I wish I had understood the freedom I really had back then, and used it better

Lots of reasons to dislike Google. That is not one of them.

Is it fair? Probably, yeah. But I don’t think it’s an effective way of framing or addressing the problem.

The challenge is always getting enough people to do enough of an action that it makes an impact. It is certainly more effective, in terms of reducing emissions, to target policy interventions at leverage points - like forcing energy companies to adopt renewables by law and banning further fossil fuel extraction.

Personal action can be useful to live in alignment with your values and to provide examples to others for ways to get involved in the climate movement, but we can’t consume our way out of this.

Why am I not surprised? In the words of the Wu Tang Clan - “cash rules everything around me”

Excel is definitely not useless! Learning a little Python (especially the pandas package) can go a long way in making data analysis easier though

Now you’re speaking my language!

Every time I’ve asked ChatGPT for help coding, I’ve wound up needing to rewrite it all for myself. LLMs make baffling design decisions (because they are just paraphrasing Stack Overflow, not making actual decisions).

I have found them helpful for turning error messages into more legible explanations of what went wrong, but AI-generated code has not been effective, in my experience

I’m not a power user, so I’m often frustrated by Excel trying to do things I don’t want it to and by its abundance of features that I’ll never use.

And at least at my workplace, a lot of work processes use poorly-designed Excel spreadsheets for critical tasks, because it’s such a simple way to manipulate data.

I also find that when I need to do more complicated data analysis, Excel starts to become limited, and I find Python to be a more powerful and flexible tool.

Sometimes I want something bitter. If I want hot and bitter, I’ll drink coffee. If I want cold and bitter, I’ll have an IPA. I also like dark chocolate. Must just be something about bitterness that I enjoy.

Of all the words in the world, those are certainly some of them

• Knowledge Fight
• Behind the Bastards
• Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Wind has come down a lot, just over a longer time. Solar and storage are what have really plummeted recently. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/levelized-cost-of-energy

One of the big challenges now in the US is streamlining permitting, for renewables and for transmission upgrades and expansions.

I’d be interested to see the video you mention!

This is true, but investing in research and subsidizing its production is how we drive costs down. We’ve done a really incredible job of getting clean energy costs down from where they were, but there’s no need to slow our efforts down now

The internet is such a strange place

Yep! It’s a good way to get over the fear of a blank page, but I don’t trust it for more than outlines or summaries

Seconding Voyager!

Well, I’ve read a lot of theory, and I’m pretty sure our best bet is posting memes online, crossing our fingers, and hoping for the best. We definitely shouldn’t go outside and talk to people, that’ll never work

You can critique UI design without using an ableist slur

I think scripting is certainly a level 4 activity, since to even get started solving the problem you would need to navigate an IDE and have basic knowledge of a scripting language. Most people wouldn’t even know where to start.