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| Lodged | From | Messages |
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 The Social Democracy of Horatius Cocles | Those two causes are indeed part of the problem. The other part is that Texas' power grid isn't connected to other states. Because we can't connect to the other power grids, we can't borrow power from them. Here's an interview from ERCOT, that is the agency in control of the situation. https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/we-have-seen-nothing-like-this-ercot-ceo-says-agency-still-cant-predict-when-texas-power-outages-will-end/287-6fb9564b-fd08-4ec6-acf5-a022971720ad "The supply side of the equation has been challenged to, whether wind turbines froze or natural gas supplies that got tight or solar farms that really couldn't produce because of the heavy cloud cover and snow." 70 to 80 generating units are not currently producing electricity in Texas out of about 680 statewide. We're not out of the woods until this week is over, at least. Rolling outages are still happening. | |
| The Social Democracy of Horatius Cocles | https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/texas/dallas-texas-electrical-power-outage-ercot-failures/287-50797307-0afe-43eb-8175-b78e7e4fc13a | |
| Magmanism | Hello! Semi new to the "game." Played it a few years back but it seems alot has changed. Look forwarding to playing again. | |
 The Republic of The Confederacy of Beastland | I don't believe in victimless crimes (for instance, making drug use illegal), but I believe the unborn baby is a person, so it is murder. Therefore, i think treating that baby as a person (granting the baby (or fetus if you prefer that term) constitutional rights) would basically nullify Roe vs Wade's argument that abortion is protected under the 14th amendment. There is someone inside you. Unfortunately, I don't know if Trump's justices will vote to overrule Roe v. Wade (especially the third one). | |
| The Social Democracy of Horatius Cocles | I have a friend who works as CO in a state prison unit. Here's his description of what life was like for him the past couple days here in TX: "I didn’t have power for about thirty hours and my apartment got into the high thirties. We were so short at work we were mandated to work twenty hour shifts. I slept for like ten hours in my uniform since I had no heat or hot water. We managed poorly since the unit isn’t built for this kind of cold. Pipes burst and flooded two buildings and six cell blocks, boilers went down and so no heat, city power went down so we only had gates and emergency lights. We issued what blankets we had and served sack meals. I was working corridor control and was freezing my entire shift. Ice was forming around my duty post." | |
 The Theocracy of Aawia | I remember when I was in grade 2 or 3 we had an ice storm that knocked out power to our house for three days. Luckily for us our house had a fireplace and we always had at least a cord or two of wood on hand. I imagine most Texans don't have such luxuries, or a pull-out mattress bed by the fire that they can sleep on to be near said warmth from the fire. My friends weren't so lucky and I remember they had some horror stories of being all cuddled together under blankets just to keep warm, plus their power was out even longer than ours. It's brutal, and I can't imagine what it would be like without all the winter gear your average Canadian family packs. There were a few nice hotels in town that had fuel generators and after two days we broke down and went and stayed in one. At the time it was a luxury we could afford, but again I know many couldn't. I can't remember how many people died but I remember hearing that a few people did. Winter storms are just brutal sometimes, though I'd take a blizzard over an ice storm any day of the week. Edit: I actually found an article about the storm. In hindsight 60,000 isn't that bad, but we were, unfortunately, in the area mentioned in the article that would have to wait a few more days for power, and even worse than that was that it took a bit longer than estimated. Horatius Cocles, Phydios, and New Kiwis | |
 The Federation of Roborian | That is an interesting SCOTUS take, that Barrett is the least likely of the justices to overrule. I'm curious what your thoughts are on that, I agree with your conclusion, that there is no way that Roe is going to be overturned by this court , but I think that is more because very likely Kavanaugh and quite likely Gorsuch would not vote that way, Barrett is more of an unknown but I would guess she is still the most likely of the three new choices to look to strike it down. | |
