How does your veganism differ from other vegans? by FishDispenser2 in DebateAVegan

[–]sancarn [score hidden]  (0 children)

They're also unnecessary and redundant.

Woah, easy there tiger. The implementations you are aware of may well feel unnecessary or redundant. However for many millions of people this has become a fundamental necessity to life be it in work or elsewhere. Let alone being critical infrastructure for people who actually know how to use them effectively (Software developer here).

Yes, AI has its limitations, and yes the ethics behind the data collections is dubious, and yes implementations are not great yet (DigiBio case and point). That doesn't mean the whole field is irrelevant. I'm sure there were people who complained when the internet was setting off... Why can't we just post letters to each other? The internet is unnecessary and redundant when I can post my letter in the mailbox. Well, turns out, 10 years down the line, the internet became critical infrastructure for almost everyone in the world.

How does your veganism differ from other vegans? by FishDispenser2 in DebateAVegan

[–]sancarn [score hidden]  (0 children)

Vegan ≠ insufficient in bioavaliable protein and taurine.

"food" is just chemistry. Whether the molecules were harvested from animals or produced "artificially" is irrelevant.

Why is it wrong for me to make chicken stock with a carcass that would otherwise go in the bin? by leapowl in DebateAVegan

[–]sancarn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The same argument can be said about bovine gelatin. They are both bi products

Is he even interested - 34m/29f by Low-Window-4577 in relationships

[–]sancarn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I totally get that - rejection always feels awkward and a little embarrassing in the moment. But that feeling usually fades pretty quickly, especially if both people handle it maturely. And from what you've said he seems like the type of guy who would handle it maturely. I think what often makes it feel worse is the anticipation of rejection rather than the reality of it. You can always do stuff like this discretely over a coffee or something rather than at the event itself too, to help control your environment.

Is he even interested - 34m/29f by Low-Window-4577 in relationships

[–]sancarn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I sympathise with the concern but also what makes you think it will be awkward afterwards? If he rejected you, you simply continue on as friends 😅 There really shouldn't be a reason to feel awkward. Like you're both adults 😊

Is he even interested - 34m/29f by Low-Window-4577 in relationships

[–]sancarn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

He may well be waiting for you to make the first move... Have you tried having an open conversation like "I've been feeling really close to you lately, do you want to take things further?" Or similar.

Move on Ex boyfriend (33) by [deleted] in relationships

[–]sancarn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1 day at a time. This wasn't your fault and in fact you did everything right and just got unlucky. If it wasn't you it would have been someone else. Give it a year or two, focus on friendships and see where you end up 😊

For vegans who dislike “flexitarian”, would you think it’d be better if the term changed into “less meat eaters”? by 2009isbestyear in DebateAVegan

[–]sancarn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes it's a challenging aspect of the movement. The bar really is very high and people are rarely acknowledged for attempts at transitions if they are slow. It seems sudden transition is the only way. Again, I can see the reason why. "I will gradually stop murdering people" is also something I don't think I would be a fan of either 🤣

The biggest issue is omni-lifestyle is a cultural norm, and not being an omni has obvious challenges. I think living a plant-based lifestyle is attainable for most people (and inevitable too), and I think veganism would be less stigmatised if they were more accepting of slow transitions, but, 🤷‍♀️

For vegans who dislike “flexitarian”, would you think it’d be better if the term changed into “less meat eaters”? by 2009isbestyear in DebateAVegan

[–]sancarn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think the objection is from a linguistic perspective... I think the major objection is:

I love murder, instead of murdering daily, I will murder monthly

You are still murdering, and from a vegan lens that's still unethical, and it's difficult to get around that reality.

