could be a significant issue in the field of new fission reactor designs - what company wants to spend a ton of money on a design that might work but be soon out-competed by an alternative new design in terms of cost, efficiency or safety?

I guess there is likely a simple name for this in economics, or some management field - this race between technological development and its deployment on the one hand, and redundancy on the other - but I don't know what it is.   

I also don't really know the solution.

What I do think, though, is that surely the billions spent on a research reactor for a source of energy that may never be economically viable could have gone a very long way towards resolving the issue of the best way to store energy from renewables, and likely come up with some good answers on that a great many years before ITER is even switched on.

 

 

Against Peter Thiel

Oh my, Twitter (unfortunately) still throws up links worth reading - such as this 2022 essay on Substack  by John Ganz entitled "The Enigma of Peter Thiel - There is No Enigma - He's a Fascist".

Elon's on the copium train

 

So Elon is in the "I create my own reality" world of MAGA now.   I could have sworn that the reality is the opposite of what he claims here:   it was the mainstream media that was extremely keen to choose stories to promote (and even specifically editorialise) the take that "Biden should withdraw from re-election because of public concerns about his cognitive decline after the debate".

On the question of anyone "debating" Trump

I don't really know why it isn't the Democrats saying something like this: "We don't see any point in a further 'debate' with Donald Trump.  As demonstrated in the last attempt, he does not know how to 'debate' - he simply states lies, falsehood and misleading statements and if challenged, simply reiterates that 'its true', which in the world of MAGA is accepted as the final word.   As such, giving him a platform to repeat lies and never concede when they are demonstrably wrong simply worsens the epistemological crisis that the Right Wing has created over the last decade by making impossible any genuine debate based on certain facts being 'real' and needing to be conceded as such."   

She's such a nutter...

Things to wonder about

*  Not much news seems to come out regarding Russian progress in Ukraine, so I assume they aren't advancing much, if at all, despite it being summer and (presumably) the best season for them to do so?    

* I get that it certainly doesn't look like the Secret Service did a good job with the Trump protection, but I do wonder at the idea that the head of the organisation should be personally responsible for every single failure even if they have nothing to do with the particular job.    (I accept that it seems she is getting flack from both sides of politics, and she may not have performed well before the MAGA nuts, but still it seems odd that the MAGA types rushed to judgement that she was personally responsible before she even got there.  It paints a bleak image of how terrible government management would be under a new Trump administration.)

* Why are Elon Musk fanboys - or shareholders in Tesla - not worried about his full backing of the side of politics that is completely dismissive of the value and utility of electric vehicles?

* Why did I have a cinematic style dream the other day about a horse that sacrificed itself to protect its owner, and it was very moving?  

American politics

A few thoughts:

*   So the alien Mark Zuckerberg is the latest tech billionaire to suck up to Trump, calling his interference with the Secret Service effort to get him off stage "badass", while claiming to be declining to actually endorse him.  Uhuh.

Peter Theil - another person who gives the appearance of being barely human - apparently has the ultimate opportunist and Trump flip-flopper JD Vance in his pocket. 

As many are saying, the explanation appears simple - billionaires like both tax cuts (because, presumably, they think they are the smartest person to know what to do with their money, despite evidence to the contraray) and are happy to support someone they know is dumb but able to be manipulated.

And Trump doesn't even pretend to be not be open to being bought!   

*  I started writing this post yesterday, and was tempted to say "so, the predictions in many media outlets that Biden was going to resign Sunday seem to have been wrong."   Then I wake up this morning, and he has!   Can't say I am too surprised - and I think Biden's reputation in history will only be enhanced.   

*  Meanwhile, I am just continually flabbergasted at how Trump diehards are simply beyond reasoning with.   I mean, look at this patent cult post:

But even for Trumpists less emotionally unstable than Woods, how can they talk themselves into dismissing the scores of people who worked with Trump in his first term and who refuse to endorse him now - up to and including his own Vice President?   (I know the reasoning they commonly use - they were never "true" supporters, and he is just bad at picking people.  OK, that's cult reasoning - but why do they think he has overcome the inability to pick only "good" people?)

How do they think that it isn't pure opportunism that explains people who have condemned Trump in the strongest possible terms who now endorse him?  (Like Barr, Vance.)   I know the reasoning they use - it's like Woods - they fantasise that the US is the midst of the worst Presidency of all time (their cult leader told them) - but it is patently untrue on any metric you can pick.   Of course, they are also bolstered in their belief by RW media - but how can they not see that they are simple propaganda outfits for the purpose of making money?    

