In 1619, twenty African slaves first arrived on American soil at Point Comfort in Virginia, which laid the foundation for the institution of slavery that spread in the British colonies and became a key element of the colonial economy. (translated)
Cold Beer and Hot Showers - Not Kilowatt-Hours All That Consumers Want The energy sector spends an extraordinary amount of time talking about generation, transmission, storage, flexibility, markets, tariffs, balancing, ancillary services, carbon emissions, batteries, hydrogen, demand response, electrification pathways, system costs, capacity mechanisms, investment signals, market design and regulation. All of these things matter. Some of them matter enormously. But there is a simple question that often disappears somewhere between the conference room, the policy paper and the technical model: What does the customer actually want? The answer is surprisingly simple. Most people do not wake up in the morning thinking about kilowatt-hours. They do not dream about capacity markets. They do not worry about frequency stability. They do not spend their evenings comparing balancing mechanisms. They want cold beer and hot showers. They want a warm home in winter and a cool home in summer. They want the lights to turn on when they press the switch. They want their phone charged, their food refrigerated and their car ready when they need it. In other words, they do not want energy. They want what energy allows them to do. That distinction may sound trivial, but it changes almost everything. For more than a century, the energy industry has been organized around the production, transportation and sale of energy itself. Electricity became measured in kilowatt-hours. Gas became measured in cubic meters. Fuel became measured in litres or tonnes. Markets, regulations and business models were built around those units. The customer, however, never experienced life in kilowatt-hours. The customer experienced comfort. Convenience. Mobility. Reliability. Security. The units used by the industry and the outcomes desired by the customer were never the same thing. For a long time, this mismatch was not particularly important. Energy was relatively scarce, flexibility was limited, and the dominant challenge was supplying enough fuel to satisfy demand. The system could afford to focus on production because production was the central problem. Today the situation is changing. Electrification is transforming energy systems around the world. Renewable generation is increasing rapidly. Batteries are appearing in homes, businesses and vehicles. Buildings are becoming smarter. Heat pumps are replacing boilers. Electric vehicles are becoming mobile storage assets. Customers are increasingly able not only to consume energy but also to store it, shift it, manage it and sometimes even sell it. As this happens, the most valuable question is no longer simply how much energy is produced. The more important question becomes: How well is energy aligned with what people actually need? A family does not care whether its water heater operates at noon or at two in the afternoon if hot water is available when someone steps into the shower. A homeowner does not care whether a battery charges at 1 p.m. or 3 p.m. if electricity costs less and reliability improves. An electric vehicle owner does not care when charging occurs as long as the vehicle is ready when needed. The objective is not the kilowatt-hour. The objective is the service. This is why many of the most important developments in modern energy systems are not really about producing more energy. They are about matching energy to the service required, at the right time, in the right place and in the right form. The technical term for this is often hidden behind complicated language. Experts discuss flexibility, demand management, dynamic pricing, distributed energy resources and system optimization. Consumers experience something much simpler. They experience agency. They experience the ability to save money without sacrificing comfort. They experience the ability to make choices. They experience the ability to benefit from technologies that work for them rather than asking them to work for the technology. This is where many debates become confused. Consumers do not want to be coordinated. They want agency. Good energy systems do not force people to behave differently. They make beneficial behaviour easier, more natural and more rewarding. The best systems do not rely on control. They rely on alignment. When the customer’s interest aligns with the system’s interest, remarkable things become possible. Demand shifts naturally. Storage becomes useful. Flexibility appears. Costs decline. Reliability improves. The customer does not need to understand the complexity underneath. Just as nobody needs to understand how the internet routes packets around the globe in order to send a message, nobody should need to understand wholesale electricity markets in order to enjoy affordable energy services. Success is not measured by how much complexity consumers are asked to absorb. Success is measured by how much complexity the system absorbs on their behalf. The future energy system will undoubtedly involve more digital technology, more electrification, more storage, more automation and more coordination. But none of those are the destination. They are merely tools. The destination remains exactly what it has always been. Cold beer. Hot showers. Comfortable homes. Reliable mobility. Affordable bills. Everything else is infrastructure. And perhaps that is the simplest way to understand the energy transition. People do not want kilowatt-hours. They want the life that kilowatt-hours make possible.
