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Erm, what?

The job would be difficult anywhere, but it’s particularly taxing in Washington. Here, wintertime low tides – when shellfish are harvested – occur in the middle of the night. This means that farmers like Cordero are out at midnight, in the freezing cold, in January.

Lunar months – which determine tides, yes? – process through the solar months, don’t they?

20 thoughts on “Erm, what?”

  1. And twice per day. So if there’s low tide at midnight, there’s another one at midday…

    I guessed it was the Guardian before I checked.

  2. Spring high tides are when the sun and moon are aligned or opposite directly overhead. Which would be solar midnight or mid-day (allowing for geography etc.) every two weeks. With mixed semidiurnal tides (such as in Washington), there is one dominant tidal cycle per day. So, it is possible that the spring high tide is mid-day and the spring low therefore at midnight. I have not checked the tide tables.

    Non spring low tides should not be at midnight though, so 13 days out of 14 should be something else.

  3. A quick check online shows that low tide in Seattle on 1st Jan 2023 is midnight and midday, by the 11th it’s 7am and 7pm.

  4. Lemme see and compare the the same kind of industry in Cloggie waters..

    Work, yes.
    Weather, yes.
    Rising cost of accommodation, yes.
    Dependency on illegal immigrants.. No.
    Failure to innovate.. No.

    And over here…. No shortage of mussels or even oisters.. supermarket bulk specials even in Season…
    Mind.. it may help that what is presented in the article as “innovation” has been done overe here since… something like half a century ago…
    But yeah… It’s the lack of immigrants, rising rents because evil capitalists, and weather because of Worbal Gloaming.

  5. Ah I know, it’s a ritual. It’s a bit like these idiots who go swimming in the Sepentine or the Channel on Boxing Day.

  6. Pretty sure we’ve had tide tables – predicting the times of high and low tide – for more than 100 years…

  7. From that Guardian article: “Back in 2017, Trump administration officials exerted a significant immigration crackdown around Bay Center, where Cordero works. Dozens were arrested. The shellfish workforce, which skews heavily Latino, was hollowed out. Many left the region; some left the country entirely.”

    I.e. This company was relying on illegal immigrants to keep their pay rates down. Orange man bad for cracking down on illegal immigrants.

  8. An alert critic would note that the piece is actually a bought in article from High Country News, an organ that brings yet more Woke to the suffering US market.
    A Guardian writer would have included a reference to the nearby Trump inspired Capitol riot..

  9. “Gaming consoles are likely to be left plugged in and on as the TV but it consumes a significant 15kWh per hour when it is on standby.”

    Arts graduates and numbers, again! (Not to mention the extremely dodgy English grammar…)

    15kWh is possibly the consumption if left on standby for a whole year, but even that seems very high. Maybe she means 15mWh?

    They just don’t have a clue, do they?

  10. A 15 kW games console. On standby. This I would like to see!

    I’ve done some quick measurements on standby power:
    Laptop charger: 0.00W standby, 12.8W on load
    Multi-USB charger with a blue LED: 0.00W standby, 7.8W charging a phone.

    I don’t expect any modern device with a switched-mode power supply to draw any more than a milliwatt or two real power on standby. They do draw current but it’s largely reactive so doesn’t get metered.

  11. Anyone who borks kWh and kW has demonstrated that they have understanding of the underlying concepts.

    It’s the same kind of category error as saying “the distance from A to B is x miles per hour”.

    But let’s leave that aside. They’re claiming a SAVING of £5 per DAY. That’s £150 on your leccy bill every month. Even a journalist as stupid as this one quite evidently is would notice that.

  12. “15kWh is possibly the consumption if left on standby for a whole year, but even that seems very high. Maybe she means 15mWh?”

    That would be about as much as my home consumes in one year.

    Most likely they’re taking the rated power of the thing’s max standby power draw and using that to calculate.

    In my experience (I do 3d printing and have metered my machine) actual drea is much less. My printer could, at max power, cost as much as 30/mo – it’s actually less than 15. And that’s if I’m running it for 12+ hours.

  13. Additionally:
    “Leaving an average kettle plugged in and switched on when not in use uses around 0.3kWh,”

    WTbloodyF???? If it’s switched on, it’s not “not in use”. if it’s not in use, it’s not switched on – and consumes nothing. Zero. Xilch. Nada.

    How are these morons allowed to leave school?

  14. OK.. This had me curious , so I went digging a bit..

    Seems the average standby power draw for consoles is about 15W, 23-ish for the PS5, others a bit lower.
    Why the ruddy hell a device on standby would even draw that much is beyond me, but there it is..
    So a PS5 eats about 11kWh a month on standby, for £3.70-ish/month. Add a PC , a TV and sundries to that, and you’d be able to save about 5 quid a month if you religiously turn everything off.

    Every little bit helps, but that’s edging into pennypinching territory.

  15. WTF are they doing in that standby mode? I know old kit wasn’t too good in standby but it’s been several years since low standby power started to be a thing, and marketed. Even for TVs – they only have to power up the infra-red receiver and the red LED on the front.

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