High temperature energy storage

I reckon (just as many people say in the comments following) that this idea has a distinct air of "too good to be true" about its claimed cost and efficiency, but it's pretty interesting nonetheless:

 

 One thing I am curious about:it is very reliant on components being surrounded by argon.  How rare is argon?   [Answer - not very - "Argon is the third-most abundant gas in the Earth's atmosphere, at 0.934% (9340 ppmv)"]   I assume it's relatively cheap, then.

But what happens if the argon gas escapes and you get normal O2 around the super hot elements of this plant?   At least there's no radioactivity involved, even if there is some kind of explosion.

"Manifesto" discussed

By far the best article I have read about the "manifesto" of the Buffalo shooter is by Jeff Sharlet at Vanity Fair:

The Terrifying Familiarity of the Buffalo Shooting Suspect's Extremist Creed

Worth clearing your cookies to read it, if you have to.

Update:   worth reading the Slate article on the Tucker Carlson attempt at deflection from blame for his promulgating the same racist theory that inspired the shooter (even allowing that the shooting never cites Carlson or Fox News as a source or inspiration):

Since taking over Bill O’Reilly’s old primetime slot in 2017, Carlson has come to embrace “Trumpism without Trump,” as the Times put it. That ideology,  in Carlson’s interpretation, means a steady diet of paranoid nativism modulated by seething contempt for anyone who is not a paranoid nativist. In the world of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the terms “racist” and “racism” are almost only ever bestowed in bad faith by leftists hoping to chill public discourse and cow conservatives out of expressing and/or acting on their beliefs. And so it was both depressing and predictable that during Monday night’s show—his first show since the shootings in Buffalo—Carlson heaped scorn on those pundits and observers who had dared to suggest that the mass murderer who openly announced his own racism was, first and foremost, a racist.

In his monologue, Carlson argued that the top-line takeaway about Gendron should not be that he was racist, but that he was insane—and, implicitly, that the unsung villains of the Buffalo attack were the liberal pundits who had had the gall to connect two very obvious and proximate dots. “The truth about Payton Gendron does tell you a lot about the ruthlessness and dishonesty of our political leadership,” said Carlson. “Within minutes of Saturday’s shooting, before all of the bodies of those 10 murdered Americans had even been identified by their loved ones, professional Democrats had begun a coordinated campaign to blame those murders on their political opponents. ‘They did it!’ they said, immediately. ‘Payton Gendron was the heir to Donald Trump,’ they told us.”

A quick Google search for the term “Payton Gendron was the heir to Donald Trump” indicates that no one other than Tucker Carlson himself is actually saying those specific words or anything particularly like it. Likewise, no one credible is saying that anyone other than Gendron is directly responsible for the attack. Carlson surely knows this, just as he surely knows that his viewers do not particularly care whether or not the things he says are fair, accurate, or logical. What his viewers want is to be made to feel like they are the true victims of every real or imaginary outrage that makes the news.

On Fox News, and especially on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the scariest attacks are always those being systemically waged by liberals on conservative values. Even in the immediate wake of a definitional racist massacre, committed by a person whose stated ideology was not entirely dissimilar from ideas that are routinely voiced on its own airwaves, Carlson could not help implying that the real victims here are, perhaps, the conservatives whose speech might be trammeled by liberals hoping to capitalize on the shooting for their own political end

“So, what is hate speech? Well, it’s speech that our leaders hate,” Carlson said on Monday night. “So because a mentally ill teenager murdered strangers, you cannot be allowed to express your political views out loud. That’s what they’re telling you. That’s what they’ve wanted to tell you for a long time.” Implicit in this response is the argument that while Gendron’s views and Carlson’s views share a lot of overlap, it would be unfair to criticize Carlson for holding and professing those viewpoints, because, in this construction, the racist opinions and the racist violence are not directly linked. (This sidestep ignores that white supremacist ideology is inherently violent.) While the host, in part, was deflecting, the deflection was also a force of habit. The meta stories that Fox News has always liked to tell when the actual news is inconvenient or unpleasant for the right have, over time, become virtually the only stories that the network is able to tell in an era when the Republican Party is at its moral nadir.

