23 thoughts on “Imagine”

    1. I wish the only source about farming wasn’t eco-fascists. I want animals treated well but also can’t trust anything the eco-fascists say.

    1. Only computers who use too much power when idle are banned. Industry already provides this on its own, so not sure why state governments have to tell you what to do with the electricity that you buy. Shouldn’t they be working on building power generation for the electric car mandates? Can’t run a gaming PC but can power millions of EVs?

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOHKLyjVSuE

      1. My computer consumes about 500W. That’s about ~5-10 lightbulbs (depending on how “green” you are.)

        This is bullshit. The hair-shirters are going after an immesurable rounding error on power consumption, and patting themselves on the back. Meanwhile something like a million times the power is expended driving trucks across the barren desert to their hive-cities to feed them, pumping water from reseviours so they can drink. If they get their way, they’ll all die.

        I had some managerial organization-drone the other day bragging about how much power they saved on miserable LED lightbulbs in their miserable open-plan hellscape. The only thing in this guy’s head was a pile of buzzwords. Meanwhile he’s standing next to a supercomputer server rack, each rack consuming at least a kilowatt, maybe 5.

        The malinvestment is so bad, it’s shocking. It’s like watching some subverted organism grow cancer and parasites all over its body. Our civilization at this point is *malformed*.

        1. Tack on maybe another million to hundred million times as much energy for dragging tractors across fields, generating anhydrous ammonia to nitrogenate fields, smelting steel, refining chemicals – everything that actually makes our civilization work takes far more energy than anything that happens in a typical home, even a few million of them. So much so that it’s futile to go at it for “efficiency”.

          This is just torturing people for sadism’s sake.

        2. “If they get their way, they’ll all die.”

          Isn’t that crazy? It would be fine except they want to drag us all along for the ride.

      2. Thanks for the link, I normally like that guy a lot but he sure seems conflicted here. If it’s all about the idle state why wouldn’t a tweak to the OS/BIOS or a simple background process add-on solve the problem? He’s definitely a green-weenie, which I hadn’t been aware of, though based on appearance it’s not surprising.

        At any rate how is this system from Dell a no-go, with a 550W PS and a graphics card that is fully two generations old, while this system from HP (OMEN 30L), at almost 4X the price and fully up-to-date tech OK?

        1. He doesn’t cook his own food, which is always a sign that a person is partially disconnected from reality. Still, he makes good videos.

    2. Gumball News on just keeps pounding those nails in his coffin. He just now missed off gamers and his water policies are missing off lot growers. Karma is a real…you know what.

      1. Damn spell checker!! That’s supposed to be Numbskull Newsom and “pissing” not “missing”.

  3. On point! Yes, the Democrats would rather make people suffer than work with Trump to solve a problem like COVID. Yes, being honest about side effects of masks, shutdowns, and vaccines would be great. Not Scapegoating Republicans when there are huge swaths of the Democrat party that wont get the vax would also be nice. It would be nice if they were honest about Delta too!

    But you have to understand things from their perspective. They think you are retarded.

    1. To get back on the topic of Imagine, it appears that our fine host Rand, if not an anti-vaxer is somewhere in the skepticism camp, getting a degree of pushback among the many fine people contributing to the comments section here who “crawled over the top of people” to get the vaccine (I am not accusing anyone here of selfishness, I am “riffing” on remarks made by a certain Republican governor of a border state who was talking in the local idiom to persuade more people to take the vaccine. Many of us around here have disclosed that we got vaccinated as soon as it was available to us.).

      This contrasts with an alt-right blogger, a cancer survivor who is very pro-vaccine, pro-mask and pro-social distance who gets a lot of pushback from his followers that these three things are way overrated.

      “They said I should get vaccinated so I could get back to life-as-usual by being around people without masks and social distancing, but they lied and are now saying vaccinated people need to start wearing masks again!”

      OK, this also depends on whether you think COVID illness “is a thing” or if it is “just the flu, bro, and don’t be such a wuss about the risk of catching it.”

      You can, to a certain extent, hold people accountable for what they say and call them out for going back on promises that they make. On the other hand, there are events outside of our control. “This is not fair! You said I could have a picnic outside this afternoon!” to which the reply is, “Yes the Weather Service should have made a more accurate forecast when you made your plans. There is a line of severe thunderstorms that will be on top of us in 20 minutes, and it is probably not a good idea to be outside out in the open with that going on right now.”

      The vaccine is not 100% effective, and who expected that it would be? The Pfizer vaccine appears, from the experience in Israel to start wearing off after 6 months, but for some illnesses and some vaccines, that can happen? The data strongly indicates that the vaccines are saving lives, so what are you going to do about them not being perfect?

      1. “The vaccine is not 100% effective, and who expected that it would be?”

        Ahh, and here is an example of DNC media dishonesty. The media pushed the narrative that vaccines made you immune because they wanted everyone to get one. People who said that they don’t make you immune were attacked by the DNC media and silenced on social media.

        The vaccines are supposed to: 1) Make it less likely you get the virus. 2) Make it less likely you show symptoms if you get the virus. 3) Make it less likely to spread the virus if you get it. 4) Make it less likely that you end up in the hospital if you catch the virus.

