Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

This blog will pay for itself.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

No one could have predicted…

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Let there be snark.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Let’s finish the job.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

You are here: Home / Climate Change / How about that weather? / (Some) Good News Out of Texas

(Some) Good News Out of Texas

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If this were any other state than Texas, I’d think Ted Cruz had come to the end of his political career. (More about that dude later — probably in the late-night post.) Seems like every GOP Death Cult in Texas has been doing their best to destroy their constituents’ faith in them, frankly…

Reader Interactions

104Comments

  1. 1.

    Josie

    Reposting this from downstairs:’ll use this open thread to report from Houston. My son and I got power back yesterday after being without power and water since Monday. Roads super icy, so we were stuck in our town home, which is luckily pretty well insulated. Still no water, since a pipe burst over the kitchen. We did save lots of the water that dripped down for the once a day flushing of the toilets. Always look on the bright side, right? We are camping out in a very large city, along with so many others. What a fucked up situation. I have pledged to do all in my power to take down Cruz, Abbott and every other Republican that stands for reelection. Anyone else who is interested can join Beto’s Powered by People. That is one determined young man.​​
    ETA: I know Gene Wu personally, and he is a wonderful young man and an excellent legislator.

  2. 2.

    ThresherK

    @Josie: Great to hear. My BiL and his wife are in Austin and they’ve only had a few hours without, plus they don’t have the concerns (no dialysis machines, etc) many, many others do.

    —

    Are the broken water mains a normal response to this (very abnormal) weather, or is there some “privatized, deregulated, undermaintained” thing going on akin to Texas’ electricity infrastructure? (Disclaimer: I know water mains in many US cities and towns are in sorry shape–I’m not picking on Texas.)

  3. 3.

    citizen dave

    I did a BJ search for this tweet and nothing came up, so maybe first time sharing it here.  Someone texted it to me last night, but it’s a Wednesday tweet.

    @irishrygirl

    Feb 17

    I bet if Texas renamed their power grid to uterus, the state would be regulating the shit out of it.

  5. 5.

    satby

    @ThresherK: Water mains can (and do) freeze in extreme cold, that’s why they’re buried below the frost line up north.  They probably didn’t see a need to do that in Texas, also any pipes running along outside walls or in roofs are also prone to freezing if not insulated.

  7. 7.

    Gin & Tonic

    Not comprehending the words in one of those Tweets: “wells froze.” Lots of people up here in New England (including me), where it is generally colder in winter than Texas is, get their water from a well. Wells are underground. They don’t “freeze.”

  8. 8.

    satby

    @Gin & Tonic: But the pumps run on electricity, and without that any water primed in the system above the frost line could freeze because they couldn’t keep it running without electricity. Obviously not what the specifically said, but likely what they meant.

  9. 9.

    oldster

    Thanks for the update, Josie. I hope it all gets better from here on.

    I really need to be reminded that there are people like you down there, and that (as the tweet says) there are more Biden voters in Texas than in New York State.

    Because otherwise, I have a strong visceral reaction to the word “Texas,” which is “fuck you.”

    I know that is not morally defensible, and it’s good to have reminders now and then about why it is not politically prudent, either.

  11. 11.

    Scout211

    @Gin & Tonic:

    If the electrical equipment above ground for the well pump or the booster pump freezes, then your well won’t pump. We had that happen once when we had an unusually hard freeze in Northern California. We constructed a housing for the pump after that and have never had a problem since. In warmer climates, most well owners don’t have a shed over the pump like most well owners do in the colder climates. So the equipment can be vulnerable to a freeze. Or maybe it was just the booster pump that froze.  But we did have electricity and the pump stopped working.  We had to warm it up with a hair dryer.

    Plus, if the electricity is not working, the pump is not working.

  12. 12.

    Dupe1970

    Ted Cruz is toast. He will likely draw a strong primary challenger and if that does not happen then the Dems will wipe him out in 2024. He is just not well liked by anybody. He gets elected because he has an R after his name but that will change in 2024.

  13. 13.

    JPL

    @oldster: Even though I have family and friends in TX, it was tempting to say you get what you vote for.  Held my tongue though.   Let’s hope that they winterize their grid system now

    Josie, Good news indeed and I hope that you’re plumbing problems are fixed soon.   My friend found a plumber that was able to put a temporary fix to stop the leak.   She can’t use that bathroom, but fortunately she has another.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    While power has been restored for millions of Texans,

    What does it say that I first read the as “White power has been restored…”

  16. 16.

