Month: November 2022

The Senate race in Nevada is tightening while they're not even bothering to count votes in Arizona. I guess the old image of vote counters toiling through the night has been relegated to the ash bin of history. In any case, the latest numbers have improved the odds of Democrats winning the Senate even without the Georgia runoff.

What really gets me, though, is that the election is so close that even after a day of counting Republicans remain stuck at about 207 seats in the House. The odds are still in their favor, but this is sure the mother of all non-landslides. Instead, it's turned into a historic nailbiter. I guess that nominating a bunch of election-denying nutters didn't work as well as they hoped. Long live the median voter theory.

*Maybe. They're inching toward something not so great, anyway. And in a midterm!

The BLS announced CPI figures for October today, and the month-over-month headline rate was slightly higher than last month while the core rate was down substantially:

On a year-over-year basis, headline inflation came in at 7.7%, half a point lower than last month. Core CPI rang in at 6.3%, a little lower than last month.

As always, though, the monthly figures are the ones to watch. In particular, you should follow the trendlines, which continue to drop for both headline and core inflation.

The big newspapers all reported that inflation was "easing," which is the right take. But they underestimated just how much it was easing because reporters focus on headline inflation and on the useless annual figures. That's precisely the opposite of what they should do. The meaningful data is core inflation measured monthly, and in October it plummeted to 3.3% on an annualized basis. That's noisy data, so don't take it too seriously, but at the same time it's very good news. Headline inflation may still be elevated, but that's mostly because of food and energy, something that neither the Fed nor the government can do anything about. By contrast, core inflation measures the bedrock economy, and this month's figures say the economy is in pretty good shape.

You've probably heard that Russia is withdrawing from Kherson—the city of Kherson, that is, not the entire oblast. Here's how the New York Times showed it on a map:

Is this a big area or a small one? Where is it, really? The tiny little detail map in the bottom right kinda sorta tells you, but not really. Unless you're a Ukraine junkie who's been following the war obsessively, this map doesn't really tell you much. Here's a different approach from the Institute for the Study of War:

This shows the entire area of eastern Ukraine and outlines the area Russia is abandoning in red. I've redrawn it in green to make it even more readable. As it turns out, it's a middling-smallish area north of the Dnipro river. The entire area south of the river is Russia's land route to Crimea, and their retreat makes it obvious that this is really their key concern. The ISW map would be even better if it were expanded to show Crimea to the south.

My point here is this: maps are good. I love maps. But why does the Times waste our time with a map that zooms in so much that it doesn't really tell us what's going on? If you're going to publish maps—and you should!—why not publish good ones?

Just to make things simple, I figure Republicans have already won a Senate seat in Alaska and Democrats have won in Arizona. That makes the Senate 49-49. All that's left, then, is Nevada plus a runoff in Georgia. Right now it's looking like Republicans will win Nevada, so that leaves only the Georgia runoff on December 6. Whoever wins it controls the Senate.

Again! Two Georgia runoffs decided things in 2020 and one Georgia runoff will decide things this year. We should thank the stars that Donald Trump decided to endorse a moron and hand him a primary win. Any ordinary Republican probably would have won already, but with Trump's acolyte in the race we still have a fighting chance. I guess it all depends on which way the libertarians jump.

Catching a smoke on 7th Street in Long Beach.

Last night, as we were watching the election returns, I was given a homework assignment: How many utility-scale solar plants in California are built with battery storage so they can provide power after the sun goes down?

The short answer is that 58% of new solar projects were paired with battery storage in 2021. The long answer is a little more interesting. For starters, here is the power outlook for today, November 9, 2022:

Next up, here's a map of some recent solar/battery hybrids that were brought online in 2021:

But the interesting part is that while it makes sense to co-locate solar and batteries, there's no real reason to. You can just build a standalone battery farm and connect it to the grid. So the critical metric isn't 58%, it's the raw capacity to supply power to the grid regardless of where it comes from. Here it is:

This number has skyrocketed over the past couple of years and continues to rise. In mid-2021 batteries provided 1,420 megawatts of power to the grid. Today it's over 2,000. Here is yesterday's battery usage throughout the day:

Finally, here's a chart that ties it all together:

This is a little complicated, but it shows the sources of California electricity throughout the day. During daylight hours, solar and wind ("renewables") provide about 18,000 megawatts of power, far more than any other source. From dawn to midafternoon excess solar power is stored in the battery network. When it gets dark, the wind keeps blowing but we lose 12,000 megawatts of solar power. This is currently replaced by 8,000 megawatts of natural gas, 5,000 megawatts of imports from other states, and 2,000 megawatts of battery storage in order to meet peak demand during the hours of 7pm-10pm. Meanwhile, nuclear baseload chugs along at a constant 2,000 megawatts all day.

