A long article from the New Yorker magazine about the semiconductor industry. A great read and worth seeking out.  Books have been written about this over the decades but this is a very good modern take.  If you get bored on the technical details, hang in there.  The story is going someplace.  There is also an audio version linked on the page, but it requires a subscription too.  It may be available elsewhere.

Sand Castles: Computer Chips Are the Most Magnificent Things Humanity Has Ever Made

A long, but very good read. Excellent graphics.  From Reuters.

Giant ‘heat storms’ are scorching the Earth. This is the story of the biggest one on record.

Turns out there have been lots of these bonds sold lately and demand is high for them.

Nearly half of US data center bonds this year are junk-rated

The Russian economy has been under pressure for a while now due to sanctions and the cost of the Ukraine war.  This has been in the financial press for about a year. I recently heard that the reason for removing US sanctions is that there is a good chance of a banking crisis in Russia.  I suppose they could stop spending all that money bombing the Ukraine.  But Russia isn’t the US or Europe.  Things can be propped up and hidden more easily. Of course this just kicks the can down the road, leading to a larger crisis later.

War threatens Russian banking crisis, European intelligence report says

I want to call this an AI problem but it’s probably a much simpler screw up.  American Airlines sends an email confirming flights.  Gmail automatically puts it into my calendar.  Usually great.  But somebody really botched it up.  They don’t seem to account for time zones.  I think this used to work ok.

My flight to Dallas is listed as 3 hours. It’s only 2.  This somehow cascaded into calendar entries that weren’t even close.  So I had to spend the better part of an hour patching up calendar entries.  Oh. And Google calendar (Android) only lets you set the time zone for each calendar entry. But suppose it’s a flight with departure and landing in different time zones? Ok so you have to be on your toes a bit.  I like automation when it’s done right. More and more it seems to be more of a (huge) time waster than a time saver.

I like Visual Capitalist but they have gotten (understandably) funny about having their graphics reproduced.  So you will have to click on the link below. But it does include sortable tables which are fun to look at too.

The idea is to combine a “livability” score with an “affordability” score.  Both pretty subjective.  But what stands out is the big American cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles) are the worst value.  Honolulu and San Diego score high on livability but are expensive (checks out).

There is a cluster along the main diagonal which says lots of smaller American cities are more or less equally livable, but trade cost for livability.  I notice Albuquerque is mentioned, and is low on cost but low on livability but still scores well.  An outlier, surprisingly similar to Houston.

What I find a bit strange is Tulsa, OK is the winner for US cities.  Not sure what to make of that.

Quality of Life vs. Cost in 99 Cities Across the Americas

In Texas, electricity was cheaper but our power bills were much higher, especially in the summer.  In New Mexico, our house is a bit smaller and the weather milder, so our consumption is much lower.  I was curious how much it cost to charge an EV like ours (Tesla Model 3 with a 75 kWh battery).  It’s a little complicated because there are three tiers of rates with different summer and non-summer rates.

We have solar so it’s a different story for us but if we were using PNM power we would almost certainly be in the upper tier in the summer ($0.1994661/kWh) and the lower tier in the non-summer ($0.0896783/kWh).  So a fill-up from 0% to 100% would be:

Summer: ($0.1994661 x 75) = $14.96

Non-Summer: ($0.0896783 x 75) = $6.73

Or course gas prices fluctuate and have been high for some time.  But a similar vehicle with, say a 16 gallon tank would cost $64 at $4 a gallon.  Gas would have to be under $1 a gallon to compete with even the expensive summer charging.

I always thought this was a big advantage of EVs but you don’t hear about it much.  Plus there are no oil changes, radiator flushes, transmission fluid, spark plugs, etc to maintain.

This has been covered in the world press for several years.  It does seem odd that hundreds of high ranking US defense and security officials keep having these strange health incidents, always while travelling overseas.  From Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Havana Syndrome: The History Behind the Mystery

Upshot: hybrids pollute 6x more than advertised.  From Clean Technia.

Still Smoking: The PHEV Emissions Scandal Continues

From The Conversation.

Americans want electric cars – they just can’t find them