    ThresherK

    @satby: Ahh, thanx. Having spent my whole life in the Borderlands between NYC and Boston fandoms, this is the stuff I don’t know.

  17. 17.

    RepubAnon

    When people talk about the wonders of an unregulated free market – Texas is a prime example.  Unregulated storage of ammonium nitrate exploding next to a school (remember West, Texas), and utilities caught in a prisoner’s dilemma when thinking about winterizing their power generation systems.  (If we spend the money to winterize, we’ll go broke because our prices will be higher – if we don’t winterize, our generators will stop working in bad weather.)

    This is one purpose of regulation in a free market system – to correct market imperfections due to deviations from the classic free market model’s simplifying assumptions of consumers with infinite knowledge shopping from an infinite number of suppliers.  Classic free market economics is not the real world, any more than the simplified view of physics taught in Physics 101 is a complete picture of how the real world works.  (Freshman physics is, as the joke goes, the study of frictionless elephants whose masses can be ignored.)

    In short, anyone who believes that unregulated free markets are a good thing also believes in. massless, frictionless, elephants.

  19. 19.

    Ocotillo

    We made it.  Power came on yesterday and is still on.  We were lucky to have it come on for 5 hours Tuesday night to allow the house to warm up for a while.

    We lost water Wednesday so we were waiting for snow to melt in buckets to use for flushing.  It came back on last night trickling out of the faucets.

    No broken pipes (fingers crossed) and had hot water for the first shower since Monday.  No Internet or TV up and running except cell phone Internet.

    Roads should be driveable today but gas is hard to find and no idea what retail stores will be stocked like.  It got down to 19 last night so the roads will have patches of ice and that promises problems because people here in San Antonio don’t know how to navigate that.

    Mrs O and I are in good spirits and wishing Cancun had been an option.

  20. 20.

    waratah

    @Josie: I am so glad to know you survived. I live in the Panhandle and we had some twenty degree below freezing weather, although that might have been with wind chill. We only lost ours for an hour on a rolling blackout plan on the coldest day we had. I found out we are lucky to not be on the Texas grid. We are on the southwest power pool that includes a lot of conservative states including a portion of Ozark Hillbilly’s. We do have federal regulations and connect two parts of the National east and west grid.
    we were lucky to not have ice build up this time in our area which does put our electricity out more so I presume that our plants and windmills are winterized.
    I laughed to myself when I saw all those conservative states in the grid more Texas gerrymandering.

  21. 21.

    Jeffro

    @Dupe1970:Ted Cruz is toast. He will likely draw a strong primary challenger and if that does not happen then the Dems will wipe him out in 2024. He is just not well liked by anybody. He gets elected because he has an R after his name but that will change in 2024.

    Yup.  It’s not like he’s going to do anything wonderful for Texans between now and then…he doesn’t even know how.  AOC and Beto just ate his lunch.

    But then again, this is just what GQP pols do…nothing:

    This disaster, in other words, is the fruit of policy, of specific choices made by lawmakers in Texas. And it’s this fact that helps explain the response to the crisis of Abbott and the Texas Republican Party, which has governed the state as a laboratory for conservative ideas for much of the last 20 years. When you don’t want to face the consequences of your actions as a lawmaker — when you’d rather demonize scapegoats than give answers — you fight a culture war.
    But then, this is just what it means to be a Republican politician now. Accountability is out, distraction is in. You don’t deal with problems, you make them fodder for zero-sum partisan conflict. As president, Donald Trump refused to treat the coronavirus pandemic as a challenge to overcome with leadership and expertise. Instead, he made it another battle in the culture wars, from whether you wore a mask to whether you remained away from public places. He spent more time trying to racialize the virus for cheap points — calling it the “China virus” and the “Kung flu” — than he did giving guidance to the American public.
    Yes, Trump is an easy target. But you’ll find the same dynamic at all levels of Republican politics.

  23. 23.

    satby

    @Josie: Hang in there, at least warmer weather is on the way to you as well. The federal disaster declaration may get you some repair funds too, I hope.

