#i like my water power generator/geothermal power mix

[dragonmons]

i fuckin adore rimworld so much but whenever i look at other people's colonies in the tag im confronted with the fact that other people make aesthetically gorgeous colonies and mine are. uh. Not That

[alpaca-clouds]

Let's talk Energy Mix

Let me talk about the energy mix for a moment - because I feel a lot of people are very unsure, how a renewable energy grid would work in practice.

So, let me get out my electrician gear and go very quickly through the different energy types that we would probably have within a Solarpunk world or something along the line. Or rather: What we might have in the future, if our governments actually fucking cared to go carbonfree.

Photovoltaic (aka Solar). Now, let me make one thing clear: Technically Photovoltaic and Solar are two different things. Photovoltaic uses certain materials that can build electricity when they interact with Photons, while Solar uses the sun's heat radiation. What most people think of as "Solarpower" is photovoltaic. This technology has made a lot of advances recently, making the panels so much more efficient than they were only a few years ago. By now photovoltaic roof tiles can actually provide enough energy for the house even during cloudy days and even further up north. Of course they cannot create enough energy during the night. While production is not 0, it is by far not enough.

Wind turbines. Currently wind turbines are making up a lot of the renewable energy mix in many countries, like my own (Germany). And for good reason. They are so darn efficient. Especially off-shore energy. While they are right now not useful for personal energy production (because turbines are fucking loud up close - only up close), they are really good at keeping the grid fed. Maybe just a bit too good.

Other forms of Wind Power. I really do not want to go too deeply into this topic. But there are currently also other forms of wind powered generators being researched. Including some that could be put onto houses. (If you want me to gover those more, just send me an ask.)

Hydro Power. Now Hydro Power, so water based power generation, has two big kinds of being used. One is by channeling the power of rivers through a generator - the other is as the currently simplest form of energy storage: If you have too much energy in your grid at any given time, pump water into a reservoir and if you need that power again, let it go through a generator. Please note though: Environmentally Hydro Power is definitely the kind of renewable power with the worst environmental impact.

Other forms of water based power generation: Currently we are experimenting a lot with getting power from the ocean. For example through tidal generators or wave generators. So far, though, these methods are only experiments, not fit for large scale production.

Geothermal Power. In a lot of areas with Geothermal activity we can also use the heat of the earth to create steam, which we then can use to power generators as well. This is especially handy in places like Iceland, that are geothermically very active, but also do not get a lot of sun half of the year and are not ideally suited for wind power.

One thing that should be noted is, that very probably we are still gonna need nuclear power as an emergency tool.

One thing that definitely needs to change, though, is how we build our energy grids. Currently we are relying a lot on macro grids, that is grids, where a few central power plants generate all the power for a large area. This does not work out well currently, based on the fact that a lot of renewables work best, if you have smaller, further distributed power plants.

This creates the need for micro grids, that are also better suited to just... Not create large scale blackouts, as the US experiences them semi-frequently.

Again, if you want me to talk more about that, I can totally do, just... send me a message.

But what you really do not need to be concerned about is the entire idea of "what do we do at night"? We have ways to deal with that. Even now. Let alone in 10 years. This area of science is currently really moving forward in long strides!

[honourablejester]

Since I’m apparently on the subject of bioluminescent mermaids again, I went back and dug up some worldbuilding notes for the story I originally had the idea for, and which basically never actually got written. It was essentially going to be a sci-fi/horror/noir set on a maritime planet (Lemuria), starring an eldritch abyssal mermaid nightclub performer and her nightclub-owner human partner (in all senses), dealing with industrial sabotage and race relations in a submarine city run by geothermal power.

If you want to see what my worldbuilding notes for stories often look like, this is (sometimes) it. Sometimes. Actually, this is quite organised for me. Normally I just wing it on the day.

Lemuria Notes

Contents:

Planet Lemuria (geography, inhabitants, language)

Major Nations/Peoples of Lemuria

Interplanetary Issues (Galactic Ruling/Judiciary Bodies)

Actual Story Idea

Planet Lemuria:

Lemuria has a very slow rotation around its own axis, especially compared to its solar orbit, with one full Lemurian day lasting two thirds of a Lemurian year. Planetary nights last for four months at the equators. The planet is primarily oceanic at this phase in its geological history, with two small continents still in existence, both largely on the same ('continental') side of the planet, and a series of many occupied island chains in the vast oceans on the other ('oceanic') side of the planet. Lemuria is home to a significant human colonial population on these landmasses, being gradually settled over the past 300 galactic years.

Lemuria is also home to what are called the demimondaine, which is a (human) collective term for the two or three loosely connected species of semi-humanoid aquatic beings (‘mermaids’) who are the original and continuing inhabitants of the planet. Demimondaine are broadly divided into three main types: surface or island demimondaine (warm-blooded, amphibious, very humanoid surface or upper water column demimondaine), ocean or deep water demimondaine (cold-blooded, amphibious, semi-humanoid mid-column demimondaine from the deeper oceans away from the islands and continents), and abyssal demimondaine (semi-humanoid, biomorphous, non-amphibious demimondaine from the sea floor and abyssal plains/trenches). The demimondaine form several major nation states on the planet, and have a (mostly) friendly and cooperative relationship with the human colonies, having granted permission for human settlement on their planet three hundred galactic years ago.

A note on languages and names: as most of the demimondaine languages are unpronounceable and largely unintelligible to humans, owing to the difference in vocal construction, most of the names given in this document are the human names for places and beings. Communication between humans and demimondaine is largely text-based, as demimondaine have several glyph-based writing systems (most language groups have one or two) that are translatable to human systems. Electronic text-based translation is the standard, though there are also several pidgin sign-languages in use, particularly in trade cities like Jasconius, Zaratan and Ys, and in the Island Union, since hand-shape is largely similar between species.

(Further note on all of this: I am bullshitting to the max, having no scientific background on any of it at all)

Nations/Settlements of Note:

Zealandia: the largest continent and surface nation, located in the southerly continental oceans and generally enjoying a very warm and humid tropical climate. Lemurine, its capital city, is the administrative colonial capital of Lemuria. The continent hosts 54% of all colonial residents and off-planet visitors to Lemuria. Zealandia is the main surface agricultural production area, and it boasts a significantly different and human-orientated diet to much of the rest of Lemuria. Baralku, the primary Lemuria-to-orbit spaceport, is located just south of Lemurine City.

Kerguelen: the smaller continent, located to the north west of Zealandia on the continental side of the planet. Kerguelen has a colder climate than Zealandia, and is primarily home to forestry and ore mining, with a small agricultural zone. It is the other main colonial settlement and nation state, along with the Island Union on the oceanic side of the planet. Kusu is the capital for this landmass.

The Island Union: a nation state comprised of several of the largest island chains in the central and southern oceanic seas, controlling much of the territory west of Deep Mu and east of Zealandia on the oceanic side of the planet. The Island Union has the most integrated mixed human and demimondaine population on Lemuria, with both species represented in its ruling body. It also has the widest range of both human and demimondaine languages in current use.

Kibu Island/Spaceport: the main Lemuria-to-orbit spaceport and atmospheric transport hub on the oceanic side of the planet, Kibu spaceport and arcology complex is built on a large semi-artificial atol island chain in the equatorial ocean, with the main spaceport tower complex on Kibukuth island.

Bohol: one of the main island chains in the southern oceans of Lemuria, it's the third largest land-based and colonial settlement on Lemuria, and the largest single non-Jasconian demimondaine surface settlement. Considered the capital and administrative center of the Island Union, and a significant point of contact between humans and demimondaine.

Jasconius: a large demimondaine floating city complex and independent city-state, inhabited primarily by deep ocean and surface demimondaine. Jasconius famously circumnavigates the planet on a slow, continuous basis to keep itself on the daylight side of Lemuria, with regular excursions to the following dawn-twilight zone. It's always morning in Jasconius. The city's heart is sixteen hundred Lemurian years old (equivalent of twelve hundred galactic standard years), making it the oldest continually-occupied demimondaine settlement on Lemuria's surface, a very popular tourist destination, and a primary human-demimondaine trading city.

