SandbagTiara2816

I’m not a power user, so I’m often frustrated by Excel trying to do things I don’t want it to and by its abundance of features that I’ll never use.

And at least at my workplace, a lot of work processes use poorly-designed Excel spreadsheets for critical tasks, because it’s such a simple way to manipulate data.

I also find that when I need to do more complicated data analysis, Excel starts to become limited, and I find Python to be a more powerful and flexible tool.

Of all the words in the world, those are certainly some of them

Sure. For one, the growth imperative means that any business must return a profit as its primary function. If profits are hard to come by, that can lead to things like predatory lending and higher fees for consumers, not to mention investment in environmentally destructive, but profitable, activities. Second, by commodifying human necessities like housing and turning them into investment vehicles, housing is increasingly unaffordable for working people as prices go up. I could go on, if you’d like, but I think those are both fairly compelling arguments.

One thing that I’ve found helpful is from Naomi Klein in her most recent book. To paraphrase - conspiracy theories often get the feelings right, but the facts wrong. For example, we are all being screwed over by banks and hedge funds, but it’s because of the structures of capitalism, not the Jews. But it’s much easier, mentally, to pin the blame on one specific person or group than to grapple with the flaws inherent in the social systems we’ve created.

• Knowledge Fight
• Behind the Bastards
• Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Wind has come down a lot, just over a longer time. Solar and storage are what have really plummeted recently. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/levelized-cost-of-energy

One of the big challenges now in the US is streamlining permitting, for renewables and for transmission upgrades and expansions.

I’d be interested to see the video you mention!

This is true, but investing in research and subsidizing its production is how we drive costs down. We’ve done a really incredible job of getting clean energy costs down from where they were, but there’s no need to slow our efforts down now

Yep! It’s a good way to get over the fear of a blank page, but I don’t trust it for more than outlines or summaries

Seconding Voyager!

Well, I’ve read a lot of theory, and I’m pretty sure our best bet is posting memes online, crossing our fingers, and hoping for the best. We definitely shouldn’t go outside and talk to people, that’ll never work

You can critique UI design without using an ableist slur

I think scripting is certainly a level 4 activity, since to even get started solving the problem you would need to navigate an IDE and have basic knowledge of a scripting language. Most people wouldn’t even know where to start.