Well... it's Trump... again. #47, here we go.

[crazyfingers]

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/trump-tariffs-attacks-over-water-complicate-columbia-river-treaty-negotiations/

I live a few miles from one of the big tributaries to the Columbia River.
This is just so stupid.

Stupid should be his middle name. And his first and last name.

 

[scombrid]

So .. Leon cozied up to Trump because he saw the handwriting on the wall, and it spelled BYD.
The Chinese automaker has overtaken Tesla as world's largest auto maker since 2023, and they are deploying a charging system that is next level from what Teslas were designed for. He NEEDED Trump to put a million billionXillion percent tariff on Chinese batteries and cars. Everything else is just Leon random running around breaking things that don't belong to him, as requested by Trump.

The Independent

The Super E-Platform offers a range of up to 400 kilometres (249 miles) from just five minutes of charging thanks to 1,000 kilowatt charge speeds. Most Tesla Supercharger stations have an output of 250kW or less.

“The new charging performance blows the competition out the water,” Ryan Fisher, head of charging infrastructure research at BloombergNEF (BNEF), told The Independent. “It’s three to four times the charging power Tesla's can consume, and the vehicles will be similarly priced in China as the Model Y.”

Anyone going to the protests April 5th? Thinking about having the attachment made into a poster. $16.50 At Staples.

Definitely going to the protests on April 1st.

I am in a personal quandary because I have family members who are in…..vulnerable positions and I am concerned that if I pop up on someone’s radar then so might they.

I hate and detest that this is making me consider curtailing my political activities but it definitely is. I’m not concerned for myself but there are people I am concerned for.

As it is, my kids have all left FB and I am only there for sharing political info. I have a deliberately very small group of ‘friends’ but many of them are more outspoken this time around. And we keep each other going, share info, etc.

Sad as hell.
This is why Trump and other monsters like to threaten families of people who pose a threat to his monarchy.

Leon is also breaking agencies that were attempting to enforce laws that his various companies were breaking. That just happens to be about all of them because he violated labor, environmental, securities, aviation, trade, ….

 

[Shadowy Man]

A friend of mine is a physics professor who occasionally writes articles for his local paper. Here he describes how the efforts to cut NSF staffing will not lead to any significant savings, will make government more inefficient, and will hamper scientific research:

There have been extensive layoffs and resignations at the National Science Foundation because of Elon Musk’s DOGE orders.

It’s unclear whether the orders will survive court challenges. The current estimated reduction in staff is somewhere between 10% and 20%, although there are rumors that future reductions could go significantly higher.

Reducing the NSF staff is a terrible idea, even if you want to reduce the budget. To understand why requires understanding the unusual nature of the organization.

The NSF’s annual budget is about $9 billion. Its mission is to support doing fundamental science. That goal (and its success rate) is hard to measure. Important scientific discoveries become obvious when they influence other scientists over the course of years and decades, not months.

Profit, unfortunately, is mostly a useless measure here. Fundamental scientific discoveries are not patentable.

If you discover a new gene, for example, you cannot patent it. Anyone can use that information. That knowledge is equally available to everyone is the whole point of government funding of fundamental science.

A common way the NSF helps encourage new scientific discoveries is the following: A university professor submits a written proposal for some specific project. Project descriptions are about 15 pages long and filled with the technical details of exactly what is known about a subject, what is unknown and how the scientist plans to make a related discovery.

A typical project will take three years to complete and cost about $500,000. Most of that budget will be used to pay the salaries of the people doing the science as well as any equipment they may need.

A typical project will have about thee people. The first person is the professor directing the project. Outside of summer months, they are not paid for working on the project.

The second person is a scientist with a doctoral degree who is typically younger (about 28 is common) who works full-time on the project and does most of the work. The third person is a scientist studying to get a doctoral degree and is typically the youngest (about 23) and may be doing their first truly original science of their career.

Some NSF-funded projects are larger in people, time or equipment, but the above description is typical.

Most proposals to the National Science Foundation are rejected; only about 30% of proposals are accepted. Deciding which proposals to fund is a critical step in keeping the scientific process healthy.

