Month: January 2019

Enlarge / Kristen Bell plays Eleanor Shellstrop, a former "Arizona trash bag" of a human being trying to become a better person in the afterlife. (credit: Colleen Hays/NBC)

After wowing audiences for two pitch-perfect seasons, season 3 of The Good Place got off to an uncharacteristically bumpy start. But even a less-than-perfect The Good Place is still a delight, and later episodes recaptured the magic that earned the series a spot on the Ars list of our favorite TV shows of 2018. The season 3 finale gave us yet another reboot to the basic premise, and it broke a few hearts in the process.

(Spoilers for first three seasons of The Good Place below.)

The Good Place has always kept us guessing, from the pilot episode in which Eleanor (Kristen Bell) realizes she's been admitted to paradise by mistake, to that shocking twist in the Season 1 finale that turned the original premise on its head.

Enlarge (credit: AntanO / Wikimedia)

It was almost like an episode of Spy vs. Spy—a security researcher conceals a camera on his person to record an undercover operative who, under false pretenses and with his own hidden camera, quizzes the researcher about work he did exposing an Israeli exploit seller with highly questionable ethics.

In fact, the counter-sting happened earlier this month, according to an article published Friday by the Associated Press. Researchers at Internet watchdog group Citizen Lab orchestrated the sting after they grew suspicious of a man calling himself Michael Lambert who contacted Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton to request a lunch meeting at a swanky Toronto hotel. The suspicions were fueled by an earlier meeting in December, in which a man masquerading as a socially conscious investor named Gary Bowman grilled a different Citizen Lab researcher about work the watchdog did exposing NSO Group, the Israeli exploit seller.

Scott-Railton agreed to the Toronto meeting and was outfitted with a GoPro action camera and several recording devices. At the lunch, he spotted a tiny camera poking out from a pen Lambert had placed on the table. As the AP reports:

Enlarge / GILLETTE, Wyo.: A truck loaded with coal is viewed from the Eagle Butte Coal Mine Overlook which is operated by Alpha Coal. The area is a large producer of coal. Gillette uses the moniker of "The Energy Capital of the Nation." (credit: Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

On Thursday, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its 2019 Annual Energy Outlook (AEO), which contains projections about trends in energy—from the amount of fossil fuels produced and sold, to the growth of renewable energy—out to 2050.

This year, against the backdrop of recent warnings from top scientists about the urgency of climate action, the EIA's projections don't look great. Coal, one of the most carbon-emitting sources of energy, is still projected to provide 17 percent of the United States' electricity in 2050, and that's assuming that no carbon-capture technology has been made mandatory. Natural gas—a fossil fuel that is less carbon-emitting than coal but still a problem for climate change—will increase its share of US electricity production from 34 percent to 39 percent.

These projections are from the EIA's "reference case," which omits any predictions about unplanned policy changes. But they do contain assumptions about how technology will change and the economy will grow. In the EIA's own words (PDF), "The AEO2019 Reference case represents EIA's best assessment of how US and world energy markets will operate through 2050, based on many key assumptions. For instance, the Reference-case projection assumes improvement in known energy production, delivery, and consumption technology trends."