I mean, thats good, but unfortunately a huge (over-representative?) amount of online leftist discourse is so subsumed by extremely emotionally driven short sighted glomming onto bullying a particular person that they often say things that are basically obviously ludicrous if you either take a few deep breathes and think about what you’re saying, or if you’re not really involved in the often extremely petty nature of discourse around/perpetuated by many popular online leftists.

But hey, Not All Leftists, I guess?

Its frankly deeply embarrassing to accurately describe myself as a leftist and then have less politically engaged people often think I’m like one of these over the top internet personalities, and also infuriating when I describe myself as a leftist to other leftists online, who then usually woke scold and purity shame me for having non ludicrous positions.

Hell I’m still banned from like half the hexbear and lemmy.ml communities for pointing out that maybe Taiwan has expressed a desire for governmental sovereignty, you know kind of like Ukraine, even though its obviously not a perfect society, it doesnt deserve to be invaded or subverted by a neighboring state?

Nah. Verbotten opinions.

I think the latest hexbear community to ban me did so because I posted a response to an ‘enigmatic, therefore funny and awesome’ meme on weibo.

The meme, a kind of wojack meme, boils down to ‘Dengist reforms allowed western influence into China, which has resulted in nowadays Chinese incels pretend to be black men online to pick up chicks because many Chinese basically racistly view black men as all having giant cocks.’

But you can’t even hint that parts of Chinese society might be gasp racist, or even have segments that view women as only interested in big dicked men because this breaks the brains of many online Western leftists that Chinese society is not actually perfect.

Its even more baffling to me that many online Leftists barely ever mention, or tie themselves up in absurd logical/rhetorical pretzels about how just in general many East Asian societies and ethnicities have large chunks that are extremely racist towards other East Asian and other ethnicities, basically because a good number of East Asian societies are nominally communist or socialist, so that must mean they’ve solved racism.

Ah so your apocalypse vehicle solution requires setting up a bunch of infrastructure (build your own wind turbine? Dam? Solar array? Molten salt nuclear reactor?) while everyone is running around killing everyone else for food and water, as opposed to having a decent sized stockpile of petrol/gasoline with fuel preservative or diesel that could be easily and inconspicuous stored in a garage or even apartment.

You are also at least /plausibly/, though not /likely/ to be able to find some gasoline or diesel somewhere in an apocalypse scenario.

You are not likely to find a working power grid in an apocalypse scenario, not until years or decades later after the survivors of the initial phase of mass panic, starvation and murder have begun to meaningfully reestablish something resembling the previous societies.

And you kind of have to survive this initial phase for the ‘long run investment’ angle to make any sense.

Please, unironically please tell me what areas in the US are 100% powered by solar or wind. I am fairly certain there are none, excepting possibly some Tribal Lands (theyre not going to let you in) or basically communes in the middle of nowhere (they are also not going to let you in).

I’m from WA originally and to the best of my ability to research, WA is one of if not the most renewably powered states in the country, getting around 2/3 of its power from dams and other renewable sources.

I genuinely have no idea what youre talking about when you say there are areas of the US that are entirely solar and wind powered. Electrical grids are part of huge interconnected networks and they do not neatly subdivide into zones that are and are not totally renewably powered.

Sure, maybe a certain neighborhood has houses covered in solar panels. Thats great! But what that realistically ends up as is a situation where that neighborhood has a good deal less draw during the day, but still relies on a dam or coal plant or wind turbines somewhere to fill up the rest of the draw, and then all of that draw at night.

None of that load balancing happens in an apocalypse scenario. The grid stops working. No more power to cover the rest of that draw. You can /maybe/ run the AC/Heat on low all day, /or/ your refrigerator in your solar house, but plug in a hair dryer or your PC or EV and drain your batteries quite rapidly, now your refrigerated/frozen food thaws and goes bad and/or you are either much more warm or cold than youre used to.

