Dark matter

News blues

Covid and its tribulations relegated to bottom of the news – best way of handling the reality that the “powers that be” have lost the plot.
In the hospital’s central office for doctors – my current location during the work day – one doctor jokes he was at a wedding in New Orleans and, so far, a third of attendees have come down with Covid. He’s testing regularly, expecting to do that same.
I, in the meantime, will go for my second booster today. It’s free, I’m in the hospital already, and Covid is around. For the first time, I’m expecting I, too, will contract it. May as well avail myself of the more vaccine – lessen the effects and try to avoid Long Covid.

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© Zapiro, zapiro.com

Escom/Eskom sePush app informs me that loadshedding stage 2, 3, even 4 is about to start, then that loadshedding is suspended, then that it is pending, then that it in process…. In other words, the app is (almost) as uninformative as the electrical supply is unstable. So far, this year, a total of the equivalence of 31 days in South Africa without electricity.

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha explained that since Saturday evening Tutuka, Camden and Majuba power stations each experienced a breakdown on one of their units.
Mantshantsha said, “we currently have 2,094MW on planned maintenance, while another 17,640MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.”
… Mantshantsha ended his statement by reminding South Africans that “load shedding is implemented only as a last resort to protect the national grid,” and appealed to the nation to help limit the impact of load shedding by using electricity sparingly by switching off all non-essential items, especially between 5am and 9am and 4pm and 10pm.
… On Wednesday morning, Eskom announced that Stage 4 would be implemented from 9am and continue until 5am on Friday. Thereafter, load shedding will be lowered to Stage 2 until 5am on Monday, 14 March.

Moreover, “Stage 4 load shedding was implemented on Wednesday morning to prevent Eskom’s diesel and pump storage dam supplies from reaching ‘critically low levels’. Should it run out of diesel and water supplies, South Africans could face Stage 6 blackouts, the power utility warned.”

CEO André de Ruyter said in a state of the system briefing on Wednesday afternoon, “I think it’s important to emphasise that we should not accept load shedding and the lack of generation capacity as the new normal.
“While it’s been going on for 14 years now, we need to take urgent steps to address load shedding.”
This year to date we’ve had 32 days of load shedding compared with 26 days of load shedding in close to the same period last year.
As of the end March 2022, Eskom’s Energy Availability Factor — the amount of energy generation a plant is capable of supplying to the grid — was at 62%, below their target of 74% for the financial year.
The most urgent issue to be addressed is that Eskom needs at least 4,000 megawatts (MW) of additional generation capacity to serve the country’s energy demand.
It needs the space to take some of its units off for planned maintenance. Until this capacity is met, the risk of load shedding remains.

This is also a ubiquitous problem of corruption and theft. “A sophisticated crime syndicate – in cahoots with Eskom officials, police and trucking companies – is stealing fuel by exploiting a design flaw at the Kriel Power Station in Mpumalanga. And it all has to do with a weighbridge on the wrong side of a gate.
In March, amaBhungane revealed how armed gangs were stealing fuel from buried pipelines owned by Transnet. >> 

MORE Covid?

News blues

Expert sounds alarm on fifth wave after Covid-19 curve turns upwards in SA More subvariants! As the World Health Organization tracks two new coronavirus subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5 more cases of these found in countries other than South Africa.
Professor Adrian Puren, the head of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), said recently, “The public should exercise caution in interpreting these data as there may be changes in test patterns. An early warning indicator, wastewater detection surveillance, shows an increase in Gauteng. He added that there was no clear evidence that Omicron was being displaced as the significant circulating variant. NICD reported that 10.6% of Covid-19 tests were positive in the past seven days, which was 2.6% higher than the previous week. 

Read more >> 

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The Lincoln Project: This woman votes  (0:23 mins)
Meidas Touch: Texas Paul REACTS to Marjorie Taylor Greene Lying Under Oath! (3:12 mins)

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On war…

Published: 23 APR 2022 © Zapiro

The Fight Against the GOP's Culture War  (7:25 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Three reasons ANC is stuck on nuclear power for South Africa’s power future:

Mantashe was enthusiastic, indicating the government was still intending to go ahead with the nuclear build process. Just to be clear, we are talking about a build programme that is likely to cost somewhere in the region of R1-trillion.

Read more >> 

I'm in the process of introducing South African anti-nuke power activists to Dr. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA) at Canada’s University of British Columbia. Dr. Ramana is also Director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Acting Director (2020-2021) of the Centre for India and South Asia Research (CISAR) in the Institute of Asian Research.
My goal? Dr Ramana has agreed to write an article, maybe more, about the impact on South Africa of building nuclear power plants. His prognosis? Not good! And, for many of the reasons presented in the article above. India-born Dr. Ramana is very familiar with the impacts and costs of nuke power on developing countries.
Exciting!
Stay tuned!

