In real life Hegseth would be fired, Palantir would be replaced. The Civilian Protect units would not have been eviscerated.

Even in the current administration, stuff that smears the president will usually get you canned. But looks like Heggie is pretty invincible given the pass he was provided on this tragedy, Johnson calling his sheep back to the barn early to prevent any on-the-record votes about Heggie. I hope that the next session of congress will propose a bill to cancel as much of the Palantir government contracts as is feasible.

I think there is great value in having the military interface with the general public. Especially in an all voluntary military situation. It's an opportunity for the public to see how servicemen/women are living, the sacrifices they are making compared to the civilians, and how tax dollars are being spent. I am fortunate that annually the Navy comes to town and offers tours of the vessels they've docked. It super interesting to see the level of sophistication / lack of sophistication on these ships. The morale and conduct of the enlisted and officers. It's just a weekend but provides excellent insight, to my a civie. You also tend to get a little of the 'real' from jokes and side comments the service people present.

I also am a super-fan of air shows, displaying the speed, precision, and sheer power directed to making that 20k kg aircraft burn through the sky. It's the kid in me, but that's awesome. Likewise with a slow, and low flyby of the bigger planes. Helos the whole deal.

BUT what Heggie and the like are pursuing is much more related to the desire of a-holes like Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un, Gaddafi, and other dear leader types. I feel certain if they could swing it, they would put on one of those military parades with the pointy missiles on trucks and scores of troops with heavy boots walking in lock-step. No. Not in the United States of America please and thank you. More, planned, organized interactive events between military...less show of power nonsense. RPMs of founding fathers within sarcophagi increasing with every passing day

A solid 25% of my electricity bill goes to wildfire costs and that's up from 13% in 2023. Keep in mind that this is 'revenue requirement' money which means the cost also includes "and includes an opportunity for the utility to earn a fair return on its investments." That fair return was apparently helpful in buying Xavier Becerra the governorship

My question is why aren't these costs amortized over 20, 30, 50 years since the benefits of such measures presumably will endure over that period of time? Or put another way, why should rate payers in 2023-2033 bear the entire cost?

Also insurance situation in California is badly . The top job, Insurance Commissioner is a port of call for legislators who have termed out. And bad ones at that. They skew the insurance rates, not accurately reflecting the risks nor costs. It's a veritable giveaway with a typical CA politician thought that these costly benefits will come for free. Nope. Homeowner insurance rates are rising through the roof, if you are lucky and not having your policy cancelled.

Keeping watch over this mess for the past 8 years? This guy:

Ricardo Lara - Straight from college to being a staffer in the statehouse. Then elected to State Assembly (2010–2012) and State Senate (2012–2018) before becoming Insurance Commissioner.

Wikipedia: "After the election, Lara faced significant criticism in which he admitted to receiving donations from the insurance industry he regulates despite pledging not to do so during his campaign.[23][24][25][26][27]

Since assuming office in 2019, Lara has missed nearly all key Senate Insurance Committee hearings, few of which were held each year, often due to international and cross-country travel. Public records revealed at least 46 such trips, including a minimum of 11 taxpayer-funded international excursions to destinations like Bogotá, Paris, Bermuda, Toronto, and the United Kingdom. In many cases, the Department of Insurance has been unable to provide clear documentation of the business purpose of these trips."

W T A F

I got this link from a Slashdot poster years ago and have been fascinated with it ever since.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gridstatus.io%2Flive...

California is CAISO as noted by parent post. There are frequently days where the sun is shining but temps are not too high or for wind where it is windy, but again temps not so high. In both cases there is a certain amount of electricity that simply cannot be added to the grid because there is no demand. The operators basically turn those off** and that is called curtailment. There can be 1, 9, higher GWh of electricity that could be generated but is not. There is still lotsa battery room to grow to capture this. Indeed we are still in an era of negative (wholesale) electricity pricing for parts of the day until storage meets that curtailment load.

Also, also some consumer + business demand balancing like avoiding running the dryer between 4-9p; figuring out when to charge your elec vehicle etc.

tldr; it's coming along. I can legit see that carbon-ish neutral generating coming soon. If only [expletive] PG&E didn't rob us *** on the transmission and delivery costs we could ..we should have lower elec prices. Instead our retail prices are highest in the nation.