It ends:

In a humane and functional polity, our top political leaders and opinion-makers would want to promote a responsible, fact-based discourse; would see nothing controversial in acknowledging hard truths about American history and in condemning racism in the past, present, and future; and would generally try to avoid voicing and normalizing the sorts of spurious cultural grievances that might ever motivate some crackpot to go shoot up a supermarket. This is not the polity we have today. Instead, we’ve got one where spurious cultural grievances are the only grievances worth nurturing, a world where the only people worth directly condemning are those who dare to call racism by its name. The dead, like the truth, are merely collateral damage.

Because I can....

The Right wing threat - Part 2

Oh, it seems as a subscriber to the Washington Post, I can "gift" 10 articles a month, including by linking.  I should do that more.

Here's a column about the rise of "Christian Nationalism" in Pennsylvania, and the GOP generally.  An extract:

With his motto “Free indeed!” — an excerpt from scripture that says freedom from sin is found in Jesus — Mastriano is a hero to some in this swing state who say they are fed up with church leaders as well as political parties they perceive as weak-willed, and with debates about religious liberty and the advantages of a diverse democracy. Fueled by a generation of religious leaders arguing that Christianity is persecuted in America, the new movement wants to see a more explicit, constitutionally approved dominance of “Christianity” — which to them means conservative politically, theologically and socially. They see themselves in a spiritual battle with Satan.

“The forces of darkness are hitting us really hard right now,” Mastriano told a few hundred people last month at a church parking lot rally in Pennsburg. “We’re going to bring the state back to righteousness, this is our day, our hour to take our state back and renew the blessings of America.”

His wife, Rebbie, then told the crowd that her husband’s opponents are not just challenging another candidate but God. “When you’re against God’s plan, there is nothing that will stop it, and they are very worried right now that there is nothing that’s going to stop this.”

Other speakers emphasized to the crowd, which included a man in a Minuteman costume holding a flag, that this Christian vision is what the Founders intended. “The Constitution prevents the government from imposing on the church. It doesn’t say anything about religion imposing itself on the state,” Rick Crump, a Christian branding expert and community organizer, told the rally.

This ethos is very different from earlier iterations of the Religious Right who were looking to engage with — even win at — mainstream politics, some experts say.

I think called it "Christian Nationalism" is too soft - calling it Christofascism gives a more accurate name.

The Right wing threat

Yes, I'm enjoying the threat being made that if people "punish" the LNP for never dealing with its climate change denying, culture warring, "conservative" wing (which I would still guess accounts for about 30% of the government - a large enough slab that is impossible to ignore), it will only cause the Party to go further in that direction.

That would be a good thing, according to gormless Mitchell: 

By the way, do you have to be at least 70 to write opinion at that paper?  

The threat summarised in this one:

I wonder if Barnaby is still smiling about this:

A depressing but accurate sounding take

From Twitter, obviously:

 

 

Impossible is fantastic

It's been a long time since I ate at Grill'd, but I'm pretty sure they used to sell the Beyond Burger as their imitation burger.

On the weekend, I was there again, and see they now sell the Impossible burger, which I have never tried before.  (I see from Googling that this is a relatively recent change.)

So I tried it in the basic burger version, and it was very, very good.  They've really nailed that texture element, which I used to say was the main thing that you could tell was different from real beef.   And the taste seemed indistinguishable to me.

I got home and told my fake meat skeptic son that, along with my "reverse Pol Pot" plan (de-populate regional areas so to stop the spread of Right wing ideas), my next law as Benevolent Dictator would have to be to ban beef burgers.   There simply is no need for them any more. 

Chicken nuggets will probably be next in the firing line, since I've seen a few videos of people tasting plant based ones which they say are indistinguishable.

