Here's the research paper the video references. They got 65% efficiency, which is pretty good, but a far cry from 90% of a lithium powertrain made this decade.
The paraffin heat exchanger is clever, but it's a flammable coal/oil product, and phase-change thermal storage is notoriously tempermental outside a lab. The thermal-to-electrical-to-thermal recuperation cycle is likewise brilliant, but I think it misses the core appeal of pneumatic energy storage: compressed air is fundamentally low-tech.
Being low-tech means that it makes grid-scale storage accessible on continents that lack the engineering manpower or natural resources to set up domestic battery production or baseloads like nuclear and geothermal. After all, if renewables keep getting cheaper, who cares about storage conversion losses? Just build a little more peak capacity.
I'm also personally fond of the idea of using pneumatic storage for industrial centers that currently use cogen/CHP, because the waste heat could be used directly instead of having to be recuperated.
Beau has stated before that he was involved in some awful stuff. But I agree with a commenter on the video: while it is important to not hide past doings, a lot more of society needs to accept that people can, and do, change.
This is someone who very clearly did something wrong, but he also did his time and is now working on further paying back society. It doesn't make what he did go away, but I also don't know why suddenly so many people are wanting to 'expose' him. He isn't in any position to repeat his actions, his current actions are inarguably for the betterment of society as a whole, as well as for individuals in need in his own community and others.
Even if you can't get past what he did, I would ask: what exactly would it take for you to say that he has paid for what he did? Anarchism explicitly calls for the abolition of prisons and our current legal structure, and Beau has (in my opinion) paid for his actions both within the current system and outside of it. After someone has done their time, so to speak, are they barred from society until the end of days? If not, then what would they need to do to be accepted that Beau hasn't done?
I ask these questions, not as someone who is trying to cause issues or argue, but as someone with a lot of respect for this movement. I ask because I genuinely want to know what people expect from people like Beau through an anarchist lens.
I like that you've read comments on the video. I think you should watch the video itself or read the transcript. The author isn't seeking Beau's further incarceration or some other form of vengeance. Anarchism does seek the abolition of police and prisons, and Card's interest in restorative justice over punishment is consistent with this kind of anarchism.
Justin King / Beau is not "barred from society" or even anarchist society, and that's not what Card is advocating. This is a discussion among anarchists about credence, not incarceration. You can't institutionalize trust; Card is providing his own assessment as well as information essential for anyone to make up their own mind.
I did watch the video. I also read the sources at the bottom of the video, and like several other comments noticed, the documents do not support a lot of the claims made in the video. However, even if they were supported by the documents, I still don't agree with the stance of the video.
The argument is that because he did something bad at one point, people should consider his past actions before any of his current ones, and that this justifies distrust of his current actions. When we live and operate in a world where trust is necessary for cooperation and survival, even suggesting to distrust someone indefinitely for long past actions and ignoring all steps taken to remedy is asking for him to be barred from that society.
It also assumes that the only reason people would support him is if they were unaware of his past actions, and they heavily imply that people who do trust him are unable to make sound decisions, not in the least by doing one of the least anarchist things possible by trusting the words of government entities known for targeting leftists and charging them with exaggerated crimes.
You are right that you can't institutionalize trust, but I am calling out a pattern that I am recognizing of people who advocate for this particular social model being unwilling to put their money where their mouth is in regards to acknowledging and supporting input from people with convictions or marred histories. The video states nothing new and instead is continuing to repeat this 'questioning' without accounting for the fact that this questioning has already taken place and done nothing except draw people away from a community that values direct action and social support.
If his past had anything to do with his current content and actions, I agree more scrutiny would be needed. But my question still stands, what should the guidelines be for deciding that a person no longer deserves to have their participation in society treated as suspect or worthy of excess questioning? At what point do people deserve to be allowed to change and exist without their motive being questioned?
Just depends on the org. With Biden in office, he's really not exactly the most unscrupulous guy, so it's probably more effective. Biden is the exact kind of boss this strategy does work on, actually, if it happens enough that it's not a fluke, he'll take it into account.
But I agree, it can be counterproductive sometimes. Especially when done too soon, since once your position is lost, your voice becomes much less impactful.
