Bleu's Blog of Miscaellany

Garth Brooks winning video of the year at the ACMs for a song about how none of us are free as long as there's racism and homophobia

Reba McEntire charting with a gothic horror song about an innocent man being executed by an incompetent judge and a corrupt sheriff

Willie Nelson being, well, his entire self tbh

Dolly Parton recording the hating capitalism banger of all time

- The Chicks and speaking out against Bush and the Iraq war, and when they got death threats and were blacklisted from country radio, they doubled down and recorded a song saying 'no, you're wrong and were not going to sit down and accept it'. (Also, their song about how you should definitely kill your friends abusive husband, dump his body in a lake, and live out the rest of your lives as lesbian farmers.)

Martina McBride - Independence Day

Garth Brooks - We Shall Be Free

Reba McEntire - The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (this is a cover--the original was performed by Vicki Lawrence)

Dolly Parton - 9 to 5

Kacey Musgraves - Follow Your Arrow

The Chicks - Goodbye Earl

Johnny Cash - Man in Black

Some more, since I'm a country fan:

Johnny Cash - The Ballad of Ira Hayes ; tells the story of WWII veteran Ira Hayes, the discrimination he faced in the army, the issues faced by his tribe (starvation, dehydration)

Reba McEntire - Fancy ; another cover, original done by Bobbie Gentry ; about a poor sex-worker who changes her own life, gets herself out of poverty, and eventually out of sex-work

Loretta Lynn - The Pill ; song about birth control and women's reproductive rights

Golden Highway & Molly Tuttle - Side Saddle ; talks about issues women face in the country music industry, as well as double standards

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - White Man's World ; discusses white man privilege, fears for his own daughter, how everyone else's struggles are just as important as your own, how people should invest themselves in other peoples wars (aka struggles)

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - Last of My Kind ; discusses social isolation, how it can lead to hatred and discrimination. Jason Isbell is also well-known left-winger, advocating for police reform, gun control, and expressing support for LGBT and transgender rights.

Miranda Lambert - Gunpowder and Lead ; a woman finally takes matters into her own hands and murders her abusive partner

Johnny Cash - One Piece of a Time ; a man working on a cadillac assembly line steals car pieces every day in his lunch box so he can, eventually, put it all together and own a card that he could never afford

Maddie & Tae - Girl in a Country Song ; song about misogyny in country music, men's expectation of women

The police ruled it a suicide. The family and local community demanded an investigation. The police refused to change their ruling.

It so perfectly sums up everything that’s wrong, but also it’s incredibly horrifying

So, basically, someone not very involved in nuclear science but still discussing it posed the question “could we retrofit coal power plants to be nuclear power plants?”. And on the face, this is a fairly good idea actually. Coal and nuclear power both generate electricity the same way (heated water turns to steam which turns a turbine) so you would only need to do some modifications, making new nuclear reactors much cheaper, and killing coal plants.

Well, someone actually involved in the nuclear industry (I think they were a researcher but I might be misremmebering) responded to the question with (paraphrased from memory)

“that’s something many of us have proposed in the past, and unfortunately we can’t do that, because coal plants currently have much higher radiation levels than the EPA allowed a nuclear plant to be operated at. And cleaning up the site would cost more than just building a new plant in an uncontaminated site.”

It’s fucking wild

My next project is on @madebykyra