“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.” –J. Robert Oppenheimer
This man, making Christmas calls from the White House, believes the world is a sphere. And he has even flown around it! So has our beautiful FLOTUS, who happens to be his wife!
Truth and common sense must be valued by us, as individuals, in order to lastingly disempower the authoritarian fake news media. This includes the perniciously smarmy science media, which never answers for its errors and lies. I believe that the media has been responsible not only for leftist pathologies like scientism, medical fascism, and radical gender ideology, but also for reactionary movements like modern flat Earth, rejection of all medicine, and Biblical geological literalism.
Just as Wheatie’s Stormwatch Monday Open Thread was created as a place for people to openly express their thoughts and opinions, so, too, is this Thank God Thursday Open Thread, where honest but civil discussion of all topics is encouraged. This thread is also to be known as Theistic Evolution Thursdays, due to the author’s expected “pontification” about his scientific, religious, and political opinions. You are welcome to pontificate back! Free speech matters!
Please label all AI-generated content as being such, unless it is patently obvious (e.g., humorous AI images). It is important that we as individuals not begin to pretend that socially derived artificial intelligence is actually our own, as this form of stealthy social information averaging and feedback would be one more pretense and deception between people, in service of stupid Marxist socialism, and of those who wish to substitute their communally protected lies for actual truth.
The source of alleged truth matters, not for the truth itself, but for validation.
And yes, it’s THURSDAY…again.
And that’s it. We’re done stealing from Wheatie.
OK – maybe her rules need to be posted.
No food fights.
No running with scissors.
If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
Other rules may be derivable from these, and that conjecture is left for discussion.
If there is nothing beyond the “W” below, then this is a placeholder. For health reasons, I can’t always post a timely opinion before each Thursday, but I will try. Otherwise, you have this placeholder post, where YOU provide the content. Enjoy!
W
Ready for a new box of chocolates? You never know what’s in them…… well, not really!
(1) More chess – including a weak opening and a mistake leading to checkmate.
(2) More firearms – namely the 30-06, multiple rounds, including armor-piercing, against plain old steel 1/2″, 5/8″, 3/4″ and 1″. It’s SPICY.
(3) – More physics magnets – specifically, an explanation of how they work. Bottom line – line up those electrons, buddy – whether it’s in the tiny, or in the big – because it’s a LAZY UNIVERSE and the universe wants to get all LOW ENERGY JEB on things!
(4) More chemistry and bad jokes – as a zany chemist facetiously documents all the laboratory errors he made, in an effort to turn a piece of plumbing pipe into the simple, cheap, metal salt that you can buy at the hardware store to kill roots in your sewer lines.
This is what real YouTube Science was, before AI and big money ruined everything!
(5) More YouTube ChiCom ClickBait FakeTech! How to turn an old microwave oven into clicks and cash (and not actually a laser-aimed, directed energy, flame-thrower).
I do wish Steve was here to critique, but just read the comments on YouTube.
Whatever you do, don’t do any of this stuff at home!
This man, making Christmas calls from the White House, believes the world is a sphere. And he has even flown around it! So has our beautiful FLOTUS, who happens to be his wife!
Truth and common sense must be valued by us, as individuals, in order to lastingly disempower the authoritarian fake news media. This includes the perniciously smarmy science media, which never answers for its errors and lies. I believe that the media has been responsible not only for leftist pathologies like scientism, medical fascism, and radical gender ideology, but also for reactionary movements like modern flat Earth, rejection of all medicine, and Biblical geological literalism.
Just as Wheatie’s Stormwatch Monday Open Thread was created as a place for people to openly express their thoughts and opinions, so, too, is this Thank God Thursday Open Thread, where honest but civil discussion of all topics is encouraged. This thread is also to be known as Theistic Evolution Thursdays, due to the author’s expected “pontification” about his scientific, religious, and political opinions. You are welcome to pontificate back! Free speech matters!
Please label all AI-generated content as being such, unless it is patently obvious (e.g., humorous AI images). It is important that we as individuals not begin to pretend that socially derived artificial intelligence is actually our own, as this form of stealthy social information averaging and feedback would be one more pretense and deception between people, in service of stupid Marxist socialism, and of those who wish to substitute their communally protected lies for actual truth.
