ZeroGravitas

No Child Left Behind was a Republican thing. Specifically George W Bush as it had elements of federal control that some other Republicans didn't like.

Teacher unions didn't like it.

So many odd aspects to this. The mom was already an activist involved in education and was going to question the state's approach to education even before she found out her kid was struggling with maths.

And she thinks she was decieved by his Elementary School even though he's bright and industrious and running his own successful business at 14?

Many things are not adding up here.

I'd assume based on being in the NYPost that it's propaganda, but it's at the very least weird propaganda.

I think they are implying she lost not because a wealth tax is unpopular with voters, but unpopular with the rich people who buy elections to avoid paying taxes.

> For example, you can't make ammonia from electricity but you can from heat generated by either fossil fuels or nuclear.

This is wrong for two reasons.

One: you can make heat with electricity from renewables sources, if that were necessary.

Two: you don't need heat because you can make ammonia with green hydrogen from electrolysis then follow the standard Haber-Bosch process. The normal fossil route does this too but gets the hydrogen by splitting fossil gas and vents the waste CO2.

You'll own nothing and Sam Altman will be happy.

China has focused on "urban mining" in their most recently published 5 year plan so if the pattern holds western journalists will be surprised to learn about the importance of this in a decade or two, probably just after a war restricts some vital supply line.

German TV had local experts who could tell the audience in real time that the authorities in Fukishsima were lying about the unfolding disaster.

A slightly racist belief in the Japanese as superior at following the rules meant a big shock when the Germans realised that even the Japanese could not be trusted with nuclear power.

Degrowthers just believed climate scientists that there is a problem and then believed climate deniers when they said none of the solutions work.

If you accept both of these then like Vaclav Smil, you'll conclude that you need to use less fossil fuels and nothing else will replace them. And if you care about fairness globally then 1st world nations need to really use less.

It all makes perfect sense if you believe all the lies told about renewables.

Most of the people mocking it helped spread those lies, which makes attacking the people who believe them a bit rude.

> I will also remind you that there is not a single industrialised economy anywhere on earth that has successfully supplied new electricity growth with only renewable energy. Not one.

Nuclear fans across the internet seems to have adopted this talking point recently and none of them have noticed it doesn't make any sense.

What are you even claiming here?

Vague non-binding promises of cheap power in 10 years is cheaper than building clean power today.

For existing nuclear, stealing it from the other grid users is cheaper than building clean power today.

I'd probably be fine with the average opinion of silicon valley workers. Even accounting for the overabundance of priveliged white men that leads to a libertarian/fascist undercurrent. It's the sociopaths that rise to the top by fucking everyone else over that are a problem.

Tesla Model 3s in the UK (and other Right hand drive countries) are made in china so you may want to revisit that bet.

Story from Florida in 2020, with arrest of Republican operative

GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: In Florida and some other states, recruiting ghost or shadow candidates is a well-known political strategy. Katherine Rundle, the state attorney in Miami-Dade County, has seen it before.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/979340075

Let's hope no one starts an ill informed and hypocritical conspiracy theory about the mail-in voting that has made it so much easier to vote.

Narrator: it was not an honest question.

The dam only runs about 33% of the time so 8 hours a day and the batteries run nearly every day so just 3 months of additions is nearing half a grand coulee dam of electricity output. Or two Coulee dams a year in grid battery production.

The existing batteries in Texas and California have already delivered a coulee-dam-year (21TWh) so far in 2026.

Grid batteries was one of the few areas that escaped Trumps gutting of the IRA and was included in other Ibfarstcuture bills.

And a side effect of the EV market getting hobbled also redirected battery factory capacity from that market.

I'm not sure what's online yet but there is a pipeline.

There's something about the trick of abusing a process set up to hire temporary staff quickly for overseas disasters and pandemics to take over and destroy a government department you don't like that feels LLM-like to me.

I wonder if Musk's team is using AI to find loopholes in laws he can abuse.