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Take a break from bad news on the planet and focus on wildlife: a photo essay >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Yet more on Escom/Eskom… as economists at the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) noted recently that South Africa hit a new record of 22,000MW of generation capacity unavailable last week, with a ‘staggering’ 17,000MW of this being unplanned.
“Worryingly, in its assessment for the winter period, Eskom anticipates between 37 to 101 days of load-shedding, the latter in an extreme scenario. If it can limit unplanned breakdowns to below 12,500MW, it could avoid load-shedding,” the BER said.
Fear not, though. President Ramaphosa finds it ‘difficult and unacceptable’ that South Africa continues to face ongoing load shedding, that rolling blackouts are costly for the economy, causing significant frustration and hardship for all citizens and businesses, and that his government now working to ensure it comes to a permanent end. 

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Puttied my first window on Friday. To clarify, noticing badly cracked or missing putty in a window frame, I removed the window frame, the pane of glass, and the old putty. After that, I puttied the groove into which I replaced the pane of glass and also applied fresh putty.
It turned out not too bad. It helps that putty has a similar consistency to clay with which I’m intimately familiar; putty, however, is stickier, less obliging, and harder to remove from hands.
Yesterday, I applied wood preservative to the frame and, soon as it was dry, I happily replaced the window into the frame, the screws placed in exactly the same screw holes.
Alas, something is off. The window doesn’t fit snugly into the frame. Grrrr!
Story of my life: in theory it “should work”, in reality it hardly ever does. As a wannabe carpenter… or plumber… or “pool gal”… or lily pond maintainer … or roof gutter cleaner… I’ve great respect for expertise… and know enough to recognize I display far more willingness to try than ability to do.
Expertise?
None here!
Sad.

Sad.

Relief (not!)

Click to enlarge and enjoy
© Zapiro

News blues

In the US, the change in reported COVID-19 cases per 100k people in the last two weeks >> 

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The Lincoln Project:

McMorrow fights back (1:42 mins)

Ron DeSantis: bad for business  (1:00 mins)

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On war…

Ramaphosa and Zelensky finally talk about Russian aggression >> 

Zelensky’s post-talk tweet: “Had a phone conversation with @CyrilRamaphosa. Told about our resistance to Russian aggression. Discussed the threat of a global food crisis, deepening relations with the Republic of South Africa and cooperation within international organizations.”

 
Ramaphosa’s post-talk tweet: “I had a telephone conversation with President @ZelenskyyUa of Ukraine to discuss the conflict in Ukraine and its tragic human cost, as well its global ramifications. We agree on the need for a negotiated end to the conflict which has impacted Ukraine’s place in global supply chains, including its position as a major exporter of food to our continent. President Zelenskyy anticipates closer relations with Africa in future.”

 
“…deepening relations with the Republic of South Africa and cooperation within international organizations…” and “…closer relations with Africa in future”?
Sounds good.
But ...how tight is Putin’s grip on African leaders? Who, for example, is pushing nuke power in South Africa? Putin and Russia, that’s who. At least they’re the frontrunners, along with China – second in line but so-so on nuke power these days  - also, South Korea, France, and US. 

US isn’t going overboard for nuclear power anymore, plus, for US, I suspect nuke power would require way too much effort, given South Africa’s lack of knowhow and the minimal overall economic benefit to the US.)

So. We shall see how much closer and how much deeper relations become between presidents in the future.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

More kvetching about Escom/Eskom:

[The parastatal power company] Escom forecasts more load-shedding in the winter season, with the power utility saying there could be as many as 101 days of power outages — something that it calls an “extreme case” scenario.
The “best case” scenario (if there is such a thing regarding the major inconvenience of load-shedding) is that Eskom might throw South Africa into darkness for 32 days during winter.

Read more >> 
Oh, great! Cold, dark winter made colder and darker because, after a decade of loadshedding, Escom – a power generation company - still hasn’t figured out how to deliver consistent power?
Just in Time – JIT* -  for me to abandon ship… back to drought- and fire-ridden California. She’s got a ticket to ride  ….
[*JIT? Just in time… A form of management – usually managing an inventory of consumables but sometimes of emotions - that requires suppliers and supply chains to produce materials just as production is scheduled to begin, no sooner. 
The goal? 
Lean and mean production machine that meets demand with zero storage costs. 
Managing emotional inventory, however, means recognizing emotions, applying limits - neither ignoring nor overly expressing feelings of frustration, irritation, and anger, nor making dramatic snap decisions – and, importantly, knowing when to ride!]

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This week’s posts focused on corruption. There is another aspect: when fed up – or broke – residents do not pay their utility and rates (property tax) bills. Each month this year, uMngeni Municipality has sent out the following notice with their invoices: 

Click to enlarge

As fed up as I am with “service delivery” – the lack thereof – I pay my bills. The idea of purposefully putting myself into a position where I'd have to interact regularly with any South Africa bureaucracy as an individual is, well, laughable. If, however, a concerted effort by a nationwide community of protesters arose that was dedicated to fight corruption in government, I’d join. The ‘popcorn’ protests that spring up here and there are ineffective against SA’s entrenched corruption. 
A nationwide effort, though? Hmmm....

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Disney in hot water: Least favorite governor Florida’s Ron DeSantis has it in for Disney, threatening to strip the company of its 55-year-old special status that allows it to operate as an independent government around its Orlando-area theme park.
This, over the DeSantis-inspired measure that bans schools from teaching young children about sexual orientation or gender identity.

After DeSantis signed the bill into law earlier Monday, the Walt Disney Company wrote in a statement that its "goal" was to get the law repealed or defeated in the courts.
DeSantis said Disney "crossed the line" with that statement. On Thursday, DeSantis went further, suggesting Disney's "special privileges" could be lifted.

Read more >> 
Wanna-be-Donald-Trump Ron DeSantis doesn’t care who he takes down in his struggle to be anointed the next Donald Trump. Kids? Dime a dozen. Transgender? Way too many of ‘em already. Teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity? Bah humbug!
(Read the downside of DeSantis' effort to Floridians >>) 

I support Disney in repealing or defeating DeSantis’s inhumane trend.
My gripe about Disney? The apparent impossibility of unsubscribing from its email lists. Specifically, its National Geographic for children’s email list.
I subscribed two children to that magazine. They liked it – until they outgrew it. That happens. Children grow and outgrow. Disney specializes in children so it must know that.
Yet, it’s taking months of frustration to stop Disney sending me annoying offers to re-subscribe, or buy this, that, or the next unwanted publication. A simple “unsubscribe” link isn’t offered on their emails, so I tried their Contact Us link. That consistently presents the error page, “our system is currently unavailable. Try again later.”
Frustrating.

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Sunny yesterday. Showers predicted today and for the next 3 days…
KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 6:22am
Sunset: 5:32pm

Rain, finally...
San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 6:24am
Sunset: 7:51pm

MeerKAT

News blues...

Covid, schmovid! Let’s celebrate something out of this world – and first spotted by South Africans:

This record-breaking megamaser is the most distant one ever observed at 5 billion light-years away from Earth.
The light from this space laser traveled a whopping 36 thousand billion billion miles (58 thousand billion billion kilometers) to reach our planet.
An international team of astronomers, led by Marcin Glowacki, observed this light, using the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory's MeerKAT telescope. (MeerKAT is shorthand for Karoo Array Telescope, preceded by the Afrikaans word for "more.")
Glowacki is a research associate at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Australia.
Megamasers are created when two galaxies crash into each other. It is the first hydroxyl megamaser that MeerKAT has observed,,,,

Read more >>

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(c) Zapiro

Reviewing the aftermath of recent flooding in Durban, President Ramaphosa said, “…climate change is serious, it is here… We no longer can postpone what we need to do, and the measures we need to take to deal with climate change.”

Good for Ramaphosa. The reality, however, more complex. Where does a country like South Africa, burdened with ongoing massive corruption at the highest levels of government, get the funds needed to competently address the growing effects of climate change. Moreover, South African police used stun grenades to disperse a crowd in Durban, suffering catastrophic flood damage, calling for more and better official aid for flood victims.
Read more >> 
(See below, more on climate change action.)

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The Lincoln Project: Abbott’s Wall  (0:55 mins)

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On war…

Alla Gutnikova's speech at the Dorogomilovsky court. She is one of the editors of the Moscow student journal DOXA, and facing prison sentences for "inciting minors to take part in illegal opposition protests”. But the speech, “Be Like Children. Repeat: 2+2=4. Black Is Black. White Is White.” is about so much more. 

Read Alla Gutnikova's speech at the Dorogomilovsky court >> 

Healthy planet, anyone?

Twenty-five scientists affiliated with Extinction Rebellion, arrived at Westminster, London, and

... pasted pages of scientific papers to the windows of the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and glued their hands to the glass to highlight the climate science they said the government was ignoring.
This, a week after the government published a new energy strategy that promised to continue the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas, failed to set targets for onshore wind, and gave nuclear power a central role.
Dr Aaron Thierry, a 36-year-old ecologist said, “Last week the world’s scientists released a report that sounded the final alarm for the planet. It said we must end our addiction to fossil fuels now. The UK government’s response a few days later was to announce it will increase its exploration for oil and gas with the intention of extracting every last drop.
“Science tells us that this approach will condemn our civilisations to destruction. We will not stand by and let this happen. Scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades but have been ignored by governments.”
…[Another scientist said} ““At both the domestic and international policy level, there are very powerful actors who don’t want our society to decarbonise.
“There are people who are very wealthy and powerful from the way that the world is set up now and they don’t want that to change, they don’t want to decarbonise because that will limit their opportunity to generate money from fossil fuels.
“As a result we have government departments making decisions that will lead us to calamity, and as a scientist I know what impacts this has, I can see that coming, and I can’t be passive, I can’t just let that happen. I need to act.

