When it comes to generating electricity, nuclear is hugely more expensive than renewables. Every 1000Wh of nuclear power could be 2000-3000 Wh solar or wind.

If you’ve been told “it’s not possible to have all power from renewable sources”, you have been a victim of disinformation from the fossil fuel industry. The majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable.

This is all with current, modern day technology, not with some far-off dream or potential future tech such as nuclear fusion, thorium reactors or breeder reactors.

Compared to nuclear, renewables are:

• Cheaper
• As clean or cleaner, in terms of emissions
• Faster to provision
• Less environmentally damaging
• Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel
• Decentralised
• Much, much safer
• Much easier to maintain
• More reliable
• Much more capable of being scaled down on demand to meet changes in energy demands

Nuclear power has promise as a future technology. But at present, while I’m all in favour of keeping the ones we have until the end of their useful life, building new nuclear power stations is a massive waste of money, resources, effort and political capital.

Nuclear energy should be funded only to conduct new research into potential future improvements and to construct experimental power stations. Any money that would be spent on building nuclear power plants should be spent on renewables instead.

Frequently asked questions:

• But it’s not always sunny or windy, how can we deal with that?

While a given spot in your country is going to have periods where it’s not sunny or rainy, with a mixture of energy distribution (modern interconnectors can transmit 800kV or more over 800km or more with less than 3% loss) non-electrical storage such as pumped storage, and diversified renewable sources, this problem is completely mitigated - we can generate wind, solar or hydro power over 2,000km away from where it is consumed for cheaper than we could generate nuclear electricity 20km away.

• Don’t renewables take up too much space?

The United States has enough land paved over for parking spaces to have 8 spaces per car - 5% of the land. If just 10% of that space was used to generate solar electricity - a mere 0.5% - that would generate enough solar power to provide electricity to the entire country. By comparison, around 50% of the land is agricultural. The amount of land used by renewable sources is not a real problem, it’s an argument used by the very wealthy pro-nuclear lobby to justify the huge amounts of funding that they currently receive.

• Isn’t Nuclear power cleaner than renewables?

No, they’re pretty comparable in terms of emissions, and renewables are cleaner in terms of other environmental impacts. You can look up total lifetime emissions for nuclear vs. renewables - this is the aggregated and equalised emissions caused per kWh for each energy source. It takes into account the energy used to extract raw materials, build the power plant, operate the plant, maintenance, the fuels needed to sustain it, the transport needed to service it, and so on. These numbers generally show that renewables tend to be as clean or cleaner in terms of total lifetime emissions, and in addition, since nuclear relies on fuel extraction (mining) and has lots of issues regarding waste, renewables is overall cleaner than nuclear.

• We need a baseline load, though, and that can only be nuclear or fossil fuels.

Not according to industry experts - the majority of studies show that a 100% renewable source of energy across all industries for all needs - electricity, heating, transport, and industry - is completely possible with current technology and is economically viable. If you disagree, don’t argue with me, take it up with the IEC. Here’s a Wikipedia article that you can use as a baseline for more information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

god are you fucking stalking me? I thought I had already blocked you lol

Humans and computers see and understand artwork completely differently. If you tasked both a human and a computer to look at a painting for 10 milliseconds and asked them to recreate it from memory, how accurate would their reproductions be? It is completely wrong and very misleading to equate human learning with machine learning. They are completely different processes.

For me, I could only really discern simple emotions and only when they were strong, and most of the time I just felt kind of neutral, even when others thought I should be feeling excited or sad I just felt kinda empty, and through therapy I realised that I wasn’t really empty, I just didn’t have an understanding of what was going on, and I was kinda suppressing stuff.

Not saying that’s what happens with you, I have no idea! I’m just sharing because I thought it might be interesting for you. And also because I just overshare sometimes!

If you were to ask me my opinion - and feel free to disagree or just ignore this, as it’s totally personal and way beyond my business - I’d say the best reason to get therapy around this isn’t because you want to have the coping mechanism available, but rather because if you’re not able to express or access the full range of emotions and process them in a healthy way, then your experience of life is kind of incomplete. This was something I discussed in therapy - why would I want to feel negative emotions, anyways? Why would anyone want to be sad or scared or angry? And from a logical perspective yes they’re helpful emotions, but aside from that, if you’re living life without that, you’re not experiencing the fullness of life, you know?

Again, I’m sure our situations are totally different, but I thought my perspective might be interesting or helpful for you.