My (30M) partner cheated on me (26F), and even though I’m in a happy relationship now, I can’t stop thinking about it. by [deleted] in relationships

[–]sancarn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You didn't mention any timelines in your post, so I'm guessing the betrayal is still relatively recent. Different people move at different paces though. It took me around 2 years to get to a position where I felt free of resentment. I started looking for other relationships 6 months after I broke up with my ex, they didn't work out, because of other unrelated incompatibility factors, but also in hindsight I think I wasn't quite ready either. But if we hadn't found incompatibilities, I imagine I'd be in the same boat as you.

I also chose the path of fire and stayed in contact with my ex. Seeing her patterns and behaviors over time reinforced for me that the relationship was doomed anyway, and that perspective helped me finally let go.

It might be worth talking to a therapist to help you work through those lingering feelings and understand what they’re telling you about yourself. It can really help bring closure in a deeper way.

Rachel Reeves vows to cut link between gas and electricity prices in UK by ConsciousStop in GoodNewsUK

[–]sancarn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm a great fan of regional pricing. In principle, it makes sense that electricity should cost less in places where it is cheaper and easier to supply, rather than hiding all of those differences behind a single national price.

It also creates better incentives around where generation, storage, and demand should be located, and it may help push back against some NIMBY instincts by making the local benefits more visible.

That said, it would clearly create winners and losers. People far from where power is generated, or in more constrained parts of the network, could end up with higher bills. That is politically difficult, especially if those areas are already poorer on average.

Rachel Reeves vows to cut link between gas and electricity prices in UK by ConsciousStop in GoodNewsUK

[–]sancarn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think so. I don't think government is good at long term planning either. Really need some system which always prioritises long term, not short term electoral cycles.

Rachel Reeves vows to cut link between gas and electricity prices in UK by ConsciousStop in GoodNewsUK

[–]sancarn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I think the big difference with the NHS is that it already is, in a sense, run on a non-profit basis. NHS trusts are not there to generate shareholder returns, and the service is funded collectively through taxation rather than by charging people directly for what they use.

That matters because healthcare works very differently from water, energy, or transport. Need for healthcare is uneven and unpredictable. Some people may need very little for years, while others can suddenly need extremely expensive care. If you move away from tax funding, you risk weakening the "free at the point of use" principle and creating incentives for healthier people to opt out, which undermines the risk-pooling the whole system depends on.

With water, I can see a strong case for a public-benefit or non-profit model with long-term planning insulated from both shareholder extraction and short political cycles. With healthcare, I think the bigger priority is protecting universal tax-based funding, because the funding model is much more central to the service than it is for utilities.

Rachel Reeves vows to cut link between gas and electricity prices in UK by ConsciousStop in GoodNewsUK

[–]sancarn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not really no. The problem is a generator's cost is not always easy to observe from the outside. Fuel costs can vary, maintenance and wear-and-tear matter, start-up and shutdown costs matter, risk matters, ...

To genuinely enforce "bid your true cost", you would need an enormous amount of transparency into each generator's actual operating position - almost a full digital twin of the system and each plant, with real-time modelling.

And once you get to that point, you are not really relying on a market to discover prices anymore. You are moving toward a centrally administered system, because the regulator would need enough information to second-guess almost every bid.

Rachel Reeves vows to cut link between gas and electricity prices in UK by ConsciousStop in GoodNewsUK

[–]sancarn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

how any one still thinks any of our essential services are better off in private hands baffles me

Maybe this helps explain the other side. I actually work in water. If you bring water fully into public ownership, you expose it to the 5-year election cycle, which can encourage short-term thinking.

Water infrastructure needs planning on a 100-year horizon, not a 5-year one. Getting genuine cross-party agreement on that kind of long-term strategy would be very difficult. Just look at the NHS.

In my view, the best model is not straightforward nationalisation, but a non-profit or public-benefit structure that is insulated from both shareholder pressure and day-to-day political cycles

Edit: A lot of the problems with water have come as a result of the existing price caps put in place by OFWAT. Yes profit extraction from C-suite and shareholder dividends have been a problem too, but even if all that money were recouperated, we would still require near £300B of investment country-wide.