Zaratan: a smaller floating city complex, located exclusively on the oceanic side of the planet, Zaratan is essentially a floating market city that travels along trade routes in the Island Union and several outlying micronations in more northerly waters. Largely inhabited by island demimondaine, and also considered an independent city-state, though it has strong trade and political ties with the Island Union.

Deep Mu: Largest and most powerful of the two known deep nations, located in the vast western abyssal plains between the Zealandia continent and the Island Union, Deep Mu is home almost exclusively to abyssal demimondaine who rarely come to the surface. Its capital is unknown to the surface, but there are rumours of a vast cave complex in the wall of the Zealandian continental shelf that serves as the main Muean city. Owing to large geothermal activity at several points on the sea floor, Deep Mu is the producer of around 60% of Zealandia's energy supply, which is a serious political bone of contention between Deep Mu and the surface.

Ys: an independant deep ocean city habitat and power station located just on the edge of the Zealandian continental shelf, Ys is the primary connection point between Lemurine and Deep Mu, and a major trading hub for deep water demimondaine in the continental oceans. It's one of the few places where humans, deep water and abyssal demimondaine intermingle.

Vaalbara: the other known deep nation, located in the colder northern waters to the east of Kerguelen. Vaalbara has two main cities, an abyssal city deep in the Cipactli Trench on the eastern edge of the territory, and the deep water city of Sedna on the Imap Umassoursa submarine plateau about four hundred miles off the coast of Kerguelen. Vaalbara is to an extent isolationist in relation to humans. The abyssal city again has almost no contact with humans, although Sedna does have a limited trade relationship with Kerguelen, mostly conducted via coastal settlements on Kerguelen itself. Surface fleets from Sedna also have some contact with Zaratan on the extreme north-westerly loop of Zaratan's circuit, and Jasconius makes a stopover above the city itself roughly every year-and-a-half when taking its northern circumnavigation route.

Interplanetary Issues:

Galactic Systems Alliance (GSA or the Alliance) - Interstellar Governing Body of which Lemuria is a member state.

Alliance Planetary Justice Commission (APJC) - Alliance justice body which investigates and regulates primarily intra-planetary/intra-system interspecies incidents from a supposedly neutral outside perspective. May be called in by system authorities and/or sent in by the GSA if reports are made to them of gross injustices in defiance of galactic law.

Story Idea:

Yes, all this was basically random worldbuilding for a single story, which wound up not being written, though bits of it still live in my brain. The original idea was for a mermaid vampire story, which morphed into a maritime sci-fi/noir/spy story in what became the city of Ys. It featured APJC agents being sent to investigate terrorist/industrial sabotage threats aimed at the Mu-Lemurine geothermal power conduits, and ending up getting involved with Yssian protectors in the form of an abyssal nightclub singer/secret agent/femme fatale and her human nightclub owner/handler/detective partner.

Serene, the abyssal singer, is strongly inspired by the black dragonfish and similar creatures on Earth, and is basically a shapeshifting black bioluminescent nightmare with glass-like bones and needle teeth who hunts in pitch darkness using self-generated infra-red light, on the grounds that if you're trying to sabotage a deep-water geo-thermal industrial complex, this is exactly the kind of nightmare you really, really don't want coming after you. She also uses the bioluminescence to perform underwater glass tank lightshows at the club ('Last Light', incidentally, for a variety of fun reasons) as a cover, as suggested by her human partner Eshe (who is also black, but in a human blazing-sun-and-light sort of way, as opposed to alien product-of-a-lightless-abyss type way). It takes the poor Apjacks a while (and some minor friendly fire) to get used to working with the Yssian ladies, but by the time the case has headed towards threatening citywide structural collapse and interspecies war levels, they've caught on well enough.

That was the idea, anyway, before I basically got distracted spending two days researching mythical island names, real and mythical sunken continents/cities and random sea deity/monster names in order to do some rather random worldbuilding, and then the story just sat there for five years doing nothing. (Yes, most of the place names are one of the above, with a couple of afterlives and ancient supercontinents thrown in - it does make in-universe sense as well, though, since they're all human names for places on an alien marine planet where native placenames are largely unpronounceable). Behold, one of the dangers of worldbuilding. Heh. Sometimes, you do too much worldbuilding, you never write the actual story.

It's an awful lot of fun, though ...

[scifigeneration]

California aims to become carbon-free by 2045. Is that feasible?

by Sarah Kurtz

Monitoring the flow of electrical power at the California Independent System Operator grid control center. AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed a new law mandating that the electricity the state consumes not cause carbon emissions by 2045.

He also issued an executive order that goes even further: It commits California to “achieve carbon neutrality” across the board and not just for power generation by 2045. Together, these steps codify California’s ongoing transition away from relying on fossil fuels for energy. This effort has been ramping up since 2011, when Brown signed another law committing the state to deriving a third of its energy from renewable sources like wind and solar power by 2020 – not including big hydroelectric dams.

Based on more than 30 years of research related to solar energy, by my assessment, California can meet the law’s ambitious goal as long as it continues to implement programs that encourage the rapid expansion of renewable energy in the state.

A growth industry

The new law actually sets multiple targets rather than just one. It commits California to draw half its electricity from renewable sources by 2026, a share that would rise to 60 percent by 2030.

To take the next step, rather than mandating that all power be renewably sourced, state lawmakers established a 100 percent “zero-carbon” goal. They did not define this term, but it is understood as including wind and solar power, big hydropower plants and other sources of electricity that do not generate carbon dioxide.

Utility-scale solar and wind electricity increased from 3 percent in 2010 to 18 percent in 2017 in California, exceeding prior state targets, largely because solar prices have dropped sharply in recent years.

Being open to a wide range of technologies makes meeting the 2045 target easier and allowed State Senator Kevin de Leon, the original bill’s author, to amass broad support for the bill.

California State Sen. Kevin de Leon, celebrating after his colleagues approved the zero-carbon energy bill he championed for two years. AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli

Where things stood in 2017

About 56 percent of the power California generated in 2017 came from sources that don’t emit carbon. That puts it more than halfway toward this new goal by 2045.

However, the Diablo Canyon plant, California’s last nuclear power station, is slated for decommissioning by 2025, and no other reactors are in the works. This closure would eliminate the 8.7 percent of the state’s carbon-free power that came from nuclear energy.

Nearly all of the remaining 44 percent of the state’s electricity is currently generated by burning natural gas, and virtually none comes from coal. Going completely zero-carbon would require phasing out the state’s natural gas power plants.

On top of wind and solar energy, other generation options include geothermal, small nuclear reactors and carbon dioxide sequestration.

One quirk about this legislation is that it deals only with utility-scale power. It would not preclude private electricity-generation facilities such as the diesel generator a farmer might use to pump water. Nor would it count the power generated by a homeowner’s rooftop solar panels.

When the sun shines

One complication is that the state’s mix of energy sources can vary a great deal, even from one hour to the next.

Consider what happened on April 8, 2018, for example. It was a generally sunny and windy Sunday, with relatively low electricity demand. At night, about 40 percent of electricity was generated from renewable sources. But around noon that day, more than 80 percent came from renewable sources including large-scale hydropower.

If the electricity generated from these renewable sources is approximately doubled, as I estimate is necessary to meet the 2045 target, the power available in the middle of the day would greatly exceed the demand for electricity at that time.

This challenge shifts throughout the year.

On July 24 and July 25, 2018, Californians were asked to voluntarily use less electricity between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. to avoid an outage because of hot weather. Prices spiked by more than a factor of 10, helping to keep demand within the supply.

On those days, renewably sourced electricity never met half of the demand for power.

Balancing act

Due to this degree of variability, relying heavily on renewable energy will require ample energy storage and big investments in grid-based technology.

Today, the expected demand for electricity is balanced by the Independent System Operator, an entity that controls the flow of electricity on the grid and selects the lowest-priced sources of electricity available.

Pumped hydro storage, electricity generated from water pumped to a reservoir, is the state’s most common form of storage today. While limited to locations with large dams, the amount of energy stored this way could be increased in California, as recently proposed for Hoover Dam.

Big lithium ion batteries are becoming more affordable and are now beginning to be deployed on the utility scale. As battery and solar prices drop, it may become attractive to disconnect from the grid and use electricity generated by a solar system and stored by a battery.

