And they come with no warning,
nature loves her little surprises.
Continual crisis!

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Linkee-poo, it's a trap!

Yanni Kuznia is promoted to Subterranean Press' Managing Editor and Chief Operating Officer. Well done, Yanni, well done.

XCKD is up to something weird. (Grokked from Dan)

As stated in Little Big Man, sometimes the sun don't shine, the wind don't blow, and the grass doesn't grow. How do you store renewable energy sources for when that happens? Well, here are a few ideas other than industrial batteries and capacitors (store the heat, store the pressure, displacing peak demand).

"'I found it to be heartbreaking,' Jacobson says. 'I do think it's critical that we draw attention to what's going on with our children and our families here in New Mexico, but I think there's a way to do it that's actionable and that's positive and unfortunately I think they did it in a way that was destructive and divisive.'" Um, I think the time for being nice has passed. Sometimes you have to break some eggs before you can make the omelet. What she (and the NM government) are really upset about is the activist who created the parody of NM Tourism ads to highlight child poverty in NM brought the discussion into the light in an attempt to get real reform. It is, IMHO, someone who is more vested in not doing anything in a position where they should be doing something who would find someone helping their cause to be a distraction.

"The scientists found, perhaps not surprisingly, that human sacrifice contributed to creating and preserving social hierarchies, and that it increased the chances that societies would have more fixed strata, which were inherited positions, and less mobility." (Grokked from Jason Sanford)

And NPR's take on the same story. And here's a fun intellectual experiment. Take what you've learned from these two articles, and the presence of human sacrifice in highly stratified societies that are intent on perpetuating those strata and cementing families within those hierarchies, and now compare and then contrast with (the reasons behind the) Black Lives Matter movement.

"When "affordable" homes in San Francisco are advertised as 'From the low $1,000,000s', it's not just the working poor who are pushed out of the city: it's everyone, except VCs, people living on VC money, and people who've cashed out on VC-backed companies." Do you know what you can get for $1M in Ohio (and NE Ohio isn't all that cheap, but still)? Of course our jobs aren't as glamorous (or as well compensated). And we do have "weather" here. But we also have a lack of affordable low to middle income properties available and practically none in development. This isn't just a coastal problem. This is a nationwide issue. (Grokked from Jason Sanford)

"'Because I had been born into the British governing class, because I knew a lot of people of influential standing, I knew that they would never get too tough with me. They'd never try to beat me up or knock me around, because if they had been proved wrong afterwards, I could have made a tremendous scandal.'" Privilege. Kim Philby speaks to the Stasi in 1981 in a film just uncovered. Kim Philby is the prototypical mole that security agencies the world over fear and which drive lots of Cold War fiction.

"TransCanada said Monday it has shut down its Keystone pipeline because of an oil spill in South Dakota, drawing fresh criticism about the risks pipelines pose… Mark Cooper, a spokesman for TransCanada, said a local landowner noticed signs of an oil spill around noon local time Saturday and informed the company." Ah, state-of-the-art leak detection at its best. (Grokked from Paolo Bacigalupi)

Now that more and more people are "getting older", there's an attempt to redefine how we live as older people. Well, at least it's not the Boomers' "60 is the new 40" shtick.

The Trumpster knows nothing. He's apparently trying to get Kasich too quit or be thrown out of the race because he "can't possibly win." And then he says, if that happens, he "automatically wins." Not how it works. Also, the article is pointed to because of the odd insertion of Hillary Clinton and Sanders in the middle. Complete non-sequiturs in a story about Trump. Just bizarre.

Sarah Palin posts picture of her with a dead boar (that she supposedly shot) in an attempt to help seal the deal for Trump in Wisconsin. I'm sure she didn't do this in an attempt to write off her hunting trip or have it classified by the Trump Campaign as a legitimate election expense. I'm sure that had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

There's the emerging narrative of the Democrats sabotaging themselves and leading to a party schism because the campaign for the nomination has become a real campaign. There are some seeds of truth in there, but I find myself wondering just how much the "pundits" know about actual campaigning and the law versus what they thought was happening all along. Do I think the Democrats could throw the election by shooting themselves in the foot? By golly, yes. It wouldn't be the first time. Does Hillary Clinton have her problems as a candidate? OMG, most certainly. But halfway through the article I found myself quoting Pres. Barlet, "You have to watch the whole board." (Grokked from Ferrett Steinmetz)

Because while the Democrats are engaging in their typical circular firing-squad (actually, this is just normal politics on a very tough race), the Republicans are talking revolt within the party.

The Trumpster finally explains how he'll make Mexico pay for the wall. Basically he'll hold private remittances hostage until Mexico ponies up the cash. Yeah, that'll work (side-eye). Because Western Union would be so up for that and smaller banks wouldn't set up low-cost alternatives. Not at all. And the drug cartels already smuggle money south, I'm sure they'd be willing to add to that amount, for a small fee. So basically he wants to punish private citizens (not all remittances are made by aliens here illegally) unless a foreign government concedes to his extortion. That'll go over well in international markets (besides having to break so many treaties that guarantee the free flow of cash between countries that we might find ourselves forced out of our own trade protections).

"In this tumultuous US election there seems, for once, to be a genuine choice on offer about which kind of ideas will spend four years being thwarted in a congressional logjam." Nobody get's out of this one cleanly, although much of the fire is reserved for Trump who "looks like a pumpkin having a nervous breakdown, talks like the words are being fired out of his mouth by a tennis ball launcher and has the general manner of an arrogant televangelist suspected of murder by Columbo." There are so many great lines in this hit-piece (and make no mistake, the writer here is shouting "a plague upon both your houses", but gets to do it from England), but this maybe my favorite, "It’s certainly been entertaining to watch Sanders try to convey a message of hope through the dark prism of the US’s Stage 4 corporate media." (Grokked from John)

Tweet of my heart: @SwiftOnSecurity Next time a vendor screws around on pricing, remind them SpaceX's website has how much they charge to SEND A SATELLITE INTO SPACE.

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