From the New York Times.

Giant Batteries Are Transforming the Way the U.S. Uses Electricity

I have had a Spotify account for years.  Lots good to be said about it, but I was never a big fan.   I remember the first music I tried to listen to wasn’t available (maybe some Warren Zevon?).  I was expecting a deep catalog where I could explore and find new music.  It wasn’t.  In fact, lots of popular artists weren’t even available.  I’m thinking Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, even Bob Seeger.

I found I still spent lots of time listening to my MP3 via my Plex server.  Hearing complaints from artists about the low pay via Spotify was enough to make me start buying music again instead of renting.

The problem is nobody sells MP3s any more.  Google music is gone and I couldn’t find any small “record stores”.  Lots of pirate sites pretending to be legit (no you really can’t legally download that Led Zep CD for $2).  This just left Amazon.  And they keep trying to sell you their streaming service.  And downloads often cost more than buying the physical CD.  But that is the only store left.

The good part is I am finding a few things out there I didn’t know about.  I wanted some old Led Zeppelin but it was all a bit pricey.  There was even a bizarre “deal” with four popular early CD for $100.  I could buy them individually for almost half that price, inexplicably.  Found this BBC live which satisfied my needs.  Was also looking for some Frank Zappa and found this live 1988 recording that is 2.5 hours of music and includes classical, a Beatles medley and Stairway to Heaven.  I had no idea.

There is so much flaring here in Texas in the fracking areas that you can see it from space.

Methane emissions from gas flaring being hidden from satellite monitors

Saw this in a recent substack posting by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  Advice from Clint Eastwood to Toby Keith.  Lots of irony there but I’ll take my wisdom wherever I happen to find it.  From Kill Zone.

Don’t Let The Old Man In

The first computer I owned was a Heathkit H-89 that I assembled from a kit.  I still have it gathering dust in my garage.  It stopped working a long time ago.  But it had not one, but two Zilog Z80 microprocessors.  I pretty much taught myself assembly language on that machine as a teenager.

After all these years the venerable Z80 is gone.  Quite a run though.  From The Register.

The chip that changed my world – and yours

Happy Birthday to Immanuel Kant.  I took some undergraduate philosophy courses, back when Kant was only a little over 250 years old.  I admit Kant is where I hit the wall.  These help a bit, all these years later.

An Immeasurable Field

Wow.  Been hearing it is a bad housing market.  Didn’t realize how bad.  From the AP.

2023 was slowest year for US home sales in nearly 30 years as high mortgage rates frustrated buyers

A good read in the form of a book review by Adam Gopnik.  I’ve always been fascinated by America’s fascination with Hitler and Nazis.  This covers an alternate and perhaps more realistic story of the Nazi rise to power in Germany in the 1930s.  The failures were essentially on the inside, with various established actors thinking they could use the Nazi movement for their own purposes.  Perhaps not a spoiler, but they were wrong nearly every time.  From the New Yorker.  May require login.

The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers

Been going on in South Louisiana for decades.  This time it’s a Man From Nantucket.

Billionaire’s million-dollar Nantucket beach house has officially been swept away

I guess it’s official, Elon has wrecked his company’s market.  From Jalopnik.

Tesla Learns Hard Lesson: Go Anti-Woke, Go Broke