Week 20

Autocar: "Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, And Yamaha Join Forces On Hydrogen Bikes"

Fast Company: "Cara Delevingne sprays industrial wastewater on her face in her latest beauty campaign.. The English model is lending her face to Swedish energy company Vattenfall, using a beauty product designed to illustrate the cleanliness of its hydrogen production."

Hersh: "[A]s some in the American intelligence community know and have reported in secret, at the instigation of government officials at various levels in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, the Czech Republic, and Latvia.. all allies of Ukraine and declared enemies of Vladimir Putin.. [they have] been quietly urging Zelensky to find a way to end the war — even by resigning himself, if necessary — and to allow the process of rebuilding his nation to get under way. Zelensky is not budging, according to intercepts and other data known inside the Central Intelligence Agency, but he is beginning to lose the private support of his neighbors"

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"@JeriLRyan@mastodon.world

The complete final season of #startrekpicard is now streaming worldwide. 🖖

Hmm… sounds like a good time for a rewatch!"

The Best Man, perfectly fine action.

Crater - how come Disney did not screw this one up? Fine movie, kids would like it and parents wld be entertained..

Cleantech: "Last November Governor Reeves proudly announced that Indiana-based Steel Dynamics is pumping $2.5 billion into an expansion of its existing campus in Mississippi...

Hy Stor first proposed a green hydrogen hub for Mississippi back in 2021. Under the name Mississippi Clean Hydrogen Hub (MCHH), the project leverages Hy Stor’s underground salt formations for storing hydrogen gas in bulk, produced only from renewable resources. Hydrogen functions as an energy carrier, so the bulk storage angle would effectively provide steel makers and other industrial users with reliable, 24/7 access to renewable energy...

Despite all anti-ESG posturing, Governor Reeves enthusiastically endorsed the project in a hearty letter of support addressed to US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in October of 2021"

"Aubrey@starshaped@labyrinth.social

A sign I'm getting old -- all my favorite albums have remastered versions. How did this happen?"

Part of ESG is "dumb green" projects eg electrification, batteries, battery-electric cars. Clean fuels should not be bundled together with them. H2, NH3 approach can scale, is open to both old and new participants in the industry.

Oz Independent MP Chaney: "We need to have a broader conversation about housing affordability, everyone wants the value of their home to stay high, they also want their kids to be able to afford a house one day. There is a fundamental disconnect here. We have to be able to talk about things like negative gearing, capital gains tax, as well as supply-side issues rather than continuing just responding with more popular demand side injections of additional funds that just drive the prices further up" #ABC

"Thanks to the fleet of the first world-class and top-ranked EuroHPC supercomputers, European scientists and industry are increasingly processing their data inside the EU. Such a trend is not only advancing science and boosting the innovation potential of companies and SMEs in Europe, but is also reinforcing the protection of the privacy, data protection, commercial trade secrets and ownership of data in Europe"

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Ivo Labbe: "‘We just discovered the impossible’: how giant baby galaxies are shaking up our understanding of the early Universe.. I run the analysis software.. and it spits out two numbers: distance 13.1 billion light years, mass 100 billion stars, and I nearly spit out my coffee. We just discovered the impossible. Impossibly early, impossibly massive galaxies.

At this distance, the light took 13 billion years to reach us, so we are seeing the galaxies at a time when the universe was only 700 million years old, barely 5% of its current age of 13.8 billion years. If this is true, this galaxy has formed as many stars as our present-day Milky Way. In record time.

And where there is one, there are more. One day later I had found six"

Newsfile: "First Hydrogen.. confirms its hydrogen-fuel-cell powered light commercial vehicles (LCV) are performing even better than predicted. In the first phase of commissioning, the Company's LCVs accumulated 6,000 km on UK roads, including mileage around London's M25 motorway. The data logging supports vehicle range simulations, which exceed a 500 km range. The vehicle is currently performing with excellent efficiency, including both urban, extra-urban (which includes driving at higher speeds) and highway operations. First Hydrogen's LCV fuel consumption figures seen in many driving scenarios are under 2 kg / 100 km, and in mostly urban driving this is 1.5 kg / 100 km"

Blackwater, Wagner are somewhat different, they are private, have members from all walks of life as with the French Foreign Legion but in a war Wagner they would, should fit in a hierarchy somewhere. RSF has been that alternative "second military" for a long time now, actively toppling, helping form new governments. They are used to having access to power.

