Amazing video by Technology Connections. It’s a long one, but don’t miss his 30 minute angry rant at the end.
I will always upvote technology connections, I have watched so many videos of his about things I would have thought i couldn’t care less about and enjoyed them all!
This!!!
My highlight was the non lightening brake lights on electric cars when they are recuperating
That pisses me off to no end. The car knows how fast it is going, it has to show you. Just make the lights come on based on deceleration, regardless of how it happens. It doesn’t even need dedicated hardware. It’s just lazy coding and development.
What video was that? I think I haven’t seen that one.
As someone not from the US, I can’t say how much I appreciate the last part of his video. As much as I understand why YouTubers want to “keep politics out of entertainment”, it’s disappointing and makes me lose interest in some US content because it seems like they are ignoring what’s going on around them.
And about the batteries, that’s unfortunately an argument I sometimes hear from skeptics. “What are we going to do with all those batteries?” they ask. I explain that they can mostly be recycled and like to ask what are we going to do with all the CO2 in the air, but apparently it’s different. Ironically one of those persons is my father, that has a cabin with a solar system that I installed for him. He originally bought a generator but since it’s very noisy to run only for some lights, he prefers using the battery bank powered by a few solar panels on the roof. I’d show him this video but he doesn’t speak English and it’s probably a lost cause anyway.
We can only hope that at least a few people can be influenced by this video; both parts.
A technology connections video with a 30 minite rant??
watches video
oh.Anyone willing to share a tl;dw?
EDIT: Okay so I watched the video and here’s a tl;dw which by necessity will lack a lot of detail and nuance. The video is in two parts.
The first part, an hour long, is about the slam dunk viability of solar panels as an energy source. In general, but most particularly in comparison to fossil fuel. The presenter underscores the real, deeper meaning of renewable energy sources and addresses many arguments made against solar power especially when it comes to scaling it up and in regards to its ecological impact. ngl, it’s pretty jaw dropping, even if I already knew most of this.
I was increasingly frustrated in the first part because I wanted to shout Do You Get Why This Is Not Happening? Do You Get Why This Renewable Energy Future Is Not Happening. So I was relieved to see that he does get it.
The second part, about 30 minutes long, comes after a quick faux end credits. In this portion, he “goes there” and lays out not only why we are not moving into this future we could have, that is already here for us to have (to wit, money interests) but broadens into a reflection and indictment about the overall situation currently in the U.S.A. While dipping into partisan politics, he elucidates his personal operating principle and shows how it is a throughline into that topic. He did it in a way that pulled no punches while remaining, at least IMO, respectful
First hour: Developing a detailed intuition for exactly how solar and wind energy work and what makes them so much better than oil (without mentioning climate change or pollution)
Last 30 min: Establishing a baseline moral framework that everyone can get behind, and explaining that under this framework a revolution against the Trump regime would be entirely justified but at a minimum we absolutely must vote against Republicans in the 2026 and 2028 elections.
As someone in the comments put it: he explains solar and then goes nuclear.
I think all the information is pretty well-known in this community, but here’s a summary:
- Renewables (specifically solar + batteries) are an inevitable future of energy production due to technological advancements and economies of scale improvements; you should not oppose them but welcome them
- We are at a tipping point where solar + batteries is now the cheapest energy source available
- Land use for solar farms is not a big issue, they are much more energy efficient per unit area than the ethanol corn that currently plagues the US
- Replacing all ethanol corn fields with solar farms would make almost twice as much energy as the US grid is currently producing
- Renewables are better than fossil fuels because they do not require continuous extraction; when a solar panel or battery has been “used up” and is degraded, it can be recycled, whereas fossil fuels can only be burned once after extraction
- The end goal is an almost-closed-loop system for all energy production, similar to what we have with lead-acid batteries already
- Recycling solar panels is relatively easy because they are mostly glass and aluminum, which we know how to recycle well, and we could probably figure out silicon too
- Recycling batteries is a harder problem but possible too if we put some effort in; currently the recycling capacity is lacking because there’s not enough batteries being recycled, since most of them are still working fine in EVs sold since the start of EV boom
- Worst-case, we can literally just grind up batteries into battery mush and refine it, same as we do with ores from which the raw materials come in the first place, but likely something better is possible
- Alec describes his personal politics, how he values labor and working-class people, and how he thinks immigrants are hard-working people who need to be welcomed and cared for
- Trump and Republicans as a whole are fascists and lie constantly, which needs to be called out and stopped
- ICE must be abolished and its thugs tried for their crimes
- Democrats are not doing enough, and in fact are pretty bad on some points, but it’s still better to vote for them
- People need to organize with their neighbors, care for each other first and foremost, and defend themselves against the government
Alec’s personal views are a relief, I think it’s a shame he didn’t go deeper into them before (IIRC he had a video where he called out right-wing misinfo but stopped short of any direct calls for action). I suppose the contrast between his usual “tech presenter/science explainer” and this clearly righteous political call for action might get through to some people better.
