Author: Steven Guccione

The ‘age of electricity’ is here

Steven Guccione

A good read from Grist.  One thing to remember is that electricity from renewables (wind and solar mostly) is 4x or 5x more efficient than thermal energy sources.  This is because of all the waste heat when you burn things.  Lots of heat goes up the chimney when you use a fireplace.  Car engines give off lots of heat that add nothing to moving a car.  And just look at those big “cooling towers” dumping all that energy from the nuke plants. All “waste heat”.

So going electric might really be replacing 4x or 5x more fossil and other thermal fuels.

The ‘age of electricity’ is here. No one knows what comes next.

The Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Users’ Emotional State

Steven Guccione

I started this blog a few years ago as an alternative to Facebook and other social media for my own content.  While there was a lot to like about social media, there was lots more to dislike.   There have been many studies and they all say the same thing.  If you want to be happier, dump social media.  It seems if you are anyone over 35 Facebook is especially bad and if you are a female under 25 Instagram might be something you consider getting rid of.  From Stanford via NBER.

The Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Users’ Emotional State

Rotavirus Cases Surge Across the U.S.

Steven Guccione

A couple of weeks back I had a bug.  Didn’t feel terrible but couldn’t keep anything down.  I let it go on a bit too long and ended up in the ICU with a dangerously low sodium level (107 for you medical types).  I was literally given a less than 50% chance of survival.

A few days with the good people at Rust Presbyterian and I was able to walk out feeling completely fine.  It wasn’t covid or the flu, but probably this nasty one. Be careful out there.

My real point is that if the anti-vaxxer crowd gets their way you will be seeing lots more of this, with deaths among young children.  F-U RFK JR!

Rotavirus Cases Surge Across the U.S., Posing Greatest Risk to Infants and Young Children

The US’s largest clean energy project is generating power

Steven Guccione

The SunZia project here in central New Mexico is set to produce enough wind power for approximately 3 million homes.  Since there are only about 2 million people in New Mexico, most of this will be going to Arizona and eventually California, via new high voltage DC transmission lines.  As I have said, no shortage of wind or sun here, especially this time of year.

The US’s largest clean energy project is generating power

Why Cormac McCarthy Stands Alone Among Novelists

Steven Guccione

A posting by Will Hoyt about Cormac McCarthy, in particular his last novel(s) Stella Maris and The Passenger.  He starts with his appreciation for the counter-counter culture book Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone.

I mostly know Stone in reference to his old friend Ken Kesey.  In fact the main character in Dog Soldiers is based on Kesey’s friend Neal Cassady.  Kesey and Stone were famously foils in that Kesey was a leader of the 60s left and Stone was a conservative.  Stone’s distain for the 60s counterculture, or perhaps the corruption of its ideals, permeates Dog Soldiers.  I have a hard time recalling a nastier book with almost no redeeming characters. Still a great read.  If you are looking for the movie version it was called Who’ll Stop The Rain with Nick Nolte and Tuesday Weld.  Equally nasty.  But we are taking about a story of smuggling heroin out of war-torn Vietnam. Not much nice to say about any of it.

But McCarthy.  A good read by Hoyt even if he goes a bit religious, even Catholic, at the end.  But who else does the Apocalypse better than the Catholics do?

Why Cormac McCarthy Stands Alone Among Novelists