In todays news...

[Screwdriver]

Exciting times!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63950962

Maybe Nuclear Fusion isn't always 30 years away.

As close to a lie as it is possible to get. "more energy out than they put in" is what the press want you to believe but the truth is a LOT more complicated and a LOT less exciting.

1.8 MJ of laser power created the conditions for a fusion reaction to initiate which output 2.5 MJ. Yeah, ok so that's a net positive output of 0.7 MJ. Free energy right?

Wrong. To get 1.8 MJ out of those lasers they needed to pump 500 MJ into them.

It's all about Q factor but you can go look it up for the full detail, I won't pretend to understand it. I am just reacting to all the excitement which would have you believe they have cracked that nut and we can all bathe in free energy.

The Q factor is a very small fraction of the total energy required to get fusion to work at all. The exciting part is really only that they're doing it with fricking lasers. You can't feed the output up the input yet for a self sustaining long term power station 1. because the reaction is sustained only for mere seconds and 2. because these numbers are still way off what is needed to overcome inefficiencies in generating USEABLE electrical energy from the power output of the fusion reaction. For that you need a Q more like 5 not merely "above one".

In my humble opinion ( ) you need gravity to make fusion work and LOTS of it. We don't even know what gravity is yet, nor how to control it. If that is at all possible (unlikely imho) then fusion might one day become a possibility. Without gravity assist, I sincerely doubt we'll ever see a viable fusion power station.

The hydrogen bomb is a n example of how we can easily create fusion "power". It uses a fission bomb to create the conditions for fusion etc. That is not dissimilar to what these chaps are doing albeit in a more controlled manner with lasers. Fusion has been around since the late 50's (with bombs and TOKAMAK) so it's nothing new. Neither is this laser guff really...

Fusion power is only 20 years away. Always has been, always will be.

[gremlin]

Just to lighten the mood...

Police force entry to help woman only to find an art installation

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-63969712

I bet they felt like right dummies!!!!

I'm here all week, please remember to tip your waitress....

[Screwdriver]

If you want to lighten the mood, go to the latest Cambridge dictionary and see if you agree with their definition of a man...

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/man

[mangocrazy]

Far from lightening the mood, that looks like an attempt to open up a whole new can of worms. Didn't lighten my mood, I have to say.

[Felix]

Good

And funding of £20m that had been set aside for a referendum on Scottish independence will instead be used to help people at risk of fuel poverty.

About time they stopped wasting money on shit.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... s-63988944

[gremlin]

Stuck for a last-minute gift for your loved one? Fear not, Trump's got you covered....

Former US President Donald Trump launches $99 NFT collection

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63995563

[irie]

https://www.healtheuropa.com/long-covid ... fe/120033/

A long COVID rehab programme, piloted by the University of Leeds, has shown impressive results for patients looking to reduce symptoms and increase activity levels.

The long COVID rehab programme is based on a gradual or paced increase in a patient’s physical activity to improve symptoms and activity levels. Before the start of the programme, the participants were reporting on average three “crashes” a week where they were left physically, emotionally, or cognitively exhausted after mild physical or mental exertion. The programme aimed to minimise “crashes”.

Long COVID causes respiratory symptoms that last an extended period of time. Long COVID sufferers continue to have symptoms of the infection and have reduced activity levels as a result of fatigue.

The rehab programme was run by the long COVID service at Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust and evaluated by clinicians and scientists at the University of Leeds and Leeds Beckett University. The findings were published in the Journal of Medical Virology.

Potentially life changing for the 2m who suffer from long Covid - if they can be arsed to do anything about it, that is.

[gremlin]

Potentially life changing for the 2m who suffer from long Covid - if they can be arsed to do anything about it, that is.

I do wonder if the same people who claimed they could do fuck all work due to ME are now claiming the same due to long Covid....

[gremlin]

Meantime, in Berlin, a small child wonders to himself, 'I wonder what will happen if I tap this big glass fish tank with this small metal object.