Any mention of nuclear energy and the difference of land and resources required in comparison?
Not directly, but a key point of his thesis is that solar by itself (with batteries) can provide 85% more power than we currently use by only using the land that currently grows corn for biofuel on. He mentions wind as well.
Nuclear has its own lies spread about it that are completely independent of what renewables get and it has its own caveats, so, it does kind of make sense to not really bring it up since that could warrant its own video. Illinois has nuclear power, so, I can’t imagine it was an accidental oversight.
I don’t think so, but then again it’s a long and dense video and I might have missed something
- Renewables (specifically solar + batteries) are an inevitable future of energy production due to technological advancements and economies of scale improvements; you should not oppose them but welcome them
They’re lying.
Hahahahaha, funny interwebs person being a sarcastic edge! Such fresh comedic material, I’ve never encountered before
Or maybe for some things, you just shouldn’t… you’re only hurting yourself in the end
There’s a time and place for things, and garnering the wisdom to find the subtleties of that is something you should probably work on
Or continue forth being destructive for the lols and self-gratification, you’re hilarious — truly. Enjoy the dopamine hit while it lasts!
Big edit: sorry @fuckwit_mcbumcrumble … I got whooshed hard. I now see that yes, the tldw is indeed “They’re lying”. I feel a little dumb now, as I thought you meant the youtuber was lying; not that you had (super) summarized the subject. Very concise tldw, technically lol
Guess the video triggered me into also being tired of people lying, and thought you were being disinformative. My bad friend
“A wind turbine is like an oil derrick that generates eq. 3 gallons of gasoline evry single minute.”
Tbh I thought it would be more
Sometimes I’ve been feeling like I’m the weird one for caring about other people and the shit that’s been going on. It’s really nice to see someone as angry as I am.
Just when I thought I couldn’t like him more, he goes and drops this gigabased rant.
TC for U.S president honestly
I have been watching his videos for years with great enthusiasm.
If I ever meat him, it won’t be a handshake. That rant at the end deserves a hug. I love that antifascist energy that came pouring off him.
“It’s time to wake up and smell the fascism!”
Not finished it yet but it annoys me so much that for some reason it is VASTLY cheaper for me to buy a briefcase or two full of batteries for my house than it is for the same to be done in bulk at the scale of the grid.
Just batteries would cut my energy costs to about a third of their current rate by charging them at cheaper off peak prices. Isn’t it insane that this is a feature of the current energy market?
Only now do you start feeling the urgency of the situation, when usually apolitical channels have started discussing politics.
“If you’ve been watching my channel for any length of time, then you should already have a pretty clear understanding of what my personal politics are. If you’ve been under the impression that I’ve not been political, you simply don’t understand what politics means. I have indeed stayed out of partisan politics and electoral politics, but I’ve been wearing my personal politics on my sleeve this whole time, and they’ve not been that subtle.”
Any non-youtube link to watch this? Don’t want to deal with Google no more
For tech people: You can host Invidious locally… No google, no ads, no popups.
It’s a lot of maintenance. I’m not knocking it, I’m just pointing out how difficult it is.
I hosted a pixelfed server for my city and it cost a few hundred bucks out of my own pocket. It was a test run so I can push my city to move their social media to open-source.
But the constant need to apply spam protection and abuse from visitors, not to mention abuse from users like copyright shit and even CSAM. My expensive side project became a full time job.
Locally!!!
I’m hosting it in my own network. I access it. no one else!!
And I’m doing it, so I can tell you: It’s almost no effort hosting Invidious locally for yourself. It just works. And if YouTube breaks something every 2 months, you can usually “docker compose pull; docker compose down; docker compose up” and it works again.