The short take is:  they cannot be reasoned with.   The Republicans have decided this is the way to power, so they are not going to encourage voters to ever listen to evidence and reason. It's appalling.

The search for a substitute for blood

There's an interesting article up at Science about developments in the search for a good blood substitute.  It starts with this bit of history that I think is new to me:

In 19th century New York City, Theodore Gaillard Thomas enjoyed an unusual level of fame for a gynecologist. The reason, oddly enough, was milk. Between 1873 and 1880, the daring idea of transfusing milk into the body as a substitute for blood was being tested across the United States. Thomas was the most outspoken advocate of the practice.

At the time, severe bleeding was often a death sentence. Blood transfusion was practiced, but it was something of a crapshoot. Medical science was still 3 decades removed from discovering blood types. Patients who received mismatched blood suffered discolored urine, itching, and a sometimes-fatal complication: hemolytic shock, wherein their own immune systems attacked the transfused cells.

Doctors in the U.S. were looking for something less risky to stabilize a hemorrhaging patient. Thomas was sure milk was the answer. In 1875, he injected 175 milliliters of cow’s milk into a woman suffering from severe uterine bleeding after an operation to remove her cancerous ovaries. At first, he wrote, the patient “complained that her head felt like bursting.” She soon developed a high fever and an abnormally high heart rate, but recovered a week later. Thomas subsequently performed seven separate milk transfusions, publishing his results in several medical journals, and predicted their “brilliant and useful future.”

It was not to be: Saline solutions, still used today, were introduced the next decade as a much less dangerous, if imperfect, stopgap measure for emergency bleeding.

Gosh.  They really did try any old idea in the hope it might work.

Anyway, the other curious thing in the article is that a new experimental blood substitute has been developed by a doctor with the surname "Doctor".   Here's the reason why it could be useful:

Doctor is as fervent an advocate for hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs), as ErythroMer and its predecessors are more formally known, as Thomas was for lacteal transfusions. Donated blood has a shelf life of just 42 days. There’s also not enough, even in developed countries with well-organized blood donation systems: In January 2022, the American Red Cross, which distributes 40% of the country’s donor blood, declared the first-ever national blood crisis, as its supply—especially precious O-negative blood, the universal type—dipped dangerously low. Meanwhile, hemorrhagic shock caused by severe blood loss kills some 20,000 people in the U.S., and 2 million globally, every year.

An artificial “blood” could, perhaps, fill the void. In settings where fresh blood is hard to come by, such as battlefields and rural areas (where ambulance wait times are sometimes as high as 45 minutes), ErythroMer could be given on the fly to maintain the vital flow of oxygen to organs until someone reaches a hospital. It’s a freeze-dried powder that remains usable for years and can be reconstituted by simply mixing it with widely available saline. And ErythroMer should be safe for any blood type, because its membrane doesn’t include the red blood cell surface proteins that cause mismatches.

....

So far Doctor’s creation remains in animal testing, but it isn’t the only effort to package hemoglobin inside lipids to fashion a viable blood substitute. A rival product in Japan has already been tested in a few people and generally appears safe.

But the success of these new products is far from guaranteed. Barely 2 decades ago, earlier formulations of HBOCs were scuttled or sidelined after trial participants died. Subsequent attempts haven’t fared much better. The most advanced HBOC to date, approved for people in South Africa and Russia, has struggled amid concerns about side effects.

 All very interesting...

RIP Bob Newhart

I very much doubt a bad word has ever been said about Bob Newhart as a person - he just seems a very modest man who rode a great talent for deadpan comedy delivery (of which I am generally fond) to great success.  I hadn't realised until I watched this story that he had been so spectacularly successful with his first album so quickly:

 

 

Update: I see that he got a mention in my 2005 (!) post about how I rank the sitcoms I have watched over my life. I don't think I would change a thing about that post, either. On a side note, though, I have been meaning to say here that the funniest comedy show I have been watching lately on streaming (Binge) is the TV version of vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows. It had several seasons, but really hasn't attracted as much attention, in my opinion, as it deserves for routinely being very funny.

Update 2:  I liked this bit from a NYT interview when he turned 90:

Has your sense of humor changed since you started?