    Up here on the tundra, tomorrow will be the first day in 16 days with no snow predicted. Granted the majority of those days had only an inch of snow or so, interspersed with large storms that dropped 8-10 inches, but basically none of it has melted because it’s been so cold with very little sun. It’s going above freezing (34°, yay!) on Sunday. Snow again predicted Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday right now, with temps heading into the 40s. Next on the bingo card: floods.

  25. 25.

    germy

    Ted Cruz’s defining feature, the whole reason he exists as both a person and a political figure, is to be a useless shit-poster in the endless culture war; he has no real principles or allegiance, and he’s entirely empty aside from the endless maw of ambition inside him.

    — Patrick Wyman (@Patrick_Wyman) February 19, 2021

    He bent the knee to the man who repeatedly insulted his wife because of his thirst for power! Just incredible craven power-seeking pic.twitter.com/ht5mbZZYRr

    — Patrick Wyman (@Patrick_Wyman) February 19, 2021

    Anyway the thing about Cruz is that he isn’t the worst person in American politics, but he is the one who best illustrates the nihilistic emphasis on the performance of grievance and the utter disconnection from reality that defines the worst parts of this era. He sucks.

    — Patrick Wyman (@Patrick_Wyman) February 19, 2021

  26. 26.

    BruceFromOhio

    I’ve been following a small band of creative folks in Austin, they’ve stuck together for warmth and camaraderie, and their stories repeat what’s already known. I dropped some coin on one of many GoFundMe options, https://www.gofundme.com/f/austin-winter-storm-relief, being managed by Jane Ko, https://atasteofkoko.com

    Texas is not a monolith, and Texans are not one political size and shape. There is an entire universe of difference between two-bit ratfuck soulless criminals like Cancun Get-away Cruz and genuine leaders like Gene Wu. The people in Texas suffering from the shitty leadership are from every walk of life, every color, every faith you can imagine, and deserve support and sympathy. With 2011 as the model, it will be years before the people and the infrastructure fully recover. The craven, simpering fools like Abbott and Cruz meeping on Faux Propaganda are where the ire should be directed, and the voting in 2022 and 2024 is the place for Texans to decide if they want more of this, or something better.

    Texas as a whole will unlikely turn blue, but it can damn sure take on a lovely shade of purple.

    And if the ideologues think Elon Musk is going to go all-in on a place that can’t even keep the fucking lights on, unpleasant surprises are in store.

    @citizen dave:

    I bet if Texas renamed their power grid to uterus, the state would be regulating the shit out of it.

    Word. Quoting this like I stole it.

  27. 27.

    Josie

    @satby:

     Your report reminds me of my brothers, one in Washington state and one in Boston. They live with this kind of cold, as you do, on a regular basis, and they know what to do about it. I didn’t. I know how to get ready for a hurricane, but this was beyond my imagining. I have learned my lesson and won’t be caught so unaware again. I can only hope our leaders are learning the same lesson.

  28. 28.

    Ejoiner

    Thought I’d crowd source this question: my brother and his wife are digging out in Houston after losing power, heat, water, for the past 3 days. He says this insurance won’t replace their busted pipes until he meets his deductible which is a chunk of change he doesn’t have right now. Isn’t there some forms of assistance available through the state or feds since it’s been declared an emergency by Biden? If anyone knows anything I could pass along, I’d appreciate the help!

  29. 29.

    Ken

    @germy: I hadn’t realized that so many Texas football games had stopped playing the national anthem. Was the problem primarily at the high school level, or college?

    Switching to a different kind of snark, I would love to see some of those games follow the rule to the letter, and play all four verses.  Won’t happen, any more than there were any teams that weren’t playing the anthem.

  30. 30.

    satby

    @Josie: Yeah. But the sin of it is, you shouldn’t have had such a catastrophic failure to have to prepare for. Especially in a city that managed to keep the lights on in empty high rises downtown (which I hope were invaded by key card office workers who brought their families in to keep warm).

  33. 33.

    Kirk Spencer

    So as I’ve shared before I live in Houston but am working in Dallas, at least till I find a place to live. (Separate tale of interest to some.)

    I saw the storm coming and decided to go up early to beat it, not expecting anything more than a day of “Texas meets snow”.

    The 3.5 hour drive became six as drivers with no experience slowed to less than 20 mph on roads I felt ok at 55. Note the limit on that stretch is mostly 75. Slowing was needed. Just not so extreme provided you were experienced. For the first few hours it was visibility, not slick.