I too wish Bernie had won. But, being a Zionist just means you think Jews need a homeland. Any supporter of a two state solution is supporting Zionism.
What ever happened to democrats believing that we should support diversity? The same Democrats supporting the Israeli ethnostate would not feel the same way if it was Georgia or Alabama giving priority to white Christians and revoking residency of African Americans and stealing their homes.
The issue is always energy density and round-trip efficiency, and I don't see numbers for either of these. Remember that you do have to actually liquify the air first, and that takes power.
Oh my god, Luna Oi is such a propaganda machine for the Vietnamese government, and I say this from the perspective of a Vietnamese leftist.
Well, to be fair, I'm not good at law, but I think anyone with half a brain could see that the law is only good for workers when it could be realistically enforced. Yes, Vietnamese workers have rights, lots of them, but it would be ridiculous to say that words on legal papers alone could arm workers with a powerful arsenal of arguments and resources to fight for their rights. We have to keep in mind the sheer imbalance of power between the workers and the capitalists at all times, since when workers appeal their case to the court, most of them cannot afford the money to hire a good lawyer while the capitalists have legions of legal consultants and lawyers backing them up. It's not uncommon for a worker to represent themselves, and no, Vietnam does not have any system to assign a mandatory public defender for destitute people, which reduces the possibility of workers winning a case drastically. Even if they manage to bring the case to the court collectively, the procedure is still very lengthy and complicated and the cost of going through them is money and time, which most workers don't have. They barely get by with the wages and benefits of the company, asking them to suck it up for a prolonged legal battle that could very well last for 2 years is downright unreasonable.
Strike is another story altogether. Luna said that strikes require permission from the labor union and this is very true. However, let's stop for a second and really think about the fact that workers need permission to strike in the first place, doesn't that sound ridiculous? Why would they have to entrust the right to strike to another body of authority? What if they decided to refuse? The workers should just drop the case and go back to work peacefully then? You might say that the union will not refuse because it's a democratic institution and has to follow the will of the masses. However, in order for that argument to work, labor union have to be independent institution without the influence of both company leadership AND the state, because if the leading party decide to adopt a neoliberal policy, they would have every incentive in the world to mess with the democracy of the labor union and what could be the easier way to do it than subduing all unions under the control of the state? Yes, I'm saying this because all unions in Vietnam belong to the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour, an organ of the Vietnamese Communist Party whose current interest is to develop the economy by accumulating capitalistic wealth, not to protect worker's interests. This makes Vietnamese labor unions very prone to corruption and backstage vote rigging. There's no guarantee that a labor union could really present the interest of the worker. In Vietnam, the union's practical role is not to reel up workers to fight the factoríe, but to extinguish the intensity of their struggle so that Vietnam doesn't become a place that foreign investors would actively avoid.
Luna said something very interesting: most strikes are illegal because Vietnamese workers don't bother to ask for permission, which is debatable. Why doesn't she consider that there is a very real possibility that most strikes are actively declined by the union leaders? Vietnamese workers have been striking since Doi Moi and established a labor struggle history of their own, there must be more structural reasons why wildcat strikes are preferable than just their individual failings to be more knowledgeable about labor law. In fact, the laws are actively making it very difficult for the workers to strike. Aside from asking for permission, they would have to make sure that they are asking for benefits, not rights, striking for rights is illegal, and good luck differentiating the two because the Labor Code doesn't do that for you. Before they could ask for permission to strike, workers must negotiate with their employers in a process called meditation. The employers could sit on their asses for 30 days without going to the negotiation session to prolong the battle with the employees. And like I said earlier, time is of the essence because they have to accept not having any money to live during the entire process.
We have to address the elephant in the room too: Workers in a lot of capitalist countries also have rights, sometimes even more rights than their Vietnamese counterparts. Labor laws in Germany, Finland or more progressive states in America are way more comprehensive and the mechanism through which workers's rights are protected in those countries is way more developed. Vietnamese workers have suffered a lot and it's so disingenuous on Luna's part to present her video in a way that frames American laborers are way more miserable than us. I could not overstate how wrong this is enough when workers in factories throughout Vietnam, especially in special economic zones, have to live through abject working conditions but can not quit their jobs or protest about it. The power dynamic is heavily skewed towards the capitalists because the government is kissing their feet or inviting them to destroy our land. There is a reason why Vietnam is an attractive place for foreign investors and it's absolutely not communism. Vietnam is not a socialist paradise, but just another victim of neo-colonialism like the rest of the Global South.