As previously established, youre gonna need several houses covered in solar panels all wired together, by you, CyberTruck owner, likely not a trained electrician capable of manipulating a portion of the neighborhood into a personal solar network battery/inverter system, while there are roving, likely armed mobs and small groups or even individuals desperate for anything they think valuable, edible or drinkable.

You say there are ways of generating electricity as if you can set up a micro electrical turbine in a stream that will charge a CyberTruck or other EV at rates higher than a solid month to get a full charge, or as if you have a somehow human safe RTG in your home, or have figured out how to harness the casimir effect to generate free energy… maybe you have a personal geothermal power generator?

When your highly nuanced and extremely educated political stance is obliterated by an extremely obvious fact that you forgot to consider because you got lost in the sauce of [current hot conversation topic] for [I’m a Leftist!™] identifying individuals.

Well uh when you have the US Navy under your command, and already in the area dealing with Houthis, you know, by shooting down their missiles and bombing them and such, you actually /can/ stop trains and tankers.

You could airlift aid! You could, hilariously, stop ships heading to Israel with a Naval Blockade!

Obviously that last one isnt going to happen, but theres a whole lot more than basically nothing that you could do.

For starters: Cut off a bunch of joint projects between US and Israeli firms, stop sending them large amounts of money for other things, stop fucking shit canning every attempt by the UN to sanction Israel, or maybe even use these aforementioned things as threats and leverage to force a fucking ceasefire.

And now because this is the internet: Am I saying that Trump is somehow not bad, not far, far, far fucking worse by pointing out the rest?

Nooooo!

No, fucking obviously Trump would be a thousand times worse!

But pretending that there’s nothing Biden could do is a joke.

He doesn’t because he is a long time Zionist, and the American public, and particularly political and media figures, have been bathed in Zionist propaganda for so long that it takes an overt genocide for us to figure out that maybe Israel actually isn’t a perfect unconditional ally.

I believe they are talking about systems that require the input of a … haha ‘closed source’ (meaning classified) physical hardware/software system that is completely non networked that requires a human being to be physically using /at least/ one entirely, totally sandboxxed device to complete the authentication process of accessing information on a networked device.

Kind of like an extremely more advanced version of the enigma machine + codebook system.

I may be wrong here though about specifically what they are referring to, I don’t actually have any actual experience with real milgrade cybersecurity stuff.

The sort of cheapo way to do something like this is something I’ve seen at various points in my tech industry career, basically a yubikey or similar devices.

Perhaps another example somewhat along these lines would be ‘military grade’ laptops.

No, not (usually) the stuff marketed as milgrade, actual military grade laptops that are nearly bullet proof suitcases that can survive a bomb going off near them or being dropped out of a moving vehicle.

They also have other comms capabilities and such, but I think the main point here is … heres a thing thats /actually/ physically durable and tough, faaaar more so than basically any consumer grade laptop.

Is this a practical level of protection needed by most consumers? Probably not. But, it might be handy in an apocalypse scenario.

Hooray! I’m glad to have done the unthinkable then, aha.

Yeah, as much as there often is merit to criticizing aspects of many elements of military gear… a lot of those criticisms get overblown and recontextualized to seemingly comparable other kinds of goods or equipment in a way that kind of misses certain crucial aspects.

Maybe an actual good example of ‘Military Grade’ actually meaning ‘crap’ would be the kind of gunpowder used in the earlier production of 5.56 rounds for the first generation of M16s in Vietnam.

That is an actual case where going to the lowest bidder for what turned out to be gunpowder that burned too dirty for early M16s, combined with a lot of hype around the M16 being ‘self-cleaning’ leading to initially no or very few cleaning kits being issued… yeah that led to a whole lot of the guns jamming up.

But this doesnt mean you can just blanket point to all military grade stuff and say its garbage.

1500 … Watts… per… hour?

A ‘rate’ typically includes a per unit of time aspect.

No, there are no false assumptions, the rough 25% degrade in efficiency is based on articles that cover this sort of thing for people trying to make their houses go solar that have done all the math on this.

