I Like Ike.
EditorialBoard: Why are we assuming Trump is trying to win the election?
Everything about this election presumes something so big that itâs invisible to the naked eye, which is that Donald Trump is trying to win. But why would an authoritarian, who refuses to concede that Biden win, try to win the current one? There is no point when you never lost the last one. Why prepare for a debate when youâre going to declare yourself the winner? Preparation is for suckers and losers.
NZ Herald: Private call of top Democrats fuels more insider anger about Bidenâs debate performance
A sense of concern is growing inside the top ranks of the Democratic Party that leaders of US President Joe Bidenâs campaign and the Democratic National Committee are not taking seriously enough the impact of the presidentâs troubling debate performance earlier in the week.
DNC chairman Jaime Harrison and Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez held a call with dozens of committee members across the country, a group of some of the most influential members of the party. They largely ignored Bidenâs weak showing and the avalanche of criticism that followed.
Multiple committee members on the call, most granted anonymity to talk about the private discussion, described feeling like they were being gaslit - that they were being asked to ignore the dire nature of the partyâs predicament. The call, they said, may have worsened a widespread sense of panic among elected officials, donors and other stakeholders.
WashPo: See how this green hydrogen plant converts water into clean fuel
Turning hydrogen into liquid fuel could help slash planet-warming pollution from heavy vehicles, cutting a key source of emissions that contribute to climate change. But to fulfill that promise, companies will have to build massive numbers of wind turbines and solar panels to power the energy-hungry process. Regulators will have to make sure hydrogen production doesnât siphon green energy that could go towards cleaning up other sources of global warming gases, such as homes or factories.
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To wean machines off oil, companies like Infinium, the owner of this plant, are starting to churn out hydrogen-based fuels that – in the best case – produce close to net zero emissions. They could also pave the way for a new technology, hydrogen fuel cells, to power planes, ships and trucks in the second half of this century. For now, these fuels are expensive and almost no one makes them, so the U.S. government, businesses and philanthropists including Bill Gates are investing billions of dollars to build up a hydrogen industry that could cut eventually some of the most stubborn, hard-to-remove carbon pollution.
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Those carbon atoms arrive at the plant in the form of carbon dioxide pumped in from six nearby oil refineries. Typically, those facilities would let that CO2 â released when distilling crude oil into gasoline, jet fuel, diesel and other products â waft into the air.
That last bit is a problem: what they are doing is delaying the release of carbon from the refineries not reducing it. They get more consumable energy from each barrel of refined oil, but it’s still ends up in the atmosphere.
via Manton
ERCOT: Generation
This page provides current information on Generation Resources, including forecast and actual generation for Wind and PhotoVoltaic (Solar) Generation Resources; Resource Outages; Reliability Unit Commitment (RUC) constraints; Reliability Must Run (RMR) Resource deployments; Fuel Type; and aggregate High and Low Dispatch Limits (HDL, LDL) in the ERCOT region. The Key Documents section provides links to supporting documents related to resource asset registration, Outage scheduling, and monthly ERCOT Wind Integration Reports.
ERCOT = Electric Reliability Council of Texas
How to Geek: All of the macOS Sequoia Features Supported on Intel Macs
Despite several rumors to the contrary, Apple’s macOS Sequoia update will be supported by a range of older Intel-based Mac computers. And while Intel Macs won’t gain any Apple Intelligence AI functionality, they’ll still get plenty of great new features in macOS Sequoia.
All Intel Macs that received the macOS Sonoma update are eligible for macOS Sequoia. The only exceptions are the 2018 and 2019 models of MacBook Air.
LA Times: Too much screen time harms children, experts agree. So why do parents ignore them?
Valree is among the legions of parents who by choice or necessity allow their babies and preschoolers to watch several times more than the limit recommended by experts, creating a vast disconnect between the troubling predictions of harm and the reality of digital life for American families.
But her feelings of guilt may put Valree in the minority. Directives to limit the time young children spend on digital devices may not be taking root because many parents simply don’t believe their child’s screen time is a problem in the first place.
