The Swiss Environment Minister suggests you shower together to help cut energy usage by 15 percent, and the COO of ‘Beyond Meat’ takes a bite out of an Uber driver. All of this and more on Steve Green’s Lightning Round LXI.
This week’s topics….
00:20 Russia removes Black Sea submarine fleet away from Crimea.
03:15 Swiss environment minister suggests people shower together to save energy
06:29 COO of ‘Beyond Meat’, the fake meat purveyor, goes paleo, biting some flesh from the nose of an Uber driver after an Arkansas football game. He threatens to kill another driver.
08:55 McDonald’s CEO, sick of crime-ridden Chicago, suggests moving the hamburger chain’s corporate headquarters. Will Texas welcome the Golden Arches?
12:25 Venmo and PayPal ban ‘Gays Against Groomers’, whose mission is to safeguard children from abuse.
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19 replies on “Shower Together to Save Energy Says Government Official, Plus ‘Beyond Meat’ Exec Goes Paleo”
Scott: When you and I moved to Texas it was an individual choice. We chose Texas seeking to live like Americans. Sadly, when a major company, like Toyota, moves to Texas, they drag thousands of employees with them, many (likely most) who will vote like they did in California. Therein lies the threat to Texas and living like an American
GAG getting banned is just part of the overall big picture. The world is in the process of being taken over by people who want to create chaos and turn neighbor against neighbor so they can impose their own order on it. Tolerance has a universal constant. It’s based on a universal hardwired survival instinct. The willingness people have to tolerate those they place in the other category is based on the trust they have in the other to self moderate. So Woke get’s promoted by our overlords to tell useful idiots to do whatever they want. That’s why a dude can show off his fake breasts at a pride event, but Gays Against Groomers cannot be allowed to turn the temperature down.
So it’s not meat that makes men aggressive, it’s lack of real meat. I’ve tried some of those fake meat products at the ”urging” of the wifely unit. Message to Bill Gates – why would I want to get used to it? I don’t even like it during the beta phase.
Can I ask what I think is the obvious question?
When faced with a situation where one is going to come to physical violence, who in the hell is going for the bite his nose off option?
A strike with the heel of one’s hand, sure. Even an elbow to the bridge of the nose if you have messed up and gotten close. Or perhaps head-butting the bridge.
But biting someone’s nose off?
Who the hell does that?
Steve, I recently was checking out Venmo and found out that it is owned by PayPal, so it makes sense that both would ban within minutes of each other. The info was provided directly from the Venmo site, so it should be true. Just thought I’d let you know.
Desktop computers consume so little power when they’re not being used it’s not really even a consideration. If you’re using a desktop that does not otherwise have to be on an at full function 24/7/365 then just put it to sleep and shut off the monitor if you want to save maximum energy. It’s enough to have a power scheme set up that goes to screen saver then shuts down the monitor after a predetermined time has lapsed. If it’s not in use it’s not doing anything and all that is happening is it’s just keeping it’s circuits warm and ready for when you come back.
With an average savings difference of between $3 and $10 annually you’re not gaining much but you’re are doing unkind things to your computer if you shut it down all the way and then power it up every day or more often. That’s about what it costs to run a nightlight, maybe two nightlights.
There are components inside that computer case that operate at comparatively high temperatures to the ambient. Like any solid matter as those components heat up they expand which changes their overall size. When you first power up your system the heating of some components occurs much faster than others. It’s not until it’s been on for a while that everything gets as uniform in both heat and heat expansion that it’s going to get.
This causes a couple problems. One is the flexing of various parts at different rates. The motherboard itself, the printed circuit board, is relatively thin with circuitry applied to it in the form of very thin and narrow strips of what amounts to foil. These circuits connect whatever chips and such are on the board. As things heat and expand at different rates, then cool and contract at different rates everything on the motherboard flexes just a tiny bit. A tiny but not insignificant bit. This happens every time you power up your computer and then shut it down and it cools to ambient room temperature.
We all know what happens if you bend a piece of wire over and over again until metal fatigue sets in and it breaks.
The other problem is “chip walk”. Some of the things attached to the motherboard are chips with many little ‘legs’ that protrude from them and those legs are pressed into a soldered on socket. When you power up the chip is the thing drawing power and heating up so it expands first and fastest, then the socket catches up to it after a while by conduction and convection of heat. When you power down the socket cools and contracts fastest. Same as on power up but in reverse. The chip heating and holding more heat faster than the socket makes the chip ‘want’ to come out of the socket a tiny bit each time the machine power cycles. This is what is known as “chip walk”.
