booly

The EU had an 8% decline in emissions last year.

The US peaked at 23.1 tonnes of carbon emissions per capita in 1973. It came off that peak but stayed pretty flat through 2007 or so, at 20.2 tonnes per person. Since then, it's steadily come down, and is now at about 14.9.

There's still a long way to go, but the 35% reduction that the US has already accomplished shows that it's possible to keep making progress.

Yeah, the IRA and Infrastructure Bill steer about $67 billion to railways, $80 billion to transit systems. And even though a lot of the other spending goes towards the status quo of car-based passenger transportation, electrifying that will go a long way towards reducing carbon emissions.

And there are some more ambitious ideas baked in, too: redesigning cities to require less car infrastructure and overall energy use, etc.

I thought it was a big deal when passed and honestly can't understand why people who care about climate don't acknowledge just how big of a deal it was (and how devastating that so much of the money authorized will now be in control of a Trump administration).

The Inflation Reduction Act included $65 million in research grants for low emission aviation and $245 million in development of biofuel based Sustainable Aviation Fuel (aka SAF). And the $3 billion in loan guarantees for manufacturing advanced vehicle technologies included certain aircraft.

There were also $5 billion in loan guarantees for shutting down our heaviest polluting power plants or retooling them to greener generation methods.

There was $3 billion in buying zero emissions vehicles and charging infrastructure for the postal service.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which inherited a lot of the stuff from the Green New Deal, was a lot of things, and I don't think I've ever heard it called deeply unserious before today.

I haven't combed through the data in a minute, but I want to also say that they're also leading in fossil fuel deployment too.

Yup, China is also leading the planet on new coal plant construction. As of 2 months ago, it seemed to be on track to add 80GW of coal generation capacity in 2024 alone, and accounts for more than 90% of new coal construction.

By way of comparison, the US peaked in total coal plant capacity in 2011 at 318GW, and has since closed about 134GW of capacity, with more to come.

In context, what we're seeing is massive, massive expansion of electricity generation and transmission capacity, both clean and dirty, in China. We can expect China to increase its total carbon emissions each year to be closer to the West, while the United States reduces its own from a much higher starting point. Maybe the two countries will cross in per capita emissions around 2030 if current trends continue, but there's no guarantee that current trends will continue: will the United States continue to shift from coal to gas? Where does grid scale storage, electrification of passenger vehicles, demand shifting, or dispatchable carbon free power go from here, in a future Trump administration? What's going to happen with the Chinese economy over the next 5 years? What technology will be invented to change things?

He just turned off the switch in the breaker, right behind the meter. The meter itself is still hooked up, so from the power company's perspective, he has an account and everything.

At least that's how I read the article he wrote last year:

Nevertheless, I opened the main circuit, disconnecting my apartment from the grid and committing myself to solving what problems arose as they came. As I type these words in January, I’m in my eighth month. My Con-Ed bills continue to show zero kilowatt-hours.

Clark Kent probably draws a salary, but I'm guessing he keeps that legal identity totally separate, with separate ownership of stuff.

But there are ways to make income without another person agreeing to payment:

• Lost, abandoned, or mislaid property may be claimed by the finder as their own in some circumstances.
• Certain types of buried treasure can be claimed by the finder, as well.
• Certain natural resources can be claimed by the people who extract them, especially from land or sea or even space that isn't owned by anyone. For example, the Guano Islands Act authorized explorers to claim islands covered in bird shit on behalf of the United States, and bring back all that valuable bird shit.
• At sea, the law of salvage entities a rescuer to some reward for saving a ship or its cargo. There are other reward systems out there, too, including for tips that get criminals arrested/convicted, whistleblower rewards, etc. Maybe fighting crime can pay through those mechanisms.
• Once he actually has property in hand, Superman can also make it more valuable. Processed lumber is more valuable than raw timber, steel is more valuable than the constituent elements that went into making it. And, uh, he could always start a business and sell the stock.

And you don't need an agreement to receive property as gifts after the fact. He might not charge people for his services, but if he's willing to accept their thanks in the form of something valuable, maybe that's something he can make money off of.

Alternatively, he's just been stealing from Lex Luthor.

Watch him try to open this truck door. He looks frail and uncoordinated.

Well I'm actually sitting at a computer right now so I might as well provide citations in support of what I was saying.

It wasn’t a close case back then

Here's the judicial ruling. Note that the plaintiff lost on three independent issues, each of which was enough by itself for Pepsi to win:

• Advertisements are almost never binding offers, and this ad didn't fall within the requirements to be a binding offer. In fact, even order forms and pricing lists/catalogs printed by the merchant aren't binding offers by the merchant to sell the items on the list at the listed price, and must be affirmatively accepted by the merchant in order to form a binding contract.
• No reasonable person would understand this joke as an offer, even if it weren't an advertisement, so even if analyzed outside of the advertising context Pepsi would still win.
• There's no written contract, and contracts for the sale of physical goods worth over $500 require a written contract. The actual written materials in the points program all indicated that the only items available are those within the points catalog, and there was no Harrier jet in the actual printed catalog.

Then, on appeal, three other appellate judges unanimously ruled that the district court got it exactly right.

There's been some reporting that Musk's Super PAC has been paying its workers so well that it's poached a bunch of the volunteers from the official campaign, and is so poorly run/audited that a lot of the workers are entering false data into the canvassing reports to qualify for bonuses. If that turns out to be true, then it will have been the case that Musk is burning his own money while hurting the Trump campaign.

I'm not ready to call the race, but stories like this at least reassure me that for Republicans, they're not sending their best.

I made my own "cell phone service" but it only works within 10m of my home.

I did a paper on that in uni and was wondering why the hell Pepsi did not lose. It was a technicality but I don't think they would win again in this day and age.

You're way off on this. It wasn't a close case back then, and since then the law has since shifted considerably towards Pepsi on this (advertising is very rarely construed as an actual offer in the contractual sense), so that it would be an even more lopsided win for Pepsi today.

was in charge of the prison where he died

Technically the president delegates that to his Attorney General, who in this case was the son of the guy who first hired a totally unqualified Epstein (21 years old, no college degree) to be around high school age kids, where he was known for ogling girls and somehow showing up to student parties where there was underage drinking.

And some blame lays with the prosecutor back in 2008 when Epstein was first charged for sex trafficking and sexual assault, who decided to let Epstein agree to a secret plea deal for only 13 months in county jail (which is really weird for a federal prosecutor to let happen), who, oh wait, was then rewarded by becoming a cabinet official for Trump.