Demographics: NYC loses 5+% of its population
New York City has lost 5.3% of its population — nearly 475,000 people — since the start of COVID. And most of them are hunkering down in the South. Here’s…
Demographics: Affecting nation state credit ratings
As fewer children are born, and the overall population age temporarily rises, this leads to problems making pension and health care cost commitments. That in turn is leading to greater…
Climate oops: Britain reverts to coal after solar PV produces insufficient power
Britain fires up coal plant as solar panels suffer in hot weather (yahoo.com)
Demographics: Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, school enrollments remain in free fall
Public school enrollment continues to fall post-pandemic (spectrumnews1.com) Enrollment has been dropping since 2014, and accelerated in the pandemic, but has not seen a recovery.
Demographics: Arizona’s 2nd largest school district shrinking it’s way to 3rd largest
CUSD says it has a plan to address enrollment decline | News | chandlernews.com We know that we are in a community that has a low birth rate,” Berry said.…
Demographics, Education: University enrollments soon to decline too
This blog has documented the rapid rise of elementary school closures, which is now extending to middle and high school as well. Here in the U.S. this is just about…
Ev Wow: GM joins Ford in joining Tesla’s charging network
GM and Tesla partner on EV charging network, following Ford (cnbc.com)
Automation: White collar jobs are at risk of big change if not outright elimination, due to AI and automation
“People used to say that the robots are going to destroy skilled labor. Well, not really. I haven’t seen any plumbing robots. I haven’t seen any electrician robots. And I…
EVs: EVs might not be the panacea many imply they are
Sadly, keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV, says actor Rowan Atkinson Source: I love electric vehicles – and was an early adopter. But increasingly…
Climate: “Fungi may offer ‘jaw-dropping’ solution to climate change”
Fungi stores a third of carbon from fossil fu | EurekAlert! Fungi stores a third of carbon from fossil fuel emissions and could be essential to reaching net zero, new…
AI: Rodney Brooks – the problems with AI
“What the large language models are good at is saying what an answer should sound like, which is different from what an answer should be.”—Rodney Brooks, Robust.AI Source: Just Calm…
Vint Cerf receives 2023 IEEE Medal of Honor
Vint Cerf is an awesome individual: For the past five decades, Cerf, now 79, has been perfecting, extending, and evangelizing the Internet. It is for this—his contributions in cocreating the…
Business: Employers are manipulating Glassdoor revies
Layoffs push down scores on Glassdoor: this is how companies respond (pragmaticengineer.com) Glassdoor is a website where employees (current and former) rate their employer. Employers have figured out how to…
Believable: “47% of all internet traffic came from bots in 2022 | Security Magazine”
A new report reveals that in 2022, 47.4% of all internet traffic came from bots, a 5.1% increase over the previous year. Source: 47% of all internet traffic came from…
Climate: Great Salt Lake’s shrinkage not due to climate change
Today, as much as two-thirds of the potential river inflow never reaches the lake. Consequently, the lake is shrinking. However, it is not climate change, but human water use that’s…