I put out a fairly long comment in response to Michael Cains 8:02 pm post that has disappeared, perhaps because it had a link to a German state website. I hope it could be recovered, because it’s quite interesting, even if I say so myself
The situation in Western Europe is probably worse. Felixtowne (UK) is so congested that some lines (Maersk among them) are simply dropping UK bound cargo into Rotterdam and let consignees sort it out (which, after Brexit, is not a trivial, load it on a truck, thing).
At least in Europe, the root cause, so far, is the lack of heavy and long haul truck drivers. The industry has been hemorrhaging jobs for decades now, with little new blood entering into it and retirees not being replaced. In Europe, Eastern European countries (Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, the Baltic’s) have been supplying the bulk of drivers in the last two decades. As these Eastern EU countries’ economies have improved, the number of drivers they supplied has fallen, being replaced by Ukrainians and other ex soviet nationals. Those, too, are not enough now, and several EU countries (Germany and Italy jump to mind) have established work and residence permit processes for non-EU truck drivers to move in https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/visa-residence/types/other/professional-drivers .
What COVID has brought to the fore is that our economic system does not have enough resilience. Resilience is expensive, involving investing real money today to avoid something bad that perhaps would never happen, and the first mover to implement it will lose out to its cheaper, less resilient, competitors.
A government mandate for resilience all along the supply chain would partially alleviate this prisoner’s dilemma, forcing all competitors to engage in this exercise, except that voters would punish a government who raised the cost of everything on the excuse of a pandemic, or global warming, or people not wanting to be a truck driver, or whatever.
Back to the original subject of the post, since I believe Buttigieg is a person of above average intelligence (full disclosure, I voted for him in the primaries) I think he understands the problem better than most. However, I don’t know how much can he do to change essentially the way we (the whole planet “we”) have been doing business for the better part of five or six decades, since the rise of Japan Inc., the JIT concept, offshoring, and the social -and economic- decline of blue collar jobs like long haul trucking.
This didn’t start in August, when Buttigieg’s children were born, or in January, when Biden was inaugurated, or in Feb 2020, when China went into lockdown. This is the progression of a myriad things that happened before, and continue to happen now. Things will change dramatically, in the next few decades. I trust the gods that future President Buttigieg will help with that transition.
If he runs next election he’ll get crushed. Only about 20% of the country is delusional, that’s not enough.
If it were only 20%, then why doesn’t the “sane GOP” just cut him loose ? It’s well know that McConnell, for instance, doesn’t like Trump. But he won’t do anything that can be interpreted as anti-Trump. Nor would anyone else. They almost kicked Liz Cheney from the party for saying that Trump lost the election, for fishing sake.
Either Dems represent 75% of the electorate, or the delusionals are way more than 20%, or the “sane GOP” has decided that Trumpism is the way of the future.
Because I do not see much daylight between the delusionals and the Republican Party as a whole
Pluto IS a planet, and will remain one at least until my last breath.😇
Seriously, I didn’t take it well 15 years ago, and I’m not over it. Since I was a kid vaguely interested in astronomy, Neptune, and Pluto were my favorite and I would read every scrap of information on both. I was thrilled to find out that Pluto had a moon, Charon. It made if part of tbe big boys league (take that, Mercury and Venus).
1. It’s a really good analysis of one of my favorite movies ever. If we ever met, we can talk about it for hours, so thank you for posting it.
2. Tycoon Brahe, MEDIEVAL astronomer!,! What the fish, dude? Brahe lived like 100 years after the end of the Middle Ages.
There’s a direct line from Brahe to Kepler to Newton. Brahe’s very accurate astronomical observations allowed Kepler to develop his laws, from which Newton was able to in turn develop the mathematical model of universal gravitation. In other words, Newton’s universal gravitation were the mathematical explanation of Brahe’s decades old observations
Because I worked at an energy firm where "everything happened". that happened too. We were sued by our [former] lawyers while the trial was still ongoing.
I was personally deposed by the lawyers of our former lawyers in this process, since I was a witness of the fallout, a story that's probably worthy or its own blog post [It included me and my inside counsel trying to sneak out of the lawyers' offices and being confronted (i.e. screamed at) by the Partner with the name in the door at the elevator lobby (our sneak out was unsuccessful)].
For those curious, we won on the underlying trial, and the judge threw out (JNOVed) the verdict. Everything happened at that company.
It very much sounds like the "open the mines again" discussion we had 4-plus years ago.
But the mines won't open again.
Options available for politicians/political parties are:
1- Propose a mechanism to mitigate the impact of the [mines/factories] closure on the population, via relocation. subsidies, welfare, etc. We can discuss the proper mix of all these tools.
2- Reduce corporate taxes and environmental/health and safety regulations, and hope that equity owners will feel obliged to share part of the benefits with labor (who will, of course carry the burden of the pared down regulations). This is old style Reaganism/Ryanism.
3- Promise that the mines/factories will reopen once the evil people that are responsible for the closure (environmentalists, liberal elites, country betraying globalists, the Chinese, etc.) are vanquished.
There's one party already doing (1), and is not the GOP. It seems to me that's there another party hell bent doing (3), and shows absolutely no interest in (1). I don't see anyone pushing for (2)
The question to Dennis and his ilk (similar to Jaybird's above) is as follows:
Why doesn't anyone in the GOP want to enter the (1) space? And, if (1) is unacceptable to Republicans (why????) and (2) is going the way of the dodo, what would (4) look like?
I loved, loved, loved, the first Paddington movie. It’s a personal story I’ll share with your permission.
I didn’t know Paddington from Adam, but my spouse is from Belfast and grew with it.He said we had to watch it, that he really wanted me to see it. So he-arranged our Paddington viewing while in a visit to London. We went to a suburban movie house in mid afternoon on a weekday, and he insisted on going to the balcony, where we were alone . Thank goodness for that. Most of tbe other patrons were actually small children with their mothers.
Such a beautiful, funny movie, We laughed so, so, so much. At some point I thought I would literally fall off the seat. I would have been embarrassed to laugh that much in front of others. He pointed out to me the details a reader of the books would know, so I could experience the movie fully with him. It was, in a way, a perfect date. Years later, we still remember it as a day Paddington made perfect (hey, like in the movies).
