Scrabble
Brittney Spears, now a long way from being a child being exploited for her appearance, and still subject to a guardianship run by her father, reports that sometimes its fun to make words up when playing Scrabble.
Spears has been the subject of a documentary about her plight recently, although she apparently isn't participating in it herself. She's also the subject of a popular "Free Brittney" movement.
Spears is a study in pathos, having been really basically exploited for her appearance as a near child and then living in the wake of her prior fame.
Texan Exceptualism
Texas has its own power grid.
That's right. It's own grid.
Most of the Western United States is in one grid, and the Eastern half in another, but Texas has its own. It goes by the name ERCOT.
This dates back to the 1930s when Texas power companies sought to evade interstate regulation. Texas was big enough that power companies in Texas could simply operate a grid within it, although in fairness some of Texas is served by neighboring systems. In 1970 this system became formalized.
The system has been getting a lot of attention recently due to power failures in Texas. Last year Texas Senator Ted Cruz criticized California's policy on renewable energy but now Texas is having a major problem of its own. People were quick to focus on the reliance in Texas on renewables, but it turns out that while there were truly failures, failures in the traditional energy sector were at a higher rate. Wind turbines did ice up and fail to work, but then there were also failures associated with coal and nuclear power sources.
This raises a lot of questions, probably all of which will suggest areas where blame should be focused and not all of which will be correct. One question which may come up is the desirability of having its own system in 2021. The system also had problems in 2011, at which time it imported some power sources from Mexico, so there have been problems before.
Of course, this was an extraordinary storm, and that may mean that anything that occurred is really a bad example. Texas is prepared for heat waves, but not freeze outs.
As posted here the other day, while the U.S. has gone to very large grids, the new energy systems might argue for small localized ones, or at least the incorporation of smaller ones into larger systems.
Laramie County Censures Cheney
And it, like the rest of the Wyoming GOP, better hope that it doesn't look foolish in the eyes of history.
Congress appears set to do a 9/11 style commission on the insurrection. It's clear that it'll show at least as much as has already been shown, which means that the GOP will of course be free to pretend it doesn't mean anything and that it isn't happening.
By the time this is put up it will be probable that the GOP has lost 200,000 members in those state, far from all, where that can be tracked. Assuming the trend exists elsewhere, it's likely more than 300,000. For those states where the tally has been close, this is really bad for the GOP in more ways than one. Mitch McConnell has his eyes focused on 2022, but Trump has his focused on punishing those who opposed him. One of the sets of people punished this go around were Republicans in Georgia, resulting in the loss of their Senate seats.
If the riff in the GOP isn't healed, it may indeed turn out to be "Trump's Party" in 2022 and 2024. But that party will be smaller and therefore that development would be a gift to the Democrats. By leaning increasingly into Trump as the permanent figurehead, rather than emphasizing their issues, the Trump wing of the party is risking dragging it into irrelevance.
On censures, what does that really mean anyway? So far Cheney has given the "M'eh" reaction and Ben Sasse treated the threat of one from Nebraska's GOP as if they were a bunch of toddlers having a tantrum. And after all, it really doesn't do anything to the censured person.
Australia blacksout itself.
The Australian parliament passed a bill to make Google and Facebook pay for Australian journalism on its site, resulting in Facebook just blocking the stories, a move which caused some Australian government communications to cease.
Australia called Facebook's move arrogant, but the question may be levied where the arrogance was, or at least the hubris.
No comments:
Post a Comment