Wow. I saw this article in my feed a few times and skipped it. Figured it was another story about Texas being hostile to anything not oil and gas. Well, it is that and more. There seems to be no accountability in Texas these days.

Texas Slaps Down Tesla Fast Charger Plan

As a young man, toward the end of the Cold War, I realized something was fundamentally amiss. We were told we were fighting for Democracy and against Communism. But one of these is an economic system and the other is a system of government. The USSR at the time was a democracy, in that they held elections. So why this switcheroo? I figured people really didn’t have a great interest in fighting a long expensive war for Capitalism, so “Democracy” was quietly substituted. And so somehow everyone went along with this very inaccurate description of this very important subject.

Of course when the USSR collapsed, they got Milton Friedman-style Free Market Capitalist economics (and kept their Democracy, relatively unchanged). What resulted was the situation today, with a country ruled by oligarchs. The US seems to have been following the same path, led by the exact same economists. The Hartmann Report discusses money and democracy in America today.

America Must Choose Between Great Wealth or Democracy

Was googling myself (ok, Duck Duck Going myself) testing something out when it offered a grid of photos that I suppose are of me. The first is my (deceased) dog and my cat. Close. One resembles me enough that I did a double take, but it isn’t me. Then others are strangely varied. A baseball pitcher action shot, people of all ages, races and even genders. Not sure what to make of this past my initial amusement.

A good article from the Atlantic on our post-Social Media world. A good quote that might just explain lots of things. Of course this was probably true in other social groups before the internet:

“Across eight studies, Bor and Petersen found that being online did not make most people more aggressive or hostile; rather, it allowed a small number of aggressive people to attack a much larger set of victims.”

WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID

i used to watch this show as a kid. Didn’t everyone? From CBS Sunday Morning. I have to add that this may not be what you think it is. It starts out as a puff nostalgia piece, but goes somewhere else, perhaps in ways not intended by the film makers.

A little Sun Ra, for V. Putin (don’t you push that button!)

Today excess power generated by rooftop solar in most places is bought back by grid operators at retail prices, about $0.10 kWh. This seems fair, since consumers are paying retail form the power they take from the grid. A new law will lower this by half in four years, then continue to lower the payback more in subsequent years. This bill is massively unpopular and simply protects monopoly utility companies. Oh, there is also a plan for power companies to charge some unspecified fees to people with rooftop solar panels.

Wow. Citizens need to fight this. And if that doesn’t work, get batteries and stop selling excess power back to grid operators. If that doesn’t work, disconnect from the grid all together.

Anti-rooftop solar net metering bill passes in Florida

As solar gets cheaper and cheaper it might be time to think of what could be done with all that excess capacity, or just explore non-traditional uses for this sort of electricity generation. Many places around the world already use desalination to make fresh water from abundant salt water. The problem is the expense (as well as the pollution) from the energy used.

I was wondering what it would take to make your own fresh water using solar. Lets use a rough figure of 15,000 kWh for 1 million gallons of water. This comes to 15 wH per gallon. That is, a 15 Watt energy source can make a gallon of water per hour. This is rough and maybe not to scale, since the numbers are probably for larger and perhaps more efficient large installations. But perhaps not.

A normal 400W solar panel running for 8 hours would give over 200 gallons of water. Assuming an American uses 50 gallons of fresh water per day (probably a large number due to various forms of waste and inefficiency) this means one solar panel can supply an American family of four with it’s fresh water needs. I’m a bit surprised by this. Given some of my water bills I wonder if it may even be cost effective in many places where municipal water is available. Somebody check my math.

Update: several home reverse osmosis units are available for about $300. They don’t seem to be using any sort of excessive power and claim to produce on the order of 500 gallons per day. Could be much less than one solar panel to produce clean water for a family of four, and you could do it easily today.