Amazing video by Technology Connections. It’s a long one, but don’t miss his 30 minute angry rant at the end.
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I have been watching his videos for years with great enthusiasm.
If I ever meat him, it won’t be a handshake. That rant at the end deserves a hug. I love that antifascist energy that came pouring off him.
“It’s time to wake up and smell the fascism!”
That rant at the end really sums up my feelings as a Midwestern leftist. Hell the whole thing does honestly. But you treat people right, you make prudent decisions, and you treat labor with dignity and respect.
I also really respect him for accepting when something that had been obvious to him (the value proposition of solar and electrification) turned out to have not been obvious to others so he cut the snark and explained his reasoning. It’s an admirable display of character. But also, yeah it had been obvious to me as well.
Probably not my favorite video of his, but definitely rhe one I respect the most
Just when I thought I couldn’t like him more, he goes and drops this gigabased rant.
TC for U.S president honestly
Or even a governor or senator, he has the right ideas and ability to explain what is happening and what needs to be done
That level of competence would never fly in the US government.
Most governments
I like the guy. Really. But haven’t you seen what happens when people from entertainment become president?
Now that I’ve seen the type of people that seek political positions over a few decades, I would push Alec to run for some sort of local office. He’s the exact opposite of the majority of assholes who enter politics.
Like Zelenskyy? Sign me up
His works is way beyond just entertainment though. He talked about this in this very video.
Great video. Completely breaks down the argument. You already knew this of you had been paying attention. Oil/gas for electricity generation in any form is DOA. It is insanely more expensive than solar + battery.
Not to mention destructive to the environment and politically fraught with issues.
To think if our government went all in it could provide dirt cheap limitless energy that would not cause lung disease or wars is staggering.
But the rich would be only 0.987 as wealthy
they’d probably be more wealthy from their heavy investments in renewable energy, which is more profitable than fossil fuels btw
it’s the same story as weed legalization, it only happens after the current established powers have given themselves enough time to secure the new playing field.
Wondering now if paradoxically accelerating global warming increases stock ROI in renewables as the perceived value of renewable energy increases with the perceived/predicted level of global warming.
No, they are just after power, not money. They have a darwinist ideology to push.
It’s capitalism, power is wealth by definition. These are compatible concepts.
By perceived value i mean speculation.
They use the aesthetics of capitalism to intellectualize and explain why we should not question their supremacy.
In reality, capitalism does not in any way justify monopolization of natural resources, or the large-scale destruction of the environment.
Capitalism is the ideology of thr petit-bourgeoisie, not the actual bourgeoisie. They are just social-darwinists.
I do not understand what this adds to the concept of capitalism other than introducing the term “social darwinism”.
There is no difference between “the aesthetics” of capitalism and its actualization, and neither base a capitalist’s actions in regard to benefitting society beyond “the market”. Capitalism is simply the current method of accruing power for someone to push their personal ideology on others. It just happens that the most effective method to exploit capitalism is to reject any sense of empathy or consideration for anything external or internal, especially flesh and blood humans because they are the only real threat to your power.
You have less power but more wealth than a Mycenean king. You have a more steady diet that is healthier for you, with better healthcare, better housing, more time for leisure, less chance of being robbed or murdered or killed in battle, etc. etc. But the king could have people killed or tortured; he could send people to their deaths; pass judgment in any moral dispute between hundreds of his subjects; etc.
The capitalist elite gladly loses wealth to gain power. And the power a rich person has over someone who must work for them to eat is incomprehensibly greater than the power a rich person has over someone who can eat regardless of whether they work for them. Thanks to ICE and other anti-immigration laws, rich people can effectively keep undocumented migrants as slaves again. What are they going to do? Complain and get themselves sent to a concentration camp?
What do you think a billionaire would rather have? A hundred mansions, ten private jets, twenty yachts, and a thousand unionized employees; or ten mansions, one private jet, two yachts, and a hundred slaves?
Wealth truly is not equivalent to power.
I agree that wealth is not equivalent to power but I continue to assert that it is the fundamental concept of capitalism. It’s rule by those who can exploit a market most effectively amassing the greatest amount of capital (by money/property value).
I find wealth in having hobbies and relationships that don’t return monetarily on my energy investment. This is incompatible with capitalism. While living under capitalism, i could have the highest quantity of relationships of the highest quality with other humans and it would still be worthless compared to someone with more capacity than me for taking on debt.
I wonder if I’m being misinterpreted here so if it’s unclear at this point; i see capitalism as a direct assault on our very humanity and a psychological disease that tears from us our empathy and feeling for one another through the pursuit of “wealth”. I despise it.
i don’t think they’re that far-sighted though it’s probably a neat side-effect to them
Mmm… Well i think there are enough of them that think long term to maintain their institutions. The oil industry has been suppressing concerns about climate change and disaster for well over a century now
But what about the coal miners? 🥺 More importantly the coal mine owners, won’t somebody please think of them? 🥺
By pure coincidence, Hank Green released a video about coal on the same day
Also by pure coincidence, Matt Colville released a video explicitly paying homage to Technology Connections the same day, too.
Thanks for mentioning the last 30 minutes, but for additional clarity, there is a fake ending 30 minutes before the actual ending. Please watch those last 30 minutes!
Damn that last 30 minutes went HARD. I got chills.
Good clarification!
Love the rant
As someone not from the US, I can’t say how much I appreciate the last part of his video. As much as I understand why YouTubers want to “keep politics out of entertainment”, it’s disappointing and makes me lose interest in some US content because it seems like they are ignoring what’s going on around them.