Sure, depending on your /exact/ set up, certain parts of this will vary slightly, but you still end up in the ballpark of needing a roughly suburban front yard sized solar array and battery/inverter set up to charge a CyberTruck off of one day’s electricity.

Now, having a much smaller solar array to charge maybe an E-Bike?

Thats a faaaaar more apocalypse friendly concept.

It doesnt matter if certain other electric vehicles are slightly more efficient in terms of range per kWh: you are still gonna end up needing a fairly large solar array.

An EV for an apocalypse scenario is ludicrous.

You wont have a home charger or network of chargers if the grid goes down, and if it takes a stupendous amount of effort and time to set up a solar array giving you the ability to basically light local foraging in an EV…

A simple bicycle is faaar more practical, and an E-Bike gives you an enhanced ability to do that for faaar less investment.

Or you could have a gas powered vehicle with fuel stabilizer added to the gasoline. Thats pretty cheap and easy to stock pile, and you could put said fuel cans in your car for actual extended range.

Sorry, theres no societal collapse scenario where EVs make any sense.

They simply require /infrastructure/, and the hallmark of an apocalypse scenario is /infrastructure is broken/.

Yeah thats the main problem, significant development is likely to be crushed.

I realized after writing this all out that it was closer to a sequel than a remake but… oh well, I thought it was a neat idea nonetheless.

And yes now that you mention it this is actually similar to the Golden Sun series irt the dueling groups of protagonists (antagonists?), but I swear I did not realize this and was going more from the DB Xenoverse time demon angle.

I do not actually know as this is the first time I am even hearing of Chrono Cross.

Youre telling me theres a sequel?!?!?

I only ever managed to play Chrono Trigger on ZNES something like 20 years ago and remember being blown away by how different and more interesting it was from basically every other JRPG up to that point.

Now I must find this sequel.

This is almost certainly true, but it doesnt mitigate the actual fact that the thing /is/ a nightmare for pedestrians.

At some point, someone on an engineering team or a corporation generally has to be… you know, responsible for the thing they designed?

At least thats the theory anyway. In practice this doesnt appear to matter if you have enough money and can lie and bribe people.

If you are going to tell me that an MRAP or L-ATV is not built to much, much higher durability, survivability and capability standards than a consumer grade vehicle, you’re off your rocker.

Yes. Military Grade ‘stuff’ is often done by lowest bidders. Whoah, so are nearly all consumer products!

The difference in this case is fundamentally different approaches to design. Hugely different kinds of suspension systems and body design, etc.

No, its obviously not a literal indestructibility modifier.

But it sure goes a long way further toward it in many cases.

Ah right! Its been a while haha.

I think you are confused.

Volts * Time != Watts

EV Battery Capacity is measured in Watt Hours, not Watts.

If you had 1500 Watts Hours in an EV Battery… that’d be about 1/10th a charge of the earliest EVs with roughly 10 kWh batteries and less than 1/100th of the CyberTruck’s approximately 123 kWh battery pack.

Yes, 3 to 4 smaller consumer grade solar panels … really more like 8 to 10… can have a cumulative energy production of 1500 Watt Hours…

But Watts are not Watt Hours. And 1500 Watt Hours is an extremely small amount of energy in terms of an EV.

I entirely do not mean to be a dick here, I’m genuinely curious as to what you are actually trying to describe.

How long would it take to fully charge a CyberTruck on Solar Panels?

So, as I am currently aware, the best consumer available solar panels in the US are 22.8% efficient, meaning 228W per square meter.

Assuming 12 hours of day, 12 hours of night, and Fixed Panels, you end up with roughly a 25% efficiency loss from that first efficiency figure, factoring in dust build up, inverter/battery system inefficiency, temperature dependent efficiency loss, average cloud cover and numerous other factors.

22.8 * .75 = 17.1

Sooo… to generate a full charge of CyberTruck, roughly 123 kWh…

171 watt hours * X sq m * 12 hours of daylight =

= Y watt hours generated per day.