Reeking of desperation

Gee, its hard not to interpret this as s sign that the internal polling (and focus groups) must be looking disastrous for Morrison and the LNP:

 That's on top of this:

But the Prime Minister has changed his tune as he enters the final week of the campaign, trailing in the polls and momentum swinging behind Labor.

"I know (that) Australians know I can be a bit of a bulldozer when it comes to issues," he conceded.

"As we go into this next period on the other side of the pandemic, I know things that are going to have to change with the way I do things."

A promise to change, if given the chance, "because we're moving into a different time, a time of opportunity."

In campaign terms, it is a tectonic shift.

 

I hope this causes the NFT fad to die completely

The online world, and especially the crypto community, is lambasting Madonna upon the release of her and Beeple's new collection of sexually graphic NFTs, which include explicit footage of the singer giving birth to trees, butterflies, and robotic centipedes. The video clips include close-up shots of the singer’s genitalia created using scans of Madonna’s body.

That extract is from Fortune, which at least has the good taste not to link to the site where you can watch the tree grow.  (Yes, I looked at it, and it is so, so stupid and creepy looking: a good comedian could probably do at least a 30 minute stand up set about it.)     Can't she just take up knitting, or something?

Awful people

Yes, Glenn Greenwald actually says that people who make on line death threats are not the people the target of the threat should worry about - because people who really want to kill you don't tell you ahead of time.  It's just an outlet for their anger that, if you take it away, is actually more dangerous. (!)

That Tucker Carlson actually laughs in agreement, when he is one of the biggest pretenders that "Leftists" are threatening his safety, is just ludicrous.

These are ridiculous, awful men:

 

 

Not just at my house

My wife is home with a cough and sore throat, and I have been having (admittedly mild) passing symptoms of a cold too.  Both of us did a RAT yesterday that showed a strong negative...

 

They have built their own fantasy alternative reality, and insist on living in it

 

Update:   Speaking of Republicans/Conservatives always wanting to be the victim, have a read of the ridiculous lines Ted Cruz was mouthing on Hannity, as shown in this Philip Bump column at the Washington Post.

As someone said in the comments following:

Fascists frequently paint themselves as victims.

For goodness sake, don't tell Peter Thiel...

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from young mice can improve memory function in older mice, researchers report today in Nature. A direct brain infusion of young CSF probably improves the conductivity of the neurons in ageing mice, which improves the process of making and recalling memories. The team also suggests that the improvements are largely due to a specific protein in the fluid.

“This is super exciting from the perspective of basic science, but also looking towards therapeutic applications,” says Maria Lehtinen, a neurobiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts.

That's from Nature.

And a reminder about Peter Thiel

Phil fails (to get a grip)

 

The laughable pretence that the Left is being scary by protesting like this

I'll just let a series of tweets tell the story:

 (I initially thought the tweets saying that judge's neighbours were supporting the protesters were probably too "good" to be true, but it seems right.)

Yes, I understand the point that no one in a gun happy nation welcomes a group of protesters outside their door.   Still, if there is one side that has made a deliberate point of protest with the potential of deadly violence from a gun, it's the wingnut Right, not the Left.  

Also, there is no doubt the Right is especially hypocritical in the case of the abortion issue:

That graphic doesn't tell half the story, given the amount of daily harassment abortion clinics - or even suspected abortion clinics - have endured.

And let's not forget the completely conspiracy based harassment that MAGA people have conducted against election officials:

Update:  Slate article After thirty years of turning abortion clinics into war zones, now you want "civility"?

Naive

 

Um...

 

I would assume it's because if voters don't see abortion affecting them personally, they won't change their vote regardless of what they think about its legal status.  

I would guess that it may take some high profile case (or cases) of women dying due to inability to get an abortion under new State laws to change this.    

