sethoflagos

Good points. Reading between the lines, different interest groups are all pulling in different directions, competing for limited governmental attention and development budgets. What's clearly lacking at national levels globally is holistic long-term power supply planning covering: Projected regional power demand Capacity and distribution of base load generation. Capacity and distribution of hot-standby generation. Capacity and distribution of cold standby generation. Capacity and distribution of deep power storage units. Transmission capacity. Stable environmental impact criteria. Stable and flexible grid supply-demand management. Grid voltage and synchronisation management. Stable grid frequency control Power factor control. Rigorous transient and fault protection. Progressive stable and fair power pricing policy (both internal and external) Progressive stable and holistic investment policy Rational accommodation of technological advances. Failure to address any one of these appropriately will adversely impact grid performance as a whole. The free market will always cherry pick the fastest ROI, neglecting the rest, so the central dilemma is how to achieve all of the above through stable, integrated state-level control for the next 50 years. (Where's Stalin when you need him!)

For the same unit power output per unit volume of fluid, a denser fluid needs: less elevation difference; shorter pipe runs; lower fluid velocity. Without knowing the exact nature of the fluid, it's impossible to say whether losses would rise or fall. For some dense fluids (e.g. mercury) I imagine that losses could fall significantly. There is potential to increase power output per unit volume of fluid, but now losses would rise in rough proportion (also to square of velocity) though this does seem to imply that efficiency doen't take a serious hit. Key algebra is h = v2/2g = 'velocity head'

The main advantage IS being able (potentially) to locate high capacity gravity storage in areas of lower relief, perhaps locating them closer to regions of high demand cutting distribution losses. A secondary benefit maybe the lower liquid head to volume flow ratio may better facilitate the use of mixed flow (Francis vane type) pumps and turbines which may help hydraulic efficiency. No mention of the high rates of mechanical wear typically associated with slurries though.

The thermodynamics of a 'photon gas' is well established and quite real. Very similar to the thermodynamics of a molecular gas, but slightly different equations: (there is no conservation of photons etc.) On second thoughts, that's not what you're saying is it. You're referring to that unheard falling tree in a forest malarkey. Never really gone in for that viewpoint. Bit too solipsistic for my taste.

They will suffer an ''absence of heat" death. No more stars (or radioactivity etc.) to keep local temperatures much above absolute zero. Chemistry ceases to be a thing. Or at least chemical reactions grind to a halt. No food; no respiration; no metabolism. Periodically launch probes into deep space and carefully watch their red shift? Long term experiment, but what else are you going to do for a googol-year?

Unless you're suggesting that growth of the scale factor will decelerate to zero, can there ever be a maximal entropy? (IIRC, AOTBE, entropy grows proportionally to ln a) Ultimately, matter and energy may become so thinly spread out that particle interactions rarely occur, and each particle tends towards its own isolated little ground-state universe of entropy zero (in its own frame of reference). But then, many if not most of these will be photons which don''t experience time anyway. As for the leptons, while they are able to oscillate between their various flavours/states, they must still be little clocks ticking away for eternity, aren''t they? Which suggests that time will at least continue somewhere. Even when their nearest neighbours have been accelerated away to such an extent that their light cones no longer intersect. It all begins to sound a bit Hilbert's Hotelish, but I've yet to see anything paradoxical in an asymptotic approach to zero local entropy density at infinite time/global entropy. Not sure that 'equilibrium' has any meaning at such infinitessimally low densitities. No collisions: no equilibrium.

We're in the Lounge! (... and just how did you assess a 50 minute clip within 20 minutes of me posting it? Another mindless kneejerk reaction?)

On 4th June, the European Parliament replaced Google with Qwant and five days later, Europe released a sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office.

Ever wondered WHY you have such a negative instinct towards intelligence? I've linked a Youtube video that offers some explanation. I think it goes a bit over the top in places, but that's Australians for you. I know you won't actually watch it, and even if you did, you wouldn't be able to let yourself learn anything positive from it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9MubNsh3rs

I've just hopped onto chess.com to check the aforementioned 'one line that I don't play' (1Nf3 e5 2 c4...) and have confirmed without a shadow of a doubt that it is absolute poop. Not that it leaves white in a bad position, far from it, but 2 Nxe5 is simply up a free pawn with zero compensation for black. A no-brainer if ever there was one. Situation normal is reconfirmed. ChatGPT copies where it can and guesses where it can't. And now I'm pretty sure it copies extensively from the chess.com database (where a good few hundred of my games are stored - confirmation bias or what!)