The source of alleged truth matters, not for the truth itself, but for validation.
And yes, it’s THURSDAY…again.
And that’s it. We’re done stealing from Wheatie.
OK – maybe her rules need to be posted.
No food fights.
No running with scissors.
If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
Other rules may be derivable from these, and that conjecture is left for discussion.
If there is nothing beyond the “W” below, then this is a placeholder. For health reasons, I can’t always post a timely opinion before each Thursday, but I will try. Otherwise, you have this placeholder post, where YOU provide the content. Enjoy!
W
Why Current Electric Vehicles Suck As “Reliable” Transportation – And What Might Be Done About It
We were discussing electric vehicles here, when Aubergine made an important point – quite bluntly, the superiority of internal combustion engines at simply getting the job done.
Dude, I live in Montana. Until an electric vehicle reliably runs in -20 degrees, can go several hundred miles without a charge, and can be easily repaired in the middle of a wheat field, they are not going to work here.
Gasoline and diesel engines are practical, EVs are not.
Some of this is inherent to the technology. Gasoline and diesel oil doesn’t lose energy availability at low temperatures, but batteries DO. This is a well-established problem with electric vehicles (EVs).
Note Aubergine’s point about “easily repaired in the middle of a wheat field” – and just consider the simple “repair” of bringing a gallon or two of gasoline to a vehicle which has run out of gas. Yes, there are electrical options – but the equivalent of walking for a gallon of gas isn’t one of them. The closest thing is calling in a jumper truck instead of a tow truck. This shows how much convenience is given up by leaving the simple, long-solved convenience of the internal combustion engine.
But it gets worse.
Barkerjimposted a link to a really great analysis, showing why EVs will NEVER be “quick fill-ups” using the current technology.
ChiCom-sponsored brag science is claiming they have a new battery that can basically solve all the problems of EV batteries. The oh-so-trustworthy Huawei is saying the battery can give ranges of 1800 miles and a 5-minute recharge.
Really?
You mean THIS stuff is solved?
Sorry – not really.
The reality is quite problematic, and Willis Eschenbach explains why.
But, as usual, reality is hiding out in the fine print, ducking the spotlight while the PR machine does its victory lap. Nobody wants to talk about physics. Nobody asks how, exactly, you’re supposed to pour Niagara Falls through a garden hose.
Left unsaid in all of that is the fact that that cable is NOT very flexible. So you’re going to have to park far away from the charger just to have enough flex in the cable to be able to attach it to your car. And it will still take two hours to charge your car because it’s only 1/24th of what you need.
The reason this problem doesn’t already exist at supercharging stations is that the car is only charging up for 300 miles, not 1800 miles.
This is where my mind typically gets BIOS-booted back into “utter basics of batteries” mode – where we just look at the chemistry of “redox” – meaning “oxidation and reduction”.
Rust, fire, human metabolism, copper cleanser, and batteries, are all examples of redox. Oxidation and reduction is what batteries do, only with rerouting of the electrons into an electrically useful pathway, instead of “just heat”. The battery is an ingenious perversion of fire, one might say.
And yet, this.
Batteries are – fundamentally – just chemical reactions. And that has consequences.
Interestingly, the inverse is also true.
Direct chemical reactions can be viewed as ultimately short-circuited, failing batteries.
And it gets bigger. Planet sized, in fact.
The biosphere on Earth is a kind of giant, solar-charging battery. Plants are the key – the thing that makes the battery, resulting in biocarbon and oxygen. Land plants store the energy as wood and oxygen.
The oxygen part of the battery encompasses the entire planet, which is a bit of a mind-blower, and has some amazing implications. The wood part of the battery may degrade to coal or petroleum, but either way, sunlight creates a giant charged battery. That battery can then discharge through FIRE. And, that fire can be converted to electricity.
California could take advantage of this giant battery, and turn its wood problem into money, but under intellectual “progressive” lightweights like Gavin Newsom, that can’t happen. Sad.
The internal combustion engine is the same, only it uses really old wood. AND – in a strange sense – it’s like an EV that works through battery discharge of heat, and not by any direct electrical intervention.
Now that I’ve loosened up your mind a bit about what is a battery and what is a chemical reaction, let’s look at why internal combustion is such a great type of EV.
