This Week in Michigan Was Strange
Do You Remember The Green Police Ad From The Super Bowl?
I wanted to thank everyone for participating the poll. This beautiful vista was the choice for the January banner. If you are curious as to why I’m hitting you twice today with publications, I wanted to send this out for the Michigan readers, as there have been developments this week regarding the renewable energy agenda that is being set for us with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
Back of the Envelope Estimate
In Gaylord Michigan, the DNR announced it’s intention to lease 420 acres of state forest to RW Energy, and subsidiary of RWE based in Germany.
from the Mackinac Institute came up with a fantastic way to help visualize how much area that represents, and for conversation with those who you want to alert, it is an excellent way to get people’s attention.A Walmart parking lot is roughly 4 acres. Gorilla math says that 420 acres ~= 105 Walmart parking lots.
I was on the phone with a friend, an engineer, who rightfully freaked out when he heard 420 acres, but when I laid this out in terms of parking lot, he got quiet. This next piece of information is what really got to him.
Current estimates are that in order for Michigan to achieve the renewable energy standards as required by our laws we so foolishly enacted, the state will need 209,000 acres of land. Gorilla math say 209,000 acres ~= 52,250 Walmart parking lots. That is approximately 340 square miles.
Petition to Stop the DNR
One of our Cultural Courage readers
has set up a petition as an effort to gather momentum to get the DNR to abandon leasing land for destructive use. Essentially the solar and wind turbine installations will be cutting down trees, disturbing fauna and indigenous animals. Judging from the surprise and outrage, many haven’t understood what shutting off coal and natural gas will result in further destruction of our environment as we seek out more land with less tree cover. Farmland will also be in jeopardy due to eminent domain being invoked. We can look to Maryland regarding what will look like, as I reported on OZFest Morning Mission in the summer of 2024.You can find the petition here:
The Green Police
Do you remember the Green Police ads from the Super Bowl 14 years ago? I remember people at work laughing about it, and my reaction was “they are getting us accustomed to being made into criminals over environment infractions - ain’t funny at all.”
Michigan Washentaw county Sheriff Alyshia Dyer, a former road deputy turned social worker and newly elected to her post, announced new plans that are guess what?
The Green Police.
Her plan is to cut road patrols in half, and create an Environmental Crimes Unit. Are we laughing still?
Severed Conscience Podcast Release
Sticking with the theme of climate change initiatives affecting our economy, this week on OZFest Morning Mission the false promises of stability of renewable energy and the continued threat of avian-flu were the focus. In the Severed Conscience series we emphasized that one of the benefits of being able to influence and nudge people toward solutions that they normally would not consider meant that those who want us to live in C-40 cities or 15 Minute cities want to construct a controlled environment. Then convince us to migrate there while they turn of energy sources. Literally. To meet the standards set by Agenda 2030, there are many changes coming our way unless we stop them. Some unfortunately have already been passed into law.
Audio is up on Apple Podcast, Spreaker and Spotify.
Latest Article on the Adoption of Artificial Intelligence
AI has been all over the news in the tech world. Every day there is a new development related to using Generative AI for images, video, creating music, as well as the ongoing debate as to whether Artificial Super Intelligence will be achieved, and what impact that will have. Amazingly many of the fans of AI are predicting that it will affect the job markets drastically, but these same prognosticators seem to miss some fundamental flaws that these new releases have.
I wrote software for 30 years, and despite the jubilance that the AI Tech Bros have, many to have forgotten the basics of testing. I’ve been testing out Google’s Gemini 2.0 this week, and you may interested in what I found. Yeah, this title is a bit whacky, but my career in software has been pretty whacky. I tend to find trouble, cause trouble, but have a lot of fun fixing things. You’ll get a bit of my history in this, and if you have ever wondered what it’s like to be part of a software team, you’ll find it interesting. I’ve changed names to protect people’s privacy, but this is one of my favorite projects, we kicked ass. And people had fun at my expense.