If I may ask, has therapy helped you? Did you manage to cry?

It has helped me a lot. The reason I went into it was to come to terms with living with my disabilities and so on, and just to kind of stop hating myself so much, and in that respect, it really helped a lot. And I learned a lot about myself - some things I like, some things I dislike. My life is so much better for having gone through it in many ways, things that I wouldn’t have really thought about if it wasn’t for therapy. I have always thought of myself as quite self aware but it really made me see that what I thought of as self awareness was really kind of just self-loathing, and that I wasn’t really aware of lots of things going on in my head. I’d really recommend it to anyone, it was a very worthwhile experience.

The reason that the case went to court is because the rule was selectively enforced, but we don’t know details beyond that. So we don’t really know one way or another.

“For the good of society … [transgender people] must be eradicated” - Michael Knowles, at the CPAC conference

There is a game studio I like called “Indie Board and Card” as well! It’s a bit of a shit name you’re right.

I know it’s not a big leap, honestly it’s perfectly reasonable to assume. If the guy had just said “oh yeah, I had assumed he was talking about the first amendment because this is a US legal case” I’d have been like “yeah, fair enough” but he kept being a pedantic ass about it and trying to make out that I was somehow fucking stupid for thinking that the guy was talking about the broad concept of freedom of expression rather than the 1st amendment, lol

I’m from Scotland, and when I was a kid, it was assumed that everyone was Christian. It was extremely uncommon to be raised atheist - all of my friends have Christian parents, pretty much, and every school was a religious school. It wasn’t too hardcore or anything. We had lots of religious lessons in class, the school got together twice a week to pray, read bible stories and sing hymns, and we recited the Lord’s Prayer before lunch each day. I wasn’t really interested in any of it but also I didn’t make a scene or ask to sit out or anything, and we were never forced to read from the bible or anything like that. I have read the bible, out of personal interest, but it was never expected from me.

High school was a bit similar but not as much - we had the school chaplain (priest who partnered with the school) show up once a fortnight (every 2 weeks) to deliver a sermon or religious lesson or whatever, and they were always good for a laugh. My favourite lesson of his was about how text speak (this was before smartphones, so we all typed on the 9-digit phone keypads stuff like “hey hru will u b going 2 skl 2mro” meaning “hey, how are you? Will you be going to school tomorrow?” was common) could be used with God as well - we could say “hf” to mean “Heavenly Father” and lol could mean “lots of love”. We got a kick out of that for a few weeks sending eachother ironic texts that we had meant to send to god but got the wrong number.

Wait, what was I talking about again?

I’m just a straight male. Are my pronouns he/him?

Probably. Straight is the wrong word here - that refers to your sexuality, not your gender identity. A straight male is into women. But a straight male could also have pronouns other than he/him. Usually, a cisgender male uses he/him pronouns, but not always. Cisgender is a word that means that your gender identity matches your assigned gender at birth - e.g. not transgender

Is that how I should tell people?

Yes, the best way to do it is part of your introductions, like, “Hi, I’m Blake, my pronouns are he him”. Usually people don’t “say” the slash, it’s just a space, but you can say it if you want.

Do you actually tell them as you meet them ?

It’s up to you. If I am meeting someone 1:1 for the first time, I probably wouldn’t unless they did first. I always do it when I’m introducing myself to a group.

Do I have to wait for a certain social cue ?

The only social cue is simply, “what are your pronouns?”. Ideally, we (cisgender folk) should be trying to make it easier for transgender/non-binary people by sharing our pronouns, even if they would be obvious to most people - I’m a hairy, 6’4” bear, most people can tell I identify as male, but if I say my pronouns are he/him or any/all pronouns (I don’t mind which pronouns people use for me) it makes it less awkward for trans people or gender non-conforming (GNC) folk to do so.

How about online. Should I tell people or have it on my personal profile somewhere?

It’s up to you, nobody will expect it from you - it’s personal information after all. If you’re comfortable sharing it, then you can put it anywhere you like, including on your profile, or you can share at the point it becomes relevant.

And about respecting other people’s pronouns. How do i figure them out?

Either they tell you, or you ask them! It’s better if you avoid trying to guess. If you need to use a pronoun and you haven’t been told them, go with they/them.

Is it a big faux pas if I don’t before I know them ?

Nope, not at all! No one is expecting you to know their pronouns before they tell you, or you ask.

Is it a faux pas if I refer to someone I just met and I assumed to be male as he/him?

