Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a 50:50 day yesterday being a mix of clouds, spotty rain, and occasional sunshine. It was a good day for running errand because I certainly didn’t miss any of the better weather activities. I did spend a couple of hours at two different banks during the morning, making a few changes to my accounts there. I wish I could say I was depositing a couple of million dollars in each bank, but it was something more mundane along the lines of modifying the accounts.

Probably the most ‘exciting’ thing I did yesterday was watch a couple of episodes of History Channel’s new World War II series. It reminds me a bit of the BBC’s old World At War series that we used to watch on PBS. The one big difference between the new series and World At War was the original series included interviews with a lot of people who fought in World War II from both sides. I will say that I like what I have seen in the new series so far as it does cover things the original World At War did not, digging deeper into the politics before and during the war.

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When I saw this a few days ago my first thought was “Can they really be this dumb?”

It turns out they are...or at least this one is.

You wanna hear something funny?

Lemme tell y’all what Rep. LaMonica McIver just said to Secretary Mullin during the hearing. Paraphrasing but you get the gist…

“You wanna talk about racism and everything… tell me why every person locked up in Delaney Hall is a foreigner?”

Who’s gonna tell her that ICE facilities ONLY house illegal aliens?

GOOD LORD! Democrats are truly the stupidest breed out there.

The comments in the Instapundit post are brutal...and rightfully so. So are the over 4000 replies to the post in X.

Note: According to some of the Instapundit comments, it is possible Rep. McIver was not the one who made this comment. However, the sources for this refutation are suspect...at least to me.

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I have to wonder when the exodus of the British will begin from the UK?

Seeing how they are being treated by their government and the increasing abuses being heaped upon them by “innocent” migrants that seem to have no problems committing heinous acts. And then they lay the blame on the victims with the police supporting the narratives.

3 days after his son was murdered, Mark Nowak had to fight tooth & nail to stop the police from issuing a statement claiming Henry had racially abused Vickrum Digwa.

They had no evidence of any racial abuse from Henry. The police are trained to side with foreigners by default.

What’s worse is that these foreigners are the antithesis of British culture and are in the UK to tear it down and replace it with 7th century barbarism. They are already acting like run the country.

Hmm. Maybe they already do.

That might explain why I have been seeing more and more Brits on YouTube talking about moving to the US.

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Seeing what’s been going on in the UK, one has to ask a follow-up question: Is Saving Europe Still Possible?

Considering just how wishy-washy some of the other European countries have been when it comes to allowing ‘enemy’ migrants into their countries by the millions, I’d have to say they are teetering on the brink. If they don’t get the Muslim immigrant problems squared away they will go the way of so many other nations and empires and cultures that didn’t stop similar problems cold: extinction.

It doesn’t help that European birthrates have plummeted while Muslim immigrant birthrates in Europe are much higher. All they have to do is wait a couple of generations and the white Judeo-Christian culture will be outnumbered and doomed to dwindle away. And what’s worse is that the Europeans have been doing it to themselves. It’s not much different here.

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From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this climate change nonsense:

Brown Eggs Canceled for Offending the Climate

The advantage of a totalitarian ideology is that it can be applied to everything. For example, global warmism dictates even what color eggs should be offered for sale.

An assessment by SAC Consulting for Sainsbury’s found that brown eggs have a 12.7% higher carbon footprint than white eggs, as the hens that produce brown eggs are larger and eat more food.

Next comes the government ban on brown eggs. Next after than come restrictions on how large a hen can grow. If this fails to perfect the weather, tighter regulation will be required.

Hmm. I would have thought larger hens would be a good thing because they have more “meat” on them. Did anyone take into account the ratio of the amount of feed versus the amount of meat on the chicken carcass? What good are smaller chickens if you need more of them to provide the same amount of meat if it also means in total they’ll eat just as much if not more that the larger “brown egg” hens?

And so it goes.

