Sunday, February 04, 2024

🧌

Surprise, surprise, surprise!
"We actually made it into Eagle Pass…I was able to see some people trying to cross and stopped at the wire there,” she told the MSNBC anchor. “It’s very eye opening,” she added. 
“And tell me more about ‘eye opening.’ Is it what you expected? Is it better? Is it worse?” asked the reporter. 
Misty responded, “It’s not what I expected. But then again I don’t know what I expected. I can tell you it’s not as bad as what I thought. So that’s kind of eye opening in itself, too.”
I especially like the “we actually made it into Eagle Pass” opening. Like they’d managed to get to Mordor and didn’t find it overrun with orcs and trolls.🧌 

While its analysis is preliminary, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that large-scale cryptocurrency operations are now consuming over 2 percent of the US's electricity. 
... 
One independent estimate made by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance had the US as the home of just over 3 percent of the global bitcoin mining at the start of 2020. By the start of 2022, that figure was nearly 38 percent. 
The Cambridge Center also estimates the global electricity use of all bitcoin mining, so it's possible to multiply that by the US's percentage and come up with an estimate for the amount of electricity that boom has consumed. Because of the uncertainties in these estimates, the number could be anywhere from 25 to 91 Terawatt-hours. Even the low end of that range would mean bitcoin mining is now using the equivalent of Utah's electricity consumption (the high end is roughly Washington's), which has significant implications for the electric grid as a whole. 
Or just for the Texas grid, since it stands alone.
The EIA also found a number of strategies that miners used to keep their power costs low. In one case, they moved into a former aluminum smelting facility in Texas to take advantage of its capacious connections to the grid. In another, they put a facility next to a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and set up a direct connection to the plant. The EIA also found cases where miners moved near natural gas fields that produced waste methane that would otherwise have been burned off. 
Since bitcoin mining is the antithesis of an essential activity, several mining operations have signed up for demand-response programs, where they agree to take their operations offline if electricity demand is likely to exceed generating capacity in return for compensation by the grid operator. It has been widely reported that one facility in Texas—the one at the  former aluminum smelter site—earned over $30 million by shutting down during a heat wave in 2023.
We’re so glad the powers that be decided to woo crypto miners down here. You know, what with the invasion and all, we need them for…something.

In other, other news: P.T. Barnum was right.
“I called him and asked him: Did you see that Trump spent $55 million of his campaign money on lawyers, for both himself and his associates? Does that trouble you?" Westneat wrote. 
"Not at all, it doesn’t bother me,” said the donor (whom Westneat kept anonymous). 
"I don’t know anything about how he’s actually using the money," the donor added. "I do know that everybody’s attacking him with whatever weapons they have. If he’s defending himself with my money, then that’s more than fine with me." 
"The main thing I can impart to you, and thank you for calling, is that no matter what, we intend to keep at it," the donor told Westneat.
There is one born every minute.
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1 comment:

  1. The Thought Criminal5:41 AM

    Considering how much time the "journalists" spend on opinion polling, they also seem to put a hell of a lot of stock into single voices. Of course, it's always those single voices who voice the line they started out wanting to sell or, especially, the line they figure their bosses want sold. I have no respect for "journalism" anymore.

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