this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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Amazing video by Technology Connections. It's a long one, but don't miss his 30 minute angry rant at the end.

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[–] Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago

It is pretty standard in most electric cars I've been in that it shows the kWh/h as it charges and how many kWh it has charged when complete.

Also your comment reminds me of the Boots economic theory. That poor people pay more overall because keep buying cheap boots yearly rather than spend more once on expensive boots every 10 years like the rich.

A captured government is the problem, the corrupt administration and the purchased opposition can't do anything for you like cheap power and subsidized electric cars because it doesn't help their donors.

[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 35 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I have been watching his videos for years with great enthusiasm.

If I ever meat him, it won’t be a handshake. That rant at the end deserves a hug. I love that antifascist energy that came pouring off him.

[–] DirtPuddleMisfortune@feddit.org 2 points 7 hours ago

"It's time to wake up and smell the fascism!"

[–] VibeSurgeon@piefed.social 52 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Just when I thought I couldn't like him more, he goes and drops this gigabased rant.

TC for U.S president honestly

[–] thomasloven@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I like the guy. Really. But haven’t you seen what happens when people from entertainment become president?

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

His works is way beyond just entertainment though. He talked about this in this very video.

[–] pahlimur@lemmy.world 4 points 20 hours ago

Now that I've seen the type of people that seek political positions over a few decades, I would push Alec to run for some sort of local office. He's the exact opposite of the majority of assholes who enter politics.

[–] rarbg@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago

Like Zelenskyy? Sign me up

[–] argarath@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Or even a governor or senator, he has the right ideas and ability to explain what is happening and what needs to be done

[–] Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That level of competence would never fly in the US government.

[–] kunaltyagi@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago

Most governments

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 67 points 2 days ago

That rant at the end really sums up my feelings as a Midwestern leftist. Hell the whole thing does honestly. But you treat people right, you make prudent decisions, and you treat labor with dignity and respect.

I also really respect him for accepting when something that had been obvious to him (the value proposition of solar and electrification) turned out to have not been obvious to others so he cut the snark and explained his reasoning. It's an admirable display of character. But also, yeah it had been obvious to me as well.

Probably not my favorite video of his, but definitely rhe one I respect the most

[–] Baggie@lemmy.zip 42 points 2 days ago

Sometimes I've been feeling like I'm the weird one for caring about other people and the shit that's been going on. It's really nice to see someone as angry as I am.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago (7 children)

I know it's not the main point of his video, but I really wish he'd looked into the CapEx vs OpEx stuff a bit more.

For example, when talking about how much fuel his car uses in its lifetime vs. the cost of buying solar panels, he makes it clear that the solar panels are a better investment than buying gasoline. But, what he doesn't talk about is the difficulty for a lot of people in coming up with the money up-front to make that investment. Especially if you're poor, finding $25 per week to put gas in your car is easier than spending $3000 up front to put solar panels on your house. I know later he makes the argument that it might not even make sense to put solar panels on your house. But, that up front cost is also there for buying an electric vehicle vs. buying a car with an ICE (fuck ICE). The Nissan Cube he showed had a starting price of $18k when it was last available new in 2014. The Ioniq 5 starts at double that, at more than $36k. As far as I can tell, you can't get a new electric car for less than $30k, whereas the cheapest gas cars are only $23k or so.

A big reason for the status quo is that paying small amounts constantly is possible when you're poor, but paying a big up front cost to go electric isn't. What's worse (and goes with the last half hour of his video), is that we're in this situation because the fossil fuel companies keep getting subsidies, whereas any subsidies for electric cars or photovoltaic panels keeps getting shut down.

Also, I know it's an American channel so it has to use things like "gallons", but please when talking about energy, use Joules, not "kilowatt hours".

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

Nah americans are very familiar with debt being the country with the most personal debt in the history of the world. If only they took debt for investment not for buying a new truck.

This is entirely on people's lack of trying.

[–] CureMaple@slrpnk.net 1 points 14 hours ago

Vime's Boots Theory

[–] spacesatan@leminal.space 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

No. Why would anybody have an intuitive frame of reference for what a joule is.

This appliance uses 1 kilowatt, running it for an hour is a kilowatt hour. Easy.

*And I can't even find anything suggesting any countries meter electrical bills by the joule so ???

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

This appliance uses 1 kilowatt. Running it for 1 second uses 1 kJ. Easy.

Are you billed by the hour, or by the month?

[–] spacesatan@leminal.space 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

By the kilowatt hour per month.