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You can’t tell me there won’t be a federal investigation about the voting in Los Angeles as it seems that just about every mail-in ballot was for Nithya Raman which moved her from a a distant third place to a solid second place. This means she’ll be running against fellow communist Karen Bass for mayor of Los Angeles.

To quote Dan McLaughlin, “The machine wins. Absolutely nothing will change in LA.”

Statistically, the split in the mail-in votes should have approximated the results seen from ‘regular’ voting. But against all odds, the mail-in votes heavily favored one candidate.

If this holds up the only thing I can do is quote Ed Koch: “The people have spoken. Now they must be punished.”

I figure the exodus from LA is going to accelerate going forward and will resemble what’s been happening in New York since fellow communist Mamdani became mayor. I do have to wonder how long it will take either of those cities to look more like Detroit when it hit rock bottom.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where now that the weekend is over the good weather will return, the roar of motorcycles will start to be heard by Wednesday, and where 300,000+ bikers will be arriving to take part in Laconia Motorcycle Week.

D-Day - June 6, 1944

It was 82 years ago today that the Allies invaded Normandy.

It was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.

It was brilliant. It was audacious. It was daunting. It was a gamble.

It worked.

I remember when I saw Saving Private Ryan with a friend, his father, and his father’s friend. I didn’t know until after we finished watching the movie and leaving the theater that both of these elderly men were veterans of D-Day. As we drove back to my home my friend’s father stated that the movie-makers had captured D-Day perfectly. His voice shook as he said this. His friend merely nodded, and I could see he was fighting back tears.

It was a few years ago when I saw this video of John Williams’ Hymn For The Fallen and even today it brings tears to my eyes. As such, I felt I had to post it here, today of all days.

It is only fitting.

Friday Funny - Immediate Regret

Thoughts On A Sunday

Looking at yesterday’s weather one might have thought we were back in mid-April with overnight temps at or below freezing, snow in the mountains, and heavy rain and winds until early afternoon. It wasn’t all that warm around here with high temps in the low 50’s late in the afternoon.

The wet weather did allow me to test out the new tires I bought for the trusty RAM 1500 on Friday. The old tires had definitely outlived their usefulness with the wear bars just barely starting to show. My only complaint about the old tires is that they didn’t wear nearly as well previous tires I’ve had on the pickup. They had been a compromise as the tires I wanted to put on the trusty RAM weren’t available at the time. I got around 30,000 miles out of those before they were worn out. The previous set to those lasted me about 50,000 miles.

One of the first thing I noticed with the new tires is that they were quieter than the old ones and the ride was much better. I also noticed it felt like there was better traction in the rain than I had been experiencing. (Not surprising considering how little tread was left on the tires.)

Things are still gearing up for summer around here, with some of the road construction on one of the main highways going on around the clock. With Laconia Motorcycle Week coming up starting June 13th, they wanted to get all of that work done prior to the 300,000+ bikers arriving. (Truth be told, the bikers will start arriving on the Wednesday before the start, meaning we’ll be hearing the roar of motorcycles starting on June 10th.)

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I promise that this was pure happenstance.

It seems that yesterday’s post about how vehicle touchscreens are awful has now been backed up by a YouTube video that I found just this morning. (The first 2:50 covers that issue.)



So far it’s only a few carmakers making the change back to more traditional controls, but I have no doubt others will follow.

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The Left is continuing to “harsh our mellow” when it comes to celebrating America’s 250th birthday, threatening celebrities who want to participate in celebrations.

What do you expect from people who have no problems coming right out and stating they hate the country of their birth, the country that hasn’t silenced their hatred by means the Left would have no problems using against those who “Are Not One Of Them”.

One of their excuses for doing so?

The ‘bad’ economy.

Writes Cynical Publius:

Anyone who claims the lack of joy about the 250th is a function of a rough economy was not alive in 1976.

The country rocked in its 200th celebration and the economy was a FREAKING MESS.

