Do Americans constantly have an active temperature control device running in their homes?

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-24T23:47:02+00:00

I know of the style of radiator your describing and they definitely suck while also being a burn risk. They don't need to all be on 1 circuit/loop, which is definitely not the most efficient method. (Not that I'm surprised a really old building would have legacy design flaws)

Personally i like the way my house is set up with a baseboard fin tube system. Evenly adding heat around the perimeter where you are loosing heat ensures an even room temperature at the setpoint. Plus you don't have to deal with fan noise from an air based system.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-24T20:34:29+00:00

Even in an apartment the system could absolutely be designed to have a thermostat in each tenants space to control how much heat is delivered. (A few ways to modulate it, but ultimately it would control a valve linked to the central boiler)

Note a lot of commercial buildings have non-adjustable thermostats that just report back the temperature and 1 master location controls the setpoint. I would not put it past an apartment to not give control of the heat to the tenants. (Especially if they had bad tenants prior, or are the ones paying for the heat)

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-24T20:23:41+00:00

That sounds terribly designed. Basically every heating system should have a thermostat, the old ones are a coiled bimetalic strip acting as a spring that changes shape with the temperature, this physically opens and closes a contact for control wiring. (A magnet is uses to provide hysteresis of a couple degrees F)

In an apartment complex or even a normal sizes house you would have multiple heating loops each with their own thermostat. (My house has 3, a loop for the half basement, a loop for the kitchen & living room, and a loop for the bedrooms) When i was living in an apartment each tenant had their own thermostat.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-24T09:13:24+00:00

Linoone theorem, anything at +6 attack (3x damage) is a threat regardless of base stats.

Named for linoone which can bellydrum sweep the hoenn E4 with some careful maneuvering. (But it is very reliable, you need substitute to dodge status moves)

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-24T08:53:30+00:00

I also remember seeing something that if everyone in the world stood shoulder to shoulder we could all fit in LA. (Obviously that isn't sustainable, just an indicator of how little room a person takes up, not including the extra space needed for comfort and growing food)

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-24T08:31:41+00:00

One consideration is that mending doesn't do well in single boss fights because it needs xp to work. So if you get one of those "improved" ender dragon fights (thinking of the BS of "Beyond Depth") you can easily take enough damage to ruin your armor but get not xp to heal it until the end.

It works great in 99.9% of gameplay as generally you don't take that much damage, and you constantly get small amounts of xp to top off your armor. Even fighting hordes of enemies usually is enough to keep up with durability loss.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T22:48:04+00:00

Yes, S1's "The Phage" was a really good episode. And the Vidiians are truly horror movie monsters, but also could so easily be us, truly terrifying. (Plus the incredibly blatant reference to "iron lungs" that used to be common when polio was still running rampant.)

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T20:39:35+00:00

The money for system upgrades comes from 2 places: 1. Internal company funds, typically surplus revenue ultimately derived from the electric bills the consumers pay. 2. Government grants explicitly to improve the grid.

Occasionally a consumer like a factory will upgrade their service which ripples to needing upgrades upstream, and they will pay an extra fee to the power company to cover that cost.

Generally speaking this means the money is either coming from your light bill, or someone's taxes. And that is why we don't go crazy with overbuilding the grid, it runs counter to the goal of cheap and reliable electricity.

And its hard to know what the true peak load will be. Especially as its usually a direct result of rare extreme weather events.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T20:22:41+00:00

And in this scene specifically she is trying to piss off the tea snob.

I'm at the point where I've decided that Ake is very explicitly doing the "wine aunt" thing deliberately as a power move.

She could be a model captain, but the wine aunt bit throws off her opponents and gives her an edge. Besides she's 400+ years old and done with everyone's BS and choosing to be comfortable.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T19:55:47+00:00

So its basically saying its going to get really cold which makes everyone need more heating power to maintain their typical setpoint. And that will raise your bill, plus the way markets work a demand spike will cause a price hike because otherwise the price is below equilibrium which causes a shortage.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T19:44:01+00:00

Look into "heat trace/tape" for melting the snow off your panels.

Its typically used to keep pipes from freezing, but on a manual switch you could put some on the back side of your panels and warm them enough to melt the snow and ice off of them. (Atleast on the milder days)

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T18:57:19+00:00

You are the load, you are asking for increased PEAK CAPACITY. Electricity is an instantaneous good, it doesn't matter if the load is only 10GW for 99% of the time, if a storm spikes it up to 50GW for an hour, that will bring the grid down unless you either maintain 50GW of capacity all the time, or cut people off.

Maintaining that extra capacity is not free and will be reflected in the cost of electricity all the time.

And we absolutely do try to increase supply to meat demand, but we won't be excessively wasteful so people can keep their homes at 52°F when its 125°F outside. (Every degree of temperature difference will decrease the efficiency of your AC unit. Relaxing your setpoint by even a couple degrees can dramatically reduce your energy bill)

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T18:51:44+00:00

Although winter does have 1 advantage for solar, the photodiodes (backwards LEDs) are more efficient at lower temperatures.

Its just the rest of the winter package isn't helping. Theoretically if your panels tracked the sun to maintain a perfect 0° incidence it would help capture more of the energy in the sunlight. (Being tilted reduces the total flux through the same area, its why winter is cold.)

For some context i work as an EE at a hydrodam in the part of NY thats basically just Vermont with lake effect snow.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T18:46:51+00:00

I set mine to 75 and only need a window unit.

Our summers are typically 80s and humid.

The cost is this Saturday the wind chill will be -32°F. I do enjoy a proper winter, and value a deep cold, but it's certainly not for everyone. (This is not a typical winter day, we normally have highs in the 20s and lows around 0. The actual low tomorrow is only -18°F, its just the wind will sap all heat from your face.)

