NBC News reported last week what avgeeks and ICE watchers have been talking about for months: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been flying around on a recently acquired luxury Boeing 737. DHS told NBC the jet, which is worth an estimated $70 million and comes with a queen bed, showers, a kitchen, and four flat-screen TVs, would serve a “dual purpose” for Cabinet-level official travel and deportations.

Obviously, this is bullshit – flight data shows it has never done anything resembling a deportation – but the situation is actually so much worse than this one 737. Over the last four months, Noem’s DHS has acquired at least nine new airplanes, with another on the way. Of those, half appear to be luxury jets.

The latest, a 2016 Gulfstream 650, popped onto my radar (pun intended) on Feb. 20, flying from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to Nashville and back, registered to DHS. A day earlier, it had been registered to Valkyrie Aviation Holdings Group, part of a shadowy network of shell companies connected to MAGA-aligned former State Department officials. Together, these companies have gotten more than a billion dollars in DHS contracts in a matter of months.

This story will put together reporting from Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, The War Zone, and The Washington Post, along with new information and my own reporting, to reveal the full scale of DHS's fleet expansion.

Last August, DHS boasted that “Noem personally reviews and approves any contract above $100,000.” Like the stockpiling of weapons and fast-tracked warehouse purchases all over the country, the rapid acquisition of these aircraft shows that Noem’s DHS is swimming in cash and out of control.

DHS did not respond to a detailed list of questions about the facts in this story, or to follow-up queries.

OpMed

But first, a little back story.

William A. Walters III ran the State Department’s Operational Medicine directorate from its inception during the Obama years through the first Trump administration. Also called “OpMed,” the team was essentially a medevac unit that arose from the ashes of Benghazi. Walters, a former Army surgeon, stayed on when Biden came in, and in May 2021, Vanity Fair wrote a glowing piece describing how his team used their emergency logistics skills and sheer bravado to deliver the COVID-19 vaccine to embassies all over the world, even when it ruffled diplomatic feathers.

Three months after the first story, the magazine published a bizarre follow-up. Walters had abruptly quit OpMed after the new Secretary of State decided to scrap an expansion promised by his predecessor. What’s more, Walters claimed – with little evidence – that the US’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan was a direct result of that decision.

Many OpMed staffers appear to have followed Walters’ out the door, including his deputy, Taundria Cappel. Over the next few years, Walters and Cappel started at least a dozen companies, all registered to the same Arlington, VA, office building. All of the companies also had mythological names: Soteria Solutions, Atlas Management Services, Salus Worldwide Solutions.

Somewhere in there, Walters seems to have gone full MAGA. In November 2024, a few weeks after the election, he accepted a “Patriot Award” at a Mar-a-Lago gala attended by the former president president-elect.

Salus Worldwide Solutions

The next summer, DHS handed a monster contract worth up to $915 million to Salus Worldwide Solutions to provide flights for immigrants wishing to “self-deport.”

The contract was weird for number of reasons, as Dan Friedman and Nick Schwellenbach revealed in Mother Jones. First, it was awarded by DHS’s Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans, not by ICE, which typically manages all immigrant removal flights. Second, at the time the office awarded the contract, it was headed by a former State Department colleague of Walters and Cappel, who, they reported took meetings at Salus’s office. Third, and perhaps most glaring, Walters and Cappel have no aviation industry experience. Sure, they chartered many planes as medical professionals at OpMed, but that does not aviation industry experience make.

ICE’s current flight broker, CSI Aviation – which has its own shady provenance and a $1.5 billion contract – sued, alleging the Salus contract was noncompetitive and improperly awarded. It’s unclear how the case has impacted the fulfillment of the contract; in a joint status report filed Feb. 19, CSI and DHS told the court they had not been able to come to a mutual agreement about how to move forward.

Walters and Cappel did not respond to requests for comment. An attempt to visit their Arlington office was not successful; there was no receptionist in the building lobby, no one came in or out in the hour I spent there, and elevators were only accessible with a key card.

Daedalus Aviation

Next, DHS signed a $140 million contract with Daedalus Aviation to facilitate the purchase of up to six Boeing 737s to start ICE’s own deportation fleet, first reported in mid-December by Marianne LeVine and Jacob Bogage at the Washington Post. Daedalus was headed up by Walters and Cappel, the same people behind Salus, they noted.