There is this Gen Z misconception that the '70s and early '80s were some sort of economic golden age of readily available, well-paying jobs, low cost housing and an all around sense of prosperity.

WRONG.

Google "Stagflation." Google "gas lines." Google "mortgage interest rates in the 1980s."

Our economy today is a golden age by comparison, without exaggeration.

Yet somehow in 1976 we could gleefully celebrate our nation's birthday without Democrats turning it into a Howard Zinn-inspired anti-history hatefest.

I remember the “bad old days” of the 1970’s and particularly during the Bicentennial. The economy was in the dumper. There were jokes about the “last people leaving Massachusetts turning out the lights” because the economic problems were particularly harsh there. Yet nobody had any problems with celebrating America’s 200th birthday.

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For anyone who’s been paying attention, the following won’t really be a surprise.

Minimum Wage Wipes Out Jobs in California

What did the people running California think would happen when the minimum wage was boosted way above a reasonable level?

Not everything Democrats do is ineffectual. Consider minimum wage hikes — via Yahoo Finance:

Carl’s Jr. is staring down the potential loss of dozens of California locations after a franchisee and its affiliates filed for bankruptcy protection — blaming the state’s staggering minimum wage. …

Friendly Franchisees Corporation CEO and Founder Harshad Dharod said the state’s $20 minimum wage in the fast-food sector contributes to the chain’s financial distress ahead of bankruptcy filing under subsidiary Sun Gir, according to Restaurant Dive.

Fast food franchises cannot stay solvent while paying teenagers $20/hour to flip hamburgers. No one expects them to. The objective of ever higher minimum wage is to saw off the bottom rung of the ladder, resulting in more government dependence and thereby more votes for Democrats.

Carl’s Jr. isn’t the only fast food franchise that has been hit hard by the $20/hour minimum wage. We saw when Pizza Hut laid off delivery drivers because of the new minimum wage. How many others like McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and others have installed ordering kiosks to replace workers because they’re cheaper?

And let’s not forget the minimum wage hike for hospitality workers, with L.A. raising the minimum wage for them to $30/hour and San Diego raising theirs to $19/hour. You can’t tell me there won’t be a fallout in the hospitality industry like that seen in the fast food industry.

Like so many others have already found out, the real minimum wage is $0/hour when businesses start shedding workers because of the now much higher wages. Everyone will feel these wage increases as they will drive up costs.

It will be interesting to see how this is going to work out for Californians.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re waiting for summer weather and temperatures to return, the heavy rains we did receive over the end of last week and into Saturday helped reduce the rainfall deficit, and where Monday is returning again to interfere with the weekend.

New Isn't Always Better

I have mentioned more than once my dislike of modern automotive design, specifically when it comes to things like the multifunction touchscreen displays in almost every new vehicle over the past few years. Functions that used to be controlled by switches, buttons, knobs, and sliders have migrated over to the LCD touchscreens that take up a portion of the dash, mostly in the center. Some have gone so far as to replace the gauges – the speedometer, tachometer, fuel gauge, temperature gauge, oil pressure gauge, battery voltage, odometer, trip meter, and so on.

Is it that I am an “old faht” that doesn’t like all the new doodads and gizmos that has me writing this? Considering that I am a techie and have been one since the 1970’s, it isn’t that at all. It all comes down to the fact that some user interfaces, in this case for motor vehicles, really don’t lend themselves to LCDs and touchscreens. The newer technology, while really cool and cool looking, has one major downside to them:

The driver has to take their eyes off the road in order to use them.

It appears the UI/UX (User Interface/User Experience) designers, also know as “Buttons And Stuff Engineers”, have forgotten that distracted driving is a Bad Thing^TM. Any time a driver has to take their eyes off the road means they aren’t paying attention to their driving which in turn can lead to accidents. If they have to take their eyes off the road to handle functions that used to be controlled by physical controls, the aforementioned switches, buttons, knobs, and sliders, they are driving distracted. Drivers could control many functions without having to take their eyes off the road because muscle memory let them do so without having to look at them. The fan speed control, temperature setting, and vent controls were always in the same place. The same for headlights, windshield wipers, radio volume, radio station selection, and so on. But with the new LCD touchscreens muscle memory doesn’t work.