If you're talking about systems that generate and consume power measured in watts. Why would you then convert to joules so that you can say 'this generates ___ joules per hour' when you could just infer kwh from the nameplate wattage. It's an extra conversion for no reason.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 0 points 15 hours ago

Why would I care about "Joules per hour"? What matters is power (Watts), and total energy used (Joules). "Kilowatt hour per month" is just an awkward way of saying "Joules per month"

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 points 1 day ago

fwiw there's a comment by @Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca as a top-level reply to the post that I think was intended as a reply to you.

kWh are a metric unit (even if they're not SI), and are extremely common in discussions of household electricity. I wish it weren't the case, the same way I wish countries other than Australia used kilojoules for measuring energy in food instead of (kilo)Calories. But they don't.

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

My partner does Energy research and Kilowatt hours is a very common unit of measurement she has to deal with. Its not even non-standard. It uses S.I. units, even if I find it odd. Has nothing to do with U.S. customary units Americans use.

[–] Evil_Incarnate@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A kilowatt hour is 3.6 megajoules. It's used for the same reason lightyears are used to measure distances in space, it's easier to say Alpha Centauri is 4.396 light years away than 4.159x10^16 metres.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Astronomy uses special units because the SI units are more than 10 orders of magnitude different. You'd have to use really exotic prefixes like "zetta" or "yotta" if you wanted to keep using metres.

The difference between a kilowatt and a megajoule is just 3 orders of magnitude. You just have to switch from "k" to "M". People are already familiar not only with "M" but with "G" and "T" because of Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes, etc. There's nothing about kilowatt hours that's more intuitive or easy to use.

[–] spacesatan@leminal.space 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

kilowatt hours ARE more intuitive than watt seconds when talking about something like solar panels, electric cars, and household energy where generation and consumption are better understood on the scale of hours.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

No they're not. You're just used to them.

[–] spacesatan@leminal.space 1 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Are you seriously trying to say that if you're talking about a solar panel it makes more sense to talk about how much energy it produces per second than per hour. If you wanted to think about the amount a panel can produce per day are you sitting there thinking about how many seconds of sunlight it will get in a day.

If you want to estimate the energy usage of a 400 watt lighting system during an 8 hour workday you think it's more intuitive to go 400 * 3600 * 8 / 1,000,000 than 400 / 1000 * 8?

The reason seemingly every electrical utility in the world uses kWh is because hours are the more intuitive unit of time for this context.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Also, I know it's an American channel so it has to use things like "gallons", but please when talking about energy, use Joules, not "kilowatt hours".

Does Europe use joules to measure electricity usage in your home? 🤔

[–] Defectus@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I pay my European kilowatts in tears and agony

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I'm sorry, we pay in tears in my American house as well. We can all be united by our tears <3

[–] kablez@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Here in Australia we measure the flow of electricity in Kangaroo Hops per Hour.

[–] Baggie@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago

Otherwise known as kph, or hopperidoos

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 99 points 2 days ago (20 children)

Great video. Completely breaks down the argument. You already knew this of you had been paying attention. Oil/gas for electricity generation in any form is DOA. It is insanely more expensive than solar + battery.

Not to mention destructive to the environment and politically fraught with issues.

To think if our government went all in it could provide dirt cheap limitless energy that would not cause lung disease or wars is staggering.

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[–] pedz@lemmy.ca 82 points 2 days ago (5 children)

As someone not from the US, I can't say how much I appreciate the last part of his video. As much as I understand why YouTubers want to "keep politics out of entertainment", it's disappointing and makes me lose interest in some US content because it seems like they are ignoring what's going on around them.

And about the batteries, that's unfortunately an argument I sometimes hear from skeptics. "What are we going to do with all those batteries?" they ask. I explain that they can mostly be recycled and like to ask what are we going to do with all the CO2 in the air, but apparently it's different. Ironically one of those persons is my father, that has a cabin with a solar system that I installed for him. He originally bought a generator but since it's very noisy to run only for some lights, he prefers using the battery bank powered by a few solar panels on the roof. I'd show him this video but he doesn't speak English and it's probably a lost cause anyway.

We can only hope that at least a few people can be influenced by this video; both parts.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 day ago

The political discussion taboo only serves 2 purposes. 1, keep the stupid comfortable. To them, politics isn’t about ideas but about identity and is treated like a religion. You aren’t challenging an idea, you are threatening their identity. 2, Don’t upset rich people. Everyone discussion politics openly is a threat to the rich. So if you make it taboo to discuss those things you make it so that only those not bound by that taboo may participate.

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[–] AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

Fell asleep an hour into his last night, didn't expect it to be that long, but I am looking forward to finishing it.

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