Lower battery costs are also spurring the sales of more electric vehicles. Ideally, these vehicles could be charged at times when electricity is plentiful and cheap. By 2045, I believe they could be helping make the grid more stable.

Other options are becoming available. One example is utility-scale compressed air storage, where energy is stored as pressurized air.

And there is growing interest in solar thermal plants, which generate electricity from sunlight’s heat and use high-temperature storage to continue generating electricity after the sun sets.

The University of California Merced and many other wholesale electricity customers are saving money by using thermal storage. They chill water when rates are low and use the chilled water for air conditioning when electricity prices are high.

Wiggle room

Because California’s new law does not require that every watt be generated within California’s borders, utilities could keep buying electricity from nearby states, as long as they verify its origins are in keeping with the new law’s requirements.

And because the law does not define “zero-carbon,” it provides flexibility in how the state can meet this new target.

For example, California would allow the continued operation of natural gas plants when their output is coupled with purchase of renewable energy certificates, credits issued for the generation of renewable electricity that may be sold, from a utility that generates solar or wind power.

These credits arise through several kinds of arrangements. Perhaps the most common is through rooftop solar systems. Small-scale solar energy supplied about 5 percent of California’s electricity in 2017. It is likely to grow because of California’s mandate for solar panels on most new homes, starting in 2020.

In assessing whether the goal of going zero-carbon by 2045 is realistic or not, it is worth considering that solar energy has grown for years at a pace that far exceeded projections thanks to technological progress, government policies like California’s new law, market forces and the public’s demand for renewable energy.

About The Author:

Sarah Kurtz is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Merced.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

[orbemnews]

The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles Atop a long-dormant volcano in northern Nevada, workers are preparing to start blasting and digging out a giant pit that will serve as the first new large-scale lithium mine in the United States in more than a decade — a new domestic supply of an essential ingredient in electric car batteries and renewable energy. The mine, constructed on leased federal lands, could help address the near total reliance by the United States on foreign sources of lithium. But the project, known as Lithium Americas, has drawn protests from members of a Native American tribe, ranchers and environmental groups because it is expected to use billions of gallons of precious ground water, potentially contaminating some of it for 300 years, while leaving behind a giant mound of waste. “Blowing up a mountain isn’t green, no matter how much marketing spin people put on it,” said Max Wilbert, who has been living in a tent on the proposed mine site while two lawsuits seeking to block the project wend their way through federal courts. The fight over the Nevada mine is emblematic of a fundamental tension surfacing around the world: Electric cars and renewable energy may not be as green as they appear. Production of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people. That environmental toll has often been overlooked in part because there is a race underway among the United States, China, Europe and other major powers. Echoing past contests and wars over gold and oil, governments are fighting for supremacy over minerals that could help countries achieve economic and technological dominance for decades to come. Developers and lawmakers see this Nevada project, given final approval in the last days of the Trump administration, as part of the opportunity for the United States to become a leader in producing some of these raw materials as President Biden moves aggressively to fight climate change. In addition to Nevada, businesses have proposed lithium production sites in California, Oregon, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina. But traditional mining is one of the dirtiest businesses out there. That reality is not lost on automakers and renewable-energy businesses. “Our new clean-energy demands could be creating greater harm, even though its intention is to do good,” said Aimee Boulanger, executive director for the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, a group that vets mines for companies like BMW and Ford Motor. “We can’t allow that to happen.” This friction helps explain why a contest of sorts has emerged in recent months across the United States about how best to extract and produce the large amounts of lithium in ways that are much less destructive than how mining has been done for decades. Just in the first three months of 2021, U.S. lithium miners like those in Nevada raised nearly $3.5 billion from Wall Street — seven times the amount raised in the prior 36 months, according to data assembled by Bloomberg, and a hint of the frenzy underway. Some of those investors are backing alternatives including a plan to extract lithium from briny water beneath California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea, about 600 miles south of the Lithium Americas site. At the Salton Sea, investors plan to use specially coated beads to extract lithium salt from the hot liquid pumped up from an aquifer more than 4,000 feet below the surface. The self-contained systems will be connected to geothermal power plants generating emission-free electricity. And in the process, they hope to generate the revenue needed to restore the lake, which has been fouled by toxic runoff from area farms for decades. Businesses are also hoping to extract lithium from brine in Arkansas, Nevada, North Dakota and at least one more location in the United States. The United States needs to quickly find new supplies of lithium as automakers ramp up manufacturing of electric vehicles. Lithium is used in electric car batteries because it is lightweight, can store lots of energy and can be repeatedly recharged. Analysts estimate that lithium demand is going to increase tenfold before the end of this decade as Tesla, Volkswagen, General Motors and other automakers introduce dozens of electric models. Other ingredients like cobalt are needed to keep the battery stable. Even though the United States has some of the world’s largest reserves, the country today has only one large-scale lithium mine, Silver Peak in Nevada, which first opened in the 1960s and is producing just 5,000 tons a year — less than 2 percent of the world’s annual supply. Most of the raw lithium used domestically comes from Latin America or Australia, and most of it is processed and turned into battery cells in China and other Asian countries. “China just put out its next five-year plan,” Mr. Biden’s energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, said in a recent interview. “They want to be the go-to place for the guts of the batteries, yet we have these minerals in the United States. We have not taken advantage of them, to mine them.” In March, she announced grants to increase production of crucial minerals. “This is a race to the future that America is going to win,” she said. So far, the Biden administration has not moved to help push more environmentally friendly options — like lithium brine extraction, instead of open pit mines. The Interior Department declined to say whether it would shift its stand on the Lithium Americas permit, which it is defending in court. Mining companies and related businesses want to accelerate domestic production of lithium and are pressing the administration and key lawmakers to insert a $10 billion grant program into Mr. Biden’s infrastructure bill, arguing that it is a matter of national security. “Right now, if China decided to cut off the U.S. for a variety of reasons we’re in trouble,” said Ben Steinberg, an Obama administration official turned lobbyist. He was hired in January by ​Piedmont Lithium, which is working to build an open-pit mine in North Carolina and is one of several companies that have created a trade association for the industry. Investors are rushing to get permits for new mines and begin production to secure contracts with battery companies and automakers. Ultimately, federal and state officials will decide which of the two methods — traditional mining or brine extraction — is approved. Both could take hold. Much will depend on how successful environmentalists, tribes and local groups are in blocking projects. On a hillside, Edward Bartell or his ranch employees are out early every morning making sure that the nearly 500 cows and calves that roam his 50,000 acres in Nevada’s high desert have enough feed. It has been a routine for generations, but the family has never before faced a threat quite like this. A few miles from his ranch, work could soon start on Lithium Americas’ open pit mine that will represent one of the largest lithium production sites in U.S. history, complete with a helicopter landing pad, a chemical processing plant and waste dumps. The mine will reach a depth of about 370 feet. Mr. Bartell’s biggest fear is that the mine will consume the water that keeps his cattle alive. The company has said the mine will consume 3,224 gallons per minute. That could cause the water table to drop on land Mr. Bartell owns by an estimated 12 feet, according to a Lithium Americas consultant. While producing 66,000 tons a year of battery-grade lithium carbonate, the mine may cause groundwater contamination with metals including antimony and arsenic, according to federal documents. The lithium will be extracted by mixing clay dug out from the mountainside with as much as 5,800 tons a day of sulfuric acid. This whole process will also create 354 million cubic yards of mining waste that will be loaded with discharge from the sulfuric acid treatment, and may contain modestly radioactive uranium, permit documents disclose. A December assessment by the Interior Department found that over its 41-year life, the mine would degrade nearly 5,000 acres of winter range used by pronghorn antelope and hurt the habitat of the sage grouse. It would probably also destroy a nesting area for a pair of golden eagles whose feathers are vital to the local tribe’s religious ceremonies. “It is real frustrating that it is being pitched as an environmentally friendly project, when it is really a huge industrial site,” said Mr. Bartell, who filed a lawsuit to try to block the mine. At the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation, anger over the project has boiled over, even causing some fights between members as Lithium Americas has offered to hire tribal members in jobs that will pay an average annual wage of $62,675 — twice the county’s per capita income — but that will come with a big trade-off. “Tell me, what water am I going to drink for 300 years?” Deland Hinkey, a member of the tribe, yelled as a federal official arrived at the reservation in March to brief tribal leaders on the mining plan. “Anybody, answer my question. After you contaminate my water, what I am going to drink for 300 years? You are lying!” The reservation is nearly 50 miles from the mine site — and far beyond the area where groundwater may be contaminated — but tribe members fear the pollution could spread. “It is really a David versus Goliath kind of a situation,” said Maxine Redstar, the leader of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes, noting that there was limited consultation with the tribe before the Interior Department approved the project. “The mining companies are just major corporations.” Tim Crowley, a vice president at Lithium Americas, said the company would operate responsibly — planning, for example, to use the steam from burning molten sulfur to generate the electricity it needs. “We’re answering President Biden’s call to secure America’s supply chains and tackle the climate crisis,” Mr. Crowley said. A spokesman noted that area ranchers also used a lot of water and that the company had purchased its allocation from another farmer to limit the increase in water use. The company has moved aggressively to secure permits, hiring a lobbying team that includes a former Trump White House aide, Jonathan Slemrod. Lithium Americas, which estimates there is $3.9 billion worth of recoverable lithium at the site, hopes to start mining operations next year. Its largest shareholder is the Chinese company Ganfeng Lithium. A Second Act The desert sands surrounding the Salton Sea have drawn worldwide notice before. They have served as a location for Hollywood productions like the “Star Wars” franchise. Created by flooding from the Colorado River more than a century ago, the lake once thrived. Frank Sinatra performed at its resorts. Over the years, drought and poor management turned it into a source of pollutants. But a new wave of investors is promoting the lake as one of the most promising and environmentally friendly lithium prospects in the United States. Lithium extraction from brine has long been used in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, where the sun is used over nearly two years to evaporate water from sprawling ponds. It is relatively inexpensive, but it uses lots of water in arid areas. The approach planned at the Salton Sea is radically different. The lake sits atop the Salton Buttes, which, as in Nevada, are underground volcanoes. For years, a company owned by Berkshire Hathaway, CalEnergy, and another business, Energy Source, have tapped the Buttes’ geothermal heat to produce electricity. The systems use naturally occurring underground steam. This same water is loaded with lithium. Now, Berkshire Hathaway and two other companies — Controlled Thermal Resources and Materials Research — want to install equipment that will extract lithium after the water passes through the geothermal plants, in a process that will take only about two hours. Rod Colwell, a burly Australian, has spent much of the last decade pitching investors and lawmakers on putting the brine to use. In February, a backhoe plowed dirt on a 7,000-acre site being developed by his company, Controlled Thermal Resources. “This is the sweet spot,” Mr. Colwell said. “This is the most sustainable lithium in the world, made in America. Who would have thought it? We’ve got this massive opportunity.” A Berkshire Hathaway executive told state officials recently that the company expected to complete its demonstration plant for lithium extraction by April 2022. The backers of the Salton Sea lithium projects are also working with local groups and hope to offer good jobs in an area that has an unemployment rate of nearly 16 percent. “Our region is very rich in natural resources and mineral resources,” said Luis Olmedo, executive director of Comite Civico del Valle, which represents area farm workers. “However, they’re very poorly distributed. The population has not been afforded a seat at the table.” The state has given millions in grants to lithium extraction companies, and the Legislature is considering requiring carmakers by 2035 to use California sources for some of the lithium in vehicles they sell in the state, the country’s largest electric-car market. But even these projects have raised some questions. Geothermal plants produce energy without emissions, but they can require tens of billions of gallons of water annually for cooling. And lithium extraction from brine dredges up minerals like iron and salt that need to be removed before the brine is injected back into the ground. Similar extraction efforts at the Salton Sea have previously failed. In 2000, CalEnergy proposed spending $200 million to extract zinc and to help restore the Salton Sea. The company gave up on the effort in 2004. But several companies working on the direct lithium extraction technique — including Lilac Solutions, based in California, and Standard Lithium of Vancouver, British Columbia — are confident they have mastered the technology. Both companies have opened demonstration projects using the brine extraction technology, with Standard Lithium tapping into a brine source already being extracted from the ground by an Arkansas chemical plant, meaning it did not need to take additional water from the ground. “This green aspect is incredibly important,” said Robert Mintak, chief executive of Standard Lithium, who hopes the company will produce 21,000 tons a year of lithium in Arkansas within five years if it can raise $440 million in financing. “The Fred Flintstone approach is not the solution to the lithium challenge.” Lilac Solutions, whose clients include Controlled Thermal Resources, is also working on direct lithium extraction in Nevada, North Dakota and at least one other U.S. location that it would not disclose. The company predicts that within five years, these projects could produce about 100,000 tons of lithium annually, or 20 times current domestic production. Executives from companies like Lithium Americans question if these more innovative approaches can deliver all the lithium the world needs. But automakers are keen to pursue approaches that have a much smaller impact on the environment. “Indigenous tribes being pushed out or their water being poisoned or any of those types of issues, we just don’t want to be party to that,” said Sue Slaughter, Ford’s purchasing director for supply chain sustainability. “We really want to force the industries that we’re buying materials from to make sure that they’re doing it in a responsible way. As an industry, we are going to be buying so much of these materials that we do have significant power to leverage that situation very strongly. And we intend to do that.” Gabriella Angotti-Jones contributed reporting. Source link Orbem News #Electric #gold #lithium #power #Race #Rush #Vehicles