Stones: “Questa è una maglia bellissima, una delle più belle della storia del calcio: si respira ovunque la grandezza di questo Club al Centro Sportivo, ho visto i trofei, questa è una squadra speciale e sono orgoglioso di farne parte. Vogliamo scrivere nuove pagine di storia, ho grande entusiasmo per quello che verrà: sono esaltato per questa sfida e voglio conoscere un nuovo stile di gioco al quale non sono abituato. Sono uscito dalla mia comfort zone: vediamo cosa succederà. Akanji? Penso che sia una persona fantastica, umile e genuina, esattamente come in campo: è un giocatore di livello mondiale, sono stato fortunato a dividere lo spogliatoio con lui per tre anni al City e ora anche di averlo ritrovato qui” (Inter tv) #Calcio #Sport #Squadra
Stones a Inter TV: "Questa è una maglia bellissima, una delle più belle della storia del calcio. Si respira ovunque la grandezza di questo club. Sono esaltato per questa sfida, voglio conoscere un nuovo stile di gioco a cui non sono abituato. Sono uscito dalla mia comfort zone" https://t.co/lvyKYm6jg9 #calcio #Inter #sport
We adviseren luchtige kleding waarbij comfort vooropstaat: geen stropdas of colbert, maar polo's, T-shirts, sneakers en, afhankelijk van het werk, zelfs korte broeken
Stiamo per scavallare il Gran Premio della Montagna del caldo A maggio scrissi una cosa in cui credo ancora. Non bisogna vivere l’estate come un incubo, né trasformare ogni aggiornamento meteo in ansia anticipatoria. L’estate va vissuta, per quanto possibile, con equilibrio e serenità. Detto questo, l’onestà intellettuale però viene prima di tutto e questa estate è stata davvero pesante. Pesante per durata, persistenza, umidità, notti tropicali e difficoltà di recupero nelle ore notturne e il mio pensiero va soprattutto a chi non può permettersi un condizionatore in casa. Nel clima estivo che stiamo vivendo, il raffrescamento domestico non è più solo comfort ma per anziani, fragili, bambini piccoli e persone malate è sempre più un presidio sanitario indispensabile. Trovo scandaloso che non sia ancora trattato come tale. Tra la fine della seconda decade e l’inizio della terza decade di agosto si intravede il progressivo arretramento della struttura subtropicale continentale che ha dominato questa lunga fase. Usando il gergo ciclistico, stiamo per scavallare il Gran Premio della Montagna del caldo, non significa trovarsi subito in pianura, ma iniziare lentamente la discesa. Il caldo potrà ancora tornare. Anche settembre, in Italia, può proporre fasi calde importanti. Ma da qui in avanti l’astronomia inizierà a darci una mano, soprattutto di notte. Le giornate si accorciano, il sole perde forza, le ore di buio aumentano e diventa progressivamente più difficile mantenere minime diffusamente estreme, specie lontano dalle coste e dalle grandi aree urbane. La speranza, ora, è che l’autunno faccia l’autunno. Non servono nubifragi, non servono alluvioni, non serve recuperare in tre ore quello che non è caduto per settimane. Servono piogge distribuite, regolari, capaci di rientrare nei suoli e non solo di scorrere via. Le settimane appena passate hanno lasciato terreni secchi, vegetazione stressata e un deficit idrico che tra settembre e novembre sarebbe importante colmare nel modo giusto. C’è poi un punto comunicativo che voglio chiarire. Prevedere con diversi giorni di anticipo una fase anticiclonica calda in piena estate è molto più semplice che prevedere una perturbazione autunnale, una nevicata o una discesa artica in inverno. Il motivo è fisico, un anticiclone estivo è spesso una struttura ampia, lenta, persistente, con masse d’aria estese e segnali termici abbastanza continui. Le perturbazioni, invece, vivono di traiettorie, minimi di pressione, ondulazioni del getto, contrasti termici, interazioni con Alpi e Appennini, richiami umidi, aria fredda in quota e dettagli che possono cambiare anche a 48-72 ore dall’evento. Basta uno spostamento di poche decine o centinaia di chilometri per modificare piogge, temporali, neve, vento e temperature. Per questo alcuni titoli a effetto, quando annunciano caldo e anticiclone in estate, possono anche "andare a buon fine" ma non significa che lo stesso metodo funzioni da settembre in poi, quando l’atmosfera diventa più dinamica e la previsione a lunghissimo termine torna a essere molto più fragile. Il caldo più duro sembra avviarsi verso il suo declino stagionale, non sarà ancora la fine dell'estate ma lentamente ci avviamo a cambiare passo. #Estate #Clima #Temperature
