Hacker News Reader

Comment by hollywood_court | Hacker News Reader

Us Southerners love to shoot ourselves in the foot. We do it every single election cycle and then make disparaging remarks about states like California.

View on HN

Jackson, Mississippi is 83% black. About 90% of black voters vote Democrat. Mississippi is a Republican state.

So, not really, the people affected vote for change, and the rest of the state decides to give them the shaft.

California does certain things better, but we also manage to burn down half the state every summer.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-wildfires-grow-...

Today we're in the middle of a power shortage, to the extent that EV owners are asked not to charge their cars.

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/california-electric-vehic...

Some small towns have literally run out of water.

https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2021/06/california-...

I'm not trying to excuse the negligent mismanagement of Jackson's public water system, just pointing out that there are serious infrastructure problems nationwide. The bill is coming due.

I am not arguing that California does anything better, but it’s odd hearing Southerners complaining about California whilst also reaping the rewards of California’s success. We receive a great deal of money from California and we don’t use that money responsibly. And then we disparage California. It’s so strange.

As a Californian, I've been pretty disappointed by the efficiency of our government and the amount of corruption here. Infrastructure is collapsing. It is not a good idea to not criticize your own local and state government, I really don't give a shit what people of Alabama think about California. We need to get our collective heads out of the blue vs red game and just look at the facts of how governments are running. Used to be that local newspapers were popular, not anymore. No one is watching.

For the amount of taxes I pay, I expect way more from our governments. California should have cities that look like Zurich, not SF and LA.

> but we also manage to burn down half the state every summer.

That's an exaggeration, and the drought has been really bad for the last few years.

> Today we're in the middle of a power shortage, to the extent that EV owners are asked not to charge their cars[*].

[*] Between 4 and 9PM.

People are voluntarily asked to reduce power consumption between 4 and 9pm on the hottest days of the year. We're out of power!

California has a lot of problems, but the state government at the moment is actually operating quite effectively at trying to solve them. Including the issues with the electrical grid (for example our one nuclear plant getting emergency funding to stay online to help meet our environment goals while the grid is transitioning).

They could easily handle this with some smart metering, so people could just dry their clothes or charge their EVs in the morning or at night.

Smart metering is installed and rates vary with the time of day. Some people can afford to not care about that so asking people not to charge their cars might help.

Just absolutely restrict 240V during peak times then.

From the perspective of your electrical meter, there is no difference between running 2 120V appliances on separate busses vs running a single 240V appliance assuming they consume the same overall wattage. So this would be a very difficult thing to enforce.

That’s what a meter with more intelligence is used (and ya, it would need tighter coupling with the panel where 240V circuits are formed).

240V are what run electric stoves. I guess no cooking either. Why don't we just have a functioning grid like civilized society?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com