Update:   I don't know - it's possible I could be wrong, given the enthusiasm with which some Red States are coming up with new ideas in anticipation of Roe going:

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) on Sunday refused to rule out the possibility that his state would ban certain forms of contraception, sidestepping questions about what would happen next if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

 

An encouraging graph

I'm starting to think that even the pro-mining voters of Queensland and NSW can't stop a Labor victory:

Speaking of the pro-miners, there was a 30 minute show on ABC News on the weekend about this - with the usual vibe of "we have to listen to the concerns of the mining towns."

Quite frankly, I don't know why we have to.   

As was shown,  people already know of small towns that have died after the local mine closed.   If you live in a town that expands under mining projects, you should accept that the mining money is not going to last forever, and that governments therefore have every reason to be careful as to how much they invest in infrastructure (hospitals, etc) to support a place that they can confidently know is going to face a dramatic population downturn as soon as its key economic reason reason for existing goes away.

And yeah, climate change means less coal mining.   Live with it.  

I'm thoroughly sick of the pussy footing around the sensitivities of people on this issue.   Sure, they can make their money while the going's good, but don't expect that it's going to last forever.  

About "primitive communism"

Quite a good essay at Aeon here about an idea popularised by Marx that has been influential.  Here's a part near the start:

...the most peculiar project born from Marx’s notes was released a year after his death. Engels titled it The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. I’ll call it The Origin, for short.

The Origin is like Yuval Noah Harari’s blockbuster Sapiens (2014) but written by a 19th-century socialist: a sweeping take on the dawn of property, patriarchy, monogamy and materialism. Like many of its contemporaries, it arranged societies on an evolutionary ladder from savagery to barbarism to civilisation. Although wrong in most ways, The Origin was described by a recent historian as ‘among the more important and politically applicable texts in the Marxist canon’, shaping everything from feminist ideology to the divorce policies of Maoist China.

Of the text’s legacies, the most popular is primitive communism. The idea goes like this. Once upon a time, private property was unknown. Food went to those in need. Everyone was cared for. Then agriculture arose and, with it, ownership over land, labour and wild resources. The organic community splintered under the weight of competition. The story predates Marx and Engels. The patron saint of capitalism, Adam Smith, proposed something similar, as did the 19th-century American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan. Even ancient Buddhist texts described a pre-state society free of property. But The Origin is the idea’s most important codification. It argued for primitive communism, circulated it widely, and welded it to Marxist principles.

The essay goes on to talk about evidence from modern anthropology that goes against the idea.

 

Right wing paranoia watch

 In Australia:

 

Mind you, the evidence from New Catallaxy is that Australian right wingers, who are extraordinarily gullible when it comes to American conspiracy theory about Trump, still find that Aussie-style Qanon garbage is just too much.   Bosi will be lucky to receive a couple of hundred votes.

The New Catallaxy dumb ageing cranks are, however, swayed by "massive voter fraud at the Trump election" conspiracy, as evidenced by them linking to article about that D'Souza "documentary" 2,000 Mules.  

As this article explains, the movie proves precisely nothing, and it's easy to see the misinterpretation (and lack of understanding) of information that has been manipulated by conspiracy theorists who make money by promoting it to the gullible.   

It's once again, as always, a case of Trumpists seeing something they don't understand, saying "Hey, that looks suspicious to me!", and then thinking something has been proved.

 

A case of "grin and bear it", I suppose

A somewhat disturbing picture:

Yes, yes:  pragmatists will argue that this is what politicians do when campaigning - and look at the amount of sucking up Rudd did to News Corp and others to get and try and keep the job.

But, just as it did Rudd no good, what is the point of sucking up to such a has-been who surely can't keep "working" forever.  Mind you, ancient Sydney based radio personalities seem to have found some magic elixir to stay alive enough to keep using a microphone, even if they don't enjoy the best of health.   It's not just confined to Right wing figures either - look at Phillip Adams. And here's a photo of John Laws (86, but he could pass for older) from today:

Can anyone explain why such a rich man can't afford a decent haircut?