249 Comments

Ta, Dok. There is no Planet B. Harris-Walz 2024 and a blue tsunami of votes EVERYWHERE, and up and down every ballot.

Expand full comment

"a second abandonment of America’s commitment to fighting climate change."

Yes. If legacy media felt that "future" was worth spending some precious words on Trump's head-in-the-sand about climate change would be disqualifying. Period.

Expand full comment

Wher stack of dead iggles?

Expand full comment

We're gonna need a bigger oven to cook 'em up.

Expand full comment

They're all rafted up at the base of the wind-turbine Trump believes in.

Expand full comment

The lead photo reminds me of something I learned long ago, which is that in The Olden Olden Days there were, in general, only 2 colors of paint: white and red. White was made with lead, and red was not, so rural people painted their barns red so that when the cows and pigs licked the walls, they didn't get lead poisoning. Then they painted their houses white but added wallpaper on all the interior walls so that their children didn't get lead poisoning. They forgot about the window frames. One friend of mine lives in a 200-yr-old farmhouse, and when she tried to remove the wallpaper, she found there were 7 layers of different wallpapers.

Expand full comment

Red was cheap too since it is made with iron that is readily available.

Around here once the culm dumps (made of coal mining waste not profitable enough to use or sell) started to burn with that bluish flame that our out-of-state relatives found so exciting to see at night, the sulfurous fumes changed a lot of lead painted white buildings to permanently stained black.

Expand full comment

Interesting.

Expand full comment

That reminds me of my bedroom reno. When we went to remove the wallpaper, we found nine layers of paint and or wallpaper on the 77 year old plaster walls. The previous residents must have loved to redecorate.

Expand full comment

What, the US government is aware that battery backup is a must?

Ben Franklin approves this message. https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/benjamin-franklins-pioneering-electrical-work-influenced-todays-technology

Expand full comment

The area of Iowa where I grew up is covered with windmills. I love them. When you're in the middle of nothing but cropland, the miles of red lights at night are beautiful.

Expand full comment

Right? People say they're ugly but I see sustainability and good science/ingenuity.

Expand full comment

Yesterday I drove up I97 through Oregon & Washington. The hills above the Columbia Gorge are covered with windmills and it's lovely.

Expand full comment

I agree, and are you from Crawford or Ida county or thereabouts?

Expand full comment

Winnebago.

Expand full comment

Grew up just south of the Winnebago county line. 13 miles from Winnebago’s Big Bertha main gate.

Expand full comment

I've got the I 35/highway 20 Vista when I go back to my ancestral lands.

Expand full comment

So flat, so soothing.

Expand full comment

I'm a fan of vertical axis turbines. I think they could be incorporated directly into the structure of a house, making them less visible than the big horizontal fan windmills.

Most of the ones currently sold for home use are too small to completely power a house's needs, but in conjunction with a small solar footprint and a battery backup, it should be possible to be completely independent without the need for power lines in a rural area.

Expand full comment

I have a design for one that worked well at small model scale, I've never tried to build a large one. Not a Savonius style, more like cutting a bucket into 3 sections and arranging them about an axis in a particular way. It was easy starting and felt like it should scale up well but I haven't attempted a build yet. People are doing neat stuff with "power-walls" of a bunch of little VATs stacked up.

Expand full comment

The funny thing about windmills is that many farms used them to generate electricity before the electrical grid was expanded in the 1930s.

Expand full comment

The squeak of the windmills was part of the 'tumbleweeds' view of the depression - and part of my visits to a Ryegate MT ranch (where we had fights using grease guns - there is nothing like watching wiggling stream of grease hit and splat on your opponents' chest)

Expand full comment

My grandfather on my mother's side was a windmill salesman. Then the depression hit.

Expand full comment

And pump water also too.

Expand full comment

I posted about my round trip to Redwood Falls last week, a part of the world I hadn't seen in many, many years. As I left the Twin Cities Metro Area and drove through central rural Minnesota, I marveled at how little things had changed over the past so many years. But then... oh look, there's a solar panel array... and there's a wind turbine farm... and there's another solar panel array... and there's another wind turbine farm...

And so it went. So central rural Minnesota *has* changed in important ways, but hasn't lost its rural, down home character.

Expand full comment

Constantly amazed by how people don't want to consider 'Progress', as in energy production, as a thing.

I once proposed 'coal-burning cars', as an answer to the problem.

With a monkey on the back, shoveling coal into the boiler.

It could work.

Expand full comment

Kinda steampunk.

Expand full comment

First mototcycle to break 60m was a coal fired steamer.

Expand full comment

Anthracite coal was the best.

Expand full comment

Fun fact: the first internal combustion engines ran on coal dust.

Expand full comment

Because I know coal dust is explosive, that makes sense. ( & flour dust, at the mill).