Ok… so lets target Y as a full charge in one day.

171 watt hours * X sq m * 12 hours per day=

= 123000 watt hours per day

Solve for X.

171 x 12 = 2052

123000 / 2052 ~= 60

60 square meters of solar panels.

To be able to fully charge a Cyber Truck.

In the apocalypse.

So I hope you also have a small militia to guard your small compound of easily broken or damaged solar panels in the apocalypse.

Say youve got an array of 1x1 meter panels on the ground, spaced half a meter each with a fence around it, 6 rows of 10, then a meter to a fence.

The panels are angled at 35 degrees , so their foot print size is more like 1m x ~0.9m

So thats:

61 + (60.5) + 2 = 11m

x

100.9 + (100.9*0.5) + 2 = 15.5m

So basically, you need a plot of land roughly 170.5 sq m, or roughly 1534.5 sq ft just for solar panels.

So basically, in the apocalypse, youre gonna have something like your entire front yard as a solar panel field.

Estimated cost of setting this all up would be… what, nearly 200,000 dollars if you build the entire thing yourself, double that if you pay people to build it for you? Months of build time, half a year if you do it yourself?

Seems like a very practical way to prepare for and survive an apocalypse. Very inconspicuous.

Spend an absurd amount of money and time to be able to drive at most 175 ish miles away and then back to home base, never able to go further away in case of i dont know a mass group of starving violent people, unless you know a string of buddies every 330ish miles who /also/ have their own solar front yards they’ll just agree to let you use.

It has apparently been rehosted as ‘Nuzu’ on github… but I wouldn’t be surprised if that or any similar instance just gets taken down once it gets reasonably popular.

MSFT sure as shit doesnt want to get sued by Nintendo.

Yeah this is because (if we limit the scope to multiplayer games), the gaming world is sooooooo used to basically minor niche hit or mediocre games that are not actually that fun and engaging that when an /actual/ hit comes along, everyone’s brain explodes.

A decade or two ago you would actually fairly commonly have multiplayer games that were actually hits, actually had broad appeal, that had actual continuous sustained growth from actual organic recommendations.

That hasn’t happened in such a long time that its now practically inconceivable.

In the last roughly 5 years, barring an occasional indie hit with actual staying power, Multiplayer games have been so lackluster, flawed, exploitative or all of those combined for so long, promoted by giant marketing campaigns and hype machines, that everyone has just gotten used to new game come out, its not that great, but NEXT GAME SOON!!!, buy, rinse, repeat.

An actually good multiplayer game with wide, broad appeal is now so nearly totally unimaginable to the basically intelligencia and managers and CEOs of the video game world that the very language of describing video game popularity has morphed to accommodate the expectation of expensive mediocre garbage that is thrown away when the next flashy bauble comes along.

Well I am surprised no one has mentioned this but:

This is the best possible JRPG to do a retcon/reimagining of as is going on with FF7, but a bit differently.

Time travel!

So, start a new story with new characters, but intermix this with the old cast and story beats resulting in a completely new story that brings back old favorite settings and characters, introduces new ones.

Maybe you change significant plot points of the old story, maybe you don’t, maybe you doom the world to some entirely new kind of catastrophe, maybe you get stuck in what would otherwise be called a soft lock but is actually in this world an intentional plot device that just looks like a soft lock but isnt.

Hell, if you /really/ want to go hog wild with this:

Make the new set of characters generally opposed to the original set of characters, have their own method of time travelling, and make it so much of the game is actually about attempting to out-time-travel-wit the others, basically with certain characters attempting to be time demons ala DB Xenoverse and others trying to stop them… all mixed with the narrative possibilities at many points for many characters to switch allegiances, go rogue, or mostly team up.

even moooore possible endings

No I have no clue how you could actually write something this complicated, but the entirety of Kingdom Hearts exists and people tell me somehow that all makes sense, so I am confident a team of competent writers can pull off an absurdly complex multivariate story line.