From The New Yorker (may require login).  The interesting bit is people are making magnesium, a lightweight metal, using seawater and cheap excess solar electricity.

California Is Showing How a Big State Can Power Itself Without Fossil Fuels

More sad news from Texas.

Kinky Friedman, provocative satirist and one-time gubernatorial candidate, dies at 79

Tried to do some yard work before it got too hot.  Went in the fridge looking for something cold. It’s not noon yet, but why not a beer?  Should have read the label.

Somehow I missed that Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world and owner of the Washington Post, has put a longtime Fox / News Corp / UK Telegraph guy in charge.

The Washington Post Announces William Lewis as Publisher and CEO

Today almost six months to the day later another News Corp guy is installed as editor.  So the top two people at the supposed liberal national newspaper in the US are both former leaders of Rupert Murdoch’s new organization (i.e. Fox News in the US). 

The NYT headline is about the previous editor leaving. The real news is who the replacement is.

Sally Buzbee, Washington Post Editor, to Leave Role

I know the basic story that mismanagement caused terrible famines in Mao’s China during the Great Leap Forward.  I only learned yesterday that it was essentially caused by a War on Sparrows (the bird).  When Mao saw a sparrow eating some grain he decided they were a pest and should be eradicated to help with food production. Unfortunately sparrows also eat bugs, which are even more of a problem for food production.  The resulting ecological imbalance lead to crop failures and millions of deaths.  A cautionary tale of bad science and concentrated power.  From wiki:

The ecological repercussions translated into a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions. The absence of sparrows, which traditionally kept locust populations in check, allowed swarms to ravage fields of grain and rice. The resulting agricultural failures, compounded by misguided policies of the Great Leap Forward, triggered a severe famine from 1958 to 1962. The death toll from starvation during this period reached a staggering 20 to 30 million people,[7] underscoring the high human cost of the ecological mismanagement inherent in the “Four Pests” campaign.

Four Pests campaign

The trouble with algorithms.  From The Baffler.

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A good read on large scale issues of grid stability as electric generation transitions to renewables.  From IEEE Spectrum.

GETTING THE GRID TO NET ZERO:  Grid-forming inverters will take us to 100 percent renewable energy

Funny they don’t name the country in the title.  Maybe to keep a lower profile.  Spoiler: the country is India, which has a history of sectarian violence and has a nationalist leader who looks more authoritarian every day.  From Vox.

“Everyone is absolutely terrified”: Inside a US ally’s secret war on its American critics

So it may not have been the all-you-can-eat shrimp after all.

How private equity rolled Red Lobster