Why did Democrats all start moving in lockstep to ban gas stoves, seemingly with no prior concern at all? And sure enough, with a little digging, it’s been revealed that this isn’t just idle science taking place.

The company behind the study is called “Carbon-Free Buildings.” That company is a partner of the World Economic Forum and has a true-believer CEO who wants to rid the world of all carbon emissions (which is impossible and would lead to mass extinction). //

Now, it’s all starting to make sense. Is this moral panic over gas stoves really about children and asthma? Of course, it’s not. Rather, it is yet more nonsense from the WEF and its like-minded corporate underlings regarding climate change. It’s obvious, in my view, that the citation of health risks being bandied about currently is just a convenient cover to try to force more people off forms of energy that rely on fossil fuels (i.e. natural gas). //

But what’s scary here is how quickly they were able to mobilize. A study gets put out, Ocasio-Cortez and others run with it, and suddenly the federal government is trying to tell you what stove you can cook on. There’s a certain psychotic efficiency to the modern left, and it shouldn’t be brushed aside.

Wood gas vehicles: firewood in the fuel tank

During the Second World War, almost every motorised vehicle in continental Europe was converted to use firewood. Wood gas cars (also known as producer gas cars) are a not-so-elegant but surprisingly efficient and ecological alternative to their petrol (gasoline) cousins, whilst their range is comparable to that of electric cars. Rising fuel prices and global warming have caused renewed interest in this almost-forgotten technology: worldwide, dozens of handymen drive around in their home-made woodmobiles.

Wood gasification is a proces whereby organic material is converted into a combustible gas under the influence of heat - the process reaches a temperature of 1,400 °C (2,550 °F). The first use of wood gasification dates back to 1870s, when it was used as a forerunner of natural gas for street lighting and cooking.

In the 1920s, German engineer Georges Imbert developed a wood gas generator for mobile use. The gases were cleaned and dried and then fed into the vehicle's combustion engine, which barely needs to be adapted. The Imbert generator was mass produced from 1931 on. At the end of the 1930s, about 9,000 wood gas vehicles were in use, almost exclusively in Europe.

Second World War

The technology became commonplace in many European countries during the Second World War, as a consequence of the rationing of fossil fuels. In Germany alone, around 500,000 producer gas vehicles were in operation by the end of the war. //

"Park an Italian sports car next to a wood gas car and the crowd gathers around the woodmobile. Nevertheless, wood gas cars are only for idealists and for times of crisis. //

Another problem of wood gas cars is that they are not particularly user-friendly, although this has improved compared to the technology used in the Second World War. See the second part of this pdf document (page 17 and further) for a description of what it was like to drive a wood gas car back then:

"...experience at the Wurlitzer organ could be a distinct advantage".

shayre utilizes your own storage, not cloud storage. You know where your files are and where you want them to be. shayre gets them where they need to go as soon as possible without any clicks. If you still want the cloud, shayre works with it too. ///

possible commercialized Syncthing fork?

Update: Banning Gas Stoves

Yesterday’s announcement that the unelected Consumer Product Safety Commission was considering a ban on gas stoves drew sharp criticism from Republicans and Democrats. The commission claims that while gas stoves are in 40 million households, they emit dangerous toxins that harm users. One of the most salient points against this was a recirculated document from the National Fire Protection Association claiming electric ranges (stoves) are significantly more dangerous than their gas counterparts. https://www.nfpa.org//-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-and-reports/US-Fire-Problem/Fire-causes/oscooking.pdf The data says electric ranges are:

• 3.4 times more likely to cause a fire-related death.

• 2.6 times more likely to cause a fire.

• 4.8 times more likely to cause a fire-related injury.

UPDATE: Following the unprecedented backlash, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has scrapped its plans to ban gas stoves.

in moments of deep grief you’re faced with a decision: either cling to God and let him be your source of comfort, or run from him and wade through the grief on your own.

You can’t make it through the expatriate life without experiencing the touch of grief. Grief is temporarily or permanently losing something that you loved. Living a life of high mobility, constant goodbyes, and exposure to big and little traumas causes griefs to steadily stack up along the way. I’ve written a couple of books on this metaphor, which I call the Grief Tower. //

Our personal storylines tend to subconsciously ripple into an assumption that God responds the same way to our grief that we as humans do.

When people say, “Look at the bright side,” we think the right thing to do is to stay positive. We forget that God invites lament. When people say, “He works all things out for the good,” we forget that when it doesn’t feel good in the moment, God is still there to empathize, comfort, and acknowledge that this feels so hard. When people say, “You’re so strong for how you’re handling this,” we don’t remember that God doesn’t expect us to be strong. We forget that He is strong so we don’t have to be.

Everything’s bigger in Texas.