Today, battery storage provides about 7% of peak demand, but the plan is to keep building massive battery capacity so we can reduce the use of natural gas plants during the evening.

NOTE: California is by far the biggest user of battery storage in the country. It has about twice the capacity of the #2 state, Texas, and five times as much as #3, Illinois.

I have avoided jumping aboard the "Elon Musk is an idiot" train mainly because he is, plainly, not an idiot. Beyond that, it's obvious that he recognizes Twitter was a dumb, impulsive purchase. He's only running it because a court wouldn't let him wriggle out of it.

But counsel for the prosecution begs to disagree and offers Exhibit A: Twitter blue checks. What a wild-ass clusterfuck. Here's a brief, approximate timeline of the infamous blue check:

• In the early days of Twitter, shitposters and other assorted smart alecks started appropriating famous names for their accounts. George Clooney. Emperor of Japan. Donald Trump. Anyone who hadn't yet joined Twitter was fair game.
• The victims of this duplicity—movie stars, baseball players, news anchors—were forced to use made-up screen names when they joined up. For example, @realDonaldTrump. The imposters fought back. War ensued.
• Twitter, realizing it had a problem on its hands, created the blue check as a signal that an account was genuine. For example, Mother Jones procured blue checks for everyone on staff in 2010 so that readers would know for sure if a tweet came from a real MoJo reporter.
• Time passed. The origin of the blue check became shrouded in the mists of internet lore and people began to vaguely associate it with being some kind of VIP. Twitter had only itself to blame for this misconception since, in fact, it didn't hand out blue checks to just anybody who could prove their identity. They worked on the assumption that impersonation was only a problem for certain kinds of people, so they approved checks only for journalists, politicians, public figures, and a few assorted others.
• Time passed. Elon Musk bought Twitter.
• Musk appears to be one of the people who misconstrued the blue check as a mark of VIP status. He vowed to get rid of this elitist nonsense.
• After a bit of fumbling, Musk announced that the blue check would be available to anyone for $8 per month. This prompted widespread guffaws, but Musk stuck to his guns.
• Various smartasses started impersonating the famously thin-skinned Musk, who got pissed off and announced that impersonation will get you tossed off Twitter.
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• The value of the old-school blue check—the one that merely verified you were who you said you were—suddenly became clear. Musk's answer was to give gray "Official" markings to anyone whose identity is verified by Twitter.
• But within a few hours of appearing, the gray marks were abruptly gone. There was no comment from Musk.
• And that brings us to the current day. Old blue checks still exist. Elon Musk has one! They are verifications of identity. New blue checks will exist someday for anyone willing to pony up $8. They are verifications to scam artists that you're a sucker. And then there will be the great unwashed masses, who presumably will get downgraded service or something and will have no idea why.

All clear now?

The LA Times says that here in California we value accuracy over speed in vote counting. Fine. I'm all for that. Still, I just looked at the LA mayor race and as of 9 am this morning we've counted 14% of the vote. That seems a mite slow even for the accuracy obsessed, doesn't it?

Well, that could have been a lot worse, couldn't it? However things ultimately turn out, there sure wasn't any sign of a red wave this year.

The downside, of course, is the House. As a friend reminded me, even a narrow Republican win means two years of investigations, hearings, "oversight," debt ceiling brinkmanship, and government shutdowns. In other words, all the usual GOP temper tantrums when they get bored and have nothing better to do.

I'm basically in favor of anyone with a D by their name tonight. Still, we all have certain races that we care about more than others. Some of them are local. Some just feature people who personally piss you off. Here are mine:

Los Angeles County sheriff. Alex Villanueva is not only a bad sheriff, he's also a terrible human being. His old-school brand of corruption needs to have its ass kicked.

California 47th congressional district. We all love Katie Porter around here. That would be enough by itself, but the fact that she's running against the loathsome Scott Baugh cinches it.

Arizona governor. Kari Lake is an election denier and a MAGAnaut. What's worse, she's probably a fake election denier and MAGAnaut, just doing what she has to do to win. More importantly, she's a rising Republican star. I'd like to see her crushed before she gets off the ground.

Pennsylvania senator. I don't happen to care all that much about John Fetterman, but Dr. Oz? Spare me.

Wisconsin senator. Can you get any dumber than Ron Johnson? Ugh.