You can't cheat thermodynamics! If it's being absorbed by the panels (rather than reflected) then it's absolutely becoming waste heat. Solar panels look dark blue/black because they're absorbing most of the light that hits them. This is why them overheating is a problem that can affect performance. If they were mirrors they wouldn't overheat at all, but they also wouldn't be able to produce any electricity.
Thermodyamics says that a solar panel is cooler than an equivalent black panel. Some solar energy gets converted to electricity. All of that converted energy does not end up as waste heat. A 100% efficient solar panel would not get hot. Only the inefficiency ends up as waste heat.
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but by conservation of energy if all of the energy of the sun was converted to heat then no electricity would be produced? Conversely, that fact that panels do produce electricity means that not all of the sun's energy is heating the panel?
solar panels are only partially efficient. if the solar -> electric conversion efficiency is 21%, then 79% of the incoming solar radiation is converted to heat.
The portion of incoming light that becomes electricity is dissipated as heat primarily where it is used (e.g. in an appliance attached to the grid fed by the solar panels), not in the cells themselves. So it's true that a cell connected to an external load will be cooler at equilibrium than one that is disconnected.
Likewise. All negative or positive aspects of the religion aside, the geographical aspect to Mormon congregations build affinity networks quickly. This is both an asset (it can integrate you into a community quickly) while also being a liability (more MLM and Ponzi schemes).
I learned this weekend this geographic designation for local congregations is shared among the Amish, where congregation (to my understanding and happy to be corrected) are between 20-40 families.
Bernie Madoff is the classic example, his affinity fraud targeted wealthy Jewish individuals, foundations, and charities. In terms of relative frequency though, good question. Utah is an oddity where state-level stats are a decent estimate for Mormons, given the 70% membership. It would be harder to get equivalent stats for Jewish or Amish communities.
I'm going to hazard a guess that the OP agress here but I'll at least chime in with my own take on that which is our building habits of desertification of the planet (grass and a few trees is a biological desert) based on a mistaken belief of cheap, infinite oil to power cars happily down roads unimpeded by traffic, building cheap houses that won't last at out of plastic, composite materials which are needed because of poor architecture and a negative heating feedback loop were a bit unsustainable.
We're both under-building (in terms of volume, and quality) and over-building in terms of spreading things out too much.
This does not mean pack everyone into skyscrapers like Hong Kong. It means building medium density neighborhoods like we used to (ya know all of the most expensive places in America? Wonder why they're so expensive...) where most of your daily activity would involve walking or biking somewhere, you have some yard in the back of your home and you probably own a single car but can certainly own more than one if needed. But transit isn't 99% (literally) car-based infrastructure.
EVs won't solve these problems. The root problem is car-based infrastructure so more efficient cars just puts more people on the road and uses more resources. The only solution is changing architecture and neighborhood design.
1) fake wallets (give them a key to some coins but not all)
2) multisig - someone else has to provide the other half of the key or what you can give them is worthless
etc
The total value of all currency right now is far higher than the value of all the gold - if there was some sort of rush back to gold the price increase would be tremendous
“And that is probably why the U.S.’s statutory price of gold stays fixed at a decades-old level of $42.22. The consensus that independent central banking is a good thing (because it keeps a lid on inflation) dictates that the Fed have plenty of ammo. If the official gold price stays at $42.22, the Fed can lay claim to the full 261,498,927 ounces held by the Treasury. If the price is increased, the Fed gets only a sliver of that, the Treasury laying claim to the rest. And with fewer resources, the Fed’s has less control over the purchasing power of currency.”
It's not so much about 'ammunition': for that it doesn't matter how the central bank accounts for their gold.
The archaic official value of gold is just a political left-over from when the US was part of the Bretton Woods system, and no politician has found it advantageous to change that relict.
Just like we are still labouring under lots of other old regulations. Like taking our shoes off at the airport.
tldr; the Fed owns gold certificates which give it a claim on a $11 billion worth of gold held by the US Treasury. They don't have a claim on a number of ounces of gold, so the US hasn't changed the convertibility value of gold certificates of $42.22 set in 1973 so that the Fed's claim on an absolute mass of gold remains unchanged.
It still doesn't quite make sense to me, because if the official value matched the market value, the Fed would still have the same claim to their book value of gold. It makes me think that something else is going on that's intentionally obscured.
you don't have to move that far to escape all that. Plenty of areas an hour away from San Jose that are nice and a lot cheaper (still more expensive than Texas or Florida, sure).
Depending on if you need to change jobs and the family situation sometimes it's just as much effort to move states than move a few hours away.
If you have the opportunity it's good to look at the entire country, sometimes even the world (though for tech the US is by far the best option) for the best value.
Even moving 2 miles away will result in better quality of life. Downtown San Jose has the some of the highest crime rates and largest homeless encampments in the city, and the rent in other parts of the city is not a lot higher.
But if I'm moving an hour away, why not move farther? I was born, raised and have lived 31 out of 34 years in California and I just can't fathom why anyone would choose to live here anymore. I bought a house in Southern Oregon 4 years ago and moved up here full time a year ago thanks to the pandemic. I really hope I never have to move back.
Southern Oregon is a far cry from Texas and Florida as the top comment mentions. I don't see how either of those states would factor in especially for my partner who champions women's and LGBTQ+ rights...
No need to drive even an hour. Downtown San Jose is certainly a hellhole (I worked downtown on Santa Clara St. for a while) but just a few minutes away there are very nice suburbs like Campbell, Willow Glen etc.
