It also pollutes the mind of ignorant people with misinformation. Not that that is anything new. But I do think objective truth is very important in a democratic society. It reminds me of that video that used to go around that showed Sinclair Broadcasting in like 20 some different ‘local’ broadcast news all repeating the same words verbatim. It ended with ‘This is extremely dangerous to our democracy’. With AI being added to all the search engines, it is really easy to look something and unknowingly get bombarded with false info pulled out of the dregs of internet. 90% of people don’t verify the answer to see if it is based in reality.

Do you mind sharing what company and country you when with for the VPS and why?

Walking to a friend’s house is nice as long as there’s not a big multilane highway with no pedestrian infrastructure dividing the town in between. Car dependency is a big problem in most of the US. Portland is probably a bit better than other places in that regard, but I’m sure they have still have some issues with it.

I would think this would be a good use for VOIP landlines since lots of places are probably doing away with dedicated phone wires.

Why can’t the people we vote for represent us?

Politicians were never meant to represent us (the people). We the people was war propaganda to revolt against the English and their king. They have, since the founding of the US, represented the business owners (landowners). And even after giving women and black people the right to vote, the system still mostly represents the interest of the business owners.

Bug report closed: System works as intended.

For the politicians to actually represent us, we the people would need to have some sort of broad agreement on what we do and do not want. But unfortunately, the people don’t have the needed experience or education to come to that agreement. So instead we get 2 different flavors of politicians serving the owners and none serving the people. Pick your favorite team, but they do not currently represent the people’s interest, instead they represent the business owners’ interests.

As a people, our job is to attempt to bend the politicians and business owners’ to our will using what we currently have at our disposal: our actions and our words. But that still won’t get anywhere without many other people backing up our actions and our words with their actions and words. It won’t be easy, but it is necessary if we want to shape our societies future. If we don’t do it, we get shadowy groups like the heritage foundation doing it for the business owners and pushing it on our leaders.

Also the politicians’ job is largely dependent upon them listening to the demands of the businesses lobbyist as of now. If they don’t follow their wishes they can expect a harder battle to keep their seat. They would get less big campaign donations and stronger primary challengers as a result of their noncompliance. This makes our job harder since it is difficult to get them to understand something when their job and salary depends upon them not understanding it.

But how much heatsink? Pea sized is surely a bit small for a whole chicken. Maybe egg sized?

Yeah I looked it into a bit recently, and found it very interesting mostly on the basis of production per acre. Are you planning on solar for the home’s energy or some other source? Now that I think about it something like biomass would work quite well as a supplemental energy source for the winter when the sun isn’t out much. If you are going for solar will you have a battery system as well for evenings / winter or are you grid-tieing for that?

Processing the biomass could take some planning if you produce it on a large scale. I ran some rough numbers for total energy production per acre per year for giant miscanthus and it is quite shockingly high. It takes 2-3 years to get established but once it does it is a powerhouse. It can produce 15-20 tons (short) of biomass per acre depending on growing climate/conditions once it is fully established. With 20t/acre, it has a 17 MJ/kg LHV(heat from burning) and it would contain about 85,679 kWh of energy; At 40% electrical conversion efficiency, you can expect around 34,271 kWh of usable electrical energy. That’s enough to power and heat 3-4 houses if you burn it in a CHP power plant.

So you could potentially plant 1/3 - 1/4 acre of a home’s yard and have easily have enough biomass to heat and/or power a home. Definitely could be worth looking into giant miscanthus (wiki link) depending on the area and site. Being a plant, it tends to produce more the warmer the weather is in the area as long as it has sufficient water to grow. At that scale all you would probably need is a scythe, a shed, and a fireplace for heat. A small hay-baler might be nice too, even if not strictly necessary. It may not be as efficient per area as solar but I imagine is a whole lot cheaper.

I also read that with torrefaction it could be a drop-in fuel for existing coal plants which would be stellar from an environmental perspective. I think it would compliment solar well particularly in the winter when you burn excess harvested sun for heat so you could have a battery / fuel usage then for when you can’t produce any energy. Anyway I hope you / someone finds it useful. I hope I didn’t overshare, I feel like I wrote a book lol.

Edit: I’d also be interested in hearing about your planned house. I have read about house building some from an energy use / conservation perspective and found it interesting. Have you read / heard about Passive House’s? I suspect they overlap pretty well with carbon negative housing in general.

Good suggestions. Speaking of carbon negative and biogas digesters, have you heard of Giant miscanthus? It is both carbon fixing a great feedstock for biomass energy. It is a lot more productive per area planted than a wood would(heh) be since it is a fast growing perennial grass. It stores a lot of carbon and nutrients in it’s roots which it then reuses to regrow when warmer weather comes.