If you’ve ever shut off a hot car and walked by the engine compartment hearing little “tink’s” and metallic pops this is the same thing happening. Different components of the hot engine are cooling at different rates. But everything in that engine compartment this could be an issue for is held together by rather robust nuts and bolts, not pressure pressed into a socket.
OK, now that we’re up to speed on computer thermal issues and as I said, the savings is negligible or less even than that … When you do things that wear out your computer faster you have to go buy a new computer sooner than you probably would have otherwise. All the old computer, no matter how green or conscientious you are about disposal, enters the waste stream.
It costs more to mine the component minerals, treat and shape them into usable form and build a computer than your annual savings on electrical power will ever be if you shut it off every day. It takes a LOT of electricity to make those parts and there’s the burning of hydrocarbon fuels to supply the power to transport them all back and forth where they need to go to eventually become a computer. Then when a computer is no longer useful the same thing happens in reverse. Power to transport, power to disassemble, power to reclaim and recycle what can be and power to incinerate or otherwise destroy/melt/smelt what cannot.
So the less often you have to replace a computer that has failed, the better off the environment and the electrical grid are.
It’s either irresponsible or an act of desperation for a government entity to beg you to shut your computer completely off when you’re going to use it in a few hours. It’s a net loss, power-wise.
If you’re going to be gone for weeks then you might think about powering it down all the way and disconnecting it from the grid/network/cable system to avoid surge and lightning damage but if you use it every day then no, do not shut off your computer.
Thanks for an excellent summary. Some geek squad member had told my mother several years before she passed that she should shut down he PC every night. I could never convince her otherwise. In the 11 years after my dad passed and she essentially became tethered to the outside world via her PC, she had to replace it 4 times. Twice she did it on her own, when you moved to be nearer to us, I tried to explain it to her. I think if I had been able to do what you just did, I may not have had to replace it again 3 months before she passed.
Keeping things cool and allowing for different rates of expansion of different materials probably ends up being 90% of machine design.
Always loved the SR-71 story. In order to have an airframe that was sealed tight in the air at Mach 3 plus, it was purposely designed loose on the ground. Enough so that it leaked fuel prior to getting to cruising speed and altitude.
BTW – It takes a LOT of electricity to make those parts.
It not just the quantity of the power but the quality of it as well. Lots of effort goes in to making voltage and current steady so chips get made consistently.
You’re most welcome and thank you for saying so.
I hate the Geek Squad with a passion. Those little twerps have done far more damage than they’ve remedied.
Anyone who’s reading this, forget anything the Geek Squad ever told you. The odds are good that it’s not only wrong, it will harm your equipment and data. Never forget that they work for a company that makes a lot of money off selling new computers, components and peripherals.
A prophet is never honored in his hometown. It’s too bad that your mom wouldn’t take the word of her educated and experienced engineer son over the say-so of some pimple faced kid from Best Buy. I had the same sort of problems with my Mom her whole life. I sympathize with you completely.
There’s no way that turning off your computer when you’re not using it is any sort of net gain over just leaving it on.
I had a recent discussion with a too smart for his own good neighbor Brad who thinks all things saving energy and planet. The last time I had to replace the light bulbs in my garage, I used LED bulbs. A 40W bulb uses about 6W. You can tell at night that I leave that light on, or at least turning it off is not in my nightly security sweep.
He “asked” me if I knew I was leaving my garage lights on, thus confirming to me his level of nosiness.
I tried to explain that 6W over 10hr per day 365 days per year at $0.10 per kw-hr came to less than half his morning Starbucks.
The blank stare was its own reward.
I can be a real prick when I have run out of patience. My wife and daughter are kinder, they just say I can be a jerk. 😉 Guilty!
Your neighbor is a prime example of herd mentality following the herd just to follow the herd. It saves him from having to do any thinking and some simple math. He can then point to his herd following, invite you to follow too, and look down on you who actually does think and do some simple math because you graciously declined his offer to be like him and his herd.
I don’t think I could have come up with a better example of what’s wrong with people today than that simple anecdote.
It’s contagious too. Even good people can fall into that trap because it’s the easy way out.
Over the years I’ve replaced every bulb or light in my home with LEDs as the incandescent, halogen and compact fluorescent lights burned out. I didn’t do this to save the planet. I didn’t do it to help out the planet, I did it to help out my wallet. I did it to save money and so I wouldn’t have to climb on ladders and things more often than I absolutely had to. LEDs last much longer and when they came down in price to where that became a wash against cheaper bulbs that don’t last as long I started making the transition.