The state’s bean counters have recorded a historic $33 billion surplus in tax revenue this year — about the same amount as the combined annual budgets of Connecticut ($20B) Delaware ($5B) and Vermont ($8B). //

Texas’ unprecedented surplus also comes at a time when other huge states such as New York and California are staring down the barrel of $3B and $22B budgetary debts respectively.

There are over 600 billionaires in the United States. Why does the IRS need an entire army of 87,000 agents to deal with just over 600 people? Why do they need 87,000 new agents in enforcement to deal with these 600-plus people? Why are these enforcement agents armed? Do they anticipate a firefight against these billionaires? //

According to Reason, the IRS attacked the poorest of Americans significantly more than they did anyone else:

https://reason.com/2023/01/06/in-2022-the-irs-went-after-the-very-poorest-taxpayers/

On Wednesday, Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) released data provided to it by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on audits performed by the agency in fiscal year 2022. Despite the infusion of new funding earmarked for the IRS via last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, the agency continued historic trends of hassling primarily low-income taxpayers, with relatively few millionaires and billionaires getting caught up in the audit sweep.

“The taxpayer class with unbelievably high audit rates—five and a half times virtually everyone else—were low-income wage-earners taking the earned income tax credit,” reported TRAC, noting that the poorest taxpayers are “easy marks in an era when IRS increasingly relies upon correspondence audits yet doesn’t have the resources to assist taxpayers or answer their questions.”

FAA type certification was awarded June 11, 1963, and Helio gave the Twin Courier a designation of H-500. Foreseeing military use, the U.S. Air Force assigned the designations U-5A and U-5B to the naturally-aspirated and turbocharged versions, respectively. But despite the certification and preparation, only seven examples would ever be produced. //

The operational history of these seven aircraft is as unique as their appearance. While Helio publicly stated that all Twin Couriers were delivered to the CIA, they would go on to operate in clandestine operations under various entities of the U.S. military and government. Over their operational lives, some would be given USAF markings, while others would wear civilian paint schemes and civilian registration numbers. The N-numbers were registered to entities speculated to be shell companies for the CIA. //

Dr. Joe F. Leeker of the University of Texas, Dallas, has compiled what might be the most comprehensive history of the Twin Courier. In it, he traces the progression of each airframe through its respective history, noting that they saw service in Nepal, Bolivia, Peru, and the U.S. before being transferred to—and disappearing in—India. From there, the trail goes cold, and no Twin Couriers are known to exist today.

We can speculate, however. Given the rugged, remote areas in which the aircraft were known to operate, demanding airstrips and conditions likely claimed more than one aircraft. //

Considering the clever engineering and intriguing history of the Twin Courier, it’s unfortunate none exist today to be admired in person by future generations. Despite being certified by the FAA, it’s unlikely more will ever be built.

A variable-frequency transformer is a doubly fed electric machine resembling a vertical shaft hydroelectric generator with a three-phase wound rotor, connected by slip rings to one external power circuit. The stator is connected to the other. With no applied torque, the shaft rotates due to the difference in frequency between the networks connected to the rotor and stator. A direct-current torque motor is mounted on the same shaft; changing the direction of torque applied to the shaft changes the direction of power flow.

The variable-frequency transformer behaves as a continuously adjustable phase-shifting transformer. It allows control of the power flow between two networks. Unlike power electronics solutions such as back-to-back HVDC, the variable frequency transformer does not demand harmonic filters and reactive power compensation. Limitations of the concept are the current-carrying capacity of the slip rings for the rotor winding.

I know very little about rocket launches, but one thing I thought I understood was that launches want to take off from as close to the equator as possible, which southwest England is not. Was there something special about the payload or this launch site? Or is this the launch equivalent of fighting with one arm tied behind your back? //

The optimal launch site for a given launch is at the same latitude as that launch's orbit's inclination. Depending on available downrange space, a particular site can also launch to orbits higher than its latitude, but never lower (without doglegs, which I'm going to ignore for the rest of this comment). So a low-latitude site is better in general since it makes more orbits possible, but it's not the best site for all orbits.

This launch by Virgin Orbit is going to polar orbit, which is extremely high-latitude. So it's possible from basically any launch site, and in fact is slightly better from high-latitude sites. //

It depends on your target orbit.
If you're shooting for an equatorial orbit, launching from near the equator gives you a boost from the Earth's speed of rotation, and saves you from needing to build a wasteful dog-leg or plane-change manoeuvre into the flight plan. This saves fuel and therefore lets you fly a bigger spacecraft with the same launch vehicle.
If you're shooting for some types of polar orbit, then the Earth's rotation is just an annoying thing you need to cancel out, so launching from a high latitude is more efficient.
The point of Virgin Orbit's approach is that you can launch the airplane from any convenient place with the right infrastructure, and fly to the best latitude for the type of mission you're doing that day before you light up the rocket, and you have good odds of bring able to launch without the weather problems that can cause delays when you're constrained to one fixed site.