When i was younger I ran across something by Noam Chomsky. I don’t even remember the details. I suspect it was some sort of magazine interview. Since then I’ve read just about everything of his I’ve come across. Today I was looking for an old quote that I thought was his. Something along the lines of “the media can’t tell you what the think, but they can tell you what to think about”. I couldn’t find the quote but I found lots more. Here is a good collection.

Noam Chomsky Quotes from the Father of Linguistics

Wow. I saw this article in my feed a few times and skipped it. Figured it was another story about Texas being hostile to anything not oil and gas. Well, it is that and more. There seems to be no accountability in Texas these days.

Texas Slaps Down Tesla Fast Charger Plan

As a young man, toward the end of the Cold War, I realized something was fundamentally amiss. We were told we were fighting for Democracy and against Communism. But one of these is an economic system and the other is a system of government. The USSR at the time was a democracy, in that they held elections. So why this switcheroo? I figured people really didn’t have a great interest in fighting a long expensive war for Capitalism, so “Democracy” was quietly substituted. And so somehow everyone went along with this very inaccurate description of this very important subject.

Of course when the USSR collapsed, they got Milton Friedman-style Free Market Capitalist economics (and kept their Democracy, relatively unchanged). What resulted was the situation today, with a country ruled by oligarchs. The US seems to have been following the same path, led by the exact same economists. The Hartmann Report discusses money and democracy in America today.

America Must Choose Between Great Wealth or Democracy

Was googling myself (ok, Duck Duck Going myself) testing something out when it offered a grid of photos that I suppose are of me. The first is my (deceased) dog and my cat. Close. One resembles me enough that I did a double take, but it isn’t me. Then others are strangely varied. A baseball pitcher action shot, people of all ages, races and even genders. Not sure what to make of this past my initial amusement.

A good article from the Atlantic on our post-Social Media world. A good quote that might just explain lots of things. Of course this was probably true in other social groups before the internet:

“Across eight studies, Bor and Petersen found that being online did not make most people more aggressive or hostile; rather, it allowed a small number of aggressive people to attack a much larger set of victims.”

WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID

i used to watch this show as a kid. Didn’t everyone? From CBS Sunday Morning. I have to add that this may not be what you think it is. It starts out as a puff nostalgia piece, but goes somewhere else, perhaps in ways not intended by the film makers.

A little Sun Ra, for V. Putin (don’t you push that button!)

Today excess power generated by rooftop solar in most places is bought back by grid operators at retail prices, about $0.10 kWh. This seems fair, since consumers are paying retail form the power they take from the grid. A new law will lower this by half in four years, then continue to lower the payback more in subsequent years. This bill is massively unpopular and simply protects monopoly utility companies. Oh, there is also a plan for power companies to charge some unspecified fees to people with rooftop solar panels.

Wow. Citizens need to fight this. And if that doesn’t work, get batteries and stop selling excess power back to grid operators. If that doesn’t work, disconnect from the grid all together.

Anti-rooftop solar net metering bill passes in Florida