You’re both sorta wrong (and sorta right).

Texas’s grid is crap. It’s far too unregulated and operators do not focus on the right sorts of improvements that will enhance grid stability. Sure, production is great, which means prices are low, but when you ignore warning calls, you invite disaster. They knew, and they chose not to enforce regulations that other states enforce. Other states deal with far colder weather. This was a failure of regulation. And they also fail to maintain basic system design, so a normal power fault can grow out of control to take out power to most of west Texas.

Anyway - sorry. That’s just a pet annoyance of mine. I hate it when pro-corporate governmental policies are seen as a positive thing based on limited metrics. Lower rates amidst poorer performance is not what I’d consider a marker of success. People die, have their homes and property damaged, and lose a lot of money during power outages.
While the chronic underinvestment in their infrastructure is still an issue, the recently announced infrastructure investment is geared toward transmission and generation, which wouldn’t (directly) address their reliability woes.

It seems to me that the goal of this allocation is to build generation capacity in states with space for solar (and possibly wind, although the Biden admin isn’t trying to bootstrap the wind industry in the U.S.). And also build transmission capacity to get that power out of those states and into other areas of the country. (And possibly back in, should they face local problems.)
My hunch is that they want to get some of that renewable power out west, to have a backup the next time the Colorado river/areas that currently get power from the Hoover Dam suffer from a drought, and to feed power up to the east coast so they can decarbonize more easily.

Which is more or less what happened the last time Biden tried to forgive student loans. Eventually Missouri was found to have standing, and all his efforts were thrown out.

Aside from a nagging feeling that it was known this was going to happen, and this was all for political talking points, I wanted to info dump.

A few tidbits from that prior lawsuit:

• MOHELA supported loan forgiveness, although I can’t recall why. (I think it was about simplifying administration in the face of a bunch of loans that had already paid for themselves in terms of the interest collected. At this point the cost to maintain the loan on their books and or chase accounts they can’t write off is more expensive than attempting to recover the loan.)
• MOHELA refused to be a plaintiff, and it was the state of Missouri claiming standing.
• The state of Missouri only had standing due to a voluntary agreement where MOHELA would pay a certain percentage of revenue back to the state of Missouri - something it had not done for nearly a decade. Missouri’s standing was merely technical, and more or less un-realized.
• Yet it still was used to fuck over millions of people, because Misery loves company.

The bear-pig part merely raised eyebrows. Manbearpig is what got the feds involved.

Well now I’m thinking of Babe the Blue Ox as being a mighty hunter.
Maybe they call him the blue ox because he crushes his victims to death (starving them of oxygen!), leaving them blue?!

The problem is that now the first page of results is all AI garbage and wrong, so you’re not 100% sure at what point you’ve reached the sane internet.

“The secretary also increased the readiness of additional U.S. forces to deploy, elevating our preparedness to respond to various contingencies,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday.

Military.com: Thousands More US Troops, Attack Aircraft Heading to Middle East as Israel Targets Hezbollah in Lebanon

Ehhhh…… Israel is making this threat because the U.S. is sending more people to the region. Israel’s insanity and posturing is enabled by the U.S. putting itself in a position to be committed.

We already know Russia has assets in Syria and is fighting a proxy war with both the U.S. and Ukraine there.

It’s so shameful what greed and broken electoral finance laws in the U.S. have done to the country. Right now, an investment of a few million by a PAC can turn into billions of dollars from the government, via direct aid, passing laws, or simply looking the other way if a company isn’t being too obviously evil.

The primaries this year were highly telling in that regard - politicians were being nakedly bought in plain sight, but, again, because “you don’t fuck with the money” it’s not a question in political circles of whether overhauling campaign finance should be undertaken.

Devils advocate: It may not be “pee tapes”, it may be video of him sexually assaulting a Miss Universe candidate.

Well. That’s it. Get the flamethrowers. Time to burn down the Amazon.

No. Not the one that’s already burning. The other one.

Reddit comment: Shaving does make your dinghy look bigger!

It seems my feed agrees with you, with this poetic juxtaposition.

(And I agree with you, too.)

My grandmother chose to spend the last of her time “at home, with dignity.”

We (mom and siblings) lived with her, and got to experience the whole thing. I will spare you the details, but it was not dignified.

I will never put another person through that in my life. Not even hospital staff. If I ever receive a terminal diagnosis, I’m immediately going to begin planning my exit - likely in a similar fashion as above.

For the 5% of my adult life that I’ve had short hair and no beard: Quentin Tarantino. For the rest of my bearded, long-haired adulthood: Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus. But they need to have blue/green eyes and forehead wrinkles.
(Huh. On paper that just sounds like I look like Nick Offerman, but not really.)

My understanding is that they are focusing on adding in “AI” features in a big way, and that’s why they cut development on the other work. 🫤

Who was it intended toward?

Someone that hasn’t watched TV since the 1980’s? ChatGPT, for when someone invariably turns it loose on the fediverse?

It’s not niche as a concept. Your explanation is known worldwide.
Its inclusion in the discourse is unwarranted.

Next time you feel the need to add a disclaimer that justifies/explains/adds caveats to racist language: fucking don’t.

So they got a group of people who suffer from workplace safety violations at higher rates than other populations, and those work involves industrial chemicals that get used on food, buildings, and lawns, and concluded more study was needed on climate change?

Yeah, sure, and consuming eggs causes high blood pressure amongst smokers.

Editing to add: News stories and studies like this are a misuse of science reporting and science funding. It sets back research, muddies the waters on the real causes of these issues, and treats climate change as if it’s a trivial catch-all where chemical companies can just do bad science to cover for continuing to make unsafe goods.

I like to look up stuff, even if I’m not remotely qualified to understand the results.

Tartrazine induces structural and functional aberrations and genotoxic effects in vivo
Is tartrazine really safe? In silico and ex vivo toxicological studies in human leukocytes: a question of dose

My (thin) grasp of things is that even though it’s a food additive, it’s not heavily studied, and not at higher doses, but the two studies above don’t paint a great picture. And slathering it on your skin is definitely more than you’d come into contact with than what’s needed to color food.
So, yeah - not a parlor trick I’d do to gross out my friends.

The article I read mentioned this person has co-morbidities. Presumably, that’s why their symptoms are worse/they even got tested. Perhaps this means that it only weakly infects humans (currently, anyway). Hence the lack of prior detection.
I’m sure we’ll start to see more community cases. Hopefully that won’t translate to the virus mutating further in ways that make it more infectious or harmful.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This might sound tin foil hat-y, but the doctor - Petrak - is a contractor without an incentive to complete the work in a timely or efficient manner. I can’t see why he would push for a speedy closure.

That plus a hospital that doesn’t want to be sued for malpractice, plus a government agency where they would rather check boxes and maximize their metrics*, than consider the damage of their policies to innocent people is a recipe for torturing the public.

* I would assume they’re going for number of investigations, and not efficiency. They probably count raw numbers, and do what they can to catch every little thing - thoroughness can be good, mind you - because finding something is “proof” of their efficacy.

It’s a shame more families don’t sue in these circumstances to make the involved parties check themselves to ensure they aren’t causing more harm than good.