Over the Christmas break, a source at Avelo Airlines told me the budget airline had been offered a huge sum for the immediate sale of a handful of its Boeing 737s. The source did not know who the buyers were, but over the next few days, I watched the Federal Aviation Administration’s aircraft registry as five Avelo planes quietly transferred ownership to Daedalus.

I was still pitching this story to outlets in early January when Avelo announced it was getting out of the ICE flight racket. “We won! We stopped Avelo’s ICE flights,” some of the wonderful activists in the boycott movement told me. I did not have the heart to tell them that while their movement certainly played a role in Avelo’s decision to cut bait, these planes would in all likelihood, keep flying shackled people for ICE.

On Jan. 10 and 11, all five planes shed their Avelo callsigns and flew down to Lake Charles, LA – a common stop for planes in need of a new paint job and some remodeling. And what do you know, another Boeing 737 I was familiar with had recently spent time there.

Valkyrie Aviation Holdings Group

Back in mid-December, Joseph Trevithick at the military news site The War Zone (TWZ) did a deep dive on the mysterious 737 that had recently emerged from Lake Charles with a DHS seal, “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” written on the side, and a livery identical to the one Trump had picked in his first term for the new Air Force One, which Biden had subsequently scrapped as too expensive.

New DHS plane 👀 pic.twitter.com/B64S1THp4B

— Grokius Maximus ⚔️ (@alx) December 14, 2025

As avgeeks noted at the time, this tired livery style is just an upside-down version of Trump’s own plane, with an extra gold stripe and clip art-style wavy flag tossed in for good tacky measure. The plane also had a custom registration number: N471US. Might the “47” be an homage to a certain 47th president?

The planes’ then-owner, Valkyrie Aviation Holdings Group, had reserved eight more n-numbers: N472US through N479US, Trevithick noted. He also pointed out the WaPo story about Daedalus and the DHS deportation fleet, but given this 737’s luxury interior, it seemed “ill-suited to conducting deportation flights,” he wrote, and could not say if Daedalus and Valkyrie were related.

But here’s the thing: Valkyrie’s office is just one floor up from the Daedalus office in the same darn building as all of Walters and Cappel’s other ventures. Daedalus also recently posted a job listing for Gulfstream 650 pilots, despite not owning any G650s. But Valkyrie does!

Or at least, it did, for a single day last week, when it flew from Dallas’s Love Field to Dulles, Atlanta, Charleston, and Joint Base Andrews. The next day it was DHS property.

And, as I write this, another one just stepped into the light. Some time in the last few months, it’s hard to tell when, the reserved n-number N472US was also assigned to a G650. This one was registered to a non-mythically themed company – Vigilant Aviation Holdings Group – at a Delaware address frequently used by anonymous shell companies. This plane has spent the last month at Ardmore Municipal Airport in Oklahoma – yet another place airplanes go when they need a refresh.

It appears to have just completed its metamorphosis, flying to Love Field, according to public flight data. DHS is listed as its owner.

C104

So that’s eight planes – the five Avelo 737s, the luxury 737, and the two G650s. We’re still not done! Because last October, during the longest government shutdown in American history, Noem’s DHS announced it was replacing one of the US Coast Guard’s Gulfstream 550s – the ones already designated for DHS and USCG leadership travel – with two Gulfstream 700s.

One of these G550s was, by all accounts, getting a little old, and $50 million had already been budgeted for its replacement. Noem picked a time when her 260,000 employees weren’t receiving paychecks to announce the replacement would be upgraded and doubled. The first of these G7s, which uses the callsign C104, arrived on Jan. 29, according to flight data.

And it looked ... strange.

This is what the airframes in USCG’s fleet usually look like, including the C102 jet Noem had been using:

And this is what the new “Coast Guard” jet looks like, according to flight data and the DHS Flickr feed:

No orange. No light blue. No USCG seal or “Semper Paratus.” Just upside-down Trump.

The second G7 is scheduled for delivery later this year. The USCG did not respond to a request for comment.

The Cost

Ordinarily in my ICE flight reporting, the cost to taxpayers is one of the things I write about the least, because the enormous suffering of the migrants onboard is always so much more important. But seeing as how not one damn deportation has occurred on DHS’s new fleet, let’s get into the public purse.