Column: Wie heeft baat bij de complotdenker? Lisa Loeb is comédienne. Samen met Daniël Paarlberg onderzoekt ze complottheorieën. Ze maakten een podcast, schreven een boek en schuiven aan om uit te leggen waarom mensen erin geloven. Een comédienne als expert. Prachtige ontwikkeling. Vroeger onderzocht een journalist een mogelijk complot. Tegenwoordig legt een comédienne uit waarom u denkt dat er een is. Maar misschien onderzoeken we de verkeerde mensen. Wie heeft eigenlijk belang bij het begrip complotdenker? De burger alvast niet. Die promoveert van iemand met een vervelende vraag tot onderzoeksobject. Stel dat iemand vermoedt dat de overheid informatie achterhoudt. Vroeger dacht een journalist: interessant, laten we die overheid onderzoeken. Nu luidt de vraag: waarom wantrouwt deze burger de overheid? Een subtiel verschil. De overheid verdwijnt uit de verhoorkamer en de burger mag plaatsnemen. Psychologen, sociologen en desinformatie-experts leggen uit hoe angst, onzekerheid en sociale media burgers rare dingen laten denken. Wat de overheid precies heeft uitgespookt, komt later wel. Misschien. Voor instituties is dit comfortabel. Overheden hebben gelogen. Bedrijven verzwegen belangen. Banken manipuleerden. Farmaceutische bedrijven zijn veroordeeld wegens misleiding. Politici hielden informatie achter. Daarom hadden we ooit onderzoeksjournalisten. Watergate begon tenslotte niet met een symposium over mensen die Nixon wantrouwden. Nu hebben we het woord complotdenker. Een schitterende uitvinding. Je hoeft een verdenking niet te weerleggen. Je kunt eerst degene die haar uitspreekt classificeren. Reptielen. 5G. WEF. Corona. Farma. Geheime diensten. Alles in dezelfde grabbelton en flink schudden. De krankzinnigheid van het ene verhaal besmet de geloofwaardigheid van het andere. Zo ontstaat een industrie die niet onderzoekt of instituties de waarheid spreken, maar waarom burgers eraan twijfelen. Wie profiteert daarvan? Iedere machthebber die liever over wantrouwen praat dan over de oorzaak ervan. Dat betekent niet dat Loeb en Paarlberg door iemand zijn gestuurd. Daar is geen bewijs voor. Bovendien levert die beschuldiging vermoedelijk aflevering 61 van De Complottenpiramide op. Niemand hoeft opdracht te geven. Een goed frame werkt vanzelf. Talkshows nemen het over. Universiteiten onderzoeken het. Beleidsmakers spreken over desinformatie. En de journalistieke vraag verandert. Niet meer: wat doet de macht? Maar: waarom vertrouwt u de macht niet? Daarmee hebben we het perfecte complot gevonden. Geen geheime vergaderingen, duistere genootschappen. Geen enveloppen onder tafel. Alleen de consensus dat vooral degene met argwaan nader onderzocht moet worden. En als hij blijft volhouden? Dan hebben we gelukkig altijd nog een comédienne om uit te leggen wat er met hem aan de hand is. De macht kan blijven zitten. De burger ligt inmiddels op de sofa. 📌 Heeft u mijn bundel al? https://t.co/y64gXJ5yrY 📌 Steunt u mij ook? https://t.co/V2P6pFuNy1 #complottheorieën #wantrouwen #desinformatie
Il condizionatore non è più solo comfort, ormai è un vero presidio sanitario. Possiamo discutere di consumi, emissioni e uso responsabile, ed è giusto farlo. Ma quando per giorni le massime superano i 35-38°C, le minime restano tropicali e l’umidità impedisce al corpo di disperdere calore, il raffrescamento domestico per molte persone non è un lusso ma una necessità. Anziani soli, cardiopatici, persone con patologie respiratorie, disabili, bambini piccoli, famiglie a basso reddito che vivono in case esposte al sole o in quartieri molto caldi non possono essere lasciati davanti a estati sempre più pesanti con il consiglio di "bere acqua e tenere le finestre chiuse". Qui dovrebbe intervenire lo Stato, non con bonus confusi o incentivi a pioggia, ma con una misura mirata. Garantire alle persone più vulnerabili un accesso reale a un raffrescamento efficiente. Contributi forti per acquistare climatizzatori moderni o pompe di calore, installazione compresa. Priorità alle abitazioni più esposte, manutenzione garantita, tariffe agevolate per il consumo energetivo durante le allerte caldo ed ovviamente educazione all’uso corretto. Non significa trasformare il condizionatore nella risposta unica al caldo, la risposta strutturale resta più ampia ma nel frattempo le persone devono vivere adesso, non tra vent’anni. Per una persona fragile, un ambiente raffrescato può significare dormire, respirare meglio, non disidratarsi e non finire in emergenza sanitaria. Non è comodità, è prevenzione sanitaria. #SalutePubblica #Condizionamento #Benessere