        Now, we have people getting the virus who have been vaccinated, which should be expected but the media is freaking out in contradictory ways. They wont explain why this is to be expected because they need to fearmonger over Delta and they are still telling people to get vaccinated while saying they don’t work.

        They also aren’t reporting useful information like are people showing symptoms before getting tested, like with the Texas Democrats, or are they being tested without showing symptoms, like when people go to the White House or prepare for surgery? Do they even have a test that can tell the Delta version from the normal one and is it being used on everyone who gets the COVID?

        What the media isn’t saying, that being vaccinated and then getting the virus means not only that you are less likely to be seriously ill but that people are getting the benefit of natural immunity and the vaccines, making it more likely that the virus will no longer be a concern or that if it sticks around, it won’t be as deadly. This is especially good for vaccinated people who then get sick and show no symptoms.

        Side note, why isn’t everyone being tested for antibodies or t cell immunity at their regular dr check ups? Knowing how many people have been sick is very useful information.

  4. This came up in a conversation that piqued my interest. First, I had to look to see what constitutes a high end gaming GPU and then did a quick search on Ebay. The highest end Nividia was available for one penny under $10,000. I don’t know if this is scarcity pricing, something else that came up, but I doubt anyone willing to pay that sort of money, or even a substantial fraction, is sweating their power bill.

    For now, there’s nothing to prevent anyone from simply buying the card and installing it themselves. Dell probably spent more time optimizing the power consumption than the DIYer will.

  5. The biggest power hog in your house is usually the Refrigerator. In hot places it is the Air Conditioner. Banning the “High-end PC” sounds like they can’t find a way to ban Grand Theft Auto XXX so they will try to ban the PC’s. Bah! Humbug!

    1. Your refrigerator is a power hog if you are one of those people with a residence in San Francisco with not one, but two of those massive refrigerators with the stainless steel paneling. You know, the kind with the bottom freezer compartment in a slide-out drawer that you keep stuffed with whatever that $12/pint brand of ice cream that can be ordered to ship to your house?

      https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/cnsnewscom-staff/pelosi-shows-national-tv-audience-her-freezer-full-12-pint-ice-cream

      If you have a conventional top-freezer fridge purchased in the last 30 years, it probably uses between 1 and 2 kWHr/day, which is a largish portion of your electric use but not as large a fraction of your electric bill as you think, that is, unless you are very energy efficient in all of your other uses of electric power.

  6. Imagine – if people who have had the disease and survived (we are the 99.7%!) and have consequently developed a natural immunity to the disease could get a little respect.

    Why would I get an injection against a disease that I have already beaten? That makes zero sense. The fact that there is sooooo much insistence in that regard tells me that there are other agendas at work to which I am not privy. Being autistic, I don’t do well with people who aren’t honest. One can’t make good decisions with bad information, which is what you have when there are secrets and hidden agendas. Give me facts, not FUD.

    1. “Why would I get an injection against a disease that I have already beaten?”

      I think it was David Spain who said he knew someone who caught the covid and recovered but had some lingering symptoms, like a brain fog or malaise, that went away after they were vaccinated.

      It is possible to get covid more than once and it is possible to get covid after being vaccinated. The question is, do vaccines help your body fight off covid? Another question is, do any risks of side effects outweigh any possible benefits?

      Since you beat the disease naturally, it seems very reasonable to me that you should be able to choose whether or not to get vaccinated. Would getting vaccinated give you the best chance possible to fight off a future infection? I think so but don’t know for sure and it seems prudent to take a wait and see approach as we learn more about the virus and the vaccines. Unless there are requirements for your job or something else important, is there a risk in waiting to make the decision? It is not like the vaccines are going to disappear.

      “One can’t make good decisions with bad information”

      My thought process through all of this has been how to mitigate risk while having imperfect knowledge while also accepting the outcome could still mean getting sick. You have to simultaneously listen to everyone but ignore them. The right answer might be recommended by the wrong people who also might later backtrack on what they said, which isn’t confusing at all. /s

      I’m vaccinated now and I don’t wear a mask and I know that means I can still get sick but it is less likely. I view it as a good thing if I did get sick and never had symptoms but the risk is there to become the statistic.

      1. Again, if the injection doesn’t prevent infection, then why?

        I’m seeing a lot of uncertainty in your response, reasonable given the slew of often contradictory information flying about. I do agree to listen to everyone and believe no one, but in the end every individual who exercises agency in their own lives must decide for themselves. I work as a manager in a very popular retail store. I am in the front lines of exposure, and I know I got sick last November. I can feel when my mucous membranes are being assaulted by germs, which is how I know I was exposed to something about a month or so ago, probably the delta. A couple of my employees did call in sick. (Don’t worry, they lived through it) Am I scared? No. Will I get exposed again? Probability pretty close to 1.0. Am I going to let that fact rule my life? No.

        1. “Again, if the injection doesn’t prevent infection, then why?”

          For me, it was because the potential side effects and benefits of getting vaccinated outweighed the potential downside from getting the virus. My body didn’t like the vaccine very much and I was sick for 2-4 days after each dose. I knew this would happen but it was better than the unknowns of getting the virus.

          I don’t know if I would have got a vaccine if I already had the virus, at least not right away, but I would consider it as we learn more. Badgering people who already had the virus to get the vaccine doesn’t make sense to me.

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