Engaging Data

Just for factual background, engaging data has a new infographic about California energy production that is useful [1] Worth noting that there isn't a lot of room for growth of solar that isn't battery-backed. California exports a ton of energy during the bright months. As a practical matter, the era of sending excess rooftop solar generation to the grid is over. [1] https://engaging-data.com/california-electricity-generation/

> Yet the whole transaction needs the Sell part to realize the gains. Surprisingly, the Schwab experiment did not model this for the "participants". The FIRE community did model this at great length though. And the example in TFA is just an example: saving $2K a year is basically drinking one or two beers less each day (so I wouldn't look too much into that amount). Most people in the west could save that. At the very least the people at which TFA is aimed could save $2K a year. Try $20K a year: most working people here could save that. Here's a nice "rich, broke or dead" FIRE calculator: https://engaging-data.com/will-money-last-retire-early/

This was a well written article. Making people aware of the engineering/hydrological analysis of a possible event is not fear mongering. It is the first step to planning. "modeled on the Great Flood of 1862, which also made a lake of the Central Valley". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862 The failure of the Oroville Dam spillway in 2017 and the hasty evacuation of home downstream was a real crisis event. Today Oroville is at 100% capacity [1] but snowpack seems to have been greatly reduced from the peak this year [2]. One could easily visualize a scenario where a rapid warming in April of this year could have caused snow melt to overwhelm the reservior flood storage capacity. [1] https://engaging-data.com/ca-reservoir-dashboard/ [2] https://engaging-data.com/california-reservoirs-and-snowpack/

BTW the author has one of the best FIRE (Financial Independence to Retire Early) calculators as well https://engaging-data.com/early-retirement-calculators-and-tools/

It's a valid question. The honest answer could simply be "yes." Depending on your circumstances. The more nuanced answer is... Look at things like The Trinity Study / Monte Carlo simulation, https://www.cfiresim.com/, https://engaging-data.com/visualizing-4-rule/, https://firecalc.com/intro.php, https://retirementplans.vanguard.com/VGApp/pe/pubeducation/calculators… and so on. To start, we assume that 1) we cannot predict the future but 2) the best predictor of the future is the past. Then we make some assumptions that we think we could apply to the future, like how much we'll spend each year, how we'll allocate our assets / investments, and how long we need our money to last. From there, we take historical data and apply our unique assumptions to the historical data simulating each time period available, and we take a close look at the results. To get 100% success, you'd need something like no inflation, or invested assets greatly exceeding our expenses. For example, if you spend $100,000 / year, and you have $4 million invested, even if inflation matched your investment return, you could still live off this money for 40 years. But you probably don't need a true 100% success rate. More likely, you need just a bit of flexibility, and a backup plan. Most failures happen due to something like stagflation or negative returns very early into your retirement. Your best option at that point is to return to work and reduce expenses until you've passed…

> By and large, we don't store solar energy for use overnight - we store it (or really any energy) for use in smoothing short demand spikes. This really depends on the amount of battery storage installed. In California we now see battery discharging through to the morning. https://engaging-data.com/california-electricity-generation/

> Does the heater handle real winters, like they have in Alaska, Mongolia, and parts of Russia north of it? Or just European and American "winters" where -20°C is considered hardcore? It handles "real winters" [1] where large portions of the human population live. [2][3][4] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/e4ff248622e19fa303d72e259e0d6201b8… [3] https://engaging-data.com/population-latitude-longitude/ [4] https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/

This is a fun one: https://engaging-data.com/country-centered-map-projections/ Click on New Zealand and you get a nearly perfect "East is up" map.

I mean, this just appears to be fixed nominal returns, minus a fee, multiplied by a factor from an actuarial table. Contrast it with a calculator like this [0] that uses combines historical return and inflation data with actuarial data to show the variance of outcomes, not just average returns. For instance, your calculator shows a scenario of investing in bitcoin and withdrawing >20% of your portfolio every year which makes zero sense once you account for variance of returns. I like the idea of tontines, I'm glad someone is trying to bring them back, and I don't doubt that your product could help with longevity risk, but I haven't seen anything so far that actually shows that. I'd like to see actual results from backtesting, or a prediction that takes risk into account, not just a fixed return. [0]https://engaging-data.com/will-money-last-retire-early/

It's extortion. Sometimes the extorting party can act on its threats, sometimes they can't. In regards to the auto industry, I'm not sure what you mean by "look where auto manufacturing investment in the US is". Most auto manufacturing jobs are still in the rust belt [1]. Most EV Production investment is in the rust belt [2]. [1]: https://engaging-data.com/auto-manufacturing-state/ [2]: https://www.assemblymag.com/articles/98988-ten-us-states-dominate-ev-p…

