It’s not a “feel good statement”, it’s reality. Gas is terrible. It’s responsible for a significant portion of climate change and gas stoves cause myriad health issues. This is basic stuff. Of course the transition isn’t all sunshine and rainbows but electrification is far from some insurmountable ideal, and it can be quite cost effective.

The vast majority of HVAC equipment will be replaced on burnout, and when you do the economics of a new gas furnace (and almost certainly AC these days) vs an ASHP, it’s simply not $30-50k extra. There are state and local incentives, the federal tax credits, utility incentives etc., but I agree the IRA programs are on thin ice (even though Biden awarded funds before leaving). I bought a high end cold climate heat pump for just a few grand more than my neighbor who bought a furnace/AC with similar operating costs. You can get a cheaper ASHP and furnace for something in between cost wise. My state has tripled cold climate heat pump incentives and they are now very competitive with gas systems. I work in the industry and live this every day, it’s not some boondoggle, the grid updates necessary aren’t as dramatic as headlines imply and are already well underway to support vehicle electrification and load growth/resiliency. The PNW is quite mild and people are willing to pay for AC anyway due to heat waves (and wildfire smoke), so going straight to heat pumps is a very cost effective solution. Folks are cancelling gas service left and right and the remaining users will be left with rising fixed costs. Plus as I led with, gas is terrible for your family and the climate (and locally where the wells are).

It’s always the right time to switch to heat pumps and induction stoves. Gas is terrible.

Turkeys are super cool, but it’s still a bit silly to apply human values to wild animals. Pretty much all animals are wired to survive while expending the least amount of energy and reducing risk to themselves. Stealing catches from other animals is quite common across species because it’s easier and safer. The reality is that it’s brutal out there. I don’t have diminished admiration for a bear because it found some food in a trash can instead of catching fish from a stream.

Raptors are awesome and they absolutely hunt and kill other animals. You don’t have to make up fake animal facts to dunk on the US.

Didn’t he die just today trying to suck on his own penis? Hard to keep up with the news these days.

Marginal cost is never zero though. That would imply truly free unlimited energy. There is a cost to build solar, wind, storage, etc. that needs to be amortized. We also want to incentivize folks to not waste energy, so a reasonably strong link between usage and price is helpful.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this all plays out for gas infrastructure as folks electrify and cut their gas service. Once the spiral starts, fixed costs will grow for the remaining customers and push more people to cancel their service.

But the size of the array, and therefore the cost of the array, are intimately tied to the production of said array. So there can’t be flat rate unless consumption never surpasses production, which is of course will when you have zero marginal cost.

Of course, and that’s part of the charm. They bag out like a pair of leather slippers. I read something recently about them using a shit ton more adhesive in the new Forester so maybe it’s improving? My 2015 isn’t that bad, but I hate driving in general so basic appliance standards is fine by me.

What does this even mean? What TV shows are you even talking about? Indiana is a US state.

I’m too lazy to look this up, but I believe death rates were higher out of cities vs in cities. Half the reason hospitals were packed in cities is because rural people went where the ventilators were. Everywhere had all the covid waves, they just hit cities first.

Elderly tend to be more R, and D folks were more likely to mask and vaccinate. But elderly vaccinated pretty well across the board and the divide was bigger in the young. Lots of factors, but my money is on D making out slightly better as a broad cohort. Tragic all around though.

Ok I did some searching and excess mortality points to higher rural impact, but official cause of death data is mixed (too lazy to link though).

https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penn-sas-comparing-urban-and-rural-excess-mortality-during-covid-19-pandemic

Nobody said it was difficult to understand. I agree it’s a dead simple idea, and like most dead simple ideas it’s not actually a good idea. There’s a reason Bernie Sanders wholeheartedly endorsed Kamala (and Hillary), but sure, all the .ml folks must know better. If you think Bernie is too centrist then you need to understand that your cohort is so laughably out of step with the populace that you’ll never get anywhere. Kind of like where PSL is at with zero seats (ever, btw, not just currently).

Real people will be harmed by another Trump term. Immigrants, women, POC, LGBT, basically anyone other than healthy white men. It says a lot when you think they’re all disposable enough to help Trump to win in the hopes of a future socialist movement that won’t ever happen because the movement can’t even win a single seat anywhere in the country. AOC correctly called the green party “not serious” and they’ve actually won a small handful of elections, unlike PSL. Movements start from the bottom up, not the top down.

Is that why PSL has a grand total of zero members in office? I thought surely there must be a few, but nope - zero. It’s literally a joke to run a candidate for president when you don’t have a single member serving in any elected office in the entire country. It’s laughable.

And sure, maybe it’s not “true accelerationism” but it’s a common term to describe leftists that embrace people like Trump because they are deluded into thinking it will somehow break the system and a communist utopia can magically rise from the ashes. Call it whatever you want, but it will never be a good idea.

Just be wary of anyone conflating a simple vote for a 3rd party candidate for president every 4 years with the hard work of actually organizing a socialist movement. They are very different things. A 3rd party that has zero mathematical chance of success and crawls out of the woodwork every 4 years is a spoiler, not serious, and only benefits the fascist. This is just accelerationism.

Unless the plan is something more like Terminator. If you “unshackle” AI and give them a mandate to get CO2 back to 250 ppm things are going to get real.

That’s entirely the wrong denominator for this comparison. IRS doesn’t write the budget nor do they write tax law, they just collect.

You’re still making the mistake of treating dems like some single monolith. It’s a coalition of just about everything that isn’t MAGA at this point, covering all sorts of ideals, yours being just one small part. The answer is still “get a majority of reps that aren’t asswipes” and then we’ll get legislation we want.

As to DC statehood, it would have gone through if not for Manchin because the Senate “majority” at the time hinged on his support. We need to win these seats with bigger majorities, period, and then they’ll pass better bills. The overwhelming majorty of Dems support DC statehood, saying “they won’t do it” is not a great take when they literally didn’t have the votes.

Sure, assuming you don’t think the American rescue plan, bipartisan infrastructure act, CHIPS, IRA, and the first massive tranche of funding for Ukraine are useful. I don’t think you realize how short 2 years is for the legislature and how narrow the dem margin was. They achieved significantly more useful legislation than I thought possible. Unfortunately they didn’t codify Roe, overhaul SCOTUS, or harden our institutions against fascism, so maybe you’re right. Who knows what they could do with a larger majority and control of the House/Senate for 2 more years though - it would be fun to find out, if we could avoid getting all worked up blaming different people we mostly agree with and vote big against fascism.

What kind of ice are you riding on? Snow, even packed snow it usually ok, but turning/braking on ice is a disaster without studded tires. Source - I’ve crashed on ice several times despite being a very competent rider in all conditions for 3 decades.

You seem to supporting the concept though. More people didn’t keep voting left, they voted center/left which sounds like has been moving right, so things stayed the same/went right. Who you vote for matters too - we have multiple opportunities to vote between “dems”. To me OPs comment is a simple truism - we can’t move left by not electing leftist individuals (and parties by extension). Any other strategy is some pie in the sky game theory.

Maybe the garbage brands. Milwaukee, DeWalt, Makita, etc are very well made, and significantly more powerful than they were 5-10 years ago.