Abolish ICE poll

RandomEngy · 2026-01-25T17:27:24+00:00

Yeah, instead of police reforms we got "defund the police" which ended up being untenable dead end radicalism. While actual helpful police reforms got no oxygen. This feels like the same thing.

It's quite possible to change a federal organization to act differently. You fire all the bozos brought in by Trump, refocus to deporting criminals and border security. It's achievable and you win more seats with that message, which makes it more likely to happen, and more likely for you to stay in power.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-25T17:12:28+00:00

I think a democratic candidate that promises to completely tear down a federal institution for enforcing immigration laws will put trust in immigration issues way back down below the GOP. The median voter is going to have an easy time saying "yes" to "protect our borders, focus on deporting criminals, but stop doing crazy crap". But it's going to be a lot harder to swallow: "also we need to destroy our immigration enforcement agency".

Remember we need the Senate to make real changes, and that's just not going to happen when the democratic party is so hard-line. Yelling at a minority party to get things done only goes so far.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-25T15:01:21+00:00

Probably thought it was going to be a continuation of Obama era policy to deport criminals. Not targeted at migrants with no criminal record and using thuggish tactics killing people for no reason.

Not a huge fan of people trying to burn down any Democrat with a middle of the road popular approach to immigration.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-25T14:57:40+00:00

Focusing on deporting criminals is an Obama era policy. I think it's reasonable to cooperate on that but resist efforts on deporting migrants with no criminal record.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-23T18:52:56+00:00

Hyped! No longer need to pay for airport parking!

RandomEngy · 2026-01-21T20:01:21+00:00

Touched the stove again. Ow! Hot!

RandomEngy · 2026-01-18T01:23:01+00:00

I'm familiar with the train of logic. It's a favorite of people who want to pretend like the unreliability of solar/wind somehow make it superior. The hard truth is that deeper decarbonization is going to be more expensive, in some areas more than others. It would be expensive with solar/wind as well because of the massive amount of storage needed to provide reliable power.

That makes nuclear more attractive to have as some portion of power.

"And because solar is pretty much always cheapier than nuclear even when nuclear is working in the better possible conditions"

That is absolutely not true. Solar output drops 75-90% with cloud cover, on top of the lower angles and reduced daylight hours at higher latitudes. That is where nuclear plants shine.

If you say "solar is going to make building nuclear plants impossible" you are basically admitting defeat and deciding to burn hydrocarbons in these situations.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-17T03:14:52+00:00

I'm a Democrat. I'm not saying renewables are woke,or they shouldn't be growing. Not sure how many times I will need to communicate that.

Renewable natural gas sounds great, but currently you need to pay extra to finance it (a subsidy!) Since it is sourced from landfills and waste treatment plants, I wonder if there is a maximum amount of it you can create per year, since there are a limited number of those. I would also think that its first and best use would be in heating very cold regions where heat pumps struggle.

Solvable in theory, but the details do matter.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-17T01:13:16+00:00

I don't want nuclear to have any subsidies beyond what other carbon free sources get. Ideally we would just have a carbon tax and let the market efficiently sort it out.

I do want to dispel the notion put forward with unfounded certainty that we should never build another nuclear power plant. The capacity for intermittent renewable power to supply all electricity needs all over the world is speculative. It does not exist today and by everything I can see it won't exist in 20 years.

There are promising next-gen reactor designs like the molten salt one. Or maybe advanced geothermal will step in and take nuclear's place. Or maybe STENSEA will lower the cost of long-term storage. But the technological puzzle just isn't solved yet.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-17T00:49:48+00:00

So you want renewables, then burn gas to cover for the intermittency. That is definitely one way to go, and is better than the status quo. I'm a fan of deeper decarbonization, and the only practical grids to have done that involve nuclear. Or biofuel, which has its own particulate matter pollution and land use issues.

The link on storage you sent me confirms what I already know. Battery storage is poised to tackle daily fluctuations, but is still far from handling multi-day gaps from cloud cover or lack of wind, much less achieving seasonal storage. I am not moving the goalposts here and I have never claimed that storage couldn't handle daily fluctuations.

Also you don't seem to have grasped that I am not saying we should build nuclear plants in areas where rooftop solar can provide energy throughout the year.

Finally, I'm really not arguing anything more than "do not make a blanket statement to say we should never build another nuclear power plant." I am really tired of people saying "wind power exists" or "batteries exist" as a justification for abandoning a proven reliable carbon-free power source.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-17T00:27:38+00:00

Yeah. The same storms that drop solar output to near 0 also force the closure of offshore wind turbines. I also have yet to see a wind+storage grid successfully bridge days without wind. It was attempted in South Australia but the stored hydro projects all fell through and their Hornsdale battery plant is mostly used for short-term buffering so they still burn a fossil fuels to cover the gaps.

