Yay! The power is back:

It's been a stressful week, never knowing when the power will be on or off, having to wile away time in the dark.  I've certainly eaten more than I should because there was nothing better to do.  I couldn't make any long term plans or engage in any long term projects.  But it's all behind us now.  Texas has recovered and tomorrow it will start warming up.

I would like to see some people fired for not foreseeing this issue and providing against it.  It's their job to make sure the power grid is robust under any weather circumstances.  God knows most of the country has cold weather and snow all the time and they aren't left in the dark.  This is pathetic.  Especially when we're the heart of energy production in the country and we have a Republican, pro-energy government that's supposed to be competent about these issues.  There needs to be an accounting done for such obvious mistakes and we need to make sure they never happen again.  But all of that is out of my hands.  I can only hope whoever heads the electric grid in this state starts doing the right thing from here on.

I read an interesting article showing that on average, Japan only experiences 4 minutes of power outages a year.  We in America can expect 240 minutes a year without power, and of course we in Texas just blew through that average like so much smoke.  Every industrialized country in Europe has more reliable power than us, even though they've all signed on to the green new deal.  There is no excuse for unreliable power.  Any competent country can deliver power, even if it is green it can be reliable, if the people in charge are not corrupt imbeciles.

I want to live in a first world country again.  Perhaps instead of 'make America great again,' Trump should've concentrated on a more doable goal, like, 'make America's power grid as reliable as Mexico's again.'  At this point I envy our neighbors across the border.

Like usual, the trend is against us.  In 1980 power outages were very rare and very short in America, but they've been getting more frequent and longer every year since then.  Despite all the innovations in computers and internet interconnectivity, somehow things keep deteriorating.  This is a sign of moral rot.  When there's no possible technological explanation for why things are always getting worse, you can only point to the people.  The people peopling America are not as good as they were in 1980.  In every way.  They aren't as intelligent, as honest, as hardworking, as skilled, as educated, as virtuous, and eventually that shows even in our infrastructure.  Eventually our planes fall out of the sky like the Boeing 737 Max, our power shuts off and our water becomes unpotable.  You can't deny and defy reality forever.  Eventually reality asserts itself in ways that can no longer be ignored.  The longer we rebel the worse our punishments will become.

The communist famines were due to central planners substituting their city-learned theories for how crops should be grown over the expertise of the actual farmers who had been growing crops for centuries.  They denied reality and thus the crop didn't come in and millions died.  We're following the same trend and eventually will achieve the same result, unless we wake up and admit certain basic facts about the world.  This should be a wake-up call.  Though of course it won't be, just like every other warning sign that's been ignored.  People love their fantasies too much, they'd rather die than admit they were wrong.  So I'll just have to get used to weeks and months without water or power.  It's the new normal.

Now that power is back, I can finish off the Vikings tv show, finish rewatching Healin' Good Precure, and get back to my 100 playthrough music listening project.  Life will become sweet again.  But where do I go to get back my lost week?  I don't have such a long life that I can spare intervals like these.  Ever since the Covid-19 outbreak it feels like all life is in a deep freeze, in abeyance.  Where do I go to get back my lost years?  A country with competent leaders -- like Japan, for instance -- barely felt a hiccup from Covid.  Just like they barely feel a hiccup keeping their power on.  It's only the USA that's always disaster central.  We're the worst at handling everything.