    So anyway, I got to Dallas about 3 hours after I planned on Sunday night. Where I discovered that my reservation hadn’t finished, and there was no vacancy at that inn. Or the next. Or the next after that. Two hours later I put my head on a pillow so I could be at work at 4:30 Monday morning.

    I sit of knew how bad it was going to be while checking in. Three families waiting in line to get their rooms discovered they were neighborhood neighbors. The power had gone out, been out for a while and each had a special needs situation that made them decide to go to motel instead of waiting it out.

    My next largest warning was as I went through the lobby at a bit after 4 and saw TWO workers at the desk answering phones, all getting, “No, sorry, we have no more rooms.”

    My third, that basically left the rest of the week unsurprising, was at work. We had less than ten people for a shift that is normally over a hundred. And the next supervisor/manager didn’t make it till a few hours later.

    I was lucky this storm. I had heat and water where I lay my head, and though I work in a warehouse we had access to water and heated rooms on need. My wife back in Houston had the power out a couple of times, and we’re in boil warnings, but otherwise fine.

    Btw, 4×12 means I drove back to Houston last evening. The highways are mostly clear-I drove home at posted speed the whole way without concern, and what traffic there was did the same ( more or less, you all know the tortoises and hares of highway travel.)

  35. 35.

    L85NJGT

    @RepubAnon:

    A true free market doesn’t exist outside of theory and thought exercises. The Texas power grid was regulated into a Ponzi scheme.

    Well regulated markets are a requirement for any successful civilization. This requires a polity that is engaged, at least occasionally, beyond “I got my mine” and whatever 15 minutes of hate Tucker Carlson is selling for the day.

  37. 37.

    Sasha

    For a long moment, I thought that that top tweet from NBC News began, “White power has been restored for millions of Texans”.

  40. 40.

    Ken

    I’ve never had a frozen water pipe break.  Do you know immediately, or are a bunch of people going to have an unpleasant surprise as the temperatures rise and power and water pressure are restored?

  44. 44.

    germy

    @Ken:

    The GOP has convinced itself and its voters that the only role of government is to bomb foreign countries, keep foreigners out, and protect private enterprise from any oversight.

  45. 45.

    Immanentize

    @Ken: unpleasant surprise.  The pipe freezes, cracks, but stays frozen and leak free until it warms up.  Then, WHOOOOSH!

  46. 46.

    Immanentize

    @germy: you forgot snoop in women’s underwear drawers and bodies, keep the blahs from voting, and distribute free guns to all white folk.

  47. 47.

    Kirk Spencer

    @Ken: In my experience both can happen but usually you know before the thaw as the burst pipe leaves only the thin ice shell holding the water. Since it’s weaker than metal you get the spray.

    The bigger problem is when it breaks in a place you don’t see often. Like how I ended up with a frozen pond in my unfinished basement one winter. ( Where we lost the wedding dress and most of the yearbooks and, well, a lot of stuff to the frozen mud that resulted.)

  49. 49.

    Another Scott

    @SFAW: Relatedly, …

    It is perfectly American that there's more accountability for taking a vacation than for inciting a deadly insurrection.

    — LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) February 19, 2021

    Yup. :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  50. 50.

    L85NJGT

    Smart grid technology would keep the entire ERCOT grid from collapsing on a bad day, by fire-walling off the various component utility company grids from each other.

    Unfortunately, Obama used the term “smart grid” during his presidency, so Texans will have to live under the continual possibility of complete grid collapse. I guess that’s just the price of freedom.

  51. 51.

    Ken

    @Kirk Spencer: My favorite variation on the national anthem is from a play; pity I’ve forgotten the name, something like “American History in 60 Minutes”.

    It opens with the cast singing the anthem, except they’re one syllable off.  Instead of starting with the two note “O-oh”, it gets one note, and everything else shifts from there.

    O say can you see by,
    The dawn’s early light what,
    So proudly we hailed at,
    The twilight’s last gleaming whose, …

    It does weird things to your head to hear it sung that way.

  54. 54.

    Kristine

    @satby:

    Snow again predicted Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday right now, with temps heading into the 40s. Next on the bingo card: floods.