First, the G7s. We know $50 million had been budgeted for a replacement. The New York Times reports the two upgraded jets will cost $172 million. From where in the USCG budget is that extra $122 million coming? We have no idea! But there’s a Coast Guard member on Reddit whose office hasn't had heat all winter and was just told the funds to fix the HVAC system had dried up, and I don’t think he’s going to be happy about the new jets.

Next, the 737s. Daedalus’s contract to acquire six and stand up an airline was for $140 million. That was always going to be aspirational, but with the luxury 737 alone costing half that, it’s downright impossible. And that doesn’t even factor in the cost of refurbishment or hiring and training the crew they are trying to hire and train. Is that coming from the $915 million Salus contract in the middle of a lawsuit? We have no idea!

DHS tried to convince NBC News that using the luxury 737 for deportations would “sav[e] the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars,” because, “this plane flies at 40 percent cheaper than what the military aircraft flies for ICE deportation flights.” Which, honestly, was a pathetic attempt at the grift.

Military ICE flights are rare, and among the most expensive – some estimates are as high as $28,500 per flight hour. Forty percent off of $28,500 makes $17,000 an hour – still more than CSI Aviation charges for a 737 – $15,865 per flight hour – on its most recent price list. And the latter will fit more passengers.

Lastly, let me say something about where these planes are going. I’ve logged every flight for the USCG jets and the luxury 737 going back to October, and while it is often not possible to know who is using which plane and for what reason, let me just say: Those 17 trips to Noem’s hometown of Watertown, SD, in the last 18 weeks? That was her.

If she misses it so much, perhaps she should go back to stay. Preferably via Greyhound.

Thank you for reading. I am a former Washington Post staff writer, and as far as I know, I’m the only journalist in America covering ICE flights full time. I am committed to keeping this reporting non-paywalled, but if you are able, please sign up for a paid subscription or send me a one-time tip, so I can continue this important work. –Gillian

Xcel Energy’s Colorado subsidiary made a $903 million operating profit in 2025 that was trimmed by a $295 million write-off for settlements of Marshall fire lawsuits — even as sales of electricity and natural gas declined.

The 2025 profits, reported by Public Service Company of Colorado in a federal filing, comes as the company is seeking a $365 million increase in electricity rates and a $190 million addition to natural gas bills.

Both rate cases are pending before the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.

“The information in this filing shatters any illusion that the company and its shareholders are under any distress,” said Joseph Pereira, the deputy director of the Colorado Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate.

“This demonstrates the company’s pending rate requests are out of touch and unreasonable by any measure,” Pereira said. The UCA represents residential and small commercial customers in rate cases.

The net income of $678 million, however, was lowest in the last four years, according to filings with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission by Public Service of Colorado, or PSCo.

Xcel Energy, PSCo’s parent company, posted record-breaking profits in 2025, with net earnings topping $2 billion. PSCo, one of four Xcel Energy electric and gas subsidiaries, accounted for a little more than a third of Xcel Energy’s earnings.

The increase in profits comes even though the Colorado subsidiary is selling less electricity to its 1.6 million electric customers and less gas to its 1.5 million gas customers.

In 2025, electricity sales were down slightly to 17,579 watt-hours while revenue per customer was up a bit to $2,011. Those numbers are part of a trend as electricity sales since 2020 are down 7% and revenue per customer is up more than 9%.

The story is similar for natural gas with sales to retail customers down 11% since 2020 to 90 million British thermal units in 2025. Revenue for each million BTUs used by residential customers, however, has jumped over the same period by more than 50%.

Households are also paying more for each kilowatt-hour of electricity with the charge rising nearly 25% to 14.27 cents over the five years — about the same as the rate of inflation.

“Electric revenues are impacted by changing sales, fluctuations in the price of natural gas and coal, regulatory outcomes, market prices and seasonality,” the company said in its annual report.

The company, however, doesn’t make most of its money from electricity and gas, but from investing in new plants and powerlines, as well as investments in wildfire protection and electric vehicles — and getting customers to pay for them with a return on each investment.

“Higher ongoing earnings primarily reflect higher recovery of electric and natural gas infrastructure investments and increased” funds used during construction,” the annual report states.

Those investments are needed to insure reliable service and meet Colorado’s clean energy goals, Xcel Energy said.