We watched Paddington 2 at home on video, and though we found it good, neither of us could get past our memories of P1, so we didn’t like it as much. I confess I hated the beginning of the prison segment, but, spoiler alert, the prison segment ends well.
Thanks for writing this. It made my heart warm again.
As it happened, the day I had my second (Pfizer) shot, I also went out to celebrate with a friend, and drank substantially above my normal level.
The next day, I woke up with what it was either a mild hangover, or a mild vaccine reaction. It was completely gone by 6 pm. I normally joke that it had to be the vaccine, since it couldn't be the top shelf scotch.
But when I am alone with my thoughts, I do believe I actually had a hangover
And in choosing George elector of Hanover they skipped close to 50 Catholic more senior dynasts. The true King of the UK is the (would be) King of Bavaria, Franz of Wittelsbach, Francis Ii of England and Scotland
Shakespeare’s spirit raising speeches notwithstanding, the English Kings not only lost the Hundred Year War, but lost about half of the lands they controlled before declaring war on France
I got my second Pfizer shot on Friday afternoon. The side effects of the second dose were very mild. Nothing on Friday afternoon, On Saturday I had a SLIGHT flu-like discomfort (some joint pain, like when you have a cold, I had some headache, very mild, and no fever). On Sunday I woke up feeling perfectly fine and went biking for three hours.
Please note that on Friday night I had a work related celebration dinner, including two Old Fashioned, wine, and a vodka shot (the latter ordered behind my back, I'll point out).
Any relationship between the Old Fashioned and the mild Saturday malaise is entirely Pfizer's fault.
My college class WhatsApp chat group was discussing vaccine reactions yesterday. We are mostly high 50s (a couple of low 60s) y.o., and distributed all over the world, mostly across Europe, with some USA, LatAm, and, interesting for comparison, Israel.
The anecdotal consensus was:
If you hadn’t had a previous COVID infection
1. First shot had no symptoms in Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines , very, very, very mild ones in Moderna.
2. Mild symptoms in Pfizer’s second shot, similar to Modena’s first. Rough 2-3 days of high fever nausea and headaches in Moderna’s. Probably attributable to the difference (3 vs 5 weeks of additional antibodies building) between the two. No one knew of an AZ second shot.
If you had had COVID, it was bad from the first shot. The more recent the infection, the worse the reaction. Again, 3-4 days, perhaps a week, in which you felt like you were going through Covid again. This applied to asymptomatic cases too. Even if you didn’t have symptoms before, you are up for a rough week.
I had my first Pfizer shot last Friday. A colleague had a Moderna one two days before that. He got a big sore lump in his arm, like a bad insect bite. I had nothing.
I cannot comment much on the actual state of the electrical infrastructure in the USA since I am mostly involved in international markets - I can speak with more accuracy about power into Beijing (sucks big time - massive issues) than power into Denver. having said that, I suspect it is at least as bad as our road infrastructure, and probably worse. Our friend Michael Cain knows a helluva lot more than me about the physical infrastructure itself.
Having said that, I have been given a soap box by you, and I'm not stepping off it, yet.
We have a political problem in USA, or at least in parts of it, that blows my mind compared to places not like Germany, but like El Salvador, and it is the regulatory capture by utilities.
For most utilities worldwide, the regulator responds to customers (or at least to politicians that respond to customers). The utility is a villain, kept in check by the regulator.
For instance:
Tariffs are built based on an ideally economically adapted grid, that is the right size, and not bigger, calculated by the regulator based on a statistical sampling of hundreds of utilities internationally, that will provide the required level of quality service. Should the utility fail their quality targets, it is heavily penalized, with the penalties applied as tariff rebates (a couple of dollars for each customer, but adding to millions to the utility. Should they over invest to make sure they meet their goals, the excess capital costs are not allowed to be part of the tariff base and generate no return. Same principle for ongoing O&M expenditures.
Likewise, utilities have to contract just the right amount of energy, not less -brown outs are penalized at punitive levels-, and not more, extra energy purchased above a thin security margin of 5% or so cannot b e transferred to the customer, the utility buying or selling any difference at their risk in the spot market.
In the USA, utilities present their investment and operations plan to technically weak regulators, and, if approved, they get a guaranteed return on it. Utilities have an incentive to over invest because the regulator will not penalize unnecessary investments. Likewise, regulators, having approved the investment/operations plan, somehow "own it". If investments prove insufficient (hurricanes, ice storms, fires) well, the utility built the approved plan, so it is not the utilities' fault it was not a good plan. Why didn't the regulator say something?
Recent (decades old :-) ) deregulation has at least decoupled the energy and the wires businesses, but most energy plans still pass on too much risk to customers that are not savvy enough to chose. Hey, I am savvy enough, I review our own tariffs, and I can't find enough publicly available information to be sure what and how I am being charged for here in Texas. But utilities and the Public Utilities Commission have already warned Texans to expect to be hit by massive electricity bills for February given wholesale energy prices in the 1,000s US$/MWh.
Separately, but not less important, the multiple government layers add enormous complexity and veto points to building anything, be it new generation or more wires.
In my ideal world, just as there is no Kansas accounting that is different from Oregon accounting, or there's no Tennessee medicine different from Connecticut medicine, and therefore there shouldn't be Kansas Accounting boards or Connecticut Medical Boards, there shouldn't be a myriad different utility regulations. A federal transparent regulation, implemented by state regulatory agencies that refer only to the same Federal guidelines, and relay on the same environmental and approval criteria would make it a more transparent system.
The argument for the states seems to be that they are closer to the local citizen, but that's not really true, not today. We live in a centralized information market, where we all receive the same information, centered around DC/NYC/CA and little more. The general public -you and me- does not have the bandwidth to individually follow what is happening in the Helena, Tallahassee, Boston or Santa Fe utilities commission offices, health offices, transportation offices, environmental offices, etc. The public has to -even if they don't want to- 'have to, again, rely in just a handful of specialists in the different areas, the Faucis of their different specialties. And these specialists themselves do not have the capability to follow the 50 states different regulations. They can only follow Federal regulations, and a couple more.
