STATESIDE STORIES: ELON MUSK X-ES TWITTER; SOLAR PANELS ON CALIFORNIA CANALS
By Mary Foran
MUSK CHANGES “TWITTER” TO “X”
Elon Musk, the owner of the world-famous social network Twitter, has decided to change the name of the blue-birded app to “X”. This change could erase billions of dollars in company value, but Musk was defiant about the change.
“X will become the most valuable brand on Earth” he said on the social network which still retained a twitter.com domain name.
Logo for the X networking site, formerly Twitter
His ambition is to make X “the everything app” and he added that in the coming months, the company, now called X-Corp, would add “comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world.”
With the scope of the features expanding beyond short-form messages, Musk said that the rebranding was necessary.
The name change will be costly. Vanderbilt University estimated that the Twitter brand, built up over 17 years and attracting hundreds of millions of users, was worth $15 billion to $20 billion, as reported by Bloomberg.
Lawsuits could discourage users from entrusting Musk and X with their finances if it expands into the sector.
So far, X is bleeding money for Musk, and if that continues, Musk may be pressured into selling more shares in his electric carmaker company Tesla, which is currently valued at over $831 billion dollars after dropping around 10% in the past week.
Musk is going to remove the iconic bluebird logo and replace it with a stylized X to signal the corporate change.
Users will no longer be “tweeting” their messages, but “X-ing” them instead.
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SOLAR PANELS COVER CANALS IN CALIFORNIA
Solar panels, California
California’s Department of Water Resources has invested $20 million dollars in a project called “Project Nexus” which involves the installation of solar panels in canopies on top of 4,000 miles of irrigation canals in Turlock, central California.
The panels are said to simultaneously prevent evaporation and produce clean energy.
Project Nexus, announced in February, will initiate construction in the Fall, and completion is ideally scheduled for the end of the next year.
The panels will produce some 13 gigawatts of energy capacity, which will help achieve Governor Gavin Newsome’s goal of 60 percent renewable energy by 2030.
India’s first Canal-top Solar Power Project in Kali, Gujarat State
The project is based on a similar one in India. It will be the first of its kind in the US, modeled after a research paper written by University of California Merced project scientist Brandi McKuin in 2021.
McKuin told Reuters that she’s really looking forward to seeing her research come to life. Her team hopes that if it is successful, similar projects will become increasingly common.
Turlock Irrigation District main office
Estimates are that the solar canopies will save up to 63 billion gallons of water. That’s enough to irrigate some 50,000 acres of farmland and supply 2 million with drinking water.
Additionally, the canopies will prevent the growth of weeds and algae formations which will greatly reduce cleaning costs.
The solar panel canopies will be constructed in the Turlock Irrigation District which boasts the longest irrigation canal system in the world, and have the blessings of California environmentalists.
With the fierce heat of summer baking California and much of the country, water and power are two essentials.
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Images
Featured image (Twitter logo)/redymzoyO, Pixabay. Text supplied.
X logo as rendered in macOS and Linux systems/Sawyer Merritt via Wikipedia, PD
Solar panels, California/Tom Brewster Photography, CC BY2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped
India’s Canal-top Solar Power Project/Hitesh vip, CC BY-SA3.0 via Wikipedia
Turlock Irrigation District main office/Marcuz Flores, CC BY-SA4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