Several years ago a neighbor remarked to me that she came home late at night and my outdoors were lit up like daylight. I told her that was probably just a bunny or a dog that tripped the motion sensor lights. This seemed to satisfy her, more-or-less, but I still got a little stink-eye. Because, I assume, I had lights on when I wasn’t actually personally using them at the moment they were lit.
Then a year or more later she and her husband were here one night after dark and she was complaining how dark it was outside. Go figure.
I had replaced the motion sensors with IR emitters.
Because I have a pretty extensive camera system and those cameras work as well in IR as they do in visible light.
Then I showed her the camera images and she was completely flummoxed. The whole place looks like daylight in the cameras all night long. It’s seriously illuminated and the human eye can’t pick up any of it. So she can’t tell if I’m ‘wasting energy’.
She started sputtering about how extreme the lighting was in the camera views. (In one camera you can see all the way back to a grove of trees bordering a field, about 200 yards or maybe a little more from the physical camera.)
Her husband, a friend of mine, winked at me and said …
“Dear, infrared uses hardly any electricity because it is such a long wavelength.”
Which he and I both knew was gobbledygook that was totally untrue. A light is a light and it uses power according to it’s wattage and construction.
She was wholly mollified and congratulated me on my planet saving energy conservation. By switching over to infrared. Which is on all night every night and can only be seen by cameras. Which use electricity too. I’m using more electrical power now than the motion sensors ever dreamed of consuming.
I have to question the wisdom of letting people like her or your snoopy neighbor vote.
As far as being a prick goes, I’m right there with you. It never even occurred to me to contradict her husband and ‘mansplain’ all this to her.
My buddy and I had a great laugh over bourbon and cigars about this later.
My sister has a favorite expression. It goes …
“You can’t be a prick all your life. Take a day off.”
To which I reply …
“What? And ruin a perfect record? No, thank you.”
Some day people will look up “Worlds biggest prick” in encyclopedias and my picture will proudly be displayed on that page. If you want to compete for that honor I’ll just have to out-prick you. 😉
You and Ron can have the “World’s biggest prick” honors. I’m going for “World’s biggest goofball engineer.”
I can tell that in the next 10 years or so, I will probably be competing on your level. At this point, I still have a bit of a filter; mostly because the lack of one on her part (for her whole life but worse as she got older) was probably the main source of conflict between me and my mom. So I am sufficiently self-aware to know my tendencies and will rein them in if not too exasperated at the current situation.
That said, my tolerance for exasperation is clearly a tank that never gets full anymore. So the time that I am willing to listen to people’s stupidity without turning loose the power of a fully functional death star gets shorter and shorter.
My wife (who is much nicer than I am) has suggested I shine them on a bit and see how big a hole they get themselves into. She finds this entertaining as it demonstrates that they really have no idea what they are saying, they just have a list of grievances to parrot. Therefore, they pinball topics because there is no depth.
I can do this early in a night, but only if the Karen or Brad is so daft as to make full on debate a non-challenge. I am sure that some go home thinking I agree with them. It makes me laugh.
Ah well, as you say. They get to vote, too.
Yeah, part of my problem is that not only do I have no filter anymore, I purposely uninstalled any conversational filtration.
If someone is going to say something stupid I’m most likely going to call them on it. How uncomfortable I intentionally make them, how much fire the Death Star unleashes, in doing so is entirely up to them.
I give as good as I get by a factor of 10x. If they get snarky with me it’s game on. If they are polite and respectful they’ll get that back from me too.
Nothing pisses me off much more than a stupid person attacking me with their stupidity. This constitutes an obvious line of departure for measuring the character and intelligence of the person I’m dealing with.
Smart people know they can be wrong. I know I can be wrong. Smart people are comfortable enough with their intelligence, are self-aware and facile enough in discernment that they tend not to attack. So they discuss civilly and are open to a give-and-take in a conversation. This is more of a tendency than it is universal truth. There are smart people who are mean and just want to fight too but that’s not an indicator for intelligence either.
Many stupid people are already so convinced of their own superiority that if you disagree with them on any given topic they attack and try to destroy you.
Between those two endpoints are people who mean well, mean to be taken well, want to treat others well and so deserve kindness and patience regardless of intellectual capacity plus or minus.