Something very sick makes me laugh. My wife says to me, “If people ever found out what you find humorous, they’d stop showing up.” I said to her: “That’s our little secret.

I think that Covid has sealed his fate

Generally speaking, I have been agreeing (mostly) with Jennifer Rubin's "hot takes" on Twitter about the Biden situation, even though she decided about a week or so ago (I think) that Biden does have to give up.  Here's one she wrote, updating her take on the whole matter, that I saw yesterday:

I also agree with David Roberts, who has really been grinding his teeth about the media over this:

Most people answer: 

And this is exactly how the NYT will frame it:

Things the VP candidate has said...

Apart from all the dumping on Trump he did before he decided he could make a better living by being a Trump suck up, people have been looking for other stuff JD Vance has said, and this one is "good":

 He was quoting Nixon, and this tweet gives some more context:

Notice how Nixon in a private (drunken?) rant talks exactly how Trump and his minions talk openly (and while sober) now.   

But the media shrugs and reports it as if it is just normal political talk now....

Further to a previous post...

 

And on the local scene:  

 They are too dumb to see the danger in preaching to their own religious membership that the political opposition is "evil".  

Shouldn't it seem odd to at least some MAGA types that God got an angel to get Trump to turn his head a fraction, but not to bump the rifle away from a firefighter protecting his family?

 

Impressions so far

Seems to me the Republican convention is far from going smoothly.   Trump seems to be wanting to broaden the party out to any old weirdo who'll bend the knee - see speech from Amber Rose (who I had never heard of before, but seems she is either an atheist or satanist - or maybe former satanist, I don't know);  the video of Trump sucking up to complete nutjob RJK junior (in which he sounded very "up", compared to his very low energy appearance on the first night); Johnson walking off stage when the teleprompter stopped; Gaetz looking like he wanting to punch out Kevin McCarthy; Rudy falling over; nutjobs realising Vance has an Indian wife; Melania still in a bunker somewhere.

All looks perfectly normal - not.   This article from WAPO gives some good detail on internal divisions within the party being shown up in the convention.

And yet the NYT is still drumming up the "Democrats are in panic" line.   

How many MSM outlets published images of Trump looking asleep on the first night?   If it was Biden in a similar situation it would be on the top of every single web page.

The double standards on display are astounding...

PS:  Noah Smith has become far too pessimistic lately, I reckon.   His judgement is going wonky on some issues:

Update:  Greg Sargent now writes at New Republic, and he's good.

I've been waiting for this...

In the midst of entirely justified grief, an example of how their political hero has created unwarranted division

First:  nothing is this post is intended to downplay the legitimacy of this family's grief.   

I wasn't going to comment on the wife of the late Corey Comperatore not taking a call from Biden - I can understand that she would likely be under the influence of those who immediately leapt to blame  criticism of Trump as "inciting" an attempt on his life.  However much of a nonsense I may think that is, and given the lack of detailed knowledge of the background and motivation of the shooter, I can understand her not being in the mood to talk to Biden.  

Interestingly, she also said Trump hadn't called her - something you would think his advisers would recommend him to do.  But he was looking out of sorts at the convention today, so who knows?  As I mentioned in my last post maybe he's undergoing some issues, and maybe he wouldn't handle a call well.   (I'm also remembering the seriously oddball call he made to a kid at Christmas in which he referred to belief in Santa Clause as "marginal": if he can screw up a call to a kid like that, can he be trusted to make a spontaneous condolence call?)

Anyway, I will post about this:   it now seems that the man's daughter has posted on Facebook about her grief, and it inadvertently shows something more concerning.  Look at this:

The issue I'm referring to is (even allowing for her grief) the worrying cynicism that "the media" would not report the heroism of her father.

I'm pretty sure she had been proved wrong before she even wrote this:  very early reports said he had died protecting his family with his body, and no cynicism was expressed anywhere about that in any media outlet that I've seen.  (I think I have seen exactly one person on Twitter critical of her father for some of his attitudes - but that is in no way "the media")

Her attitude towards "the media" is clearly one that has come from believing a decade or more of Trumpian rhetoric of it being "the enemy of the people", so she assumes they would never praise the actions of anyone who was at a Trump rally no matter what they did. 

