At least for transmission, my own perceptions are that it's more of a regional thing. The Transwest Express is under construction to deliver 3 GW of Wyoming wind power to the big switch yards at the Hoover Dam for sale into all of Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Southern California. Sunzia is under construction to deliver even more wind/solar from New Mexico to Phoenix, and a connector from Phoenix to Southern California is all permitted. Xcel in Colorado is building a large collector loop out on the prairie to make it easy to move wind/solar from out there to the Front Range. BPA is doing a $2B transmission upgrade to allow more renewable power from as far inland as Montana to get to Seattle/Portland.
All of those are Western Interconnect projects, of course, and have nothing to do with delivering power to the 75% of the US population that lives farther east than that.
Texas, and to a somewhat lesser extent Florida, build because they can sprawl. Where are the desirable places where California and New York can sprawl?
After the fire burned a big chunk of Altadena early this year, there were numerous pictures showing isolated houses that survived while all the houses around them burned. A point made in the articles was that those were new homes built on tear-down sites; the surrounding homes that burned were all 50+ years old. For the discussion we're having here, the point is that Altadena was fully built out, right up the the steep brush-covered hillsides, 50 years ago. A bit of digging shows that it was built as a suburb at a population density right at 5,000 people per square mile 50 years ago. Dallas, TX has a current density of 3,400 per square mile. The Dallas suburbs are significantly less dense.
I think you're letting Texas and Florida overwhelm your opinion. A number of the other states in the South and Southwest have lost US House seats over the last three censuses. They're not building infrastructure in the face of a relatively shrinking population. The (now) Red states in the Midwest are struggling to hang on to population and aren't building infrastructure. Eg, Ohio has barely grown its population by 10% over the last 50 years. Their power grid sucks, but it's not possible to justify investment unless demand is growing. I did a good chunk of my formative years in Nebraska. They've "grown" themselves into the position that three counties now account for all of the net growth in the state's population. Just happens that those three are the most liberal in the state, relatively speaking.
I have made myself a terrible person to have opinions about appearance things like gray-on-gray or vertical text spacing or whatever. I have a piece of JavaScript that runs in my browser that I have built (over several years now). With the exception of a couple of my regular sites (eg, my bank), that JavaScript goes through every page I download and does its best to confine the text to my small set of chosen fonts and sizes, vertical and horizontal spacing, appropriate fg/bg contrast, etc. From my perspective, the new theme has moved things around on the page, but the text itself is still formatted in the same basic style. I also make judicious use of ad (and other suspicious content) blocking. Someone was looking over my shoulder some time back while I jumped through a few sites. They remarked on how my view of the web was much simpler and more consistent than what they got on their computer.
As I've mentioned before, WordPress has managed to recreate all of the worst aspects of Windows 95 from a developer's perspective. Those of us who are old enough remember installing Windows 95 updates and watching some subset of critical application software break. Install a new version of WordPress and watch assorted themes and/or plugins break. Will does really good work; I read Outside the Beltway regularly, and a few weeks ago they went completely offline for most of a week because a WordPress update broke other things so badly.
As I've said before, my working assumption is that the goal is the North American Empire under Donald the First. If you're on the Donald's side, it doesn't matter how you justify the walls at this point, so long as the walls go up.
Isn't this the case where the DOJ's argument is "Neither we nor the Salvadorans can find him"? With a sort of implicit "No one's actually keeping any records"?
One China in theory, two in practice. For example, Taiwan has long had permission to buy almost leading edge US weapons systems that China would never get. Taiwan has purchased both Patriot and HIMARS missile systems. There is active discussion to let them buy Excalibur artillery rounds. Remember when F-35 deliveries were curtailed after it was discovered that some parts supplier had included Chinese magnets? The F-35 incorporates integrated circuits fabbed in Taiwan without any complaints.
Among the things the administration doesn't understand is that every department is different. Different research interests across all of topic, framework, etc, shape things. And that pushes into which classes are taught, reading material, and all that. It's not like Calc I, where they're teaching language as much as anything, consistent across the needs of math majors, physics majors, engineering majors, history majors, and so on.
My perception is that the administration wants there to be a single narrative about Middle Eastern history and current politics. No room for variance. Exactly the opposite of what universities are supposed to be.