That could be why automakers are reversing course, at least partially, bringing back those switches, buttons, knobs, and sliders that control common functions used every day by motorists, even if it is the onboard vehicle control modules that still drive those functions. They have come to understand why their customers detest using touchscreens for these functions.

This begs the question “Why did automakers switch over to using touchscreens?” The answer is simple.

Costs. Touchscreens are cheap.

They can control numerous functions from a single interface depending upon the programming and the design of the systems in the vehicle. A single data connection to a vehicles control module(s) can control all of the usual functions. There’s no need for separate wires or cables for each of those switches, buttons, knobs, and sliders. And while those touchscreen interfaces are cheap, replacing them is not. You know the dealerships and repair shops will charge a fortune for a replacement. All told, the cost of that touchscreen interface including its associated electronics is probably less than $100. But they’ll hit you for up ten times that much plus labor if it ever needs to be replaced.

And there’s also this: If the touchscreen fails your vehicle just became very dumb. You won’t be able to use any of the functions it controls. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Now about the crappy engines the automakers have been putting in their new vehicles...

Friday Funny - Baby Weight Or...

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s a rainy day today, something that doesn’t really bother me since we certainly need the rain and the fact that it’s a four day weekend for me. A lot of the weekend chores were taken care of yesterday, so other than going to church this morning, there was nothing that I needed to do. While I usually make my Sunday morning trip to Walmart for pre-church shopping, I postponed it because of the holiday weekend and the resulting heavier traffic as there was nothing I was lacking that couldn’t wait an extra day or two. Most of that shopping is for things I need for the coming week.

While out and about yesterday running errands, I did notice that the parking lots at our local Walmart, supermarket, and a couple of my favorite restaurants were full, a sure sign that the summerfolk are here. What did surprise me was that our town docks weren’t busy at all, at least when I happened to swing by there on my way to where the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout is berthed. There was no line of trucks with boat trailers waiting to launch boats. Talking to the enforcement officer on duty there it seems there was a bit of a rush in the morning that tapered off before lunch and that it had been “onesie-twosie” since then. That’s not to say it didn’t pick up again later in the afternoon, but right then there was no one at the boat ramp launching their boat. However, there were quite a few boats out on the lake throughout the day.

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It looks to me (and many many others) that Spencer Pratt has a pretty good chance to become the next mayor of Los Angeles. If nothing else, campaign ads created by others not connected to his campaign have been slamming present mayor Karen Bass. Ads from his campaign have also been highly critical of her actions prior to and during the fires that burned so much of LA and her inaction afterwards.

If nothing else, it’s going to be very interesting in Los Angeles over the next few months, politically speaking.

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You have got to be kidding me. Someone, please tell me this is satire!

“White milk is undoubtedly White supremacy.”

WTF? Umm, unless I’ve missed something, isn’t most mammalian milk white in color? Talk about being totally disconnected from reality.

She says that RFK Jr. wanting regular milk in schools is ‘racist’.

This is the Democrat Party.

This is what happens when you close most of the mental institutions and the inmates are allowed to wander amongst the general population. The things I’ve heard from some Democrat politicians and party members have both amazed and terrified me, often at the same time.

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Seeing what’s been going on the the UK recently, one that is more and more resembling Orwell’s dystopia in 1964, the following makes perfect sense.

British Flock to Trump’s Free Speech Portal

Even under moonbat rule, Britons may still have free speech — thanks to the USA.

GB News reports on Freedom.gov, a free speech portal designed by the Trump Administration to allow people in repressive countries to share officially disfavored information.

Censorship has become increasingly prevalent in Europe under left-wing domination — an alarming development that the Trump Administration has taken a leading role in combatting (sic).