Can We Use The Great Oxygen Battery Component?
For one thing, the internal combustion battery takes advantage of atmospheric oxygen as the “oxidant” part of the battery. That is a huge part of the battery weight that does not have to be hauled around. That part of the battery is already wherever you want to be.
Likewise, the discharged part of the battery (CO2 and H2O) is simply ejected into the shared global atmospheric battery, where these substances can be recycled by the solar generator (plants) and converted back into wood and oxygen.
Yeah, take a moment to savor the beauty of what God hath wrought through “just” the Schroedinger equation and the periodic table!
BEAUTY PAUSE.
Ok, back to stuff.
If we’re going to stick with lithium (or similar) batteries, the electrical vehicle is always going to be stuck with hauling ALL of the battery around. Both the oxidant and the reducing agent are going for the ride. And THAT includes the “used” oxidant and reducing agent. The full battery – even the discharged stuff – is going for the full ride, and is being hauled around by the good stuff.
SO – my first point – is that it sure would be nice if the EV battery could use oxygen as the oxidizing agent.
JUST SAYIN’.
This needs research, and isn’t a quick fix. But it offers future possibilities.
So setting that ambitious point aside, let’s go back to the points made by Willis and SteveInCO.
Can We Make Electricity Delivery Fast Like Gasoline?
How can we make gas service station stops SHORT and SWEET?
IMO, moving back toward a SHARED BATTERY like the atmosphere can work in several ways other than oxygen. One way would be to make the fuel something that you can just load into the car quickly and drive away. If car batteries were more like rechargeable device batteries – meaning they just slid in and out of vehicles – then energy stops would pretty much be as fast as racing pit stops, if one needed a fresh, charged battery. Just swap batteries and move on down the road.
With a scheme like this, the infrastructure for charging batteries could be located either in service stations, or nearby. Charging on the road becomes something that is done away from the consumer, except when home charging.
Note also that “swap-in” battery units can be very smart and the latest tech. The latest battery tech becomes a lot like the grade of the gasoline. Even better, the battery becomes something that can change technologies quickly, evolving faster than the vehicles themselves.
Battery units can be “self-warming” to get maximum energy release. They can be delivered warm and ready to work on the coldest day. They can keep themselves warm, as needed. They become their own thing – less of a concern for most drivers.
My most important point, however, has nothing to do with the chemistry or electrical technology.
Let All Batteries Fight It Out
To recover the innovation of “non-gasoline batteries”, we have to AVOID both unnecessary regulations and subsidies. Let these technologies compete, so that they can evolve. It is my contention that subsidies have distorted the technology of electric vehicles. EVs are not convenient in certain ways, because the “technosphere” of EVs had one focus of its geometry moved too close to individuals and their homes, due to subsidies administered through individuals.
That approach worked for a while, but it has led to technology which has limited the growth of EVs, and has held EVs back from being the industry that they could have been. Microsoft – for all its problems – knew that it had to create an ecosystem around itself, and let other forces drive significant parts of that ecosystem. EVs need to do the same. Off-loading “batteries” and “battery service” into largely separate industries that others can monetize and innovate in, could be the right move here.
Let gas and coal compete – and at all levels of organization! IMO, coal-powered vehicles like Teslas have a great future, especially as nuclear-powered vehicles. However, they will need to go through growing pains.
As Trump likes to say…..
Thank you for your attention to this matter (and energy)!
Forty years ago, I would have been writing this as a letter to the editor of my favorite science association magazine, AFTER the president of that association would have ALREADY said something similar PUBLICLY to the President of the United States, BUT – well – times have changed, and the heads of science associations don’t say things about leftist groups that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer don’t approve first.
So today WE THE PEOPLE talk about one of my favorite sciences – CHEMISTRY.
Let’s talk about relative dangers – what is hype and what is not hype.
Remember the “Deplor-a-Ball” after the Trump inauguration, when those DNC-Creamer-Antifa types (whoever) were going to use BUTYRIC ACID to attack the ball?
It’s time for some BRUTAL honesty for the sake of DISCERNMENT.
People on our side made a big deal about butyric acid being “corrosive” at the time, but the truth is, butyric acid is a weaker acid than acetic acid, the main stuff of VINEGAR. Pure acetic acid is not bad stuff – one could actually wash their hands with it, as long as they washed their hands thoroughly afterwards with water. Acetic acid, like butyric acid, is a WEAK ACID.