It is possible to break things beyond fixing in any stretch of time the Democrats are likely to get. Once the US pulls its military assets from Europe, they're not going back. Once Japan builds its own nukes, they're not going to give them up. He and the Supreme Court are going to drive lots of wedges between the states and the federal government, and between different groups of states. You don't rebuild NOAA or NIST in less than a decade.
What I want is the Broadway version delivered to my home. Fixed camera view of the entire stage delivered to the big screen TV, theater-quality audio. Because I like stage musicals, and because I am unlikely to spend the money to go to NYC, or even to a national touring company closer to me.
Back during 1978-1982 I was in a Bell Labs bowling league. After enough beer, Labs' bowlers picked arguments with the automatic scoring machines' addition. The machines were never wrong at adding. You did have to keep an eye on them because they occasionally got the pin count wrong.
The text of the required questionnaire has been posted. OMB's estimate is that it will take 30 minutes to complete. Looking at it, I'd put the time to do any sort of accurate response at days/weeks. Applied at a university level, none of the Australian schools will meet the requirements.
The Australian media seems to be moving towards describing this as an "America First" fallout -- Trump doesn't want to invest money in any other countries. My knee-jerk reaction would be, "US staff for all of NASA's network terminals in Australia are expelled. Ditto for DOD's deep space radar work. The US Navy's visiting privileges are revoked. We'll get back to you about whether we're going to return any equipment." But I'm not a nice person.
When you are a US researcher writing a proposal to study coral reef bleaching on a global scale, you collaborate with some Australian group because of the Great Barrier Reef.
When you are a US researcher doing climate change modeling and need to improve how you handle atmosphere/ocean interfaces in that part of the world, you collaborate with some Australian group.
When you are a US radio astronomer with a project that requires certain continuous observations, you collaborate with the Australians who build and operate world-class telescopes from a unique global position.
When you are a US researcher in toxicology looking at venom chemistry that leads in certain directions, you collaborate with some Australian experts on the poisonous species Down Under.
When you are a US battery chemistry researcher and the work leads you into certain reactions and the best group on that is in Adelaide, you collaborate with them (if you can get them interested).
The US federal government funds an incredible array of R&D topics. If you want to argue that the federal government should confine itself to the D, and only go outside the US when there's no other choice, say that.
Research is much more global these days, with lots of collaboration across borders.
In some fields, Australia has an inherent advantage. Far southern oceans, for example. Their interest in that is rather more "personal" than ours. Or their view of the southern sky. Northrup Grumman is spending $341M in federal funds for a facility for the Space Force's Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability in Australia. I'm sure Australia is getting a nice chunk of funding for signal-processing R&D out of that.
The US federal government is spending $201B on R&D in FY2025. The $600M that is being spent in Australia is 0.3% of that. The Australian federal government is spending $14.4B on R&D this fiscal year (quite comparable on a per capita basis). Would you be as surprised if you found out that $43M of that was being spent to fund work in US laboratories?
Trump and China are negotiating how to settle the issue of TSMC, the only company in the world that can fabricate integrated circuits at, for example, 2nm scale. Musk is representing the US tech bros' interests.
In mathematics, there's a thing called an "existence proof." Such a proof typically tells you that for a particular type of problem a solution exists. It tells you nothing about how to find the solution.
A judge saying, "Bailiff! Take Pam Bondi into custody and hold her for 30 days for contempt!" strikes me as something similar. The authority exists. It says nothing about how to actually take Ms. Bondi into custody if, eg, the US Marshals Service stands between her and the bailiff. Or (assuming success on the custody bit) where the bailiff could hold her and provide the legally required food/health care/etc.
Axios reports that at a pre-committee meeting with Republican Senators' staff members, Weldon was completely unprepared to answer questions and had no real idea of the range of responsibilities the CDC head has. Another source I saw suggested that there were a handful of Republican Senators (ie, >3) that found his anti-science responses in that meeting too extreme.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “From Freddie de Boer: Abundance, Up To A Point”
At least for transmission, my own perceptions are that it's more of a regional thing. The Transwest Express is under construction to deliver 3 GW of Wyoming wind power to the big switch yards at the Hoover Dam for sale into all of Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Southern California. Sunzia is under construction to deliver even more wind/solar from New Mexico to Phoenix, and a connector from Phoenix to Southern California is all permitted. Xcel in Colorado is building a large collector loop out on the prairie to make it easy to move wind/solar from out there to the Front Range. BPA is doing a $2B transmission upgrade to allow more renewable power from as far inland as Montana to get to Seattle/Portland.