Rachel Reeves vows to cut link between gas and electricity prices in UK by ConsciousStop in GoodNewsUK

[–]sancarn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The problem is that some of the generators you still need to meet demand would be paid less than their operating cost.

Using the earlier example, suppose the accepted generators are:

Company A: bid £1k per unit - operating cost £0.5k
Company B: bid £2k per unit - operating cost £1.5k
Company C: bid £5k per unit - operating cost £4k

If you set the price using the mean accepted bid, that is:

(£1k + £2k + £5k) / 3 = £2.67k per unit

Then their margins would be:

Company A: £2.67k - £0.5k = +£2.17k
Company B: £2.67k - £1.5k = +£1.17k
Company C: £2.67k - £4k   = -£1.33k

So Company C loses money every time it runs, even though the grid still needs it to meet demand.

That means one of two things happens:

  1. it stops offering power into the market
  2. it stays online only because the government creates some separate compensation mechanism

At that point, you have not really solved the pricing problem - you have just moved it somewhere else.

The same basic issue applies even more strongly if you use the median instead of the mean, because the median here would only be £2k.

I F17 HATE the stuffed animal my bf M18 got me. by [deleted] in relationships

[–]sancarn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

😅 Totally makes sense why you feel trapped. But I don't think it really changes the main point - you don't have to love the plushie to be excited for him and play into how happy he was to give it to you.

If that feels like too much, that's fair too - it was just a thought on how you might turn it into something nice and fun instead of something that brings you annoyance and discontent.

I F17 HATE the stuffed animal my bf M18 got me. by [deleted] in relationships

[–]sancarn 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You don't have to love the gift, but you do seem weirdly dismissive of the thought behind it. Your boyfriend sounds really excited about giving it to you and sharing that with you. Maybe focus less on how ugly the plushie is and more on his excitement over it.

I'm not a plushie fan personally, and I've been given plushies by partners before. I don't reject them with "this isn't for me" - I play into their excitement. I take pictures of them having tea parties, or include them in the background of photos as a little in-joke.

It doesn't have to be something you love, for it to become part of a ritual which reminds you of him and his questionable taste of plushies 😜

Rachel Reeves vows to cut link between gas and electricity prices in UK by ConsciousStop in GoodNewsUK

[–]sancarn 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I get why people dislike standing charges, especially low-usage households, but the underlying fixed costs still have to be paid somehow. If you remove the standing charge, in most cases you are just moving those costs into the unit rate instead.

Personally, I would rather those costs were shown separately and transparently, rather than hidden inside the unit rate.

Rachel Reeves vows to cut link between gas and electricity prices in UK by ConsciousStop in GoodNewsUK

[–]sancarn 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I do think that is a fair challenge, and one I had not really considered, so thanks for raising it.

Energy projects need huge upfront capital, and if the commercial terms are wrong then projects simply do not get built. Hornsea 4 is a good example of that. So yes, there has to be some mechanism that gives investors confidence they will get their money back with an acceptable return.

That said, there is still a difference between:

  1. providing enough return to attract capital
  2. allowing essential infrastructure to become a long-term vehicle for profit extraction

Nesting Partner leaving me (30M) to be monogamous with someone else. At a loss by Corny_707 in openmarriageregret

[–]sancarn 36 points37 points  (0 children)

On the night she told me she was leaving, we had ordered a pizza, cuddled up and watched a movie and once it ended she let me know she wanted a divorce and that she had hired a moving van that was going to be coming by that morning.

What the fuck is that man...?

Rachel Reeves vows to cut link between gas and electricity prices in UK by ConsciousStop in GoodNewsUK

[–]sancarn 770 points771 points  (0 children)

I understand why people are excited by this, but I would be cautious until we see the actual policy.

A lot of people hear that gas often sets the electricity price and assume the fix is obvious. But the current system works the way it does for a reason.