For now, only the landing page is live, but apparently it is already getting plenty of hits from the UK.

The UK has become increasingly authoritarian, going so far as arresting people for “offensive online comments.” The definition of offensive seems to be “Anything that disagrees with the Leftist elite in Great Britain.” We have seen the British government trying to go after people here in the US for offensive online posts on social media. The US government has informed the Brits that their laws against “offensive” speech does not apply here in the US after they’ve tried to enforce it against both Americans and British subjects here in the US.

I have to wonder if things really start getting bad in the UK that we’ll see an influx of British refugees fleeing an increasingly totalitarian state?

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Why doesn’t this surprise me in the least?

Apparently Hakeem Jeffries has a definition of what is and is not acceptable anti-Semitism within the Democrat Party.

Just when I think I couldn’t detest this a**hat any more than I already do, he proves me wrong.

As if we need yet another example of the anti-Semtism inherent in the Democrat Party all we have to do is look to Texas Democratic congressional candidate Maureen Galindo. She has openly called for “prison camps for ‘American Zionists’ and ‘castration processing centers’ for her ideological enemies.”

Hmm. Where have we heard that idea before?

Oh, heck, I’m finding more and more of the ‘usual suspect’ Democrats are becoming increasingly unhinged, and if at all possible, increasingly racist in the “soft racism of lowered expectations” type of racism, pretending that minorities can’t possible get ahead without their helping hands because they’re too intellectually challenged to do it by themselves.

Unfortunately we are seeing more and more of this from the Democrats every day.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it’s been raining all day, Memorial Day approaches, and where Monday isn’t a bother...this week.

The Start Of Summer

It’s Memorial Day Weekend which marks the unofficial start of summer. While there will be the Memorial Day ceremonies and remembrances on Monday, the crowds of summerfolk started arriving in force before noon yesterday to celebrate the start of summer.

The WP Mom and I had to run a few errands early yesterday afternoon including stops at Walmart and one of our local supermarkets for some last minute shopping. The traffic was heavy and the parking lots were full. We saw a lot more out-of-state plates than we have since last summer, with most of them being from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York.

A lot of this goes in line with the boatyards and marinas being busy since the beginning of the month getting boats ready for pick-up by the owners or launching them for owners. That was certainly true for my go-to boatyard as I had to stop by yesterday to make arrangements to store the Official Weekend Pundit Boat Trailer for the summer now that the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout is back in the water. (This used to get stored next to the garage at The Manse, but I haven’t been living there since 2018 and there’s no room here at The Gulch.) The boat slips that I could see while out and about were occupied, for the most part. I expect the rest will occupied before the end of the weekend.

All of the seasonal restaurants are now open on more than just the weekends, as they have been since late April, and the few that I passed while out running errands were busy, but not “Saturday or Sunday” busy as we’ll be seeing from now until Labor Day weekend. Some of the attractions will be open just on the weekends for the next couple of weeks until schools let out for the summer.

Another sign of the holiday weekend?

Road construction ceased after Thursday (with one or two exceptions) and won’t restart until Tuesday after the “madding crowds” have departed. (I have no doubt this is true in other states as well.)

When the work restarts around here in the Lakes Region some of it will be going on around the clock, with prep work taking place during daylight hours and paving being performed overnight. One of the reasons for this around-the-clock work is that Motorcycle Week starts on June 13th – which is three weeks from today - and they want to get as much road repair and construction done before then. The 300,000+ bikers expected to attend will start arriving a few days before that, hence the push to get this round of work done. Once the rumble of motorcycles fades away after that week, the road crews will be back at it.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I will not be venturing out onto the lake until late Monday or Tuesday as it is quite often too crazy and dangerous to venture out onto Lake Winnipesaukee during weekends unless it’s first thing in the morning or early evening. There are too many Cap’n Boneheads out on the lake and it can be exhausting to be out there dealing with them. It’s better that I watch their antics from shore.

