Congress never gave the EPA the power to regulate CO2. They could, but they didn't. So the EPA doesn't get to regulate CO2, until congress lets them.

Go read Massachusetts v. EPA. The SCOTUS held that under the current Clean Air Act, not only can the EPA regulate greenhouse gases, but they must do so. One of the possible outcomes of this new case is that the Court will reverse itself on that decision. OTOH, maybe just take my word for it -- it's one of those horrible fractured decisions the Roberts court is known for. Page after page in the opinion and the dissents arguing about the meaning of the word "otherwise".

Those stupid fucks (EU govts) have even started a second huge pipeline...

Not just started. Nord Stream 2 is complete, and Gazprom has filled it with methane. They can start deliveries the day after the Germans sign off the last of the paperwork.

Possibly worth noting that the Europeans decided many years ago that energy and energy policy was an economic matter to be handled under the EU treaties, not a security matter to be handled under NATO. That's irritated the US from the time they made that decision.

15 or so years ago I saw a DHS presentation about an exercise that started with terrorists crashing stolen buses and/or garbage trucks into the transformers at all the main substations for a sizeable Midwestern city (their estimate was that 12-18 people could plan and execute such a plan). The rest of the exercise was for city managers and elected officials to try to handle the ensuing long-term emergency. Long-term because all of the transformers were very large custom-built in Europe with a six-month lead time.

One of the things the presenter said came out of that exercise was a lot of pressure by the cities/states on the electric utilities to start shifting from the large custom-built to smaller standardized main substation transformers operating in parallel, and to cooperate on warehousing a number of spares in the state.

I recall reading at the time that ships striking the side of the canal along that stretch happens regularly. But it took a peculiar set of circumstances -- size, weight, wind, and more -- to get the ship hung up on both sides of the canal.

Two series that I put a lot of hours into over the years wound up in 2021: Benedict Jacka's Alex Verus urban fantasy line and James Corey's Expanse books. I rate them both "acceptable". Winding up a series in a way that ties up all the loose ends but isn't a let down is a hard task.

1) It's an international project. The Ariane 5 and launch services are part of the European contribution.

2) Given the production schedule, the first SLS that would be available outside the Artemis project would be delivered three or four years from now.

3) Even if the SLS were actually available now, the cost per launch is something over $2B, an order of magnitude more than the Ariane 5.

4) The ULA has notified NASA that they will barely be able to deliver the SLS vehicles to cover the Artemis launches. NASA has started rebooking unmanned missions that had been planned to use the SLS. Eg, Europa Clipper is now booked for a Falcon Heavy even though that will require a longer, slower flight to Jupiter.

You're seriously still listening to the same old stale generic boring stuff from decades ago?

It's Saturday so I get to whine. I'm old and my wife of 40+ years is disappearing down a dementia hole. My choices are farther back than the 80s, and don't include Clapton -- I always thought he was overrated -- but sometimes I just need some comfort music.

Another reason we're not using Yucca Mountain is that the only way to get casks there currently is to drive them, on special trucks, right through Las Vegas. All these years and no one has ever addressed the missing last 200 mile transport link.

LibreOffice is no problem. I have used it professionally for years for documents and spreadsheets.

Now that I am retired my home desktop is Linux and LibreOffice is a fine solution for my use. Previously, I was appalled at how many academics used the Windows version of Excel as a "standard" numeric computing platform. In those days, I needed to keep a copy running that I knew was bug-for-bug compatible, which I found quite frustrating.

The argument is being made that this plant is a replacement for the nearby coal-fired plant (one of the three units there already shut down to meet haze limits). That coal-fired plant sells the bulk of its electricity to utilities farther west, some as far as the Pacific Coast. The most interesting question to me is will those customers be willing to buy nuclear electricity? At present my guess would be no, they're going to buy wind-solar-storage based power instead.

Exactly. ULA has bet most of their future on the billion-dollar-per-launch moon shot, and on the BE-4. They're about one successful high-profile SpaceX Starship mission away from being in serious trouble.

Right up until you pull down the bookmarks menu. What used to fit comfortably in less than two-thirds of my vertical space now runs off the bottom of the screen. With staggering amounts of white space between the items. In a font I apparently can't control, with a size smaller than what I allow pages to use. The least they could do would be to provide a straightforward method, with clear documentation, to change the spacing using CSS.

There is a disable entry in about:config, so small credit for that.

When the FCC made the decision on how to classify an ISP service back in the 1990s, they had two choices: it was a telecommunication service, or it was an information service. The decided to classify it as an information service for two reasons: (1) at that time, no one had succeeded in selling a data transport service by itself, and (2) if they made it a telecommunications service there were a bunch of statutory provisions that had to apply and the cable companies wouldn't have built out their networks.

It was a dumb decision. I was in the industry and had a few people's ears and I told them at the time it was a dumb decision. Years later Obama's FCC attempted to split the difference. They wanted to reclassify it as a telecommunications service, but also promised that they would never enforce the pesky parts of the law. Reversed with the change of administration, but it would never had stood up in court anyway.

What's needed is a third category. Around the time Obama's FCC was making their ruling, a handful of Congress-critters introduced a bill that would have done that, sort of. ISPs were singled out as a subset of information service providers and required to implement net neutrality. The bill went nowhere. Congress has still refused to act, and we all suffer the consequences.

...and they were not required to store enough gas at the power plants to weather a storm like this.

Speaking broadly, it's very difficult to store natural gas on that scale. It's not like coal where you can pile a week's worth on the ground outside the plant. (Piled somewhat carefully -- spontaneous combustion is an actual thing in large enough piles of coal.)

20 or so years ago eastern Colorado had a night with extreme cold and Denver had rolling blackouts because water that collected in some of the natural gas infrastructure (well heads, treatment plants) froze up. The gas companies were required to improve their de-watering gear and the problem has not repeated.

This is the first time I've experienced electricity rationing in the USA.

Requests to conserve aren't uncommon. This past Sunday afternoon, my municipal utility in northern Colorado issued such a request. Less extreme -- or better prepared for -- version of the situation in Texas. Very cold, higher than normal residential demand for natural gas limited deliveries to generators, so tight electricity supplies for the evening peak. Enough load was voluntarily shed to avoid a shortage.

The bigger utility down the road 60 miles runs a program that pays people to let the utility put a switch on their air conditioner. During summer hours with extreme demand the utility turns off air conditioners for 20 minutes at a time on a rotating basis. It's cheaper than building another generating plant that would be seldom used.