| The Social Democracy of Horatius Cocles | Now our governor wants an investigation done on the power officials, seeing that death and unprepared for storms won't look good on him. Winterizing the power equipment isn't mandated here in Texas as that would require the state to step in and intervene in the market. Without a requirement to properly winterize the plants, generators, etc the companies had no incentive to spend the needed money. Certainly the state government wasn't going to mandate such an investment or in anyway subsidize it. As such, the problem wasn't seen as an important one. As far as "policy makers" are concerned, Texas is more likely to suffer from extreme heat and drought than winter conditions. There's been no political will to spend the money on Texas' grid for winter. Absent incentive, the companies didn't do anything. Now that people are dying, the state legislature is making noise of how this will be a high priority going forward. Meanwhile, those same "law makers" are busy tweeting criticisms of California for its outage. And all this so Texans can allegedly have low prices in the energy market. The prices aren't that low to begin with and not worth the avoidable deaths. We'll see if our "law makers" are willing to set aside their ideology momentarily and establish and enforce state requirements. Given Texas' political makeup, I'm not holding my breath | |
| The Social Democracy of Horatius Cocles | Texas made few power reforms despite warnings. ‘An incredibly dangerous situation’ February 17, 2021 06:00 AM Over a couple frigid days in February, as demand for power soared, generators across Texas tripped up and failed to operate in wintry conditions. Long outages ensued across the state, and millions of Texans were left without power. Even more wondered how something like this could happen here. “You would have never thought you would see the day in the energy capital of the world,” said one oil company CEO. By Tuesday, 45,000 megawatts had tripped offline, potentially enough to power 22 million homes. (About one-third of the lost power came from wind sources and the rest from fossil fuel sources.) In 2011, the estimated total that unexpectedly dropped from the grid was 8,000 megawatts. The exact causes for what tripped up the power supply will be investigated and determined. So far, ERCOT officials and outside experts have pointed to a few likely reasons, none of which are new. For one, the ability to move natural gas appeared to falter because of the weather and was made available at first priority to consumers, rather than power generators. The move helped the general public with their heating needs but may have prevented some generators from getting the natural gas they need to produce electricity at their plants. The other reason is purely about the cold: The power generators’ equipment, both for wind energy operators and fossil fuel operators, was not ready for the extreme temperatures. “It’s those private companies that generate power that are not working,” said Gov. Greg Abbott in a TV interview. “Some of them literally froze up, and were incapable of providing power, and some are still incapable of providing power.” The deep freeze and blackouts of 2011 were caused by almost the exact same reasons. Less than two weeks later, the Texas Legislature and Public Utility Commission held hearings, coming up with a bill on winterizing techniques for generators. But the only requirement of the bill, which was signed into law that June, was timing: Generators must file a weather preparation report with ERCOT by Dec. 1 that ERCOT sends to the PUC. There are no standards for generators to meet or any methods for sanctioning them. Even turning the report in on time has been a challenge: More than 30 generators filed theirs late this year. “These companies are ... not spending the money to make the necessary upgrades,” said David Blackmon, a longtime energy industry analyst based in Mansfield. “I think the proof is we have 3 million Texans with no power, and that’s an incredibly dangerous situation.” However the hearings unfold, they may arrive to a thornier question beyond winterization: Why didn’t the state have enough energy reserves for the extreme weather? “We have been worried for a while about whether or not the Texas market is attracting enough investment in power generation to meet the loads that have been developing there,” Robb said. The NERC made note of this concern in recent assessments. “Most of those were written with summer loads in mind because of the high amount of heat and air-conditioning load. But even our 2020 winter assessment highlighted the risk of extreme weather leading to load shedding events like we’ve seen here,” he said, noting the stretch of frigid temperatures the last few days was beyond what they had expected as extreme. In the summer, ERCOT has successfully managed demand to avoid rolling blackouts, which, Robb says, “is something to be very, very proud of.” But what would really help, both in high-demand summer and winter periods, according to experts, would be more power plants. That’s easier said than done here. Unlike most places in the U.S., Texas has a deregulated electricity grid. So private companies decide to invest in new power plants when it makes sense from a profit standpoint, and they decide how much power to generate based on how much they will be able to sell at the best price. As the state population has increased, the amount of power plants, as well as reserve power supplies, have not kept pace. As far back as 2013, energy industry analyst Edward Hirs warned Texas’ ERCOT-managed, deregulated model could lead to a focus on short-term prices that create long-term capacity issues. He told Houston’s NBC-2 news station on Monday, “This has been a fool’s errand since it was passed into law 20 years ago. And it just totally needs to be revamped.” The power went out for Fraser, who lives about a quarter mile from a power plant in Horseshoe Bay. He said he used his fireplace for heat, and for making coffee, and was not deterred by what he described as two impactful weather events in 20 years. “I’m sitting here without power and without heat, but one day of being inconvenienced is not a reason to redesign the market,” he said. | |
