Thoughts On A Sunday

It is the weekend before Thanksgiving and I did something unusual – I took off the entire week of Thanksgiving. It doesn’t mean I’ll be out doing vacation-like things. Rather, I’ll be taking care of chores that really need to be done before winter finally gets here. One such set of chores is continuing my efforts to slowly empty out my rental storage unit. Of course some of that will be hindered because the trusty RAM 1500 not is going to be available for two or three days.

First thing Monday morning it will going into the body shop to take care of some incipient rust as a means of preserving it for another 10 years. Hopefully the work will be done prior to Thanksgiving Day as it is possible the WP Mom and I will need to use the RAM to get down to the youngest WP Sister’s place as there is a possibility of snow that day.

Another chore that needs doing is helping the WP Mom make her Thanksgiving fudge. (Not to be confused with her Christmas fudge.) She usually needs help with the mixing as it is something she insists must be done by hand. I also help with quality control.

Somewhere among all of that I also need to tackle the garage at The Gulch, moving the warm weather stuff out of the garage and into the attic, the cold weather stuff from the attic into the garage, and rearranging the rest of the stuff in the garage to make it easier to deal with winter weather including moving the Official Weekend Pundit Dual-Fuel Generator to a place that will make it easier to deploy should we lose power. (Yes, we do have power outages during the warm weather months, but not nearly as often as we see in the winter.)

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If I had a way, I would tell the ‘Greens’ in Germany “I told you so!”

Germany’s dive into green energy has finally come around to bite it in the ass as it turns out that said green energy can’t meet the energy demand, particularly after abandoning nuclear power and other non-green power sources. They are learning the hard way that renewable energy isn’t reliable and isn’t always available when it’s really needed.

Since the original article linked in the Instapundit post seems to have disappeared, those commenting on this issue are saying “I told you so!” in my stead.

It all comes down to Germany is getting it “gooder and harderer” because those in power listened to the ‘feel good’ bullsh*t being sold by the Greens and didn’t actually do their homework or the math to figure out it wasn’t going to work.

And to think that Germany was once a center of some of the world’s best engineering and in a little over one generation it has fallen victim to ‘feelz’ over facts.

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Just when I thought things in Chicago couldn’t get any stupider, someone in the Windy City proves me wrong. The latest bit of insanity?

Traffic light cameras are racist.

Really?

Illinois State Rep. La Shawn Ford is again calling for change after new data shows more than 2.5 times as many red-light camera tickets were issued on Chicago’s South Side over a yearlong period than at intersections where cameras are installed on the city’s North Side.

Hmm. Could it be that more drivers on the South Side of Chicago are running red lights than in other parts of the city? Or is he claiming there are 2.5 times as many red-light cameras in the South Side as anywhere else in the city?

What about crime? If more crime takes place on the South Side is it because of racism and the laws should be changed to decriminalize some crimes? Oh, wait, they shouldn’t do that because we’ve seen what happens in places like the metro areas in California and in New York City.

Is there anything that cannot be classified as racist in order to create yet another class of ‘victims’?

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I have seen this question popping up here and there in a number conservative websites, so it makes me wonder if something may be in the offing. The question:

Is Elon Musk going to buy MSNBC?

He certainly has the wherewithal to do so. And then there’s this:

Since the election, MSNBC’s ratings have been falling dramatically with no signs of reversing. Their audience feels like they got played, especially now that Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have opened communications with Donald Trump.

There are rumors swirling in media that Comcast may sell off MSNBC, so naturally people are starting to wonder if Elon Musk could buy the network. People are not asking if Musk should buy it, because obviously, he should.

Of course I was thinking Musk should buy CNN, particularly if it should lose the Project Veritas lawsuit which would likely leave it available for pennies on the dollar. For all I know, Musk could end up buying MSNBC and CNN. That would be a certain amount of irony, if one thinks about it.

If nothing else it would piss off a lot of the Left to see two bastions of Progressive Propaganda fall into Musk’s hands because no one is watching them anymore, not even the Left.

And so it goes.

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Why doesn’t this surprise me even as it surprises others?

EV owners are being advised not to use the heat in their Evs because it can “significantly reduce the range”. Really? Who’da thunk it?

Apparently the Telegraph in the UK.

Drivers of electric vehicles (EVs) have been warned they should think twice before turning on their hot air blowers during the cold weather.

Having a battery rather than an internal combustion engine (ICE) means EVs have to use more electricity to generate their own heat.

Experts have warned this could drain the batteries of their electric cars – particularly older ones – and reduce their range.

Unlike with petrol and diesel cars, owners of EVs do not get to enjoy the luxury of the “effectively free” heat which is created as a by-product of simply having the engine running in ICE vehicles.

Instead, they have to use a “more substantial” amount of battery capacity to keep warm, which decreases how far they can drive.

The warning comes as Britons brace themselves for snow, rain and gusts of 70mph in the form of Storm Bert this weekend.

Here in the US that would be even worse as it gets a lot colder here than it does in the UK, even if you’re only talking about New England where I live. It can get down to single digit temps (Fahrenheit) or even into double digit negative numbers which of course makes it worse because you can’t not use heat when it’s that cold. Then again, it is likely an EV wouldn’t want to work when it’s that cold.

The coldest temperature I’ve seen here in my town is -29ºF/-33ºC, and that’s without wind chill. I have a feeling an EV wouldn’t do that well when it’s the cold. I’ve also lived farther north where the coldest temp I’ve experienced is -36ºF/-38ºC. Even my ICE car didn’t start easily at that temperature, but it did start. I have a feeling an EV wouldn’t fare well at all. Try dealing with temperatures like that without using heat.

Not going to happen.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where only a few boats are still in the water, we’re likely to see some snow on Thanksgiving Day, and where the fudge pot will soon need to be stirred.