Adam Bell

There is absolutely a market for Mr Tickle opening a day spa.

Fantastic, water is a great thermal sink! I look forward to visiting your Cousteau-esque nuclear-powered habitat.

You can have one in your garden Dave, it will be an amazing conversation starter.

Fabulous! Tiny stirling engines for all!

If they actually get Artemis up in 2027 then I expect that they will, as they already have smaller prototypes they can bring along for the ride. Alas, there is a big if in that sentence.

This makes it very helpful for applications where access to spare parts and maintenance is likely to be minimal, such as... on the Moon. It may have spillover benefits for rugged applications on Earth too. /fin

A Stirling Engine uses heat, in this case from a core of fissile materials, to expand a working fluid to drive a generator. The working fluid is wholly contained within the engine throughout its useful life. /3

Based on NASA's other Fission Surface projects, the successful bidder for this funding is likely to be a nuclear Stirling Engine, rather than the kind of reactor we're used to on Earth. /2

Nasa to build nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030 - US media The reactor would provide power for humans on the Moon but there are questions about feasibility.

Absolutely fascinating. NASA has a long history of using nuclear energy is space, including using small nuclear piles to drive robots on Mars. But this is a different scale of project. /1
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Modern Megajoule Theory

The post-industrial state is that everyone has this information but doesn't have the tools to interpret it and therefore makes up their own interpretations. Access to information is necessary but not sufficient for a liberal society, alas!

The author is correct that democracies tend to be more stable, but that is entirely because they provide a framework for elite competition that is less destructive than the alternatives. This has nothing to do with an inherent 'anti dominance intutition' or whatever his claim is. /fin

Most social collapses are driven by environmental factors or elite competition, both of which lead to the collapse of trade networks vital for exchanging goods that enable more productive work. /2

I was all ready to find this fascinating as I absolutely love histories of social collapse, but this ends up being a bunch of weird pop psych and statements that are incredibly hard to justify, such as people preferring to be farmers and hunters if it wasn't for those dastardly governments. /1

I don't endorse Richard's solutions (except 3), but I think this approach is preferable to pretending like the country isn't significantly impaired, broken if you will.

I don't know whether competence maps to status in a meaningful way; it's very much a distinct category. Status is inevitably a relationship between yourself and society; competence is a relationship between yourself and a skill. I would think of it much like phronesis.

Unironically I would like to tell my teenage self to consider being less useless.

Essentially it boils down to, "Would you find someone incapable of getting shit done, has no direction in life and who regularly ignores your views attractive? No? Well, neither do women."

This is really good. If I can paraphrase, men can make themselves more attractive by being able to do things competently and by assuming that the woman they are talking to has a richer inner life that is nothing to do with them. Status is irrelevant to a left-wing theory of getting laid.

Energy in Britain has gotten scarce—and thus expensive.

Prices are high in absolute terms, and further above the European average than any point in at least 40 years (barring the 22/23 shock).

What's behind this, and is it crimping growth? I took a look for @economist.com. (🧵)

We actually have a milkman who has solved this challenge through the innovative practice of, "Giving us a box."

Also, the largest fraction of benefit spending is on pensions, implying that the civil war the gentleman is pushing for will involve the torching of nursing homes. I am unclear whether Reform intend to stand on a manifesto of, "WE WILL MURDER YOUR GRANNY," but that is what is implied.

Liebreich: The Pragmatic Climate Reset - Part I | BloombergNEF As the tide on clean energy turns, Michael Liebreich makes a strong case for a pragmatic climate reset.

An enjoyably punchy read here from the ever excellent @mliebreich.bsky.social

about.bnef.com/insights/cle...

TNUoS was already murdering Scottish RE projects; I wouldn't bet on many coming forward without this being resolved. I also expect higher grid defection in Scotland from the mid 30s than most models predict as a consequence.

Although it's a small number, that 50% uplift in TNUoS in five years is, uh, something that feels like it's going to become more important than it is now...

On the solar PV work, I have direct access to bills (as we need to model the commercial feasibility) and while I can't post those, this will help actually tell you where B2B power pricing is at the moment.

(note: wholesale prices down since April).

Source: brownlowutilities.co.uk/non-commodit...

Disagree; the fusion plants I've been in have been amazing jerry-rigged devices that have considerable Heath Robinson-esque charm. Agree on all the others though.

If I can't smuggle fudge or pies, what is even the point of doing crime?

My career as a fudge smuggler is ruined.

Thanks to being pulled aside by security at the airport in Jersey, I now know that densely packed fudge looks just like heroin to the security scanner.