Lots of stuff almost everyone knows, but all in one updated article. Changes should have been made in the 1980s.

Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price

I first noticed this when Austin passed an ordinance against throw away plastic grocery bags, and the state stepped in and removed the ban. I thought the conservatives liked local control of issues.

The most bizarre was perhaps a proposal to bypass selective local noise ordinances. The bill was crafted to apply only to Austin and was sponsored by rural representatives far from the Music Capital. I’m not sure if they were being paid off by someone or if it was just a spiteful move of some sort. Either way it is a strange way to run a state.

It’s not just voting and Covid: How red states are overriding their blue cities

I have heard one third of the land in cities is used for cars. Not hard to believe.

America has eight parking spaces for every car. Here’s how cities are rethinking that land

Bad Guy With Gun shoots and kills police officer. Good Guy With Gun shoots BGWG. Next police officer on scene sees GGWG holding rifle over body of slain officer and slain BGWG, and shoots and kills GGWG. So, yeah, GGWGs can help in rare circumstances, but having lots of unidentified people with guns can only lead to this sort of confusion. In the end the only real difference this GGWG made was getting himself accidentally shot and killed by police. This is why police wear uniforms and drive marked cars.

Colorado man who intervened after ambush on officer was fatally shot by police

From the Observer.

Entitled To Profit: In Texas, Title Insurance Is a “Total Scam”

From Pro Publica:

Lord of the Roths: How Tech Mogul Peter Thiel Turned a Retirement Account for the Middle Class Into a $5 Billion Tax-Free Piggy Bank

There has been lots of attention on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921. What isn’t widely known is this was not an isolated event. After WW I, in the early part of the 20th century, there were dozens of similar events in what is know as the Red Summer.

Red Summer is the period from late winter through early autumn of 1919 during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots took place in more than three dozen cities across the United States, as well as in one rural county in Arkansas.

Red Summer

Ah, my old field of study. I spent decades doing work on FPGA computing. An area that refuses to die (but also refuses to be successful). This would be the old Altera FPGAs, which Intel has been selling for quite some time, but aimed at the data center. I like this idea and I think it could be taken much further. I will note that the URL calls this a “smart NIC” which, I suppose, is one way to look at it.

Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs)

While Texas hasn’t made much progress toward universal Access to healthcare, today the governor signed a bill that should provide universal Access to firearms.

Texas’ GOP governor signs permit-free gun carrying legislation

it seems to me that one group of Texans are excluded from this group, and they are a group that suffers some of them highest rates of personal violence. Of course I’m talking about the Homeless. Without the money necessary to pay for a place to live, most homeless Texans certainly don’t have the ability to afford a firearm. I believe there should be a government program to bridge this gap and provide guns to the homeless in Texas. In the meantime, I hope the private sector and non-profits will step in to help Texas achieve Universal Gun Access. I’m thinking of getting involved myself.