All of those are Western Interconnect projects, of course, and have nothing to do with delivering power to the 75% of the US population that lives farther east than that.
On “From the NY Times: DOGE Savings “85 percent less than its objective””
Do those numbers put DOD and military spending done by other parts of the government in discretionary or non-discretionary?
On “From Freddie de Boer: Abundance, Up To A Point”
Texas, and to a somewhat lesser extent Florida, build because they can sprawl. Where are the desirable places where California and New York can sprawl?
After the fire burned a big chunk of Altadena early this year, there were numerous pictures showing isolated houses that survived while all the houses around them burned. A point made in the articles was that those were new homes built on tear-down sites; the surrounding homes that burned were all 50+ years old. For the discussion we're having here, the point is that Altadena was fully built out, right up the the steep brush-covered hillsides, 50 years ago. A bit of digging shows that it was built as a suburb at a population density right at 5,000 people per square mile 50 years ago. Dallas, TX has a current density of 3,400 per square mile. The Dallas suburbs are significantly less dense.
"
I think you're letting Texas and Florida overwhelm your opinion. A number of the other states in the South and Southwest have lost US House seats over the last three censuses. They're not building infrastructure in the face of a relatively shrinking population. The (now) Red states in the Midwest are struggling to hang on to population and aren't building infrastructure. Eg, Ohio has barely grown its population by 10% over the last 50 years. Their power grid sucks, but it's not possible to justify investment unless demand is growing. I did a good chunk of my formative years in Nebraska. They've "grown" themselves into the position that three counties now account for all of the net growth in the state's population. Just happens that those three are the most liberal in the state, relatively speaking.
On “The Emergency Ordinary Times Facelift”
I have made myself a terrible person to have opinions about appearance things like gray-on-gray or vertical text spacing or whatever. I have a piece of JavaScript that runs in my browser that I have built (over several years now). With the exception of a couple of my regular sites (eg, my bank), that JavaScript goes through every page I download and does its best to confine the text to my small set of chosen fonts and sizes, vertical and horizontal spacing, appropriate fg/bg contrast, etc. From my perspective, the new theme has moved things around on the page, but the text itself is still formatted in the same basic style. I also make judicious use of ad (and other suspicious content) blocking. Someone was looking over my shoulder some time back while I jumped through a few sites. They remarked on how my view of the web was much simpler and more consistent than what they got on their computer.
"
As I've mentioned before, WordPress has managed to recreate all of the worst aspects of Windows 95 from a developer's perspective. Those of us who are old enough remember installing Windows 95 updates and watching some subset of critical application software break. Install a new version of WordPress and watch assorted themes and/or plugins break. Will does really good work; I read Outside the Beltway regularly, and a few weeks ago they went completely offline for most of a week because a WordPress update broke other things so badly.
"
After a relatively long absence, their pattern has changed somewhat. Working on recognizing it...
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25”
As I've said before, my working assumption is that the goal is the North American Empire under Donald the First. If you're on the Donald's side, it doesn't matter how you justify the walls at this point, so long as the walls go up.
"
Isn't this the case where the DOJ's argument is "Neither we nor the Salvadorans can find him"? With a sort of implicit "No one's actually keeping any records"?
"
One China in theory, two in practice. For example, Taiwan has long had permission to buy almost leading edge US weapons systems that China would never get. Taiwan has purchased both Patriot and HIMARS missile systems. There is active discussion to let them buy Excalibur artillery rounds. Remember when F-35 deliveries were curtailed after it was discovered that some parts supplier had included Chinese magnets? The F-35 incorporates integrated circuits fabbed in Taiwan without any complaints.
On “Martin Niemöller, and Who First They Came For”
Among the things the administration doesn't understand is that every department is different. Different research interests across all of topic, framework, etc, shape things. And that pushes into which classes are taught, reading material, and all that. It's not like Calc I, where they're teaching language as much as anything, consistent across the needs of math majors, physics majors, engineering majors, history majors, and so on.
My perception is that the administration wants there to be a single narrative about Middle Eastern history and current politics. No room for variance. Exactly the opposite of what universities are supposed to be.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Pantherine Vandals”
Watching water fall out of the sky. It has been a dry last four months.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/24/25”
It is possible to break things beyond fixing in any stretch of time the Democrats are likely to get. Once the US pulls its military assets from Europe, they're not going back. Once Japan builds its own nukes, they're not going to give them up. He and the Supreme Court are going to drive lots of wedges between the states and the federal government, and between different groups of states. You don't rebuild NOAA or NIST in less than a decade.
