The insurance challenges are now making it more expensive and difficult for some utilities to attract the capital required to harden their grids
The grids they’ve been refusing to maintain or harden for decades, those grids? Given their past history, they wouldn’t be acting now unless there was pressure on them - they’d just be handing out another round of executive bonuses and stock dividends.
That’s been a general movement away from rural America for decades (and people have been leaving the countryside to make their fortune in the big city for centuries). However, this line stood out to me because of the timeframe cited:
A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023.
Maybe I’m just still bitter, but maybe they should have tried social distancing, wearing masks, and getting vaccinated.
I think Sweetdisc Chomp is Honey Nut Cheerios.
One of my friend’s life ambitions was to own a Jaguar, and he finally managed to buy a used one. He called his insurance agent to add the car to his policy. The agent was like, “Oh, a second car, a Jaguar, no problem. How many miles do you think you’ll be putting on it each year? Five thousand should be plenty, yeah?”
And my friend is like, "No! I’m fixing it up and driving it everywhere! I need lots of miles!. and the insurance agent is very quiet and then suggests starting with 5k miles and see how it goes. Whatever, my friend thinks, this guy just doesn’t understand the allure of the Jaguar!
He fixes it up, gets it running, here about three blocks from the house and it breaks down. Pushes it home, fixes it up again, gets about five blocks. This goes on for months.
Eventually, my friend changes his car insurance back to 5k per year, and acknowledges that he’ll never ever ever reach that much. It’s mostly a garage princess, not (entirely) out of a desire to keep the body fresh, but more because it constantly needs babying.
I’m not sure your dad’s Jaguar is any better.