Wednesday, August 9, 2023

News roundup, 9 Aug 2023

- Home invasions? Try that in a small town. Oh wait, they did, and they succeeded.

- The federal government is actually showing signs of playing hardball with laggard provinces - they may be forced to agree to federal emissions targets for the grid in order to access federal money. A step in the right direction, assuming they don't chicken out. Meanwhile Danielle Smith is doing her damnedest to crush the thriving clean energy sector in her own province, by imposing a seven month moratorium on any new projects. Because freedumb. Whether she is willing to cut off her nose to spite her face remains to be seen, but my money's on her pushing forward anyway, just like Ron DeSantis in Florida.

- On the positive side, solar power is helping to keep the power on in Europe despite huge demands on the grid due to air conditioning use. Which makes perfect sense; the hottest part of the day is usually the sunniest.

- Also positive - the Inflation Reduction Act is doing wonders for clean energy.

- Lula, for all his faults, seems to actually be taking action to protect the Amazon. It's almost as if elections actually mattered, sometimes.

- Having your air conditioning fail is annoying, and expensive, but it should not be fatal. It was for these people though. Expect this to be a more widespread problem in the future.

- Why does Alabama still have such a bad reputation for race relations? Maybe because of stuff like this.

- In 1970 Richard Nixon was doing his darnedest to prevent Salvador Allende from taking office in Chile. This should of course come as no surprise to anyone who knows what happened a few years later.

- Self-proclaimed champion of free speech Elon Musk is doing everything he can to silence a nonprofit that dares to point out the prevalence of hate speech on his platform.

- One of the biggest beneficiaries of working from home is now ordering their own workers back to the office. If I had to guess, I'd say it might be pressure from their biggest shareholders, some of which doubtless have significant exposure to the commercial real estate market.

- Weird stuff is happening to water temperatures in the Pacific, with a small area being cooled as most of the ocean is getting hotter. Consequences TBA...

- We know that a lot of the same kind of people who burn the Quran also like Putin. Some say this may not be a coincidence; at the very least, the Kremlin stands to benefit from divisions arising because of this.

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