“We continue to invest in Colorado’s electric and gas system to ensure that we can deliver our customers with the clean, reliable, safe and low-cost energy they need to power their homes and businesses,” the company said in a statement.

In 2025, PSCo’s property, plant and equipment rose 19% year-over-year to $27.8 billion. Since 2020, that base of capital investment, upon which rates are set, is up 60%, according to filings.

Xcel Energy said it plans to invest another $17 billion in Colorado in the next five years, adding that in 2025 it made $5 billion in new clean energy power plants part of its goal of replacing its coal plants.

”These investments are rigorously reviewed by the Commission, with input from consumer and community advocates,” the company said.

Xcel cleared to build renewable energy projects before tax credits expire

On Feb. 18, the PUC also approved 4,100 MW of new generation — a mix of wind, solar, natural gas and storage — to be fast-tracked in an effort to get federal tax credits before they expire.

The proposed gas rate increase would raise gas customers’ bills by an average $7.59 to $74.41 a month to pay for safety improvements, meet rising operating and maintenance costs and provide investor returns.

The electricity rate increase Xcel Energy is seeking would raise bills about 10% to $110 a month to recover infrastructure investments, operating costs and lost revenue sources.

“Enough is enough. Coloradans are being crushed under the weight of gas and power bills that get bigger every year,” Sarah Tresedder, senior climate and energy organizer for the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “The PUC needs to put a stop to the bleeding.”

The company said that the average Colorado residential customer’s electric bills are 39% lower than the national average. That average, however, includes some very high-cost states such as Massachusetts, with an average charge of 30 cents a kilowatt-hour, California at nearly 35 cents a kilowatt-hour and almost 42 cents in Hawaii, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Xcel Energy’s Colorado rate of 14.27 cents a kilowatt-hour in 2025 is just about the same as the eight-state Mountain West average, according to the energy administration.

There’s a Japanese word with no English equivalent: Omoiyari. It means something like a deep, reflexive consideration for others that permeates at all levels of the culture.

That the Japanese would have such a word is not surprising, given that they are probably the most culturally cohesive society in the developed world. But what is interesting is why. 

Japan is mountainous. Very little flat land. So their staple crop became rice, which needs far less acreage than wheat. But it demands something wheat doesn’t: the entire village. You can’t grow rice alone. One paddy at a time, everyone works together, negotiating who floods which field and when.

So it seems that the reason Japanese have such great manners isn’t so much because of their virtue, but because of environmental necessity.

Thomas Talhelm proved this in a 2014 Science study. What he found was that within the same country, China, with the same government, same ethnic group, and same language family, rice-growing regions produced measurably more collectivist people than wheat-growing regions. In the 1950s, the Chinese government assigned people to two state farms just 56 kilometers apart. One grew rice, and one grew wheat. They had the same policies and the same latitude. Within a generation, the rice farmers were significantly more group-oriented. 

Or take the Scandinavians. Their ancestors spent centuries in Viking longhouses with fifty people and their livestock, one structure, and brutal winters. There wasn’t much room for personal drama or squeamishness about privacy. A thousand years later, Scandinavians are still laconic, moderate, and remarkably relaxed about nudity. The longhouse is gone but the culture it created isn’t.

In the Nineteenth Century, adjusted for inflation, for the price of half a Volkswagen Passat, you could head West and grab yourself a price of land and have everything you needed to set up your own farm and be exporting grain within 18 months. The only deal was, on the farm you were on your own. Hence why American individualism and gun ownership are so highly valued in the US today.

Environment shapes reality, which shapes language and culture, which shapes behavior. It’s all connected.

One could reasonably deduce that the reason those of us in the Anglosphere don’t have our own word for Omoiyari is because our environment never demanded one. Language is not only a product of culture, but its creator.

Korean Air had one of the worst safety records in aviation. The problem wasn’t mechanical. Korean has six speech levels encoding hierarchy, and junior officers couldn’t directly challenge captains during emergencies. The fix was to require all cockpit communication in English. Not because English is better. Because it didn’t carry the hierarchical weight. Their safety record since has been spotless.

They didn’t change the people. They changed the language.

Every organization is already doing culture design, but is it on purpose?

The post Omoiyari appeared first on Gapingvoid.

For miles around xAI's makeshift power plant in Southaven, Mississippi, neighbors have endured months of constant roaring, erupting pops, and bursts of high-pitched whining from 27 temporary gas turbines installed without consulting the community.

In a report on Thursday, NBC News interviewed residents fighting to shut down xAI's turbines. They confirmed that xAI operates the turbines day and night, allegedly tormenting residents in order to power xAI founder Elon Musk's unbridled AI ambitions.

Eventually, 41 permanent gas turbines—that supposedly won't be as noisy—will be installed, if xAI can secure the permitting. In the meantime, xAI has erected a $7 million "sound barrier" that's supposed to mitigate some of the noise.

However, residents told NBC News that the wall that xAI built does little to quiet the din.

Taylor Logsdon, who lives near the power plant, said that neighbors nearby jokingly call it the "Temu sound wall," referencing the Chinese e-commerce site known for peddling cheap, rather than high-quality goods. For Logsdon, the wall has not helped to calm her dogs, which have been unsettled by sudden booms and squeals that videos show can frequently be heard amid the turbines' continual jet engine-like hum. Some residents are just as unsettled as the dogs, describing the noises from the plant as "scary."

A nonprofit environmental advocacy group, the Safe and Sound Coalition, has been collecting evidence, hoping to raise awareness in the community to block xAI from obtaining permits for its permanent turbines. The group's website links to videos documenting the noise, noise analysis reports, and public records showing how challenging it's been to track xAI's communications with public officials.

For example, public records requests to the city of Southaven seeking information on xAI exemptions to noise ordinances or communications about the sound wall turned up nothing. A director overseeing the city's planning and development claimed that the office was not "involved with the noise barrier wall" and could provide no details. Similarly, a permit clerk for the city's building department confirmed there were no documents to share.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the coalition told Ars that the "absence of documentation raises transparency concerns."

"When decisions with community impact are made without accessible records, it creates an accountability gap and limits the public’s ability to understand how those decisions were evaluated or authorized," the spokesperson said.

An IT worker who co-founded the coalition, Jason Haley, told NBC News that xAI's wall showed that the city could have required the company to do more to prevent noise pollution before upsetting community members.

"If you knew the noise was going to be an issue, put in a sound wall first," Haley said. "Do some other stuff first before you torture us. That’s not that hard of an ask."

xAI did not immediately respond to Ars' request to comment. According to NBC News, the company has yet to make public a noise analysis that it conducted.

xAI's turbines spark other concerns

xAI has maintained that it follows the law when rushing at breakneck speeds to build infrastructure to support its AI innovations. In Southaven, xAI was approved to operate the temporary gas turbines at the power plant for 12 months, without any additional permitting required.

Now it's seeking permits for the permanent turbines, which residents worry could be nearly as loud, while possibly introducing more smog into an area that's mostly homes, churches, parks, and schools, the Safe and Sound Coalition's website said.

Pollutants could increase risks of asthma, heart attacks, stroke, and cancer, a community flyer the coalition distributed warned, urging attendance at a public meeting where residents could finally air their complaints (a meeting which NBC News' report thoroughly documented). The flyer also suggested that the city's main drinking water supply could be affected and perhaps tainted if the power plant's wastewater contains toxic chemicals, since there isn't a graywater recycling plant nearby. For residents, it's hard to tell if things will ever get better. One noise analysis the coalition shared found that the daily sound of the turbines was higher on an "annoyance scale" than when entire neighborhoods set off New Year's Eve fireworks.

"Our water, air, power grid, utility bills, property values, and health are all at risk," the Safe and Sound Coalition's website said. "We're already facing toxic pollution and relentless industrial noise. There is no clear oversight, no transparency, and no plan to protect the people living nearby."

The coalition expects that if enough community members protest the plant, the permitting agency will deny xAI's permits and order any potentially dangerous turbines to be shut down. But other groups are taking a different approach, considering suing xAI if it continues operating the unpermitted gas turbines in Southaven.

Earlier this month, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) joined the NAACP in sending xAI a notice of intent to sue. In that letter, groups warned that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently changed a rule that they argued now requires permits for the temporary turbines. They gave xAI 60 days to respond.

