Sort of back to normal, for now

The air quality in Chicago has cleared up to near-normal levels—or, at least, levels that would have been normal in the 1980s:

The smoke might come back tomorrow night when I'll be at the Pritzker Pavilion listening to Fauré. Criminy.

Meanwhile:

• The OAFPOTUS rambled for 25 minutes about the 2020 election last night, in a kind of pathetic attempt to call elections in general into question.
• The OAFPOTUS's nominees for attorney general, Director of National Intelligence, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director debased themselves in their Senate committee hearings this week.
• Thomas Edsall pleads with the Democratic Party to shift on three key issues if we at all want to win in 2026 and 2028.
• That epidemic of explosive diarrhea sweeping the nation? Yep. Taco Bell.
• A bi-partisan group of US Senators is trying to tighten the screws on Russia as Lindsey Graham tried to do.
• MP Andy Burnham (Lab.-Makersfield) is the new Labour Party leader, and will become Prime Minister on Monday.
• People don't like data centers, which seems a bit irrational if you look at the numbers.

Finally, a sad note: stick shifts are nearly extinct. I learned to drive on a stick shift, and every car I owned until the Prius had one. Manufacturers make so few of them that only 0.6% of new cars have them. Even in Europe, stick shifts have gone from 91% of new car registrations in 2001 to just 29% in 2024. Even BMW, who make the most fun cars to drive, has only three models with stick shifts.

As I get older, I find more and more of my skills no longer matter. "How to use a clutch" is now one of them.

TIL that Dave own(s/ed) a Prius. Huh. The reasons we hate data centers involve things that urban dwellers apparently can't comprehend: Data centers consume absolutely *massive* amounts of energy, which (a) severely limits what everyone else can use, which can lead to deadly scenarios (e.g., medical devices failing when power is lost), and (b) drives electricity prices into the fluffing stratosphere. Data centers may be printing money so they don't care, but Joe Consumer is getting fluffed. Point the 2nd: data centers also require massive amounts of freshwater to cool their equipment, which contaminates everything downstream with giant thermal blooms, killing entire ecosystems. Their gobbling of water also severely limits how much water is left for all the living, breathing people and critters in that area. Are you sensing a theme here? We hate data centers because they're taking nearly all the electricity and fresh water from an area for their use with no effort to mitigate the effects. As long as tech bros continue to rape communities for their immoral hyper-capitalism, they can collectively go fuck themselves. I'm proud my governor (Hochul, NY) told them to go elsewhere. Virginia can take all the jobs it wants; we'll gladly keep our power and water while the Dominion state bends over a barrel without lube for the benefit of the .001%.

OK, you not only know I have a Prius, you commented on the post where I announced that I'd bought it: https://www.thedailyparker.com/post/2018/12/23/personal-update1 Where are the data centers near you? Not a challenge; a request for information.