Its no secret that the Internet has been tough on news sources. I admit that for years I mostly rely on Google News to select the news I read. For a while I was pretty happy with this. Over time I began to get more “clickbait” articles, that is, one with ridiculous headlines designed to get you to click on their link. I figureed ignoring these stories would “tell” Google not to send me this sort of stuff. But it didn’t.

I found I was getting lots of articles about the same thing, often using the same text. I also began to get local stories from places I have never been and have no particular interest in. I also found it was taking me longer and longer to read my news in the morning. But maybe that was Googles plan all along.

Recently I decided to beging to ruthlessly block articles and sites that sent me any stories I found had misleading headlines or information. Also I tried to reject news that was loaded with adjectives and adverbs. I’m just want facts, not opinions and emotions. This had led me to blocking what I’m used to consider premier content. I’m mostly thinking of the New York Times. I’m fact, their stories keep popping up and I keep blocking them. What up with that Google (although I suspect I know the answer)?

i joke that I’m down to ESPN, Al Jazera and The Onion. But something funny has happened, at least temporarily. I’m spending less time reading news and feel more informed. I’m also getting lots of news from less prominent and often more local sources. Its important to note that I’m trying to broaden what I read, not narrow it. I’m not looking to make my own echo chamber; quite the opposite. I’m not sure what the solution is for news in today’s world, but I’m happy with my aggressive blocking of news sources.

Of course, existing coal, oil and gas have enjoyed decades of subsidies. An nuclear subsidy is probably hard to calculate. The other story here is the trends. Older technologies aren’t getting much cheaper. New renewables are on a very steep price decrease curve. From Visual Capitalist.

Ranked: America’s Cheapest Sources of Electricity in 2024

For TLDRers: Its all about frackers, mostly here in Texas. My understanding has always been that fracking technology was never economically competitive, especially when you figure in negative methane (“natural gas”) prices. Yes, they will pay you to take natural gas in Texas these days. Predictably, it just ends up burned or “vented” into the atmosphere. From Scientific American (which somewhat cowardly lists this completely factual article as “Opinion”).

New Satellites Alone Won’t Stop the Methane Climate Crisis

I keep wondering how such vast quantities of FPAS, “Forever Chemicals” are being found in our environment. From The Guardian.

PFAS widely added to US pesticides despite EPA denial, study finds

I am technically a Baby Boomer, but just barely. I never identified with the group, being too young for Vietnam and Woodstock, though I do remember seeing them on the news as a kid. I always “passed” as Generation X, but I have learned I am part of a “microgeneration”, Generation Jones.

Generation Jones

From the Washington Post.

The life secret Jerry Seinfeld learned from Esquire

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.