Robert; there certainly is something fascinating about huge piston engines.
Just outside London, close to Twickenham, the Kempton Park steam museum has a pair of triple-expansion steam engines which used to pump huge volumes of water at colossal pressures to somewhere in N. London. The story goes that they are virtually identical to the engines in the Titanic and that some of the scenes in the old B&W movie "A night to remember" were shot there.
The last time I visited they were working inside the LP cylinder of one of the engines which was accessed via one of the ports! The other engine was running - quite majestic!
Here's the website:
https://kemptonsteam.org/

Then, just along the road, there's the Kew steam museum with its remarkable collection of old engines:
https://waterandsteam.org.uk/

(possible repost — odd hiccup when I posted earlier)

Jo Nova has a story today on France dropping renewables in favour of nuclear. Good news for the French. Might be good news for the rest of us longer term, assuming they don't mess it up.

On rotaries, perhaps a "3-sweep" engine describes it. Three lobes sweeping the four stages of the Otto cycle: compression then power then exhuast+intake (vs. the 2-stroke intake+compression then power+exhaust).

In the lead-up to summer Australia's Bureau of Meteorology examined the auspices long and hard and held out for several weeks more than the US people before declaring that we were entering an el Nino weather pattern. Farmers sold down stock (or whatever) in preparation for dry conditions.

Of course it turns out that we've had heaps of rain (I'm glad to say that at least this year it has managed to be warm compared to the last three miserable summers, but it has been just as wet). So now we have the national broadcaster casting around for explanations why our BoM shouldn't be considered a laughing stock. I think they'd better try again. Chocolate pinwheels?

MikeHig,
Thanks for the pointer. As you suspected, I was aware of 2-stroke prominence in shipping, but the strength in power generation was news to me. I thought that was pretty much all turbine engines (apart from backup generators at hospitals and the like). From reading at the Wartsila website it seems that the reciprocating engines have a much faster response to varying loads, so I guess renewables have played their part bringing the 2-strokes back on land.

Was also interesting that the fast response wasn't so much dependent on injecting more fuel, it was simply to fire up another engine. It's getting a bit like my grandfather's power station. It harnessed the mighty Crana River and, when the people of Buncrana demanded more power than the river could provide, they would fire up one or more of the (I think it was) four single-cylinder diesel generators, and the lights in the town would brighten again.

I was slightly disappointed that those websites were more marketing than technical, but I did enjoy this brochure of engine configurations. A helf-metre diameter piston going up and down a 2 metre stroke twice a second is fun to contemplate.

Commenters at Jo Nova's on that Mazda concept went down a bit of a silly path, arguing whether rotary engines were 2-strokes (presumably because they have ports) or 4-strokes (confusion with the Otto cycle perhaps). Bit difficult counting strokes when you don't have pistons!

Today, Jo Nova is on to world government worries. I don't see it working that way. I think the UN (WHO, etc.) provides a smorgasbord that our own governments and bureaucrats can choose from. It provides cover for policies they couldn't get through parliament (slightly less obnoxiously than EU did for Britain).

Robert; 2-stroke diesels may not be on the roads but, as you may already know, they dominate maritime propulsion in turbocharged form. They are also widely used for onshore power generation, sometimes in CHP systems where they achieve 90%+ efficiencies.
If interested, the websites of Wartsila, Mann/B&M are worth a visit.

tomo,
Thanks for the links. Was interesting to watch Dala dismantling the EV battery. We often hear how EVs have so few moving parts, and that seems reasonable: Yeah. A battery and a motor, how hard can it be? Then you see inside the battery. Ok, not many moving parts, but plenty complicated. Would take a bit of courage dismantling your first one...

Have lately been doing a bit of battery resuscitation myself. A couple of expensive gadgets that stopped working simply because the battery voltage got low and the BMS went into "protection mode" (aka "bricked"). One was a little Bose stereo. It was version 2. Version one had a pop-out/pop-in battery. V2 required complete dismantling just to get at the battery. I used to like Bose. Have they been bought out by Apple, or just adopted their ethics?