Usually not - most of the time, you probably can guess from gender expression, and you wouldn’t cause any offence. If there is even 1% doubt in your mind though, you should definitely just ask. Even if you’re 99.99% or even 100% sure, it’s good to ask anyways. The more we normalise people asking and sharing pronouns, the less awkward it becomes for everyone!

I’ve never seen anyone referring to anyone irl by non conventional pronouns. Is it an actual thing or is it currently being pushed to make the world a more inclusive place?

In my experience, it’s pretty uncommon, but it does exist. Usually they’re used by people who don’t really feel comfortable identifying as exclusively male or exclusively female, or by people who want to subvert or oppose the usual gender binary.

Hope this helps, thanks for being open with your questions and for trying to make the world a better place! If you have any other questions just ask.

No, it’s the name of the company, Indie Game Studios. Not all independent studios of course!

Hahah, I don’t remember! it probably wasn’t :p

I’m struggling to see how it ate so many dev hours.

Lots of stuff got added: space combat, ship building, the new research system, the rank challenges stuff, new lockpicking, and I bet loads of stuff besides that I forgot. Adding all of that stuff to a new game from scratch would take a good chunk of time, but I can imagine patching it all in to an ancient game engine that’s probably barely hanging together honestly it’s surprising they got some of it working at all

Interestingly, the original elder scrolls games had a lot of procedurally generated content, it was only Morrowind that was the first “handmade” world from what I recall. But it would have been much cooler if they could have added a few interesting little secrets or stories to each planet and just had fewer of them or something.

I’m getting old! I watch that video and think, “who let that kid play around on that statue?” and apparently he’s old enough to be criminally responsible haha.

As others have said, no, French isn’t particularly widely spoken in Germany or Czechia. My guess would be that France has a reputation for haute couture, so it’s not uncommon for restaurants, hotels, cafes. etc. to take on a little French flair in a similar way to how coffee shops like to become a little bit Italian!

Obviously for a big hotel it’s pretty likely that they will have French guests and quite a few French speaking staff, hotels are a bit like that - it’s not uncommon to hear the person at the front desk switching between 3 languages while interacting with guests of different nationalities, and most Europeans will speak their own language, at least some English, and probably some other European language. For example, I’m Scottish, and I speak English fluently, a little French (enough to deal with the day-to-day on holiday!) and a good bit of Norwegian.

I hope you have a lovely holiday, remember to respect local customs, and try to speak a little of the native language if you can - they’ll probably switch to English nearly immediately but they’ll appreciate the gesture!

The tourist looks like they’re a teenager, to me, like maybe 16 or so? Is it their parent holding the camera or what?

Come on man, I’ve seen you around a lot and I know you post a lot of good stuff, but to be fair, you’re not blameless here. I get that you’re not interested in a game and it’s frustrating to see lots of posts about it dominating your feed, but clearly the OP is interested and excited about it, and basically telling them to shut up about their interest just because it’s not what you want to hear about is a mean thing to do. It would be different if they posted spam links to their own blog every single day or something like that but they post all sorts of relevant news links to various communities so I think they just share stories they’re interested in, and that’s valuable to the community too! We all should be working together to build a nice friendly community to talk about what we enjoy and sometimes that means we have to tolerate others quirks and discussing things we don’t particularly care for.

Oh boy, Travis Worthington comes off as such a selfish asshole in this interview. Paraphrased, and being a bit unfair to him, he just kind of says, “oh, we know fine well that we are benefiting from stealing art from others, and I’d really like if you believed that I cared about that, but the reality is that I don’t really give a shit, and if you’re an illustrator, just give up on your dreams of getting a job someday, because I certainly won’t be paying you”

Definitely gonna be avoiding indie games studios from now on.

If you stole from Elon Musk’s private jet, shouldn’t he be allowed to throw you off the plane? Like it was kind of implied that you’d have to follow Elon’s rules when you got on the plane, and it was in that 10,000 page EULA you clicked “I agree” on… should Elon really be forced to carry people on his jet whom don’t follow the rules? If you don’t like them, you can get off the plane.

Don’t worry, if you’re falling through the sky, you’ll be eligible for a parachute, just send away form 117b and wait 6-9 months for your request to be denied, then you can hire a lawyer and file an appeal! Usually that should be sufficient to get you the parachute you need.

Oh, what’s that, you already hit the ground and died? Ah well, should have just danced for Elon I guess.