 The Ancient Tellurian Union of The Gallant Old Republic | I will say, as an outsider, I find the Texas power market very bizarre: I am not used to picking your energy provider like a cell phone carrier. That said, the prices are way cheaper here: Michigan has one power company for the entire state and it charged easily x3 what I pay in Texas. At any rate, I fell like these are separate issues: you can have the independence of the Texas energy market and power lines that don't collapse after 3in of snow (I still feel like that was the bigger issue than the energy shortage and rolling blackouts: they couldn't even properly roll because the lines were so fragmented) and, of course, they can incentivize building more winterized capacity without changing over to Michigan's system (or whatever). They haven't, but they could (and should). The can also make more of an effort to complete the Tres Amigas to help avoid shortfalls. | |
| The Republic of The Confederacy of Beastland | I am not really sure, because I remember when Trump was trying to fill the dead witch's seat, he mentioned that even some liberals like her (maybe trying to get some more senators to vote in favor because of the little time they had to approve her-as in, maybe purposely picking a more liberal justice as a compromise or some crap). I don't like the first dude at all though, so maybe. I wanted Judge Napalotano on the court I remember the day after she was approved, CNN was saying what a great job she did, and I do not think that is a good sign. | |
 The Commonwealth of New Kiwis | I've only ever touched natural snow once in my life and I barely remember that... I do see it lots though! | |
| The Republic of The Confederacy of Beastland | Is there such thing as artificial snow? Where do you live? | |
| The Federation of Roborian | Personal matters aside, Napolitano would probably be a pretty good pick from a jurisprudence standpoint, but he would never have been chosen just due to his age and the way the SCOTUS game is played nowadays. For Barrett, I think that there is room for concern over her limited record (though there frankly always is), but she was certainly not a compromise choice at least, she was considered the more conservative option for the second seat and Kavanaugh the moderate. I think the lighter coverage she got the second time was just based around electoral concerns and the Democrats (and sympathetic media) not wanting to come off too strongly and drive away suburban women voters, she got a rougher go-around for her first nomination. (Not that they pulled all their punches, we got the literal dictionary-editing nonsense of Mazie Hirono to try to paint her as 'homophobic'.) I think she was probably about a good a pick as you could get, though I did have a preference for Jennifer Elrod. I'm not entirely convinced that she'll be as rock-ribbed as the hope is, I doubt she'll be an Alito and almost certainly not a Thomas (best justice in modern SCOTUS history), but I would be legitimately surprised if she becomes a swing vote over Kavanaugh and/or Gorsuch. Artificial snow is definitely a thing-ski hills make use of it all the time. | |
| The Theocracy of Aawia | Depending on your definition of artificial, there sure is. If you mean artificial as in unnatural precipitation, then it can be done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIaZ2ZFSJXU If you mean having the same effects as snow, even though it isn't, there is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH5ohfruMBg If you mean looking like snow, there is: https://aframe.oscars.org/features/fake-snow But if you mean basically having real snow that's room temperature and can do everything snow can, I don't think so, or at least I haven't heard of it. | |