The result is that those regulators hiding in plain sight in their offices Des Moines, Pierre, Sacramento, or Seattle, and their work, are known only by those who they are supposed to be regulated by them. Regulatory capture in those circumstances, helped by an appropriate contribution to unknown state legislators (show of hands if you know who is your state senator and representative, what they have proposed/voted for in the state assembly, and who are their donors) with oversight power over thse regulators.
I'll step off the soap box now, because mu next Zoon conference is about to start :-)
As many of you know, I both live in Houston and have worked, and still do work, for the power and distribution utilities business, with experience in more than 20 countries, so let me pitch in my two cents:
As already pointed above, wind generation normally works in cold weather: Scandinavia, the North Sea, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas and Antarctica are places where wind turbines operate normally without any problem. They have to be winterized, though, which turbine manufacturers sell as an option -like leather seats, but for wind turbines. Though the Cold weather package is not terribly expensive compared to the cost of a turbine, it is not nothing, so a significant portion of Texas wind turbines, particularly those close to the Gulf, are not winterized. Our company has not winterized our turbines in California, based on my recommendation.
The main problem with respect to generation this week has been the failure of natural gas no ramp up. This has had two causes: technical issues (frozen fuel systems in the plants), and commercial issues (lack of gas to purchase).
The former problem, frozen fuel supply systems is the same winterization problem discussed above. fuel valves freeze and cannot be open, gearboxes freeze, liquid fuel generators cannot reach ignition temperatures. Same issue, no winterization package because it is not expected to be used.
To understand second issue, the gas commercial availability you have to understand that Texas electricity load profile is very different in the summer than in the winter. Texas electricity is used mainly to cool the state in August, where we reach the peak demand and frequently experience blackouts. Our very mild winters (Houston rarely gets below 32, and almost never below 25) do not generate an equivalent demand. So commercially, thermal generators make (or should make) arrangements to secure duel supply in the summer, when all hands on deck are called to generate, but let those firm commitments lapse in the winter, when, most gas fired plants do not run at all. Conversely, states up north have relatively milder summers but very cold winters, and all the available gas is shipped to the North: the Lake states, Mid Atlantic, PJN and New England.
However, electricity demand on Monday in Texas was similar to that registered in August. In itself that's an enormous increase in demand. Whether this had been forecasted or not by ERCOT (the Texas System Operator) I don't know, but I doubt they did.
When ERCOT started calling thermal generation on line on Monday it was faced with both technical failures to start and lack of gas. The supposed rolling blackouts that ERCOT had coordinated with counties, cities, and Emergency Managements Systems all across the state suddenly turned into permeant outages. ERCOT and the utilities did not have enough operational generation flexibility to start turning the power on and off as required. Those that had been shut off stayed off (I was lucky, I lost power only on Wednesday, when the situation was slightly better controlled). By the time the system was "balanced", only 35-40% of the load could be served. There was no generation available to cover anything more . We stayed like that for more than 48 hours.
On Wednesday we had a weather respite, temperatures rose and some more thermal generation could be bought on line. Stronger than expected wind also increased wind output above what winterized generators had forecasted, easing the pain marginally. The gas supply problems continued until Wednesday afternoon when governor Abbot forbade with immediate effect any gas exports from the state (there goes the sanctity of private contracts out the window). By 6 pm I, and 60% of the state, had power. By midnight Thursday, 90% of the state had power. Suddenly, with the stroke of a pen, the power issue was solved in less than 12 hours just by making enough gas available to generators . Mind you, Houston is still below freezing as I write this.
Lots of ink (of pixels??) has been used to explain that a once in a lifetime (at least for those born after 2011, the last time this was an issue) winter weeklong blackout is a reasonable price to pay for cheap energy, because generators (are supposed to) pass to customers the savings associated with not winterizing equipment that will not operate in winter, or not signing up for gas contracts that will not be used.
When pundits say that a blackout is a reasonable price to pay for savings in capital or operating costs, they are looking this from the point of view of the generator. These savings are balanced with loss of energy sales revenue. That's how I saw it when ruling out cold weather packages in California.
But blackouts are not cost free events to customers. Commercial customers lose revenue but not being able to operate. Large industrial batch industrial operations might lose millions of dollars with just a short interruption. A smelter that loses power for hours will see their furnaces filled in with solid metal that will be almost impossible to remove. Water and sewage service was interrupted in all major cities. Cellphone data coverage was lost, even if you could charge your phone in your car.
So pundits are ignoring this massive externality that well designed regulatory systems, like Guatemala's or Colombia's (two countries with excellent, very complete, regulatory frameworks) called the cost of undelivered energy, or rationing costs. A properly designed regulation compensates the customers for the energy not delivered, not at the "price" they would have paid for that energy, but at a value high enough to mitigate their real damages. Twenty to fifty times the tariff price would be
And individual customers are not only cold and without internet. People that require critical medical equipment (respirators, dialysis) can die, no, have died. Scores have also died in the state of carbon monoxide poisoning trying to heat up their houses (Galveston county required a mobile morgue to store the dead bodies collected). Who pays for the lives lost in a blackout whose effects were foreseeable, and foreseen in countless reports after the 2011 freeze/blackouts?
Lastly, the areas of Texas outside of ERCOT, El Paso (electrically part of the NM grid), and Beaumont (tied to LA's) had barely any power interruptions. I'm fairly sure that customers there are perfectly nappy of paying a couple cents a month to cover the risk of dying in the next decennial once in a lifetime power outage
I'm going to hijack this thread from the discussion that murder attempts do not count if the attempters are klutz that don't know the first ting about trying to murder vice-presidents and members of Congress, into a discussion about Romney.
Between Romneycare and the junior senator from Utah's proposal for child benefits there's a long stretch of Romney the flipflopper, eager to say anything that he though could help him win Republican votes, starting by calling himself as "severely conservative"
The number of issues Romney flipflopped about is enormous -and there's a Wikipedia page all about them ( htt ps://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Mitt_Romney ) if you have hours to waste. But his newfound interest in his legacy, instead of in accolades from Fox News, is very recently found, or a recent flopflipping.
