Hey, just wanted to say I appreciate your posts. They give me the vibes of cracking open an old EGM. It’s nice to have a nice curated newsletter that doesn’t read like the SEO garbage that’s all over the web.

I mean it’s just filters so you can get a more relevant list for yourself. The PC-only filter was useful for me.

Decrease in new solar. Once the panels are up there’s no reason to take them down unless your roof is leaking or something.

There was a huge rush last year to beat the deadline to get grandfathered into the old NEM 2.0 rate structure. Like the article says, the new NEM 3.0 rate structure pays about 25% of what the old plan does for surplus energy back to the grid. This basically doubled the payback period for a solar project from like 5-6 years to over 10 years.

Under the new structure it’s more cost efficient to add battery storage so you can time your exports but the battery costs are also large so the payback period is still way higher than before. These changes basically killed all financial incentive for anyone interested in solar.

This is all different from the flat electric bill you mentioned which is something just recently approved by the CPUC. This change adds a ~$25 unavoidable fee every month so that even if you use zero or negative energy you still have to pay. To compensate, they are lowering the per-kW rates by a small amount. Of course however, this new policy has no limits on how much the new flat fee or the per-kW rate can increase. And as we’ve seen in the past few years, PG&E will raise rates however much they want with no recourse.

So in the end, big wins for PG&E shareholders. The only losers are every single Californian and every living being who enjoys a livable climate.

What? Wilds can be played offline. The grind is there but it’s about the same as the other monster hunter games which can also be played offline. The online part of the game just lets you do hunts with other players.

Don’t private jets contribute a significant amount of carbon emissions? I remember seeing headlines about how much pollution was being created from Taylor Swift’s non-stop private jet usage. Wouldn’t this tech help at least reduce that kind of pollution?

Prop 13 just limits how much property taxes can increase every year.

This proposed proposition would fundamentally alter how all state and local taxes are voted on. For state taxes a 2/3 majority in the assembly and senate are already required but this bill would also require voters explicitly approve every bill. For local, it would change the threshold for tax increases from ballot measures from a simple majority to 2/3 majority. Both of these changes would utterly handcuff state and local governments.

This looks great! Loved going through these kind of zines back in the day. Also, for anyone else who likes these kinds of things, the Zachtronics game EXAPUNKS uses cool in-world zines to tutorialize the gameplay mechanics. Highly recommend that game.

Thanks for sharing! Any opinion on WinGet vs Chocolatey or Scoop?