Berlin's giant AquaDom aquarium containing 1,500 fish explodes

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63996982

[Yorick]

Rolls Royce give staff 10% rise. The shock here is that the average staff pay is only £29k. That's pitiful really for such a prestige company.
I thought car workers got paid well.

https://news.sky.com/story/rolls-royce- ... s-12768934

[Mussels]

Stuck for a last-minute gift for your loved one? Fear not, Trump's got you covered....

Former US President Donald Trump launches $99 NFT collection

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63995563

I really want to buy one for my wife, not only a picture of Trump but also a donation to his political fund. Her dyed in the wool socialist dad would wet himself laughing.

[irie]

Rolls Royce give staff 10% rise. The shock here is that the average staff pay is only £29k. That's pitiful really for such a prestige company.
I thought car workers got paid well.

https://news.sky.com/story/rolls-royce- ... s-12768934

No, not 10%!

Workers at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars' Goodwood factory are to receive a pay award worth up to 17.6% after negotiations between the luxury automaker and Unite the union.

In all, 1,200 production workers at the West Sussex plant are to receive a salary boost of 10% and a one-off payment of £2,000 from January, avoiding the prospect of industrial action.

For the average blue collar worker, the salary rise and separate award equate to a hike of 16%, though production line workers on the lowest rate of pay at the plant will benefit to the tune of 17.6%%.

A typical worker's pay will increase by £2,972, notwithstanding the one-off payment.

[Count Steer]

Stuck for a last-minute gift for your loved one? Fear not, Trump's got you covered....

Former US President Donald Trump launches $99 NFT collection

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63995563

I really want to buy one for my wife, not only a picture of Trump but also a donation to his political fund. Her dyed in the wool socialist dad would wet himself laughing.

Get her some butter in a pot for £105 instead. It'll be more use and he'll still wet himself laughing.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/d ... dApp_Other

[KungFooBob]

Poor fishies!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63996982

[cheb]

24 hours to save the NHS not be a staple of electioneering?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64002936

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has said he would not "pretend the NHS is the envy of the world" as he promised reforms under a Labour government.

He gave a speech setting out Labour's plan to fix the NHS in England, which he said was in "existential" crisis.

Labour would train more staff and use the private sector to bring down waiting lists, he said.

He branded left-wing critics of his proposals "the true Conservatives".

Speaking at the right-leaning Policy Exchange think tank, Mr Streeting suggested the NHS was not "delivering a standard of care that patients should be satisfied with".

Labour, he said, "will give the NHS the investment and staff it needs, but that has to result in better standards for patients".
Strikes

Mr Streeting's reformist agenda has thrust him into the centre of a fractious debate about the future of the NHS at the time when nurses are locked in a dispute over pay with the government.

How Covid has dealt the NHS a lasting blow
Largest nursing strike in NHS history starts
Nurses strike is a badge of shame, Starmer tells Sunak

The shadow health secretary said Thursday's unprecedented strike by nurses was the result of "12 years of failure to get our economy growing", pay freezes and funding cuts.

But in wide-ranging speech lasting about 15 minutes, Mr Streeting said the NHS's problems went beyond the strikes and laid out what a Labour government would do to address them.

In recent years, the NHS - which was founded under a Labour government in the 1940s - has faced significant financial and workforce challenges, made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The care backlog is at a record high, with NHS England figures showing 7.2 million people were waiting to start routine treatment at the end of October.

Mr Streeting said it was clear NHS staff were "working as hard as they can", but added: "We cannot continue pouring money into a 20th-century model of care that delivers late diagnosis and more expensive treatment".
Roadmap

The shadow health secretary, who was last year treated successfully for cancer in an NHS hospital, said reform was the only option.

He said he endorsed a report by Policy Exchange, which lays out a roadmap for how Labour could achieve its target of training 15,000 medical students a year, if it wins the next general election.

On top of this, Mr Streeting said Labour's plan would involve:

Training 5,000 new community health workers a year
Using spare capacity in the private sector to bring down NHS waiting lists
Fair pay, terms, and conditions to stop the exodus of care workers

Attempts to reform the NHS have proved politically contentious, especially for Labour, some of whose MPs are ideologically opposed to private-sector involvement in the health service.

But Mr Streeting said Labour would not shy away from reform under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer, who had planted the party "firmly in the centre-ground".

