As Texas Went Dark, the State Paid Natural-Gas Companies to Go Offline
wsj.com
wsj.com
This is how medical pricing in the US got to where it is, for instance.
I think there is a lot of real harm done in this world that is done on purpose, i.e., actions that are meant to hurt people, and serve no other purpose - and these actions are dismissed by the 'enlightened' as mere stupidity, not worthy of serious discussion. Meanwhile, evildoers entrench and continue doing evil, under the guise of stupidity.
I have personally dismissed many things as merely 'stupid' when it has later turned out to be an actual evil plot with the intent to harm. This has happened a lot recently, actually.
I no longer support Hanlon's razor as anything useful and now often regard it as a red flag.
I don't have a comment on this current article as it pertains to hanlon's razor, however. I'll sit this one out.
The situation here is likely carelessness even more than stupidity, because running an electric grid is pretty complex. This was just a little... well, big detail they overlooked.
Meanwhile, they produced as much atmospheric pollution as possible, maliciously, knowing the damage they were doing but pretending it was all a big misunderstanding.
That's just one example. There are thousands, though. We could do one more I guess.
Many Republicans in Congress are actively playing dumb about the insurrection, for another example. They say that it was just like a tour, they say that the real issue is "BLM destroying our cities" while ignoring that white supremacists stormed the capital and tried to kill our lawmakers and VP. People will call the rioters stupid and tell us they didn't know what they were doing. Sure.
They knew what they were doing. They were trying to overthrow US democracy and murder our lawmakers. That is malice. They pretend it is stupidity and a looooooot of people go along with it.
I honestly have a lot more. But here are two high-profile cases of obvious malice and wrongdoing while hiding under the guise of stupidity.
A far more logical explanation is that an unexpectedly large group of demonstrators showed up and when faced with a tiny police presence ended up overrunning them. After that they just took advantage with no thought -- Hey lets proudly get on camera committing a crime. What could go wrong.
https://www.insider.com/zip-tie-guy-capitol-riot-plastic-han...
MUNCHEL and Eisenhart made no secret of their intentions in
traveling to Washington: they told a reporter for The Sunday
Times that they made the trip because they “wanted to show
that we’re willing to rise up, band together[,] and fight if necessary.
Same as our forefathers, who established this country in 1776.”
Notably, MUNCHEL told the Times reporter that he had left
his guns in Tennessee because of the “strict” guns laws
in Washington—the implication being that MUNCHEL would have been
armed with a firearm had Washington’s gun laws not been in place. And,
as described below, there is evidence that MUNCHEL and
Eisenhart were armed with firearms when they came
to Washington for the rally.
So they were not simply protestors operating on the spur of the moment without a plan.
And that still leaves all of the planning done on social media, and the communications captured by the government. To claim that no one at the Capitol that day went there with the intent to disrupt the certification of the election of Joe Biden would be incorrect.
What's a "real" insurrection? An insurrection is "a violent uprising against an authority or government." Jan 6 fits the bill perfectly.
> it would have been significantly better armed, more violent and more effective.
Your goalpost-moving is ridiculous. You've made up your own definition for words which are already clearly defined.
> A far more logical explanation is that an unexpectedly large group of demonstrators showed up and when faced with a tiny police presence ended up overrunning them. After that they just took advantage with no thought -- Hey lets proudly get on camera committing a crime. What could go wrong.
Were we watching the same event? I'm honestly confused how you could come out of the Jan 6 events with that take. "Far more logical" explanation that totally denies the reality of the raw video footage from that day.
> unexpectedly large group
Can you cite that it was unexpectedly large? I thought it was smaller than they expected?
> and when faced with a tiny police presence ended up overrunning them
Why was there a tiny police force at the capitol? The reason is that the insurrectionists had insiders working with them that specifically held back the National Guard for hours while the insurrectionists took over the Capitol.
You are citing examples of why this wasn't a "real" insurrection but your examples are direct results of the "successes" in the planning an execution of their failed insurrection.
> After that they just took advantage with no thought
What do you mean, "no thought"? These people clearly had this planned out. There were secret underground-tunnel tours of the Capitol given to the insurrectionists the day before, by Republican members of congress. There was significant forethought and planning that went into the event.
> Hey lets proudly get on camera committing a crime
They didn't think they were committing a crime. They have been very vocal about this. They consider the crime to be our democracy and they were there to stop it. Presumably at the end, they expected to win, and therefore not be criminals, because they'd be in charge of the government and rewarded.
The insurrection failed (so far) but that doesn't mean it was fake.
..they're on video being let in by the police.
From the outside, the UI of evil often looks like stupidity.
Just a small thing to add: you can be highly intelligent and still gullible or conformist. A lot of the evils in the world are also caused by those: naivité and peer pressure.
I was an election integrity activist, advocating voter privacy and process transparency. Many bad actors, much bad faith.
I learned to use messaging like "quality assurance" and "preventing errors" in public. Any mention of fraud stops all conversation, triggering pearl clutching and feinting spells (think flopping in professional soccer). The accusations then totally dominate public discourse, obliterating reform efforts.
There's probably some cliche or rule stating reform and justice are mutually exclusive. Certainly abandoning notions of justice lessens the blowback, allowing the more clever perpetrators simply take their profits and wander off to their next grift.
As shown when the phrase "it is easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission" is used to excuse the act.
(Anything you don't test will go wrong :-P )
Gas processors' input providers were on the list.
Large loads (compressors, pumps) usually consume a share of the gas they transport because gas is so much lower cost than electricity. I wasn't aware that any facilities have a large enough electrical load to become part of the voluntary load shedding program.
They keep referring to the list in "firms" instead of facilities or something like that. It sounds like they qualify at a corporate level instead of a firm, so if they're vertically integrated then it could impact all the facilities.
The dollar amount they spent also seems high enough that it may have been more profitable to shut down than actually operate.
ERCOT, unfortunately, was created specifically to avoid regulation so we're not going to see it happen.
[0]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/ercot-failed-to...