If they take ten years to build, start now. Nuclear plants offset 400 million tons of CO2 a year in the US alone. All the waste produced since the 1950's would fit just over 9 meters deep on a single football field. Yes there's mining, it's not great, guess what? Solar panels and wind turbines also require mining. The open pit sort, the sort with wastewater containing the ever-perfidious radioactive elements. All in all, for each ton of rare earth elements extracted, about 2,000 tons of toxic waste is produced, 1-1.4 tons of which are radioactive, usually thorium and uranium funnily enough. A point of interest on the waste, the tailing dam of the Bayan OBO mine in China, responsible for only half the world's rare earth elements, is around 70 million m3, the nuclear waste I previously mentioned comes in at 49,000 m3, or 0.07% of the volume of a single mine.

All this to say, let's build solar panels, wind turbines and nuclear reactors, because we're in the harm reduction phase, and nuclear reactors are a fantastic tool even if they have downsides, just like everything else.

Many internet-goers like to give pedantry a hard time, but I just want to let you know that I love it and all the niche facts it brings.

Def Bulgaria with toasting knowledge like this.

Buy concert tickets if you want to support musicians, streaming income doesn't really factor into it afaik.

Like incest for computers. Random fault goes in, multiplies and is passed down.

12:01AM is definitely 00:01, so 12AM is midnight.

Agree though, 24hr clock is just better.

Oh damn, didn't know he'd written more than the original 3. I absolutely adored Garth Nix when I was younger, the keys to the kingdom series too. Might have to revisit and add the last two abhorsen books to the collection.

Fun fact, there's around 2% of people that don't produce smell when they sweat. The smell comes from bacteria that eat a certain chemical in sweat, and the folks don't produce it, i.e. no bacteria or smell.

For trebuchets at least, they were only siege weapons, took a long time to both assemble and fire. Though I must concede they were better than melee weapons for knocking down walls.

I think the BEUC reaction came from the product itself not being carbon neutral. Apple paid for credits to "offset" the carbon released in production, but that carbon is still released in production. Also where they invested to get said credits is a timber plantation for making pulp, not a great carbon capture project.

To return to simile, it's like labeling a product as non-toxic because the toxins only release after a few years.

Giant, geode, gel, george, gerbil. Just sayin'.

Polymer bonded to frying pans to make them non-stick.