Romney is not so much quitting the party as he was booted out of it by Donald Trump in 2017 . After writing a scathing op-ed in 2016 against Trump, no amount of wining, dining, and begging for forgiveness got him back -unlike Cruz- into those allowed to fawn and praise the Glorious Leader and bask in his greatness.
But then, much as he tries, Romney was never a good fliflopper.
I don't know what Romney really thinks about healthcare or child care, but I won't be surprised to see Romney walk back every single word of his newfound ideas if he thinks it will help him get one more vote. I guess Romney's legacy will be whatever idea he supported five minutes before he draws his last breath. Plenty of time for him to be for and against child welfare many times
I'm going to hijack this thread from the discussion that murder attempts do not count if the attempters are klutz that don't know the first ting about trying to murder vice-presidents and members of Congress, into a discussion about Romney.
Between Romneycare and the junior senator from Utah's proposal for child benefits there's a long stretch of Romney the flipflopper, eager to say anything that he though could help him win Republican votes, starting by calling himself as "severely conservative"
The number of issues Romney flipflopped about is enormous -and there's a Wikipedia page all about them ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Mitt_Romney ) if you have hours to waste. But his newfound interest in his legacy, instead of in accolades from Fox News, is very recently found, or a recent flopflipping.
Romney is not so much quitting the party as he was booted out of it by Donald Trump in 2017 . After writing a scathing op-ed in 2016 against Trump, no amount of wining, dining, and begging for forgiveness got him back -unlike Cruz- into those allowed to fawn and praise the Glorious Leader and bask in his greatness. But then, much as he tries, Romney was never a good fliflopper.
I don't know what Romney really thinks about healthcare or child care, but I won't be surprised to see Romney walk back every single word of his newfound ideas if he thinks it will help him get one more vote. I guess Romney's legacy will be whatever idea he supported five minutes before he draws his last breath. Plenty of time for him to be for and against child welfare many times
Great minds think alike - I do exactly the same, but use song lyrics, and a number that means something to me but to no one else (like my friend growing up -i.e. 35 years ago that I haven't seen since the mid 80s- birthday)
And I use hints in my phone to remember like "Holophernes" is a key that I'm using the Hey Jude lyrics (Jude=Judith), and Alexander is a key for I'm using my friend's birthday
And, nevertheless, there is a pic of Loeffler and with Chester Doles, a former KKK leader who runs the white supremacist American Patriots USA. In 1993, Doles nearly beat a Black man to death. In 2017, he marched in Charlottesville.
She might not have looked for him, but definitely he looked for her
I recall a Rod Dreher post from several years ago about when Larycia Hawkins had to step down from Wheaton College for saying that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
The majority of his small-o orthodox commenters were saying that absolutely not. Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God. The God of Islam is a different God.
Mind you,they were not arguing that Muslims were worshiping the one true God differently. They were not even arguing that they were worshipping God wrongly or defectively.
They were arguing that Muslims were worshipping a completely different God that exists separately. For starters, Christian God has three persons while Muslim God has only one: “see, totally different Gods, no way it’s the same one.”
I guess the 1st Commandment is optional as long as you have the correct understanding about gays that will make you a Dreher small-o orthodox
I think the concept that it's missing here is laches, the unreasonable delay in making an assertion or claim, such as asserting a right, claiming a privilege, or making an application for redress, which may result in refusal.
Challenges need to be made in a timely fashion. You cannot wait until you find out whether the changed rule favors or disfavors you to claim it's unconstitutional (a claim you won't make if the rule change ends favoring you)
That's why the minority in the PA case said they would have taken the case, but only rule on the constitutionality of it prospectively, for the next election.
In addition, you cannot claim that certain types of votes are unconstitutional under PA law, but not others. The constitutional claim is not just with respect to the presidential votes. If the remedy is to toss out votes, you have to toss out all votes because they all have the same constitutional defect. Votes for president, for senator, for representative, for dog catcher. They all have the same problem.
The fact that the requested remedy is only to toss out the presidential votes, but leave the remainder in place is another proof of bad faith
The problem is that, Latinx is a very special generic word created just for the purpose of encompassing Latinos of different genders.
It doesn't solve the "collective masculine" issue. A group of many gendered doctors is a group of "doctores", just like a group exclusively male doctors. Likewise "cachorros" is a litter of mixed male and female puppies, or a litter of only male puppies. (*)
Unless we start speaking of doctorx or cachorrx, we haven't done really anything to solve the collective masculine noun issue in Spanish. It is very unlikely Latinx is going to get incorporated into Spanish, except as a frowned upon anglicism.
(*) There has been initiatives to replace the collective masculine in Spanish with actually mentioning both genders. Hence "doctores y doctoras" (or "cachorros y cachorras"). Besides being clumsy and long winded, it also sounds demeaning of women, like they have to be added separately and specifically, because otherwise it would be assumed they are excluded -unless you specify that there are doctoras around, it s to be assumed only men can be doctors.
Chávez was a big proponent of the naming both genders school, and all Venezuelan legislation since goes out of its way to specify both genders at every occasion. Imagine an electoral code that said:
"Male voters and female voters should show their voting registration certificate to the male election clerk or the female election clerk before going to the voting booth. Voting registration certificates are issued by the state's male Secretary of State or female Secretary of State"
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Parsing Out Pete Buttigieg, Parenting And Otherwise”
I put out a fairly long comment in response to Michael Cains 8:02 pm post that has disappeared, perhaps because it had a link to a German state website. I hope it could be recovered, because it’s quite interesting, even if I say so myself
"
The situation in Western Europe is probably worse. Felixtowne (UK) is so congested that some lines (Maersk among them) are simply dropping UK bound cargo into Rotterdam and let consignees sort it out (which, after Brexit, is not a trivial, load it on a truck, thing).
At least in Europe, the root cause, so far, is the lack of heavy and long haul truck drivers. The industry has been hemorrhaging jobs for decades now, with little new blood entering into it and retirees not being replaced. In Europe, Eastern European countries (Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, the Baltic’s) have been supplying the bulk of drivers in the last two decades. As these Eastern EU countries’ economies have improved, the number of drivers they supplied has fallen, being replaced by Ukrainians and other ex soviet nationals. Those, too, are not enough now, and several EU countries (Germany and Italy jump to mind) have established work and residence permit processes for non-EU truck drivers to move in https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/visa-residence/types/other/professional-drivers .
