Random Thought Thread

Ohhh guys, today the weather is super warm and sunny.I spent like 3 hours outside.Totally wiped out from the walk and chopping wood for ages.Waiting for my roll delivery now — gonna try eating them with habanero, as people suggested.I still love winter, but damn, sun + slightly cool weather is a thousand times better for me
 
I hate it when the USPS does a "walkabout" with a package. :confused:

Ordered a knife off of The Exchange from a member who only lives 70 miles away but instead of delivering it direct to my PO, USPS sent package to the distribution center in Sacramento (90 miles) and then sent it to the distribution center in Oakland (80 miles) which still has to travel yet another 50 miles to get to my PO.🤷‍♂️

So, instead of traveling 70 miles, the package will travel at least 230 miles & instead of delivery in 1-2 days, it will take at least 4 days via Priority Mail to get here. :rolleyes:

#WasteInGovement
 
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sgt1372 said:
I hate it when the USPS does a "walkabout" with a package. :confused:

Ordered a knife off of The Exchange from a member who only lives 70 miles away but instead of delivering it to my PO, USPS sent package to the distribution in Sacramento (90 miles) and then sent it to the distribution center in Oakland (80 miles) which still has to travel yet another 50 miles to get to my PO.🤷‍♂️

So, instead of traveling 70 miles, the package will travel at least 230 miles & instead of delivery in 1-2 days, it will take at least 4 days via Priority Mail to get here. :rolleyes:

#WasteInGovement
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Well, if you want to feel better, everything shipped to me via USPS goes to Salt Lake first (which is about 280 miles south of me).

Then, you'd assume the package would travel north from there, which is about a 4-hour drive, but no - it goes west to Boise instead, which is about 350 miles in the wrong direction, on the opposite side of the state from where I am. Then, from Boise it takes another day or two to turn around and travel 350 miles back east again to the ID/WY border. And then once it finally arrives at the local P.O, there's is a high likelihood they will put it in someone else's parcel locker and then I have to find time to go to the P.O. while it's open and get it sorted out.

That's the so-colled normal routing, not accounting for "walkabouts," which also happen pretty regularly. And that's also when I pay extra for "Priority."
 
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tinfoil hat timmy said:
Do you think it's an issue with having infrastructure in place that's too expensive to update? It feel like a bit of foresight could at least have set up a mechanism to use the 2 thirds of energy lost in this transaction toward something productive .
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Well, here's the situation right?

You want heat in your house

So the power plant is going to take the heat, from burning coal

The heat that you want


And use it to boil water into steam.

Due to the latent heat of water, it takes a lot of energy to boil water

That energy is largely just lost

And then they use the steam pressure to turn a turbine

A lot of that energy is lost too

And then this turbine converts rotational mechanical energy into electrical energy. This step is actually pretty efficient.

And then it is transmitted along power lines to your house, with some loss

Where you take all of this carefully crafted electricity and subject it to a controlled short-circuit to make the heat that you wanted. That was present in the coal in the first place. But you threw most of it away.

Electric resistive heat is ironic because it is both 100% efficient and also the least efficient use of electricity possible, because it does no work other than create heat.
 
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