Juxtapositions – power and uneven progress

Yesterday’s smoke map:

Today’s smoke map:

You can find the map here, https://fire.airnow.gov/#

You can change what information is displayed by turning on and off layers here:

(On the top right, click the dropdown menu that looks like 3 pieces of paper on top of each other. That’s the symbol for layers.)

On a related topic, a good friend of mine in California has been having her power turned off at regular intervals, for many hours at a time, by the power company. Apparently the power grid is maxing out in the extreme heat. Everyone is staying home, running the air conditioning, and we’re having a record heat wave. There’s simply not enough power.

My friend is trying to save her refrigerated and frozen foods, but has had to throw out some items. And here I always thought of California as being so advanced. Previously I associated a lack of consistent infrastructure to be something we’d encounter on a trip to Mexico, not something that would become an issue in an expensive suburb of the California Bay Area.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/17/us/california-blackouts-investigation/index.html

And last year they were cutting power in California during windstorms, out of concern that the power lines would start fires in the wind.

These past few years, and particularly this year, have been very humbling for our country. No longer can we claim to be far more advanced than everyone else.

I would love to have solar panels and be off-grid. We actually bought a roof full of solar panels for our house a few years ago, but then we sold that house. Now I’m afraid to buy them for this house because we still are not settled down. We can’t afford to buy solar panels each time we move, especially if we keep moving every year or two! And we’ve never gotten lucky enough to buy a house that already had solar panels. I wish all houses did! THAT would be progress.

Meanwhile, Laura encountered these robots in the streets of downtown Mountain View. Talk about uneven progress. We can’t keep our grid functioning, and we did one of the worst jobs of dealing with covid in the world, but we have robots bringing us lunch. At least for those in downtown Mountain View.

Here’s the video she took, it’s short and cute:

Laura says, “There were two parked in front of a restaurant. A woman came out of the restaurant, opened the top of one of them, placed a bag of takeout inside, shut it, and walked back into the restaurant. That robot then left the restaurant and drove down the sidewalk, which is what I got on camera. It turned at the corner and I lost sight of it.”

Coming soon to a neighborhood near you! If you live in Silicon Valley.

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