"
Before his minions make the attempt. Plausible deniability, in the sense of "Well, if I had still been there it would have all gone smoothly."
On “Weekend Plans Post: Pantherine Vandals”
What I want is the Broadway version delivered to my home. Fixed camera view of the entire stage delivered to the big screen TV, theater-quality audio. Because I like stage musicals, and because I am unlikely to spend the money to go to NYC, or even to a national touring company closer to me.
On “Bowling — Balling Up the Score”
Back during 1978-1982 I was in a Bell Labs bowling league. After enough beer, Labs' bowlers picked arguments with the automatic scoring machines' addition. The machines were never wrong at adding. You did have to keep an eye on them because they occasionally got the pin count wrong.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
More realistically, the question would be, "Do you do battery chemistry research with BYD money?" And the answer is that of course they do.
"
The text of the required questionnaire has been posted. OMB's estimate is that it will take 30 minutes to complete. Looking at it, I'd put the time to do any sort of accurate response at days/weeks. Applied at a university level, none of the Australian schools will meet the requirements.
The Australian media seems to be moving towards describing this as an "America First" fallout -- Trump doesn't want to invest money in any other countries. My knee-jerk reaction would be, "US staff for all of NASA's network terminals in Australia are expelled. Ditto for DOD's deep space radar work. The US Navy's visiting privileges are revoked. We'll get back to you about whether we're going to return any equipment." But I'm not a nice person.
On “On Jethro Tull”
Matt Gaetz enters the conversation...
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
When you are a US researcher writing a proposal to study coral reef bleaching on a global scale, you collaborate with some Australian group because of the Great Barrier Reef.
When you are a US researcher doing climate change modeling and need to improve how you handle atmosphere/ocean interfaces in that part of the world, you collaborate with some Australian group.
When you are a US radio astronomer with a project that requires certain continuous observations, you collaborate with the Australians who build and operate world-class telescopes from a unique global position.
When you are a US researcher in toxicology looking at venom chemistry that leads in certain directions, you collaborate with some Australian experts on the poisonous species Down Under.
When you are a US battery chemistry researcher and the work leads you into certain reactions and the best group on that is in Adelaide, you collaborate with them (if you can get them interested).
The US federal government funds an incredible array of R&D topics. If you want to argue that the federal government should confine itself to the D, and only go outside the US when there's no other choice, say that.
"
Research is much more global these days, with lots of collaboration across borders.
In some fields, Australia has an inherent advantage. Far southern oceans, for example. Their interest in that is rather more "personal" than ours. Or their view of the southern sky. Northrup Grumman is spending $341M in federal funds for a facility for the Space Force's Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability in Australia. I'm sure Australia is getting a nice chunk of funding for signal-processing R&D out of that.
The US federal government is spending $201B on R&D in FY2025. The $600M that is being spent in Australia is 0.3% of that. The Australian federal government is spending $14.4B on R&D this fiscal year (quite comparable on a per capita basis). Would you be as surprised if you found out that $43M of that was being spent to fund work in US laboratories?
On “On Jethro Tull”
There are times when I wish the site had up-votes. This comment isn't worth a response, but definitely deserves an up-vote.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/17/25”
Trump and China are negotiating how to settle the issue of TSMC, the only company in the world that can fabricate integrated circuits at, for example, 2nm scale. Musk is representing the US tech bros' interests.
"
In mathematics, there's a thing called an "existence proof." Such a proof typically tells you that for a particular type of problem a solution exists. It tells you nothing about how to find the solution.
A judge saying, "Bailiff! Take Pam Bondi into custody and hold her for 30 days for contempt!" strikes me as something similar. The authority exists. It says nothing about how to actually take Ms. Bondi into custody if, eg, the US Marshals Service stands between her and the bailiff. Or (assuming success on the custody bit) where the bailiff could hold her and provide the legally required food/health care/etc.
On “Trump’s CDC Director Nominee Withdrawn Before Hearing”
Axios reports that at a pre-committee meeting with Republican Senators' staff members, Weldon was completely unprepared to answer questions and had no real idea of the range of responsibilities the CDC head has. Another source I saw suggested that there were a handful of Republican Senators (ie, >3) that found his anti-science responses in that meeting too extreme.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.