@Five, I really respect your effort to maintain the vitality of many progressive communities on Lemmy, but you can noy promote Luna Oi if you also support anarchism. The narratives she pumps out are very harmful for the left because her videos are purely dogmatic propaganda that promotes a vision of socialism based on an opressive, authoritarian regime. Vietnam is a capitalist, authoritarian country that have attempted multiple times to attack progressive movements by framing them as reactionary.
I really appreciate your comment - it elevates the post, and I hope is the first step to developing a culture of media criticism and respectful debate in !vietnam. You put a lot of effort in to your analysis, I respect that.
I'm really grateful @cnx created this community on Slrpnk, as it has encouraged me to research and learn more about Vietnam and the Vietnamese people. I share things here that I find interesting and educating, in the hopes that other people also find them valuable. One of the things that interests me is how Vietnamese people feel about themselves, their country, and their place in the world. My ability to learn is impaired by my language limitations, as I don't speak Vietnamese.
I find some of Luna Oi's work worth sharing because I think she gives an English voice to the sentiments of a significant portion of the Vietnamese people. She is very critical about how Vietnam is misrepresented in western media, and is actively creating propaganda that represents the Vietnam she would like the rest of the world to see. I hope !vietnam can become a place where Vietnamese people feel welcome to build community, and I think demonstrating a willingness to engage with media they feel represents authentic Vietnamese perspectives is a good way to achieve that goal.
The original plan for this community when it was created by @cnx and @poVoq was to primarily emphasize the solarpunk aspects of Vietnamese culture, but my engagement is for a broader purpose. I don't think an anarchist or solarpunk future is possible without the participation of people who have survived colonialism, from which the Vietnamese experience is particularly valuable.
While most of my posts are based on what I find interesting in the moment, I do make some effort to balance stories I share that are critical of the Vietnamese government and society with posts that encourage an engagement with the typical Vietnamese experience.
While I try and privilege anarchist media and voices when selecting sources, I share news and stories from a spectrum of political ideologies. Limiting my posting to sources I explicitly endorse would significantly limit my post volume, and hamstring my goal of fostering a community of diverse political perspectives. While I don't endorse Luna Oi, not sharing content of hers I find interesting while holding a different standard for other content I share would be hypocritical. Worse, I've found that working too hard to differentiate oneself from the authoritarian left can be interpreted by Nazis as an endorsement of their views and politics. My cooperation with party socialists is conditional on shared goals and means. I'm happy to exclude Hexbear and Lemmygrad from the platform, but I don't have a problem with authoritarian leftists themselves who can engage with Slrpnk communities without disrespecting community norms and trolling. I reject "left unity" but I welcome cooperation from any political ideology when fighting against racism, homophobia, and fascism.
Ultimately, I think anarchist ideas are resilient enough to survive exposure to authoritarian ones. While the responsibility for directing the growth of a community is in the hands of its moderators, I think there's a lot of potential for a community of diverse Vietnamese and foreign perspectives sharing ideas in an online solarpunk context. @cnx has been extremely tolerant of my less than flattering posts about Vietnam, I suspect your contributions have a place here as well. I hope you continue your engagement in this community and the Fediverse project.
Been loving this channel for a while. Coolest video is them flooding a forest and showing fish swimming underwater, but above a forest floor. Real trippy.
In Australia, we call them "leaky weirs" (check dams too) as beavers don't exist and they were popularised by Natural Sequence Farming and Peter Andrews with great effect. Don't let the name fool you, they aren't that leaky and are built similarly to this vid.
I don't know if I like the term beaver dam as it's a bit exclusionary but if it works for clicks and techniques for the northern hemisphere, that's cool.
I've just included some old videos, NSF has been around for a long time:
yt.artemislena.eu
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