Sales of vinyl records have been on the rise for years, but according to the RIAA's 2022 year-end revenue report for the music industry (PDF), record sales hit a new high last year. For the first time since 1987, unit sales of vinyl albums outpaced those of CDs, vindicating all the people who have spent decades of their lives talking about how vinyl "just sounds better."

Although vinyl unit sales only surpassed CDs last year, revenue from vinyl records has been higher than revenue from CDs for a while now. In 2022, vinyl albums earned $1.2 billion, compared to $483 million for CDs. The growth in vinyl was more than enough to offset a drop in CD revenue, helping overall physical media revenue climb 4 percent over 2021 (which was already way up over 2020).

Streaming services still account for the vast majority of all music revenue in the US—84 percent, up from 83 percent in 2021. The RIAA says there was an average of 92 million streaming music subscriptions active in 2022, which, together with digital radio and ad-supported sites like YouTube, generated $13.3 billion. The growth of streaming services and physical media comes at the expense of paid digital downloads, which accounted for a mere 3 percent of all music revenue in 2022.

When you hear the words “clean energy,” what comes to mind?

Most people immediately think of solar panels or wind turbines, but how many of you thought of nuclear energy?

Nuclear is often left out of the “clean energy” conversation despite it being the second largest source of low-carbon electricity in the world behind hydropower.

So, just how clean and sustainable is nuclear?

Try these quick facts for starters.

1. Nuclear energy protects air quality

According to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the United States avoided more than 471 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2020. That’s the equivalent of removing 100 million cars from the road and more than all other clean energy sources combined. //

2. Nuclear energy’s land footprint is small

A typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear facility in the United States needs a little more than 1 square mile to operate. NEI says wind farms require 360 times more land area to produce the same amount of electricity and solar photovoltaic plants require 75 times more space.

To put that in perspective, you would need more than 3 million solar panels to produce the same amount of power as a typical commercial reactor or more than 430 wind turbines (capacity factor not included). //

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-how-much-power-does-nuclear-reactor-produce

3. Nuclear energy produces minimal waste

All of the used nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear energy industry over the last 60 years could fit on a football field at a depth of less than 10 yards!

Using litigation to achieve policy ends has become a tried and true tactic in political and advocacy fights. However, in recent years, climate activists have used the courts as a weapon to attack large energy companies — essentially leveraging the legal system as a proxy to win a war of public opinion. Nowhere is this form of “lawfare” more pronounced than in the raft of climate litigation facing energy producers. //

The counties, cities, and states filing climate lawsuits are not only attempting to pin down fossil fuel producers for alleged harms but also to leverage America’s state and district courts to diminish their standing in the court of public opinion. Leveraging of the judicial system in the name of politics not only threatens the rule of law, but also jeopardizes whether oil and gas will be available when America and its allies need them. //

Energy production provides tangible benefits to all Americans. First, hydrocarbons are central to powering our economy and creating essential products. In fact, the U.S. Department of Energy notes that Americans use at least 6,000 everyday products manufactured with petrochemicals. //

Second, homegrown fossil fuels ensure America’s energy security and reduce our dependence on less reliable and often untrustworthy foreign countries and companies along with their dirtier product and insecure supply chains. Third, and importantly, energy producers are often the ones paving the way for low- and zero-carbon energy solutions through innovating next-generation technology. Climate lawsuits undermine all these goals. //

The ironies here show the goal of these lawsuits is bringing litigation to change behavior, not to uphold the rule of law. In reality, plaintiffs do not have to win in court to succeed. By casting energy producers as villains, they advance the dubious narrative that the companies producing the energy the American economy requires are blocking a low-carbon future. As one journalist explained, climate lawsuits are useful tools for special interests because of the “effect the suits could have even before they’re decided in court.” Such suits do not have to prove any actual wrongdoing or legal violations, as long as the “lawfare” they wage degrades the reputation of energy producers.

688 Attack Sub is a classic modern submarine simulation which puts you in command of either the American Los Angeles or the Soviet Alfa class nuclear-powered submarines. Most of the systems you would expect such as sonar and periscope are featured and nicely presented in VGA. The game offers ten missions for both the Soviet and American side in a Cold War scenario, that grows progressively hotter. Nice to see that the two sides' submarines have their own graphic sets in the game, even with some pseudo-cyrillic labels on the Russian side.

Before you enter safe mode, you need to enter the Windows Recovery Environment (winRE). To do this, you will repeatedly turn your device off, then on:

1. Hold down the power button for 10 seconds to turn off your device.

2. Press the power button again to turn on your device.

3. On the first sign that Windows has started (for example, some devices show the manufacturer’s logo when restarting) hold down the power button for 10 seconds to turn off your device.

