My system cost about $15,000 via solar city for a 6kwh system. Austin utility paid me about 3000 and I got a 4000 tax credit. Last month my bill was -20 dollars. Looking back on solar, probably not the best financial decision but I think it's pretty cool and I will be able to run the AC this summer at 70 for a reasonable bill.
From June till September last year(pre solar) my energy bill was near 200. My financing is about 70 dollars a month for the next 20 years... I'm expecting my solar production to cover probably 70% of my bill. Since I'm paying financing plus utility hookup(mandatory $10), plus what ever I use after solar; I will likely not recoup my investment. Imho, it's more feelgood and a hedge against future energy price increases.
I have also noticed that I pay attention more to my consumption. I've debated on buying an energy consumption device like sense, but it seems like a toy...
The -20 bill was the result of having pleasant weather and not running the AC as frequently in April, plus it was a very sunny April... I'm pretty sure I will not have a negative utility bill in August.
I'm pretty useless if I get less than 5 hours of sleep. Anymore than that and I'm good to go. I shoot for about 9ish hours of sleep a night, I typically have a sleepless night every 10 days where I'm up at 330 until the next sleep.
There are mail services that are pretty close to this in practice. Earth Class Mail is an example. Fairly expensive, but if you use them for your mailing address, they will receive the mail, scan the envelope, and provide you the option to have the mail physically forwarded, opened and digitally scanned, and/or junked.
Yes! We could call it electronic mail or e-mail for short.
Am I missing something about Outbox? Why wouldn't they just give the people using this service a P.O box corporate office to use as their 'address' when getting something delivered?
I'm sure they thought of that. Probably some way USPS can refuse to acknowledge it or something.
I've always wondered why private mailbox numbers even need to exist. The numbers could be virtual and all of the packages could be in one place to be retrieved by workers on demand. Perhaps there's some sort of clause USPS has to defeat an idea like that or an arbitrarily low limit for how many #s can be at a physical location etc.
Complex problems often require complex solutions. I imagine that your suggestion works for some situations but not all. The cynical side of me thinks that one of the few benefits of the disaster will be new technology and robots that will help prevent future disasters. I imagine there's a very high priced market for these kinds of hardened robots.
If a solution does the job, it does the job. In the six years since the meltdowns, they've been building these robots, which up until this year, have all failed.
With an electronics-free periscope, they could have saved five years. And keep in mind, the radioisotopes are still flowing into the ocean this whole time.
There was a documentary about Tchernobyl surrounding forest few years ago. Most of the vegetation grew back, healthily for my naked eye. Anyways, the most surprising part is that mammals were back too; even though the radiation level was higher than average. I concluded that only a few generation of darwinian selection is needed to breed radiation hardened humans.
Alternatively, the animals aren't radiation hardened and do die of cancer, but not fast enough to get in the way of breeding and multiplying. Or, in other words, while radioactive waste is unhealthy, it fatality rate is lower than having humans around.
It's also quite random, they may live there and the background radiation isn't bad enough on average to kill them, but then if they accidentally ingest a few hot particles it could be game over pretty quickly. For most animals this might not even register in the top 10 existential threats, but for humans the psychological stress would be debilitating.
