Wow. Over a third of the renewable energy produced by Scotland’s wind turbines is “curtailed”. This means ignored, dumped, not used. Not that there isn’t demand for this power, just not enough power lines to move the electricity from where it is to where it’s needed. Or storage to hold it for when it is needed.  I realize the criticism of renewables is that it can be unreliable. But we are talking about wind in northern Scotland. It seems pretty reliable.

Scotland’s Wind Turbines Are Being Paid to Stand Still 37% of the Time

I have always been fascinated by the end of the Cold War and the transition of the former Soviet Union to a capitalist economy. Perhaps just because it was the big historic news story of my youth.

The short story is a group of US economists led the Soviet economy into capitalism via “Shock Treatment”. In retrospect it appears to have been an abject failure. But little has been said about this in the mainstream. Just googling around today out of curiosity I ran across the article from 1990 in something called the Monthly Review. It discusses how the former USSR and later China made their largely unsuccessful transitions to a modern Western democratic capitalist societies.

As the same group of free market capitalists continues to exert influence in the US, despite their repeated failures overseas, one has to ask if these “failures” weren’t failures at all but part of a plan. As the corruption mounts in the US and our Billionaires begin to resemble the Russian Oligarchs, you have to wonder where the US is headed.

The Necessity of Gangster Capitalism

From The Guardian (UK)

Trump Burger owner in Texas faces deportation after Ice arrest

From the Independent Voter Project. Based on primary voters.

Party Registration Statistics
Total Registered Voters: 17,485,702
Democrats: 8,133,683 (46.52%)
Republicans: 6,601,189 (37.75%)
Unaffiliated: 2,750,830 (15.73%)

Ths Google Newsfeed on my android Google phone keeps jamming Fox News content on me. I keep blocking them and they seem to come back with even more. Maybe half a dozen stories the morning. Even Orwell couldn’t predict this. Corporate sponsored political propaganda, for profit.

A good read from the London Review of Books.

Where the Power Is

Three times in the last four days I have tried to block Fox News from my default Google Newsfeed on my Google Android phone. Somehow it keeps coming back. What’s up with that, Google?

A good read from Oil Price. Pretty much a trade publication for the oil and gas industry, it’s definitely a cheerleader for legacy energy industries. But they are business oriented and usually pretty factual.

The Global Energy Shift Is Happening—Quietly but Surely

Yesterday after a visit to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, I linked to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961). There was a specific quote I was thinking of, and I couldn’t find it. I was pretty sure it was in his farewell speech, famous for its coining the phrase “Military-Industrial Complex”. Turns out it was in a different speech. I didn’t realize how quotable Eisenhower was. Didn’t know he was from Abilene, TX either. Maybe the last decent Republican president this country has had. A nice bunch of Eisenhower Quotes. The one I was thinking of is his “Cross of Iron” speech.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Address “The Chance for Peace” Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 4/16/53

A few weeks back, in the distance from the Costco parking we could see what looked like missiles across the road.. We assumed they were part of the nearby Kirkland Air Force Base, perhaps the front gate. It turned out to be The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. We went by yesterday and went through the exhibits and the boneyard of old equipment in the yard. It was a sobering experience to think the best minds of several generations put all of their efforts into these weapons. I couldn’t help but think of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961) which is worth a read today.