As does indoor plumbing.

Hopefully, not explosive.

Expand full comment

If only one could harness all this explosive energy.

Expand full comment

Harness farts.

Expand full comment

What's neat is watching green energy infest the prepper communities. r/preppers is constantly a fight between people doing basic disaster prep like me (your lil' grew up in a major hurricane zone pal) and people prepping for a literal apocalypse, but most of them are on the solar panel train to power simple devices now that there's literally generators that can plug into panels that fold up and can fit in a closet (marketing is mostly aiming at the camping crowd, but the use is clearly there for emergencies). Even the way deep into the end times ones are pro solar since they can use it to power personal distilleries and such.

As I live in a condo, my only solar devices are small ones, a phone charger/power bank that can charge from the sun if the wall is not available, and an emergency radio that had both those options AND a hand crank in case it's dark and no power. But my car is electric now and I like it that way. XD

Expand full comment

Multiple options for your adaptable life.

Expand full comment

I have a light-powered HP calculator that I'll use when I don't feel like messing up my monitor desktop with another damn window.

Expand full comment

I have a light-powered calculator from high school that *still* works.

Expand full comment

I use my phone most of the time but I also have a little cheap Avengers calculator that came in a cheap themed set I nabbed ages ago.

Expand full comment

Tony Stark Avengers or Emma Peel Avengers?

Expand full comment

They didn't have "pocket" calculators in the 60s / 70s, but if they did, Steed and Peel would have used them.

Expand full comment

Marvel.

Expand full comment

I remember when those came out.* I never bought one, though, because 75% of what I used my calculator for was done well after sunset.**

* I am OLD.

** Navigational rallying. Every register was filled with custom timing programs.

Expand full comment

𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢’𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦.

That's just TCFFG/PAB's counting. I tend to throw in Ronald Reagan's war on every one of Jimmy Carter's (you know, the fucking nuclear engineer guy) energy independence and renewable energy initiatives which pretty much had the same effect as letting the atmosphere do carbon capture (which by the way is a thing now in Louisiana) and apparently just doesn't work as advertised (surprise!) by big awl and gas.

Expand full comment

In the early 2000's I was working with a couple of extraordinarily well-educated scientists, one of whom I knew, for reasons, was intimately familiar with the IPCC report and its terrifying prognosis for the planet, and the other, likely knowledgeable of the report. At the same time our rural/agricultural community was in the process of approving multiple wind turbine projects, and both of these individuals, drawing on view property mindsets, vocally opposed the wind projects, going full NIMBY, including at least one shamefully preposterous, fear-mongering letter to the editor in the local paper (remember those?). *One* of the things that continues to piss me off about that is that now when I look out on the completed projects, taking some comfort in watching the blades turn and thinking about how with each spin they're producing energy that otherwise would be coming from fossil fuels, those two are living rent-free in my brain nagging at me with the thought that if *those* two couldn't get on board, what hope is there to make progress with the genuine chuds.

Expand full comment

The difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in a nutshell.

Biden does something tangible to help people in areas that don't support him.

When Trump was asked how he was going to help people in rural areas whose hospitals have closed, he said, "we're going to help them. They love Trump, they support Trump."

1. He didn't answer the question by saying HOW he was going to help. 2. He made it about himself. 3. He (at least) implies that he's only going to help people who support him.

Expand full comment

During his reign wildfires were killing California and PAB basically said " fuck um they didn't vote for me"

Expand full comment

He's going to stiff the people that support him anyways.

Expand full comment

It's the grift. Whether cash or votes, it is all about the grift. MAGATs will never see any returns.... except maybe the return to Jim Crow and no trans individuals. Hate is free if you are a Convicted Felon PAB.

Expand full comment

Have you been watching the price of his scam stock? He's already been taking their money.

Expand full comment

If we weren't cursed with the villagers we've got some public policy wonk at a legacy media powerhouse might write a story about how weird it is that one candidate is basically a grifter very obviously trying to personally profit from his involvement in public life in America. He's so low class it's remarkable, shilling gold sneakers and NFTs and shit. Imagine how the NYT or WaPo would have treated Obama if he was shamelessly hocking nearly worthless merch on the internet while running for president or while president?

Expand full comment

4. And since he lies 24/7, he wasn't gonna help ANYONE.

Expand full comment

Strangely no "Trump never tells the truth" stories on legacy media.

Expand full comment

Remember -- to keep this going, we're going to need solid support in both houses of the Congress.

Vote Blue! Power for You!

Expand full comment

Yeah, without both houses of congress it'll just be a waiting game before team Fashy is back, hell even with a sweep it's going to be hard to operate with Mitch McConnel's hack judiciary all the time.

Expand full comment
Error