EV Challenges In China -- August 19, 2022

China: Yesterday mainstream business media was starting to report power shortages in south China due to drought --> hydroelectricity shortages. Those sources stated that China would start replacing -- temporarily -- hydro losses by burning coal. 

Now this:

I was always told that "overnight charging" of EVs would be the solution. 

And "significant penetration" of EVs has not even begun.

Even in California, on at least two occasions over the past few years, EV owners have been asked to minimize charging due to electricity shortages.

Canada: I don't find this "pathetic." I just found it incredibly interesting. It goes well beyond Trudeau. One needs to ask why? Link here.

*************************
Mid-Terms 

Confirms my thoughts, previously posted. 

I don't foresee a "red wave" this fall. 

In fact, there are signs that the Dems could secure clear majority in the US Senate.

Link here.

********************************************
71st Birthday Celebration -- Last Week

**********************
The Book Page

I remain committed to reading one new book a week this summer, a habit I may continue well into autumn and winter.  

Released August 9, 2022, I just ordered the new biography of Credence Clearwater Revival from Amazon and it will arrive tomorrow. 

Looking for background to the book, lo and behold, a featured essay in The New Yorker, behind a paywall, but for which I have a subscription.

The lede: 

When Creedence Clearwater Revival broke up fifty years ago this fall, they were critically respected, hugely influential, and popular almost beyond belief. 

Billboard credits the band with nine Top Ten singles in just two and a half years, from early 1969 to the summer of ’71—an amazing stat, but one that still undercounts the band’s success. 

The fanciful twang of “Down on the Corner” and the blue-collar rage of “Fortunate Son” were each tremendously popular, but, because they were pressed on flip sides of the same 45, Billboard counted them as only one hit record. C.C.R. also has the most No. 2 hits—five—of any band that never scored a No. 1. 

In 1969, as John Lingan notes in his new book, “A Song for Everyone,” Creedence Clearwater Revival even reportedly achieved “something that no other group had done in America since 1964: They outsold the Beatles.”

*****************************
Road Trip To Flathead Lake

Tracked here.

In some ways, this was my most satisfying road trip ever to Flathead Lake. It was just Sophia and me. 

We had a great time. It really was an incredible trip.

Sophia, eight years old just a few weeks earlier, was an incredible traveler. We seldom went longer than ninety minutes or maybe two hours without stopping for a break, regardless of whether we needed gas or not. 

Staying overnight in motels along the way made a huge difference, something I would not have done had I been traveling alone.

In Wyoming she loved looking for deer and pronghorn antelope. From wiki:

The pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) is a species of artiodactyl (even-toed, hoofed) mammal indigenous to interior western and central North America.

Though not an antelope, it is known colloquially in North America as the American antelope, prong buck, speed goat, pronghorn antelope, prairie antelope, or simply antelope because it closely resembles the antelopes of the Old World and fills a similar ecological niche due to parallel evolution.

It is the only surviving member of the family Antilocapridae.

During the Pleistocene epoch, about 11 other antilocaprid species existed in North America. Three other genera (Capromeryx, Stockoceros and Tetrameryx) existed when humans entered North America but are now extinct.

As a member of the superfamily Giraffoidea, the pronghorn's closest living relatives are the giraffe and okapi. 

The Giraffoidea are in turn members of the infraorder Pecora, making pronghorns more distant relatives of the Cervidae (deer) and Bovidae (cattle, goats, sheep, antelopes, and gazelles), among others.

The pronghorn is the fastest land mammal in the Western Hemisphere, with running speeds of up to 90 km/h (55 mph). It is the symbol of the American Society of Mammalogists.

More here.