"It is plain to see for anyone who uses the NHS that it is failing patients on a daily basis," Mr Streeting said. "So yes, we are going to reform it and make the NHS fit for the future."

"Ironically, it is those voices from the left who oppose reform, who prove themselves to be the true conservatives."

Momentum, the left-wing group set up to support Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, criticised Mr Streeting's speech as a "deeply worrying and self-defeating intervention".

"His refusal to back nurses' demands for fair wages or a public NHS free from private-sector involvement fly in the face of public opinion and Labour's own mission and history," said Momentum's co-chair Hilary Schan.

In a recent interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Streeting was quoted as saying the NHS must "reform or die".

Mr Streeting said some "online bad-faith actors" had suggested he was "ambivalent about which my preferred option would be".

"I do believe the crisis is existential for the NHS," he said.

"And it is in defence of the NHS's founding principles, funded through progressive taxation, free at the point of use, that I make the reform argument."

[Screwdriver]

"What do we want?"

"NINETEEN PERCENT!"

"When do we want it?"

"NOW!"

Need to plant a fair few magic money trees I reckon. I support the nurses, I support the notion for better pay. I believe giving the NHS more money just leads to more inefficiencies. You can't run public health like a business and basically, that's what the NHS (and corporate enterprise who are desperate to get on the gravy train) are trying to do.

Decisions will be made with a view to profit and paradoxically the more expensive they can make the treatment (or choose which patient to prioritise) the more profit they make. Of course, since there is no magic money tree, such profit based medical services will inevitably cost exponentially more to run, leading to more private investment, more corporate control, less value to the consumer.

[ZRX61]

Awkward...

https://climatechangedispatch.com/new-s ... 2sekzwl1NI

[Pirahna]

Awkward...

https://climatechangedispatch.com/new-s ... 2sekzwl1NI

Nothing awkward about that at all, it's a climate change denial site. If you Google for something like "who are climate change dispatch" you'll get all the information you need. Or do you? Perhaps the people claiming to fact check sites like Climate Change Dispatch are really being funded by oil companies to surpress the truth?

[Screwdriver]

Awkward...

https://climatechangedispatch.com/new-s ... 2sekzwl1NI

While there's nothing more I like than to jump into another CC debate, I'll just flag this up as an observation based on a quick look at the author(s).

Stuart Jenkins. Physics, specialising in climate stuff. Super smart chap investigating specifically non CO2 contributions to cc. Wrote a scientific treatise which the article "refers" to.

Dr. David Whitehouse. Doctor of astrophysics (??). Bit of an asshole, professional cc denier. Wrote the article.

So my guess based on multiple previous occasions is that the report is the deniers spin on the real science. Using an otherwise valid scientific paper to prop up an argument which has nothing to do with either the paper or the actual science.

Just to add one teensy little snippet: we should remember we are in an interglacial period. A period during which we should expect a cooler climate than "usual" *wrt Milankovitch cycles) before we plunge back into an ice age proper. The fact that the earth is warming is alarming from that perspective despite is seeming to suggest warming should add some balance etc.

That is a specious argument since the climate is such a finely balanced non linear system which finds its equilibrium over centuries/milennia (pick a time frame). Whereas the effects we are seeing are not on the geological timescales we should expect without agw.

The problem is that in finding a balance or equilibrium, any non linear system is going to start behaving wildly and swinging from one extreme to the other before it settles into a (relatively) steady state...

[ZRX61]

Nothing awkward about that at all, it's a climate change denial site. If you Google for something like "who are climate change dispatch" you'll get all the information you need. Or do you? Perhaps the people claiming to fact check sites like Climate Change Dispatch are really being funded by oil companies to surpress the truth?

All they do is post articles from other websites... In this case the article originated here:

https://www.netzerowatch.com/21st-centu ... tists-say/

I dismiss all the crap that's based on projections, computer modelling & wild ass guesses because they're just assumptions. When you ask for actual evidence to back up the wild ass guesses etc they tend to be a bit lacking in proof... We have this thing called "the scientific method", when you apply it to the wild ass guesses etc the modelling & projections readily fall apart. If we're expected to follow the scientific method for everything else, why the fuck does this subject get a free pass?