A series of these going on in the US right now. This one involves propping up uncompetitive nukes in Ohio. From the Guardian (UK).

In exchange for the millions to Householder, FirstEnergy got $1.4bn of subsidies for two of its ailing nuclear plants, prosecutors allege. The subsidies came in the form of HB-6, a bill championed by Householder as one of the signature pieces of legislation of his speakership. The law slapped a surcharge on to the electric bills of everyday Ohioans and went toward making the two nuclear plants profitable.

Ohio Republicans accused of taking $60m in bribes as corruption trial opens

Quite a while back I settled on Plex as my media server. I have thousands of MP3s, thousand of photos, plus personal videos and even ripped movies and TV shows from DVDs. I happen to use my Raspberry Pi 4 running Ubuntu as a server, but Plex works with most popular platforms. You pay for the server, and clients are free.

We mostly listen to music on Amazon Alexa using Spotify these days or just stream WWOZ using Alexa and TuneIn. I thought it would be nice to be able to listen to my old MP3s on Alexa, since the alternative is using the Apple TV Plex client. Not a huge hassle, but not as easy as Alexa. I recall trying this a while back, unsuccessfully. The Alexa plugin still gets poor reviews and two stars, but thought I would give it a try.

With instructions from Plex, got it working almost immediately. Now I can just say Alexa, ask Plex to play music by John Coltrane and it works!

I am pretty much 100% in agreement with Prof Jacobson, although I’m sure he is much more informed than I am. On thing you have to remember is there are millions (billions?) of dollars being spent on sophisticated advertising campaign to keep established players (oil, gas and coal) in charge. Will it be “easy”? Actually I don’t see any reason for it to be difficult. Certainly easier (and much cheaper) than dealing with the effects of doing nothing. From the Guardian (UK).

‘No miracles needed’: Prof Mark Jacobson on how wind, sun and water can power the world