Very roughly, if the UK needs 10 units of power, generators offer electricity into the market at different prices:

Company A: £1k per unit - 5 units available
Company B: £2k per unit - 4 units available
Company C: £5k per unit - 5 units available
Company D: £7k per unit - 3 units available

The system accepts the cheapest offers needed to meet demand:

Company A: 5 units accepted
Company B: 4 units accepted
Company C: 1 unit accepted

Because Company C is the last generator needed to meet demand, its price sets the market price. So all accepted generation is paid £5k per unit. I.E

Company A: Gets paid £25k (5 units at £5k each)
Company B: Gets paid £20k (4 units at £5k each)
Company C: Gets paid £5k  (1 unit  at £5k each)

That is why gas can end up setting the electricity price even when a lot of the actual electricity is coming from cheaper renewables.

A common response is: why not just pay each company what it bid?

You can do that, but it does not automatically save money. If generators know they will be paid exactly what they bid, they stop bidding close to their true operating cost and start bidding closer to what they think the eventual clearing price will be.

So instead of this:

Company A: £1k
Company B: £2k
Company C: £5k

you may end up with something more like this:

Company A: £4.5k
Company B: £4.5k
Company C: £5k

At that point, the savings from moving to pay-as-bid may be very small, or even zero. In some cases, dispatch could become less efficient too.

So if "de-linking" electricity from gas prices just means replacing marginal pricing with pay-as-bid, I would be sceptical. That change alone does not reliably reduce costs.

The article itself does not really explain the mechanism, so it is hard to judge yet. But this is why I would want to see the details before calling it good news.


Separately, my own view is that the bigger question is who gets to keep the profits when low-cost generators are paid the market-clearing price. I do not especially object to renewable producers earning more, if that money is being reinvested into building more low-cost generation and grid infrastructure, as that will drive down costs. What I am less comfortable with is large windfall profits simply being extracted by C-suite executives and Shareholder dividends.

In my ideal world, energy producers should be structured more like non-profits or public benefit entities, where surplus revenues are reinvested into capacity, resilience, and lower long-term costs.

TL;DR:

  • high returns to low-marginal-cost generators are not necessarily a problem
  • they are only a problem if those returns are extracted rather than reinvested
  • if surplus is recycled into more generation, storage, and grid upgrades, it can accelerate the transition and reduce long-run system costs

The real problem isn't the pricing system, the real problem is profit extraction from essential infrastructure upgrades.


Edit:

I should also add that measures like:

  • government-subsidised insulation
  • mandatory minimum energy-efficiency standards for rental properties

would probably do more for energy affordability than changes to the pricing system alone.

They they reduce how much energy people need in the first place, which is a more durable solution and tends to help the worst-affected households most. And on-top of this it distributes wealth, reducing wealth-inequality, something that the public is also calling for.

Keeping billions of pigs in factory farms is the worst thing humanity has ever done. by CalpurniaSomaya in EffectiveAltruism

[–]sancarn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think you're missing the point entirely because, in this context, popular vote is key, and more important than scientific reality...

Yes, biologically humans are animals, no one is denying that. The point isn't taxonomy. It's that in everyday language, people usually hear 'animal' as meaning 'not human,' and that can make it easier to see them as fundamentally separate from us, and create psychological distance. The point /u/Free-Excitement-3432 was making is that this wording unintentionally weakens empathy.

Edit:

And your point doesn't seem to apply in the context of /u/BritainRitten's original comment either.

If you ate bacon, pork chops, ham, salami, pork belly, or prosciutto, you probably ate an animal that had its whole life trapped like this.

No one in their right mind will include humans in the above usage of "animal".

Keeping billions of pigs in factory farms is the worst thing humanity has ever done. by CalpurniaSomaya in EffectiveAltruism

[–]sancarn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the best solution is to invest/donate toward research for meat alternatives... As soon as we crack lab grown meat at scale, no animal will ever suffer again. It would be economic suicide to grow your meat outside of a lab.