What COVID has brought to the fore is that our economic system does not have enough resilience. Resilience is expensive, involving investing real money today to avoid something bad that perhaps would never happen, and the first mover to implement it will lose out to its cheaper, less resilient, competitors.
A government mandate for resilience all along the supply chain would partially alleviate this prisoner’s dilemma, forcing all competitors to engage in this exercise, except that voters would punish a government who raised the cost of everything on the excuse of a pandemic, or global warming, or people not wanting to be a truck driver, or whatever.
Back to the original subject of the post, since I believe Buttigieg is a person of above average intelligence (full disclosure, I voted for him in the primaries) I think he understands the problem better than most. However, I don’t know how much can he do to change essentially the way we (the whole planet “we”) have been doing business for the better part of five or six decades, since the rise of Japan Inc., the JIT concept, offshoring, and the social -and economic- decline of blue collar jobs like long haul trucking.
This didn’t start in August, when Buttigieg’s children were born, or in January, when Biden was inaugurated, or in Feb 2020, when China went into lockdown. This is the progression of a myriad things that happened before, and continue to happen now. Things will change dramatically, in the next few decades. I trust the gods that future President Buttigieg will help with that transition.
On “Video Throughput: Doctor Who, or Why Space Telescopes are Smarter Than Giant Slugs”
The two smallest planets in our Solar System are Mercury and Pluto
Welcome to the good side! We have cookies
PLANET PLUTO ROCKS!!
On “The Cyber Ninjas Clown Car Empties”
If he runs next election he’ll get crushed. Only about 20% of the country is delusional, that’s not enough.
If it were only 20%, then why doesn’t the “sane GOP” just cut him loose ? It’s well know that McConnell, for instance, doesn’t like Trump. But he won’t do anything that can be interpreted as anti-Trump. Nor would anyone else. They almost kicked Liz Cheney from the party for saying that Trump lost the election, for fishing sake.
Either Dems represent 75% of the electorate, or the delusionals are way more than 20%, or the “sane GOP” has decided that Trumpism is the way of the future.
Because I do not see much daylight between the delusionals and the Republican Party as a whole
On “Video Throughput: Pluto Edition”
Pluto IS a planet, and will remain one at least until my last breath.😇
Seriously, I didn’t take it well 15 years ago, and I’m not over it. Since I was a kid vaguely interested in astronomy, Neptune, and Pluto were my favorite and I would read every scrap of information on both. I was thrilled to find out that Pluto had a moon, Charon. It made if part of tbe big boys league (take that, Mercury and Venus).
On “Video Throughout: An Astronomer Reacts to 2001: A Space Odyssey”
Two things
1. It’s a really good analysis of one of my favorite movies ever. If we ever met, we can talk about it for hours, so thank you for posting it.
2. Tycoon Brahe, MEDIEVAL astronomer!,! What the fish, dude? Brahe lived like 100 years after the end of the Middle Ages.
There’s a direct line from Brahe to Kepler to Newton. Brahe’s very accurate astronomical observations allowed Kepler to develop his laws, from which Newton was able to in turn develop the mathematical model of universal gravitation. In other words, Newton’s universal gravitation were the mathematical explanation of Brahe’s decades old observations
On “Wednesday Writs: Michael Avenatti Chalks Up a W Edition”
WW3
Because I worked at an energy firm where "everything happened". that happened too. We were sued by our [former] lawyers while the trial was still ongoing.
I was personally deposed by the lawyers of our former lawyers in this process, since I was a witness of the fallout, a story that's probably worthy or its own blog post [It included me and my inside counsel trying to sneak out of the lawyers' offices and being confronted (i.e. screamed at) by the Partner with the name in the door at the elevator lobby (our sneak out was unsuccessful)].
For those curious, we won on the underlying trial, and the judge threw out (JNOVed) the verdict. Everything happened at that company.
On “From GOP to Grand New Party: Starting A New Party With An Old Name”
It very much sounds like the "open the mines again" discussion we had 4-plus years ago.
But the mines won't open again.
Options available for politicians/political parties are:
1- Propose a mechanism to mitigate the impact of the [mines/factories] closure on the population, via relocation. subsidies, welfare, etc. We can discuss the proper mix of all these tools.
2- Reduce corporate taxes and environmental/health and safety regulations, and hope that equity owners will feel obliged to share part of the benefits with labor (who will, of course carry the burden of the pared down regulations). This is old style Reaganism/Ryanism.
3- Promise that the mines/factories will reopen once the evil people that are responsible for the closure (environmentalists, liberal elites, country betraying globalists, the Chinese, etc.) are vanquished.
There's one party already doing (1), and is not the GOP. It seems to me that's there another party hell bent doing (3), and shows absolutely no interest in (1). I don't see anyone pushing for (2)
The question to Dennis and his ilk (similar to Jaybird's above) is as follows:
Why doesn't anyone in the GOP want to enter the (1) space? And, if (1) is unacceptable to Republicans (why????) and (2) is going the way of the dodo, what would (4) look like?
On “Give Joe Biden Credit for Withdrawing from Afghanistan”
If you travel more than once every presidential term, get TSA preapproved. Shoes stay, laptop stays, it’s a breeze.
On “Citizen Paddington: Why Some Consider The Lovable Bear’s Films Among The Greatest Ever”
I loved, loved, loved, the first Paddington movie. It’s a personal story I’ll share with your permission.
I didn’t know Paddington from Adam, but my spouse is from Belfast and grew with it.He said we had to watch it, that he really wanted me to see it. So he-arranged our Paddington viewing while in a visit to London. We went to a suburban movie house in mid afternoon on a weekday, and he insisted on going to the balcony, where we were alone . Thank goodness for that. Most of tbe other patrons were actually small children with their mothers.
Such a beautiful, funny movie, We laughed so, so, so much. At some point I thought I would literally fall off the seat. I would have been embarrassed to laugh that much in front of others. He pointed out to me the details a reader of the books would know, so I could experience the movie fully with him. It was, in a way, a perfect date. Years later, we still remember it as a day Paddington made perfect (hey, like in the movies).