Former Sudan prez Bashir created the second group RSF as a Praetorian Guard, who later turned on him. RSF grew in size and capability over the years now rivaling the real military SAF itself.

Easier said than done especially when there are two militaries instead of one to deal with.

Alneel: "There Can Be No Peace in Sudan Without the Democratic Empowerment of Its People"

This must be the new "the dog ate my homework"

Hindustan Times: "‘Drunk’ US driver switches places with his dog to avoid arrest"

Some m..fkers are always trying to ice-skate uphill

For anyone who wants to read an accurate account of how open-source, as in free software, made inroads into the industry, should check Chris Anderson's excellent book Free. CA details Microsoft's experience with open source through psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler's famous Five Stages of Grief. In the end, Stage 5 - Acceptance: Gates and Ballmer took their best shot and had their ass handed to them. Open source could not be quashed, and it has been growing ever since.

Green Car Congress: "PESA, the largest Polish producer of rolling stock, has developed a shunting locomotive with a hydrogen drive"

The Times of India: "Green hydrogen: India is betting big on making a transition towards renewable energy and reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and one key factor in this is green hydrogen. According to the National Green Hydrogen Mission, by 2030 India hopes to develop green hydrogen production capacity of at least 5 MMT per annum"

Earth.org: "US military pollution is a significant contributor to climate change. If it were a nation state, it would be the 47th largest emitter in the world... The Cost of Wars Project found that US military pollution had accounted for 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, which amount to 257 million passenger cars annually. They compared this astonishing output as higher than the emissions from whole countries like Sweden, Morocco, and Switzerland"

Earth.org: "In 2017, the US Naval Air Station Oceana in Norfolk, VA was found to have spilled 84,000 gallons of jet fuel into a waterway. Similarly, in 2019, statistics arose claiming that the Air Force contractor had been dumping industrial solvent Trichloroethylene (TCE) into the ground surrounding the Tucson International Airport for 29 years. It was found that over 1,350 residents suffered from cancer and other illnesses, due to these negligent actions"

Isle of Wight beaches suffer from pollution. Sad.

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First Post: "Taking a dig at those opposing the UN reforms, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that those who are beneficiaries of the old system are resistant to that change as they feel it would 'dilute' their positions of privilege"

WION: "In show of power over disputed Spratly islands, Philippines set-up buoys in South China Sea.. The buoys are placed within a [322-km] zone. It encompasses Whitsun Reef"

Past five days around Bakhmut, Ukraine is showing gains North and South, RU made major headway inside the city in a residential area.

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Imma place Libya into the RU-friendly African countries; the Eastern gov has most of the land, nearly all the oil, and has good rels with Russia.

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Reuters: "Australia Big Hydrogen Push Could Catalyse Industry, Experts Say.. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's Labor government announced a A$2 billion (1.4 billion dollars) 'Hydrogen Headstart' programme in its budget with the aim of accelerating the production and export of the fuel"

Renew Economy: "South Australia swamped with nearly 30 proposals for world leading green hydrogen plan.. The state Labor government has committed nearly $600 million to build a 250MW green hydrogen electrolyser and a 200MW green hydrogen power plant in the steel city of Whyalla. Both would be the biggest of their type in the world, at least for a time.

The guarantee of government funds for first of its type projects has naturally attracted huge interest from Australia and around the world. The government received around 60 expressions of interest last year, which have converted into 29 formal proposals under a tender that closed last week"

With the hipster code removed shortest path is working like a boss. Custom data xform, road network fits into a 200 MB, key/value db, tiny board RPi runs it. All based on open source data, code.

H2 View: "Höegh Autoliners and Norwegian green energy provider North Ammonia have announced a partnership for the supply, distribution, delivery, and consumption of green ammonia. The partnership will enable Höegh Autoliners to meet its commitment to powering at least 5% of our deep-sea operation with green ammonia by 2030, as part of its First Movers Coalition pledge, and aim to consumer at least 100,000 MT of green ammonia within its fleet by that same year"

Russia is not the only Haftar supporter. France, Egypt, SA, UAE and, more recently, US are also supporting. On the other side there is gobble gobble doing the wobble wobble and (of course) the spastic child Qatar.

Haftar's got almost all the oil (the red dots are oil fields)

u.sm_plot_libya2(["Ghadamis","Tripoli"])

Some in the West are playing both sides? Good catch by #TFIGlobal

FT: "More than $1bn of EU exports targeted by sanctions have disappeared in transit to Russia’s economic partners, a flow of 'ghost trade' that western officials believe has helped sustain Vladimir Putin’s wartime economy.