> The West ... continues to disadvantage itself through eco nonsense

I'm assuming the Chinese EVs that he raves about, and the 1,700 TWh of new renewables generation added since his last visit that helped clear the air are not "eco nonsense" by this definition?

A completely renewable grid is less important than electrifying the low hanging fruit of heating and transport.

Anything below 800g of CO2 (which means basically every current grid) means electrifying is a net win. Even the famously coal heavy South African grid is already past that barrier and even if it wasn't all grids are getting cleaner over time.

A grid that has maxed out wind and solar and then used only coal for 2 weeks would be one of the cleanest grids in the world right now, on par with France or Sweden.

Chasing 100% on a grid to satisfy the complaints of people who are concern trolling isn't smart nor necessary. What you need is bulk cheap electricity to allow you to reduce your heating and transport costs and clean your air at the same time.

She just did her yearly recap of the market:

https://bsky.app/profile/solarchase.bsky.social/post/3mxjkhs...

It was the third of its type in Europe built by roughly the same people, fifth if you include Chinese models built separately, so not a totally new design.

They worked around the CfD and shifted nearly 2 billion of the costs to the next nuclear build by paying the first project out of the new budget for "lessons learned"!

Apparently the main lesson learned was, don't use a CfD because you'll be contractually bound to your initial bid and be responsible for cost overruns. Instead consumers are paying upfront for construction, with no cap on costs for the next one.

Though of course that's not really a lesson learned. Their CFO knew enough at the time the deal was originally signed to resign over it.

I used to think the people who took this "America is too incompetent to make the green transition" stance where just downplaying the tech out of some combination of ignorance and weird partisan logic.

But to give them due credit, they believed in this vision and put in the hard work to make sure it became true.

Judging by the source data:

https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?tem...

Solar's global peak month in (northern hemisphere) summer 2024 nearly equaled nuclear, the full calendar year 2025 slightly beat nuclear and now it's possible that the next yearly minimum month coming up this december will match nuclear. That's a lot of change in just 2.5 years.

Also, the graph shows the world needs more wind power as it counter cycles both solar and hydro supply.

European car manufacturer's sales to China seem systematically underdiscussed, considering the amount of ink spilled about the other direction.

German car manufacturers leaned on their government to not protect the German solar industry from China a decade ago in case it affected their sales of ICE cars to China.

I would guess a lot of the pushback against EVs from the industry is because they have one eye on export markets that they gambled to trail Europe on EV adoption but which are about to topple like dominoes to Chinese-manufactured EVs.

Even when NEV sales in China were 50%, the share for Chinese brands was 80% NEV. It's the non-chinese brands that have everything to lose as that transition accelerates (latest numbers was 2/3rds NEV and ICE sales on a rolling 12 month basis are a third of their peak in 2017). The drop in ICE sales is more pronounced than the rise of EV in calendar year 2026, as you might expect when people realise that the old models are legacy from the day they are purchased.

One modern need is to avoid people using the well known patterns of vote reporting to inflame conspiracies about "mysterious" and "sudden" reversals in vote tallies.

Gerrymandering can give you control of state level offices that then let you affect federal elections by say closing voting locations where you think mostly the opposition will vote or kicking people with ethnic names of voting lists at the last minute.

So there's not a direct effect on Presidential elections but there's a second order effect.

Yes. Hence my question.

Since it's obvious to you, why don't you share your take on it?

Is this parody?

> Jamie, a crypto alum who asked not to share his last name, met a backer for his raw milk startup at a Miami kava bar. The crowd was "50% recovering opioid addicts from Appalachia and 50% Wall Street and Silicon Valley refugees looking for shelter from taxes, pandemic restrictions, and leftist ideological hegemony," he says. A crowd accumulated in the corner, smoking.

> He struck up a conversation with a jacked, Harley-riding investor while chain-smoking Marlboro Reds. Jamie told the investor about his startup, and the two talked about alternative wellness between drags. A week later, the investor signed a check. Smoking poles put him in pole position.

It's all weird but specifically "smoking poles" has a different meaning as far as I'm aware. I can't quickly Google up anyone using "pole" to mean cigarette.