Ryan Pohl building batteries in the boonies. Photo: Nina Riggio | The Washington Post
Here’s an interesting story: We’ve wondered from time to time about what we’re going to do with all the batteries from these cool new toys everyone thinks will save us from ourselves. Ryan Pohl has a few ideas on that subject.
Pohl is repurposing depleted electric-car batteries to power the off-the grid wanderers who winter at Quartzsite, billed as “the RV boondocking capital of the world.”
There are no plug-ins out there, so the nomads mostly power their rigs using fossil-fueled generators. What there is is plenty of sun. And with solar panels, some used Nissan Leaf batteries, plus an assist from Pohl and his mobile workshop, these wanderers can get a little greener.
Here’s a story that every daily newspaper should be running as of, oh, day before yesterday.
Is your state’s power grid in shape for a Texas-size storm? Do you even know where or how your state gets its power?
I sure don’t. Lucky for me there’s this magic button on the wall, and when I press it, zoom, I control the weather! Inside the house, anyway, and only if nothing goes wrong outside it.
Here’s a New York Times story from last fall breaking down how making electricity has changed over the past two decades. Regarding New Mexico, it reports:
Coal has been New Mexico’s primary source of electricity generation for nearly two decades. But coal-fired power has declined since 2004 in response to tougher air quality regulations, cheaper natural gas, and California’s decision in 2014 to stop purchasing electricity generated from coal in neighboring states.
Natural gas, wind and solar accounted for a little more than half of the electricity produced in New Mexico last year, up from just 15 percent two decades earlier. In 2019, the state legislature passed a law requiring utilities to get 50 percent of the electricity they sell from renewable sources by 2030, rising to 100 percent by 2045.
According to [the U.S. Energy Information Administration], New Mexico has among the highest potential for solar power in the country. The state also sends a significant amount of electricity to California, which has long set aggressive renewable energy goals.
I’m feeling a strong kinship with Emily Litella these days.
“What’s all this stuff I keep hearing about DikDok and ChapSnat? I remember when you paid money to the telephone company! The telephone company never paid money to you! And you watched TV on the TV! Not on the telephone!”
I know, I know … since the first proto-influencer sketched a warthog on the cave wall while his elders looked on disapprovingly (“Fuckin’ kids today, amirite, Ogg? Minding the fire isn’t good enough for ’em anymore.”) some entertainment-delivery system has been poised to bring society crashing down around us.
Cave paintings. Comic books. Radio. TV. The Innertubes.
But damme if I don’t think the smartphone will be the tombstone of civilization, such as it is.
Fuckin’ kids today. Hey! Influencers! That’s my goddamn lawn you’re dancing on up there, y’know! The last one I’ll ever have! Get the hell off of it!
Didn’t need the rooftop laser cannon for this one. Five minutes with the pushbroom and our north-facing driveway is open for business.
It’d be a fine day for running if I still did that sort of thing. Instead I burned a little frosty daylight puzzling out the Apple TV HD Herself and I gave each other for solstice.
It’s been “improved” since our third-generation model, which means a remote that’s less intuitive and a box devoid of apps. We’re not big TV consumers, but still, I had to download and do the who-are-you/prove-it tango with the few apps we use, fencing with iTunes and the App Store and keeping one eye on Apple’s support site for tips on how to make that remote hunt.
You can use Siri, of course, but with my predilection for coarse language she’d probably be downloading porn 24/7.
“Siri, I was speaking rhetorically. I didn’t actually want videos about motherf … oh, just forget about it.”
I should have contracted the kids next door to handle the job. Their brains are all fresh, not clogged like a bus-station toilet with old usernames and passwords. They’d have had us up and running in no time.
When I was a greedy and impatient young pup my parents granted the opening of one present each on Christmas Eve.
Now I’m a grizzled old mutt and there is just one present under the tree, period. And it’s for the both of us, Your Humble Narrator and Herself.
Opening it this evening seems silly, especially since we already know what’s inside: an Apple TV HD. It is to replace our Apple TV (3rd generation), which no longer pulls down HBO Now, Now having been rechristened Max, as in Mad, which I am.
We generally enjoy an hour of TV with our dinner. But should there be anything worth watching on HBO Max, which lately seems as unlikely as finding a sense of honor and duty in government, we have to bypass our old Apple TV — though, oddly, it seems to work just fine with everything save HBO Max (happy holidays, AT&T, you miserable pricks).
Dig that crazy midget Xmas tree, daddy-o. And the cool wrapping on the lone gift.
The workaround involves booting up the even older Mac Mini, lighting a candle to the shade of Steve Jobs, chanting our Video Mantra (“TV Input, HDMI-1, Receiver Input, AV-1”), switching inputs on both TV and receiver, launching a browser (Which one? I never remember), and finally shrieking, “Goddamnit all to hell anyway!” and running right back to the loving tentacles of Netflix, sister of Cthulhu.
Tomorrow we will have the new Apple TV, so, yay, etc. Herself’s gift will be watching it. Mine will be setting it up.
This is less enthralling than it might have been long ago, in the Before Time. After 30 years of providing my own tech support for personal and professional gadgetry I’m having trouble working up any enthusiasm for wrangling a new comosellama just in case HBO, against all odds, comes up with another “The Sopranos,” “High Maintenance,” or “The Wire.”
I’m for sure not holding my breath while waiting for a new George Carlin special. Neither is George.
Who might ask: Is newer always better?
When it comes to bicycles I’m much more interested in friction shifting, rim brakes, and the nine-speed drivetrain than I am in the latest shiny object making the registers ring, when customers and product can be found in the same place at the same time.
I have an Apple Pencil for my iPad Pro, but when I sat down yesterday to draw a holiday card for the neighbors, I used my old analog A.W. Faber 3H pencil, a fistful of Sakura Pigma Micron pens, and a sheet of Strathmore 300 Series Bristol paper. And yes, the card was in good old black and white. (I thought of making a quick trip to the art-supply store for colored pencils, and then I thought again.)
Speaking of iPads, there’s a metric shit-ton of e-books on mine, but I notice I’m mostly reading real books lately. The kind you don’t have to plug into the wall.
This is just the yelping of an old dog who’s tired of learning new tricks, pining for a day when he not only didn’t have to keep stuff running, he didn’t even have to buy the stuff. It just sorta, like, grew there, under the tree.
But time passes and things change.
“Nothing endures but change,” as Heraclitus observed.
Izzat so? Well, spare me the change, you one-scroll wonder. And gimme some George, goddamnit. I already got too much stuff.
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