• 0 Posts
  • 50 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 9th, 2023

help-circle
rss










  • I feel that. My dad sold my childhood home after my mother’s passing and moved out a few years ago. I had not lived there for 25 years or so, but three of my cats were buried in the yard because I lived in rentals during that time. The last walkthrough through the house was of course emotional, but strolling through the yard past the trees where I put the little furballs to rest really hit me.


  • There’s also fuel cells, where fuel is not burned to create steam to move something, but combined with oxygen in a different way (the end products still being the same) so the electrons shuttled around during this reaction can be utilised as electricity. Think of combustion as oxidation of your fuel, the oxidation meaning that you (among other things) move electrons from the fuel to oxygen. In combustion, unfortunately you can’t access the electrons directly, as they are always stuck in the chemical bonds of the molecules, that’s why we take the detour via heat/mechanical - the steam engine. The fuel cell now separates fuel and oxygen, and thus divides the combustion reaction into two parts that happen at opposite sides of the cell. Those sides are divided by a membrane that does not allow the electrons to transfer across, so they need to take a detour through an electric circuit, in which we can harvest them as electrical power.

    I always found it really fascinating that fuel cells are the only other technology than solar where the electrons we use as electrical power are more or less directly generated as opposed to the detour via a generator. Unfortunately, fuel cells are still a very niche technique.



  • He won’t, because he’s rich. The article is so apologetic already, several paragraphs about how bad this poor guy feels. Bonus points for mentioning he’s a father of four (nothing is mentioned about the victim’s family). "I’m not a thug!'. You disregarded other people’s safety and well being for your own benefit, when being called out, you used unreasonable force. That’s a thug to me.



  • Well, the much higher salary ceiling might look nice on paper, but let me tell you from experience that it is eaten up quickly by higher cost of living. I have been fortunate enough to work for short (one to three year) stints in the US, most of that in the SF bay area. A few years after returning (more or less for good) to my EU home country where I now have a government job (which does not pay as well as industry jobs), one of my former SF bosses asked how much he’d need to pay me in order for me to come work for him long term. It was quite tempting, and I did the math back and forth and in the end arrived at 2.5x of what I’m making now, and that is on the low end. I have a few colleagues and friends in similar situations, and the 2x-3x figure is what we generally agree on. Between health insurance, child care, retirement savings and housing, your cost will be dramatically higher than in most EU countries, and this does not factor in differences in Labor rights and potential visa issues.

    The SF bay area of course is extreme, but a low six figure salary puts you just above the poverty line there (so people say). Working remotely living in some low COL state might be an option, but then again you will live in East armpit nowhere Kansas…