[neoclassical-succubus]

Day 15: What technology is used in your world?

OH BOY. Okay, this is gonna be long, so be like Scar: BE PREPARED!

Let’s start with the very basics of most of the things in my multiverse: the Psion particle.

Psion is a particle roughly a photon’s size, which seems to interact quite a lot with both electromagnetism and gravity. Psion is the particle of life: it is found quite a lot in living beings, while in rocks/metals it’s close to nonexistent. Psion can also be found in almost pure concentrations in what’s called Psion-enriched crystals made of either mercury, gallium, or glucose. It is unknown why theses doesn’t seem to have the lack of Psion usually found in inert materials, but this is very useful for a special piece of technology: the Psion Particle Accelerators (PPA for short). Theses Psion Particle Accelerator drain the ambient Psion / a flask of anything who has Psion in it to convert the energy into electricity while, surprisingly, the Psion comes out intact, thus creating effectively a working infinite electricity generator. However, theses things tend to release the Psion stored in them in bursts, causing them to sometime overheat. As such, “Psion vents” are on the side of each torus ring that is a PPA to enable a quick exit of theses bursts, but one must still be careful when this happen.

This piece of technology can also lead to another interesting creation: hard light objects. This allows to effectively create stuff such as light-blades, an add-on to existing weapons to use if they are rigged with a PPA to sharpen even it even more, or extend its range. Hard-light pellets are also used as a projectile by the peoples in the Robot AU, as theses can be either incapacitating or lethal on choice.

Adding to the hard light technology is another using light and Psion too to produce speeds that are very impressive. Introducing the Kugelblitz Motor, existing only in space for the moment. The Kugelblitz works with a black hole put into a controlled confinement and bombarded with photons to end up with an output of something having a mass and thus propelling the spacecraft at LUDICROUS SPEED! Well, for the larger ones. Smaller ones can only accelerate up to a “mere” Mach 2. Theses small ones are the ones put into the raceships.

Yet another technology still untouched right now is the robots. How do they work and how does the AI system works? Let’s talk about that.

Robots are complex machines who moves with “pressure muscles”, tubes of a special compound who, when pressure is added in, gets “wider” and mimic that way a muscle’s way of contracting. That way, the muscles can be easily changed if broken. Bones are made of a carbon-based polymer. Most of the “organs” are instead the computer parts, with some models also being “Factories” able to consume some material to create usable stuff in them. The computer part of a robot/an AI is quantum one, consuming less energy and taking less place. The whole think is either animated by a PPA or, if they cannot have one due to it being too expensive to create/ just plain impractical, they will have multiple incomes of energy with different ways of getting them.

...Boy, this is long. Pause here and go read a book instead of being all your time on the internet!

You read a book? Did something else? Or you just didn’t give a heck? Good, let’s resume.

