To understand the world
I can not make things happen but at least I should understand what is happening and I do this better if I write about it
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It has been two years since I started this blog. At the beginning, I wanted to write about everyday things in life.
My schedule is to study AI one week (I stopped blogging on it), and write my General post the next week. While I'm working on AI, I also decide on what to write the week after.
I notice that I've been writing 'ambitious' articles lately. I questioned myself why? I certainly do not write to persuade others. All my topics are chosen to help me gather my own thoughts. I think I needed to write more political articles lately because I felt the need to create a reference point for myself. In the increasingly confusing world, I was trying to create my own subjective reality. I have already mentioned in another post, situational awareness is a must for Homo Sapiens. I probably felt a lack of awareness of my own situation. Writing helps on such occasions.
I have certainly been reading and thinking a lot more after retirement on non-technical matters. Through this process, I have come to believe that I needed new templates to view the world. The templates learned in my youth and corrected on the margins since then are not only inadequate for the present, but they were wrong and incomplete even when I was young. No matter what Murathan Mungan says with poetic elegance1, the world did not get dirty when we grew up. The world didn't change; it was always stained by shadows. Yet, in our own naivety, we wove dreams with threads of purity to rationalize the world’s complexities. Alas, after three scores and ten, it was no longer possible for me to rely on the same tapestry.
I have been writing about the ROGUE world and how it affects Turkey and other countries for over six months. I have been doing so to try and construct a new narrative in my mind. There is one more piece like that I need to write, on what is happening in Turkey and its prospects in the ROGUE and post-Erdogan era. We will return to less boring topics afterwards, I promise.
Short Takes
We can hear Voyager 1 again
-+-+-+-+ Semafor, 15 March 2024
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977. I was 22 years old trying to do my Masters in the middle of the Hasan Tan boycott2.
Since then, Voyager 1 has been chugging along. In November, a malfunction stopped communications but this is now fixed and we can hear the Voyager again.
This situation may not last much longer. Voyager 1 is now more than 15 billion miles from Earth. Its signals take 22.5 hours to reach here. Is it out of the solar system? The boundary of the solar system is defined as the distance3 where the Sun's solar wind is no longer noticeable. This distance is 120 AU (or ~17 hours at light speed) in the direction facing interstellar wind and extends to at least 350 AU (~49 light-hours) in the opposite direction. So Voyager 1 may already be out of the solar reach depending on the headwinds facing it. Godspeed Voyager 1.
Realism in Hydrogen Markets
Power, Aaron Larson, 1 March 2024
-+-+-+-+ The hydrogen industry faced a reality check in 2023. Only 7% of the announced projects survived to the final investment decision (FID). The main problem is the cost. Low-carbon hydrogen is far more expensive than the fossil fuels it could replace — equivalent to oil priced at up to $400 per barrel, according to Aramco CEO Nasser,
The best prospects are really the ones that have always been there, according to Jonathan Robinson, vice president of Power & Energy Research at Frost & Sullivan, and they are in oil refining, ammonia, methanol, fertilizer, and chemical sectors that could benefit from government incentives by incorporating clean hydrogen into processes. Steel and chemicals are other sectors with potential. Electrification solutions are starting to get a bit more traction but very slowly. Robinson does not see immediate prospects for hydrogen in the transport sector apart from long-haul trucking. Maritime could take off in due time but probably will go to methanol, he says.
It all comes down to the price of hydrogen. In power generation, existing storage projects aim ancillary services and capacity markets. However, returns will decrease on these markets as more projects come on-line says Sarp Ozkan, VP of Commercial Product with Enverus.
In Australia, earlier this month, the Tonsley facility began blending 5 per cent hydrogen into supply for 700 homes in Mitchell Park.
The government-subsidised plan is to offer new housing estates in Adelaide 100 per cent hydrogen gas for heating and cooking from 2025.
There are many interesting ideas being floated in the Australian Hydrogen sector but, like in US, I expect the winners will be those that provide real benefits beyond tax incentives and government subsidies. One example is the hydrogen-fueled ethylene cracker proposed by the Brisbane company InfigoLabs. This technology eliminates and replaces the entire radiant section in steam cracking (problematic heat transfer tubes), thus eliminating 20~60 day de-coking interruptions (directly increasing uptime) and achieving higher temperatures that maximise ethylene yield (12% ~ 15% increased yield), while completely decarbonising this process. High-quality carbon credits provide additional incentives.
Diary
-+-+-+-+ Well past the wet season, it still keeps raining in Brisbane. I try to go out riding my bicycle on rare dry days. Last week I rode to Karawatha Forest, which is about 10 kilometers from where we live. Two-thirds of the distance is riding through parklands but towards the end you end up on busy roads although with enough safe space on the side of the road for bicycles.
Karawatha Forest is a relatively large area with no mobile phone reception near its centre. I remember losing my bearings on a previous visit and it took me a while to come out. This is how the forest looks:
This time, partly deliberately, I came out from the other end of the forest and then realised that I was in Woodridge, a fair way away from home. Bicyles are allowed on Brisbane trains. I decided to take the train and rode to the closest station, Trinder Park.