Friday Funny - Relatable Marriage Jokes

Thoughts On A Sunday

The weather has been great this weekend up here at the lake - sunny and in the mid-70’s on Saturday and sunny and in the lower to mid-80’s today. It was perfect weather today for working on the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout.

Speaking of which, the boat made the move from the boatyard to BeezleBub’s place late yesterday afternoon. It needs a little bit of cleaning up before I start loading the gear – anchors, mooring lines, a paddle, boat hook, transom light, PFDs, cushions, fire extinguisher, and so on – so I can launch the boat sometime during this week. It will definitely be in the water before the upcoming Memorial Day weekend.

The garage work still continues as I slowly dig through everything residing there to figure out what goes into the attic, what goes back onto the shelves, and what goes to the dump...er…solid waste center. I’m hoping that more than half the stuff presently residing on the shelves can go to the dump. (So far that appears to be the case, but I won’t know for sure until the job is done.)

I have been seeing the summer businesses getting ready, with many of the seasonal restaurants and ice cream stands having been open the past couple of weekends and the summer attractions cleaning up and getting everything ready for Memorial Day weekend. Friends of mine were up this way yesterday and we had lunch at one of my favorite local restaurants because I knew that starting next weekend it would be jam packed with summerfolk until after Labor Day.

And so begins another summer tourist season in New Hampshire.

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Oh yeah, this is going to make the folks in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine happy.

Vast, Untapped Source of Lithium Found in The US Could Last 300 Years.

There could be nearly 330 years' worth of lithium hiding beneath the Appalachian Mountains, which stretch like a stony spine across the eastern United States.

New research from the US Geological Survey suggests that the Appalachians may contain around 2.3 million metric tons (2.5 million US tons) of recoverable lithium oxide locked away in pegmatites, the grainy, granite-like rocks that form as water-rich magma cools and crystallizes deep within the Earth.

"This research shows that the Appalachians contain enough lithium to help meet the nation's growing needs – a major contribution to US mineral security, at a time when global lithium demand is rising rapidly," says Ned Mamula, Director of the US Geological Survey (USGS).

I know there are large deposits of lithium in neighboring Maine, having heard that news a couple of years ago. But that there are deposits in New Hampshire and Vermont is a surprise.

I have no doubt there will be opposition against mining the lithium that resides under the mountains and China won’t have to fund any of the protests. Since I must assume that any such mining will be ‘hard rock’ mining meaning tunnels and shafts rather than strip mining, I can see where folks will be concerned about affects on ground water and aquifers as well as what will be done with the tailings. The mountains in all three states run through pristine forests, all of which contain hiking trails, campgrounds, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, and a wide range of wildlife.

Things are going to get interesting around here.

Since lithium is used in batteries there is a huge demand for it and at the moment we get a lot of it from foreign sources. Being able to source lithium from domestic sources is very attractive for obvious reasons.

However, we must keep in mind that there are other high-capacity battery chemistries under development by DARPA that could make the lithium-ion batteries obsolete, with one of the more promising chemistries being graphene-silicon that doesn’t use lithium or cobalt or manganese as part of its chemistry. That means it is also cheaper to make because the materials used are available everywhere. It also has much higher energy density and lower internal resistance than lithium-ion batteries and won’t have the propensity of igniting itself like lithium-ion batteries.

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Being one of those engineering types, I have always been skeptical about so-called “green energy”, knowing that even while the energy – solar and wind – is free, collecting it and putting it into a usable form - electricity – was not. It also isn’t cheap, something so many of the green energy proponents keep choosing to ignore. And in many cases it also isn’t environmentally friendly between the mining of materials needed for solar panels and destruction of large tracts of land to hold these “green energy” systems.

However, it seems the luster of “green energy” has waned as the reality of that energy becomes apparent, with the biggest in-your-face factor being that it isn’t capable of meeting the growing demand and doing so cheaply. Instead, the focus has turned elsewhere with nuclear topping the list. The nuclear comeback is something that will leave green fantasies behind.