More technical stuff about Kugelblitz: Suits are mostly skintight suits, except for one case: dragon-newts typically uses hard suits, as their scales would destroy most soft suits, and Guardians evolved to be able to use most of their body in complete vacuum, thus their suits are open at some places. Moreover, some ships have a special gravity generator to be able to have them like long corridors instead of towers. G-Suits and the raceships has been ameliorated to reduce a maximum any internal damage caused by any kind of G-thrust.

Back on Earth, but under the sea, the technology over there is using electricity created by geothermal plants. Underwater jet-skis exists, akin to our motorcycles. Bigger models are actually more like submarines for more peoples. One feat that seems to have been done in the ancient times by Atlanteans is that the capital of the Ocean is a moving, city-sized submarine.

Robot AU again? The mainframes of the AIs are arranged into blocks of 2*2*2, and all of the robots around means there is skyscrapers of theses mainframes. All of them are regular-working computers, except in their center where there is a quantum hard-drive to do all the computing. The rest is just everything needed for it to work in the most optimal way. This way of arranging the mainframes however means that the places around theses skyscrapers are scorching hot. Part of this is recycled with some thermal generators, transforming the heat back into electricity, and the rest of the heat is cooled with some coolant units sometimes put instead of some mainframes. Speaking of generating powers, the Robot AU uses different methods such as solar panels and wind turbines to create energy. Psion Particle Accelerators are quite uncommon here. However, they are working on it, and one of their prototypes, a gauntlet capable of creating a breach between dimensions, is what sets the plot of Alternate Takes forward. Another thing to note about the robots is that they are coded with different languages: in the original Earth, the four original AIs created are named Adam, then Eve, Lilith and Hal, and their code is the Adam (.adm) code. On the Robot AU, their code is instead the Gregory code (.gre) or the Intelligence Servant Kimera (.isk).

Meanwhile in the Fantasy AU, Steampunk is of order near Brittany and the United Kingdom, as zeppelins and lots of Victorian-era technology is still used, but they sometime uses more contemporary tech, as theses are available nearby. Excepted the Crimson King’s kingdom, it is everywhere a nearly contemporary level of technology. Even in Hell and Heaven they have guns, computers and smartphones. Beats the old scrolls, stone slabs and bows.

One last thing back on the Earth! There is prototypes being created during the stories, but they’re not quite working yet. For example, mechas are being designed to be able to be used both as a utility vehicle with a car, a plane, or a boat form, or be used to fight extremely large threats in mecha form, such as exceptionally large animals.

That, and Lilith wanted a mecha so she’s making one for her. Can’t really blame her.

...Did I said it was the last thing?

Oh sorry, I lied.

Another piece of technology being worked on is Carol’s genetic experiments with the DNA-mixer substance brought up in day 12. The end goal would be to be able to control it to be able to genetically enhance peoples the way they want, by giving them animal/plant attributes using this and a bit of surgery.

The medical level has progressed quite a bit, but let’s just talk about the technological side of that: grafts can now be almost easily 3D-printed with enough material, but others prefer to have sweet robotic arms to are compatible with actual robot limbs (well, you can’t change your head though.). To each their own.

Also, of course, there’s the possibility of creating a time machine, as Tales Of Time shows us, with the side effect of this one exploding. But hey, we can’t go right on the first try?

A peculiar piece of technology is also the less used kinetic weapons used by some robots in the Robot AU, which change the spin of the gun charging into shockwaves. Or the fact that some technology seems to reinforce when used in rhythm…

A weird thing of technology mishmashed with magic are the demonic guns in the Fantasy Universe, which fire soul-catching cartridges with a classic gun mechanism mixed with some special magic.

Oh and there is a kind of diving apparatus called “rebreathers” which basically lets you either recycle the air in your air tanks or let you breathe directly from the water, as it exacts the oxygen in the water and changes it into dioxygen. In space the former is used to attain a near infinite amount of air for anyone breathing dioxygen.

...Okay yeah let’s stop here.

[vegetable420-blog]

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Some companies will bring both to an installation, along with several helpers to assist with any heavy lifting. You claim that companies only offer contracts, because they make money?? Any suggestions as we are financially unable to replace the unit at this time and we live in south texas so really need some kind of cool Air Conditioning Repair Wekiwa Springs FL. Any reviews on American Standard or suggestions appreciated.

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[figsandnewtons]

environmental rambles #1: the market is unequipped to handle the fight against climate change

It just occurred to me that for all I post about politics, I don’t actually post about my area of expertise—that being environmental policy and sustainable measures. And as I’m getting deeper into conversations with people, I forget how much I just assume is known. So here’s a loose series I’m going to begin. I have no outline or general idea about how long these posts will be.

The key issue when tackling *climate change* or environmental degradation (ugh do I have to write a post that explains how this is a real problem? Please no.), and frankly the key issue when tackling anything in this political climate, is money. Because solving any problem usually requires shelling out, and we have a very entrenched economic system where profit is valued above all else. For instance, with healthcare, consider how many conversations there were about the burdens on small to mid-sized business, or costs shifting to states, or how best to implement price controls. It’s the first thing anyone looks at.

Climate change is tough, because our largest sources of GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions are electricity, transportation, and heating. It seems logical to tackle the actual shit we burn to power this stuff, which is why there’s a push for renewables, or for nuclear energy (97% renewable, but that 3% is a Problem). Ditto for mixing our gas with ethanol (there’s claims that GHG emissions are net-zero because corn fields act as carbon sinks, but honestly, corn production in the USA is its own damn topic), or the push to mass transit, telecommuting, the purchasing of off-sets for travel, and electric cars.

Believe it or not, we do have scientific solutions to all of this, at least at some level. We are able to generate electricity through processes that do not emit many or any GHGs (solar, wind, hydroelectric, tidal power, etc., though strengths and weaknesses of all of these is another topic). However, there’s obvious shortcomings in how our electrical grid distributes it, in storage technology, in differing regional capabilities...it’s a whole thing, trust me.

Now, that’s not to say there aren’t challenges to how we currently get delivered electricity, but those challenges have been accommodated by our infrastructure, which is shaped largely by our market. It is more economic currently to keep sending electricity through our shitty and inefficient grid using a Large, Centralized Power Plant™ than it is to implement SMART-grid technology, to have a variety of power sources (geothermal heatpumps coupled with solar panels), and so on. Ever play Sim City 2000? Stick the power plant there, lay down the wires, and you have civilization. Nifty.

On another level, there is nothing that stops businesses from being incredibly unenvironmental in their practices. One example, which I promise I will detail more later, is that properly fertilized soil (soil cows have pooped on) acts as a carbon sink. Yet our current agro system is such that it is *cheaper* to pump in chemical fertilizers (which emits GHGs in their production and are usually quite oil-reliant), to use monocultures for efficient crop growth and harvesting (limiting biodiversity, and creating strains that are increasingly pesticide resistant, thereby needing to up the amount of pesticides used, which also have an environmental footprint), and to stick cows onto concrete feedlots where they are fed with said monocultured corn to get really fat really quickly.

What I just described...there is a ton of environmental damage in this practice, and that’s not even counting methane pockets from all the cows shitting and burping together, or the intense, intense water requirements (and water pollution) of such a system. But these damages, these costs to our environment, are external to our market system.

And that’s the crux of it, the tragedy of the commons, where any shared resource is vulnerable to self-interested behavior, and it’s exceedingly difficult to do anything about it without regulations. In this case, the resource is our entire planet.

These externalities—GHG emissions, biodiversity loss, water pollution, etc.—mean that the company or actor creating the problem is not the one who has to pay for it. So it is offset to someone else, be it the people who have to pay for the water clean-up, or on a larger scale, the economic costs as our planet heats up (droughts, increased extreme weather events, floods, environmental refugees...I can keep going for a while). Therefore, there is no economic incentive for an individual actor to stop doing it, unless there is pressure from clients/consumers (brand reputation risk), or economic risk to their business model as a result of climate change/environmental degradation. These are risks that most businesses do not consider, unless they are specifically asked to do so.

Similarly, there is little economic benefit for individuals to act in the best interest of the environment. Buying offsets for a plane flight is an additional cost to you. Electric cars are often more expensive. Taking public transportation to work is often more expensive or inaccessible to where you need to go. Walking/riding a bike is likely infeasible. There’s exceptions (EnergyStar rated products save in the long-run, just as measures to properly insulate your home or change lighting can improve heating and cooling bills), but overall all, incentives are entirely lacking. Or penalities for bad behavior, though there are exceptions there too.

