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Had. Now we have the "Merit Order Principle". Cheap energy (i.e. renewables) are used first but the price is determined by the most expensive energy source running. (See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit-Order)

So if you're running a solar park you have production costs of about 5ct/kWh. But if there's also a gas plant running you get maybe 20ct/kWh. Instaprofit.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromgestehungskosten


Uniform pricing creates huge windfall profits for those cheap generators too, which incentivizes more investment. I‘m not saying there‘s collusion but the incentive to keep a gas turbine in the stack is clearly given.


But why should I put my time into reading and thinking about your article if you didn't think it worth your time to actually think about and write it?

Hope the Next Big Thing (TM) is the Electric Monk.


Makes me wonder how much information from prehistoric civilizations got lost by cutting up their libraries into wedding rings...


The diamond with information you're hypothesizing would have been dug up and modified by that prehistoric civilization, only to be put back under ground. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been found in a diamond mine.

And would you trust (very) future civilizations to come across a small diamond and think: hey, I'm going to fire a laser through this thing in a particular sequence and interpret the outcome as UTF-8? I think anyone who wants their data saved for posterity would give that some thought and not leave it to chance.


It's trivial to include macro structures that invite investigation, and utf8 is irrelevant. It doesn't matter what encoding scheme you use. utf8 is fine. All that matters is that there is structure.


> Otherwise, it wouldn't have been found in a diamond mine.

After 50k years, a library would become a diamond mine.


For some reason, I imagine most diamonds just store the same word over and over:

HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT....


Or, "under pressure, da da da da-da dum dum"


Another reason for using synthetic diamonds for jewelry.


One aspect of humor depends on cognitive flexibility. Puns work that way.

So if you're not able to make the right mental context switch at the right moment, you won't get the joke.


> One aspect of humor depends on cognitive flexibility

All humor? (Honest question)

I was under the presumption that e.g. slapstick or schadenfreude humor doesn't need linguistics, and is therefore seen in many animals. Animals that don't have any form of language but do have rather intricate social systems or even ranks and caste systems. but do have humor. E.g. where breaking or pushing those systems is the humor.

E.g. "boss gorilla slips on a banana peel haha".


It's difficult to reason about intelligence in this context.

Human intelligence is defined by behavior we humans value. Intelligence tests are geared to measuring these aspects.

Intelligence tests devised by animals would look totally different - and it's quite thinkable humans wouldn't do too well taking them.

Wouldn't assume that animals have less language ability than we humans, unless we totally figured out what other species are really talking about. Unless we do this is just an assumption.


And they are able to show insight and planning to get what they want...

Once a friend of our dog came visiting, grabbed his favorite stuffy and happily chewed it in the yard. Which our dog clearly resented.

So he cleaned up the yard and hid all other toys in the house. Usually that's our job - he never bothers to look after his toys.

Then he came out with an old tennis ball, pranced around, played with it, like "Dude, this is the BEST toy EVER invented. An it's mine."

His friend dropped the coveted stuffy and came over to investigate... our dog dropped the ball, grabbed the stuffy and hid it in the house.

His friend was left with a slimy, boring ball.

I really can't think of any other explanation - he knew how to get his stuffy, but also anticipated this trick wouldn't work twice. So the cleanup in advance.


That is a rare level of cunning!

A simpler, somewhat common version is when one dog pretends that there is something interesting outside, so that the other dog would drop the toy and would run to the window hoping to bark at the mailman, while the trickster picks up the left behind toy.

Some dogs actually learn to see through this ruse. It can be very amusing to watch them darting instinctively, then suddenly realizing what is about to happen, returning back to pick up the toy and only then going to the window more leisurely.


Yes, that was clever.

But he showed real intelligence by never doing anything like this in front of us ever again. ;)


I remember a video from a camera someone set up in their home to see what their dog -- who was not allowed on the furniture -- did when they were gone. It may not be surprising that the video depicted the dog rolling around and rubbing itself on all of the furniture.

It's a small wonder whether the dog did that when the owner was home!


Reminded me of this interesting bird song visualization project:

https://github.com/soundshader/soundshader.github.io/tree/ma...

Less information than a spectrogram, but really visually appealing. :)



wow this is so cool. thanks for sharing


Wondering if pesticides, especially neonicotinoids play a role in this epidemic. Neonicotinoids are neurotoxic and have effects on mammals...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid#Harms_to_Mammali...


A pity, I'd have liked to visit Scotland again. Perhaps it's just me, but when a country decides to treat me like a criminal suspect instead of a welcomed visitor I just don't want to go there anymore.


Then you probably won’t be traveling internationally much after about 10 years from now. This is coming everywhere.


yes, but some countries have a pretty streamlined process.

Canada, for exemple. They asks you for your name, passport number, credit card number, if you have anything specific to mention. Then you instantly received an email with your ETA

On the other hand, countries like the USA make it weird. They infamously ask you if you were involved in the 3rd Reich, and they want your social media accounts. The latter is probably to know if you're an American&Trump loving tourist, or if you keep saying that Canada is better. Idk what else they can get out of this.

oh, and they ask you if you have a mental health disorder; They probably don't want autistic tourists either.


> Idk what else they can get out of this

Mining for extremist attitudes or behaviors


it just makes me want to open a twitter account to post all the dad jokes and questionable p0rn I can, or anime reviews and fan theories, just to proudly provide the link on the ESTA form. (aka just a concentrate of Twitter)

have fun, dear government agents. You were the ones who wanted it.

I hope trollish attitude or behaviour isn't disqualifying, but I couldn't care less if I'm allowed in the USA or not.


Exactly that - the subtitle really says it all: "A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship"

A craftsman is an expert in his field who applies his knowledge and techniques judiciously, not religiously or automatically.


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