Juicing profits ...

While dark money giving to tax exempt groups is legal, a number of utilities have faced criticism for it. Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images/Unsplash

Reading this Guardian piece about the power companies gouging us rubes hits home as CT residents are getting hosed big time by Eversource by paying ever-increasing rates based on little evidence said rates are justified outside the fact you gotta juice profits. Seems Michigan is leading the way to eliminating this scam, hopefully other states will soon follow as the kind of crap Eversource, in particular, is doing goes beyond the pale without question.

US power companies have made political donations of at least $215m to dark money groups in recent years, according to a new analysis of 25 for-profit utilities, amid growing concerns around how they wield influence.

Such secretive donations to barely regulated non-profit groups have helped utilities increase electricity prices, hinder solar schemes and helped elect sympathetic legislators in recent years.

While dark money giving to tax-exempt groups is legal, a number of utilities have faced criticism for it. In Arizona and Alabama, power companies faced blowback after they used dark money to aid the election of friendly regulators. In Michigan, regulators barred another company from using dark money entirely after it spent $43m on politics in just three years.

It gets better ...

In another instance of ethically questionable actions, Florida Power and Light (FPL) used dark money to interfere with ballot initiatives, and the elections of five politicians who in part aimed to tackle the high prices of electric bills and environmental and climate goals.

“We are captive payers. To be funding lobbying against clean energy and climate that customers actually want goes against the public interest,” said Jean Su, a senior attorney at environmental group Center for Biological Diversity.

Customers can also lose out.

This was a scenario in Arizona when, in 2014, power company Arizona Public Service gave $10.7m to dark money groups that donated to key regulatory commission races. The two Republican commissioners backed by the groups won. In 2017, they went on to support the power company’s request for a $95m-a-year increase in electric bills, which ultimately was passed down to customers.

It took a subpoena from a regulator to finally prove in 2019 that the company had been behind the political spending.

Regarding Eversource ...

ADDITIONAL BUSINESS INFORMATION

Government Actions:

Government Action: BBB reports on known government actions involving business’ marketplace conduct:

Eversource 2021

The following describes a government action that has been resolved by either a settlement or a decision by a court or administrative agency. If the matter is being appealed, it will be noted below.

On 10/27/2021, the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) approved an agreement between The State of Connecticut and Eversource. This accountability plan seeks to address State identified deficiencies in Eversource’s handling of their response to Tropical Storm Isaias, improve Connecticut governances within Eversource, and to stabilize electric distribution rates until at least January 2024 for Connecticut consumers.

Under the agreement, Eversource will return $65 million dollars back to the customers in the form of credits on the December 2021 and January 2022 bills. An additional $10 million dollars from Eversource will be directed to assist customers having difficulty paying their bills, while an already established $28.4 million will continue to appear as a credits on all customer bills. This existing credit showing on bills as “TS Isaias Performance Penalty” is the result of a prior PURA penalty that Eversource, under this new agreement, has promised not to appeal.

This above outlined agreement was for settlement purposes only and should not be considered as an admission of guilt or finding of violation of the law. For more details, please click here.

We won't talk about the unneeded upgrades of telephone towers and clear cutting trees in my town but this one review regarding this utility kinda says it all. 

Eleanor's not alone ...

Any questions?

2.8C & counting

Illustration: Kate Dehler

2.8C and counting applies as banks start to renege on supporting environmentally friendly projects because it costs too much to do business due to regulatory demands but you already know that, right?

What might otherwise have been a staid conference took an unexpected turn as Berkey, group head of engagement and regulatory strategy at UBS, interjected. The finance industry was being asked to align loans, investments and capital-markets portfolios with a global warming trajectory of 1.5C, while the planet may in fact be hurtling toward a 2.8C increase from pre-industrial times, he noted.

The upshot: The world’s biggest banks can’t live up to the green regulatory ideal unless they start dumping huge numbers of clients worldwide at a reckless pace and also roil economies in large swathes of the globe that primarily rely on dirty fuels. Faced with that dilemma, many lenders are quietly reeling in their climate ambitions.

Remember, it's all about the money, always has been, always will be.

Fast forward to 2050 and think what the world will be like, frightening to the max comes to mind here.

And so it goes. - K. Vonnegut

The Dali ...

Even before the Baltimore bridge disaster crippled a leading port, the risks of depending on a global shipping supply chain were conspicuous. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

 

About three years ago, yours truly wrote a piece about fragility and how 

it relates to supply chains. To whit ...

The supply chain driving the inherently complex production and distribution of smartphones must overcome numerous events able to disrupt the system in a myriad of ways including war, revolution, disease, weather, material shortages, manufacturing issues, truck breakdowns, traffic accidents, container ship mishaps, piracy, etc, etc, etc. 

Well, the bit relevant to container ships is most apt considering the disaster befalling the Baltimore Bridge and the Dali, a cargo ship capable of holding nearly 10,000 containers at a time. The most interesting part of the NYTimes article is the fact the Dani's far from the largest ship of its kind as depicted by the chart seen below. 

Sources: “The Geography of Transport Systems,” by Jean-Paul Rodrigue; VesselFinder; the Empire State Building; the Eiffel Tower; ShipHub; Maryland Port Administration 

Note: Widths shown are for the widest point for each ship.

From this perspective, the acme of producing stuff on planet earth has arrived as climate change and the inherent disruptions it will cause will negatively impact how the world does business as civilization moves further into the 21st century.

