damable december

A Norwegian company called World Wide Wind has developed a new design for offshore wind turbines. The traditional design, with the blades on top, is not suitable for the deep ocean due to the risk of flipping over. The new design places the blades underneath the turbine, with two propellers positioned at a 45-degree angle. This allows the turbine to capture wind from both directions and reduces the risk of it getting blown over. The design is also less expensive to build and could lower the cost of offshore wind energy. The company plans to start testing in 2025 and launch commercially by 2030. And Nora Louise. Kathy Bond. What's your middle name? Anne. Fuck off! Jane. It's not Jane. Susan. Elizabeth. Oh, Kathleen Elizabeth Bond. That's right. That's right. It should have accomplished greater things. But I have, and you're not allowed to ask me how the turbine works. There will be no scientific questions at all. I do have one, but I'll muscle myself. Go ahead. Yes, there's a lot of self-muscling that should be employed. Well, I read about this on a place that I do go to, New Atlas. And I wasn't even decent enough to backtrack this time to try and find the original story because they really did a very good job of outlining how it works. Okay. Well, there's this company called World Wide Wind. Okay. It's one of the big problems about wind tech is that a lot of people don't want it anywhere near them. They're worried that they're going to have headaches. They think that's going to hurt the birds. You know, Nora's making bad signs, which I'm not allowed to say or cut them out of the podcast. But one of the, one place on the earth that enormous amounts of winds are generated is out in the deep ocean. But the big problem is, is that traditionally, you've got a wind turbine, you stick it in the ground, you've got a pole that runs up it, and then you have at the very top of the blade, which is just like a simple propeller or like, what are those things that kids go on? Dandelions? No. Anyway, propeller or... Yeah, no, people know what a wind turbine looks like. Yeah. But what they've done is, is they've flipped it because, you know, that makes no sense out in the deep ocean. Of course, it's going to blow over. Yeah, it's going to blow over, it's going to flip, and then, you know, just the repair jobs. So they took all the tech, all of the turbine technology, etc., from the top of the turbine, and then they put it underneath the turbine. Okay. So imagine, if you will, there is the pole, and it goes down into, past the water, past the dinghy that supports it, and it's all beneath, and then it's cabled into the bottom of the ocean floor, or weighted down in some way. Okay. And at the top of it, rather than having one propeller at the top, there are two. One goes in, and they're positioned on a 45-degree angle. So one of the propellers spins in one direction, and then further down the shaft, there's another propeller, and it spins in the opposite direction. Right. So it's capturing wind from both directions at the same time. I see. So it would look like, from the illustration, that unlike a regular wind turbine where, like, the blades are turning around perpendicular to the water, the surface of the water, it's kind of going around sort of parallel to the water, right? Exactly. It's going in the opposite direction, so you don't have as much of a, I guess, like a potential for it just getting blown anywhere. Yeah, yeah. And then part of it is, like, you sort of wait at the bottom again so that these strong winds don't just kind of blow the whole thing over. Yeah. They don't have any problems with it that need to be repaired. They can much more easily fix it than if it's at the top, because these things are huge. Yeah, they're, like, 1,312 feet tall. Imagine that, Laura. Imagine that. But this is terrific, because the biggest thing about it is the cost. It is so much less expensive to build one of these. I don't have the figures, and even if I did, I wouldn't properly be able to describe how they're going to work it. What they're saying is that it could drop, and I'm just going to read this. the levelized cost of energy for offshore wind to less than $50 a megawatt, which is less than half of the cost of what regularly harnessed, pardon me, of what regular horizontal access towers are currently doing. Okay. And what they're even projected to do to 2027. So they're hoping to have this thing up and operational by 2030. I thought it was also interesting that it's a Norwegian company. Yes. And, of course, Norway is making tons of money off of offshore oil, of course. So I thought that was interesting that they're planning for, like, a lower-carbon future. Oh, they always have over there. They've always, like Germany, they've always been very, very big on wind farms. Yeah. No, and I know that from my time in Italy as well. But I just thought it was interesting, like Norway in particular, because they make a lot of money out of the fossil fuel economy as well. Yeah. Yeah, they're thinking about the future. So when did they think this was going to be actually, like, a going concern? 2030. Okay. Yeah. They're going to start testing in early 2025, and they're hoping to launch commercially in 2030. My question was, and I'm not going to ask you to answer this because I have no idea how this would work, but I was curious. Like, how does the energy get transmitted to where it's actually going to be used? I thought that too. I don't know how that technology works, so, you know. I don't know. Cables? Along the ocean floor? You couldn't do it through the air. Somebody out there knows. And you could go back to the blog, but apparently we don't have questions. No, I do. There's an update on that. Actually, this new podcasting platform we have does not have comments enabled, but there is a contact button. So if you want to send an email, I just added it this week. Oh, that's great. Yeah. If anybody out there has a great idea of how they'd get the electricity from the middle of the ocean into my home, I would like to know. They've got a team of orcas. Right. It's sort of like Pony Express. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Now, you've got an interesting... This is kind of my opportunity to pick your brain. Again, if you have comments, please email us through the sniffer.net. I've kind of been thinking like I've been feeling really creatively... I've been feeling really creatively challenged lately. Like I just am feeling... Blocked? Yeah. Blocked or like... It's not even like writer's block in the way that I'm like actively working on something and I'm having trouble producing it. It's like I'm just... I used to always have a lot of ideas, like creative ideas and be working on something. And I don't know what it is. I just feel like I'm not. And like even like I'm trying to think of a concept for another book. Oh, boy. That would be good. Well, I hope so. But I have to have an idea first. I'm like... And I don't know. It's funny. Like I just... I'm thinking maybe it's like a creative muscle that I just have not been exercising. I mean, you do in a little bit. Like in Spark, you do. You have to come up with story ideas and using sound to tell the story and things like that, but not in more of a bigger way, you know? Yeah. And I was thinking about rereading this book that I have by the choreographer, Twyla Tharp, called Creative Habit. Oh, she's great. Or she was great. Yeah. And she writes about how like the whole... You can't wait for that divine inspiration. It's like a daily practice, right? Like you do that daily practice. So I've been thinking of maybe going back to that book, but I did come across a piece, and I'll put a link to it at stemford.net, which was about a thing that I think everyone knows this, which is one of the guides to harnessing your creativity is imposing constraints on what you do, right? Yeah. Like so if you decide I'm going to paint something, but I'm only going to paint in purple or I'm going to... Very spiritual, right? I'm going to write a book, but I'm not going to use the letter E or whatever it is. Yeah. And they had some... It is a thing that's sort of known, but some of the kinds of things that they were talking about was the idea of like very obviously imposing a deadline, like so you're not to... You lend some structure to what you're doing, removing your resources, some of your resources, so like you can only paint it purple or whatever, or otherwise kind of turning like the limitations into opportunities, right? So if you... And the example they give is Richie Havens, who had some kind of like issue with playing the guitar, using his thumb to strum and things like that. So I thought that was interesting and it was something that I've come across before, but I mostly wanted to just talk to you as a person who is engaged in more creative endeavors, like what do you do when you're feeling blocked? Pray for food. I don't even want to say that I don't get blocked like that because I'm worried that the curse will come to light and there will be thunder and lightning outside of the window. I think for me, there was one of the articles that you had sent me that was about, recommended like you were talking about like Picasso with the blue period or you and your purple period, thinking within the box. Yeah. That is the biggest... Thinking and believing that I could create outside of the box was, I would say, the biggest professional creative mistake I have ever made in my life. You have to understand the box that you work in. You can't say, well, how do you make a novel and everyone will love it? Right. That's a bunch of hooey. It just doesn't work like that. Right. If you just want to waste your time, that's great. But if you want to write something that's going to sell, it won't. Right. It's hard enough to make money. So thinking about, for example, like in my case, I'm thinking of an idea for a book, like thinking about, well, who do I want to reach? Who's my audience? Those kinds of things. Yeah. For writing, there are all sorts of amazing resources with agents that you can actually tap into different communities and attend seminars to see what's selling, what's hot, what's not, what they're going to be anticipating will be in the future. Right. I'm so glad that I thought it was a waste of time and it was enormously helpful. Really? Yeah. Oh, enormously. Huh. And because it really, really sort of made me see things in a much more real way. Right. This was after I'd written a 400-page novel and this was very, you know, not that long ago and completed it. Oh, this is fabulous. Doorstopper. And then never get a publisher. I was fortunate enough to be able to get the Montreal Publishing Company. Yay. To take it on. Yeah. But it went from 400 pages, now it's less than 300. Yeah. And the way that they surgically edited that thing, it was great. It was such a wonderful experience. But did you need that initial time of just like freely writing what you wanted to write in order to have something that came out of you that you could then edit or no? No. No. No. Just be more mercenary about it. I think that creatives always, at least this creative, has always needed to be more mercenary. Right. Like, I've never been driven by money ever in my life. And I kind of wish that I had been. Right. Because maybe I would have been a little bit more sensible about the whole process. But even if your motivation is to get people to read it, right, not even to make money off it, but just to get people to read it, then you have to think in other terms. Yeah. But you still have to work within the box. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you have to know, like, fairly sure that it's the same for all of the different artistic disciplines. It's like, you have to know how to work within a genre. Or if you're a photographer, if you decide that you're going to shoot in black and white, you need to know how to do it properly. Right. Or if you're going to break the rules, you need to know what rules you're breaking. Exactly. Yeah. That's a much better place than what I said. Yeah. No. That's what I would advise. And as far as if you're thinking about it, get a whole bunch of... Do you like sticky notes? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Do you like all the different colors? Yeah. Get a whole bunch. Mm-hmm. And write them all down. Every time you have an idea. And don't judge it. Right. And put it in a basket. Yeah. And just put them in. And put it in. And then afterwards, it would almost be like a secret Santa when you're just pulling them out and going through them and seeing which one that you think might have legs. I think that's in one of Twyla Tharp's recommendations. I think she calls it box. It's just, like, put the things in the box and don't judge it. And then you have it there for a rainy day. So you and Twyla are on the same page. Yeah. No. That's what I would recommend for any kind of creative endeavor. And probably nearly even a business endeavor, too. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No. It was good. I liked the articles that you sent me. Yeah. Thanks for the advice, Kath. And I welcome any advice from listeners. And I have that Email Me button on thesnipper.net. And thank you to the listener who suggested... And thank you to the listener who pointed out that there was no way to contact us. That got me thinking about putting a contact page. Thank you, listener. Okay. Thanks, all. Bye. Take care. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye.