Oh, it’s Eurovision season?

We don’t get as much of the noise about Eurovision here in the benighted Americas, but every once in a while something trickles into our media. I’m liking the Irish entry, “Doomsday Blue,” partly because it’s aggressively weird, partly because I think it’s catchy, partly because it’s satanic, and partly because it has pissed off conservatives.

Even delicate little Tommy Robinson has fallen onto his fainting couch.

Also, I partly like it for its politics.

The performance is definitely provocative, and combined with Thug’s non-binary LGBTQ+ identity, it makes them the perfect target for right-wingers.

But at no point has it seemed to occur to conservatives that their outrage might be the point of the performance—even after Thug themself called the uproar “quite iconic” and said it’s “p*ssing off all the right people.”

Thug calls themself a “rebel witch” who’s been “conjuring Ouija Pop since 1993,” and “Doomsday Blue” uses the phrase “avada kedavra,” popularized in the “Harry Potter” series by outspoken transphobe JK Rowling.

Thug called it a form of “wordplay,” a sort of reclaiming of the word from Rowling’s TERF-y hands, and has also used their performances to call for trans rights and a “ceasefire” in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Definitely satanic.

I missed the whole Eurovision thing this year, and just learned that Doomsday Blue came in 6th, while the winner was this song by Nemo, another nonbinary artist.

Nice voice, but I liked Bambie Thug better.

A cynical Mother’s Day connection

Would you believe that it was nine years ago that the internet was arguing about the color of this dress? I know. Time is fleeting. Let’s do the time warp again.

Anyway, the dress is in the news again, just in time for Mother’s Day. The dress was worn by Keir Johnston’s mother-in-law, and how do you honor your mother-in-law? Apparently, by strangling your wife. She survived, but apparently their marriage has been an 11 year long exercise in violent abuse.

Maybe the best Mother’s Day gift is a divorce and seeing your abusive husband arrested and jailed, and the nasty little man going viral.

The new state flag is official

Today is the official changeover day for the Minnesota state flag. I like it!

I especially like it because I just learned what the meaning of the original design — that cluttered, ugly illustration of farmers and Indians — was intended to be an illustration of Manifest Destiny.

Minnesota Legislature adopted that flag and seal in 1893.

A poem written by the wife of one of the artists who painted the seal said it was a representation of Manifest Destiny. intended to be an allegory of oncoming progress and civilization, and the removal of native people from the landscape.

“For the artists who created the seal, this is intended to be an allegory of oncoming progress and civilization, and the removal of Native people from the landscape,” said Minnesota Historical Society Director of Research William Convery.

If I’d known that, I would have been much more irate about it. This changeover has a similar significance to the destruction of confederate flags and monuments to rebel generals.

Commencing

I went to the UMM Commencement ceremony today, sorta. I’m afraid I had to bail out before I died — it was being held outdoors, for the first time in a half dozen years, and the sun was blazing down, and I was expected to line up with other faculty an hour ahead of time for the processional, in the sun…and then we were going to march out to some shadeless folding chairs to sit for an hour and a half. Keep in mind we’re all wearing black robes. I decided I didn’t want to watch whole families collapsing with sunstroke, nor did I want to collapse myself.

I came home instead, and watched the colorful weeds commencing in my yard.

I think I’ll also take a nap this afternoon. Apparently the northern lights are going to be flaring some more tonight, and I want to get some better photos.

Aurora time!

I stayed up late to try and see the northern lights. They were nice, but a bit dim here — they did stretch out further than I’ve seen previously, streaking practically all across the sky. I tried taking some photos (f/1.8, 15s exposures, with a tripod, of course), but I wasn’t entirely satisfied. Too blurry, mainly what I captured were fuzzy swirls of red and green.

I should practice more, but it’s late and way past my bedtime.

The future is battery powered

I remember the Olden Times when Rush Limbaugh (may he Rot in Peace) would rail against solar power — what will we do when the sun goes down? — and wind power — what about calm days? — and tell us to keep burning coal and gas.

Technology marches forward, and now we have these things called batteries that can smooth out the highs and lows of electricity production. Now when we hear about solar farms going up, they’re usually accompanied by energy storage farms. Here’s what energy production in California looks like:

Solar power production is swelling during the day, and is extended into the peak demand period with batteries. Maybe they could also expand wind power, and possibly be better at conserving energy? I think if I plotted energy usage at my house, it would be much more uniform: we don’t have air conditioning, and I’ve done more cooking with an eye towards preparing meals that can produce leftovers that last a few days.

As it is, California is sometimes producing more solar energy than it can use. They have to throttle solar power output back, or even pay neighboring states to take it.

Good things are happening here in Minnesota, too. We’ve got a gigantic energy storage facility going up in Becker, a town between Morris and the Twin Cities.

