Here's the thing: I think COVID-19 is real. I think it's actually a disease which has spread throughout the world, and I think it has killed some people, and I think that the early precautions which were taken were reasonable and proper considering we didn't know a lot about the disease. I do not, as that link attests, think it is entirely "imaginary and fictitious".
But I do not think it has killed nearly as many people as has been claimed; I do not think it is nearly as contagious nor as deadly as they're telling us. The federal government incentivized COVID diagnoses by paying hospitals $7,000 per case, which is why you had people dying of blunt force Chinavirus or motorcycle wreckage Chinavirus or gunshot Chinavirus. And we did not need to lock down the country for a year.
And also, that would rather neatly explain why the rate of influenza infection cratered at about the same time Wuhan virus infections were necessarily skyrocketing.
By the way, at the call center my wife manages, three employees called off today due to adverse reactions to the vaccine. Out of perhaps 18 people, that makes at least four who experienced significant effects from the vaccine, including her. And now they're saying people may need three, four, five doses of the thing.
No.
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By the way, infections are now down precipitously. Heard on the radio today that there's something like 800-900 new cases in Chicago this week, way down from the 4,000 we were seeing before the election. (How coincidental.)
The thing is, we're now reaching the point of herd immunity to whatever bug is actually biting us. This is an entirely natural process and it doesn't have a damned thing to do with the so-called "vaccine", because that vaccine doesn't confer immunity to the virus.
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This is what happens when your state gets 25% of its electricity from windmills. And this is Texas we're talking about!
In a sensible world, this event would be the death knell for windmill power. Unfortunately, we live in Clown World.
The advantage for Texas is that they are not subject to many federal regulations, so power is cheaper there most of the time. But when something like this happens, the fact that the state's power grid is not connected to the rest of the country means big power bills.
I was wondering what was going to happen when I heard that wholesale power cost so much. I figured the electric companies were going to have to eat the difference, try to amortize the cost into the rest of the year--but no, they're just passing on the price increase directly and immediately.
It makes me wonder what kind of power plan I've got. Is it indexed to the price of electricity, or does it merely average a bit more per kilowatt-hour so that spikes in the spot price don't get ramrodded up customers' asses?
But the people who are asking, "How is this fair?" don't seem to understand this is what you asked for when you demanded "renewable energy". If you want power to be available in the quantities you want at fair market prices the last damned thing you should be asking for is "renewable energy". You should be demanding nuclear reactors, lots of them.
Let's revisit the Arse Technica article that said this:
wind (and solar) don't produce as much power during the Texas winter under normal circumstances, so the loss of some capacity there wasn't as much of a problem as it might have been in summer; they weren't expected to produce much anyway.That's a flat-out lie. Texas relies on windmills for a full quarter of its electrical supply. There's no way in hell the state could stand being without their windmills during the winter.
Windmills were making something like nine and third gigawatt-hours before the storm; afterwards they weren't making nine hundred megawatt-hours, a reduction of an order of magnitude (ten times less) than they were making before.
Ford makes a truck with a built-in generator. One bit in that article shows people using the on-board generator to power their furnace.
I was looking over a bunch of that stuff and I learned that the real issue with using a portable generator to power your house by backfeeding the system is that people don't think to isolate their houses from the grid beforehand. You can get a kit which adds an interlock to your existing circuit breaker panel, so that you can supply power to the house with a portable generator yet not feed power outside the house, endangering the lives of whoever might be working on the power grid nearby.
Myself, I thought that was a given. I mean, when I was noodling around with that idea myself, I figured that the very first thing you'd do would be to throw the main breaker switch "open" so that your little one-lung generator wouldn't be trying to power half a dozen houses. I've been cautioned that it's really not a good idea to do that, for lots of other reasons, so I haven't made any moves. But it turns out that a $400 Harbor Freight generator can supply enough juice to run the stove, so (given the generator) if I were to get the right extension cord at least I could cook in a power failure.
The thing is, though, I am still tempted by this idea, especially given that the interlock kit exists. I'd bet I'd have to install a new circuit breaker panel, though, because I think the existing one is full. And that means hiring an electrician, because the last damned thing I want is to fool around with 100A wiring. Probably wouldn't cost me more than $3,000...and if I'm doing that, might as well have the electrician install a proper generator isolation switch and run wiring to the garage. Have a cable hung on a hook there, and when I need to, plug the cable into the generator, throw the big switch, and start the generator. You know? (That's probably illegal, too. *sigh*)
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I really hope that this horseshit is the beginning of the ruin of teachers' unions. It'd be nice if Sarah Hoyt was correct and the Wuhan Flu precautions mark the downfall of socialized education.
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Do not piss off a Marine, particularly not a career Marine. Thug broke into this guy's house and attacked his wife with a knife, so he naturally went and got his shotgun. Did he shoot the intruder? Why on Earth would he waste perfectly good ammunition on a shitbag? He beat the intruder to death with the gun.
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Every time the establishment attacks President Trump, his approval numbers go up. You'd think that by now they would have twigged to this, and would just start ignoring him, but they can't do that. He's living rent-free in their heads.
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My Jeep. *sigh*
Today I went to put some coolant in, thinking that I didn't have heat because the supply pipe for the heater core is the highest point in the system and the Jeep has been using coolant for at least seven years.
Stopped at a parts store and bought two jugs of antifreeze, and cautiously removed the radiator cap. Instead of blowing steam and scalding coolant, it sucked air--which told me all I needed to know. But when I got the cap off, I was greeted with a disconcerting sight: sludge.
It's rust-colored, thick goo, almost gelatinous. I tried adding coolant to the radiator but it wouldn't take much.
When I got home, then, I opened the hood and grabbed the upper radiator hose and--as expected--was able to hold it in my hand without burning myself. No coolant in upper hose is not good, so I set to working on trying to top up the system. Exactly as expected, when I took the heater core supply hose off, nothing came out. When I tried pouring coolant into a funnel stuck in that hose, though, the level went down very slowly.
Compressed air into the fitting on the thermostat housing--the radiator fill blew rusty gelatinous crud everywhere, looking like Linda Blair had puked up her guts. But then I was able to add coolant to the radiator and it went in. After that I worked on trying to bleed the air from the system, but I did not get very much out. The upper radiator hose represents the highest point in the cooling system, and as you know you can't add fluid to a lower point because it seeks its own level.
I've been thinking about getting an in-line filler neck for the upper hose, though of course that adds another potential failure point. FFS, the cooling system on this truck is the biggest problem I've had with it; the only thing I haven't had to replace (yet) is the heater core, and if I keep it much longer I know I'll be doing that nightmare job. (Step one: remove the dashboard. Really.)
I've never had this kind of trouble with any other vehicle's cooling system. Even the green Escort--one year I replaced a leaky radiator, and the next winter I froze my ass off because the new thermostat had jammed open. It was a "fail open" type and it failed, open, as designed...but that was literally cold comfort when I was driving home through single-degree temperatures, from Iowa. After I replaced that thermostat, the heat was hot and the AC was cold and all was well, and stayed that way until the car was totaled in December of 2005, ten years after I'd bought it.
Anyway it hasn't overheated, and since I topped it up I think it'll be okay. The heat's not heating, but I can live with that for a couple more months. Once we have warm weather, though, I MUST flush that cooling system as completely as I possibly can. This is getting really old, damn it.
Of course, the other thing I could do is to break down and buy another vehicle.
Nahh.