#Ellie and David

[elliespuns]

I don't know if you're ready to hear this (I have a hard time coming to terms with this), but if it wasn't for David intervening when the clicker suddenly appeared in front of Ellie out of nowhere, the girl would have likely died before even getting a chance to make it back to Joel.

When the clicker appears, everything moves in a frenetic blur. Ellie's body locks up, her mind frozen as she stares in mute horror at the oncoming threat. Paralyzed by fear and already overwhelmed by the strange man's proximity, the poor girl can't even muster the strength to lift her weapon in self-defense in time. Her heart pounds a staccato rhythm, the sound deafening in her ears as the clicker bounds towards her. In her weakened, famished state, Ellie's survival instincts fail her. She remains rooted to the spot, a hapless victim, a sitting duck as the creature closes in. When suddenly, a deafening boom shatters the air—the man fires a gun at the clicker, the weapon Ellie didn't even know he still had on him. He saves her life.

I believe this scene is far more pivotal and sensitive than we perhaps realize. It perfectly captures Ellie's youth, naivety, fear and vulnerability. The girl is forced to crouch by a campfire with a complete stranger, having no choice but to trust him since her desperation to save the only person she's ever deeply cared about leaves her no other options. The tension is palpable and Ellie clutches her gun, thinking she has the upper hand after she coerced the man into handing it over, providing a fragile illusion of control in a terrifying situation.

But as David pulls out his gun, a chilling realization hits us—he's had complete control over her all along. At any moment, he could've drawn the pistol concealed at his waist and threatened or even killed her. But he chose not to. We know why. The man savors her fear, derives twisted pleasure from seeing her so defenseless and fragile. This dance of false friendship is all part of his sadistic game. He gets off on slowly manipulating her, chipping away at her defenses, playing her like a fiddle. Pulling the gun would've been too easy, too quick. That's not how he gets his thrills. He much prefers this deliciously dark mind game.

Ellie's mind races as the realization dawns on her—she had been so naive, so trusting. Her conversation with this man and the shocking discovery that he has been armed the entire time sends her thoughts spiraling. She berates herself for her failure, for not insisting that David prove he was truly unarmed. But in her innocence, it was simply too much for her young mind. Joel had always drilled into her the importance of not trusting others, yet here she is, on the brink of facing the danger alongside a complete stranger, allowing him into her personal space. The inner conflict of her actions and the harsh realities she's faced are undoubtedly swirling through her thoughts as she confronts the consequences of her misplaced trust.

I feel physically ill when I think about how close we came to losing Ellie. If not for David's timely intervention, I know she wouldn't have survived. But it goes beyond that—without those antibiotics, Joel would have succumbed too. He would have died consumed by self-loathing and regret. The poor man would have lamented his failure to protect the young girl. His mind would have been haunted with terrible thoughts of Ellie's fate—wondering if she was still out there somewhere, lost and alone, injured or killed because of him.

It's a stark reminder of the delicate nature of fate, how one seemingly insignificant event can have far-reaching and profound consequences. Who can say what horrors would have befallen if that wretched man hadn't been armed, or if he hadn't found the compassion in his black heart to spare the girl in that moment? The butterfly effect at its most extreme.

[nipuni]

Alec Hardy dreams 💭

A speedpaint video of this will be available at my Patreon next month! You can also find prints and stuff of all my art at my Store

[ghost-bison]

best david tennant duos don't even try to argue

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

A David Lynch Tribute in The New Yorker Cartoons by Navied Mahdavian and Ellis Rosen.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How an obscure advisory board lets utilities steal $50b/year from ratepayers

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in NYC on WEDNESDAY (26 Feb) with JOHN HODGMAN and at PENN STATE on THURSDAY (Feb 27). More tour dates here. Mail-order signed copies from LA's Diesel Books.

Two figures to ponder.

First: if your local power company is privately owned, you've seen energy rate hikes at 49% above inflation over the last three years.

Second: if your local power company is publicly owned, you've seen energy rates go up at 44% below inflation over the same period.

Power is that much-theorized economic marvel: a "natural monopoly." Once someone has gone to the trouble of bringing a power wire to your house, it's almost impossible to convince anyone else to invest in bringing a competing wire to your electrical service mast. For this reason, most people in the world get their energy from a publicly owned utility, and the rates reflect social priorities as well as cost-recovery. For example, basic power to run lights and a refrigerator might be steeply discounted, while energy-gobbling McMansions pay a substantial premium for the extra power to heat and cool their ostentatious lawyer-foyers and "great rooms."

But in America, we believe in the miracle of the market, even where no market could possibly exist because of natural monopolies. That's why about 70% of Americans get their power from shareholder-owned companies, whose managers' prime directive is extracting profit, not serving their communities. To check this impulse, these private utilities are overseen by various flavors of public bodies, usually called Public Utility Commissions (PUCs).

For 40 years, PUCs have limited private utilities to a "rate of return" based on a "just and reasonable profit." They always gamed this to make it higher than was fair, but in recent years, the "experts" who advise PUCs on rate-setting have been boiled down to a tiny number of economists, who have discovered that the true "just and reasonable profit" is much higher than it's ever been considered.

