When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade. Substitute Sargassum! That’s what they’re doing here.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201119-atlantic-ocean-the-largest-seaweed-bloom-in-history
2020-11-20 When Is Trump Going To Concede?
I sure wish that the judges would hurry up and kick all of Trump’s lawsuits out of court. This BS is going to go on for weeks and months and it’s costing lives and the nation’s security. Dec 6 is the day every state has to certify the election results, and that’s still 2 weeks away.
Congress needs to get a bipartisan law, or better a constitutional amendment passed to deal with the procedures and responsibilities of the White House and the President.
2020-11-19 Tesla Hiring in January For Gigafactory Berlin
The end of this article says that they plan on starting production early, but then deliveries won’t start until summer. My thinking is that the exceptional “25guns” engineers will be sent to a working production line (Fremont?) for a few months to gain first hand experience on the actual products that he or she will be working on in Berlin. This OJT is the best way to train them so when Berlin gets up and running they will already have experience on the line.
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-giga-berlin-7000-jobs-january-2021/amp/
2020-11-19 FTC, States Plan To Sue Facebook
The congressional hearings where the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook appeared virtually were happening earlier this week. But this has been going on for some time. There has been talk in the news about asking that Facebook be broken up and IG and Whatsapp separated. This all remains to be seen.
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN27Z37U
Here is another article with links for these subjects.
https://bigtechnology.substack.com/p/a-breathtaking-constraint-on-capacity
2020-11-18 1% Causes Half Of Airline Emissions
Seems like people should do more traveling virtually, especially now with the surge in the pandemic.
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/17/people-cause-global-aviation-emissions-study-covid-19
2020-11-17 Tesla Batteries And Supply Constraints
The manufacturing of Electric Vehicles and grid scale storage are constrained by the amounts of batteries that can be supplied by the battery makers around the world.
The early Tesla EVs used the ubiquitous 18650 lithium ion cells, something like 6000 per vehicle. In order to reduce costs and weight Tesla went to the larger sized 2170 cells. Then this fall at Tesla’s Battery Day they revealed that they were producing huge 4680 cells at their pilot plant on Kato in Fremont. The number of cells have been further reduced to several hundred, saving more on costs and weight.
During this past time Panasonic had been producing the 2170 cells for Tesla alongside Tesla in the Gigafactory in Nevada. Even though Tesla has been making batteries like crazy and buying them from outside, they still need many more for the Tesla Powerwalls and Megapacks. Battery supply constraints still dominate.
Tesla has patented the battery advances they have made. Now Panasonic has announced they will be producing the 4680 cells using Tesla’s technology.
Other companies have downplayed the Tesla battery making (see link). But Tesla has signed contracts with battery materials suppliers, so they can keep production going. If there are slowdowns in batteries it affects the production of vehicles. Now that other auto makers want to make EVs, they are finding that making your own batteries has advantages when it comes to supplies.
Perhaps Tesla has contracts with so many suppliers that other auto makers are finding they are having difficulty obtaining batteries for their own cars?? It would make sense since the demand for Lithium ion cells is so great and growing due to increasing EV production. And Tesla is leading the pack with EVs produced worldwide.
https://www.teslarati.com/ford-ev-battery-production-tesla-no-advantage/amp/
2020-11-16 Microwave Oven And Magnetron Disassembly
This shows how to cannibalize a microwave oven and retrieve the magnets from the magnetron. Notice that he wears a mask during the magnetron disassembly. The purple insulator can contain beryllium which is toxic so it should never be chipped or broken. Use eye protection and a filter mask.
2020-11-14 Trump Trying To Rush Arctic Drilling Leases Before He Leaves
This gives one the feeling that Trump is trying the hardest to do harm to this country.
If whatever Trump does gets passed before he leaves, it’s not going to be consequential. The Biden administration will probably undo it. But even if they don’t it won’t matter because the fossil fuel, and especially oil industry is on a downward spiral and nothing will be expanding, it’ll be shrinking.
It said “Major US banks have sworn off financing Arctic drilling projects…”
Many investment funds are changing to get their investments out of big oil and coal, and into responsible companies that will shed the harmful investments and change to green. And this is even before Biden’s plans are implemented. After Biden’s plans are implemented it will be even worse for the fossil fuel industries.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-rush-drilling-leases-arctic-172628524.html
2020-11-13 Desperate Trump Using Desperate Legal Tactics
Trump still won’t concede election.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/13/trump-law-firm-withdraws-pennsylvania-election-case
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It’s Saturday Nov. 14, more than a week after the election and Trump still refuses to face reality. He and his campaign cronies are still trying to challenge the election results in court. This article says that even if the lawsuits were successful the gains would be nowhere near enough to change the election.
I heard that the reason why Trump is so desperate is that when he’s no longer president he will no longer have the immunity protection and the lawsuits will attack him. The talk was about tax evasion and misrepresenting the values of his properties in order to get loans and avoid taxes. They say that a loan for $400 million becomes due next year and that’s another major problem for him. Here’s a link to an article about this.
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/office-president-trump-face-legal-vulnerabilities/story
Back to the election and Biden. The administration refuses to allow the president-elect Biden’s appointees access to the information needed to make a smooth transition. This is something that has not happened before and is unconscionable. The nation’s security depends on it.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/10/trump-legal-strategy-election-435853
2020-11-12 Nuclear Fallout Has Killed Hundreds Of Thousands Of Americans
From YouTube video
Nuclear Tests That Went Horribly Wrong
Quote >>… The real killer came in the form of radioactive fallout. New research has revealed that there has always been a hidden cost of developing nuclear weapons, and it’s in the form of numerous American deaths. Between 1951 and 1973 it’s estimated that anywhere between 340,000 and 690,000 Americans died as a result of nuclear fallout in their own country. Between 1951 and 1963 the US tested nuclear weapons above ground, inadvertently exposing thousands of workers to fallout. In high doses this fallout is deadly to humans and even in low doses it can still lead to cancer. The emissions did not remain localized at the test site. Instead, wind blew the fallout into local communities. Over time, it was revealed that towns near nuclear test sites had significantly higher rates of cancer when compared to other cities.
Unfortunately, the impact of these tests lingers in American society. It’s entirely plausible that millions of Americans were exposed to fallout and suffer from illnesses related to that exposure. <<
What this has to do with nuclear power
I’m bringing this up because so many nuclear power proponents claim that nuclear power plants are the safest form of power. They may be the safest so far. But at Chernobyl and Fukushima there are whole cities (one is Pripyat) that are abandoned and uninhabitable for decades or centuries because of radioactive fallout from the accidents at nearby nuclear power plants.
But there was a lot of fallout from the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power plant accidents. This was diluted by the environment — by rain, by wind and spread thinly around the world. This fallout may not have been enough to kill anyone outright. But it could have caused cancers in many people where it was never proved what caused the cancer. The power plant fallout could have caused the premature deaths of many thousands of people.