Weak acids give you TIME – maybe even INFINITE TIME – to wash them off. If they’re going into your STOMACH, where it’s already even MORE acidic, it’s not even a big deal.
That is why we put acetic acid – whoops, I mean vinegar – on our salads. We enjoy the MILD SENSATION of its WEAK ACID NATURE on our TONGUES. On our MUCOUS MEMBRANES.
Are you starting to see this?
Even when acetic acid is BAD, like when you cough a bit from inhaling some salad dressing, or when we use acetic acid to make cute little lab animals COUGH (but not too badly!) in tests of COUGH SUPPRESSION, it just ain’t that bad.
By the way, they teach this stuff in universities. Or at least, they used to.
Butyric acid, like acetic acid, simply isn’t that bad. It STINKS really, really, really badly, and THAT is what the evil Democrats were going to do – STINK UP that fancy party of uber-hip, good-to-be-bad, Trump supporters.
That’s it. It was a STINK ATTACK. But many on our side tried to make it sound worse than it was, because they could, because the LOSERS and HATERS had basically made a really dumb error in using a stinky stuff with the name ACID in it. The Democrats didn’t respect the POWER of psychology and information over actual chemistry.
Yeah, I know the feeling – the Dems who plotted that attack are indeed evil punks who deserve to go to jail – but it was still just a STINK ATTACK – not a corrosive attack. Even if Democrats had thrown that stuff on people, it would have been like throwing a mixture of RANCID BUTTER AND VINEGAR.
Yes, it probably says “corrosive” and “danger” on the label. Today, everything is OVER-LABELED, and we don’t have much DISCERNMENT of true chemical dangers. Everything is deadly in California for a reason – so that nobody has discernment. They WANT people to be like babies, utterly dependent on “experts” like me.
BUT NOW FOR SOME DISCERNMENT. Now for something discernibly different.
Fast forward to ANTIFA, and their threats to throw water balloons filled with “muriatic acid and wax” at conservatives. THAT, my friends, is a whole nuther beast. THAT is where CHEMICAL DISCERNMENT comes in.
Muriatic acid is – as you can see here – as much as 28% hydrochloric acid.
28% Hydrochloric acid is, for lack of a better term, concentrated hydrochloric acid.
People quibble over concentrations here, but it is frigging MEANINGLESS. As I will explain.
From Wikipedia:
Hydrochloric acid is produced in solutions up to 38% HCl (concentrated grade). Higher concentrations up to just over 40% are chemically possible, but the evaporation rate is then so high that storage and handling require extra precautions, such as pressurization and cooling. Bulk industrial-grade is therefore 30% to 35%, optimized to balance transport efficiency and product loss through evaporation. In the United States, solutions of between 20% and 32% are sold as muriatic acid. Solutions for household purposes in the US, mostly cleaning, are typically 10% to 12%, with strong recommendations to dilute before use. In the United Kingdom, where it is sold as “Spirits of Salt” for domestic cleaning, the potency is the same as the US industrial grade.[14] In other countries, such as Italy, hydrochloric acid for domestic or industrial cleaning is sold as “Acido Muriatico”, and its concentration ranges from 5% to 32%.
Even the toilet bowl cleaners based on HCl are shocking to me in their strength, and they are nowhere near 28% – more like 5-10%. I have ordered my wife NOT to buy those things. We had to air out the house the last time she used one. I smelled HCl everywhere and I did a MAJOR “WTF”.
I’m not saying this isn’t a damn good product. What I’m saying is that people need to be damn careful with it, and – well – my dear wife needs a more carefree product, let’s just say.
Note that the PRINCIPLE here is the same as what ANTIFA is doing with added “wax”. The “gel” is a way to make it STICK. They’re just talking about even stronger acids.
Check out the warnings on this gelled 5-10% acid. Seriously. READ THEM.
Trust me, these differences in high (>5%) concentrations only mean a few seconds MORE or LESS before it does the SAME NASTY STUFF TO YOUR BODY. These are all STRONG CONCENTRATIONS OF THE SAME ACID – a substance known as hydrogen chloride.