Public data analysed by the Financial Times found that only about half of a $2bn sample of controlled 'dual use' items shipped from the EU actually reached their stated destinations in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia.

These goods, which are deemed by the EU to have potential uses for military or intelligence services and are subject to export controls, may have entered Russia directly from the EU under the pretence that they were only passing through"

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TDB: "Special Counsel John Durham’s report on the FBI’s investigation into Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign criticized the agency for acting on 'raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence.'.. CNN anchor Jake Tapper claimed Monday that the report by Durham is 'devastating' to the organization and even exonerates Trump 'to a degree.'"

Politico: "Durham report faults FBI’s Trump-Russia probe"

"With its benign location and natural resources, Mexico has high hopes for hydrogen. It could attract investments of around $60bn and generate around 3 million jobs – but for that to happen, a number of key obstacles need to be overcome [around cert, reg]... 'we are at the perfect time to move towards this transformation; since it is estimated that by 2030 in Mexico the production of green hydrogen could have lower costs by up to 64% compared to other countries that do not have the same energy potential, we also have a privileged location, which allows us to obtain solar and wind energy, from which green hydrogen is generated,' added [an expert]"

WION: "In India's biggest drug bust, crystal meth worth $1.45bn seized from Kerala coast, Pakistani held"

If Ukraine followed the Minsk aggrement, the areas under RU influence then were smaller than the areas controlled by Russia now. So overall, this avoidable war has been a net loss for UA. Was the effort worth it, other than serving Western interests "to contain Russia"?

The find is in the Haftar controlled region (Gen Haftar is supported by Russia).

u.sm_plot_libya1(["Ghadamis","Tripoli","Sirte"])

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Al Monitor: "Russia's Tatneft makes new oil discovery in Libya.. Libya's state-owned National Oil Corporation and Tatneft said they discovered the oil in the Ghadames basin 330 [km] south of the capital Tripoli at a depth of 8,500 feet. The amount of oil that can be extracted amounts to 1,870 barrels per day"

Janes: "Australia places greater value on long-range missiles than B-21s"

TechXplore: "Navid Attarzadeh first noticed the prickly pear cactus while walking to UTEP's Center for Advanced Materials Research lab. The team had been exploring nickel as a catalytic replacement for platinum, a metal that is abundant on Earth.. Nickel, however, is not as quick and effective at breaking down water into hydrogen.

'Every day, I passed this same plant,' said Attarzadeh, a doctoral student in environmental science and engineering. 'And I started connecting it to our catalyst problem. What caught my attention was how big the leaves and fruits were compared to other desert plants; the prickly pear has an extraordinary surface area.'

That's when the Attarzadeh had an idea. What if they designed a 3D nickel-based catalyst in the shape of the prickly pear cactus? The larger surface area could accommodate more electrochemical reactions—creating more hydrogen than nickel typically can. The team quickly designed the nano-scale structure—invisible to the human eye—and put it to the test. 'We tested the catalyst's ability to split water repeatedly and had good results'"

Second round it is #TR

Global Sea Level rise

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Pandaily: "China’s First Hydrogen-powered Urban Train Can Reach A Top Speed of 160 km/h"

The Guardian: "David Miranda, campaigner and former Brazilian congressman, dies aged 37.. Lula celebrates ‘extraordinary trajectory’ of favela-born politician and Guardian columnist who played key role in Snowden leaks"

Renew Economy: "Fortescue Future Industries has offered a first glimpse of Australia's first electrolyser manufacturing facility, posting a picture of the shiny new facility on LinkedIn this week... Once fully operational, the $114 million project will produce 2GW of electrolysers per year, which are in high demand as a critical technology needed to produce 100% renewable #GreenHydrogen."

R. Reich could be right; celebs doesn't want a blue check but e-jagoff gave them one anyway paying out of pocket indicating celeb paid and endorsed the gonzo system when they didn't, isn't that fraud under the FTC Act? Past deeds as CEO might warrant investigation.

It gets even better; pesticide DDT is banned in US but you might buy an apple shipped from another country produced via the DDT which US sold them. Ain't that grand? Bidness makes money one way or another. People also get poisoned, one way or another.

Paper: "US allows the production and export of pesticides to low- and middle-income countries.. even when those pesticides have been banned domestically due to their known detrimental health impacts"

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