    NE Illinois, hello! Looking forward (NOT) to a little snow on Sunday. 1-3″, but hoping for less. My area received 12″ on Monday. At least it was fluffy thanks to the cold–I read somewhere, probably the WGN site, that it was 30:1 snow. Given that most of the snow was of that type, I am hoping the resulting melt doesn’t flood the area–I’m not in a flood plain, but nearby streets and main roads can flood.

    30s expected for the coming week. They’ll feel like the 50s.

  55. 55.

    Immanentize

    @Kirk Spencer: pipe burst in my basement as well.  So much water so fast.  I had to photo the bulged and busted pipes before the insurance company would pay up.

  57. 57.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ken: I was once at an Aimee Mann concert where, as part of her encore, she sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” that way.  Really weird.

  58. 58.

    geg6

    @Gin & Tonic: ​
     
    Well, they don’t freeze because they are below the frostline. Up here, we know what to do to avoid frozen and burst water lines. At least, most of us do. Doesn’t mean a bad winter or someone who just won’t do the maintenance on the lines won’t have those troubles, but it’s much less likely to happen here because we take the precautions.

  59. 59.

    eclare

    All passenger flights out of MEM cancelled due to water issues.  I don’t know what that means to FedEx, which is shipping a lot of vaccine.

  60. 60.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Somehow we are able deliver drinkable water and edible food to countries in Africa during natural disasters and yet we don’t seem to be able to do the same for our fellow citizens in their times of need.

  61. 61.

    Geminid

    @Ken: I think ice expands before it thaws. Or at least that’s what I’ve heard. That cracks water pipes. Times I’ve spent under houses fixing busted copper pipes seem to confirm that. But I wasn’t down there watching them crack, so I cannot verify the phenomenon.

  66. 66.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SFAW: Yes.  Yes, it was.  OTOH, since this was in 2000, all the pro-Nader stuff in the lobby annoyed the fuck out of me.

  67. 67.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Gin & Tonic: Was editing to add a correction but timed out. The “4” I remember is the temperature (in C) at which the expansion occurs, so it’s slightly before the water reaches freezing. It expands by about 8% in volume. This is why ice floats. Otherwise your cocktail would look funny.

  68. 68.

    geg6

    @Gin & Tonic: ​
     
    I have noticed that exact thing when mixing up my dogs’ doggie ice cream. When you pour it in the carton as a liquid, you think that it doesn’t seem like much. But once it has frozen, it fills up the little carton.

  69. 69.

    Kristine

    @Gin & Tonic:

    This is why ice floats. Otherwise your cocktail would look funny.

    During the organic chem class, our prof told the story of the party during which someone mixed punch so strong that the ice sank to the bottom of the bowl (ethanol is much less dense than water). One of the profs, who really should’ve known better, almost died from alcohol poisoning.

  71. 71.

    Geminid

    @BruceFromOhio: Sheetrock prices will skyrocket also. If it were my house, I’d go back with plywood instead. But people don’t like seeing the seams; sheetrock provides a more “finished look,” at least until it gets wet.         Wet sheetrock can’t be picked up without falling apart, so those big scoop shovels will be in demand also. And wheelbarrows. Some houses may end up being pushed over by track loaders and loaded into dump trucks. Those who can keep their houses could be paying the repair bill for years, since losses may not be covered by insurance.

    A Texas-sized mess.Those folks will be furious even when the immediate crisis is over.

  73. 73.

    Another Scott

    @Gin & Tonic:

    This is why ice floats. Otherwise your cocktail would look funny the oceans would have filled up with ice and life on Earth would have been nearly impossible.

    An amazing thing, H2O.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  77. 77.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @OzarkHillbilly: What does it say that I first read the as “White power has been restored…”​

    It says you need glasses. Also, you’re paranoid. (Not that you don’t have ample justification for that. My current bon mot is

    Anyone who isn’t paranoid isn’t paying attention.

    which IMHO ought to be a rotating tag here. YMMV. :^p​)​

  78. 78.

    Ken

    @Steve in the ATL: I have heard that. IIRC Hal Clement uses that in one of his books, Still River. In it humans are somewhat unique in the galaxy, most other races having evolved around M stars and commonly having ammonia-based biochemistry. Some of the aliens are fascinated by ice skating.

    Which seems a little off, now that I think of it. If they’re from colder planets, they should have plenty of water ice.  Maybe it was too cold to melt under moderate pressure, so wasn’t slippery?