| The Federation of Roborian | Not that it is popular at the moment, but there is some validity to what Fraser is saying there. "As far as "policy makers" are concerned, Texas is more likely to suffer from extreme heat and drought than winter conditions" is an example of policy makers being pretty clearly correct. There's always a tradeoff between preparedness and efficiency, and it's a guarantee that if a rare event exploits that, there will always be blame for not preparing in that area regardless of what the odds were. One is better prepared if one sets up for subzero temperatures in Texas, but one is also better prepared if one sets up for hurricanes in Kansas. We could mandate that every car be manufactured to be EMP-hardened, armor-plated, and bulletproof, ad thus much more safe, but there's a recognition that the extreme cost added for relatively rare usage (though less rare than this cold snap) is not worth the cost. People always seem to assume that policymakers know the future, if tomorrow a terrorist attack was launched against us from Luxembourg the news would be full of thinkpieces about how we 'should have known' that it was coming and devoted more resources to monitoring them. If this was a mild winter and the next summer was record-setting, no-one would be complaining about winterization, and the attitude would be dismissive at best towards anyone saying that the spending should go towards cold-weather protection rather than hot-weather protection in Texas. It's more or less playing the reverse lottery, where you know buying the tickets gives you long odds, but if you don't, you'll get a 'lottery ticket' event that hurts rather than helps you, like this one. It is, though, still a lottery ticket kind of event. This is, by the reports I've been seeing, literally the coldest winter since the invention of electricity, a greater than once-in-100 years event, not the sort of thing you build your models off of assuming-even the guy in the article critical of Texas's preparedness admitted this was beyond anything they had anticipated. Preparedness v. cost is on a curve, and it may well be better to move it a little ways to get to a better optimum, this is not at all to say that Texas's system is perfect or that criticism is unwarranted, they very well may deserve some of it, just to say that 'oh, they should have known better, they're clearly incompetent' is not entirely fair. It's difficult to tell someone who just won the lottery that buying the ticket was actually a bad move by probability, and it's difficult to point out after a system failure that the odds of that failure were extremely long, but in both cases a single stroke of very good or very bad luck does not disprove the system. | |
| The Federation of Roborian | Perhaps there has been something similar to this on the right, I'm willing to hear about it in case I am in a bubble of sorts on this, but the death of Rush Limbaugh has, I think, undeniably highlighted where hate is most concentrated in American politics. It's everywhere, and it is extreme, Twitter was trending with "Rot in Hell" and "Good Riddance" (which apparently are just fine with their 'Community Standards') and left-wing persons of note or even not of note everywhere were and are slinging the harshest invectives they can think of, even Deadspin, a sports website, ran as a headline: "Rush Limbaugh, dead at 70, spewed racist filth from every pulpit including ESPN's", and then claimed that his politics led to hundreds of thousand of deaths….somehow. All for someone who never even held elected office, never physically implemented any policy, is not accused of any crimes of which I am aware, just talked. I never really followed him all that closely, he seems to have said some things that I would not condone, but I'd wager at this point that half the people condemning him never listened to his show either, and are jumping on a remarkably hateful bandwagon. I'd compare it to Ginsburg's death, where the attitude was not simply neutral, but even a forced sort of complimentary on the right, some kind of seeming obligation to not just not speak ill of the dead, but give praise. I was actually very frustrated by how far that went, talking about someone who actually affected policy in a destructive way and worked to uphold the killings of tens of millions, the reactions were a night-and-day difference. I saw some celebratory/hateful comments, 'ding dong the witch is dead' sort of thing, but limited to random accounts on conservative websites or boards, not a sliver of the universal rage and fury at Limbaugh from all kinds of official channels, heck, Donald Trump came out and complimented her, I wait on Biden's comments on Limbaugh. I'm generally of the mind that too much obsequiousness towards someone just because they passed is not warranted, I am fine with criticism, I don't expect left-wingers to have to comment about him as a trendsetter and pioneer of radio for the common person, but to compare the respect shown people like Ginsburg to the hate thrown his way is nuts. I still hold it as all right to be critical of someone's legacy on their death, but the notion that the left wing is fundamentally anti-hate never had much of a leg to stand on and now that leg is rapidly crumbling. | |