We watched Paddington 2 at home on video, and though we found it good, neither of us could get past our memories of P1, so we didn’t like it as much. I confess I hated the beginning of the prison segment, but, spoiler alert, the prison segment ends well.
Thanks for writing this. It made my heart warm again.
On “Vaccination Rates Slow to A Crawl, Worrying Officials”
As it happened, the day I had my second (Pfizer) shot, I also went out to celebrate with a friend, and drank substantially above my normal level.
The next day, I woke up with what it was either a mild hangover, or a mild vaccine reaction. It was completely gone by 6 pm. I normally joke that it had to be the vaccine, since it couldn't be the top shelf scotch.
But when I am alone with my thoughts, I do believe I actually had a hangover
On “Prince Philip Dead at 99”
And in choosing George elector of Hanover they skipped close to 50 Catholic more senior dynasts. The true King of the UK is the (would be) King of Bavaria, Franz of Wittelsbach, Francis Ii of England and Scotland
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_succession
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Shakespeare’s spirit raising speeches notwithstanding, the English Kings not only lost the Hundred Year War, but lost about half of the lands they controlled before declaring war on France
On “Thursday Throughput: COVID Vaccine Side Effects Edition”
I got my second Pfizer shot on Friday afternoon. The side effects of the second dose were very mild. Nothing on Friday afternoon, On Saturday I had a SLIGHT flu-like discomfort (some joint pain, like when you have a cold, I had some headache, very mild, and no fever). On Sunday I woke up feeling perfectly fine and went biking for three hours.
Please note that on Friday night I had a work related celebration dinner, including two Old Fashioned, wine, and a vodka shot (the latter ordered behind my back, I'll point out).
Any relationship between the Old Fashioned and the mild Saturday malaise is entirely Pfizer's fault.
On “Weekend Plans Post: The Home Stretch?”
My college class WhatsApp chat group was discussing vaccine reactions yesterday. We are mostly high 50s (a couple of low 60s) y.o., and distributed all over the world, mostly across Europe, with some USA, LatAm, and, interesting for comparison, Israel.
The anecdotal consensus was:
If you hadn’t had a previous COVID infection
1. First shot had no symptoms in Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines , very, very, very mild ones in Moderna.
2. Mild symptoms in Pfizer’s second shot, similar to Modena’s first. Rough 2-3 days of high fever nausea and headaches in Moderna’s. Probably attributable to the difference (3 vs 5 weeks of additional antibodies building) between the two. No one knew of an AZ second shot.
If you had had COVID, it was bad from the first shot. The more recent the infection, the worse the reaction. Again, 3-4 days, perhaps a week, in which you felt like you were going through Covid again. This applied to asymptomatic cases too. Even if you didn’t have symptoms before, you are up for a rough week.
I had my first Pfizer shot last Friday. A colleague had a Moderna one two days before that. He got a big sore lump in his arm, like a bad insect bite. I had nothing.
On “Thursday Throughput: Texas Power Outages Edition”
Thanks to all!!! You are very kind
I cannot comment much on the actual state of the electrical infrastructure in the USA since I am mostly involved in international markets - I can speak with more accuracy about power into Beijing (sucks big time - massive issues) than power into Denver. having said that, I suspect it is at least as bad as our road infrastructure, and probably worse. Our friend Michael Cain knows a helluva lot more than me about the physical infrastructure itself.
Having said that, I have been given a soap box by you, and I'm not stepping off it, yet.
We have a political problem in USA, or at least in parts of it, that blows my mind compared to places not like Germany, but like El Salvador, and it is the regulatory capture by utilities.
For most utilities worldwide, the regulator responds to customers (or at least to politicians that respond to customers). The utility is a villain, kept in check by the regulator.
For instance:
Tariffs are built based on an ideally economically adapted grid, that is the right size, and not bigger, calculated by the regulator based on a statistical sampling of hundreds of utilities internationally, that will provide the required level of quality service. Should the utility fail their quality targets, it is heavily penalized, with the penalties applied as tariff rebates (a couple of dollars for each customer, but adding to millions to the utility. Should they over invest to make sure they meet their goals, the excess capital costs are not allowed to be part of the tariff base and generate no return. Same principle for ongoing O&M expenditures.
Likewise, utilities have to contract just the right amount of energy, not less -brown outs are penalized at punitive levels-, and not more, extra energy purchased above a thin security margin of 5% or so cannot b e transferred to the customer, the utility buying or selling any difference at their risk in the spot market.
In the USA, utilities present their investment and operations plan to technically weak regulators, and, if approved, they get a guaranteed return on it. Utilities have an incentive to over invest because the regulator will not penalize unnecessary investments. Likewise, regulators, having approved the investment/operations plan, somehow "own it". If investments prove insufficient (hurricanes, ice storms, fires) well, the utility built the approved plan, so it is not the utilities' fault it was not a good plan. Why didn't the regulator say something?
Recent (decades old :-) ) deregulation has at least decoupled the energy and the wires businesses, but most energy plans still pass on too much risk to customers that are not savvy enough to chose. Hey, I am savvy enough, I review our own tariffs, and I can't find enough publicly available information to be sure what and how I am being charged for here in Texas. But utilities and the Public Utilities Commission have already warned Texans to expect to be hit by massive electricity bills for February given wholesale energy prices in the 1,000s US$/MWh.
Separately, but not less important, the multiple government layers add enormous complexity and veto points to building anything, be it new generation or more wires.
In my ideal world, just as there is no Kansas accounting that is different from Oregon accounting, or there's no Tennessee medicine different from Connecticut medicine, and therefore there shouldn't be Kansas Accounting boards or Connecticut Medical Boards, there shouldn't be a myriad different utility regulations. A federal transparent regulation, implemented by state regulatory agencies that refer only to the same Federal guidelines, and relay on the same environmental and approval criteria would make it a more transparent system.
