4 Finnish engineers - friends since childhood - have come up with a novel solar & wind energy storage system that they have up and running in a utility company operation. This article makes clear what they have created and its game-changing potential for completely clean residential, commercial and industrial heat and electricity … round the clock. [Crooked Media]
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221102-how-a-sand-battery-could-transform-clean-energy
***
Tesla’s stock price fell another 7% today after news that Elon Musk’s sold $4 billion more of it. It's now down 22% since the day he took over Twitter, meaning Tesla's market value has dropped by $160 billion.
***
I found this book review to be very interesting because it tells of a book that could not find a publisher when written and has now appeared 50 years later.
“While working in Portland bars and restaurants to support herself and her young son, Dunn wrote a novel called “Toad.” Harper & Row, publishers of “Attic” and “Truck,” bought the book in 1971, but ultimately turned it down. (“Nobody in this book is likable!” she was told.) Despite interest from other publishers and years of revision, the book never found a home. In 1979, a final round of rejections caused Dunn to set aside the novel for good.
In 2016, at age 70, Dunn died of lung cancer. Her legacy, it seemed, would be a single, much beloved cult novel. “Geek Love” was a National Book Awards finalist, sold over a half-million copies and has never gone out of print.
After her death, Dunn’s son, along with numerous friends and fans, including editor Naomi Huffman, pushed to bring Dunn’s unpublished fiction into print. Huffman had uncovered “Toad” in Dunn’s substantial archive at Lewis & Clark College, …
This month, “Toad” finally made it out into the world. “Toad” is a subdued, haunting novel. It is exhilarating, often disturbing, and as compelling in its way as Dunn’s best-known work. [WaPo]
***
BBC China correspondent reports:
This doesn’t sound good. #ZeroCovid #China …
A medical laboratory in Xuchang, a city in Henan province, has stopped providing COVID-19 PCR test service for local governments due to payment delays. Another signal that local governments are running out of fiscal resource to continue implementing Beijing’s zero-COVID policy.
#Guangzhou #Covid update Wednesday: District-wide lockdown in Haizhu district extended til Friday; flights out of Guangzhou massively reduced; mass testing of millions of city residents; the capital of #Guangdong Province is going through its most serious #coronavirus outbreak.
Five cities in #China have temporarily cancelled 70% of their domestic flights as part of #ZeroCovid measures because of current outbreaks including: #Beijing, #Guangzhou, #Zhengzhou, #Hohhot, and #Chongqing.
#Guangzhou #Covid Thursday update: City officially reports over 3000 cases today. School has been suspended in 8 of 11 districts starting today.
***
An American man has returned 19 antiquities to the four countries they came from after reading reports in the Guardian about the repatriation of looted antiquities.
John Gomperts, who lives in Washington, realised that the ancient pieces worth up to £80,000 – including two seventh- and eighth-century BC Cypriot vases – that he had inherited from his grandmother could have come from illicit excavations because they have no collecting history. [TheGuardian.com]
***
It seems that Economics Professor Victoria Bateman of Cambridge University was correct when she told Brits before the Brexit vote that Brexit would leave Britain naked:
Denmark: British man being deported over late post-Brexit paperwork [The Guardian reports]
Phil Russell says he was four days overdue sending an application to stay he did not know he needed
***
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Ballot Question 1 officially passed on Thursday morning, adding an equal rights amendment to the Nevada Constitution.
***
One of the most surprising & stunning events that I was lucky enough to be alive to see:
November 9, 1989: A (botched, as it turns out) announcement by the East German government that it would open checkpoints along the Berlin Wall leads a throng of East Berlin residents to the wall in an attempt to get into West Berlin. Amid the crowds of people trying to cross, some began chipping pieces off of the wall, and over the next several weeks what had been the most in-your-face symbol of the Cold War was torn down.
Happy to learn about Toad. Geek Love is one of my favorites .