Short Circuits #4

Trivia, (actual trivia), nerd Facebook and the death of coal.

Trivia callout

We’re hosting our trivia event in Melbourne on the 23rd October and we’ve been absolutely blown away by the response — thank you so much for the support. It’s honestly humbling.

The first batch of tickets have officially sold out and we’ve just made a limited number of tickets available via a second release. Once these are gone, the venue is at capacity.

If you’d like to attend, don’t delay!

https://events.humanitix.com/currently-speaking-energy-trivia

Q

Over on LinkedIn Dennis Freedman has been doing God’s Apollo’s work, and has been unearthing old electricity system videos. This is extremely our shit.

What kind of videos? This is an excellent example — Desmond Llewelyn (Q from the James Bond films) explaining the CEGB’s transmission investment to the patrons in a British pub.

If you’re into historical electricity videos, give him a follow!

Facebook for nerds

Amongst Facebook’s death spiral from boomers sharing decidedly average cat memes to boomers getting catfished by weird AI slop, there’s still some interesting content on that godforsaken platform?

I take pictures of Power Systems (closed group) is exactly what it says on the box — pictures of power systems. It’s an international group, and seems largely full of linesmen, so it’s lots of photos of power lines.

Anyway, if these posts whet your whistle, you should join.

Otherwise enjoy the firehose of weird AI slop:

What have the Romans ever done for us?

In case you missed it, the UK closed its last remaining coal-fired power station, the 2.1 GW Ratcliffe-on-Soar, on Monday 30 September.¹

It not only bookends a 142-year history of coal-fired generation in Great Britain, but it is also the first instance of a G7 nation having a coal-free power system.

Writing from the perspective of Australia, this achievement seems genuinely mind blowing; but Carbon Brief has a great deep dive on the history of coal usage for power generation in the UK and its multi-decade decline.

Also, shoutout to the Nottingham World website, which features the weirdest gallery of random pictures of the Ratcliffe power station, from the dramatic shot above, to whatever the fuck this is?

1. Shockingly, every single article I’ve seen on the closure of Ratcliffe has negated to mention that the station won the coveted CEGB Hinton Cup for “good house keeping” not once, but twice! Honestly, that state of journalism these days.