Mark Ellis worked for one of those profit-hiking "experts," but he's turned whistleblower. On paper, Ellis looks like the enemy: former chief economist at Sempra Energy, an ex-Exxonmobile analyst, a retired McKinsey Consultant, and a Socal Edison engineer. But Ellis couldn't stomach the corruption, and he went public, publishing a report for the American Economic Liberties Project called "Rate of Return Equals Cost of Capital" that lays out the con in stark detail:

https://www.economicliberties.us/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/20250102-aelp-ror-v5.pdf

I first encountered Ellis last week when he was interviewed on Matt Stoller and David Dayen's excellent Organized Money podcast, where he memorably referred to these utilities as "pocket-picking machines":

https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/the-pocket-picking-machine

Dayen followed this up with a great summary in The American Prospect (where he is editor-in-chief):

https://prospect.org/environment/2025-02-21-secret-society-raising-your-electricity-bills/

At the center of the scam is a professional association called the Society of Utility and Regulatory Financial Analysts (SURFA). The experts in SURFA are dominated by just four consulting companies, who provide 90% of the testimony for rate-setting exercises. Just two people account for half of that input.

In order to calculate the "just and reasonable profit," these experts make use of economic models. Even in normal economics, these models are the source of infinite mischief and suffering, built on assumptions that legitimize the most abusive conduct:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

But even by the low standards of normal economic models, the utility models are really bad. They rely on unique "risk premium" and "expected earnings" calculations that no one else in finance will touch. As Dayen explains, these models are "perfectly circular."

This might be a bit confusing, but only because it's one of those scams that you assume you must have misunderstood because it's so, well, scammy. In the "expected earnings" analysis, the "just and reasonable profit" a utility is allowed to build into its rates is defined as "the amount of money it would like to make." In other words, if a utility projects future revenues of $10 billion over the next ten years, that is its "expected earnings." "Expected earnings" are treated as equivalent to "just and reasonable profits." So under this model, whatever number the utility puts in its financial projections is the number that it's allowed to take out of the pockets of ratepayers.

This is just as bad as it sounds. In 2022, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said that it "defied financial logic." No duh – even SURFA's own training manual says it "does not square well with economic theory."

In the world of regulated utilities, this kind of mathing isn't supposed to be possible. The PUC and its "consumer advocates" are supposed to listen to these outlandish tales and laugh the utility out of the room.

But it's SURFA that trains the consumer advocates who work for the PUCs, the large energy customers, and community groups. These people – who are supposed to act as the adversaries of the companies that pay SURFA members to justify rate-hikes – are indoctrinated by SURFA to treat its absurd models as accepted economic gospel. SURFA has co-opted its opposition, transformed it into a botnet that parrots its own talking-points.

Because of this, the private power companies that serve 70% of US households made an extra $50b last year, about $300 per household. What's more, because the excess profits available to companies that simply bamboozle their regulators are so massive, they swamp all the other tools regulators use to attempt to improve the energy system. No incentive offered for conservation or efficiency can touch the gigantic sums energy companies can make by ripping off ratepayers, so nearly all the incentive programs approved by PUCs have been dead on arrival.

What's more, utilities are allowed to fold the cost of hiring the experts who get them rate hikes onto the ratepayers. In other words, if a utility hires a $10,000,000 expert who successfully argues for a $1,000,000,000 rate-increase, they get to recoup the ten mil they spent securing the right to rip you off for a billion dollars on top of that cool bill.

We often talk about regulatory capture in the abstract, but this is as concrete as it can be. Ellis's report makes a raft of highly specific, technical regulatory changes that states or cities could impose on their PUCs. These are shovel-ready ideas: if you find yourself contemplating a sky-high power bill, maybe you could call your state rep and read them aloud.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/24/surfa/#mark-ellis

[winter-seance]

Broadchurch (2013-17) Episode 3.01

[oopsalldt]

Alec’s “sick day”

aka he gets sent home by Ellie but surprise surprise he continues to work at home, and then falls asleep at work the next day

[thatskindarough]

BROADCHURCH

[accirax]

DRDT characters, but if I designed them

[elliespuns]

What I love about this scene is not only the fact that it was done with no stunts, and all this goes to Ashley Johson, who got beat up real bad during this part of the game to pull this out, but also how much Ellie is (regardless of how terrified she really is) so collected.

She wouldn't give them the satisfaction of having her beg for mercy or cry. I love how much she's using her brains here, like everything to get out of this situation

Because she can't let herself believe that this would be it. That this would be where everything she's done till now ends. 

[nipuni]

Broadchurch noir 🕵️‍♀️🕵️‍♂️

[skydaemon]

hey do you want to see something COOL?

this is ludwig (bbc). this is deaf actress and strictly winner 2021 rose ayling-ellis. this is a deaf character BEING GIVEN AN INTERPRETER RATHER THAN BEING EXPECTED TO LIPREAD IN A PROFESSIONAL SETTING!!!! i particularly love the part at the end where she looks to the interpreter before answering the question - the name has to be spelled for her to know who he’s talking about. rose uses interpreters in real life, and it’s so cool to see a character she plays use one on tv!!!

[nastasya--filippovna]

Did a few scenes from @princeloww 's fic Shellshock. You can read it here. You should. It's a piece of art.

[junaip3r]

[djkerr]

UNIT images from upcoming episode 14 of The Pitt, heading further into the chaos of the mass-shooting.

📷 @warrickpage IG

The Pitt 01x14 8:00 P.M.

[princeloww]