Gas is soooo expensive in California, and it’s really annoying to pay $20 as a toll when driving into NYC, right? Yes, but this is the kind of shit that’s been implemented to create an economic penalty for acting against the best interest of the planet. The issue is that it’s not consistent across the board, and it’s usually not enough to actually affect our systems, especially when larger standards and regulations, such as our CAFE standards for allowable fuel efficiency in vehicles produced, matter more (and are currently in danger of being stripped away entirely). A good example is how in Southern California people are told to limit showers and restaurants stopped providing water without request to tackle the drought, and yet nothing was done about the intense irrigation needs of farmers. Why the fuck is cotton and rice grown in a desert?!

Oh, because it’s cheap and can be.

So this is sticking point #1 for why climate change feels so unsolvable. Our entire economic system fails to account for this. The “invisible hand of the market” doesn’t have a way of placing a dollar value on environmental degradation. A carbon tax is one solution that could alter this entirely and allow the harm we’re doing to be properly valued. Implementing it across the board...that’s more difficult. And there really would be small to mid-sized businesses, as well as individual consumers, who would be hurt. How do you pass policy that would make our meat at least 3x as expensive? I mean, it should be, it *needs* to be, but politically, how do you get something like that any traction?

There’s no simple answer, other than championing politicians on all levels of government who champion this cause. I’m sure that won’t take too long or anything...

On that cheery note, until next time.

[aundreamassina9-blog]

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[kayawagner]

100 Dungeon Descriptors Table

Nothing fancy today, just a list of dungeon descriptors, helpfully listed in d100 format. Oftentimes I find myself wanting to make a new dungeon or area and am short on ideas. This list is useful for inspiration, kickstarting design with an idea or two about which ideas can be formed. Alternately, you can pick one or two as overarching themes and then flavor smaller areas with another selection. Of course you may need to get creative if you end up with conflicting descriptors that make no sense together, but if it’s too bizarre you can always ignore the one you like least and/or roll again.

Here’s an example: We’ll go with an area with two random descriptors and three sub areas each with an additional descriptor of it’s own. Our rolls* are 9, 53 , 51, 14, 90. That gives us main traits of Icy and Rectangular rooms. So we have a start of an idea. Rectangular rooms is pretty standard dungeon stuff. Icy implies cold or ice creatures and a certain environment. Maybe this is high in the mountains, deep underground, a magical cold, or far to the north/south. We’ll decide later. Our three sub zones are Large scale, Geothermal, and Non-euclidean. Giant is easy. So we have a giants’ castle in the high mountains covered in frost and ice. Under the castle we’ve got a series of geothermically active caverns. We could go fire elemental here, but I like making the geothermal energy a power source for the giant’s castle better. So the castle has steam driven gates and other cool steam type devices, as well as few “ice giant engineers”, although no steam heat. In the caverns themselves, there are a few ice giant taskmasters (nearly naked because of the heat) and a bunch of slaves that maintain the steam pipes. Beyond the castle, carved into the mountain is a series of rooms with odd magical geometry. Let’s combine that with the ice to have sliding traps and block puzzles that rely on the non euclidean nature of the space, placed to protect some appropriate artifact. On advice of my test audience, we’ll also add some man sized blind penguins and ice-template gibbering mouthers to this area. That even gives us three adventure hooks: against the giants, free the slaves, capture the relic.

Wet: Moldy – damp, and mold grows everywhere

Wet: Flooded  – ankle to waist deep water everywhere

Wet: Underwater – entire place is underwater

Wet: Rotten – sodden, and everything is ruined, turning into mush

Dry: Crumbling – dry rot, crumbling stone

Dry: Dusty – a layer of dust and grit cover everything

Dry: Parched – dry air that makes you thirsty and uncomfortable

Dry: Dehydrating – moving air the pulls moisture away, full of mummified husks of small creatures, etc…

Cold: Icy – covered with a layer of ice, formations on walls and ceiling

Cold: Clammy – cold and damp air, works through your clothes

Cold: Glacial – biting cold, walls of ice

Cold: Crisp – cool but invigorating

Hot: Smoldering – piles of still warm ash, may have low oxygen levels

Hot: Steamy – geothermal vents, geysers, etc…

Hot: Magma – flows of magma (1500k about 3 times as hot as a campfire, 500k) in large rooms, heat may dissipate enough to approach, in small rooms maybe not

Hot: Warm – general warmer temperature

Live: Positive aura – depending on the strength, area may be covered in growth or items may animate or burst into frantic activity

Live: Swarming – filled with large swarms of vermin

Live: Live rock – dripping mineral water creates slow growing formations

Live: Genius loci – a spirit caretaker oversees the area

Dead: Bodies – corpses litter the area

Dead: Negative aura – may cause a feeling of illness or unease, bolster undead or even damage the living

Dead: Ruined – once worked the area is falling apart

Dead: Eerie – feelings of being watched, prickling of the skin, etc…

Vegetation: Overgrown/roots – plant growth and hanging roots block passages and cluster about the ground

Vegetation: Flowering – strange cave flowers grow or sprout from bushes or vines

Vegetation: Fungus/mold – large fungi or molds grow throughout the area

Vegetation: Gardens – carefully tended (once?) gardens dot the area

Natural: Solution caves – caves formed by minerals dissolving, often wet

Natural: Lava tubes – formed by magma flowing out of a space, stone is hard, rooms are tunnel like

Natural: Fracture caves – full of debris,  layers of rock collapse to form caves

Natural: Erosion caves – made by action of wind or water wearing down rock, may have strong winds or high tide

Manufactured: Hewn – crudely carved out of rock, surface still shows tool marks

Manufactured: Supported – soft stone supported by columns or beams

Manufactured: Rough Brick – simple stone bricks carved from rock shore up and finish walls

Manufactured: Advanced Brick – smaller, fancier, or simply better made stone bricks

Sounds: Whistling – sound of wind forced through tight passages or over odd formations

Sounds: Rumbling – perhaps an indication this area is unstable or of seismic activity

Sounds: Battle noises – inhabitants often get in noisy conflict

Sounds: Moaning – the wind? or something more sinister?

Smells: Decay – death, decomposition, mold

Smells: Dirt – the smell of earth and dirt

Smells: Chemicals – strange acrid brews, sickly sweet tangs, some kind of strange chemicals are on the air

Smells: Metal – the distinct smell and taste of metal, is this a metallurgists, a mine, or just an ore rich area?

Denizens: Beast – area is populated with animals, predators, scavengers etc…

Denizens: Lowlives – slimes, fungus monsters and insects

Denizens: Magical – elementals, undead, constructs and other unnatural things

Denizens: Humanoids – primitive or advanced humanoid tool users

Scale: Tight – small rooms, tight passages, crawling and squeezing through tunnels

Scale: Standard – normal room and passage scale

Scale: Large – larger passways, huge rooms, perhaps natural or built by giants

Scale: Mixed – a mix of scales, often natural but also a characteristic of an area inhabited by different sizes of creature

Shapes: Rectangles – standard square and rectangular rooms

Shapes: Ellipse – circles and ellipses

Shapes: Angled – angled rooms other than squares and rectangles, triangles, hexagons, unusual shapes…

Shapes: Natural – caves and natural passages

Maintenance: Maintained – the area is being maintained, passably clean and repairs are made

Maintenance: Expanding – the area is maintained and new areas are being built on the edges

Maintenance: Abandoned – no one is doing maintenance, most things still work but some don’t and wear is obvious

Maintenance: Collapsing – no one has done maintenance for a long time, few things work, most are broken, missing, or destroyed

Airy: Strong winds – winds howl through the rooms and halls, light items are blown away, doors may be flung open or characters pushed down

Airy: Cavernous – huge open caverns with vaulted ceilings

Airy: Chasms – deep chasms voids and pits

Airy: Open – one monstrous cavern with discrete areas within, sneak a little overland into your dungeon

Architecture: Monolithic – huge construction from large slabs of rock

Architecture: Sparse – clean unadorned construction

Architecture: Embellished – covered with engravings, runes, patterns, etc…

Architecture: Stylistic – an unusual or alien style

Obscured: Foggy – mists, steam or fog blanket the area

Obscured: Screened – webs, vines or other obstructions shroud the area

Obscured: Magic darkness – rooms or the entire area is covered in magical darkness