After years of efforts by radical greens to strangle America’s oil, gas, and coal industries — while forcing the nation to accept costly, land-devouring wind and solar — the U.S. is once again emerging as a global energy superpower.

And this time, it’s not just fossil fuels: In fact, nuclear power is taking center stage.

Tennessee is poised to become the world’s leading hub for nuclear innovation, thanks to Trump administration policies and state leaders willing to back real energy solutions over climate virtue-signaling. Public and private investments are now flowing into advanced reactors, uranium enrichment, and next-generation nuclear technologies.

--snip--

Together with a resurgence in oil, natural gas, and coal production, these developments will unleash American energy, manufacturing, innovation, and job creation while lowering electricity prices and reducing blackout risks for families and businesses alike. They also send a clear warning to America’s blue states: If you cling to anti-energy ideology, you will be left behind.

This cannot be said enough when it comes to nuclear power: Too many people against nuclear power today seem stuck in the 1970’s because modern Gen III and Gen IV nuclear reactors “are not you grandfather’s nuclear reactors”. This is particularly true of small modular reactors (SMRs) which can have electrical power outputs of a dozen megawatts to up to 300 megawatts output power. The days of big Gen II 1000+ MWe reactors are gone if for no other reason is that they cost a lot of money to build, take a very long time to build (mostly due to lawsuits and regulatory changes partway through construction which also adds to the cost), and they can be very difficult to site as they can have requirements for conditions that are difficult to meet. But SMRs are different.

One of the biggest differences is right in their name: They are modular. Depending upon the generating capacity they can be built in a factory in a single piece and fit in a shipping container or in less than a dozen pieces that will be fit together on the construction site. They use advanced nuclear technology which makes them safer, easier, faster, and less expensive to build. Some designs can actually use ‘depleted’ nuclear fuel from old Gen I and Gen II nuclear power plants which has the advantage of being able to use fuel that is considered waste and reduce that waste from something that needs to be stored away for 25,000+ years to requiring to be stored only a couple of hundred years or so.

SMRs can be clustered together to provide the equivalent power to the old fashioned Gen II plants or spread out to create a distributed generation and transmission grid.

I could go on and on about SMRs but there’s plenty of information about SMRs on the Internet.

One thing I can say bodes well for a nuclear power renaissance is that my state’s governor, Kelly Ayotte, has been a big proponent of more nuclear power in our state.

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If we need any more proof that green energy and the over the top push to “Save The Planet” is failing, all we have to do is look at the EV market and see who’s either dialing back their production of electric vehicles or is throwing in the towel altogether.

The latest automaker to take a huge hit in the EV market?

Honda.

In this case Honda took its first ever loss in its history and is pulling back on EVs.

Such was the cultural vibe that giant corporations all collectively jumped off a cliff together hoping to invent a new technology fast enough to be able to land.

In the case of Honda, after 70 years of endless profits, they burnt at least $9 billion dollars, and have given up the idea of trying to get EVs to make up one fifth of their sales by 2030. The demand just isn’t there. They also thought they could shift their whole fleet to electric or fuel cells by 2030. That’s gone too.

There are just too many problems with EVs to make them popular enough to replace Internal Combustion Engine vehicles. Two of the biggest problems – the stability of Lithium-Ion batteries (and cost of replacing them) and the lack of electricity generation capacity to meet the projected demand if EVs had truly been popular and didn’t depend on government subsidies in order to drive demand.

Will EVs ever go away? Probably not. But they won’t be nearly as numerous as ICE vehicles unless the battery safety issues, and the battery replacement and repair costs are addressed. We would also need to see the electrical grid capacity expanded and charging stations to become as ubiquitous as gas pumps. Until then I think EVs will be a niche market, Tesla notwithstanding.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re seeing actual summer temperatures, more boats are being seen on the lake daily, and where Memorial Day weekend is only a week away.