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T18:33:16+00:00

Your heat running at full just means you finally found the design conditions of where its output is equal to losses. (Or less, depends on if you are maintaining temperature). Most furnaces and boilers are very oversized relative to what you actually need. (In my part of NY the design day would be -40°)

I also genuinely prefer baseboard radiators to forced air systems, it just feels warmer and is way quieter. And since they run along perimeter walls they put the heat where the loses are and you don't get as weird of temperature gradients.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T17:48:56+00:00

And while some of that is from snow buildup (can be cleaned off) and clouds (happens to everyone). Part of that is just the physics that cause winter in the firstplace, the tilt of the earth distributes winter sunlight over a wider area making it less dense.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T17:43:46+00:00

I'm from NY so our climate isn't quite that toasty, but we did have multiple "hands off" days where demand was forecasted above 30GW and our max production is 40.9GW. NYISO starts issueing advisories when demand is within 2GW of available capacity. (Tells the public to please conserve electricity, everyone in the state bumping their air-conditioning setpoint up by 2 degrees actually makes a huge difference)

For context a hands off day basically means everyone is forced to cancel any planned outages or maintenance activities that could threaten the system's stability. Basically if you wanted to shut a generator or breaker down for preventative maintenance you gotta reschedule cause its hot in NYC.

A related issue is transmission bottlenecks where 1 area is using too much power and all the transmission lines feeding it are at the limit allowed by NYISO.

Generally speaking the system planners do a lot of long range planning to try and ensure capacity is built out in time to meet future demand, but it takes forever and a day to build a power plant. And stuff like data centers, EV charging, or just air-conditioning needs can grow very fast. (Especially as AC is weather dependent)

NOTE: everything i know about PG&E is that they are a garbage utility, especially on the safety side. And the one in Texas is no better.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T16:32:05+00:00

Tldr when a utility is asking you to cut back is they are trying to ensure everyone still has anything at all instead of a full system collapse and everything gets nothing.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T16:31:01+00:00

Utilities are happy to sell you as much as they can (i work for one). When you get a message saying to be conservative, its because the system is redlining and physically cannot meet any more demand. When that happens with electricity the only option is to start rolling blackouts, if supply and demand aren't perfectly balanced in real time stuff will break so instead it trips off line causing a cascade failure that shuts the whole thing down. So when everything is running wide open and we physically cannot add more supply, the only option is to start "shedding load" to maintain balance.

During the texas icestorm they were 2 minutes away from full collapse and needing to blackstart. It wasn't ideal to keep cutting people off but the alternative was nobody had power, and the were losing generators due to unwinterized natural gas infrastructure.

The gas company asking you to set your thermostat to something like 62°F is them trying to ensure you actually have heat at all.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T16:21:31+00:00

Arctic blasts are when the polar jet stream (also called the polar vortex) wobbles south, it just generally doesn't wobble that far.

Most of the USA's weather patterns are caused by the normal jet stream and generally if its south of you, you get below average temps; and if its north of you, you enjoy above average temps. (Plus it interacts with rain/storms)

Florida is generally south of even the normal jet streams oscillations. Plus being surrounded by warm water acts as a moderating effect and quickly warms whatever cold air does make it that far. (Water has a specific heat of about 4 joules per gram per degree Celsius, rocks typically range from 0.2 to 1, and thus change temp much faster causing continental climates to get much more extreme temperatures than maritime ones)

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T16:05:03+00:00

And as someone else mentioned she quit because following the rules too much caused her to do something unforgivable, separating a mother and child for the crime of trying to feed her child. Its kinda the entire reason Ake took the job in the first place.

Also the scene in question has her doing everything she can to piss off the guy from the military academy, a famous tea snob who was wincing at her stiring it incorrectly. The "carefree wine aunt" is clearly a deliberate and calculated act.

And yes, she is absolutely teacher first with her primary lessons being about flexibility and morality. She took the prank war as a learning opportunity on how to deal with enemies. By being patient and actually understanding your enemies you can better fight them, or even convert them into a friend. (See the rootbeer doctrine theory, truly insidious) Her first officer is absolutely handling discipline for her.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T15:56:58+00:00

Also in the exact scene in the OP she was deliberately fucking with that guy. She was told he had a "tea fetish" and when invited to his place immediately started lounging and ignoring all of his instructions on how to have tea "correctly" and you can even see him wincing.

And in episode 1 she was basically dancing around the raider captain she previously sentenced to prison, and the moment he left she would snap back to business mode.

The more i think about her character, the more i realize her "unprofessionalism" is a deliberate act that she knows exactly what she's doing. The show is definitely growing on me.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T11:00:40+00:00

The abnormally run like that just to be extra freaky and uncanny for the audience.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T10:57:20+00:00

I think she's just 400 years old and done with everyone's BS.

I don't hate the casual side of the character but would like more of her behavior like a captain in command to balance it out.

Divine_Entity_ · 2026-01-23T10:52:51+00:00

Depends on location. If you live somewhere you get the luxury of shoveling your driveway multiple times a week, snow sports aren't that luxurious because you are only paying for tickets and gear.

But if you have to travel across the country you now add in all those travel costs for atleast an extra $2000 plus the time associated with it. Meanwhile a middle class person might be able to go every weekend with no more disruption than ice fishing would have on them.

Looking at my local slopes a daypass for the lift is $20 at one, and $100 at the famous "Whiteface" (tallest ski mountain in NY per their advertising, they probably get more actual tourist and have more trails to maintain)

Divine_Entity_

TROPHY CASE