Hey Texas, you paying attention to this?  From the Sacramento Bee.

California’s grid passed the reliability test this heat wave. It’s all about giant batteries

Thats a pretty big scam.  Oh, he’s a friend of Steve Bannon?  From the BBC.

China tycoon Guo convicted in US over $1bn scam

Might as well add a 7 and an 8 while we are at it.

The oceans are heating so fast, some scientists call for a new “Category 6” hurricane classification

I usually have a project (or two) going that I document here.  For a few months now I have been organizing old photos.  First my own photos which involved scanning about 200 rolls of negatives.  They were all organized and dated, so it wasn’t a hard job, just a boring time consuming one.

Earlier in the year I had scanned in a large pile of photos that belonged to my father.  I recall about 5,000 in all.  They were in no particular order, so I just put them in groups of a few hundred, and made them available to family on Google Photos.

There were still negatives of my father’s in a box (he was a professional photographer).  Didn’t seem like much but they were about another 5,000 photos, many overlapping with the prints I had already scanned.

Recently I decided to try and date and sort these 10,000 or so semi-random photos.  It’s has been a bit fun to go through all the old family photos.  I have to put in an upvote for the software I have been using.  I’m a Linux user but looked at Windows too.  Whatever would make the job easier.  I have been really impressed with the gThumb application on Linux.  Great for moving and editing large groups of photos.  I can’t imagine having made nearly this much progress this quickly or painlessly with any other tool I looked at.  If you have a large photo organizing job to do, definitely give gThumb a look.

Few years back, when we decided to sell the house, we had a new fence put up.  The old fence was 25 years old and falling apart.  Our lot is an acre so it was a big expense.  It came up in conversation last week, my wife mentioning it cost $30k.  No, I replied it was more like $10k.  My wife looked it up and the cost was actually $20k.  We were both right, on average.

I was wondering how average age varies by state.  I was expecting to see some big differences.  Turns out there isn’t that much variation by age in the US as I would have thought.  Ok, Maine seems a little long in the tooth, but otherwise we are all more or less in our late 30s, state-wise.

Mapping the U.S. Median Age by State

Much of Houston is without power after a relatively minor Cat-1 hurricane.  I will hold off saying something snippy about the oil and gas businesses based in Houston and their impact on such weather events, or the taxes they don’t pay or the infrastructure Texas won’t modernize.

Frustrations mount in the Houston heat after Beryl moves on and leaves millions without power

There aren’t so many people in flat out denial of climate change these days.  I wonder how Sen Inhofe felt about his work in this area in his later years.  I read the whole article waiting for perhaps a deathbed conversion, but there was no word of one.

Jim Inhofe, 89, dies after a long Senate career marked by fight against climate science

From the BBC

A Bugatti car, a first lady and the fake stories aimed at Americans

In the stark contrast of today’s presidential race, I am reminded of Hunter Thompson’s quote from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, when Richard Nixon beats George McGovern in a landslide.  Unbeknownst to everyone, Nixon would not last for very long with the Watergate scandal looming.

“McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.  Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72