I wouldn't mind smoking a joint now and then but under the current scheme, with either club membership or home-growing, I'd have to commit to buying a whole butt-load of weed.

Requiring residency to buy is perfectly sufficient to quell tourism, though I think there should be exceptions for people from countries with legal weed because they're not going to come here to smoke. It doesn't mean out-sourcing the distribution of small amounts to the black market.

A year? Feckless Americans holding back statements again, it seems. Europe is certainly in for the long haul. Also plenty of countries not ruling out boots on the ground. In fact the US not having a clear stance of "you use tactical nukes we're going to put them onto Ukrainian soil" or similar is yet another instance of fecklessness.

You may think yourself smart and strategic but in the end you're a salami, sitting there motionless, being sliced.

Attempted murder, which this was, regularly (as in in almost all cases) means you get a rebate on that life sentence in Germany. Depending on circumstances it's going to be 3-15 years. In any case also a life-long sentence means parole after minimum 15, median 17, average, 18.9 years, only 13% >25 years.

People dying in prison is quite rare because, overall, unrepentant nasty pieces of work are rare... and Ali Bashar happens to be one of those cases: Murderer-rapist, court declared notable gravity of his guilt, meaning the minimum to parole is 20, also, even if he gets out on parole (most likely not after 20 years) courts reserved the right to put him in preventive detention, meaning he'd be out of the prison regime (bedtime and whatnot) but still in lockup. Essentially an asylum for the not criminally insane.

From all that I've seen electricity lines (also HVDC) have higher transmission losses by a magnitude. With hydrogen and modern material science you'll probably have the choice between higher losses and embrittlement, but that's just another economical equation: Do you want to eat the higher losses, or replace the pipeline in a couple of decades or a century.

At least environment-wise hydrogen leaks aren't an issue: Some atoms diffusing through the wall don't constitute a fire hazard and the end result is water. Methane, OTOH, is a nasty greenhouse gas.

Speaking of nature: Ammonia is nasty, but nature produces it itself (just not at those concentrations) and can deal with it. The site directly surrounding a leak would be dead, a bit further downstream (literally) there's going to be over-fertilisation. Not nice but definitely better than an oil leak and fixing it quite literally involves waiting until grass has grown over it as rain dilutes it and microorganisms migrate back in to eat it. Similar things apply to ethanol which I'd say would be a better choice for general use such as hybrid cars, camping stoves and whatnot because it's not going to burn your lungs away. Can't rely on people being conscious enough to get up and flee the ammonia stench when they're in a car accident.

Burning methane also produces steam. Methane produces 891 kJ/mol, hydrogen 286 kJ/mol, methane has four hydrogen atoms that'd be 1144 kJ per what should the unit be in any case: Methane produces less heat per unit of produced water than hydrogen (the hydrogen first needs to get ripped off the carbon). Those ovens burn dryer than your current gas oven.

Never used steam when making pizza, they're not in there long enough for steam to make a difference. For bread it's indispensable to get a proper crust, though.

EDIT: Did I get moles right? It's been a while and I am no chemist.

Back in the early days of gas infrastructure, before wide-spread electrification, you know gas street lights and everything, the gas was produced by gasifying coal, resulting in gas that was often over 50% hydrogen, with only ~20% methane. Rest nitrogen and CO.

Natural gas has a methane content upwards of 75%, which meant that everyone had to switch out their burner nozzles but the rest of the infrastructure stayed intact.

All this is to say: Nothing about is really new or rocket science. Europe is certainly creating a backbone pipeline network for hydrogen, parts of it new pipes, other parts re-purposed natural gas pipes, many were built to a standard that allows them to carry hydrogen though some valves etc. might need upgrading. Some of those were originally built for hydrogen in the first place, and checking Wikipedia there's actually a 240km segment in the Ruhr area, built in 1938, still in operation, which always carried hydrogen. Plain steel but comparatively low-pressure so it works.

Oh and have another number: According to Fraunhofer, Germany's pipeline network can store three months of total energy usage (electricity, transportation, everything). Not in storage tanks, but just by operating the pipelines themselves at higher or lower pressure.

And we need that stuff one way or the other: Even if tomorrow ten thousand fusion plants go online that doesn't mean that the chemical industry doesn't need feedstock, or that reducing steel with electricity would make sense. Both of those things need hydrogen.

Fusion is still in the future so the plan is to import most of that hydrogen, mostly from Canada and Namibia, in tankers carrying ammonia which is way more efficient that trying to compress hydrogen also ammonia is needed for some processes anyway.

All three paragraphs are written by wikipedia authors summing up longer texts by various scholars. If you want to actually engage with the topic on a deeper level, read those scholars, not just the summary. It's all linked (those numbers in brackets). Ignore the Christian if you please, noone will blame you.

I think you’re under the impression that you are smarter then you actually are.

*than

There's no mention of Hijabs in the Quran and "dress modestly" is very much relative. You also may or may not see Turks drinking plum wine but they're definitely drinking beer and most definitely Raki.

Because they went to Eton which teaches important skills such as talking utter bollocks with absolute confidence. People trust them.

Not to mention that the UK originally joined the EC in the early 70s precisely to fix its economical problems.

Joining the EU might indeed be a bit off because everybody is weary of a not actually fully committed UK but that doesn't mean the UK can't join the single market, or at least a customs union. Turkey currently is more closely integrated with the EU than the UK is.

Nope woke means being aware of systemic injustices. What you describe is people with a saviour complex being ineffective, annoying, failures at praxis. Alternatively, rightoid snowflakes being triggered by being reminded that people different from them exist. The Acolyte is a nice recent example: It's no Andor but definitely not a bad show, by recent Star Wars standards definitely one of the good ones. Yet a whole mob of people got triggered because, what, I don't even get it. And before anyone says "It breaks with canon" no it fucking doesn't.