**That's also why some wind turbines aren't turning on windy days. They're not broken, just told not to produce so they feather the props
*** Complicit with the corrupt and inept political apparatchiks.

Link to the CAISO data above as well as all the other independent system operators (ISO) around the country. I got this link from a Slashdot poster years ago and have been fascinated with it ever since.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gridstatus.io%2Flive...

California is CAISO as noted by parent post.

As I write this late morning PDT, that's 73% renewables. Add on another 7% nuclear and that's 80% elec from not burning dead dinos. Nat gas is 8%, imports from other states is 6% (have to assume those imports are nat gas)

Solar 67%
Wind 2%
Geothermal 2%
Hydro 2%

The Waymo's , Zoox, and now Telsa Cybertaxis are a real thing in my city. They drive everywhere a human can and are everywhere. There are dozens on any road I drive. And I'm talking congested weird urban streets with hills, twisty roads...delivery trucks double parked, cyclists weaving, everything. And yeah they self park just fine.
Self driving taxis is a done deal. Proof of concept is complete. Now they are just working on reducing the costs of the vehicles and sensor + and gpu hardware. And dealing with the various city agencies that (rightfully) want to slow the roll to protect jobs. And if you pull up YouTube you can see that China has no such compunction and they basically caught up in a few years time...no doubt by "borrowing" the tech Waymo, Zoox, etc developed and honed.

While letting Russia sell it's oil at nearly twice the price.

Fortunately the Ukrainians have long range sanctions with real teeth

I also think I was included. Noticed weird Google map directions on my common urban routes, where there was not an obvious accident/construction/blockage. Depending on how much I cared to care, I've taken the Google suggested route and other times 'my' preferred route. No discernable difference in my admittedly anecdotal, not scientific trials, so maybe that fits the 0.5% improvement. Wondering if the overall throughput was improved, could not discern that through a quick read of the study. Though on these urban routes all the reasonably similar alternatives are typically the same level of traffic.

Same thing with other commodities like oil. Mostly traded back and forth by via futures contracts and such at CME, etc. But at some point, someone does actually want the physical oil (or gold) and that means it has to exist somewhere. For purposes of standardized, uniform trading it makes sense to choose one location and for the delicious West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude that place is Cushing, Oklahoma.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

Stocks have been drawn down as people sold during the first part of the Iran war the U.S. administration started this year.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eia.gov%2Fdnav%2Fpet%2Fh...

Depending on where you live on your personal catastrophism spectrum, levels here could fall to make the place inoperable, throwing physical delivery and therefore futures markets into chaos (seems unlikely operators will permit that to occur) . Similarly, though not related to futures/options, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has been drawn waaaay down

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eia.gov%2Fdnav%2Fpet%2Fh...

To try and tamp down oil/gasoline prices during the Iran war and Strait of Hormuz difficulties. Not sure how effective that has been really, global oil markets are pretty huge...like 100 million barrels per day. At it's peak the SPR had like 750 million barrels so maybe the administration really thought this Iran thing was going to be over in a week or two.

Anyway I've wandered fully OT now, but this sort of "Not based on any reality except the one you think manifests when you just say baloney into a Foxnews camera" makes me think of Treasury Secretary Bessent's recent Treasury Buyback Scheme (of long term, 30yr debt) . Sure it briefly pulled rates down as traders didn't want to get caught in a trap, but today we're right back at a 22 year high. Using $4 billion here or there is lip service in a multi-trillion dollar trading market. The bond vigilantes are the one group that will eat their own and are the biggest threat to Trump Inc..

Also worth keeping in mind what exactly the "Billionaire Tax" aka Prop 40 is about.

This is a state ballot proposition that is once again put forth by the SEIU United Healthcare Workers West (UHW) union. Nominally this tax is meant to replace Medicaid dollars destined for California that the Trump administration is cutting, which might also cut healthcare staffing/union jobs.

I am as pro-union as the next 'libtard' but the SEIU UHW is merrily gambling the rest of the State's livelihood for their own narrow interests.

It's not just if/when the billionaires change their tax domicile, it's also the sub-billionaires who start reading the room and also make their exits. It's the firms that relocate their HQ's and those fat SVP salaries to TX, or TN, or whatever. We may not like it, but it is the reality that a big chunk of CA tax revenues depend on individual capital gains taxes and property taxes which are inextricably linked. Thus, I do not appreciate SEIU UHW and their ill conceived "stick it to the man" populist ballot crap that shows up every election cycle (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fballotpedia.org%2FSEIU-UHW_West).

Over 40% of CA budget goes to State funded healthcare (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fopen.fiscal.ca.gov%2Ftransparency.html). The SEIU UHW should be working on making healthcare more affordable instead of less, they should be working on getting their members to participate in the capital economy which is where wealth can actually be accumulated, and seeing a future where they can be instrumental part of technology change, instead of a victim of it. But no, they have leadership stuck in the 1990's Appalachian union time-warp (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.seiu-uhw.org%2Fbiography-seiu-uhw-president-dave-regan%2F) where the perpetual 'struggle' is the name of the game, not actual benefits for members nor the patients they serve

Don't you mean "malk" https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsimpsons.fandom.com%2Fwi...

This FCC announcement is just more slop from the Make America Mid Again (MAMA) crowd. Ugh.

Per https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eia.gov%2Felectricit... the entire state of Ohio has a summer capacity of 30GW. So this single data center will have a third again as much as the entire state does today. Crazy.

However I would say that given the experience with Intel, Ohioans should be wary of this actually coming to fruition. Also also, their overtly corrupt state representatives will likely find some way to try and extract indulgences from OpenAI/Softbank/NVDIA to possibly derail the scheme.

Lastly lastly, if all of these data centers are running on Nat Gas, one would expect the price of that fossil fuel to rise, which calls into question the economics of such huge, power hungry data centers. The token costs are already pretty high and that is still for being sold by OpenAI/Google/Anthropic below cost to build market share.

I am not brave enough to put my money where my mouth is on this whole scheme (markets...irrational...solvent and all that) but this has to be a bubble. Or more accurately a circle---- between GPU mfg + AI software + financiers that hopefully will unwind contained mostly to those folks.

Agreed. This is a "No sh-- Sherlock" moment. Let's see...key players are Musk, Altman, Zuck...then the stuffed suits from Microsoft and Google...then Anthropic duo, and then China. Running down the list:

1 We know for sure Musk, Altman and Zuck would be happy if a large fraction of the humans on this earth would disappear or be disappeared. They are for sure on the sociopath spectrum. They get deeply negative trust scores.

2 M$ and Google have repeatedly shown that they put quarterly corporate financials above humanity, and will lie and cheat when necessary. Very low on the trust score.

3 Anthropic duo are inexplicably seen as the more trustworthy ones. On the face of it, that's insane since they simultaneously warn about the extreme dangers of their products, the fact they will eviscerate employment in a timeframe too fast for society to adjust, and at the same time press forward as fast as they can to deploy new more dangerous products. I guess by comparison to 1 above is how they get any favorable reviews.

4. China...same amount of trust one would get in purchasing $20, 512GB USB stick from Temu.

So yeah, I don't know about a crisis of trust...seems like society is correctly 'pricing' these circus clowns.

Admittedly, this is work-in-progress on building something so I should cut them some slack. It does seem tough to get over that energy density x payload = range issue. True that early electric autos were also range-starved, waiting for the better LiPo's to be developed and scaled to cost.

But if the Wikipedia is correct that "106 foot wingspan plane" maxes at 110nm range currently. Not sure what sort of altitude that includes. 110 miles to ride a plane is a tough sell, even if you are just trying to connect a spoke city to a hub city. Like would someone fly from Milwaukee to Chicago...maybe, I guess. That Joby air taxi says 150 miles range, but they are only carrying a handful of people.

But leave it to the chemists and engineers to tweak some more miles. Fundamentally I agree that most stuff on the ground should be powered by electricity (trains, trucks, cars, buses) and stuff in the air could use bio-fuels once widely available.

Appreciate the insight from an aviator. Agreed I still want a human in the tower (and two in the cockpit). In some ways your post reinforces what I am noting, namely that there have been a host of technological improvements in aircraft and ATC like GPS, TCAS, and the ones you listed above. But then those improvements are all pushed through the same bottleneck of one or two controllers managing hectic workload on a few common frequencies.

A recent example of an 'unforced error' might be the tragedy Air Canada jet crashing into a fire truck at La Guardia. Truck was incorrectly cleared to cross an active runway.