While I agree that energy-intensive business should always be pushed onto flexible-pricinv contracts, as a private consumer, uniform pricing is an advantage imo. You don’t need to think about whether running the washing machine will cost you 0.2¤ or 0.6¤ or whether there’s a price surge, and it’s even more expensive.

Fixed pricing happens in Europe too. The retailer prices the volatility into a fixed pricing plan. It still ends up much cheaper than how the UK has structured their grid, which ensures electricity companies are making massive piles of money.

UK’s uniform pricing is intended to ensure renewables are artificially profitable, incentivising more production. In most other countries, suppliers charge competitive rates, and brokers buy on an open market. This allows demand-based generators (like gas) to charge more during high demand periods (when wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining). The flip side of this is that prices crater during high wind and sun periods. This leads to volatility which can be smoothed with futures contracts. The net effect is that renewables become less profitable, but consumers pay a lot less for electricity.

The UK needs to restructure their energy market to better align with the rest of Europe. It would significantly reduce prices for everyone.

IMDB rating: 4.2.

I’ve had exactly the same experience. Lemmy has been far more hostile than I ever experienced on Reddit. Any opinions which aren’t far left are called “Nazi,” and users are very quick to justify violence against “Nazis.”

That’s coherent. Unfortunately most people who use it today literally mean “someone who disagrees with me.” It really muddies the water because it’s often accompanied by threats of violence. The net effect is raising the temperature in the room on both sides, because it’s effectively dehumanising others who have perfectly valid political disagreements, and calling for their death.

The “tolerance paradox” is a handy tool with which to justify violence by those on both sides. If I’m just fighting intolerance, then my actions are justified. It’s a common rally cry used by authoritarians to stamp out diversity and democracy. To really hammer the point home, the Nazis were the first to employ it. By blaming their issues on the “intolerance” of foreign states, they justified a global war. It is obviously the inspiration for Popper’s 1945 work, The Open Society and Its Enemies. Russia is currently using this fallacy to justify the war in Ukraine, claiming that the West is “intolerant” of Russia, and they need to defend themselves against this intolerance.

Here is a full quote from Popper on the subject if anyone is interested.

I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

Popper’s argument is laid bare here. Tolerate up to the point of violence. That is, if one physically attacks us, we no longer have the burden of tolerance. Popper is commonly misquoted and intentionally misused to justify violence, suppresion, and censorship against disagreement, and that is clearly not his argument.

disagree, if political discourse can’t survive public debate, then it isn’t a very good political ideology.

They made it clear they’re talking about spaces and topics not about politics. People who feel entitled and compelled to make everything a political culture war are insufferable. Made worse when they call everyone who disagrees with them a Nazi. The word has lost all meaning now.

I can explain the delta. The article is referring to capacity. It’s a trick used by activists to overrepresent the contribution of renewables to the grid. Renewables are of course highly volatile and their peak capacity is much higher than trough. Grids require reliable base load generation, so little of the renewable peak capacity is actually useful or consumed. What’s important to measure is actual consumption, which your report measures.

Beehaw is quite toxic and for that reason, lemmy.world is not federated. I expect an angry swarm of people from Beehaw to send me death threats now to prove how untoxic they are.

in germany, for example, the population that immigrated since 2012 makes up approx. 3% of the total population. that means that the population is roughly 3% larger than it would be without that immigration.

That doesn’t sound correct. Source? As of 2022, 19% of Germany was foreign born. Unless there was some kind of mass immigration prior to 2012 - which I don’t see in the stats - you appear to be mistaken.

Makes me wonder where all that money is going?

Scroll down to spending categories. Most money is spent on things like social security, medicare, veteran care, unemployment insurance, and health. Defense is 13% (and absolutely needs to be audited ASAP). Interest payments on debt is now 13% and growing fast. This is why it’s important to at least reduce the deficit as fast as possible. Imagine how much good the government could do with another $400B each year without those interest payments. (well, maybe not this government, but the next one).

I can confirm it’s resolving rt.com. I’ve tested on two ISPs here in Denmark and both block the domain. I’m wondering if there are regional differences in the legislation or edicts.

I work in IT so I can confidently inform you that the vast majority of people do not change their DNS providers. Very few people would know how. Recall that my comment above is not about how easy circumventing censorship is, it was about the censorship existing at all, and how the EU would censor results in a search engine they create.

It’s a perfectly valid ideological divide here, so I can’t tell you you’re “wrong.” I would argue that in order to believe that democracy is valid, one must subscribe to the belief in individual agency. That is, the ability for people to make rational decisions about not only themselves, but their society. If one believes that, they should believe that the same people must have access to as much knowledge as they wish - especially if it’s from the guys who oppose the current people in power. Democracy fails to function if the people in power can suppress criticism.

That’s a fair and nuanced take. You’re right that there should be some exceptions for illegal content, but my line is clearly much further into the freedom spectrum than the EU has drawn that line. To roll up to my original claim: they would immediately ban many sites on any search engine they created, and they would do so for many reasons I am uncomfortable with.

The user asked why I believed the EU would ban sites. I gave them the answer. Why would you expect me to reply with something unrelated to their question? You just don’t like that a) I’m correct - the EU would immediately ban sites on their search engine, and b) you’re comfortable with the government telling you which books you’re allowed to read. I’m not.

I have whiplash. You’ve gone from an implied “that’s not happening” to “okay so it’s happening, and here’s why it’s a good thing!” Why feign ignorance if you knew that I was correct?

I don’t believe any government has the right to restrict which books and news sites I should be allowed to access. I think I am the best person to decide which knowledge I should have access to.

rt.com is blocked for me. If you can access it and you’re based in the EU it means you’re using a foreign DNS provider like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8.

I understand well the arguments used by governments to restrict access to books and websites. I reject them. I believe I am the best person to decide which knowledge I am allowed to access. I am certainly far more qualified than the government.

How quickly we shift from “it’s not happening” to “okay it’s happening, and here’s why it’s a good thing!” It’s fine that you prefer the government to choose which information you’re allowed to view. I don’t. I believe I should be allowed access to all information, and I should be allowed to choose what I want to read. I think banning books and websites and news is wrong.

No I mean actual censorship. For example, RT and Sputnik. They have also banned PressTV and CGTN. They suspended broadcast licenses for EADaily / Eurasia Daily, Fondsk, Lenta, NewsFront, RuBaltic, SouthFront, Strategic Culture Foundation, and Krasnaya Zvezda / Tvzvezda. All of these sites would be explicitly banned from any EU based search engine.

Note that I am not giving American tech companies a free pass here. Google is one of the worst.

Also note that “censorship” doesn’t exclusively refer to government censorship. That is an American-centric perspective using the Constitution as the lens. Censorship is often conducted by individuals and organisations. In this case I am referring to the EU.