Problems are amplified on the internet because often a stupid person will not hesitate to drop what they think is a “zinger” and take a drive-by potshot. But …
One of the really great things about the internet is that when you’ve shown them for what they are it’s right out there in public for everyone to see. Often in forums and media that will not go away in my lifetime too.
I see this everywhere, even here. I do not expect people with average intellect to act like they have more than they actually do. So I expect that I’m going to see something I consider dumb or obviously inaccurate from people who are otherwise nice folks. The key there is ‘nice folks’ get treated like nice folks even if their horizons are not as broad.
The way I see it it’s the heart not the mind that should be a deciding factor in how I deal with a person. Someone with a good heart, in the right place, is preferable to me over a mean spirited asshole who just happens to be above average intelligence every time.
I have enough experience with human beings to know which type I’m dealing with to a reasonably high degree of accuracy.
That said, I’ve noticed that conversing in text is like-as-not to lead to misunderstandings because all the other conversational cues like inflection, tone of voice, facial expression and other body language are all absent.
Sometimes I’m not really drubbing a stupid person into the dust, I’m just good-naturedly poking a little friendly fun at someone I otherwise think well of. That kind of thing isn’t always received in the manner it was sent.
I write like I speak and I often speak wryly. If you don’t know how I speak then there is the opportunity for a misunderstanding. Then I have to clarify and/or apologize. If clarification or an apology is warranted it will be forthcoming.
I do not set out to make enemies, I do not go looking for trouble. The “world’s biggest prick” thing is mostly, but not totally, a joke. If someone chooses to be my enemy I’m happy to oblige them to whatever degree they would like to take that. They’ll have to take a number and get in line.
As a general rule though I’m nice to people who are nice to me and not a bit nice to people who are not nice to me. I’ll give everyone the chance to prove which sort they are. I’ll put up with quite a bit from a decent, civil person and nothing at all from the other sort.
That’s about the only filter I’m interested in applying anymore.
Most people let things slide by and say nothing, ignore the insulting, belligerent and ingracious, and generally try to get along. That would not be a realistic description of my attitude.
I am this way because of a lifetime of observation and interaction with other human beings. I purposely cultivated and crafted my attitudes and positions so I’m not a bit ashamed of them and they are not something forced on me by others. I personally think that if more people were this way our society would be more secure and prosperous so …
I don’t know you all that well but from what you’ve said and broadly speaking …
If I were to advise you in your outlook over the next ten years or more I’d say to take what you’ve learned from your Mother and everyone else then consider it all carefully using the best as an example and the worst as a lesson and just be honest with yourself about what’s important to you in your situation.
My situation is different than yours, I may come to some different conclusions thereby. For instance, I don’t have a wife to say to me “Didn’t you take that a little far?” or “Are you going to let him get away with that?” Or anything else of the sort. There is no restraining gentle influence in my life anymore. So I have to make due with what I consider fair and just.
You’re a good man and quite intelligent so I know you’ll figure it out.
And …
Don’t forget to forgive yourself for being human while you’re at it.
Thanks, always enjoy our “discussions” and it is a great indication that varied life experiences can yield similar outcomes.
I would sum mine up as “don’t suffer fools quietly” but as you say, no need to go full auto on someone actually trying to understand and be nice about it. I think I am pretty good about that and having a very kind hearted spouse helps.
Your point about intelligent people at least trying to listen and learn from each other is spot on. I have a co-worker/friend who was convinced the AGW was a threat. It took a while, but showing him real data and discussing facts versus worst case scenarios has at least pulled him back from the we have to do something now. Fortunately he fully understands the environmental pitfalls of mining and disposing of battery materials, so this gave us a common cause.
Also having all of Gore’s deadline pass with no issue helps. 😉
There was a bumper sticker in the late 60s or early 70s that read: “SAVE WATER, SHOWER WITH A FRIEND”. Everything old is new again!!
Anyone else recall a stupid celebrity special during Clinton’s time that was all about saving the planet. Kevin Costner was tending bar and that was the line he kept saying. At least I think it was him.
A Conservative substitute to PayPal…paralleleconomy.com
Moving to Texas is more than merely relocating. It is exactly what Scott said, a lifestyle choice. Things here in Corpus Christi aren’t perfect, of course, and they’re definitely less “polished”, but I think that makes Texas authentic. And while there are Beto signs on a few fences here, they aren’t the majority, which makes living here feel much more like “real life”.
I’ve seen dog on nose violence and ferret on nose violence, but only rarely human nose bites. Interestingly, I’ve seen – several times in recent movies and series – scenes depicting someone’s nose being bit off. Media has so much influence …..