4. Press the power button again to turn on your device.

5. When Windows restarts, hold down the power button for 10 seconds to turn off your device.

6. Press the power button again to turn on your device.

7. Allow your device to fully restart. You will enter winRE.

8. Now that you are in winRE, you will follow these steps to take you to safe mode:

On the Choose an option screen, select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings > Restart.

Democrats are using tax-exempt and allegedly nonpartisan nonprofits to conduct voter registration campaigns targeting likely-Democrat voters in key battleground states. //

Released by Restoration of America, the two–part report unveils how Democrats employ tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofits to administer voter registration campaigns targeting likely-Democrat voters in key battleground states and districts. Notably, federal law expressly prohibits partisan voter registration through nonprofits: “voter education or registration activities conducted in a biased manner that favors [sic] (or opposes [sic]) one or more candidates is prohibited.”b//

“The challenge is to have state courts hold that 501(c)(3) funds can’t be used for voter registration of targeted progressive demographic groups,” he told report author Hayden Ludwig. That often includes “urban residents or students.”

“The Internal Revenue Service has stated such funds can’t be used directly or indirectly for biased voter registration. But there is no authorization for suing in federal courts. So, the only remaining choice is taxpayer standing lawsuits in state courts—which is good enough,” Kaardal said. “But eventually the U.S. Supreme Court will have to rule whether urban cities and public universities can lawfully use 501(c)(3) funds for the political purpose identified: voter registration campaigns targeted to progressive voters.” //

Whether it’s skirting federal law or injecting partisan money into election offices, Democrats will stop at nothing in their bid to rig elections in their favor. That means it’s incumbent upon Republicans to wake up and completely revamp their game plan for winning elections, including by exposing and prosecuting violations of election laws.

This year, however, Biden has supported growing the production of off-shore wind energy “by a factor of 714 by 2030.”

Yet nowhere in the Biden plan is there mention of its potential environmental hazards. For instance, there seems to be a connection between off-shore wind turbines and recent whale deaths. By disrupting communication between marine animals, noise from the turbines is hazardous to whales, dolphins, and other underwater creatures, according to the federal government’s own research. And environmentalists say that disruption could even be deadly. Yet corporate media are trying to cover for the Biden administration by characterizing these observations as a Republican “conspiracy theory.”

The problems with wind turbines are bigger than the ocean. They’re known to slaughter eagles, disrupt wildlife habitats, and displace bird feeding and nesting areas. A 2013 study found that wind turbines kill an estimated 140,000 to 328,000 birds each year in the U.S. — a number that’s surely higher after another decade of climate-crazed activism. That’s to say nothing of the negative effects wind turbines have on people. //

Yet with all the disastrous effects wind turbines have wrought on both human and animal life, they are no real substitute for coal or nuclear energy. Not only are turbines unreliable as they depend on wind to operate, but they only make up a small fraction of American energy consumption; in 2020, wind and solar production combined accounted for less than 5 percent of total energy consumption. //

“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people. Then it is not climate justice,” Thunberg told Reuters.

This time, she’s right. When environmental policy becomes anti-human and anti-nature, it should be resisted.

The confidence people place in science is frequently based not on what it really is, but on what people would like it to be. When I asked students at the beginning of the year how they would define science, many of them replied that it is an objective way of discovering certainties about the world. But science cannot provide certainties. For example, a majority of Americans trust science as long as it does not challenge their existing beliefs. //

But doubt in science is a feature, not a bug. Indeed, the paradox is that science, when properly functioning, questions accepted facts and yields both new knowledge and new questions—not certainty. Doubt does not create trust, nor does it help public understanding. So why should people trust a process that seems to require a troublesome state of uncertainty without always providing solid solutions?


As a historian of science, I would argue that it’s the responsibility of scientists and historians of science to show that the real power of science lies precisely in what is often perceived as its weakness: its drive to question and challenge a hypothesis. Indeed, the scientific approach requires changing our understanding of the natural world whenever new evidence emerges from either experimentation or observation. Scientific findings are hypotheses that encompass the state of knowledge at a given moment. In the long run, many of are challenged and even overturned. Doubt might be troubling, but it impels us towards a better understanding; certainties, as reassuring as they may seem, in fact undermine the scientific process.

Sometimes there is a vast conspiracy at play, and the problem isn’t that someone is donning a tinfoil hat but that he’s buried his head in the sand. //

Thursday’s reporting exposed even more government-funded organizations pushing Twitter to censor speech.

But yesterday’s thread, titled “The Censorship-Industrial Complex,” did more than merely expand the knowledge base of the various actors: It revealed that government-funded organizations sought the censorship of truthful speech by ordinary Americans. //

The government funding of these censorship conduits is not the only scandal exposed by the “Twitter Files.” Rather, the internal communications of the social media giant also revealed that several censorship requests rested on bogus research. //

But really, that is nothing compared to what Thursday’s “Twitter Files” revealed: a request for the censorship of truthful information, including news that certain Covid shots had been banned in some countries. And that censorship request came from a group of so-called disinformation experts closely coordinating with the government and with several partners funded with government grants....