When I entered the platform, I noticed two people with orange vests (high-visibility vests usually worn by road workers) with one sitting in the edge with legs dangling onto the tracks. My first thought was that they were working on the tracks and this probably meant that the train would be delayed. Than I realised that one of the orange vests was not really a vest but just an orange civilian shirt. This was on the guy sitting on the edge of the track. He looked like the little guy in the 90s band Outkast (Andre?). The other guy was trying to convionce him to get up. I joined them and asked, let us call him Andre, to get up otherwise the next train would cut him off his knees. He did not talk back but jumped down and sat on the tracks with a sullen face. He was not a big fellow but I was not game to jump down to try and force him up. I asked the other guy how long this was going on and he said that he came in just before I did. He had a East European accent. The station loudspeakers then announced that the next train was due in the next five minutes going towards the City, along the tracks where Andre was sitting. I did not think we could stop the train by waving at it. Looking around, I noticed a so-called “help” button. Luckily someone answered when I pushed the button and said that they would handle it when I explained the situation. We waited another 10 minutes. The guy I talked to must have stopped the trains because no train passed in either direction. Then three policemen came. They talked to the guy for a while. He finally came up on his own accord. The police did not rough him up but continued talking to him. They probably were trying to decide whether to take him to the precinct or the nearby Logan Hospital. In the meantime, my train came and I hopped on. This was my good civic deed for that day.
Pascal Hagi
-+-+-+-+ We are trying to get Pascal and Hagi eat their greens in addition to the lorikeet meal we feed them outside. I have found that they only do a few nibbles when leaves are lying flat. Therefore, I use pegs and ties to make the leaves stand upright.
Here is a typical evening in the lives of Pascal and Hagi. They just flied in. Hagi got scared for some reason and Pascal is trying to tell him to calm down. They are safe he says, “No worries. Mummy is here”. This is what Meliz used to tell Pascal when Pascal got frightened by the crows cawing nearby and Pascal uses that as a mantra to calm himself and Hagi when there is a disturbance:
They eat the flesh in between the veins on the leaves and leave the skeleton as below:
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Books I read
Mona Lisa Overdrive, William Gibson
This is the last one of William Gibson’s Neuromancer trilogy. It is probably the easiest to read in the series but this is probably because we know all the main themes and most characters are familiar from the previous book. Angie Mitchell, the daughter of the Maas scientist in the second book, is now a stim celebrity, which is similar to a movie actress today but you do not watch the movies on a screen you live them in VR. Count Zero, also from Book Two, is hiding in a place away from the net. And Molly is back from Book One and goes by the name Sally, twenty years older but as tough even tougher. The heiress to the Tessier-Ashpool, which is the conglomorate Case destroyed in Book One with Molly’s help is back now for revenge. There are two new characters, both teenagers. One is Mona, a prostitute from US slums, who is brought to London for a nefarious plot by the Tessier heiress; and there is Kumiko, the daughter of a Yakuza Chief, who sends her daughter away to London to protect her.
Although the book was published in 1988, the tech references are hardly dated. This is because Gibson mostly sticks to the functionalities not the nuts and bolts technologies. Elon Musk’s recent Neuralink hook-up success suggests that it might be possible to connect to the web through a direct link through our neural system. In the book, this happens by electrodes placed on the head. It is much less intrusive than Neuralink of course and who knows, it might be possible to do so in the future.
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Agatha Christie, Sleeping Murder
I also read the next book in Miss Marple series: Sleeping Murder. Agatha Christie wrote this book during the Second World War but it was only published in 1976 after her death. Gwenda Reed, a newly-wed New Zealand girl, is looking for a house in UK along the south coast. She inspects a few houses and one of them feels like home and she buys it. The book starts like a haunted house story. While waiting for her husband to join her, Mrs Reed starts feeling bad about parts of the house and inexplicably she seems to know more about some of its hidden features. It is not a supernatural story of course and Miss Marple, who is Mr Reed’s aunt comes on scene and sorts out the mystery.
Mr and Mrs Reed call Britain their home, although they are from New Zealand. I am not sure if New Zealanders and Australians still called Britain their true homes in 1940s. Agatha Christie thought they did. They certainly do not do so today.
Telli Telli is a beautiful poem by Murathan Mungan immortalised by Yeni Türkü as a popular song. Unfortunately, I could not find a good translation online. I will try to translate the two lines I alluded to in the text:
Yenik düşüyor her şey hayata
Biz büyüdük ve kirlendi dünya
All lose against time
We have grown up and the world turned to dirt“Hasan Tan was assigned to METU rectorship on 14 February 1977. METU students and academicians reactions to this designation speeded up gradually and a 9 month-boycott took place. During these protests, numerous acts of violence happened. Consequently, some of the students and so-called workers employed by Hasan Tan were killed. Finally, Nuri Saryal was assigned to rectorship after the resignation of Hasan Tan on 5 October 1977.” (Bilkent University Repository)
This is called heliopause