If the decisions are random, scientists will spend less time crafting good science and, instead, write several lower-quality proposals, hoping to play the odds.

If the decisions always favor people who are well-connected, then people with good ideas but few connections will simply give up.

If the decisions are decided on good scientific knowledge and intuition about where new discoveries are possible, then scientists will concentrate their efforts crafting fewer proposals that are each of high quality.

The decision process being high quality, then, is critical for a healthy scientific community to do the best science.

Most of these decisions are made by volunteers from the scientific community. Scientists volunteer to spend a few days with the foundation in Virginia discussing a set of proposals with other volunteers. The volunteer group will rank the proposals against one another and write technically detailed justifications for the rankings.

The NSF then accepts the highest-ranking proposals for funding and rejects the rest. How many are accepted depends on the NSF budget and project budgets.

Notice that none of this science is done by the employees at the foundation.

For the process I just described, the employees at the NSF organize the volunteer scientists, help run the discussions and help provide feedback to the scientists whose proposals are rejected or accepted. NSF employees are also the main contact for scientists with accepted proposals, helping them manage their budgets correctly.

Because of this limited role, the employees at the NSF are a small part of overall NSF budget: about 5%. The reason is because most of the money is going out to scientists to actually do the experiments.

If you wanted to save money, then the best way would be to reduce the overall NSF budget, which would then lead to fewer accepted proposals.

What is currently happening, however, is the staff are being fired. That only reduces the part of the budget for staff, the 5%.

The reason DOGE is going after staff is because it does not have authority to reduce the overall NSF budget. Budgets are set by the House and Senate. The main effect of firing employees, unfortunately, is to make the proposal decision process less effective.

This dynamic, where an agency spends 5% or less of its budget on staff salary and the rest doing something else, is rare in private industry but common for the federal government.

The Department of Energy has a large Office of Science that works in a similar way, as do the National Institutes of Health, NASA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

For that matter, the Social Security Administration is similar in that employee salaries make up a small fraction of the budget, about 0.5%. Most of the budget is for paying people their Social Security benefits.

Because of this structure, the firings at the NSF are not a good way to improve government. They will not dramatically reduce any budgets.

The main result, unfortunately, will be a broken government.

No one should believe this administration is actually interested in government efficiency, despite the their rhetoric.

 

[Swammerdami]

Bill Maher isn't happy with Trumpists.

 

[ZiprHead]

So .. Leon cozied up to Trump because he saw the handwriting on the wall, and it spelled BYD.
The Chinese automaker has overtaken Tesla as world's largest auto maker since 2023, and they are deploying a charging system that is next level from what Teslas were designed for. He NEEDED Trump to put a million billionXillion percent tariff on Chinese batteries and cars. Everything else is just Leon random running around breaking things that don't belong to him, as requested by Trump.

The Independent

The Super E-Platform offers a range of up to 400 kilometres (249 miles) from just five minutes of charging thanks to 1,000 kilowatt charge speeds. Most Tesla Supercharger stations have an output of 250kW or less.

“The new charging performance blows the competition out the water,” Ryan Fisher, head of charging infrastructure research at BloombergNEF (BNEF), told The Independent. “It’s three to four times the charging power Tesla's can consume, and the vehicles will be similarly priced in China as the Model Y.”

Is that a million watts???

 

[thebeave]

So .. Leon cozied up to Trump because he saw the handwriting on the wall, and it spelled BYD.
The Chinese automaker has overtaken Tesla as world's largest auto maker since 2023, and they are deploying a charging system that is next level from what Teslas were designed for. He NEEDED Trump to put a million billionXillion percent tariff on Chinese batteries and cars. Everything else is just Leon random running around breaking things that don't belong to him, as requested by Trump.

The Independent

The Super E-Platform offers a range of up to 400 kilometres (249 miles) from just five minutes of charging thanks to 1,000 kilowatt charge speeds. Most Tesla Supercharger stations have an output of 250kW or less.

“The new charging performance blows the competition out the water,” Ryan Fisher, head of charging infrastructure research at BloombergNEF (BNEF), told The Independent. “It’s three to four times the charging power Tesla's can consume, and the vehicles will be similarly priced in China as the Model Y.”

Is that a million watts???

Yeah, that sentence doesn't make a lot of sense. And I thought 1.21 jig-a-watts was bad...

 

[Shadowy Man]

So .. Leon cozied up to Trump because he saw the handwriting on the wall, and it spelled BYD.
The Chinese automaker has overtaken Tesla as world's largest auto maker since 2023, and they are deploying a charging system that is next level from what Teslas were designed for. He NEEDED Trump to put a million billionXillion percent tariff on Chinese batteries and cars. Everything else is just Leon random running around breaking things that don't belong to him, as requested by Trump.

The Independent

The Super E-Platform offers a range of up to 400 kilometres (249 miles) from just five minutes of charging thanks to 1,000 kilowatt charge speeds. Most Tesla Supercharger stations have an output of 250kW or less.

“The new charging performance blows the competition out the water,” Ryan Fisher, head of charging infrastructure research at BloombergNEF (BNEF), told The Independent. “It’s three to four times the charging power Tesla's can consume, and the vehicles will be similarly priced in China as the Model Y.”

Is that a million watts???

I think that works out from the math. A good electric car efficiency is 4 miles per kWh. So 249 miles is about 62 kWh. A 1MW charger will provide for 83 kWh in five minutes (.083 hours).

Am I doing the math wrong? Why do you think that’s wrong?

Now, being able to charge that fast without melting something is impressive indeed!

 

[crazyfingers]

So the Tufts Ph.D candidate who was snatched by masked ICE goons, Rubio points to an op-ed that she co-wrote to the Tufts student newspaper.

All I can see in this article is:

...the student body is calling for are for the University to end its complicity with Israel insofar as it is oppressing the Palestinian people and denying their right to self-determination — a right that is guaranteed by international law. These strong lobbying tools are all the more urgent now given the order by the International Court of Justice confirming that the Palestinian people of Gaza’s rights under the Genocide Convention are under a “plausible” risk of being breached.

So, students want the University to divest investments in Israel for denying self-determination of the Palestinian people, as Universities finally did on South African Apartheid, and the comment that the International Court of Justice at the The Hague says that Israel might have committed Genocide.

So that's it. That's what's so dangerous to US foreign policy. Protected speech in a student newspaper.

There is no call to support Hamas. No call to attack Israel. That's it.

Trump/ICE/Rubio remain fascists.

Op-ed: Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions - The Tufts Daily

The independent student newspaper of Tufts University

www.tuftsdaily.com

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/29/us/rumeysa-ozturk-tufts-university-arrest-saturday/index.html

 

[ZiprHead]

I heared yesterday there are right wing Jewish groups compiling lists of these types of people and turning them over to the Trump admin.

The irony of Jews turning people over to the government for mistreatment stuns me.

 

[crazyfingers]

I heared yesterday there are right wing Jewish groups compiling lists of these types of people and turning them over to the Trump admin.

The irony of Jews turning people over to the government for mistreatment stuns me.

Yes though this story is probably behind a paywall.

Pro-Israel groups take credit for aiding Trump in arrests of international college students - The Boston Globe

Organizations that created lists of campus activists said they provided the Trump administration with a roadmap for locating international students to detain and deport.

www.bostonglobe.com

 

[GenesisNemesis]

I heared yesterday there are right wing Jewish groups compiling lists of these types of people and turning them over to the Trump admin.

The irony of Jews turning people over to the government for mistreatment stuns me.

Right wingers are shitstains no matter what variety (and there are shitstains in every group, but moreso in the right wing crowd).

 

[ImGod]

So .. Leon cozied up to Trump because he saw the handwriting on the wall, and it spelled BYD.
The Chinese automaker has overtaken Tesla as world's largest auto maker since 2023, and they are deploying a charging system that is next level from what Teslas were designed for. He NEEDED Trump to put a million billionXillion percent tariff on Chinese batteries and cars. Everything else is just Leon random running around breaking things that don't belong to him, as requested by Trump.

The Independent

The Super E-Platform offers a range of up to 400 kilometres (249 miles) from just five minutes of charging thanks to 1,000 kilowatt charge speeds. Most Tesla Supercharger stations have an output of 250kW or less.

“The new charging performance blows the competition out the water,” Ryan Fisher, head of charging infrastructure research at BloombergNEF (BNEF), told The Independent. “It’s three to four times the charging power Tesla's can consume, and the vehicles will be similarly priced in China as the Model Y.”

Is that a million watts???

It needs the time component to make sense.

1000 kW is a MW. That's a lot of watts and would need to be at a high voltage to keep from overheating in continous operation. P= voltage*current. So higher voltage takes less current.

1,000,000 W *5/60/1000 = 83.3 kWHr. My house used 23.43 KWhr today so far.

I doubt they use flexible cable 240v AC charging at remote charging stations for that load and time.

The busbars coming out of our power stations are around 4"x8" (estimate from standing under them) of solid copper then stepped to 365,000 Volts in the switchyard.

I bet they use at least 480V and bus bars. Or 4160V like the auxiliary power bus in a power plant.

I should read up on it. Fast charging would be a game changer if they control the heat.

 

[bilby]

So .. Leon cozied up to Trump because he saw the handwriting on the wall, and it spelled BYD.
The Chinese automaker has overtaken Tesla as world's largest auto maker since 2023, and they are deploying a charging system that is next level from what Teslas were designed for. He NEEDED Trump to put a million billionXillion percent tariff on Chinese batteries and cars. Everything else is just Leon random running around breaking things that don't belong to him, as requested by Trump.

The Independent

The Super E-Platform offers a range of up to 400 kilometres (249 miles) from just five minutes of charging thanks to 1,000 kilowatt charge speeds. Most Tesla Supercharger stations have an output of 250kW or less.

“The new charging performance blows the competition out the water,” Ryan Fisher, head of charging infrastructure research at BloombergNEF (BNEF), told The Independent. “It’s three to four times the charging power Tesla's can consume, and the vehicles will be similarly priced in China as the Model Y.”

Is that a million watts???

It needs the time component to make sense.

1000 kW is a MW. That's a lot of watts and would need to be at a high voltage to keep from overheating in continous operation. P= voltage*current. So higher voltage takes less current.

1,000,000 W *5/60/1000 = 83.3 kWHr. My house used 23.43 KWhr today so far.

I doubt they use flexible cable 240v AC charging at remote charging stations for that load and time.

The busbars coming out of our power stations are around 4"x8" (estimate from standing under them) of solid copper then stepped to 365,000 Volts in the switchyard.

I bet they use at least 480V and bus bars. Or 4160V like the auxiliary power bus in a power plant.

I should read up on it. Fast charging would be a game changer if they control the heat.

Even megawatt charging rates are slow by comparison to liquid hydrocarbon refuelling.

I did the maths on this a while back:

A litre of gasoline provides 31.5MJ of energy, and in the US a pump transfers 38 litres (10 USgal) per minute, or 0.633 litres per second.

That's an energy throughput of 31.5MJ/l x 0.633 l/s = 19.95MW

That's equivalent to the electricity needed to power about 16,400 homes.

It seems highly implausible that the average motorist would ever have ready access to a 20MW electricity charger for his car, or to a battery that could charge at that rate without exploding.

And US gasoline pumps are, by law, slow. In the civilised world, petrol pumps can deliver 30% more (50l/minute). Hi-flow diesel pumps used to fill trucks and buses are even faster - between 80 and 120 litres per minute.

120 litres per minute of diesel fuel is an energy transfer rate of about 76MW.

By comparison, the fastest 3-phase AC chargers for the Tesla model 3 charge at 11kW; Pumping gas is about 2,000 times faster at getting energy into a car than this.

The fastest single phase chargers are 7.4kW; While a standard wall socket charger can manage a paltry 2.3kW, (around a ten-thousandth of the energy transfer rate of a gas pump).

The "super" DC charging stations achieve an "impressive" 250kW, making pumping gas at a regular gas station about eighty times faster than using one of these.

A megawatt charger is still only 5% of the power achieved by a standard US gas pump.

That's probably OK, though most motorists would be pretty pissed at taking twenty times as long to refuel/recharge as they are in the habit of doing.

 

[TV and credit cards]

So .. Leon cozied up to Trump because he saw the handwriting on the wall, and it spelled BYD.
The Chinese automaker has overtaken Tesla as world's largest auto maker since 2023, and they are deploying a charging system that is next level from what Teslas were designed for. He NEEDED Trump to put a million billionXillion percent tariff on Chinese batteries and cars. Everything else is just Leon random running around breaking things that don't belong to him, as requested by Trump.

The Independent

The Super E-Platform offers a range of up to 400 kilometres (249 miles) from just five minutes of charging thanks to 1,000 kilowatt charge speeds. Most Tesla Supercharger stations have an output of 250kW or less.

“The new charging performance blows the competition out the water,” Ryan Fisher, head of charging infrastructure research at BloombergNEF (BNEF), told The Independent. “It’s three to four times the charging power Tesla's can consume, and the vehicles will be similarly priced in China as the Model Y.”

Is that a million watts???

It needs the time component to make sense.

1000 kW is a MW. That's a lot of watts and would need to be at a high voltage to keep from overheating in continous operation. P= voltage*current. So higher voltage takes less current.

1,000,000 W *5/60/1000 = 83.3 kWHr. My house used 23.43 KWhr today so far.

I doubt they use flexible cable 240v AC charging at remote charging stations for that load and time.

The busbars coming out of our power stations are around 4"x8" (estimate from standing under them) of solid copper then stepped to 365,000 Volts in the switchyard.

I bet they use at least 480V and bus bars. Or 4160V like the auxiliary power bus in a power plant.

I should read up on it. Fast charging would be a game changer if they control the heat.

Even megawatt charging rates are slow by comparison to liquid hydrocarbon refuelling.

I did the maths on this a while back:

A litre of gasoline provides 31.5MJ of energy, and in the US a pump transfers 38 litres (10 USgal) per minute, or 0.633 litres per second.

That's an energy throughput of 31.5MJ/l x 0.633 l/s = 19.95MW

That's equivalent to the electricity needed to power about 16,400 homes.

It seems highly implausible that the average motorist would ever have ready access to a 20MW electricity charger for his car, or to a battery that could charge at that rate without exploding.

And US gasoline pumps are, by law, slow. In the civilised world, petrol pumps can deliver 30% more (50l/minute). Hi-flow diesel pumps used to fill trucks and buses are even faster - between 80 and 120 litres per minute.

120 litres per minute of diesel fuel is an energy transfer rate of about 76MW.

By comparison, the fastest 3-phase AC chargers for the Tesla model 3 charge at 11kW; Pumping gas is about 2,000 times faster at getting energy into a car than this.

The fastest single phase chargers are 7.4kW; While a standard wall socket charger can manage a paltry 2.3kW, (around a ten-thousandth of the energy transfer rate of a gas pump).

The "super" DC charging stations achieve an "impressive" 250kW, making pumping gas at a regular gas station about eighty times faster than using one of these.

A megawatt charger is still only 5% of the power achieved by a standard US gas pump.

That's probably OK, though most motorists would be pretty pissed at taking twenty times as long to refuel/recharge as they are in the habit of doing.

Given our current method of refueling of pausing during or making it a part of your routine while out running errands, I can see where it would be frustrating. It would be like pausing during a conversation on your phone for 2-3 minutes to refuel it. EV charging needs to be done like phone charging. Mostly at home and overnight. Having to charge while out and about in your own neighborhood would be akin to running out of gas today. Someone just isn't paying attention.
If the ratio of EVs to ICVs were flipped, on the highway we'd need charging at more than half the parking spot at rest stops with restaurants. I suppose some highway rest stops as we have them here on routes that traverse the country like I-90 and I-80 would need to accommodate perhaps thirty vehicles at once all wanting to pull 40 amps while folks eat. Some rest stops are quite large with half a dozen restaurants available at each. At hotels, everyone would want to slow charge overnight.

 

[Elixir]

China is deploying this in urban centers to start of course. The way they do things is far more efficient (brutally so) than in the US. Au is even more spread-out.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[Elixir]

A megawatt charger is still only 5% of the power achieved by a standard US gas pump.

Try talking an EV owner into putting gasoline in their car.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So .. Leon cozied up to Trump because he saw the handwriting on the wall, and it spelled BYD.
The Chinese automaker has overtaken Tesla as world's largest auto maker since 2023, and they are deploying a charging system that is next level from what Teslas were designed for. He NEEDED Trump to put a million billionXillion percent tariff on Chinese batteries and cars. Everything else is just Leon random running around breaking things that don't belong to him, as requested by Trump.

The Independent

The Super E-Platform offers a range of up to 400 kilometres (249 miles) from just five minutes of charging thanks to 1,000 kilowatt charge speeds. Most Tesla Supercharger stations have an output of 250kW or less.

“The new charging performance blows the competition out the water,” Ryan Fisher, head of charging infrastructure research at BloombergNEF (BNEF), told The Independent. “It’s three to four times the charging power Tesla's can consume, and the vehicles will be similarly priced in China as the Model Y.”

Is that a million watts???

It needs the time component to make sense.

1000 kW is a MW. That's a lot of watts and would need to be at a high voltage to keep from overheating in continous operation. P= voltage*current. So higher voltage takes less current.

1,000,000 W *5/60/1000 = 83.3 kWHr. My house used 23.43 KWhr today so far.

I doubt they use flexible cable 240v AC charging at remote charging stations for that load and time.

The busbars coming out of our power stations are around 4"x8" (estimate from standing under them) of solid copper then stepped to 365,000 Volts in the switchyard.

I bet they use at least 480V and bus bars. Or 4160V like the auxiliary power bus in a power plant.

I should read up on it. Fast charging would be a game changer if they control the heat.

Even megawatt charging rates are slow by comparison to liquid hydrocarbon refuelling.

I did the maths on this a while back:

A litre of gasoline provides 31.5MJ of energy, and in the US a pump transfers 38 litres (10 USgal) per minute, or 0.633 litres per second.

That's an energy throughput of 31.5MJ/l x 0.633 l/s = 19.95MW

That's equivalent to the electricity needed to power about 16,400 homes.

It seems highly implausible that the average motorist would ever have ready access to a 20MW electricity charger for his car, or to a battery that could charge at that rate without exploding.

And US gasoline pumps are, by law, slow. In the civilised world, petrol pumps can deliver 30% more (50l/minute). Hi-flow diesel pumps used to fill trucks and buses are even faster - between 80 and 120 litres per minute.

120 litres per minute of diesel fuel is an energy transfer rate of about 76MW.

By comparison, the fastest 3-phase AC chargers for the Tesla model 3 charge at 11kW; Pumping gas is about 2,000 times faster at getting energy into a car than this.

The fastest single phase chargers are 7.4kW; While a standard wall socket charger can manage a paltry 2.3kW, (around a ten-thousandth of the energy transfer rate of a gas pump).

The "super" DC charging stations achieve an "impressive" 250kW, making pumping gas at a regular gas station about eighty times faster than using one of these.

A megawatt charger is still only 5% of the power achieved by a standard US gas pump.

That's probably OK, though most motorists would be pretty pissed at taking twenty times as long to refuel/recharge as they are in the habit of doing.

Ultimately, this is substantially cart before horse as what in the bleeping hell is the benefit of an electric car? No exhaust, quieter. That is about it. The electric car has a tether that limits long distance driving. It's main ability to drive is also based heavily on the battery. Charging for local use is convenient, assuming you install a charger. Charging outside of local use is dependent on options that are still developing.

And for what? No exhaust and being quiet? The electric car on a gas/coal power grid makes little sense at all. We are currently looking at a massive buildout of charging stations on a fossil fuel grid, to charge expensive EVs with batteries that are non-recyclable, with an unknown lifespan in itself, just so we can pollute 20% less than an ICE... ignoring the environmental cost of the damn batteries? It makes so little sense.

 

[Elixir]

It makes so little sense.

It makes plenty of sense in a nuclear powered environment.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It makes so little sense.

It makes plenty of sense in a nuclear powered environment.

Hence cart and horse.