The same groups previously sent a legal threat to xAI, opposing alleged data center pollution in Memphis, Tenn. xAI eventually secured permits for some of the gas turbines sparking scrutiny there, which many locals found "devastating." Further concerning, residents relying on drone imagery—with no other way to keep track of how many turbines xAI was running—warned that the permits only covered 15 of 24 turbines on site.

EPA shrugs off xAI permitting concerns

It's unclear whether the SELC can win if it takes xAI to court, or whether the EPA would ever intervene if that action could be construed as delaying Trump's order to rush permitting and build as many data centers as fast as possible to power AI.

The SELC declined Ars' request to comment, but the EPA's administrator, Lee Zeldin, seemed to negate that argument in an interview with Fox Business in January. Asked directly about xAI's gas turbines, Zeldin confirmed that the EPA was working closely on permitting with local officials in Southaven and Shelby County—where xAI built a massive data center sparking protests.

Rather than suggesting that the EPA might be preparing to review xAI's unpermitted gas turbines, Zeldin emphasized that for Donald Trump, it "is about getting permits done faster."

"EPA has the power to slow things down; EPA also has the power to speed things up, and that's where the Trump EPA is," Zeldin said.

Permitting for the Southaven project's permanent gas turbines may be approved as soon as next month, NBC News reported.

Residents skeptical second sound barrier will be better

For Southaven, xAI's power plant—along with a planned data center, which Musk has dubbed "MACROHARDRR" to mock Microsoft—represents a chance to surge the local economy. That prospect seemingly swayed government support for the projects, which has apparently not waned in the face of mounting protests.

When Musk bought the dormant power plant, "it was the largest private investment in state history," Tate Reeves, Mississippi’s Republican governor, claimed. Additionally, xAI’s affiliated company that's behind the projects, MZX Tech, donated $1.38 million to the city's police department, NBC News reported. Both the plant and the data center "are expected to bring in millions of dollars and new jobs," Reeves said.

For Southaven residents, the only hope they have that the noise may die down any time soon is that construction on another sound barrier will be finished in the next two months, NBC News reported. Supposedly, engineers were taking time to study "what type of sound barrier would be most effective" amid complaints about the current sound barrier.

A spokesperson for the Safe and Sound Coalition told Ars that the group remains "skeptical" that the new wall will be any better than the first sound barrier.

"To our understanding, sound barriers can reduce certain frequencies under controlled conditions, but turbine noise involves low-frequency sounds and tonal components that often reach beyond barriers," the coalition's spokesperson said. "The most effective method for reducing industrial noise exposure is typically distance from residential areas, which is not a mitigation option in this scenario given the facility’s proximity to homes."

The coalition urged xAI to be transparent and to share data backing mitigation claims if it wants the community to believe that the second sound barrier will make any difference.

"Without transparent modeling, validated field measurements, and independent verification, it is difficult to assess whether the barrier will meaningfully address the ongoing nuisance experienced by nearby residents," the coalition's spokesperson said. "Mitigation claims are only meaningful if they are supported by transparent data."

Mayor labels protestors Musk haters

At least one city official, Mayor Darren Musselwhite, has suggested that community backlash is "political." Although he acknowledged that the noise was a "legitimate concern," he also claimed on Facebook that some people protesting xAI's facility were simply Elon Musk haters, NBC News reported.

"Southaven is now under attack by all who choose to oppose Elon Musk because of his high-profile political stances," Musselwhite wrote.

However, residents told NBC News that "their concerns have nothing to do with politics." One person interviewed even praised Musk's work with the Department of Government Efficiency.

Instead, they're worried that local officials seeing dollar signs have potentially let xAI exploit loopholes to pollute communities without any warning. The community flyer from the Safe and Sound Coalition criticized what they viewed as shady behavior from local officials:

"This project was started behind our backs, with zero community input. Local officials have repeatedly downplayed concerns, spun the facts, and misled residents about the true impacts and the deals made with xAI. Many people only found out after the turbines were up and running."

The coalition's spokesperson told Ars that a health impact analysis published on behalf of the SELC provides "meaningful insight" into the biggest health risks. That concluded that using the EPA's COBRA health impact model, emissions from running 41 permanent turbines at the Southaven plant "are estimated to result in $30–$44 million per year in health-related damages, including costs from premature deaths, hospital visits, and lost productivity. Over a typical 30-year operating life, these impacts would amount to approximately $588–$862 million in cumulative discounted public-health costs, borne largely by residents of Tennessee and Mississippi."

