this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 206 points 8 months ago (10 children)

Love it. People look at me like I'm crazy for trying to go greener, and I see this stuff online all the time.

"Haha EVs are so dangerous! Look at the fire hazard" like you aren't literally parking a tank of explosive gas in your house every night

"It doesn't have nearly the range of gas" They say while driving a massive truck that needs filling every week, meanwhile my charger at home is needed once a week and costs 1/6th a tank of gas

"Solar doesn't even cover the entire electric bill" Sure, it only halves it...

So much simping for big oil companies. Always reminds me of this from the Simpsons

[–] [email protected] 113 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This is an informal fallacy, "letting perfect be the enemy of good." You have to feel out people who are doing this and try to determine what their angle is. Usually they have one, some kind of asinine hobby-horse or ulterior motive, and you need to figure out quickly if they're arguing in good faith or not.

Because usually they're not, and inevitably you'll find that as soon as you're done addressing one point they've moved the goalposts somewhere else.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 8 months ago (23 children)

I just heard this phrase, and I'm so happy because I've needed a word for it. People who do this annoy me so much. Like with EVs especially. "Well we should be using mass transit_." Yes, we should, but that will take a very long time. Let's take a good solution now, which is better than the bad solution that is currently being used, and we will continue to build and push for the perfect solution at the same time.

Strive for perfect, but accept a good solution in the meantime.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Even with good public transit I'd have to sell my house and move to get a job and travel with public transit. I feel like that's a bit excessive if I had to get another one and move more. My commutes 250 miles a week and I was using a tank of gas a week. Went electric and I use 20-30kW to charge per day. 16k miles in on my first year. Hopefully one day I'll get solar installed and reduce even more too.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Solar is pretty damn sweet. My only gripe is that I installed my system before getting an EV, so during a couple winter months I sometimes have to use electricity from the grid. Not a lot, but just enough to make me mad that I'm not 100% self sufficient. Had I gotten an EV before installing solar, I could have gotten a bigger system.

My power company has some rules that say I can't do net metering with them if I install a system that was greater than 100% of my average annual usage or some BS.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Ouch that sucks. I don't want a roof install though that seems the most common. I got a half acre open land with farm land east and west with no trees so I figured I could do a decent size system.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (9 children)

Tangently related- im a big fan of the easiest 10%. Effectively, the easiest 10% of change does just as much as the hardest 10%.

Want to use the dryer less? Big stuff on line, little stuff in the dryer. That kind of thing.

Chucking a solar panel on your roof gets you 10% of the way there in a weekend then forget about it for 5 years.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

a tank of explosive gas

And we purposely use it to fuel small controlled explosions to make it go.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (4 children)

“Haha EVs are so dangerous! Look at the fire hazard” like you aren’t literally parking a tank of explosive gas in your house every night

Just to be pedantic, the real issue there is that EVs are potentially more explosive, and once they've caught fire, pouring water on the makes them explode a second time.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Do gasoline fires go out with a douse of water?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

Sure, and that's one I hear, but it's blown out of proportion by them. Really whenever you store that level of potential energy in any form it's going to be dangerous.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Pouring water on lithium-ion battery fires is not only safe it's the primary means of fighting them. It does not make them explode a second time, what it does do is cool down the battery.

Lithium battery fires though, there you'll want a class D extinguisher. Those batteries aren't in EVs though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

So don't use water? I mean, don't use water in basically any situation regarding a fire anyway, it's a last resort, but if you don't have a fire extinguisher in your home you're asking for trouble eventually.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Looks like Lisa's never heard of the food chain

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 8 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago

You mean yours doesn't?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Triforce, Pokeball, [too small to make out], Super Mushroom, sun? The others are clear Nintendo references, so I'm scratching my head at the sun at the end.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

It's the power of woke

[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

He could go twice as far if his ~~car~~ truck wasn't oversized.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Hey, a normal sized truck ain't gonna splat many zombies after the apocalypse.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I wish solar made sense where I live, but it's not just "cloudy right now", it's extremely overcast for 9-12 months out of the year. It'll still generate power, but not really enough to offset the cost of the installation. Hopefully solar keeps getting cheaper, more efficient, or both.