One of the largest solar projects in the country is moving closer to completion, and it’s not in a famously sunny state like California, Texas, or even Florida. It’s in Minnesota, on former potato farms near the site of a retiring coal plant.

The Sherco solar and energy-storage facility will be the largest solar project in the Upper Midwest, and the fifth-largest in the U.S. by the time it’s fully completed in 2026. The first phase of the project should begin sending emissions-free electricity to the grid this fall, heralding the start of a new era in a state whose largest solar project until now has been just 100 megawatts. This new project will have a capacity of 710 megawatts. It’s being built by utility Xcel Energy, which will also operate the facility once it’s online.

The project is poised to deliver on the many promises of renewable energy: It will partially replace the nearby coal plant set to retire over the coming years, address the variability of solar power by pairing it with long-duration storage, and provide good-paying union jobs in a community that’s losing a key employer in the coal facility.

They’re using iron-air batteries, which are cheaper and less toxic and less flammable than the now-familiar lithium batteries. It’s also positive that this facility is going up explicitly to replace a coal plant, one we often saw as we drove along I-94. It hasn’t been so prominent in recent years, I guess they’ve been gradually shutting it down and we don’t see the giant exhaust plumes so much any more.

Goodbye.

Even closer to home, my university has begun a major energy storage project.

For many years now, UMN Morris and UMN WCROC [West Central Research and Outreach Center], have explored the potential of energy storage in rural Minnesota.

Now, UMN Morris and UMN WCROC are partnering to launch the Center for Renewable Energy Storage Technology, or CREST. In order to reach high levels of renewable power generation, efficient and economic energy storage systems are critically needed. This field is poised for significant growth and attention in the coming years. The new UMN intercollegiate Center will provide leadership in research, demonstration, education, and outreach in this vital field by organizing teams and partnerships and incubating energy storage research and demonstration-scale projects.

A hallmark and unique characteristic of renewable energy efforts at the Morris campuses has been the ability to test systems at commercial or near-commercial scales. This scale is especially crucial in moving new technologies from labs into the commercial market. CREST will also expand opportunities for Minnesotans to learn more about energy storage technologies and potential applications. Recently, UMN WCROC announced it will host the $18.6 million US DOE ARPA-E REFUEL Technology Integration 1 metric ton per day ammonia pilot plant. In addition, WCROC received $10 million from the State of Minnesota in the 2021 legislative session through the Xcel Energy RDA account to develop ammonia-fueled power generation and self-contained ammonia storage technologies. UMN Morris announced a new project to develop a large-scale battery-storage demonstration project. These projects are done in collaboration with partners from across the University of Minnesota and with many partners in the public and private sectors.

It’s too bad we can’t rub Limbaugh’s face in the progress that’s being made.

OH PETER JACKSON NO

…and he caught Déagol by the throat and strangled him, because the gold looked so bright and beautiful. Then he put the ring on his finger.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a masterpiece. The Hobbit trilogy should not have existed. Now Peter Jackson is taking another drink from the well, making a new movie called The Hunt for Gollum. Did I say “movie,” singular? My mistake: it’s going to be at least two movies, and who knows how much bloat they’ll experience before the end. One paragraph in the article triggered my gag reflex.

Fans and critics on social media immediately speculated about the new film’s plot, given that Gollum appeared to die at the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Appeared? May Shelob suck out your guts and spit them into a sewage pit, APPEARED? It was a key moment when Gollum fell into the lava burbling in Mt Doom. Please don’t even hint that there’s a possibility that some mindless, greedy studio executive might resurrect him. A prequel, maybe?

It doesn’t matter. I absolutely refuse to ever watch this cash grab. I’m not even tempted. The Hobbit was an adequate lesson.

I predicted the fate of Neuralink

Common problems with attempts to implant chronic electrodes — especially the ones with exceptionally fine wires — are the accumulation of scar tissue, that is the buildup of connective tissue, and shifting of the placement. You’re sticking delicate wires into a mass of reactive gelatin, inside a hard bony capsule, and the goo can shift. So it’s no surprise that Neuralink is not holding up.

Elon Musk’s neurotech startup Neuralink said Wednesday it has run into problems with a brain chip it implanted into a 29-year-old quadriplegic man earlier this year, with the issues considered so serious, it reportedly considered having the implant removed entirely.

In a blog post announcing the issues, Neuralink said its test patient, Noland Arbaugh, has begun losing the ability to efficiently control some technology using only his thoughts—the entire selling point of Neuralink.

Neuralink said those failures were caused by some of the implant’s 64 threads retracting and becoming unusable. It didn’t specify how many of the threads—the microscopic links that transport his brain signals to a chip that allows him to control technology with his mind—were impacted, nor did it say what caused the error.

I can guess what caused the error: biology and time. I’m sure those two things are trivial problems for Elon Musk to defeat, once he overcomes his other great enemy, carwashes.