The argument for the states seems to be that they are closer to the local citizen, but that's not really true, not today. We live in a centralized information market, where we all receive the same information, centered around DC/NYC/CA and little more. The general public -you and me- does not have the bandwidth to individually follow what is happening in the Helena, Tallahassee, Boston or Santa Fe utilities commission offices, health offices, transportation offices, environmental offices, etc. The public has to -even if they don't want to- 'have to, again, rely in just a handful of specialists in the different areas, the Faucis of their different specialties. And these specialists themselves do not have the capability to follow the 50 states different regulations. They can only follow Federal regulations, and a couple more.
The result is that those regulators hiding in plain sight in their offices Des Moines, Pierre, Sacramento, or Seattle, and their work, are known only by those who they are supposed to be regulated by them. Regulatory capture in those circumstances, helped by an appropriate contribution to unknown state legislators (show of hands if you know who is your state senator and representative, what they have proposed/voted for in the state assembly, and who are their donors) with oversight power over thse regulators.
I'll step off the soap box now, because mu next Zoon conference is about to start :-)
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ThTh1
As many of you know, I both live in Houston and have worked, and still do work, for the power and distribution utilities business, with experience in more than 20 countries, so let me pitch in my two cents:
As already pointed above, wind generation normally works in cold weather: Scandinavia, the North Sea, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas and Antarctica are places where wind turbines operate normally without any problem. They have to be winterized, though, which turbine manufacturers sell as an option -like leather seats, but for wind turbines. Though the Cold weather package is not terribly expensive compared to the cost of a turbine, it is not nothing, so a significant portion of Texas wind turbines, particularly those close to the Gulf, are not winterized. Our company has not winterized our turbines in California, based on my recommendation.
The main problem with respect to generation this week has been the failure of natural gas no ramp up. This has had two causes: technical issues (frozen fuel systems in the plants), and commercial issues (lack of gas to purchase).
The former problem, frozen fuel supply systems is the same winterization problem discussed above. fuel valves freeze and cannot be open, gearboxes freeze, liquid fuel generators cannot reach ignition temperatures. Same issue, no winterization package because it is not expected to be used.
To understand second issue, the gas commercial availability you have to understand that Texas electricity load profile is very different in the summer than in the winter. Texas electricity is used mainly to cool the state in August, where we reach the peak demand and frequently experience blackouts. Our very mild winters (Houston rarely gets below 32, and almost never below 25) do not generate an equivalent demand. So commercially, thermal generators make (or should make) arrangements to secure duel supply in the summer, when all hands on deck are called to generate, but let those firm commitments lapse in the winter, when, most gas fired plants do not run at all. Conversely, states up north have relatively milder summers but very cold winters, and all the available gas is shipped to the North: the Lake states, Mid Atlantic, PJN and New England.
However, electricity demand on Monday in Texas was similar to that registered in August. In itself that's an enormous increase in demand. Whether this had been forecasted or not by ERCOT (the Texas System Operator) I don't know, but I doubt they did.
When ERCOT started calling thermal generation on line on Monday it was faced with both technical failures to start and lack of gas. The supposed rolling blackouts that ERCOT had coordinated with counties, cities, and Emergency Managements Systems all across the state suddenly turned into permeant outages. ERCOT and the utilities did not have enough operational generation flexibility to start turning the power on and off as required. Those that had been shut off stayed off (I was lucky, I lost power only on Wednesday, when the situation was slightly better controlled). By the time the system was "balanced", only 35-40% of the load could be served. There was no generation available to cover anything more . We stayed like that for more than 48 hours.
On Wednesday we had a weather respite, temperatures rose and some more thermal generation could be bought on line. Stronger than expected wind also increased wind output above what winterized generators had forecasted, easing the pain marginally. The gas supply problems continued until Wednesday afternoon when governor Abbot forbade with immediate effect any gas exports from the state (there goes the sanctity of private contracts out the window). By 6 pm I, and 60% of the state, had power. By midnight Thursday, 90% of the state had power. Suddenly, with the stroke of a pen, the power issue was solved in less than 12 hours just by making enough gas available to generators . Mind you, Houston is still below freezing as I write this.
Lots of ink (of pixels??) has been used to explain that a once in a lifetime (at least for those born after 2011, the last time this was an issue) winter weeklong blackout is a reasonable price to pay for cheap energy, because generators (are supposed to) pass to customers the savings associated with not winterizing equipment that will not operate in winter, or not signing up for gas contracts that will not be used.
When pundits say that a blackout is a reasonable price to pay for savings in capital or operating costs, they are looking this from the point of view of the generator. These savings are balanced with loss of energy sales revenue. That's how I saw it when ruling out cold weather packages in California.
But blackouts are not cost free events to customers. Commercial customers lose revenue but not being able to operate. Large industrial batch industrial operations might lose millions of dollars with just a short interruption. A smelter that loses power for hours will see their furnaces filled in with solid metal that will be almost impossible to remove. Water and sewage service was interrupted in all major cities. Cellphone data coverage was lost, even if you could charge your phone in your car.
So pundits are ignoring this massive externality that well designed regulatory systems, like Guatemala's or Colombia's (two countries with excellent, very complete, regulatory frameworks) called the cost of undelivered energy, or rationing costs. A properly designed regulation compensates the customers for the energy not delivered, not at the "price" they would have paid for that energy, but at a value high enough to mitigate their real damages. Twenty to fifty times the tariff price would be
And individual customers are not only cold and without internet. People that require critical medical equipment (respirators, dialysis) can die, no, have died. Scores have also died in the state of carbon monoxide poisoning trying to heat up their houses (Galveston county required a mobile morgue to store the dead bodies collected). Who pays for the lives lost in a blackout whose effects were foreseeable, and foreseen in countless reports after the 2011 freeze/blackouts?
Lastly, the areas of Texas outside of ERCOT, El Paso (electrically part of the NM grid), and Beaumont (tied to LA's) had barely any power interruptions. I'm fairly sure that customers there are perfectly nappy of paying a couple cents a month to cover the risk of dying in the next decennial once in a lifetime power outage
On “Mitt Romney Doesn’t Give a Trump”
COMMENT WITHOUT THE WKIPEDIA LINK
I'm going to hijack this thread from the discussion that murder attempts do not count if the attempters are klutz that don't know the first ting about trying to murder vice-presidents and members of Congress, into a discussion about Romney.