[–] LemmyExpert 14 points 8 months ago (3 children)

It will! And if you've got wind...wind turbines weren't very good & experienced breakdowns, but we're on the verge of a few breakthroughs. Making wind turbines cheaper, more efficient, and less moving parts to break.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Dude, it gets extremely windy where we live. Do private wind turbines exist? That would be perfect!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

Yes, but the tall ones are hard to get approval for in most residential areas. Smaller spiral/helix looking turbines can be easier to install if you can find a good spot to place it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

There's some up and coming ideas. The problem with traditional designs is that for them to be efficient and effective, they have to be big. Backyard turbines with less than 10 acres to work with won't cut it. They might supplement things a bit, but they're expensive for little gain.

Looking to the future, that might change. This video goes over some of the options at various levels of development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQKHJm7vd4E

I would add that when it comes to these sorts of things that have yet to see mass adoption, you should be skeptical of any individual thing. However, if there are ten different things, probably at least one of them is going to work out. In fact, that's my general feeling about Matt Ferrell's videos. Good for getting an overview of what might work in the future, but don't be too quick to jump on any one thing.

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[–] LemmyExpert 24 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I am interested in prepping, and if anyone else is, too - - I look at solar/wind renewable energy & I'm concerned about high draw, high demand devices & processes. Well I started to notice that even super green setups tend to have a small generator on-hand for large/rare draws, failures, and emergencies.

And small generators have become a lot smarter & more capable! Bonus.

You probably aren't running tons of major appliances all at once all the time. Buy the generator, have that backup plan...and go into the green energy world with confidence.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

I mean even those generators are only bought out of a lack of understanding. Really easy to get 6kW home inverters, and they are stackable. Some systems will stack up to 16 units. Thats 96kW, or said another way 400 amps of 240V.

A setup of dual 6k isn't even that expensive anymore and 12kW is enough for most people to just use appliances like normal without worry. Grab a couple of the low hanging fruit efficiency changes like heat pump for both your dryer and hot water heater and your golden.

The only other mistake people make is they size how many panels they need based off the potential maximum rather than the potential minimum. You should oversize your array for summer so that it is appropriately sized for cloudy/winter :)

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago

My brother bought some land cheap and started with his infrastructure before the house (he'd previously bought a school bus and converted it). He started with solar, batteries, and a generator for the well etc, but he's finally expanded to the point where the batteries can last him through all the dark, and the generator is hardly used a d just there as an emergency backup.

He works in IT remotely so it's not like he isn't using electricity and internet all day. He does have more room to put the panels though.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Jokes on you, I’ve been burying my gasoline…

no, this is actually a joke, feds. Burying gasoline would be irresponsible and dangerous.

~What you want to do is bury diesel..~

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Wouldn't it go bad after, like, a year?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (2 children)

probably. don’t take advice on storing fuel from a dipshit.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Don't tell me what to do dipshit

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I want a prepper's community on lemmy

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I don't really understand preppers. Why would you want to survive after society collapses? That sounds awful.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (2 children)

A lot of them aren't planning for the end of the world, just for "something bad" of indeterminate but finite length that's longer than a lot of people think reasonable.

It's a spectrum, with routine "emergency preparedness" on one end, and "self sufficient lifetime bunker filled with reusable water and canned food" on the other.

It's normal for people to have a flashlight, a few days worth of shelf stable food, a first aid kit and a couple of tarps. It doesn't even need to be intentional, it's just normal, but it still forms a basic emergency kit.
A rational response to a normal risk.

A lot of the more extreme peppers who aren't radical are in more rural areas, where something like a tornado could actually knock out power for a week or more.
A rational response to an uncommon, but real risk.

Others just have a disproportionate estimation if the risk of something like Katrina or the 2003 blackout happening, that can knock utilities out for a protracted period of time, or some esoteric and unlikely beliefs about civil unrest.
A rational response to an uncommon, unlikely risk.

At the far end you have people who want to survive the literal end of the world. I don't necessarily get why you would want to survive for a bleak and empty life either.
An irrational response to an unprecedented, infinitesimal risk.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The chance to create a new society in our own image. With government subsidised cocaine and hookers.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Than have to scrape by in a post-apocalyptic hellscape? Absolutely.

I don't have a Mad Max fantasy.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

Not very shiny and chrome of you.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Back in my day, we didn't feed the trolls, and they starved to death

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

The Devil's Panties!! A blast from my past right there.

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