House Republicans retreated to talking points and missed a key opportunity to highlight Biden’s return of ‘sue and settle.’ //

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle shared frustration over the nation’s archaic permitting process Wednesday at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on energy and minerals. //

Last summer, the Biden administration reintroduced “sue and settle” practices brought to a halt under President Donald Trump. The practice refers to when lefty environmental groups allied with the government position on an issue present a legal challenge to a project and, in turn, voluntarily settle. The preferred policy outcome is implemented as a result under the cover of the courts, and liberal interest groups pocket a lucrative profit from the taxpayer.

“It takes 16 years now to permit a new mine,” Rick Whitbeck, the Alaska director for Power the Future, told The Federalist. “Part of the process — at least from the environmental activists — is to ‘litigate and make them wait,’ where they continuously file legal motions, find a friendly judge, and delay the permitting process.” //

In July, President Joe Biden’s Department of the Interior took an axe to her predecessor’s order and scrubbed the agency website placing settlements and consent decrees in public view.

The move reintroduces a signature feature of the kind of Beltway swamp activity that ushered President Donald Trump into the White House six years ago. Lawmakers, however, remained silent on the reintroduction of “sue and settle” cases despite industry leaders complaining again and again that environmental litigation is crippling the country Wednesday. //

When you look at litigation, it’s really easy to find some analysis in a 5,000 page document that could have been done better. And it’s supposed to be done on the best available information, not waiting years and years for more information to come in or requiring the project proponent to go off and do a science project and come back 10 years later. So I would say constraining it to what the focus is on the impacts on the ground of that project. Not hypothetical impacts 10 years into the future.

Republicans had a prime opportunity to highlight the administrative return of sue and settle. Instead, the hearing was a four-hour regurgitation of talking points on how Biden was bad to shut down the Keystone Pipeline.

The House Select Subcommittee on the pandemic on Wednesday held a hearing on “Investigating the Origins of COVID-19” to gather facts about the origination of the virus that has claimed nearly seven million lives globally, including more than one million in the United States.

Several witnesses explained how the science, facts, and evidence strongly point to a lab leak in Wuhan.

Yet The New York Times reported that the GOP-led subcommittee “underscored just how difficult it might be to turn up conclusive evidence” that COVID originated in a Chinese lab, not to mention the assertion by some that the ChiComs intentionally released the virus in an effort to destroy the economies of countries not named China. //

Hence the NYT’s headline:

Republicans Push Lab Leak Theory on Covid’s Origins, but Lack ‘Smoking Gun’

Tom Cotton
@TomCottonAR
·
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The Chinese Communist Party destroyed evidence so there may never be a "smoking gun."

But all the available evidence points to a lab leak.

There's a reason why the CCP covered this up.
10:01 AM · Mar 9, 2023 //

We’re talking about the very essence of science and scientific methodology. In October 2020, Scientific American observed:

[D]oubt in science is a feature, not a bug. Indeed, the paradox is that science, when properly functioning, questions accepted facts and yields both new knowledge and new questions—not certainty.

Doubt does not create trust, nor does it help public understanding. So why should people trust a process that seems to require a troublesome state of uncertainty without always providing solid solutions?

What is really at work here is the old boiling-the-frog tactic. They are attacking weapons accessories rather than weapons to avoid legal challenges and to get gun owners used to the ATF regulating those items. I think there is a more nefarious strategy at work here beyond desensitizing gun owners to ATF bullying. The ATF has suddenly become aggressive about redefining weapons. In the bump stock case, they claimed that it made a semi-automatic rifle into an automatic one. With the pistol brace rule, they are blithely declaring that a pistol may if you turn down the lights and look at it just right, be a rifle. What both rules are calculated to do, in my opinion, is to encourage people to ignore them and then hammer gun owners with federal felony convictions. //

Paxton is headed to court in a friendly federal district and will probably prevail. If the ATF defends this rule, it is headed to the Supreme Court, along with the bump stock case, where the Second Amendment is in favor and “Chevron deference,” the legal doctrine that says courts should defer to executive agency interpretations of the law, is not. //

libertylioness
2 hours ago edited
All my handguns now identify as cordless hole punchers. //

jumper
3 hours ago
"What is really at work here is the old boiling-the-frog tactic."

100% correct here. The ATF keeps chipping away, going after things they know the FUDDs don't care about. Bump stocks and pistol braces aren't mainstream accessories so they know this will largely be ignored and, unfortunately, agreed with in the usual "I'm pro-2A but..." crowd.