  82. 82.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Ken: ​TBH I’m somewhat gobsmacked they didn’t mandate singing “The Eyes Of Texas Are Upon You” instead of TSSB. Them as bein’ a sovrun nayshun ‘n all…

  83. 83.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steve in the ATL: That’s an obvious trap; of course you would.   Anyway, I really don’t like festivals.  I mean, the toilets are properly dodgy like in a good club, but there isn’t enough of a basementy feel or the smell of stale booze and old cigarette smoke.

  87. 87.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Another Scott: ​I was going to quote the angle of the H-O-H bond as one of the magic numbers of existence … except there isn’t complete agreement on what number holds the magic :

    In H2O, only two of the six outer-shell electrons of oxygen are used for this purpose, leaving four electrons which are organized into two non-bonding pairs. The four electron pairs surrounding the oxygen tend to arrange themselves as far from each other as possible in order to minimize repulsions between these clouds of negative charge. This would ordinarily result in a tetrahedral geometry in which the angle between electron pairs (and therefore the H-O-H bond angle) is 109.5°. However, because the two non-bonding pairs remain closer to the oxygen atom, these exert a stronger repulsion against the two covalent bonding pairs, effectively pushing the two hydrogen atoms closer together. The result is a distorted tetrahedral arrangement in which the H—O—H angle is 104.5°.

  91. 91.

    Miss Bianca

    @raven: I agree with the one Twitter post I saw on the NYT article, that this seemed like an actual psychotic break. Well, he;’s in the jailhouse now – we can only hope he gets some help, along with being put away as a danger to himself and others.

  93. 93.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: Aimee Mann was a Nader fan? I am disappoint. Oh, well, so was our Betty Cracker (and my ex), so I hope she had sense enough to repent of her folly.

    (Did she happen to sing. “You’re With Stupid, Now”, or had she not written that one yet?)

  96. 96.

    evodevo

    @Ken:  If the pipes froze in the walls, you are going to get a cascade of water soaking through the drywall and running under the wall footing out into the floor, with no way to get to it except cutting open the drywall, AFTER you have shut the water off. A lot of people don’t even know where that is to cut it off in time to limit the damage. And if it froze in several walls, well…..

  97. 97.

    citizen dave

    @L85NJGT: “Smart grid technology would keep the entire ERCOT grid from collapsing on a bad day, by fire-walling off the various component utility company grids from each other.

    Unfortunately, Obama used the term “smart grid” during his presidency, so Texans will have to live under the continual possibility of complete grid collapse. I guess that’s just the price of freedom.”

    This isn’t quite right.  The “grid” didn’t collapse, due to ERCOT operator actions.  It’s much harder to ramp up a whole grid from a black start situation than keeping some of the grid intact, which is what happened.  It’s not “smart grid”, but human operators using data and tools.  The grid left on its own is self-healing in the sense that disturbances work themselves out until frequency, supply and demand stabilize (thinking of the 1960s NE blackout or 2003 eastern blackout).  Grid operators try to avoid such cascading outages above all.

    “Smart grid” is not a well-defined term.  One grid operator has started talking about using AI to help them operate (their part of) the grid.

    If we firewalled off each utility system, that’s a series of smaller “grids” but not what we nowadays think of as “the grid”.  (I once had an old-school crazy leader who forbade us from using the term “grid”; so this post has been great for me).

  98. 98.

    Another Scott

    @Uncle Cosmo: Neat link.  Thanks.

    Gallium is another of the few materials that expands on freezing.  Its melting point is around 30C.  Fun stuff.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  99. 99.

    Gravenstone

    @Kristine: Looks like you would need ca. 50% by weight of ethanol (ca. 56% by volume, or 112 proof) to get a solution density lower than water. That’s a fairly stiff drink!

  102. 102.

    Origuy

    @Ken: That sounds like the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s The Complete History of America (Abridged). I’m not sure though, it’s been a while since I saw the production.

  104. 104.

    J R in WV

    I had a clever idea for an interesting comment post… but then I forgot it~!~

    Dammit….. ;~)

    I’m sure my RWNJ brother in Austin is convinced that the power outages in TX are the sole fault of AOC, from up in NYC… that wasn’t it, but we’ve talked about it around the neighborhood.

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