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As some of you know, I am now at a startup (Smartville) designing systems that let you use old EV batteries as energy storage for your house, business or grid. This is a way to: 1) Not have to throw out/recycle all those old EV batteries 2) Have a way to store energy from renewable (solar, wind) 3) Provide grid backup during times of high demand. A while back, none other than Scott Miller called me and asked me to do a podcast with him on what I'm doing with Smartville. It's up now at the link below. https://creatingacoolerworld.com/

From a marketing perspective? You can charge more for an energy storage solution. From a technical perspective? Energy storage systems generally include things like inverters, protection circuits, battery management systems, charge controllers etc so that it can be used for energy storage in (for example) a house. For example, the Tesla Powerwall contains the battery AND an inverter (so it can be used with the home's 240V power) and a cooling system, and a BMS, and protection, and case/mounting hardware. At larger scales, these systems are called BESS - battery energy storage systems. We've built a few of them. One of them is featured in the story below, to give a sense of scale. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2022-10-24/used-electric-vehicle-batteries-put-to-good-use-at-new-energy-storage-system

I read it. You’re lying.

I am starting to feel sorry for you if you think the opinion piece you posted says that the NPR covered the Hunter Biden laptop story and called it a Russian hoax.

So you can't. As usual you post bullshit and you can't back it up when you are challenged. Appears a tax bracket isn't the only thing you aren't maxing out.

My best chuckle yesterday on another forum arguing this topic: "Apparently, Hunter's laptop is some sort of Rosetta stone for true conservatives."

Boy to Split $5,520 of D. B. Cooper’s Loot L.A. Times Archives May 22, 1986 12 AM PT Associated Press PORTLAND, Ore. — The boy who found $5,800 of hijacker D. B. Cooper’s loot six years ago would get to keep almost half of the cash under an agreement submitted to a judge Wednesday by the four parties claiming shares of the find. Tuesday was the deadline for submitting claims on the $5,800 in decaying $20 bills found by Brian Ingram, now 14, on a Columbia River beach in Vancouver, Wash. In Feb 1980, six years ago. The parties that filed claims on the money were Brian Ingram and his parents represented by Richard Tosaw atty, Northwest Orient Airlines, the FBI, and the airline’s insurance company, Globe Indemnity Co. represented by J Pringle atty (Portland). Under the proposed judgment, which must be approved by U.S. District Judge Helen Frye, the federal government would keep $280 for use as evidence should anyone be prosecuted in the unsolved 1971 hijacking in which $200,000 was paid as ransom. Ingram and Globe Indemnity would split the remaining $5,520 equally. (Tosaw joined the case not long after the find in 1980 when the Ingrams were publicly demanding a reward.)