Obscured: Twisty – no special obstruction, just very few straight passages so vision only extends to the next bend

Size: Small – your classic 5 room dungeon

Size: Medium – larger complex, 5-15 rooms

Size: Large – larger yet, 20-50 rooms

Size: Extra large – sprawling multi-“zone” area

Unique: Architecture – contains a unique piece of architecture, statuary, or other landmark

Unique: Foe – contains a unique monster, NPC or the like

Unique: Magic effect – contains a special magic effect, either an aura over the whole area or a specific feature like a magical portal or pool

Unique: Treasure – has a special one of a kind treasure that may have its own backstory or associated quest

Danger: Hazards – venomous critters, naturally occurring rockfalls, pits or fire gouts

Danger: Traps – area is/was home to a trap builders and has many traps

Danger: Monsters – area full of deadly monsters

Danger: Curses – area holds curses or other magical dangers

Treasure: Coin and items – standard treasures

Treasure: Raw ore/gems – area has been or can be mined for raw ore and gems

Treasure: Art – area has art objects that can be looted as treasure

Treasure: Goods – not much in the way of treasure, but area has trade good that can be sold

Magic: Changing – shifting walls, moving rooms and other tricks

Magic: Non-euclidean – the area has a definite arrangement but its full of portals, bends in reality or other weirdness that make it difficult to map

Magic: Wild – magic in this area acts unpredictable

Magic: Null – magic in this area is suppressed or nullified

Crystal: Studded – walls are studded with raw crystal

Crystal: Monsters – monsters in this area are weird crystal versions or crystal themed monsters

Crystal: Walls – this area is carved from a massive crystal deposit, glass or obsidian

Crystal: Items – furniture, decorative items, tools, and weapons in this area are all made of crystals

Technology: Stone – denizens of this area use stone age technology

Technology: Bronze – foes in this area use bronze or another soft metal

Technology: Steel – this area has steel or another hard metal technology

Technology: Steam – this area features early steam tech

  *Using my Polyhero Wizard dice, because they’re what I have on hand. Now I can use the old “mad wizard” excuse when players look at me funny.

100 Dungeon Descriptors Table published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

[velmahwf5609-blog]

Zionism.

This is actually a compound from 400 graphics stitched with each other to present the intricacies of a computer mouse retina, which is simply 3-4 mm throughout. Some check outs are going to need regular blowing winding while others like the Panerai Luminor 1950 GMT, which possesses an eight day energy reserve, just must be actually wound around every eight times. That is incomprehensible that alleged scientific research should possess worked to perfect an instrument of enslavement in the university without being illuminated by one ray off the movement of social freedom, growing and also establishing throughout the planet. Via a mix from student-centered tasks, readings, discussions, and also contemporary movies, our team look into subjects including adjustment, personality traits, emotional ailments as well as group aspects. These textural worries are of harsh significance to our understanding from the action of materials right into ground water. 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This four-credit honors travel-seminar provides students the chance to study the record of modern-day Spanish craft in situ. Participate in the International Parkinson and also Motion Problem Community (MDS) and also become one from the 4,500 (+) participants of the professional community devoted to: disseminating know-how concerning Movement Disorders; marketing research in to goals, deterrence as well as treatment; and swimmingly having an effect on the care from clients along with Action Disorders. The Denver co Broncos quarterback was Cooper's signal-caller in high school, shaking him touchdowns as, most certainly, Mississippi's finest brother-to-brother tandem. Inning accordance with the Early Childhood Popular music and also Movement Affiliation, 85 per-cent from human brain advancement happens by the time a little one arrives at 3 years. Today, the evidence has ended up being a popular front, and a lot of neuroscientists agree that activity as well as knowledge are powerfully linked. It integrates audio academic bases with hands-on lab exercises to supply trainees depth as well as adventure in understanding as well as regulating networks. Futrelle says the leaders of the activity have done little to distress misogyny in their positions. Die Definition der anderen Graphoelemente wird dagegen im Wesentlichen nicht verändert. The months of coordinating as well as the day itself assisted to re-boot the temperature movement within this country.

[unilifeonline-blog]

Investigating Other World Computing's super-green central command Other World Computing has been peopling keep old PCs out of the …

Woodstock, Illinois is conceivably most renowned for its featuring part in the 1993 film Groundhog Day. The little burg, around a hour northwest of Chicago, remained in for the little Pennsylvania town of Punxsutawney all through the film. The courthouse square was utilized to shoot the celebrated meeting between Bill Murray's character, Phil Connors, and protection businessperson Ned Ryerson, wherein Connors ventures off the walkway into a "doozy" of a mud puddle.

Woodstock likewise happens to be home to one of the greenest structures in the whole nation. That building is the current corporate central command for Mac redesign and adornment creator Other World Computing. Ars as of late had a chance to take a voyage through the office and investigate some of its great green "elements." We additionally talked with CEO Larry O'Connor about how the drive to construct such an ecologically well disposed building is a similar drive that drove him to manufacture OWC's Mac-accommodating business in any case, actually with his exposed hands.

Preservation roots

OWC begun in the late 1980s after organizer and CEO Larry O'Connor had become well known building RAM modules for Apple IIs, welding memory chips onto circuit sheets by hand. At that point 14 years of age, O'Connor likewise re-inked spot network printer strips and repaired PCs for Woodstock range inhabitants. All through the '90s—even the low purpose of the mid-'90s when Apple wavered on the very edge of chapter 11—the organization kept on giving items and administrations to help Apple clients update, repair, and generally keep their Macs pursuing years different clients may have deserted a maturing machine for something new.

"Protection is truly at the center of our business," O'Connor told Ars. "The normal Mac is utilized perhaps three years, and the normal PC even less, about a year. Be that as it may, with a little help and the correct updates and apparatuses, those machines could be put to great use for any longer.

"Reusing is incredible—we do a ton of that here in our office. Actually, I can depend on one hand how frequently we've had our customary "junk" gotten since our new office opened three years back," O'Connor said. "In any case, what's surprisingly better than reusing is not discarding things in any case. With a RAM or drive refresh, particularly in case you're moving to a SSD, you can make a more seasoned PC as a rule keep running as quick as another machine, and pass it along to another person to utilize."

Taking after the platinum block street

As Apple turned its fortunes around over the previous decade, OWC in like manner saw its business extend. At the point when the organization's development surpassed the cutoff points of its 10,000 square foot office in 2006, OWC started arranging another 37,000 square foot grounds that would incorporate office space, repair and manufacture offices, warehousing space, and sending operations.

Rather than agreeing to a standard business office, be that as it may, O'Connor demanded working to the most astounding green models. "I'm a father, I'm from this region, and I need to do all that I can to save the excellence of this land for my children, and their children too," he told Ars. That implied shooting for a Platinum affirmation in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) from the US Green Building Council.Only around 300 structures out of the 14,000 or so that have been LEED guaranteed have earned the top Platinum status, so the test wasn't a simple one. O'Connor clarified that a considerable lot of the elements of the building, for example, low-VOC materials, fiber-optic sun based lighting, and the geothermal HVAC framework—wind up adding expenses to the development. Lamentably, banks don't (and as a rule can't) consider those components in the estimation of the building when offering financing.

"We wound up having the capacity to self-subsidize most of the changes ourselves," O'Connor said.

Despite the fact that the building's vitality investment funds (more on that later) can balance some of those forthright costs, the money related contemplations aren't generally obvious in customary business considering. "We didn't fabricate this working to profit in five years," O'Connor clarified. "We constructed it to serve us for the following 20 years, since we plan to be here for in any event that long."

