[ExI] The Futurism of Elon Musk

[John Grigg]

 "Thanks John and Adrian!  John good to see you back, me lad."

Spike, thank you!  : )  I thought that YT video would catch the interest of
the list members. I suppose the young intellectual, Tom Nicholas, is a bit
of a European socialist at heart, to dare criticise the darling of our
transhumanist hearts, Elon Musk! Lol

I had no idea California was suffering from power shortages. Not good... I
am sorry to hear that you have an ill relative who has to deal with such
conditions. In my case, I bought an air conditioner for my significant
other's father, after he spent a month in the hospital due to emphysema.
The doctors said that without one, he would probably die. Now the grandkids
like to hang out even more with grandpa, and his air conditioned bedroom!
The Philippines is very backward in some ways, but people tell me that
their power grid is definitely better than it was in years past.

What about thorium nuclear reactors? I thought they were the "safe" nuclear
alternative. But I suppose it is hard to overcome all the bad press over
the decades, due to human and mechanical failure to keep the power of the
atom under control. The recent HBO mini-series, Chernobyl, really chilled
my blood. If you have not seen it, you must! Some of the best television I
have ever watched.

I was thrown initially by your usage of the term "coal burners." But yes,
the power for those electric cars has to come from somewhere. I was
recently on an online forum when a racist fellow said he would never date a
woman who was a "coal burner." I brought down the house by saying I
understood where he was coming from, and that I also would never date a
woman who was not into renewable energy resources such as solar,
geo-thermal and wind.  ; )

John


On Sun, Sep 6, 2020 at 11:26 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

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> *From:* spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com>
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> >…I will tell ya about Elon Musk from a neighbor’s eye view.  …All is not
> lost.  Some is not even really lost, it’s around here somewhere.  Just saw
> some a while ago.  Mr. Musk sold us the coal burners, and Mr. Musk also has
> a solution to the dusk power shortage problem for sale.  Stand by, for this
> post is already too long…spike
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> OK so… lotta locals around here work at Mr. Musk’s factory up the street,
> but even those who do not might work making steering wheels and ordering
> wheel bearings and making the various electronic gazazzafratzes and things
> Mr. Musk puts into his nifty little hotwatt coal burners.
>
>
>
> OK, so… that has an impact.  We see construction crews all over the place,
> cleaning up, fixing up, building backyard granny units, painting,
> maintaining, generally improving the neighborhood, anyone who wants a job
> can get a job, so… of course we realize that in the long run, all of this
> happened because Musk built that factory right here in previously
> poverty-stricken Fremont California, cool!
>
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> Sure, we have power shortages now, particularly at sunset on hot days,
> but… there is a solution to that, and Mr. Musk will sell it to us.
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> The lithium battery caused an engineering revolution in transportation,
> and it also creates a revolution in power.  Reasoning: as we lean toward
> green power, there are engineering tradeoffs.  The cost goes up and the
> reliability goes down (because renewable sources are intermittent (the sun
> doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.))
>
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> All is not lost, not even some really: we understand that energy storage
> systems are needed.  Energy storage is inherently expensive, and it makes
> economic sense for the power company to tolerate blackouts rather than run
> up the power even higher building mass energy storage.  So… they go that
> route.
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> Having the power go out impacts some customers more than others: a lot of
> us work from home or study from home.  So we have our own generators, but
> those only run the refrigerator and the laptop computers.  In the last
> coupla, I have fired up mine trice.  The neighbors on either side and over
> the back fence already know that sound and what it means:  Plug in your
> refrigerator and phone charger strip to a powerstrip, drop the cord over
> the fence, spike will plug it in, keep four refrigerators and I don’t even
> know how many phones and laptops running, and if you have a laptop, you
> don’t really need lights, ja?  All of that, using just a little cheap
> camper generator.
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> OK, well sure, but that is noisy and undignified, ja?
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> So… Mr. Musk offers a nifty (expensive but hip) solution called the Power
> Wall.  It is little more than a bunch of Tesla batteries that is part of
> your house.  It has its own high capacity inverter and all that, so if (eh…
> when) the power goes out, no problem, your good old Power Wall keeps all
> your stuff (except the AC) going right on as if nothing happened, and if
> you really have a lot of money it can even run your AC.
>
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> The cool fun part of all this is that the individual proles pay for those
> depending on how much the can tolerate a power outage.  I will not buy one
> because I don’t own a coal burner (outta my price range) and with a bit of
> grit and determination, I can survive for a few hours without the ability
> to post a big breezy commentary to ExI.
>
>
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> Meanwhile, none of this required any political intervention, those willing
> and able to pay did so, the poorer of us see our power bills go down (mine
> did), my more capital-enabled neighbors buy the Power Wall, Mr. Musk gets
> still richer, some of that trickles back down, neighborhoods are spruced
> up, construction crews are busy, and… we (indirectly) are enabled to
> install more green and renewable energy sources because we have increasing
> ability to deal with power intermittence which is what limited green energy
> sources all along.
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> Sheesh, how often does THIS happen?  Eeeeverybody wins!  The poor, the
> rich, the EVERYBODY who likes to breath cleaner air, the everybody.  Cool!
> All you proles with more money than you know what to do with, please go buy
> a Tesla.
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> Thank you Mr. Musk.
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> spike
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