Author Cola of the Dropzone.com Title: Just for fun Fictitious thoughts for Cooper 8:17 I landed in a field west of Brush Prairie. I planted the landing, but the cordage of the ransom twisted around my right foot and with my momentum and the dead weight of the bag I went down. I didn’t go face down but stumbled and came on one knee. My right hand stretched out before me to steady the fall but it slipped completely out from the wet grass. I came to rest laying on my right side. I managed to catch the silks gracefully float over me obscuring my vision for a moment as they cradled to earth in front of me. The first thing I could make out beyond the silks were some heifers now at a distance trotting away. There was a slight breeze on the field but nothing of immediate concern. A little mud on my palms, soiled trench coat. My legs and shoes were muddied. In the distance some 240 yards I could see a light on a barn and beyond that mostly obscured I made out the silhouette of a farmhouse. Laying quietly, I listened for any dogs. Nothing stirred and the night was silent except for a slight flapping of the chute and ringing in my ear. I got to my feet and took measure of myself. Standing there I noted my legs worked and nothing of body had broken. Mistakenly I was standing upright, I then hunched down bringing my head below the grassy barbwire edge of the field. I further knelt on one knee. Taking a glance around, my nerves were on, my senses sharpening as I looked over to the field, bordered by a road to my left, another field to my rear, the farmhouse in front and some pines opposite the road on my right. Evergreens in that country there. I felt I was facing south. I looked to the horizon of the barbed wire outline of the field and toward the barn for any threats. My breathing went flat as I sucked air over my tongue and gazed intensely in every direction. Moving slowly I took in the full detail of my surroundings. Coming down I had seen a single vehicle traveling the road some 600 yards past where I landed. I was confident he’d not seen me or the chute in the rear view. The acid of my stomach had started to sour in those 30 minutes I waited to walk down the stairs. In my waiting, I had found up front a turkey sandwich I’d ordered for the crew and I forced it down then to settle the acid. However, as I now knelt quietly looking around, I noticed a burning sensation in my sinuses and back of my throat. My stomach must have splashed into my esophagus during the jump or when I pulled the rip cord. I don’t know for how long I stared out at my surroundings, time slows in moments like that. I sat there listening on every bug walking every blade of grass or fluttering in that field. I was still undecided thinking over if I had the resolve to do what might be required had I been seen. I guess in the sheer intensity of working through my pan-acy and on those nasty thoughts I felt my stomach empty out into my lower bowels. It’s odd to think yourself fortunate in life to have shit yourself a time or two. However, in having the benefit of these prior experiences, when the feeling now came over me I quickly unfastened the parachute harness, stepped back, dropped my drawers and relieved myself. With this relief my mind relaxed and an incredible rush came over me. Squatting there I couldn’t believe what I’d pulled off. It started to sink in. It began with a slight snicker at my thoughts and my spirits lifting. As I crapped, I passed a little gas and then giggled on that, and more gas chased after my giggle. I set into a pattern of giggling then gas, giggle louder, then louder fart still and this sequence twice over, took me into a chuckle. I tried to cup my mouth, with one hand, but the absurdity of shitting in that cow pasture and having to quiet myself, further served to intensify my snickering. As I pressed my hand against my mouth to hold in any laughter my own hand worked against me. The hand being moist from touching the ground when pressed to my lips, let out its own little series of farts, that were because of the cupping directed straight into my left ear drum. All of this was too much for me in that moment and I then came into a roaring laugh which discharged my bowels completely. I stood partially out of panic, pulled my pants up, belly laughing into the open field and then cackling like a lunatic of sorts as I applied some restraint in clamping down on my mouth while I buckled my britches. I thought for sure that dam Farm dog had heard me now. I buried my mouth in the crook of my elbow but the wet overcoat did not lessen the effect. After so many hours playing the stoic, the pressure valve had suddenly blown open, I’d never had such a high, I was now uncontrollable as the laughter from the stress of it all took me over. Cackling. Cackling. Cackling grinding my teeth pinching my mouth shut. The first thing that came to mind was a pillow, so I took off my raincoat and then my jacket. I balled up the jacket and buried my face in it. This dampened my laughter and taking a seat I let it roar on for a few until I came to that point of being strained by the laughter, dry from it. Taking those last few heavy and deep breaths. Exhaling. Inhaling. Exhale -Inhale to gain my composure. a ohhhhhh, a-hewwwww followed by a snickering, he he he he he. Then an a ohhhhhh in, an a-hewwwwwww out, an another snickering he he he he he. As I went on like this I became a little emotional. Being at the edge of tears from the laughing I was a little glum at having to force myself to dampen my own high spirits. After I had suffocated this untimely bliss my body felt wrung out as if I had just had one of those cries a man is known to have. The kind of cries we men have, the alone ones, behind closed doors, once every 8 or 12 years or so. That’s how I felt in that field, broken up. I snickered some here and there the rest of that evening as I walked the rails. For a long time after, that dam snicker was friendly to me warming my spirits and tickling my senses the rest of my days. It would come on at the most inappropriate of times. This new aspect of me unfortunately served to often intensify future assaults upon me from every angle. From that point on I seemed to cackle in the face of conflict and this blessing of light spirit brought with it women problems, authority problems. The snicker was not of my own doing but a reaction. The perception of which by others often interpreted as a sign, a proof, of my pleasure in their displeasure with me. How do you explain this to someone that you do not take joy in their displeasure, that you’re not part, of that part, of the lowest part, of human existence.

You posted the actual story out loud. You're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to believe whatever BH says without question. I mean, he does that for FOX News - can't you extend him the courtesy of doing the same for him?

Another knock on effect from the mainstream right’s embrace of Trumpism. You can’t report honestly on Trump without the coverage sounding like a hatchet job, so when the majority of right wingers choose to throw away their principles and support him anyway they’re not going to want to work for an organisation that makes them feel bad about that. Now, given how much your guy moans about lack of Hunter coverage (whose misdeeds he conflates with Joe, which is a pretty big red flag) I’d be interested to know how much time NPR spent covering Jared’s far more successful influence peddling from inside the White House vs Hunter’s solo efforts. Would anyone here really be surprised if the bias was actually in the other direction?