In other news today...
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@izzion said in In other news today...:
@Karla
Ladies and gentlemen, a new high score... I present to you, the first post of "In other news GODDAMMIT FBMAC!!!"
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@Karla
The article is from more than 11 years ago
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@izzion said in In other news today...:
@Karla
The article is from more than 11 years agoNothing like the past for finding about today?
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Good news for Texans! Except maybe Fox as it seems ahem right up his alley.
(technically this belongs in a "In other news Jan 2016" topic but that website has it as new news so meh)
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Headline brought to you by the 'No Shit, Sherlock' Department:
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https://moviepilot.com/p/emma-watson-finds-fictional-animals-hot-real-life/4222161
In other news today, Emma Watson just learned what furries are, and also that she is one.
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@lucas1 said in In other news today...:
@anonymous234 I think the shock is that they are probably more powerful now than the Government itself.
Uh... the CIA is part of the government, therefore the government can never be less powerful than the CIA, even if all other agencies, departments, and branches of government were eliminated.
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... and the onebox killed the reason I wanted to post this - the actual headline is:
Laindon man Ashley Deadman charged with double death by dangerous driving in Roundacre, Basildon
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I've never masturbated outside a hospital or a clinic so I'm in the clear!
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Texas
That's all you need to know.
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@Boner Next on her agenda, a law to charge woman of cannibalism if they swallow.
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
Was he one of those small handful of people who refused to return their Samsung Galaxy Note 7?
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@RaceProUK
Well, contrary to what you might assume from the initial "Texas", the bill is actually being proposed by an abortion rights advocate, as a satirical measure to highlight what she feels are inappropriate restrictions being placed on abortion by the Texas legislature.But yes.
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/me waits for the usual contingent of far-right folks to notice the part where it says President Trump wants to include Hyperloop development in his infrastructure plan and watch their heads explode.
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@masonwheeler said in In other news today...:
/me waits for the usual contingent of far-right folks to notice the part where it says President Trump wants to include Hyperloop development in his infrastructure plan and watch their heads explode.
Great. The Solyndra of the Trump administration. Fucking boondoggles.
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Obviously it started out as a head with a skull in it, but thanks to "C.S.I." we know that eventually severed heads evolve into mere skulls.
Brilliant
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
Solyndra
You do know that was taken severely out of context to be used as a political football, right?
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@masonwheeler said in In other news today...:
@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
Solyndra
You do know that was taken severely out of context to be used as a political football, right?
You don't know that there is no amount of context that changes it from anything but a boondoggle.
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
You don't know that there is no amount of context that changes it from anything but a boondoggle.
Not even the context where they were a small part of a large program of financing profitable technology companies, many of which were successful? (You know, the kind of thing VCs do all the time and no one criticizes them when some of the projects they finance fail?)
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@masonwheeler said in In other news today...:
Not even the context where they were a small part of a large program of financing profitable technology companies, many of which were successful? (You know, the kind of thing VCs do all the time and no one criticizes them when some of the projects they finance fail?)
There are a lot of things that private parties do that are OK for them to do but that government shouldn't be doing.
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I read this, and all I can think is "Put up some curtains".
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On a more humorous note:
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@masonwheeler said in In other news today...:
(You know, the kind of thing VCs do all the time and no one criticizes them when some of the projects they finance fail?)
Clearly you never follow financial news. VCs do have their share holders bitch and moan when they lose a lot of money. But it is rarely public outcry, because it is their money.
When the government does it, it is my money, so I have the right to bitch and moan.
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A story that never stops giving...
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
There are a lot of things that private parties do that are OK for them to do but that government shouldn't be doing.
Sure, but isn't basic infrastructure development one of the things that even the most hardcore small-government conservative types agree is a legitimate use of tax money?
The other relevant piece of context is that Solyndra actually had a good, working system; they just weren't able to successfully, profitably bring it to market due to competition from (heavily subsidized) Chinese solar companies, an unforeseeable state of affairs that didn't exist at the time when Solyndra got the government funding.
I was as outraged as anyone when the Solyndra story first broke, but then I realized that it looked like yet another case of people with an agenda feeding people a highly slanted story, so I looked into it a bit deeper. And the more you find out about Solyndra, the less it looks like a boondoggle and the more it looks like simple bad luck. They were just a company that was in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time.
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@masonwheeler Then they should have just worked harder to improve themselves.
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@masonwheeler said in In other news today...:
Sure, but isn't basic infrastructure development one of the things that even the most hardcore small-government conservative types agree is a legitimate use of tax money?
Yes, basic infrastructure sounds good to me. But we're talking about Solyndra.