If we are brutally honest, then the reason that they CALL the commercial, industrial-grade stuff “muriatic acid” – an older name that NOBODY uses in the laboratory any more – is simply because it DOESN’T SOUND AS BAD.
Oh, they’ll give you some industry jargon history blah-blah-blah excuse, and technically it will be true, but FUCKIN’ A THIS SHIT IS JUST CONCENTRATED HYDROCHLORIC ACID.
AND CON HCL IS BAD SHIT.
I know this sounds harsh, but I personally think that police need to SHOOT anybody throwing balloons, once strong acid has been identified. They need to END THE THROWING IMMEDIATELY.
Here is why I feel this way.
I have DEALT with both butyric acid and muriatic/hydrochloric/whatever acid. I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.
Hydrochloric is one of the ones they WARN PEOPLE ABOUT in the lab. Nobody warns you about butyric acid, even if you can find a bottle.
In contrast, chemistry students in laboratory are going to use concentrated HCl a LOT, and they need to respect it. Nothing will FREAK OUT a chemistry department head faster than hearing that some freshman spilled concentrated hydrochloric acid all over themselves.
The first thing that will be asked is HOW FAST the stuff was washed off. SECONDS COUNT.
Imagine a pint of the stuff in THE FACE.
Hydrochloric acid can blind, or if inhaled deeply as a liquid, mist, or concentrated vapors, KILL. A strike in the face, like Andy Ngo of Quillette got with the concrete “milkshake”, would likely blind or kill him, if it was con HCl instead of concrete.
He would have been in WAY worse shape than what you see below.
Update to @MrAndyNgo supporters — he is being admitted to the hospital overnight as a result of a brain bleed. You sick “journalists” and other hacks gloating about this should be ashamed. As for the rest, please pray for @MrAndyNgo who we need back in health — brave man!🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼❤️ https://t.co/XYVy4EbIzv
— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@HarmeetKDhillon) June 30, 2019
That, my friends, is the result of NORMAL weaponry. ROCKS, basically.
HCl in the hands of ANTIFA is a CHEMICAL WEAPON.
When we are in the laboratory, we ventilate butyric acid for STENCH, but we ventilate hydrochloric acid for DANGER.
Inhale a little bit of water, and you are on the ground coughing. Inhale concentrated hydrochloric acid, and your lungs are burned from the inside.
Are you starting to see why I am basically thinking the feds need to send in the troops and restore order to the whole bloody left coast? This stuff is ridiculous. This isn’t America. This is the frigging Russian Revolution.
By IDIOTS who scream about RUSSIA? Seriously?
It’s literally INSANE.
I think I’ve gotten every kind of concentrated acid on me. Every one of the “strong acids” is horrible in its own way. Sulfuric burns through clothing and skin, but it’s slow. Nitric is faster and oxidizing and does interesting things to clothing, but it’s not super-volatile. You can get a fuming version of either sulfuric or nitric acid. Those are a bit nastier. Nice, fresh, highly concentrated hydrochloric acid fumes on its own, just a bit, and the fumes have a very seductively pure but deadly look, kinda like the railroad crash above. Hydrochloric is the most like a chemical weapon. It’s volatile, searing, fast, and strong.
The idea that these ANTIFA people want to make it even worse – more like napalm on human skin by adding the wax – that is just sick. It’s like our “yippies” went from protesting ABOUT napalm to MAKING IT.
I’m pretty sure that ANTIFA is Robert Creamer’s work, because he said he likes to use mental patients, and these people sure seem like mental patients to me. They are – quite literally – criminally insane, thanks to PC and antisocial socialist brainwashing.
Antifa has gone too far with hydrochloric acid. In my opinion the plotters need to be arrested now, or the police need to use DEADLY FORCE once these people start throwing concentrated strong acid.
Have we ever had people like this in America before? Certainly not that I can remember. This is UNAMERICAN. What is WRONG with Oregon? What is WRONG with their governor? What is WRONG with Portland? What is WRONG with their mayor?
Are they taking LYSERGIC ACID DIETHYLAMIDE – a.k.a. LSD – a.k.a. “acid”? (Which is not even an “acid” at all, by the way.)
Or does PC actually have the power to make people mentally unbalanced?
Whatever is happening, Q is right. These people are SICK.