Why would we have? It's pointless. As the GP said, land doesn't vote. The more interesting map is the one where you weight the display by population, since it gives a much more accurate representation of how the USA is divided: https://engaging-data.com/pages/scripts/d3Electoral/countyelection2.pn… The tool on that website is actually pretty informative to play with if you want to quickly see how adjusting the map style can change the perception. https://engaging-data.com/county-electoral-map-land-vs-population/

It's pretty common in the US for a name that is traditionally associated with boys become unisex (Taylor) or even prominently female (Lauren). Typically it is an uncommon male name (so not, e.g. John or Brian) that sees a sudden increase in popularity and becomes unisex. Some other examples include Leslie, Casey, Jordan, Morgan, Addison, and Riley. I can't think of any examples of the reverse off the top of my head. A chart of this phenomenon for Taylor: https://engaging-data.com/baby-name-visualizer/?n=taylor&sex=b&…

A version which has some preloaded shapes and shows the forces explicitly, inspired by the same tweet: https://engaging-data.com/iceberger-remixed/ This is all from 2021 and I feel like I’d seen this prior to that but I can’t find it.

Starlink has a lot of (most?) satellites at an orbital inclination of 53 degrees to avoid "wasting" time over the poles where few people live while still providing coverage at most other latitudes. This means that at any time there's a higher density of satellites above that latitude than at the equator. Here's a map of the ISS orbit (similar inclination) over time which shows the effect: https://engaging-data.com/pages/scripts/iss/iss3.png

This reminds me a lot of calculators I use for FIRE, ie the ones shown here [0]. Perhaps I should try Causal for personal use as well as for business use. I've also seen Maybe [1] for personal finances, which looks good too. [0] https://engaging-data.com/early-retirement-calculators-and-tools/ [1] https://github.com/maybe-finance/maybe

https://engaging-data.com/will-money-last-retire-early/ I like this one better it at least tries to add in some health info and whether you smoke or not, which drastically changes your mortality.

I find this chart more readable: https://engaging-data.com/pages/scripts/reservoirs/resmekko.html

The answer is a bit simple. Only a small amount of Earth's population lives at north European latitudes (https://engaging-data.com/population-latitude-longitude/). Solar is quite effective for the majority of the population, so its adoption rate will have the biggest impact on further climate change.

Why are there so many arbitrary limits on all the inputs here? Alternative sites: https://engaging-data.com/fire-calculator/ https://engaging-data.com/will-money-last-retire-early/

For a quick visualization, I like Rich, Broke, or Dead (https://engaging-data.com/will-money-last-retire-early/) For in-depth planning, I like ficalc.app, and cfiresim.com is good, too.

Yeah quite a few FIRE tools which allow you to model retirement scenarios will let you pre-fill return rates based on historic returns. This one is pretty nice to mimic. You have to Ctrl+F for 'projection method' and then switch it to Historic Cycles, or Monte Carlo Simulation: https://engaging-data.com/fire-calculator/ Then you'll see basically a distribution appear on the graph with the median (50%), but also the 25% & 75%, and the 10% & 90% likely return scenarios. Quite useful to see what a bottom 10% ('worst-case') scenario would look like, and how it would affect your finances and your timelines.

This is just a single aquifer, but it does look like overall aquifers are at 86% of capacity (113.9% of historical). - https://engaging-data.com/ca-reservoir-dashboard/ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34319453

I think that what you said about the causes of difference is true, but that doesn't mean the party affiliation of urban vs rural voters is incidental. The parties, to the degree they do differ, do position themselves on opposite sides of the urban vs rural divide. https://engaging-data.com/election-population-density/

I find this* graph most helpful. In one graph it displays all of Californias reservoirs with their current level, their historical average, and their level 1 year ago vs their capacity. It also shows the relative sizes to one another. The reservoir from the article (Oroville) is one of the only ones to have made such a recovery. * - https://engaging-data.com/ca-reservoir-dashboard/

This one shows reservoirs + snowpack (which I think is ultimately what matters most): https://engaging-data.com/california-reservoirs-and-snowpack/

Yeah, I think you'd be right; snowpack is waaaay above normal at this rate. https://engaging-data.com/california-snowpack-levels/

Good question. I found this info on another page: "historical average level of the reservoirs at the same time of year (e.g. March 8th) between 1960 and 2010." https://engaging-data.com/ca-reservoir-level/

The same site's precipitation graph suggests that despite some recent precipitation, it's still only above average, rather than 'historic' for the period since last October: https://engaging-data.com/california-precipitation-levels/

I like this one https://engaging-data.com/will-money-last-retire-early/

My quick survey with this antipode map tool[0] says you are incorrect. [0] https://engaging-data.com/antipodes-map/