I pretty much agree with all of your post above. It prompted me to repeat a question to ChatGPT that I have previously asked earlier LLM versions over the last few years, that, at first, drew hopelessly inept responses. Tonight I got: There's not a word here I can find fault with. In fact, I felt driven to ask it a far deeper follow up question about about a relatively obscure opening system that I've fifty years pretty solid experience of playing (against both human and silicon) If I knew the references the model used to glean this, I would buy those books without hesitation. (I was under the impression I'd read them all - I clearly haven't) To top it all, this is what I got from the recommended follow-up: With the exception of one line that I don't play (until now, perhaps) this IS move by move, the opening strategy I've developed by trial and error over the last 30 years. I play a fair bit of online chess and never encountered anyone (within my recollection) who's played this system against me. It is rare, certainly at the modest level I regularly play in. I'm actually quite gobsmacked (technical term) by this. At least, it my lowly ratings status doesn't seem to be down to a poor choice of openings strategy as white.

Twi is an indigenous lingua franca used across much of Ghana. 'Falala' as both concept and given name has been widely exported, even unto Yorubaland. ...and osteopaenia 😉. Palindromicity, is enough of a constraint, I think. However, too much linguistic diversity may leave Emily confused as to just how many amphibian poachers were detained in the swamps of East Netherlands region: Twente nein Eft Act arrests - err at Cat Fen i.e. net newt. ChatGPT almost gets this except it has to be told that dialect variant 'eft' is the OE root of 'newt' (via 'an eft'/'a neft')

To pet animal as I see, bro, fava for bees is a laminate pot. (actually wanted to use 'Falala' - being born into abundance - rather than 'fava', but I guess you have a rule against using Twi 🙀) Could I slip it in as a misspelling of Valhalla? That would work (frawd!!!).

So was I: the dwarf planet, Eris, and its moon, Dysnomia. And then there is the subtext of their roles in Greek Mythology: Eris (strife) and Dysnomia (lawlessness, bad government). Too esoteric?

Well you gave me the Eris-Dysnomia system, leading inexorably to Roy Batty's Which became a 'pastel battle moot' (OE: meeting), with C-beams aimed at Syd. Naturally, my own personal involvement would limited to melting the tablet sap necessary to fuel the attack ships. Makes (satisfyingly surreal if not absurd) sense to me. Don't see what else I could do with it really given your subject matter and your constraints 🥺 Adhering to the mandatory rules of grammar, punctuation, and form clearly parallel the time reversible Dirac formalism. The rest is absurd. Just run with it.

True, but there are a class of activities that centre on exploring complex structures built from sets of fundamental units that seem to share much common mental real estate: Word games (the alphabet) Chess (the pieces) Music (the harmonic series) Bridge (deck of cards) Maths (the integers) Particle Physics (the standard model) Chemistry (the elements) Cooking (basic ingredients) Computing (the set of logical operations) Minecraft (the building blocks) If someone is skilled at any one of these, hearsay has it that they are at least likely to have an aptitude for some of the others. The symmetries inherent in one tend to repeat in odd places among the others with only minor tweaks. Does the sound and spelling of a phoneme have a direct causal relationship with the wave/particle duality of a photon? Probably not, but there is a shared symmetry in there that just helps gain a foothold...

Eris-Dysnomia pastel battle moot! I too melt tablet sap! Aim on Syd, sire!

Let's give this a bash and see how it goes. Maybe have a quick look at Cryptic Crossword in lieu of hard and fast setting rules for now. Self set preferred but lifts from other sources permissible if source given. Easy one for starters. Paul can't see performing seal (11) (Hidden answers please)

And another lovely little thinker's tale of his final journey: Delia set arc Osiris sailed to t'deli as, Sir, I, Socrates ailed.

Eva asks what is "fair to middling" in Greek: Synonym, Eva. Can I put unto Plato (total pot nut up in a cave) my nonys?

Rising to the challenge, Emily whips out 'arry's bottle: Go draw sun, Aristotle, do! Model tot's Iran/US war, dog!

... and hears the lament of homesick sweat bees: Masai Nomia duet/solo to go to Togo; to lost eudaimonia, Sam.

... and suspects archaeological team may have been hallucinating. Amen, Elisabeta! I posit Peking is no yeti site. Yon sign I kept is opiate basil enema.

Three mandatory requirements for this: clear, technically precise and well-informed legislation; rigorous independent monitoring; eye-watering punishment of defaulters. In today's political climate, don't hold your breath...

A Rocky Horror Picture Show crossover version of Snakes and Ladders, Parquet and Come Dancing? Ticks all my boxes 🥸