Defining Zionism as a colonial ideology isn't prejudice: it's thought, hence constitutionally protected -says a Court (Bristol v. Miller, 2026 - EAT 84). Law, when true to itself, doesn't protect comfortable opinions but the right to dissent from power. https://t.co/OvwWtk7AJy #Zionism #FreeSpeech #LegalRights #IL
Who were the “comfort women”? They were forced into sexual slavery for the "satisfaction" of the Japanese army. (translated)
Motivi per ritenere #Alajbegovič un grande colpo: -il suo gioco consiste nel puntare sempre e costantemente l’uomo con tante soluzioni creative. Se distribuisci tutto ciò su 185 cm, in Italia puoi fare decisamente la differenza. -Non sono un esperto del ragazzo e ho spesso domandato quale fosse la sua zona di comfort in campo visto che la maggior parte delle partite le ha giocate da ala sinistra (ruolo di Kenan #Yildiz). Mi é stato risposto che é ambidestro e seppur siano stato sporadiche le apparizioni come ala destra e trequartista, in molti sostengono non abbia problematiche di adattamento in tal senso. - Se dovesse rivelarsi vero, la #Juve risolve un mucchio di problemi -Giocatore su cui il #Chelsea aveva già posto le mani ma la sua volontà é stata determinante per svoltare verso Torino, #Massara lo voleva alla #Roma già prima di #BosniaItalia e questo la dice lunga sull’apprezzamento nei suoi confronti. Va detto, un plauso alla dirigenza juventina per un acquisto di eco internazionale: di questi tempi, una vera e propria botta di entusiasmo. Anche per #Spalletti che adesso é chiamato a farlo rendere. #Calcio #Calciomercato #Juventus
🌡️ Air conditioning is no longer just a comfort; it's becoming a key climate adaptation tool. As Europe gets hotter, the answer is twofold: decarbonize the grid AND install efficient cooling to protect people from #extremeheat Read more on @WeDontHaveTime https://t.co/YwflaLlrKU #ClimateAction #ExtremeHeat #AirConditioning #ThetweetreferstoEurope.ThecountrycodeforEuropeisEU. Sotheoutputis:EU
11/15 The responsibility of political leadership is not to sell comforting stories. It is to prepare society for the world that is actually coming. #PoliticalLeadership #TruthInPolitics #FutureReady #Nospecificcountrycodesdetectedinthetweet.
@kreuger_kevin Ik heb 0 medelijden met Tofik Bibi. Zijn hele volwassen leven is hij een hypocriete uitvreter geweest, lekker meesurfend op de DEI waanzin, van het ene comfortabele nep-baantje naar het andere. En dan nu eindelijk de reality-check. Wordt ie misschien eens een keer volwassen. #hypocrisie #realiteit #volwassenheid
Rome fell because the Romans stopped making Romans. Elon Musk pointed to the same pattern that appears whenever a civilization gets comfortable: birth rates drop. Julius Caesar noticed it around 50 BC and explored incentives for a third child. Augustus went further with the Lex Julia and Lex Papia Poppaea, creating the ius trium liberorum, privileges, tax relief, and inheritance advantages for those with three or more children, plus penalties for the childless. The laws failed to reverse the trend. Will and Ariel Durant’s reading of history shows the cycle repeating: higher births under stress, decline once external threats ease and prosperity rises. Few exceptions. A society that stays below replacement long enough disappears. Basic arithmetic. https://x.com/newstart_2024/status/2081097118693859330
Sports greatness has never automatically translated into courage off it. Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Craig Hodges, John Carlos and Tommie Smith taught us—Being extraordinary on the field isn’t the same thing as being willing to risk comfort for conviction https://t.co/XsxmaahNA7 #SportsGreatness #Courage #Activism #Thetweetdoesnotspecificallymentionanycountriesdirectly.Therefore #therearenocountrycodestoreturn.
