I WOULD UNDERSTAAAAAAAAAAND

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Nuclear plants supplying electricity to California were online during the early 2000s energy crisis and in 2020. They did not prevent outages.

The leading causes of most power outages are problems with transmission and distribution lines — a branch falling or a fried squirrel, for example. In California, customers suffer purposeful shutoffs of power to prevent faulty wires from starting wildfires. Even 100 nuclear power plants wouldn’t prevent these outages.

Flaws in the independent system operator’s energy market also played a key role in the August 2020 power outages, just as they had 20 years earlier in the California energy crisis. Buried on page 113 of the Final Root Cause Analysis report, the grid operator admits that “Energy market practices contributed to the inability to obtain additional energy that could have alleviated the strained conditions on the CAISO grid on Aug. 14 and 15.” The report goes on to say that the independent system operator failed to properly forecast demand for the next day, and to schedule adequate power supply. The grid operator allowed the export of thousands of megawatts of power out of California, at the time it was most needed. This caused a scramble for power supplies, and for the independent system operator to call for a 1,000-megawatt outage on Aug. 14, and a 500-megawatt outage on Aug. 15.

Flawed market operations created a supply-and-demand problem.

The United States is famously obsessed with productivity, from the Protestant work ethic of our Puritan ancestors to the Horatio Alger stories we continue to see as aspirational rather than as the fantasies they are. Our dog-eat-dog form of capitalism activates a constant, underlying fear of replacement — if we’re not visibly working, someone else might swoop in and steal our job. …

We don’t want to be a burden to our colleagues. We don’t want to burn through whatever limited time off we do get (if we’re lucky). And even if we do feel sick, we’re surrounded by a pandemic — couldn’t it be so much worse?

At the very least, we need the space to heal and recover when sick. And we shouldn’t stop there — we need space and at least a few moments untethered from our jobs. In a moment when life and work have bled into one undifferentiated, weekendless morass, we have ever more need for a hard stop — some excuse to rest without the fear or guilt that have become our constant companions. But employers aren’t likely to suggest that we slow down. We’ll have to make the decision to do so ourselves.

Baby Boomer Advice to Millennials

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1536340513359470592

I found the stupidest post. I did it.

https://twitter.com/BlueBoxDave/status/1538567145197535233

Captain NoFap

https://twitter.com/thetomzone/status/1538575613895876608

You heard of “imagine a guy”? This is “imagine a field trip”

https://twitter.com/levinejonathan/status/1543596737599868929?s=21&t=qRWqUdS4YysFiijy4CcOrw

No recent examples of this

https://twitter.com/bamumford/status/1542515941291851782

Scromiting

https://twitter.com/EveSimmns/status/1543263481679360000

You’re not allowed to dunk on NFTs now

https://twitter.com/rsg/status/1536350530687082503?s=12&t=6gQc8dj5OaE3ymcDABIZ0g

Another centrist says the left and the right are actually the same

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/03/opinion/the-far-right-and-far-left-agree-on-one-thing-women-dont-count.html

Twitter Is Working On A Soundboard

https://twitter.com/hopburps/status/1538132650866663424?s=12&t=0OBeMlFlGFDxKFV3X7Gw_A

Inflation: Not a Demand Issue

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-21/supply-issues-account-for-half-of-us-inflation-rise-study-shows

We’re all realizing that Airbnbs kinda suck

https://www.gawker.com/culture/airbnb-your-days-are-numbered