Just in case it is not clear: Invidious is an alternative YouTube frontend. In the backend, it uses YouTube. It’s not some kind of Fediverse thing. You cannot upload videos with it / on it and you can be the only user ever using it.
https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
Conclusion: low effort to host locally.
Ooh nice! Does he have other videos like this or is it all computers and stuff?
Lots of great stuff, lots of retro tech and common how it works stuff. His dishwasher video makes it so there is no reason to wash things by hand pretty much ever.
He hasn’t done any videos on computers, AFAIK. His channel covers a wide range of topics, from washing machines, car blinkers, heaters, refrigerators, to christmas lights. You can see his backlog here.
I highly recommend the series on the CED and the downfall of RCA. He’s also got a number of videos about various cameras which are also great!
It is pretty standard in most electric cars I’ve been in that it shows the kWh/h as it charges and how many kWh it has charged when complete.
Also your comment reminds me of the Boots economic theory. That poor people pay more overall because keep buying cheap boots yearly rather than spend more once on expensive boots every 10 years like the rich.
A captured government is the problem, the corrupt administration and the purchased opposition can’t do anything for you like cheap power and subsidized electric cars because it doesn’t help their donors.
Common sense.
it still needs to be explained carefully though
like to a child you still have to explain how to read a clock or how to tie their shoes even though it’s common sense. and you have to be patient while explaining it.
I didn’t write “common sense” to imply it doesn’t need to be explained.
I wrote it to mean that once explained, it clearly is impossible to refute because it’s common sense.
My comment was not adversarial.
Fairly uncommon, sadly
I have watched only a few minutes of this vid so far, as well as the timestamps and I must admit I don’t agree with this approach because of something I learned today.
He says around 2 m something like: the strategic US reserve of oil even tho the number of barrels sounds huge, they could sustain the US only a month of our current use. From the context my understanding is that he implies that this is due to casual, everyday-people consumption.
Well, it looks like the Department of Defense is the U.S. government’s largest fossil fuel consumer, accounting for between 77% and 80% of all federal government energy consumption since 2001. So why is this huge percentage missing from this long analysis?
Anyways, if he talks about the US military petroleum consumption, please let me know. Or if I got something wrong with this new info I got about the US military, let me know too.
You should rewatch the video, because you totally have missed his main point
Cuz the US strategic oil reserve isn’t earmarked for the federal government and the share of the military energy usage in the federal energy usage is entirely meaningless tot the oil consumption of the US economy.
Cuz the US strategic oil reserve isn’t earmarked for the federal government
According to a factcheck site it looks like the U.S. Oil Reserve Created for Supply Disruptions, Not Strictly Military Use. So maybe your statement is wrong? Otherwise could you share the source you got this from?
the share of the military energy usage in the federal energy usage is entirely meaningless tot the oil consumption of the US economy
I don’t understand what you are saying, could you please explain and/or share a relevant link? Btw maybe I should clarify that by talking about “consumption” I was not talking in economic terms, just in the sense of “utilizing”.
Come again? I am saying “isn’t earmarked for the federal government” and you come up with a fact check saying that it is not earmarked for military use. Which is the same thing.
Also, you are comparing the share of the military in the federal government’s energy usage. The government’s energy usage is largely electricity, not oil-based, while for the military it is the inverse. Also, the military consumes oil outside of the US economy: the oil consumption of an US Air Force base in say Spain is part of the Spanish economy, not of the US economy. Or at least, the overseas bases consumption will not be pulled from the US strategic oil reserves.
So it is all orthogonal to the US strategic oil reserves what the US military’s share in energy consumption of the US Federal Government is.
I am saying “isn’t earmarked for the federal government” and you come up with a fact check saying that it is not earmarked for military use. Which is the same thing.
No. “Isn’t earmarked for the federal government” is not the same as “isn’t earmarked for military use".
Any links to back what you say would be highly appreciated.
Given that the US military is part of the US federal government, yes, that is a difference without a distinction. If it is for general use, per your own source, and not earmarked for the US federal government, then it is by extension not earmarked for the US military either.
You could do worse than to actually watch the whole video and not dragging your dislike of having a military into a conversation that is not about that to begin with. Or as others have put it in a more pejorative way, stop it with the leftist bean soup.
