Midgewater

Tom Holland is discussing blood sucking parasites in Scotland. No, not Scots...

I read up on the Mosquito (a bit) in 2001 - that it served no purpose to any other life and were better expurgated like the Variola. I cannot remember the name of the book. I did take in that another book, Carson's Silent Spring, was evil. DDT for the win, baby.

This insect ranged to English-Speaking lands; the Bad Air which they bring was rife in Somerset, during the Saxon times which John RR Tolkien made his study.

The Southwest Saxons did not name these bugs with a Spanish name - obviously. Tolkien never approved the Spaniards' name for them. And I think he's right, that when a Saxon squished a biting mosquito - mosquita, to be technical - he rated her a Stechmücke. A midge-ette.

I think that is why Prof T. even bothered with a "midge water" pond, just set between the Shire and the riven dell, with no geological reason to exist there. Tollers was just making a point, that we Anglo Saxons should return to monke basics. Tolkien was good for that. He should probably be sainted.

Governor Abbott goes Tallyrand

Greg Abbott is moving toward changing the Texan energy market, as well as moving more to fossil-fuels and nuclear. Wind and solar, which failed so hard during the last freeze, will no longer be incentivised.

Greg's quit screwing around, is the basic takeaway. Pace Casey although I do hope batteries will be part of the solution UPDATE 1/5/22 nah, Casey's stupid.

This is a tad late for Abbott to catch up with DeSantis and (the supply part of) it is certainly in response to the uproar from his Right. But I'll take "doing the right thing after exhausting the alternatives" over "doing it wrong". Abbott could easily be a Bush or a Cornyn (or a Lee Bailey Hutchison, back in the day); there's money in that, and fame, of a sort.

Now, as to the trade part of it, which puts those proverbial fetters upon free-trade in energy. We all know that more regulation is not always better regulation, and much depends on who's regulating. But clearly insuffient regulation is insufficient: taking electricity away from one group of payers whilst running up thousand-dollar bills for other (poor) payers is a great way to end up with your head in the National Window. We'll see how this (forced) populist turn works next winter, we suppose.

China got thorium

News and David Fishman's commentary: China's progress toward a molten salt thorium reactor.

I'd thought that the reactor was U-233 as opposed to U-235, and that the point of the thorium was to "breed" the Th-232 into U-233... like getting Pu-239 out of U-238. I'm learning that this is first-generation thinking. (NuScale, for all its merit, is first-generation.)

The Chinese think they can use the uranium (or plutonium... or curium) to spark a reaction (antimatter aside) but then let it carry on with the fertile thorium. That's (per Fishman) why the molten-salt: 1970s-era Rankine RBMK water does slow neutrons, salt does fast ones for this faster generation. Fast neutrons breed the thorium.

That would certainly be a lot cheaper than my idea! And they won't need to create a lot of U-233 and store it and (most worrisome-ly) guard it. And noted in the commentary, not all countries are as lucky as the US in their uranium reserve; China and India are richer in thorium. (As, indeed, is our own Moon.) So they'll need this for their supply-chain.

It is still a (very) large reactor, not a NuScale you just buy for your local community. The reaction still makes U-233 as the process... proceeds; but the Chinese believe they can guard this since it's, you know, being used, in the middle of a reactor. Nobody but an idiot is going to rob the heart of Core-Chan.

The Northeasternised Hosk

I spent Saturday creating the Taladas content for 1d4chan. I could not resist my urge to extend the Steamwall. Now I'm going back to my proposed extension of the map.

My northern extension is... hideous. It looks like the conehead from that first The Hills Have Eyes (the 2006 was better, really), or Weird Science. Ugggh.

Better idea, to follow: expand Minotaur territory northwest. Their border remains the Tiderun, which we run northwest instead of due west. This pushes Tamire[-Panak] to the north which I've expanded already; but it's a steppe, supposed to be east-west.

The Steamwall (also expanded) gets that bit more territory, here the Fianawar side of it, but we can live with that. The Ilquar goblins lose that territory but, again, we're fine with that. The best of this correction: we can extend Tamire[-Panak] eastward.

I don't mind for game-balance that the Minos get more turf. In my other expansions, I'd expanded Thenol's Lebensraum, and the elves'. Potentially, anyway. As ever (and probably with Aurim herself), empires can claim all the area they want. Such empires cannot always tax all that area.

The east-expanded Tamire[-Panak] might butt into the Rainwards but, who's been campaigning all the way over there anyway? The fun stuff is west with a touch of Old Aurim.

An aside on the [-Panak]: it sucks. (Like "Blackmoor" sucked for Greyhawk.) I call that Taladas doesn't need it. If we must have the people, they're fisherfolk visiting from a northern, frigid island or archipelago without much in the way of trees. An Iceland, a Greenland, a Svalbard, a Novaya Zemlya... all the above; as long as none rival the size of Taladas.

BACKDATE 7/27

When the state keeps the price down

...the state is the owner. Some Coloradans are learning that. I'm learning it too, so, thanks Jon Caldara for teaching me.

I am naturally averse to government schemes, and (like Supertramp did) I detest words that end Ibble. So I assumed there was a Catch somewhere. Caldara tells us: "Affordability" in a nonperishable widget means the widget is sold outside the market. And what you did not buy through the market, you may not sell through the market.

To the extent said market still exists, it is distorted: your housing stock isn't in the pool of supply. (You aren't in the demand-pool either but, since you couldn't afford it, you never were.) Everybody else now has to pay that bit more, which Colorado at least sequesters to your neighbours.

