The power grid was restored by 8 p.m., when someone headed in my direction came into McDonald's. But we should not let it be forgotten. While certain lesser-of-the-available-evils politicians are infatuated with the idea of burning through all our resources to revive the old oil-boom economy of our long-gone youth, We The People need to think further ahead. If you're likely to outlive the President, don't buy into his unsustainable fantasy. We need to break up the central power grid. We need to reduce energy consumption so that we can produce our own energy. We need to make sure that damage to one device, which actually turned out to be in Weber City, is not putting people in the cold and the dark all the way to Fort Blackmore.
I was expecting that the damage would have been done by a snow-burdened tree. That was an inference made from correlation. Correlation does not equal causation. The damage was done by a corporate employee's mistake in managing a device involved in a corporate "upgrade." Let that sink in, local lurkers. Ask: When did it become possible for a device in Weber City to destroy all the mod. con. in Fort Blackmore? Why? Who benefits? Why have we allowed this and how do we make it impossible for what happened last week to happen again?
As this web site often observes, people who read stuff on the Internet certainly aren't in the top one percent of the world's richest people, but we are still part of a global elite. Given the materials, or money to buy the materials, we can figure out how to set up small, low-pollution, low-waste solar and wind devices for generating and storing our own electricity. Not everyone can do this so the companies should be going with the flow and helping people achieve energy independence.
They don't want to do this. Of course not. Who wants to be working on parachutes to allow them to fall safely, when there's a fantasy that they can fly higher than ever? The companies naturally want to buy into the fantasy.
We The People can bring the companies back to reality by becoming energy misers. You can get your electricity consumption down to where one circuit powers everything one person plugs and unplugs, turns on and off. Depending on your household size you can replace inefficient tanks that keep bathtubs full of water heated all the time with more efficient heaters that heat water when and as if flows over them, or just place the tanks in front of a window that catches the afternoon sun and have enough solar-heated water for one person absolutely free of charge (assuming you already have the tank), You can store a reasonable amount of food, for a reasonable amount of time, in a cooler bin and not need a refrigerator. The payoff? Two-figure monthly bills while you're on the grid and a realistic plan for meeting your energy needs with the energy nature has handed you: sun, wind, water, and don't forget your body with its physical need for exercise. With a little thought and effort we can live comfortable, modern, computer-enhanced lives without grid power. By doing that thought and effort, and lowering our bills this year, we can teach the companies that their options are going with our flow or crashing.
Will there still be some need for some big corporate power plants to fuel big corporate projects like city transportation systems? Probably so, for a long time. But we can and should eliminate any real need for anyone's home to depend on an unreliable, just-paint-on-the-target-for-our-country's-enemies, power grid. Not only our way of life but our actual lives could depend on our doing this. We need generators that don't depend on petroleum.
Meanwhile...I went home, had lights, and dived into a book project. I came back online on Monday afternoon. The Internet connection seems to have sustained some damage, but it can still be described as working.
Animals
Extremely cute adoptable cat in Louisiana:
Economic Indicators
Where I live, the Arctic Cat is a pure nuisance. Used to compact snowy roads into sheets of ice, used to startle animals and disrupt people's privacy in their homes. I'm sure lots of people wish the company would just die.
What I wish is that roads were opened to those things, which were made to be driven on snow, when they become hazardous for driving regular cars. The Arctic Cat is a great big untapped potential for good. The hobbyists who drive them ought to be organized like a nonviolent militia, deployed whenever roads become impassable to deliver supplies to stranded seniors, take patients to hospitals, bring students home from school, and so on.
Such that I would think a case could be made for either the US or the Canadian government, or both, bailing out the company and upgrading the Arctic Cat's image. "ATVs aren't nuisances. Reckless, stupid, aimless or malicious ATV drivers are nuisances. But today's ATV drivers are neighborhood heroes!"
Glyphosate Awareness
Viva Mexico! We need to be better neighbors.
Monarch butterfly populations continue to decline. (So do other butterfly populations--Monarchs only happen to be the best known and best loved.)
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/18/nx-s1-5179002/protect-species-monarch-butterfly-decision-may-soon-tryb
Music
Wu Fei and friends in Chinese-American jazz concert.
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