Getting a bit predictable, if not tedious. Saw this news is several outlets. Only one tried to blame The Windmills. From the Austin Chronicle.
It also seems ERCOT is voting Thursday to ban storage (batteries) from the grid. My understanding is batteries are doing a good job filling in the “duck bill” that occurs when the sun goes down and wind hasn’t picked up. Seems like a naked gift to oil and gas, at the expense of everyone who uses electricity.
Heard about this yesterday, even though the news was almost a year old. And probably a long time coming, after a quarter of a century or so. But I did hang on to this bit of history.
I am undeniably a lucky person. Always have been. When I was younger, I resented it a bit, because I felt like much of the time my hard work and accomplishments were written off by friends and family as luck. And they may have been right. As J. R. “Bob” Dobbs once said, (and I paraphrase) I would rather be lucky than smart. From Sapient Capital.
A good read from the BBC.
Saw these today at SMoCA. Great stuff.
I made some red beans with the induction cooker yesterday. I have had a hard time articulating why this is such a better way to cook. I never took to the Instant Pot. You can’t stir easily and can’t see what is going on inside. It also isn’t good for cooking off liquids.
The induction cooker is pleasant in that you aren’t bombarded with a blast of heat from the stove flame every time you get near the pot. And all that heat isn’t heating up the house and driving up the air conditioning bills, at least in the summer.
After some use it is clear that the real advantage is actual temperature control. With a gas stove you control the size of the flame, but the flame is always the same temperature. If you have a heavy pot it (sorta) spreads out the heat. But a long slow cook for something like red beans needs lots of stirring and you still get burning and sticking on the bottom. With the induction cooker you are literally setting the temperature of the bottom of the pot. This sort of control is great but a bit novel and took some getting used to. By the way, this induction cooktop only has like six different settings. Enough I suppose but more would be better. I can see maybe 25F increments as being useful.
Didnt expect these until next week, but the new pair of 100W solar panels arrived. A bit larger than I expected. I ordered the smaller Victron controller today. I suppose I need a battery now. Looking at this 50 ah 12 V lithium. Mostly to play around with, in anticipation of going full solar / battery when we move. Could come in handy to keep some lights on in a power outage, too.
I spent the end of my career doing tech work for some large financial services firms. Everyone had to do regular money laundering training. Basically how to spot it and what to do about it if you saw it. All of this was aimed at low level, cash transactions. It was also mentioned that US real estate was the primary vehicle for large scale money laundering worldwide. The basic reason was the ability to hide ownership in real estate.
Of course, all this money sloshing around was good for people in real estate and, truth be told, in the finance sector. And I suppose the economy at large, though I’m not really so sure that any of these ill gotten billions ever really trickled down to middle and lower class Americans in any form.
This law is long overdue. But, if done correctly, this will lead to serious declines in high end and commercial real estate. It will be interesting to see what effect enforcing such anti-money laundering laws will have.
Steven A. Guccione 