Vouchers and - let's be honest - loans would distort that market too. But, depending on restrictions, not nearly as much. You might be permitted to resell. Then you've got Equity: your home is an asset and the market (probably) works in your benefit. With an ibble-house, you sell "your" "$150k" home for $175k whilst your neighbour sells his $250k home for $750k. Sucks to be you!

All this wonkery stated, I ... still don't care.

If the State of Colorado owns this asset it can raise some cash by buying the home for $175k - because that was the deal, and it's the State; taking it off the Ibble programme, and selling it for real. A few dozen flips like this and Colorado just took in a few more millions. Oldest trick in the book, the book George Plunkett wrote about Tammany Hall. Except here the revenue goes to CO. (Ideally.)

Boiled down, this whole programme is a tax on new-home buyers (as opposed to buyers of existent stock) and developers of same. In the meantime, some people get to live in, basically, rentals, but at a fixed rate. As Front Range boondoggles go, this doesn't rank for me. The worst effect I can think of is the ibble homeowner whom some nu-Plunkett allows to sell at market-price if she kicks back some percentage to Totally Not Plunkett PAC. But now we've diverged from the merits of the Ibble programme and have entered the libertarian critique of programmes as such; the Waste-'n-Fraud is worse in Medicaid, nu?

Meanwhile Caldara performatively weeps for the sucker who squatted in a middle-class subdivision for years paying less than the rest of us did, probably not keeping up the place as much (because, again, the house wasn't hers). Because waaaah she didn't knooow. If it sounds like I'm calling shenanigans on Caldara's tears that's because - I am. Caldara cares for his own home and so do his readers; they just don't admit it.

Caldara did perform a valuable service, in his rantyness, by entertaining as he was explaining. So his article wasn't a waste of my time like (say) the average Richard Spencer article.

YEAH, HE'S STUPID 7/29: Forgot to mention that it's PJM drone Stephen Green trying to make Caldara happen, which should have been a clue. Hat-tip to that one, here's Caldara supporting the primary system in Colorado - you know, the one which failed. Read Ron Hawks instead.

Quit trolling, dude

Last week we Catholics got word from On High that bishops have "the option" of refusing a Latin Mass, which means (per That Hideous Strength) they'd better refuse it if they want to get anywhere in this Curia. Richard Spencer is not a Christian but butted in anyway, the next day. To that end, he did a doody in the baptismal-font and, today, is calling us to look at it again.

Spencer (as usual) sprinkles some disturbing truths in his ramble, in this case - the Church exists as a hierarchy as well as a faith, and the hierarchy has made its peace with Modernity, which Modernity Spencer (purportedly) abhors. If that was all there was, I'd have nothing to poast about. Sadly:

The main claim here is “Traditionalist Catholics” are horrified by the notion that they might have to receive the religion they’ve devoted their lives to in a language they actually understand. To disclose: I am not a "Trad" whatever that means; I just go to (Anglo) Mass. Although I do know some basic Latin. And I know what Transubstantiation means [BAGHESTAN DEFINITION 5/20/25]. Most "Trads", I dare say, know both, and know it better than I do. Between the two, I further dare say I know better, at least, than Spencer.

It isn't just scurrilous to say that "Trads" don't know and don't want to know. If I am any guide, and I repeat I am less conversant than are most "Trads", they absolutely love the experience in communing with the Saints in (most of) those Saints' own language. Which means Spencer is relaying a falsehood, to the extent the best we can say is that the man doesn't know what he's talking about.

And any Mass in its (more) original form inspires the best of us (once more: not including me) to learn that language such as to follow along. Which - for those in that tradition - allows that congregation entry into thousands of years of their own tradition and history. Latin, Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Coptic, whatever.

OnePeterFive on behalf of the Romania has been running the table on the backstory, since then. I think they're right that Duh TRADZz will be looking seriously into Orthodoxy. The "Eastern Rite" would be another option - I might even consider this myself since, you know, Syriac. But we all have to consider the vast majority of Western Catholics who aren't ancestrally Semitic and/or don't care as much about that (to them) alien Oriental tradition. Most Catholics feel more attuned with Latin and, why shouldn't they? Wasn't that Spencer's own selling-point, five years ago, that we're to live up to who we are...?

Call it a "LARP" if you want, but it's our LARP. Spencer's got his own. I know which one I prefer.

Cobia

Dr Brytney Cobia in Alabama went to al.com (two-digit URL, niiice) to offer her perspective, which she'd posted on Facebook. This got touted by both sides: Richard Spencer on the [national-]social-ish side, and of course Denninger on the sort-of other side. Either way it's certainly (((our fault))).

Denninger takes the high road by demanding the nurse's job for Public-Health Disinformatsiya, along with ten years in the pen and the loss of her children to the foster system. His evidence for the malfeasance is that drr nobody died.

Indeed: last day of record is 20 July, and nobody died since this surge began 23 June(ish). What I see, pace the fools, is a spike on 20 July: 999 new cases 7/15 to 3023 new cases 7/20 (with the usual dip in between because people weren't coming in to be tested). That is a tripling.

Dr Cobia, I admit, triggers the "and for no reason at all..." reflex on account she marvels at how come Alabamians don't Trust The Medical System. Well maybe because of stunts like this, wherein social-distancing was NOT observed nor recommended for, you know, anti-police rioters. Cobia is too slick with the Party-approved language to be entirely trusted in what edicts she delivers in this language. Still.

Not to be a ghoul, but deaths follow hospitalisations follow symptomatic cases. It was like that all year, and the srrvatives were saying exactly what they are saying now, and were just as (evilly) wrong then. Cobia reveals that Alabama is deep in the "hospitalisation" zone - in fact, the intubation zone. This will get worse.