Wikipedia: List of Martin Gardner Mathematical Games columns
Nov 1973: Fantastic patterns traced by programmed “worms”
Wikipedia: Paterson’s worms
Paterson’s worms are a family of cellular automata devised in 1971 by Mike Paterson and John Horton Conway to model the behaviour and feeding patterns of certain prehistoric worms. In the model, a worm moves between points on a triangular grid along line segments, representing food. Its turnings are determined by the configuration of eaten and uneaten line segments adjacent to the point at which the worm currently is. Despite being governed by simple rules the behaviour of the worms can be extremely complex, and the ultimate fate of one variant is still unknown.
LA Times: SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell is the mind behind Elon Musk’s vision
Billionaire Elon Musk may be the visionary behind SpaceX’s multi-planetary ambitions, but Shotwell, 60, is the steady hand behind the company’s earthly success.
As president and chief operating officer, Shotwell runs the Hawthorne company’s day-to-day operations and manages finances, customer negotiations, human resources and relationships with government entities â in short, all of the people-focused parts of a business that help it thrive.
She’s a rarity at a Musk company â an executive, the second-in-command, no less, who has lasted for more than two decades. More than that, she has Musk’s ear and his trust.
Guardian: Daily multivitamins do not help people live longer, major study finds
Researchers in the US analysed health records from nearly 400,000 adults with no major long-term diseases to see whether daily multivitamins reduced their risk of death over the next two decades.
Rather than living longer, people who consumed daily multivitamins were marginally more likely than non-users to die in the study period, prompting the government researchers to comment that âmultivitamin use to improve longevity is not supportedâ.
Guardian: Canadian woman gets three yearsâ jail in first ever sentencing for a âPretendianâ
Karima Manji, whose daughters accessed more than C$150,000 in benefits intended for Inuit, was sentenced on Thursday, after pleading guilty to fraud in February.
Nunavut justice Mia Manocchio said the case âmust serve as a signal to any future Indigenous pretender that the false appropriation of Indigenous identity in a criminal context will draw a significant penaltyâ.
Guardian: Chinese space rocket crashes in flames after accidental launch
Company Space Pioneer says first stage of its Tianlong-3 launched during test after âstructural failureâ and crashed in hills near city of Gongyi.
Like something out of The Simpsons!
Guardian: Caribbean prepares as Hurricane Beryl becomes earliest category 4 on record
It took Beryl only 42 hours to strengthen from a tropical depression to a major hurricane â a feat accomplished only six other times in Atlantic hurricane history, and with 1 September as the earliest date, according to hurricane expert Sam Lillo.
Beryl is now the earliest category 4 Atlantic hurricane on record, besting Hurricane Dennis, which became a category 4 storm on 8 July 2005, hurricane specialist and storm surge expert Michael Lowry said.
âBeryl is an extremely dangerous and rare hurricane for this time of year in this area,â he said in a phone interview. âUnusual is an understatement. Beryl is already a historic hurricane and it hasnât struck yet.â
Guardian: AI drive brings Microsoftâs âgreen moonshotâ down to earth in west London
In the short term, AI has been problematic for Microsoftâs green goals. Brad Smith, Microsoftâs outspoken president, once called its carbon ambitions a âmoonshotâ. In May, stretching that metaphor to breaking point, he admitted that because of its AI strategy, âthe moon has movedâ. It plans to spend ÂŁ2.5bn over the next three years on growing its AI datacentre infrastructure in the UK and this year has announced new datacentre projects around the world including in the US, Japan, Spain and Germany.
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The International Energy Agency estimates that datacentres' total electricity consumption could double from 2022 levels to 1,000 TWh (terawatt hours) in 2026, equivalent to the energy demand of Japan. AI will result in datacentres using 4.5% of global energy generation by 2030, according to calculations by research firm SemiAnalysis.
Last Updated: 30.Jun.2024 23:30 EDT
