In 2015 we predicted that if New York closed Indian Point nuclear and banned fracking, "air conditioners would stop working, but only for poor people."And it happened. Poor residents are being told that the heat is ruining distribution equipment when in reality it's rationing and they are on the losing end - 6 weeks after elites won their victory and closed Indian Point and while the Governor tries to make the natural gas ban permanent:

If you have been to Japan or Europe, you may have seen moss balls - Aegagropila linnaei algae that grow into green velvety balls - and thought it would be nice to have. Don't do it. By caring about the environment and believing natural-is-always-better hype and thinking if Europe or Asia does it, it must be good, you could be releasing a devastating plague. Marimo balls purchased after February have been found to have Zebra mussels, one of the most destructive invasive species in North America - and I am a guy who had to try and kill Bradford Pear trees in my yard after hippy-dippy California environmentalists got government to mandate them because Asia, so if I am more worried about these, you should be too. 

I can know when I played a game based on whether or not I had time to play the game. Right now, for example, I have time, my kids are older, so "Frostpunk" and "The Division" will be locked into their high school years. Before they were born I had time because my wife and I would devote whole weekends to binge-watching "24" (before streaming services, there was the outstanding Replay DVR, and it even let you skip commercials) or playing a game together.Remember when people played games together? On a couch?It still happens but both "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance" (2001) and "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II" (2004), while indifferent when it came to the actual story, were a blast playing with other people in the room on the same Playstation. 

If you are one of the many who no longer subscribe to Scientific American, few are surprised. There is a reason they got sold for a dollar, and that reason is that they lost the trust of science readers when they became not only political, but overwhelmingly partisan. Being covertly partisan means you can even be bigoted, if the demographic you are prejudiced against is acceptable to the base.

How hard is it to get "organic" certified?About as hard as you think it would be when the companies that do the "certification" only make their money certifying organic farms and collecting the fees. It has about as much legitimacy as buying a Ph.D. in Theoretical Phys Ed in the mail. There is a good reason that about 25 percent of organic food is just overpriced regular food and that reason is - there are no surprise spot checks on farms in America and if you believe Russia or China are telling the truth about their organic process, they have a bat from Wuhan wet market they'd like to sell you.

"Hygiene theater", the kind of symbolism that makes people feel like they are caring about their fellow humans, isn't going away, so get used to having someone unqualified stick a thermometer up to your forehead and we'll all pretend your grandmother will die if they don't.The reason is the CDC, and then ridiculously hyperactive states like California, who still haven't even adopted the overly conservative stance of the CDC. Vaccinated or not, you have to wear a mask unless you are drinking coffee - and they weirdly tried to tell people to mask up between sips, the opposite of what every expert says.

If you are old enough to remember Baghdad Bob, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf was the spokesperson for Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein who, no matter how bad things were, insisted they were on the verge of winning against a United Nations that was going to dethrone him.He's been dead for years but if he were still around, it's easy to imagine China would want to use him.

The biggest mistake a company can make is treating its customers like they are criminals. While "The Soup Nazi" was a fun bit on "Seinfeld", and there are some instances where you can adapt a 'take it or leave it' approach to how you treat people, that is not where the IPOs are.

Environmentalists believe the Pacific Ocean needs more water, and also that no new water infrastructure can be built, which leads to one of the bizarrely counter-intuitive events that have made California famous across America. Despite a drought, laws that environmental lawyers lobbied to get in place during politically sympathetic administrations mean that 1,500 cubic feet per second of water must be dumped by law from the New Melones Reservoir until...no one knows when.  

In Switzerland, it is easy to oppose science. The country is wealthy, with a minimum wage 3X that of most US states, because other countries pay the bills.  Even anti-science activists like Swiss Public Eye are funded by the government rather than consumers.When you are rich, food is no longer on the hierarchy of needs, it becomes part of the hierarchy of 'values' and values are easy when you have money. You can advocate for expensive food for poor people in other countries because you will never see them. You don't know their struggle to feed their families when UN members walk down the street daily.