It seems the new Pope has New Orleans roots. He comes from a Creole family from the 7th Ward, Baquie / Martinez. From Verite News.
Google Without AI
Google has added this AI overview to its searches. Aside from being anoying and frequently inaccurate, it probably burns up tons of energy doing lots of stuff I don’t want. So save the planet and perhaps a bit of your time and sanity.
Does One Line Fix Google?
Placitas Studio Tour
We recently moved to Placitas, NM. This weekend is the 28th annual studio tour where dozens of artists in the community open their studios for showings of their work. We really wanted to try and see them all, but we will be lucky to get to half. There is an overwhelming amount of great stuff to see (and buy). We will see how much ground we can cover tomorrow. Have a look through the web sites. I had no idea we were going to have such talented neighbors.
The 28th Annual Placitas Studio Tour – May 9, 10 & 11, 2025
The Texas-Sized Plan To Shut You Up
I don’t live in Texas anymore in large part because of ongoing erosion of basic rights like this.
The Texas-Sized Plan To Shut You Up
AI is a Bullshit Machine
From Scientific American. Thought I saved this one already but I guess not.
AI’s Bullshitting Obscures Who’s to Blame for Its Mistakes
Low Power
We recently moved from Austin TX to Placitas NM. I was always interested in putting in solar / battery but the numbers I came up with for the house in Austin were daunting. Of course most of our bill was air conditioning in the summer plus a pool pump that ran every day for 8 hours. Here in New Mexico we dont have a pool and the weather is milder. Plus the house seems to be built in a way that uses less energy. We have only gotten our first power bill but my wife remarked that she hasn’t seen a bill this low since she lived in an apartment.
This brings up a conundrum for Going Green. The investment will be much smaller, perhaps as much as 5x smaller. But then the saving will also be smaller. It makes it less appealing in some ways. We will probably get a full years worth of electrical bills and then figure it out. We will probably go with solar / batteries either way, but now I am of the mind that building better houses that use more efficient appliances might be the bigger win in this energy transition.
Corn Farms vs Solar Farms
In the US lots of crop land is used to grow corn for ethanol. This ethanol is mixed with gasoline for car and truck fuels. But suppose we just used that same land for solar? What would be the difference in energy produced? Turns out solar would produce 30x more energy. The story may be even more extreme. Car and truck engine are maybe 5x less efficient than electric. So given that all of this ethanol goes to transportation, solar could be 150x more efficient.
Ecologically informed solar enables a sustainable energy transition in US croplands
Wealth Destruction
Just trying to get a handle on the scope of the losses from the two day stock market rout. At $5T for the S&P alone this comes out to almost $15,000 for every man, woman and child in America. And this wasn’t an act of nature or even a bubble popping. It was a result of a policy decision by leaders at the highest level. I don’t see this being recovered any time soon, nor do I see it resulting in any long term gains for the country. And if anyone thinks this is going to have any sort of positive benefits, I would like to see an example of another time a similar huge drop in markets has been in any way a good thing.
Steven A. Guccione 