Oef... Daar sta je dan toch even flink met je mond vol tanden, @MarionKoopmans En niet zo'n beetje ook! Om nog maar te zwijgen van je #wasbeerschoothondje @mkeulemans. @SenRandPaul heeft nu een nog veel groter deel van de privé-communicatie op de Slack-App van de vier auteurs van het Proximal Origin-artikel openbaar gemaakt. En dat is bijzonder interessant! Het is 11 juni 2020, een krappe drie maanden na publicatie van het Proximal Origin artikel. Ik schreef al in de Wuhan Trilogie dat Kristian Andersen niet zo heel overtuigd meer was dat het virus niet uit het lab kwam. Dat wordt nu nog eens klip en klaar bevestigd: Over de #furin_cleavage_site: "The part I’m really struggling with is that at the end of the day, we really don’t have any hard evidence one way or the other - and especially given some of the recent evidence, we also can’t rule out that somebody actually put it in there. That’s obviously not to say that somebody _*did*_, but we can’t rule it out. Our paper was pretty strong in saying “there’s no way”, but I have less confidence in that statement at this stage." En wat zegt diezelfde Kristian Andersen kort daarna? "None of this tells us anything new - but it means that given no data, I find both scenarios to be equally probable. Given the data we had seen at the time of our writing, I was highly skewed towards ‘natural’. But with some of this new data (plus stuff I didn’t know previously), I’m moving much more towards the middle (again)." Goh. Juni 2020 en Andersen acht een #labontsnapping van SARS-CoV-2 (weer) even waarschijnlijk als een natuurlijke uitbraak. Ondertussen krijgt hij er maar geen genoeg van om @Ayjchan op dit medium te bashen als zijnde een racistische complotdenker. Oef... Want wat schrijft hij over Alina Chan? "Gotta say - some smoking(ish) guns starting to appear that I’m not comfortable with and Alina here is touching on a lot of points we have discussed previously that were concerning (e.g., lack of selection - I should have looked into that a little closer earlier..." En dat terwijl jij, Marion, al in februari 2020 ten overstaan van de KNAW wist te vertellen dat de mogelijkheid van een labontsnapping een complottheorie was. Misschien moet je het artikel wat @JonaWalk hierover deelde nog eens heel goed lezen. Maar er komt nog meer: over de heersende 'consensus' over de natuurlijke oorsprong van #SARSCoV2. Nou, die consensus was dus niet zo breed. Nog eens Kristian Andersen: "Suffice to say, since writing the paper I have explained to a ton of scientists (and policy makers) over and over again why this is a natural virus, and I have been pretty surprised to learn that most scientists I talk to believe there is a likely connection to the lab - people that are themselves doing GOF and culture-type of experiments, they know the risks and don’t seem to think that a natural explanation is more likely than lab culture." Gut Marion. Gut Maarten. Hoe kan dat nou? Alles wat ik in de Wuhan Trilogie schrijf, wordt langzamerhand bevestigd. Dat doet goed. Maar wat hebben de 'experts' het domme volk bedonderd. Met Marion Koopmans en haar schoothondje Maarten Keulemans voorop. Ik wacht nog even af. Ik hoop de tweede helft van volgend jaar tijd te hebben om dit allemaal te verwerken in het verhaal. Ik sluit niet uit dat voor die tijd er nog meer explosief materiaal naar buiten komt. #OriginOfCovid #WuhanTrilogie #SARSCoV2 #labontsnapping #OriginOfCovid
"Ho dato la mia medaglia a mia madre perché la merita più di chiunque. Correvo veloce in campo, ma lei ha corso molto più di me nella vita” La mamma di Nico Williams, María Comfort Arthuer, dal Ghana ha attraversato Burkina Faso,Mali e Algeria e poi il deserto del Sahara a piedi. https://t.co/c6IhnOPMYD #Madre #Amore #Ispirazione
Europeans are putting comfort and public health above green dictates. Demand for air conditioning is surging. https://t.co/1qTO14zrPQ #AirConditioning #PublicHealth #Europe #EU