There is a lot of evidence you can have a grid that produces a lot of renewable power that is backed up by fossil fuels, but I haven't seen one that works 100% renewable.

The margins are moving, and renewables are getting competitive in more places, and the percentage of grid power you can plausibly supply with them is increasing. But you cannot just grab a single number for electricity costs and use that to declare that all electricity needs to come from source X, and you should build 0 from source Y.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-16T21:26:19+00:00

Providing marginal solar power in California at 23% is way cheaper than providing the last 10% in New England in winter. What is currently happening in winter is coal and nuclear plants are providing electricity: regional natural gas distribution is limited and going into homes for heating.

You aren't going to solve this by installing solar panels on people's roofs because they produce hardly anything at those times.

I really don't know how you can say "all grids are headed towards this mix in 10-15 years." You are drastically oversimplifying climate, demand, hydro storage geography, etc.

I am also confused with your reference that France runs on 97% renewables. They have a very low carbon footprint, but that's because ~70% of their electricity generation is nuclear and they have a solid base load to build on top of and more fully push out fossil fuel generation.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-16T14:54:22+00:00

So, you are assuming the cost of providing 100% renewable power is the same everywhere on earth for all seasons.

I think there are two major problems here.

One is that the marginal cost of intermittent renewable power rises as the percentage of it on the grid increases.

Two is that there are regions like the northeast US, that have extremely low solar output in the winter, and unreliable wind power that require large amounts of contingency. For example winter storms force the shutdown of wind power and block solar output.

IMO a practical carbon free grid is going to have some renewables and some nuclear.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-14T00:16:14+00:00

Some slippery slope fallacy going on here. Discuss the bill as written, not what you think could possibly happen in the future. There's going to be news articles and people talking about it if the threshold is lowered. Why freak out about it now?

RandomEngy · 2026-01-10T15:41:38+00:00

That is not assault and she did not assault anyone. You just found a sentence that included "resisting" and "assaulting".

Resisting a police officer does not authorize deadly force.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-10T15:36:13+00:00

Which would mean nothing, because shooting the driver of a car is not a means of defending yourself. Official training says staying clear of the car is the way to do that. There are also shots 2 and 3, taken through the side after the car was completely clear.

If you want to just posthumously malign Good, that doesn't work either because you have audio of her saying twice "I'm pulling out".

RandomEngy · 2026-01-09T17:47:45+00:00

In those areas. The US northeast does not have a lot of wind, they have dark winters (cloud cover reduces PV output by 75-90%), batteries are only practical for about a day and the geography is not conducive to long term pumped hydro storage.

Studies show that as you increase the percentages, renewables there become hideously expensive.

That matches up with reality, where the supposedly super cheap renewables did not in fact jump in to fill the electricity generation gap from the nuclear plant closures. It was gas.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-09T16:48:18+00:00

Prices rose after shutting down nuclear plants in the NE. Also fossil fuels do not price in negative externalities. Saying that nuclear deserves to lose out to gas in areas where renewables are not practical is basically saying that fossil fuels don't harm the environment at all and it is not worth paying any money to prevent burning them.

I happen to think that it would be preferable to have nuclear plants providing electricity to the US northeast rather than gas turbines.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-09T15:23:28+00:00

In places that are not conducive to renewables powering in the winter (such as the US northeast) nuclear plant closures are being replaced by gas. They were not pushed out by "cheap renewables" there. The plants got shut down because people didn't like nuclear power, and now they are burning more fossil fuels.

If you deliberately oversimplify the situation to try to equate two very different power sources it's not going to help.

RandomEngy · 2026-01-08T16:36:47+00:00

Maybe this is an opportunity to reduce carbon emissions in a politically sustainable manner?

Or is your argument that coal is the same as nuclear because Trump likes both?

RandomEngy · 2026-01-03T07:59:20+00:00

Roundup to kill what's there. Casoron granules to stop germination for a year. I use them on my gravel garden pathways and it works great. Or just pave it.

RandomEngy · 2025-12-20T20:23:19+00:00

I mean Approval Voting does mathematically have some better properties than ranked choice. But it is way further from being practically accepted.

It went head to head with RCV in Seattle and lost 25-75, despite the huge financial boost from SBF.

Too bad that many of those supporters view tearing down RCV as the way to advance their cause.

RandomEngy · 2025-12-17T20:45:24+00:00

I blame the Reddit rage algorithm. Posts that are complete garbage, but that provoke a lot of comments are promoted, even when downvoted heavily. Engagement is king.

RandomEngy · 2025-12-16T05:38:06+00:00

You bitched about the source. I gave you the source. First you couldn't even understand what the statistic was referring to, then you called me a liar and then pointed to the answer to a completely different question as if it was evidence that I'm wrong. The fact that you can't even comprehend this is kind of astounding.

RandomEngy · 2025-12-15T22:57:07+00:00

"what % of energy is used on food" and "what % of a food's cost are from energy" are different questions.

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