This is pretty amazing. Did not know that this was happening. Regenerative braking saves about a third of the energy used by trains and also keeps the tunnels cooler. From Grist.

Barcelona is turning subway trains into power stations

My first job out of school involved working on military hardware. I came to decide that I didn’t want to work on weapons. When I told my boss this he sold me (for a while) on our project saying it had great commercial uses. It was Forward Looking InfraRed (FLIR) imaging used for military night vision. I’ve seen the old 512 x 512 black and white images from war zones many times over the years. I remember my boss telling me the company wanted to sell commercial versions to sherrifs departments to find “little children lost in the woods at night”. Yeah, ok. But I suppose it has happened. From BBC.

Drone captures rescue of girl, 10, who sleepwalked into woods

I like N+1. Need to make it a point to read more of these. The story of a young recruit and the effort to avoid the “Y2k” disaster. Has it already been a quarter century?

The Contingency Contingent

No this isn’t The Onion. I know Mr Gates has invested in nuclear tech, but after decades and billions (trillions?) on government investment, nuclear has been a loser. When can we stop beating this dead horse? There are better, cheaper proven alternatives.

Microsoft deal would reopen Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power AI

From Australia.

A small WA seaside town was forced to switch off gas, becoming a ‘prototype’ for the green energy transition

I always wondered how this worked. Of course, most religions had restrictions on charging interest until recently.

Halal mortgages are becoming popular in America

I keep hearing about the “slowdown” in EV adoption so much that I was almost starting to believe it. The real story is the growth *rate* is slowing. Fair enough. You can only grow at 25% for three or four years in a fixed size market (for instance). Fact is people are buying more EVs every year and fewer gas powered cars. Peak for gas cars was 2017 or so.

EV sales have not fallen, cooled, slowed or slumped. Stop lying in headlines.

I happen to have two clocks that use the WWVB radio signal to stay in sync. This signal comes from Fort Collins, Colorado as part of NIST and has been running more or less non-stop since 1963. Today I noticed by Le Crosse weather station in the kitchen was off by a few minutes. I checked the old Radio Shack clock my father gave me that I keep in the garage and it was ok. Very unusual. I did a quick Google and found this: WWVB Station Outages

Notice: From approximately April 7, 2024, 0h UTC, WWVB’s south antenna has been disabled as a result of damage from wind gusts in excess of 90 MPH. WWVB continues to operate at reduced overall power using its north antenna only.

Not sure exactly what it means but I moved the unit over to a window (recommended on another web page) and it quickly got back in sync. Not a big deal for me, but I often wonder about these bits of old technology that get taken for granted. I wonder what problems this sort of thing could have led to around the country.