Afternoon Tea 2.17.2021 - Blackout

No, wind turbines aren't freezing. Not the ones you winterize, anyway.

February 17, 2021

Limbaugh the Hutt died, someone was selling Indonesian islands they don’t own, state level GOP parties are decompensating, and instead of throwing a temper tantrum when someone he didn’t like needed something, Biden declared a state of emergency, now that some Texans are hitting hour 60 without power. It is Wednesday, February 17th 2021, and this is the Tea.

Rush Limbaugh Made America Worse (New Republic) & Point/Counterpoint: Rush Limbaugh (Defector) With a career enabled after the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, over the decades, he went on to denigrate every conceivable minority or downtrodden group of Americans you can think of. He lost his crown due to pain med addiction & not being able to keep up with newer, cruder, more venomous recent upstarts on the internet. But, he was the King of Being Awful to Vulnerable for as long as many of us can remember. Cleaving to his oafish compatriot Who Will Not Be Named in his last year, to quote David Roth:

It was a fitting final moment in a distinctly American life—two men, born rich and with deep love for themselves and without any redeeming qualities, who recognized that pushing the worst and most destructive lies in the nation’s history could win them the stupid gilded glory they sought, honoring each other for how much each honored the other. Two people who lived to laugh at the wreckage they made, who never learned anything or loved anything, whose wealth and personal damage ensured that they were somehow never told to shut the fuck up over the course of their long and brutal lives, who would sooner die than be held accountable for anything or indeed acknowledge that any power on earth or in heaven could hold them to that account, recognizing in the other the only thing they could appreciate, which was their own reflection.

Harris Co. Judge Lina Hidalgo Calls Lit Up Downtown Skyscrapers Amid Outages ‘Maddening’ (ABC-13) Greed & stupidity ensured their grid, disconnected from the national network, failed in the storms and extreme weather people who don’t believe in climate change say would never happen. To underscore, the insanity coming out of Texas is due to the way state legislators & the fossil fuel industry structured things.

Texas Power Retailers to Customers in Face of Freeze: Please, Leave Us (Bloomberg) If you suck at power generation in the time of climate change so much, you plead with your customers to quit your power company during a blizzard & pandemic, you really shouldn’t be allowed to work in power generation anywhere in this country, ever again.

A Glimpse of America’s Future: Climate Change Means Trouble for Power Grids (NY Times) & Texplainer: Why does Texas have its own power grid? (Texas Tribune) As this was published in 2011, you’d think they would have fixed the gaping, hysterically worrying holes in ERCOT in the interim decade. Here we are again, with the New York Times smarmily sounding a warning last, as usual. At least this piece in Gizmodo correctly dunks on a ghastly WSJ editorial trafficking in fake news that the TX grid is less reliable due to wind. Turbines in TX failed because they weren’t winterized, as anyone in the breadbasket can tell you. In addition to the fact that wind only generates 7% of TX’s power, while natural gas and the pipes the state relies on literally froze.

A Texas mayor resigned after telling people it was their fault if they froze when power went out in the deadly storms winter storms (Insider) Purposefully avoiding investment in winterizing, deregulating, and pleading with people to leave your grid, then saying, “It’s your own fault if you die!” is a more intense but somehow familiar flavor of America.

Why Were Portland Police Guarding a Dumpster of Discarded Food? (VICE News) Setting cops on dumpster divers during a pandemic & power outage. How did we lose our way so comprehensively?

Queens Public Defenders Push to Unionize. Management Calls Them a ‘Mob.’ (TheCity) In 1996, when our own Dark Carnival Pokémon Rudy “Watergate Auto Repair & Lube Hut” Giuliani was faced with a Legal Aid strike, he responded by bidding out NYC public defender work. Re-branded & non-profit-ized, the Queens Defenders executive director spent 2 hours on Monday loudly violating assorted labor laws associated with union organizing. Queens, am I right folks?

Facebook Says “Technical Issues” Were the Cause of Broken Promise to Congress (The Markup) Sigh. Apparently after their initial reporting, Senator Markey wrote a letter to Facebook. Magically, the drop that had started after the report continued, comprehensively reaching the promise conditions, three days after the Senator’s letter was received. Who knew Sen. Markey was the key to fixing institutional tech issues?

The national GOP is broken. State GOPs might be even worse. (Vox) Even a cursory look at state level GOP actions at the moment should cause panic. Greene & Boebert are just the ones who made it to the national stage. The state level crazy is going to get very thick and very complex in the next two years. If you thought Tea Party protesters made no sense, you may want to turn off the TV when the QAnon zealots, insurrectionists, and post-Trump radicals wearing Nazi fursona outfits show up to your state capitol.

Indonesian Islands Are Not For Sale, Authorities Say, After Online Listings Cause Controversy (Coconuts - Bali) Glenngarry Glen Ross, but for the Instagram generation. What were they going to do if someone bought one and they went to move into their new island? Re-enact the Eddie Izzard Flag bit?

30 Taliban militants killed in explosion during bomb-making class (NZHerald & Khaama Press Agency) Every single comedian in the 2000s just had their joke vindicated. Six foreigners were ostensibly teaching Taliban members how to make bombs in a village named Qultaq. The explosion was so bad the bodies of the foreigners couldn’t be identified.

Song of the Tea: The Bersarin Quartett does lovely modern classical fused with ambient & chill vibes. Seemed appropriate for the bright cold today.

When seeking help from those who you deem excellent, what can you offer them? Useful people are the easiest to exhaust.

Yours,