Like in a housing shortage you’re hoarding property and profiting off it.

Housing shortages are caused by bad government policy: namely, low-density zoning. Direct your anger towards the entity that deserves it, and make them fix their fuck-up.

(Note: I’m not making some kind of Libertarian “all government is bad” argument here. I’m saying that in this specific case, the laws need to be changed.)

By the same argument, replacing the coal fired power plant with wind and solar wouldn’t pose a challenge either.

The point is, you’ve got to compare apples to apples: either coal power vs. desalinization powered by coal, or renewables vs. desalinization powered by renewables. In every case, the pollution produced by the desalinization process (i.e., the brine etc.) is simply added to the pollution produced by whatever means was used to generate the power for it, which means @soEZ’s attempt to compare desalinization to power generation doesn’t make much sense.

US, mid thirties, and I not only drive a manual transmission, I go out of my way to insist upon it. For example, I own a truck and an SUV made in the '90s because it’s difficult to find newer ones without an automatic.

It does not really generate toxic waste like coal fired power plants

It generates all the waste associated with the electricity it uses, which is often from coal fired power plants…

…says the guy who clearly doesn’t understand the geologic water cycle.

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The problem isn’t about building houses. Everyone wants to live within 30 miles of the border. All our farm land and natural green space is in the same location. So what would you do? Which would you have us do? Bulldoze farm land, or bulldoze protected green space that is already threatened? If it was as easy as “build houses” we could have done that.

Then build fucking apartments instead, damn it!

instead of bending over for unreasonable shitheads in your party.

Why do you think he’d be inclined to do anything other than bend over for himself?

Huh, that’s the kind of thing that would just make me start visualizing how many I could fit in there.

They can build fire removedant systems…

Is the company that makes them headquartered in Scunthorpe?

Not for long if Lennart has anything to say about it, I’m sure.

I agree with you even though I’m only guessing at the episode you’re talking about and I have no idea which of the two Vortas he was.

(It’s the Ferengi hostage exchange episode, right?)

Sure, regulations such as carbon taxes are necessary to contain negative externalities, but if there’s a demand for cheap products there will be a lowest bidder that will take all market share.

If the taxes are accounting for the externalities well enough, even the lowest bidder will be sustainable.

The European Union is a confederation, just like the United States under the Articles of Confederation was.

While DRM is the bane of everybody there are cases where trust and integrity is important and it’s an intriguing look into how hard it is to manage.

Nah, when the user wants to ensure trust and integrity in his own system, it works just fine. The problem comes when the user who needs to be able to access the data is simultaneously the adversary who needs to be stopped from accessing the data.

In other words, it’s one of those situations where the fact that it’s hard to manage is a gigantic clue that it’s wrongheaded to try to do so in the first place.

According to the Open Source Initiative (the folks who control whether things can be officially certified as “open source”), it basically is the same thing as Free Software. In fact, their definition was copied and pasted from the Debian Free Software guidelines.

he also gave $5MM to Sea Shepherds

Enough to get an entire ship named after him!

People in North America identified with their colony/state first, and the United States second back in the 1700s. Give it time…

I get that they’re different countries, but different states here might as well be.

^ This guy Articles of Confederation.

(Seriously, the European Union basically has the same kind of structure now as the United States did between 1776 and 1789.)

Less than a week until Dragon*Con!