@masonwheeler said in In other news today...:
The other relevant piece of context is that Solyndra actually had a good, working system; they just weren't able to successfully, profitably bring it to market due to competition from (heavily subsidized) Chinese solar companies, an unforeseeable state of affairs that didn't exist at the time when Solyndra got the government funding.
If it all looked good then they should have been able to find private funding. You're just making my case here.
@masonwheeler said in In other news today...:
And the more you find out about Solyndra, the less it looks like a boondoggle and the more it looks like simple bad luck.
I find it to be quite the opposite.
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
Yes, basic infrastructure sounds good to me. But we're talking about Solyndra.
What world are you living in, in which energy generation doesn't count as basic infrastructure?
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@masonwheeler said in In other news today...:
And the more you find out about Solyndra, the less it looks like a boondoggle and the more it looks like simple bad luck.
Yeah, their bad luck was that they got federal funding. If they hadn't they would of folded quietly and nobody would ever have heard of them.
Solyndra had an ambitious plan (more ambitious than most of their now successful competitors) with numbers that looked pretty. But they had failed to acquire any significant private funding at a time when private investment in alternative fuels was growing on trees. Investors were falling over themselves to get in on the ground floor. Yet, despite the glut of money in the market, Solyndra had almost no interest. It was always a risky investment.
After the government handed them a giant check, they turned around and horribly misused the funds. With almost no oversight at all from the DoE, they were able to waste all the money and never even get close to their end goal.
So yeah, I think you can all it a pretty colossal failure. With so many points along the way where anyone with a brain would of stopped and said "Hold on a minute, this doesn't look right, perhaps we should slow down and think this through". But hey, it is government, the only job where having a brain is a fire-able offence.
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
If it all looked good then they should have been able to find private funding.
Odd how that point of view never seems to apply to nuclear power stations.
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@flabdablet
The NRC has pretty much killed any attempt at a privately funded nuclear power plant.Edit:
This article provides some useful information:
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@RaceProUK said in In other news today...:
I read this, and all I can think is "Put up some curtains".
Well, the article does touch on some valid points. Light pollution is a thing, after all, and the effects of blue light on the circadian rhythm at least deserves some thoughts. For the latter, sodium lights do indeed pose less of a problem.
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@Rhywden Also, blue spectrum kind of sucks for street lighting anyway. It's never going to be as bright as day, so you want something a bit lower down that works better on the rod cells; yellowy green is pretty good.
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@masonwheeler said in In other news today...:
@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
Yes, basic infrastructure sounds good to me. But we're talking about Solyndra.
What world are you living in, in which energy generation doesn't count as basic infrastructure?
Sorry, I don't read / reason by keyword and I can't figure out a way to put Solyndra and basic infrastructure into the same box.
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@flabdablet said in In other news today...:
@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
If it all looked good then they should have been able to find private funding.
Odd how that point of view never seems to apply to nuclear power stations.
Ah, I see you are like @masonwheeler and think that a company trying to sell devices to generate electricity should be treated like a public utility. Which, like treating Solyndra different from nuke plants, isn't odd at all.
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@boomzilla How is Westinghouse not a company trying to sell devices to generate electricity?
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@flabdablet said in In other news today...:
@boomzilla How is Westinghouse not a company trying to sell devices to generate electricity?
How is Westinghouse a good analogy for the money that went to Solyndra?
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@boomzilla Both are huge black holes into which we pour public money that will never be seen again?
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@flabdablet said in In other news today...:
@boomzilla How is Westinghouse not a company trying to sell devices to generate electricity?
- They also sell devices which consume electricity, such as home appliances, televisions, and lightbulbs.
- They did (still do?) have a major contract with the DoE out at the Hanford Site to work on the waste management and cleanup. I'm pretty sure they ended up losing that contract to Lockheed Martin at some point. I'm not sure who the major contract holder is now.
Those are just a couple examples.
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@flabdablet said in In other news today...:
@boomzilla Both are huge black holes into which we pour public money that will never be seen again?
In other words: not in a way that you can explain.
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@PJH said in In other news today...:
A story that never stops giving...
From the town of Cuntis .... who would have thought
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@boomzilla
What's next? "Watch live: paint dries in our newsroom!"
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@izzion In a few weeks the grass in NYC will be growing again.
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@boomzilla I mean, it's coming down pretty hard here (I'm not in the city though), but not that hard!
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
@izzion In a few weeks the grass in NYC will be growing again.
Speaking of which, I really need to mow my lawn now. Ok, my weeds.
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@boomzilla I've seen a segment on evening news here about "holy shit guys, it's really cold outside!" (in like December). Part of the segment was that they left a small bottle of water outside for a few hours and then showed how it froze into a block of ice. The whole thing was several excruciating minutes long, with a live report and everything.