And about the batteries, that’s unfortunately an argument I sometimes hear from skeptics. “What are we going to do with all those batteries?” they ask. I explain that they can mostly be recycled and like to ask what are we going to do with all the CO2 in the air, but apparently it’s different. Ironically one of those persons is my father, that has a cabin with a solar system that I installed for him. He originally bought a generator but since it’s very noisy to run only for some lights, he prefers using the battery bank powered by a few solar panels on the roof. I’d show him this video but he doesn’t speak English and it’s probably a lost cause anyway.
We can only hope that at least a few people can be influenced by this video; both parts.
For what it’s worth, ALL technology connections videos have manually added English closed captions, not auto generated gibberish. It’s some of the best captioning work I’ve ever seen. He actually takes the time to sync them to the auto/video, prevents spoiling jokes/punchlines, and adds an Easter egg at the end of most episodes (usually describing the smooth jazz outro).
You might actually have decent luck using the subtitle translation feature built into YouTube, since it (machine) translates the actual words Alec is saying.
And he’s spoken about doing it in part to ensure accessibility for the deaf, which I appreciate immensely as someone who grew up watching time delayed black box captions on whatever my mom was watching
I always flick the subtitles on at the end to see how the jazz is described and how he transcribes his bloopers.
Alec is awesome. The content he makes isn’t really my cup of tea, but I recognize that that man has some serious game.
I don’t find his videos to be entertaining, but they’re so educational that I watch them anyway.
The political discussion taboo only serves 2 purposes. 1, keep the stupid comfortable. To them, politics isn’t about ideas but about identity and is treated like a religion. You aren’t challenging an idea, you are threatening their identity. 2, Don’t upset rich people. Everyone discussion politics openly is a threat to the rich. So if you make it taboo to discuss those things you make it so that only those not bound by that taboo may participate.
Sometimes I’ve been feeling like I’m the weird one for caring about other people and the shit that’s been going on. It’s really nice to see someone as angry as I am.
I will always upvote technology connections, I have watched so many videos of his about things I would have thought i couldn’t care less about and enjoyed them all!
This!!!
My highlight was the non lightening brake lights on electric cars when they are recuperating
What video was that? I think I haven’t seen that one.
That pisses me off to no end. The car knows how fast it is going, it has to show you. Just make the lights come on based on deceleration, regardless of how it happens. It doesn’t even need dedicated hardware. It’s just lazy coding and development.
Oh fuck they broke Alec shit’s bad
Went from “ehh, its a long video. I’ll watch it tomorrow” to “holy fuck…”
I actually stopped watching it at the hour mark because I had to make dinner but then I let it play while I worked and holy shit! This dude for president!
This dude for president!
Can you imagine what he could do? I mean, if he could focus on the President thing and not use his time in office to take apart washing machines and heat pumps.
Technology Connections video in 2020: “This is a Sunbeam Radiant toaster”
Technology Connections video in 2034: “This is an AGM-158C long-range anti-ship missile”
I don’t think I had ever heard him swear until this video.
Did they break him…? Or did they set him free? :D
(was going to go with “unleashed” but that carries a different vibe not fitting to this serious cause :) )
A technology connections video with a 30 minite rant??
watches video
oh.A technology connections video with a 30 minite rant??
Isn’t that just the standard format for technology connections?
Looks at runtime
Oh, this is gonna be a good one!
It is pretty standard in most electric cars I’ve been in that it shows the kWh/h as it charges and how many kWh it has charged when complete.
Also your comment reminds me of the Boots economic theory. That poor people pay more overall because keep buying cheap boots yearly rather than spend more once on expensive boots every 10 years like the rich.
A captured government is the problem, the corrupt administration and the purchased opposition can’t do anything for you like cheap power and subsidized electric cars because it doesn’t help their donors.
That last 30 minutes earned a new Patreon subscription. I hope this starts a trend.
“A wind turbine is like an oil derrick that generates eq. 3 gallons of gasoline evry single minute.”
Tbh I thought it would be more
Except the wind never runs out. Also we can use the energy from wind turbines 3x as efficiently as we can the energy from a barrel of oil. Carnot is a bitch.
Wind sometimes runs out (as in, calm weather) and wind turbines do eventually run out after a few decades. But, 3 gallons of gasoline-equivalent per minute seemed a bit small for my intuition, so I did some back of the envelope calculations to compare it to pumpjacks for oil.
I’m doing these calculations in metric, because the US traditional units are insane, and nobody should subject themselves to that.
3 gallons is about 11.3L, so 11.3L per minute is 678 L per hour, or about 16 kL of “gasoline-equivalent” per day.
Apparently a pumpjack pumps about 5 to 40 “barrels” of crude oil per day. A barrel is 159 L so that’s 795 L to 6360 L per day.
So, the back of the envelope “how much ‘energy’ does this big mechanical thing produce” seems fairly similar, ignoring a whole lot of complexity.
Fell asleep an hour into his last night, didn’t expect it to be that long, but I am looking forward to finishing it.
Well, you’re in for a ride. The last half hour is the spiciest.
God damn, hell ya. Truth speaker
Only now do you start feeling the urgency of the situation, when usually apolitical channels have started discussing politics.
“If you’ve been watching my channel for any length of time, then you should already have a pretty clear understanding of what my personal politics are. If you’ve been under the impression that I’ve not been political, you simply don’t understand what politics means. I have indeed stayed out of partisan politics and electoral politics, but I’ve been wearing my personal politics on my sleeve this whole time, and they’ve not been that subtle.”
That shit was beautiful. He’s fucking mad.