Between Romneycare and the junior senator from Utah's proposal for child benefits there's a long stretch of Romney the flipflopper, eager to say anything that he though could help him win Republican votes, starting by calling himself as "severely conservative"
The number of issues Romney flipflopped about is enormous -and there's a Wikipedia page all about them ( htt ps://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Mitt_Romney ) if you have hours to waste. But his newfound interest in his legacy, instead of in accolades from Fox News, is very recently found, or a recent flopflipping.
Romney is not so much quitting the party as he was booted out of it by Donald Trump in 2017 . After writing a scathing op-ed in 2016 against Trump, no amount of wining, dining, and begging for forgiveness got him back -unlike Cruz- into those allowed to fawn and praise the Glorious Leader and bask in his greatness.
But then, much as he tries, Romney was never a good fliflopper.
I don't know what Romney really thinks about healthcare or child care, but I won't be surprised to see Romney walk back every single word of his newfound ideas if he thinks it will help him get one more vote. I guess Romney's legacy will be whatever idea he supported five minutes before he draws his last breath. Plenty of time for him to be for and against child welfare many times
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Comment did not appear (probably a link to Wikipedia )
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I'm going to hijack this thread from the discussion that murder attempts do not count if the attempters are klutz that don't know the first ting about trying to murder vice-presidents and members of Congress, into a discussion about Romney.
Between Romneycare and the junior senator from Utah's proposal for child benefits there's a long stretch of Romney the flipflopper, eager to say anything that he though could help him win Republican votes, starting by calling himself as "severely conservative"
The number of issues Romney flipflopped about is enormous -and there's a Wikipedia page all about them ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Mitt_Romney ) if you have hours to waste. But his newfound interest in his legacy, instead of in accolades from Fox News, is very recently found, or a recent flopflipping.
Romney is not so much quitting the party as he was booted out of it by Donald Trump in 2017 . After writing a scathing op-ed in 2016 against Trump, no amount of wining, dining, and begging for forgiveness got him back -unlike Cruz- into those allowed to fawn and praise the Glorious Leader and bask in his greatness. But then, much as he tries, Romney was never a good fliflopper.
I don't know what Romney really thinks about healthcare or child care, but I won't be surprised to see Romney walk back every single word of his newfound ideas if he thinks it will help him get one more vote. I guess Romney's legacy will be whatever idea he supported five minutes before he draws his last breath. Plenty of time for him to be for and against child welfare many times
On “Oldsmar Water Plant Hacked, Authorities Downplay Danger”
Great minds think alike - I do exactly the same, but use song lyrics, and a number that means something to me but to no one else (like my friend growing up -i.e. 35 years ago that I haven't seen since the mid 80s- birthday)
And I use hints in my phone to remember like "Holophernes" is a key that I'm using the Hey Jude lyrics (Jude=Judith), and Alexander is a key for I'm using my friend's birthday
On “GA GOP Officially Tired of Winning”
And, nevertheless, there is a pic of Loeffler and with Chester Doles, a former KKK leader who runs the white supremacist American Patriots USA. In 1993, Doles nearly beat a Black man to death. In 2017, he marched in Charlottesville.
She might not have looked for him, but definitely he looked for her
On “Wednesday Writs: Win Stupid Prizes In Leonard v Pepsico Edition”
I recall a Rod Dreher post from several years ago about when Larycia Hawkins had to step down from Wheaton College for saying that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
The majority of his small-o orthodox commenters were saying that absolutely not. Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God. The God of Islam is a different God.
Mind you,they were not arguing that Muslims were worshiping the one true God differently. They were not even arguing that they were worshipping God wrongly or defectively.
They were arguing that Muslims were worshipping a completely different God that exists separately. For starters, Christian God has three persons while Muslim God has only one: “see, totally different Gods, no way it’s the same one.”
I guess the 1st Commandment is optional as long as you have the correct understanding about gays that will make you a Dreher small-o orthodox
On “Up The Union”
I think the concept that it's missing here is laches, the unreasonable delay in making an assertion or claim, such as asserting a right, claiming a privilege, or making an application for redress, which may result in refusal.
Challenges need to be made in a timely fashion. You cannot wait until you find out whether the changed rule favors or disfavors you to claim it's unconstitutional (a claim you won't make if the rule change ends favoring you)
That's why the minority in the PA case said they would have taken the case, but only rule on the constitutionality of it prospectively, for the next election.
In addition, you cannot claim that certain types of votes are unconstitutional under PA law, but not others. The constitutional claim is not just with respect to the presidential votes. If the remedy is to toss out votes, you have to toss out all votes because they all have the same constitutional defect. Votes for president, for senator, for representative, for dog catcher. They all have the same problem.
The fact that the requested remedy is only to toss out the presidential votes, but leave the remainder in place is another proof of bad faith
On “All the President’s Myths”
The problem is that, Latinx is a very special generic word created just for the purpose of encompassing Latinos of different genders.
It doesn't solve the "collective masculine" issue. A group of many gendered doctors is a group of "doctores", just like a group exclusively male doctors. Likewise "cachorros" is a litter of mixed male and female puppies, or a litter of only male puppies. (*)
Unless we start speaking of doctorx or cachorrx, we haven't done really anything to solve the collective masculine noun issue in Spanish. It is very unlikely Latinx is going to get incorporated into Spanish, except as a frowned upon anglicism.
(*) There has been initiatives to replace the collective masculine in Spanish with actually mentioning both genders. Hence "doctores y doctoras" (or "cachorros y cachorras"). Besides being clumsy and long winded, it also sounds demeaning of women, like they have to be added separately and specifically, because otherwise it would be assumed they are excluded -unless you specify that there are doctoras around, it s to be assumed only men can be doctors.
Chávez was a big proponent of the naming both genders school, and all Venezuelan legislation since goes out of its way to specify both genders at every occasion. Imagine an electoral code that said:
"Male voters and female voters should show their voting registration certificate to the male election clerk or the female election clerk before going to the voting booth. Voting registration certificates are issued by the state's male Secretary of State or female Secretary of State"
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.