Watched one of those CIA histories (so far). Entertaining, though nothing all that amazing. I mean why get into a position of power if you can't abuse it?

Tesla patent thing seemed legit to me (on the surface, and not knowing much). The more profound problem for BEVs in general is that, if they're to take over 100% of existing combustion engine duties, even with imaginary perfect batteries (high capacity, very fast charging), we have to find a way to deliver the energy down the wires that is today delivered in liquid form. Tricky.

Mailman,
Minnesota probably had the snowed-over traffic lights problem. I definitely remember reading about it happening in Colorado.

No strong opinion from me on the Ukraine war. Baddies v. baddies. Agree with MikeHig that Putin was emboldened by the earlier Crimea takeover. He's probably a bit disappointed with how it's turned out, but not as disappointed as large numbers of Russians and Ukrainians.

A couple of things spotted this morning in comments at Jo Nova's:

Mazda 2-stroke concept. Reminiscent of GM 2-stroke diesels, and makes a feature out of a 2-stroke flaw: imperfect scavenging of the exhaust gases means EGR comes for free. Anyhow, seems to be vapourware for now, but it would be nice to have 2-strokes on the road again.

With the Boeing 727 Max 9 being grounded this long article from Feb 2020 on the MCAS problems and Boeing's decline from engineering-driven to Wall-Street-driven made interesting reading.

My beef with the article would be sticking to empathy as a word choice. I think I'd have gone for glasnost instead as it blends the ideas of openness and trust. Seems closer to what they were after.

The basic story is that minimising costs by outsourcing manufacture and smoothing over hardware problems using software has been a disaster. Reminds me of the famous Benjamin Franklin line about "we must hang-together or we'll all hang separately". It's different when you're building an airliner: we must hang-together or we'll all crash together.

Sad thing is it's not just Boeing heading down the slippery slope.

It's probably significant that, when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the team sent to tell them to stop being naughty was headed by a certain J. Biden of whom his boss (Obama) reportedly said: "Joe can F-*k up anything".
So, having faced him down in 2014, Putin would have been confident of doing so again in Feb 2022.

2. Corruption, Democrat money being awash in the Ukraine, and thats just for starters. Then we get on to influence money from China and how they practically own the Uniparty in America (and most probably more than enough to control various western democracies in the UK and Australia and various green political parties across the world.

And no its not ok for Russia to do as it pleases BUT all these things added together ensured that what happened, happened.

Putin and every other Western politician who created these conditions is responsible for everyone of those deaths.

"All these things contributed to Russia doing what it wanted"

Is it OK for Russia to do what it wanted? Just asking for a friend...

I don't disagree with your points 1) and 3). Not clear what you mean by 2) - politicians on the take? undue influence of politicians by certain business interests? corruption of ideals? But whatever the failings of western diplomacy, every single death, Ukrainian or Russian, military or civilian, is the responsibility of Putin. He had the choice: start a war to get what he wanted (which due to his own massive failure to analyse outcomes he thought would be short), or don't start a war. He chose to start a war. End of.

"Jo Nova is on a warning from history today too."

Im having an interesting discussion with a few internet peeps about the Ukraine and the Wests need to kill as many Russians (and Ukrainians) as possible as a deterrent to future aggression.

The people Im talking to are trying to make the point that we have to keep killing Russians as a deterrent to China (and Russia and anyone else) about how their aggression will be met with aggression.

The point Im making is that by the time Russia invaded the Ukraine diplomacy failed but not at the point of invasion but in the lead up to invasion. Diplomacy had failed because of a couple things...according to me :)

1. Weak Western politicians, notably 10% China Joe.
2. Western corruption.
3. Western energy policies making us Gazprom's bitches.

All these things contributed to Russia doing what it wanted because they had nothing to fear thanks to weak western politicians, corruption and poor policy choices. If anything, these thing practically guaranteed what we are now seeing in the Ukraine.