| The Federation of Roborian | New York Times obituary headlines. Not quotes mined from the write-ups, just the word-for-word headlines: Mao Zedong: "Began as an obscure peasant and became one of history's great revolutionary figures" Rush:Limbaugh: "Turned talk radio into right-wing attack machine" Subheading on Limbaugh: "With a following of 15 million and a divisive style of mockery, grievance and denigrating language, he was a force in reshaping American conservatism." If your obituary for a talk radio host is harsher on the deceased than your obituaries for dictators and architects of genocide, then you have a hate problem. (Edit: Ginsburg's were, as expected, "Supreme Court's Feminist icon", with the subheading: "The second woman appointed to the Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg’s pointed and powerful dissenting opinions earned her late-life rock stardom." You could easily substitute 1-for-1 with that: "Talk radio's conservative icon", subheading: "Rush Limbaugh's pointed and humorous commentary on politics earned him rock-star status." I hardly expected that, I did not even expect neutrality, but the supposed paper of record launching political broadsides from its obituary section that gives praise to dictators is demonstrative of a deep vein of hate among the supposedly objective media class.) | |
| The Republic of The Confederacy of Beastland | Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, and I am not trying to be mean, but the night she died I went and posted "Ding dong the witch is dead" on every single related video. I called my brother and friend and told them how happy I was. Because I was (and she died RIGHT in time). You can be upset about Hitler dying too. Ginsburg may as well have been Hitler. YouTube told me I was violating their community standards and seems to be kind of watching every comment I make now, like I'm on a list. I thought Rush Limbaugh was pretty cool. | |
| The Federation of Roborian | I understand the sentiment, but it's still not something I favor. As hippie-dippie as it is, I do not think that any death is cause for joy. Sometimes a death may be necessary, something like shooting a would-be rapist in self-defense, sometimes a death may be a net positive for the world, as I believe Ginsburg's death ultimately was, but celebration seems to me to be mean-spirited at best and rather nasty at worst. There is a definite gap in my mind between measured criticism on death, which is fair, though I think too often we play the lowlights rather than the highlights of a life at a funeral, so to speak, and firing off the party poppers or disparagement for disparagement's sake. I'm not someone who likes to say what being pro-life is or is not outside of abortion, but to me personally, at least, it involves a certain degree of respect granted simply due to another's humanity, or one's status as an image-bearer, from the religious side of things. | |
| The Commonwealth of New Kiwis | Well, according to some maps, I live in the in the middle of nowhere in the ocean, so it depends on which map you want to go by. | |
| The Social Democracy of Horatius Cocles | Yes, of course it's more likely for Texas to suffer from extreme heat. They did prepare for that much (though 2019 stands out as a particularly miserable year). The amount of suffering and dying here in Texas shows that requiring winterization is necessary step forward. As the article notes, this is hardly the first time this has happened. You can "know the future" when 1989, 2011, 2018 and now 2021 have all been very bad years for Texans and winter problems. Fraser talking about one night of inconvenience while he's sipping his drink is a slap in the face to all the Texans without water/power/heat for days. Pipes bursting in kitchens, garages flooding, etc. The hotels are filling up quickly as it is. We've had detailed reports, hearings, analyses done before and no action of any substantive nature occurred. There's plenty of anger and frustration here and a good part of it is justified. This isn't the first time we've gone through this issue. If anything, it should bring some shame that the biggest energy producer in the country can't get power to its people. Shrugging this off as a "once every decade" problem isn't the right response. Some level of regulation is needed, even if the state GOP loathes the idea. How many more people have to die before action is taken? https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Texas-grid-again-faces-scrutiny-over-cold-15955392.php https://www.khou.com/article/news/investigations/blackouts-in-texas-lack-of-winterization-of-generators/285-2e13537b-b2fb-476f-8c33-5ecce3be0fc8 | |
| The Social Democracy of Horatius Cocles | I'm not mourning Limbaugh, personally. After all his comments/legacy, it's not surprising that some people are hardly moved by his death. It's not like he didn't court controversy, he lived for the polarization. I don't think he deserved the Medal of Freedom at all, but he certainly cemented his presence like few others. The best article I've seen on Rush and his legacy: https://theweek.com/articles/967577/chilling-tributes-rush-limbaugh | |
| The Social Democracy of Horatius Cocles | I think comparing her to Hitler is a bit much. I never really cared for her and I though the press was off-the-beam in terms of celebrating her, but as | |
| The Social Democracy of Horatius Cocles | With regard to the Mao headline, NYT apologized for that headline and deleted the associated tweet. |
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