Social media is a complex beast. It is simultaneously useful, annoying, addictive, helpful, destructive, and a hundred other things. It is tying humanity into knots. Many people, including yours truly, often deride it as a cesspool of bots and trolls and agitators for hire. All that is true. At the same time most of us, including yours truly, head there reflexively to see what our various symbiotic factions are up to. There are multiple reasons for that. Foremost is that social media [Read more]
444,000 semi-loads of food? Just another day on planet earth
A friend of mine, always with a keen eye on interesting things, passed on an interesting quote from the CERA Week energy conference the other week. The head of the International Energy Forum mentioned a surprising statistic, as quoted by Javier Blas on Twitter: “Heathrow airport in London uses more energy than the whole African nation of Sierra Leone [population ~8.5 million].” Yikes! Here’s another one that turned up randomly in the feed by a credible source: “If we keep growing our energy [Read more]
Energy wise, how do you even describe 2024
Huh. Look at that. It’s been ten years since I started writing about energy. Not that that particular trivia interests anyone, why would it, however it is interesting to look back at the impetus for writing and how that has changed. Ten years ago, as I worked in a communications department for an energy infrastructure business that did not like publicity of any kind whatsoever, it began to dawn on me how dangerous were the habits that formed thereof, and how far reaching the consequences. As [Read more]
MB/SK/AB NeeStaNan Utilities Corridor: First Nations-led utility corridor is a 21st-century nation-building initiative
“The trading of goods has been in our DNA as Indigenous People for centuries, but somewhere along the way this was lost. It’s time to regain our prosperity, for the betterment of our communities and for our country.” - NeeStaNan website Ever feel like you’re being neglected by either governments or the various power centers that dominate life? The big places get all the attention, have all the votes, have all the buzz. In Canada, fewer than ten such centers dominate the country. If you’re not [Read more]
The power of inheritances – changing the world in unexpected and often unfortunate ways
The other day, against my better judgement, I cut up a butternut squash to go into some recipe. You might be familiar; a smelly, obnoxious thing like an angry potato that turns into a truly hideous mushy texture when cooked. And then it stinks even more. The experience left me with a little pang of sorrow, because I couldn’t help but think of how hungry someone must have been at some point in history to think “Hey, I’m going to eat one of those.” Surely they had to have been standing there, [Read more]
NDP ‘anti-fossil fuel advertising’ draft legislation – worthy of both the 1956 Soviet RSFSR Criminal Code or the other end of the political spectrum
Comedian Yakov Smirnov reminisced in 2014: “As a comedian in the Soviet Union, I was censored by the "Department of Jokes." Well, actually it was called the Humor Department of the Censorship Apparatus of Soviet Ministry of Culture. I think they were hoping that by the time you finished saying their name, you'd be too exhausted to tell more jokes.” The CIA, bless their hearts, translated the 1956 Soviet RSFSR Criminal Code, which you may know as Ugolovnyy Kodeks RSFSR if you run in such [Read more]
Achtung! We must learn from Germany’s self-inflicted energy shambles, quickly
In 1880, a great author, Mark Twain, whom you may never hear spoken of again because he had the audacity to write in the vernacular of the day, wrote an extremely funny essay called The Awful German Language. “Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp…There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome…Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations, and see how soon he will be elected…In [Read more]
Automobiles, human nature, and the challenge of building cars that people actually want
Some people out there have an inner itch to do things different. Maybe it’s art, or music, or some other glorious pastime that we as the rest of humanity benefit from, far, far more than we pay. What sort of car these types drive is fascinating; usually something quirky or wonderfully weird; Neil Young spent years before he made it big driving an old hearse, various narcotics taped under the dash. Others think completely differently, bone-dry aesthetically-speaking; thinkers who just want to [Read more]
No calling in sick or waiting for a nice day – the grid has to perform on the worst of them
Saturday night, the middle of the cold snap, was something to be endured. Things break at -36 degrees. A quick run to the grocery store was rerouted by a fleet of city vehicles tearing up the street in a considerable manner, most likely chasing a broken water main or some such. Imagine being without water on a night like that. Half an hour later it got worse - the provincial grid operator issued an alert for people to “immediately limit their electrical use to essential needs only.” Keep in [Read more]
Putting the “Fore!” in 2024: The new year’s complexity will stress-test us all
Flying in the face of past lamentations, I’m eating my words more and more about social media these days. The initial rise of Facebook, Twitter, etc., seemed to muffle good voices and amplify the bad, the people or bots that, either as an occupation or as a deranged character trait, seemed to rejoice in ruining people’s day with insults and negativity. It’s not that hard, if one is sufficiently abysmal; anyone’s day can be ruined with the right choice of words. Maybe most depressing is the [Read more]
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