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Sep 28, 2023Liked by Emmet Penney

Neo-paganism is yet another fruit of the liberal theologies of the 19th Century combined with the currents of the 1960's coming to full fruition in our culture. It's helping those of us who believe in Christ to see things clearly now and to choose sides with the scales fallen from our eyes. I want nothing to do with the secular culture of the West. It's hideous and devouring, and offers none of the benefits that I have seen with my own eyes that are produced by people who embrace Christian faith with open arms. As CS Lewis and Francis Schaeffer said, now is a time for choosing.

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Sep 27, 2023Liked by Emmet Penney

This is back to the Exhaust roots! All of that highfalutin wordcelery makes my engineer head spin a bit, but it was interesting to listen to.

That Apple video is the most cringeworthy thing I have seen in a long time. Alas, there are still many who don’t see the tradeoffs inherent in that simplified nonsense. I’m sure the cobalt mining kids in the Congo are cool with it tho-

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Sep 28, 2023Liked by Emmet Penney

Engineer here too.

Re: tradeoffs, the reality that how the world we have, which was made by rough hard men for the most part, was constructed entirely by accepting the premise *like a grown up* that there are trade offs, that the omelet has to have eggs broken in order to be made, is entirely our problem currently.

My boomer engineering stats teacher was this way. She loved to think about *it ought to be* instead of *this is how it is, and certain aspects of it are hard to swallow but are not changing*. It struck me then and strikes me now that it was all very 60's-ish utopianism and revealed a person who in some important ways had just never grown up. That person could not have built Hoover Dam. That person could never have been Lem Wylie, the construction engineer of Glen Canyon Dam, as he gave the order to seal the bypass tunnels shut so they could be filled with concrete so the reservoir upstream could begin to fill. That might have been a hard decision for many, because Glen Canyon was going to be submerged by the rising waters. But others would have thought about the energy produced, the water provided, and the family memories to be made on the new lake, and they wouldn't have batted an eye at giving the order. Wylie certainly didn't, because life is made almost entirely of trade offs and somebody has to do the damned work.

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Well said!

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Agree with this, and hat tip to all the people that built Glen Canyon Dam. Of course the downside here was huge because GC could easily have been another treasured national park in and of itself. This was also a galvanizing event for a lot of folks who vowed never again.

So for like 20 minutes the enviros looked to nuclear power to reduce these kinds of tradeoffs, but then they went off on their “small is beautiful” utopian journey. Now they watch and cheer giant windmills and solar panels destroy their beloved landmarks.

Nuclear dramatically reduces the required tradeoffs for a modern society. Until the utopians get that, they are bound to keep failing.

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