An observer tweeted, “The government’s insane, and I don’t know what to do, other than to do this, to try and get the attention that we need to wake the public up.”
Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

More clouds, more rain…
KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 6:18am
Sunset: 5:39pm

San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 6:32am
Sunset: 7:45pm

Learn to live with it

Worldwide (Map)
February 10, 2022 - 403,000,000 confirmed infections; 5,776,000 deaths
February 11, 2021 – 107,324,00 confirmed infections; 2,354,000 deaths
Total vaccinations to date: 10,118,400,000

US (Map) February 10, 2022 - 77,265,150 confirmed infections; 912,300 deaths
February 11, 2021 – 27,285,150 confirmed infections; 471,450 deaths

SA (Coronavirus portal) February 10, 2022 - 3,631,644 confirmed infections; 96,502 deaths
February 11, 2021 – 1,482,412 confirmed infections; 47,145 deaths

Optimistic post from a year ago, Looking ahead >> 

News blues

Polls and surveys taken in the US on Covid-19, even as the Omicron variant crested across much of the United States, indicate the public is getting tired of the pandemic and its resolve to combat the coronavirus is wavering if not outright waning.
Read more and see results of surveys >> 
New Jersey’s Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat who has taken a strict approach to pandemic protocols, recently said “We have to learn how to live with Covid as we move from a pandemic to the endemic phase of this virus."
This is the trend in the US now, with blue state governors and state health officials, once vigorously embracing pandemic restrictions, pivot toward loosening restrictions and shifting responsibility to the public.
Read more >> 
Even as the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stands by the agency's mask guidelines, emphasizing that now is not the time to change the recommendations or loosen restrictions aimed at preventing Covid-19  the CDC weighs updating its messaging around transmission and masking.
Meanwhile, South Africa remains on Alert Level 1 – the least restrictive level. A cloth face mask or “homemade item that covers the nose and mouth” is required when in public places. South Africans, like Americans, however, are getting tired of the pandemic and items covering the nose and mouth are no longer much in evidence. Read more >>

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The Lincoln Project:
Pence v Trump  (0:42 mins)
McCarthy v McConnell  (0:48 mins)
Anti-American  (1:10 mins)
And, Randy Rainbow is back: the Tango Vaccine (4:05 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

“Ambitious and concrete commitments”?

Up to 40 world leaders are due to make “ambitious and concrete commitments” towards combating illegal fishing, decarbonising shipping and reducing plastic pollution at what is billed as the first high-level summit dedicated to the ocean.
One Ocean summit, which opens on Wednesday in the French port of Brest, aims to mobilise “unprecedented international political engagement” for a wide range of pressing maritime issues, said its chief organiser, Olivier Poivre d’Arvor.
“It is essential,” Poivre d’Arvor said. “The climate has its Cop process but there is no equivalent for the ocean, at a time when man’s relationship with the marine world has become more and more toxic, and global heating is causing extreme change.”

Read more about the summit >> 

Maybe I’m too cynical, but I wish Poivre d’Arvor had not likened this effort to the “Cop process” … a model for how to get world leaders to draw out and prolong the agony of “do-nothingness” in the face of ongoing climate catastrophe.

Let’s hope the “ambitious and concrete commitments” for preserving the ocean includes attention to climate change causing more frequent marine heatwaves worldwide. 

Why? 

Because corals have adapted to live in a specific temperature range. This means when ocean temperatures are too hot for a prolonged period, corals can bleach and die.
New research  published in the journal PLOS Climate found that the future of tropical ecosystems – thought to harbour more species than any other – is probably worse than anticipated.
Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

(c) Zapiro

Back in the land of Eskom and loadshedding  . Grrr!
Backstory: South Africa’s parastatal power company, Eskom, began scheduling mandatory loadshedding back in April 2008. Loadshedding – power switched off for up to 2.5 hour increments according to neighborhoods across the nation - is “designed” to allow maintenance periods for power generators, as well as to recover coal stockpiles before the winter (when need for electricity usage surges).
Fourteen years later and whaddya get? 

More loadshedding.
Enough already!

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Jet lag’s a bummer!

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Daylight hours are topsy-turvy right now. I hear it is warm and somewhat muggy in the San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 7:04am
Sunset: 5:43pm

It’s hot, sunny, and muggy in KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:36am
Sunset: 6:50pm