It is, of course, perfectly legitimate to criticise the mainstream media - lots of us on the other side are doing that now for its role in attacking Biden as a candidate.  But the Trump led campaign that "the media" is constantly lying because they don't like him, and his followers, is transparently cultish and damaging to normal politics. 

Anyway, maybe her seeing the swathe of positive reporting for her father's actions will lead to her realising that the media isn't quite what Trump, and perhaps her father?, thought it was?   Let's hope so.      

Let me wildly speculate...

So, after saying he is changing his convention speech "to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together" (ha!), he has turned up there looking "emotional" (I actually agree with that):

Wouldn't it be funny if the near death experience has genuinely made him religious, and in the worst possible way - such as believing the Messianic guff that his Christofascist base has always believed, and that he was saved by God to win the election.

Or (and I know this is wildly unlikely) he sounds humble for the first time in his life and thanks Biden for his kindness and says his rhetoric about the Democrats is going to change.  (I mean, this is so unlikely I find the previous speculation more plausible.)

What in fact will happen, I would bet money on, is that he makes an awful speech which amounts to "we have to unify America again, and that can only happen if everyone agrees with me".

Maybe the Wall Street Journal does better videos than articles?

I get the impression that WSJ videos tend to be more politically objective than the articles and editorial line.  The latest example - I thought this video explainer of what the choice of JD Vance as VP for Trump means for the party overall was pretty fair and reasonable:

Update: Oh, Elon Musk, who's been gushing over Trump like a young woman at a Taylor Swift concert since the weekend, has decided the WSJ isn't pro-Trump enough. Interesting. 

 

"Dumb" versus "evil"

It seems to me that the simplest way to summarise the heart of political polarisation in America is that:

a.    Republicans, especially Trump supporters, think the Democrats are evil;

b.    Democrats think Republicans, especially your "average" MAGA members, are dumb.   

And being "dumb" at some level explains why Republicans are more susceptible to conspiracy belief.  It is pretty obvious that the rush of Democrat conspiracies on Twitter yesterday that the assassination looked staged (no doubt based in large part on Trump instantly turning it into political theatre) will not last - especially given that one unfortunate guy was killed.   By comparison, MAGA Republican conspiracies last forever.

Now, of course, any over-simplification is not perfect, but I think the "dumb" vs "evil" is broadly accurate, and explains why Republican rhetoric is so much more dangerous to the unity of America:  you respond to "dumb" by education and better information; but "pure evil" is readily seen as deserving of violence and death. 

That they are "dumb" also means that it is so easy for them to completely ignore the implicit "authorisation for violence" that is obvious to the rest of the world when your political leadership goes on for years about a fantasy "deep state" that wants to "destroy" you, the mainstream media being "the enemy of the people", conspiracies about elections having been rigged so as to prevent your rightful winner taking power, and illegal immigrants being cast as a group chock-full of murderous and violent intent against the "good" people who happen to have been born in America.

And the ease with which they are manipulated means they are so easily "self-gaslite", inverting the entirely reasonable warnings of Democrats and centrists (that the side that seeks revenge for their conspiracy beliefs  by way of  everything from show trials, mass public service sackings, rounding up of millions of people into internment camps, etc etc is the side that is a danger to democracy) into "Democrat rhetoric is leading to assassination attempts - it must stop."

So "dumb" - and so obvious that history is going to record them as mad and easily manipulated - but they can't see it because of the information bubble they live in and the bad faith motivation of the rich and cynical who sustain it.  

Update:  examples from just now to support this post...

Twitter on the Trump incident

Of course there will lots of insanely premature comments on this, but let's look anyway:

Latika has become a major embarrassment to her so called profession:

As someone says:

She gets worse:

And of course, Rita and MAGA are going nuts:

And as if we didn't know already:

A good summary here:

This was good advice:

For every MAGA person who thinks this makes Trump look strong and a shoo in for the election, there's probably a person who thinks that mugging for the crowd and camera when the poor agents who have to throw their bodies in harm's way and are trying to get him out ASAP is not a great look.  

Also, let's see if he shows gratitude for the call from Biden, or ignores it, or worse.  And will it decrease his rallies.  It's hard to believe President Bone Spurs  has inherent physical bravery, and I can imagine him being at least concerned about future outdoor rallies.  Will it shake out Melania from the bunker from which she has been ignoring the campaign?  (Why has no one in the MSM been asking where she is?)

So many possibilities...

Update: