Coffee and Provocation

 
Darwin Bats Last, But God Does Like a Laugh
American Cardinal Raymond Burke, who has tried to to convince people the world over to avoid their social obligation to get vaccinated, has come down with Covid and is on a ventilator. 

Releasing 15,000 Year Old Viruses

The melting glaciers of Tibet are now releasing 15,000 year-old viruses back into circulation.  A good start for a horror movie?

Norway is Rapidly Switching to Electric Cars

In 2020, all-electric cars hit a record 54% market share of Norway’s total new cars sales, but that nation is on pace to crush those results in 2021.The latest data from July shows electric cars have a 64% market share in Norway, and 58% for the year so far.  Pure gasoline and diesel, combined, totaled just 8.4% in July.

Canadian Jobs and Automation

In Canada, 43% of jobs are at high risk of being affected by automation. Jobs include: Retail salespeople, administrative assistants. food counter attendants, cashiers. and transport truck drivers. 

What Will We Do With All the Corn? 

About 40% percent of America's corn crop is now turned into ethanol to mix with gasoline -- a demand likely to plummet as all-electric vehicles take hold. 

What Will We Do With the Massive Parking Lots?

Self-driving cars, taxis, and trucks may hammer the need for massive parking lots, while speeding vehicle innovation as entire fleets of high-mileage constant-use vehicles will turn over every two years.

Collapsing Rural vs Vibrant Urban

From CNN: "Political and population trends are colliding as the steadily escalating tension between red states and their blue cities across the Sun Belt is reaching a breaking point over the volatile issue of school masking... The effort by statewide GOP leaders in multiple states to strip local Democratic officials of their authority over masking "is very consistent with what we've been seeing" for years, says David Damore, a University of Nevada at Las Vegas political scientist and co-author of the recent book "Blue Metros, Red States." "But now you have a public health issue, so it's upped the ante compared to a fight over, say, who should regulate Uber. Here it is something that is affecting every community in the country." ... Sun Belt metro areas like those centered on Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Phoenix, in fact, are generally among the most dynamic areas anywhere in the nation, soaring not only in population but also in jobs and economic output, and pulling further away from the non-metropolitan areas of their states... Against the backdrop of these population and job gains, the core underlying question raised by the GOP efforts to preempt local mask requirements is: How long can these metro areas be denied political influence commensurate with their economic clout? "These tensions," [Mark Muro, policy director at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program] says, "are reaching a crisis stage in the Sun Belt because they pit the claims of the nation's core metropolitan economic engines against a GOP management based in the rural-small-town hinterland that still controls the redistricting process and is pulling out all the stops in limiting the urban vote."

Reimagine Appalachia

“Reimagine Appalachia” is an organization that trying to equip parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky with the skillsets to thrive in the 21st Century. President Biden’s American Jobs Plan has copied part of its blueprint to pay for and train workers to run wind and solar projects, build electric vehicle charging stations, and create energy efficient homes and businesses. Most immediately, though, resources would go to reclaiming abandoned coal mines and capping old oil and gas wells.