I could care less ... NOT

And we haven't even discussed the notion of Chinese, a lego block language of immense complexity and mystery. To yours truly, the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis rules as it refers to the proposal that the particular language one speaks influences the way one thinks about reality.

Having a wonderful Chinese daughter-in Law has taught me much
in proving just how correct the hypothesis truly is. :)

Whorf's illustration of the difference between the English and Shawnee gestalt construction 

of cleaning a gun with a ramrod. From the article "Science and Linguistics", 

originally published in the MIT Technology Review, 1940.

English: 7 letters of the 26 character alphabet used to construct the word clothing. 

Chinese -  Tradtitional Semantic Construction

As already explored in part 3 of this series, the character ‘衣’ (“clothing”) is composed of parts that semantically construct the character. As a quick recap, the top segment ‘亠’ (itself a radical, radical 17) symbolizes a “cover” over the bottom segments “throw down-rise” and “throw press”, which are a heavily mutated form of something that originally looked like ‘从’ (“2 persons”).

Any questions as to why the Chinese view reality differently from Americans? :)

When you think about it. :)

It's bits, right? :)

Speaking in tongues yet again ...

The only constant in life is change - Heraclitus

2Step/R. Moran

Since the beginning of time, man’s reality distortion field rules as our tiny take on existence
is but a dust mote in god’s eye, something readily understood by Heraclitus, in 500 BC, stating 
The only constant in life is change. 

Heraclitus

Ignore this at your peril.

Here are the essential characteristics that define the success or failure of every endeavor.

500BC: The Art of War

The Art of War - Sun Tzu

Competency and situational awareness determine the success of any given initiative.

• “All warfare is based on deception.”
• “It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.”
• “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”
• “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle”
• “We are not fit to lead an army on the march unless we are familiar with the face of the country—its mountains and forests, its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps.”

Selling the Big Lie, aka Propaganda, drives advertising, politics and war.

The "art" of persuasion

 

1928, Edwin Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, writes Propaganda

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.

1933, Joseph Goebbels, channeling Bernays, creates the gospel of Nazism

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”

“National Socialism is a religion.

 All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmodedreligious practices and putting new ones in their place. We lack traditions and ritual. One day soon National Socialism will be the religion

Subjectivity rules based on the fact every person views reality in her own way.

The Rashomon effect: Tajōmaru the bandit and the wife of a samurai,
two characters who offer different perspectives of events in the film Rashomon

The word assume kills clear thinking as it remains forever the ass of you and me.

“Question everything.” - Einstein

Inventing ways to “explain” the unknowable never ceases to amaze.

Politics and the English Language - Orwell

Governments lie. - I. F. Stone

Misery loves company.

It’s all about the money.

News as entertainment medium

Tech never sleeps.

Chasing Shadows

Shadows and snow, a match made in heaven IMHO. :)

Belly Button lint :)

Praise be Saint George.

Profane, hilarious and all too intelligent, Carlin mattered ...

Laugh and cry at the same time, he's Diogenes using a mike, not a lantern, to discover the truth.
This particular riff indirectly channels Nathan Jessup's You Can't Handle the Truth! in A Few Good Men in more ways than one.

To whit:

Save the trees! Save the bees! Save the whales! Save those snails!

And the greatest arrogance of all: “Save the planet!” What?! Are these fucking people kidding me?! Save the planet?

We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet! We haven’t learned how to care for one another and we’re gonna save the fucking planet?!

I’m getting tired of that shit!

It gets better.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet, nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine; the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, The planet is doing great: been here four and a half billion years!

Do you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus four and a half billion.

And we have the conceit to think that somehow, we’re a threat?

There it is.

The planet is fine. The people are fucked.

The planet isn’t going anywhere; we are! We’re going away! Pack your shit, folks! We’re going away and we won’t leave much of a trace either, thank God for that. Maybe a little Styrofoam, maybe.

The planet will be here, we’ll be long gone; just another failed mutation; just another closed-end biological mistake; an evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, a surface nuisance.

It's different now ... rev II

Crunching data at the level of Google's Gemini Pro is truly insane. Watch the video to see why. 

It's different now ... rev II

Night Moves

Had fun doing this short clip walking around the environs of Fairfield County in the dark. :)

The singularity ... is already here

The video says it all. 

Figure's goal, according to the press release, is to "bring humanoid robots into commercial operations as soon as possible." The company openly posts a "master plan" on its website, which reads, "1) Build a feature-complete electromechanical humanoid. 2) Perform human-like manipulation. 3) Integrate humanoids into the labor force." The robots are coming for our jobs.

The technological singularity—or simply the singularity[1]—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization.[2][3]

It's already here. 

 

Vernor Vinge

Mathematician, computer scientist and science fiction writer Vernor VingeOffsite Link called the creation of the first ultraintelligent machine the SingularityOffsite Link in the January 1993 Omni magazine. Vinge's follow-up paper entitled "What is the Singularity?Offsite Link" presented at the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center( now NASA John H. Glenn Research CenterOffsite Link at Lewis Field) and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30-31, 1993, and  slightly changed in the Winter 1993 issue of Whole Earth Review, contained the oft-quoted statement(s),

"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended."

"I'll be surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030."

Vinge is right. Click here to read his full paper. 

Phase Transitions/Winter 2024

Over the space of 4 days, winter 2024 went through several phase transitions from light wet snow to bright crisp days with powder conditions rarely seen in New England. Seems global warming took a holiday for a change. Enjoy. :)