Official administrator Kayleen Ivers took us on a voyage through OWC's office to highlight its many green elements. Some are maybe self-evident, for example, the utilization of paints, covering, and glues that are free of unstable natural mixes, or the unavoidable sky facing windows and fiber-optic sun oriented lighting that cutoff the requirement for simulated lighting.Other elements are maybe more subtle. For example, the geothermal-controlled HVAC framework requires considerably less vitality that customary constrained air frameworks. However, the framework incorporates profoundly productive HEPA channels and in addition UV separating that dispose of about all clean, dust, microorganisms, and different pathogens from the air. The cleaner air keeps the workforce (now totaling more than 130 representatives) more advantageous, which diminishes non-appearance and builds efficiency. Similarly, all water coming into the building goes through a massive switch osmosis channel, keeping it as perfect as possible.There were other fascinating elements we noted amid our visit. For example, rather than a black-top parking garage, OWC introduced a considerable measure cleared with penetrable interlocking clearing blocks. Rain water is separated by a multi-layer bed of smashed stones and rock underneath the pavers, and any liquids spilling from stopped autos is sifted through before it saturates the ground. Utilizing the clearing blocks additionally implied that there was no compelling reason to burrow seepage trenches all around the part, leaving more space for arranging including every single local plant.

The organization gathers all conceivable recyclable materials, including ridged cardboard, utilized pressing materials, glass, metal, and the sky is the limit from there. Workers are additionally urged to get recyclable materials from home. What can't be reused is gathered in an assigned region in the stockroom until it can fill a semi trailer, which limits fuel used to transport the materials to a reusing office. Ivers noted amid the visit that item administrators likewise always assess item bundling and dispatching materials to limit material utilize and upgrade reusability and recyclability.

There's additional. Every one of the cleaners utilized by the janitorial staff are all normal and biodegradable, including the weakened vinegar arrangement used to clean the regular stone tile floor in the building's door. All lighting is associated with surrounding light sensors, specifically closing off individual fluorescent tubes or entire lighting banks when regular daylight is adequately brilliant. The men's restroom even elements two "waterless" urinals that all things considered spare around 80,000 gallons of water for each year. (The thought may appear to be gross at to start with, however I confirmed firsthand the claim that the framework was scentless.)

100 percent wind-fueled

While OWC's corporate home office is great for its utilization of green materials, building systems, and business rehearses, the most noteworthy accomplishment of its green activity is its 500 kilowatt Vestas V39 wind turbine. Roosted on a 131 foot tower just toward the west of the fundamental building, OWC's wind turbine came online in 2009. With the flick of a switch, OWC turned into the principal innovation maker and wholesaler in the US to be completely fueled by on location wind control.

The turbine's three 63 foot sharp edges turn around its energy generator, achieving a sum of 194 feet in the sky. The turbine can turn an entire 360 degrees to catch most extreme wind stream, and can work at twist speeds as high as 150 mph. In any case, the turbine is intended to create vitality with twist speeds as low as 9 mph, and normal winds speeds in the territory are 10-15 mph.

Everything considered, OWC's turbine produces 1.25 million kWh of energy consistently. That is twofold the measure of energy required to keep OWC's vitality productive central station and server farm operations running, and the overabundance is sold back to the power organization for a benefit. As indicated by OWC's evaluations, the abundance vitality created by the turbine is sufficient to control a little rural neighborhood. What's more, since the building's geothermal HVAC framework doesn't consume any gas, the entire office makes zero outflows.

With all the ecologically mindful components of its building and its sole dependence on wind-control, OWC got LEED Platinum confirmation in March 2010. Such radical green intuition isn't generally broadly evident in the innovation segment as it is with, say, natural cultivating, or eco-accommodating item makers like Seventh Generation and Tom's of Maine. Still, OWC has demonstrated that it can make and disseminate bursting quick SSDs, RAIDs, different RAM updates, and progressively while getting top acknowledgment for its responsibility regarding the earth.

[nusratansary1-blog]

WELCOME TO MY BLOG!

My name is Nusrat Ansary and here, I will be posting details as well as everything that concerns about my trip to Reykjavik, Iceland. Just to start, here is a bit about myself… I am currently a full time student at the University of Central Lancashire studying International Tourism Management. I have a passion for travelling to various exotic destinations and experiencing many different cultures. I have always been the kind of girl who enjoys vacating and exploring more than anything. I am creating this blog to give you people an insight on a short educational holiday trip to Reykjavik, Iceland. I am due to fly out tomorrow night and I have mixed thoughts about the entire visit, which seems to be both positive and negative. This is the first time I am visiting Iceland and I aim to provide an honest and interesting blog detailing my travels, thoughts, motivations and pre-expectations including all the fun and exciting moments in between… To me, Travel is more than just getting up and going. It is about being knowledgeable so you can travel better, cheaper, and longer.

 ‘‘IN ICELAND, YOU CAN SEE THE CONTOURS OF THE MOUNTAINS WHEREVER YOU GO, AND THE SWELL OF THE HILLS, AND ALWAYS BEYOND THAT THE HORIZON. MOREOVER, THERE IS THIS STRANGE THING: YOU ARE NEVER RATHER HIDDEN; YOU ALWAYS FEEL EXPOSED IN THAT LANDSCAPE. HOWEVER, IT MAKES IT VERY BEAUTIFUL AS WELL.’’ 

Do you ever contemplate on a destination before visiting? Because I do. I have done plenty of research about the destination in terms of places to go and the landmarks that would be worth visiting. The more I learn about different places, the more I think, “There are so many places to see, and no time to waste! Let’s go book a flight!” Therefore, after doing my research, my thoughts are ‘seriously, do I really want to travel to Iceland? The answer should be yes. Yes I do, I need to trust myself on this one. Maybe I don’t know that yet, but trust me, I do!’ No matter what continent a person is from, they have never witnessed anything like Iceland before, prior to the fact that it is so unique!

 When visiting a destination, the main aspects I look out for is the culture, the landscapes the food and things to do.

·         To me, Iceland is a country of extreme contrasts because it is widely known as “The Land of Fire and Ice.” It is home some of the largest glaciers in Europe, and some of the world's most active volcanoes. Iceland is also the land of light and darkness. Long summer days with nearly 24-hours of sunshine are offset by short winter days with only few hours of daylight. As I am travelling in February, I do not expect to see much daylight hours during the day and expect it to be beyond freezing compared to where I am from (UK). I am also hoping to catch a glimpse of breath taking, yet beautiful scenery in Reykjavik because from the research I have done and images I have looked at, it seems to me that there are outstanding amounts of locations, where I will be able to admire the stunning views of Mother Nature.

 ‘’AS UNLIKELY AS IT MAY SOUND, REYKJAVÍK SPORTS ITS OWN GEOTHERMAL BEACH, WITH WHITE SANDS AND WARM OCEAN WATER’’

  ·         In my opinion, tourists who venture for an ultimate extreme experience visit Iceland. With its abundance of mountains, volcanoes, glaciers, rivers, lakes, caves and otherwise rough terrain waiting to be tackled, Iceland is truly an outdoor enthusiast’s paradise. Some of the main places I am hoping to visit is the Blue Lagoon, which is the local natural wonder that is perhaps most ingrained in the fabric of Icelandic culture, and is the bounty of geothermal energy. The naturally heated water is said to power lives and heat homes, baths and pools, public as well as private. The Aurora Borealis, more commonly referred to as the Northern Lights is the most important thing to me to see. The main reason I am travelling to Iceland is to see the lights. Although there are no guarantees that I will see the Northern Lights during my stay, I will most likely be disappointed if I do not get a chance to experience it. Well, it is for this reason I am travelling all the way to Iceland!

 ·         The main thing that has motivated me to look forward to in Iceland is the food and culture. As I have already mentioned before, I am very keen on experiencing new cultures and getting a new taste of foods in contrast to my everyday dishes. It is said that all-year round, I be able to will find creative festivals dedicated to music, film and fashion. During summer, town festivals attract large groups of people around the country, dominating the event calendar. With abundant daylight hours during summer, and the long after hours of winter, nothing beats a good festival in Iceland. I do not expect to see many, or even any cultural traditions being celebrated during the time I spend there. Mainly because I am travelling in the winter season and the number of daylight hours are very limited. Generally, I do feel as though it will be a completely different environment to ‘home’ and I will be able to experience a different way of living. As for the food, I feel like the food will be a lot different to my everyday taste and I am definitely ready and open to try something new!

  ‘‘IN THE PAST FEW YEARS ICELAND HAS EMERGED AS ONE OF EUROPE'S MOST DYNAMIC GASTRONOMIC DESTINATIONS, FULL OF EXCITING PLACES TO TASTE THRILLING NEW RECIPES.’’