JGrffn

Nuclear isn't great long term, but of all the options that aren't great long term, nuclear is the least not great. It can support the backbone of the energy grid for relatively cheap and in much safer conditions than other energy sources, even if we are led to believe otherwise by Chernobyl and Fukushima. Advances in nuclear reactor technologies means nuclear becomes safer and more maintainable over time, and it already has been the safest source of energy for a while. Also, Japan doesn't shy away from nuclear; they've designed systems that heavily recycle nuclear waste to extract as much energy from it as possible, which also has the added effect of reducing the waste's radioactive life.

It's simple, really. We rely on it to support us while fusion gets off the ground, and even if it doesn't get off the ground, we can still rely on fission to support us while we get more and more renewable sources up and running.

If anything it's the fear of nuclear that's been keeping us in such bad energy situations. For instance, France, being at the forefront of nuclear energy use, has not worked on new reactors up until recently after decades of underfunding and underdevelopment. Now the lack of maintenance and develoent of new reactors means that old reactors have begun showing signs of significant wear and tear, threatening the entire grid and part of the French economy; they're energy exporters (green energy, at that), but are years away from having to phase out old reactors and become energy importers. That imported energy is almost guaranteed to be sourced from fossil fuels. If not even these nations are enticed to keep nuclear up and running, how are we ever to leave fossil fuels?

As for your mining comment, we're going to have this issue even if we were to rely mostly on renewable. Demands for energy storage are only going up, and lithium batteries is where it's at, currently. We just need to find the paths of least environmental damage, because there won't be any path that doesn't harm the environment.

Spoiler alert: they can't.

I kinda would believe meta doing it, tho. Only in purely conspiracy theorist levels, but it kinda is a possibility...

I have only an Instagram account, checked just now with a friend who has instagram, Facebook, and now threads. He cannot find me on threads at all, so either this isn't done to EVERYONE on Instagram, or these are just baseless rumors being spread around.

It's bad because it can be so subtle. Most of my feed, ads and random reels aside, is just friends being happy and having fun. Thing is, a lot post only when they travel or do fun stuff, and some have the money or the terrible financial skills to make that a habit. The end result is that, very subtly, you start thinking everyone has it better than you. Everyone just skips or skims through the boring or bad parts of their life, while you live every moment of yours as you keep comparing it to what you see on Instagram.

It can be a happy place if you don't frequent it too much and don't have very toxic friends (and if you can get past the ads and the random stuff that meta throws at you in the feed), but it tends to not go that way.

Edit: I'm not above this, I only post trips as well, as basic as basic bitches get.

Are we all feeling like this right now? Right around June I was getting fed up with pretty much everything in social media, it's just too much to keep up with.

• Nearly everything in /r/all would burn me out through sheer outrage engagement
• The whole YouTube anti-adblocker thing hasn't touched me, but it's sitting there in the back of my mind, reminding me I may just have to endure countless amounts of ads to watch the content I follow, and it's starting to turn me away from consuming as much YouTube content as before. Once the adblocker collapse happens, I'm not sure I'll hang out in YouTube anywhere near as much. I've done a good enough job at keeping the content itself healthy by being knowledge hungry and mostly watching educational channels, but the drama sometimes does seep through the cracks (looking at you, ukelele girl who I don't care about).
• I am attempting to burn all connections to streaming subscriptions by hosting my own plex server for me and all my friends. I put the burden of maintaining it on myself, so I don't have an issue with that even if it does bring a bit of stress to my life, but what IS getting to me a lot, is how the approach of canceling or taking a massive dump on good shows is now taking off in mass scale. I am finishing up season 3 of Snowpiercer and now I don't really want to watch the last episode because FUCKING ZASLAV FUCKED WITH IT ALL. I had this mentality with anime, where I wouldn't jump into an anime if it wasn't done (fucking Attack on Titan, man), but now it's clear that this is the healthiest approach to any shows or movies, lest you get invested in a lost cause with no chance of closure.
• Delivery apps aren't safe here either, I ended up buying an app solely to block ad push notifications from these apps. I've blocked thousands of notifications from them in just a month or two.
• Instagram, which I try to keep as healthy as possible mental-health wise, is all down to ads of everything I speak about with my girlfriend. We can't discuss anything without seeing ads about it 5 minutes later. The whole "everybody's life is more interesting than mine" effect is definitely taking a toll on me, but never quite like the ads and the targeted content drowning my feeds.
• My WhatsApp chat groups have become veeeery polarized due to the toxicity of other platforms getting to all of the members in the chat group, leading to tiktoks and reddit posts being shared for right and left leaning ideologies with very antagonizing postures, and the subsequent hours-long arguments that lead to nowhere, on topics that affect none of us in the groups.
• I bought a groundnews subscription hoping it would help me look at broader, more neutral pictures, but the news cycles themselves burn me out, to the surprise of no one. I don't regret the subscription, but it's not healthy to open the app any more frequently than about twice a week.
• Now that I discovered the fediverse, I went from not knowing at all about any of this a few weeks ago, to having Meta fighting to potentially take control of the entire thing through EEE/EEC tactics. It already feels stressful having that on my mind at all.

So yeah, I'm pretty burnt out. I ended up muting notifications for all my social media, to the point where I'm OK with sacrificing instant replies to family and my girlfriend, but it doesn't feel like it's been enough, and I'm not sure what else to do other than to try to go outside more, touch some more grass, and do my absolute best not to pick up my phone. As you can infer by seeing this post here, I haven't been very successful at that either.