Additionally, the largest amount of harmful pollutants increases are expected to be "concentrated in communities that are disproportionately Black, highly socially vulnerable, and have elevated baseline asthma prevalence," the report said.

If the permits are issued, the Coalition's spokesperson told Ars that the group expects to continue gathering reports of "firsthand experiences" from nearby residents, which will "continue to provide valuable information regarding ongoing impacts." The group plans to continue engaging with officials and pushing for greater accountability and transparent monitoring, as well as documenting noise conditions, reviewing emissions reports, and collecting independent data where feasible.

"The Coalition’s focus is long-term community protection, which means tracking compliance, advocating for corrective action if standards are not met, and ensuring residents have access to accurate information about environmental and health impacts," the spokesperson said. "Permit approval would not resolve community concerns; it would shift our focus toward ongoing oversight and enforcement."

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Comments

I’ve never used a ButtKicker or other haptic device on my sim rigs. I’ve heard it makes a big difference. So I thought I would try one. I got the Next Level Racing HF8. This has 8 vibration motors placed around the pad. This has the advantage of localizing the vibration to specific areas rather than some designs which vibrate the whole seat.

Fucking trash. The vibrations are not remotely the same. Like cheap motion rigs, the effect on immersion is that it gets in the way of immersion. Would this be fun in a more arcade and less simulator setting? Maybe. As a simulation tool, it’s a joke.

If you spend any real amount of time wrenching, there’s a pretty good chance that you have a can or a few of parts cleaners in your inventory. There’s a whole world of carburetors, brake parts, and engine components that could use a nice cleaning up from time to time. But if you’re like me and thought that most of these cleaners have similar effectiveness, you might be surprised to watch this latest Project Farm video. Apparently, some cleaners are shockingly more effective than others.

I almost always have a can of parts cleaner in my inventory and can think of a million different ways to use it. Most of my earliest wrenching projects were reviving barn find motorcycles from the dead, and cans of carb cleaner/parts cleaner were instrumental in restoring old carburetors back to working condition. It’s just so easy and gratifying to insert the little plastic stick into a jet, clear it out with some blast from the can, and then put it all back together.

I’ve found myself using parts cleaner to shine up Vespa undercarriage parts gunked up by a heavy oil leak. I’ve used parts cleaner to wipe away the grime from brakes, and I’ve used parts cleaner to clear oil out of an area so I can better pinpoint a leak. Parts cleaner can even be used for stuff that isn’t exactly car-related, like zapping away marker from a surface or cleaning appliance parts. There’s a good chance that you’ve seen my cans of parts spray in random pictures of my desk, including this one of this lamp that I bought that came from the SS United States:

Usually, I just grab whatever is on the shelf at Walmart or a parts store, never really thinking twice about the effectiveness of the can. Often, I end up with a can of Gumout Carb/Choke & Parts Cleaner or Walmart Super Tech Parts Cleaner, and it seems to work fine enough. I’ve had this habit for years! As it turns out, I might actually be using some of the less effective cans of cleaner out there.

Todd Osgood from Project Farm decided to test the popular brands of parts cleaner out there, and the results were so convincing that I’m now going to switch brands. Check this video out:

Kinds Of Cleaners

Todd technically tested two types of parts cleaners. The first type of cleaner you’ll find out there is brake cleaner. These are broken down into two categories: Chlorinated cleaners and non-chlorinated cleaners. I’ll let Fastenal explain:

– Chlorinated solvents (like perchloroethylene or methylene chloride): These are the old-school heavy hitters—super effective but require a bit more care when using them.
– Non-chlorinated solvents (like acetone, heptane, and isopropyl alcohol): These are the newer formulas designed to meet the needs of users who live in areas that restrict chlorinated options. They still pack a punch and dry even faster than their chlorinated cousins.

The two types are important to consider because chlorinated brake cleaner can get lethal fast if you’re not careful. Dr. Bernard, known as the ChubbyEmu, recently published a video based on a case study from 1982 that detailed a man who accidentally inhaled phosgene gas while welding parts. Here’s that video:

The gas effectively destroyed the man’s proteins and DNA, eventually leading to his death after his body shut down. How did this happen? He cleaned parts with chlorinated brake cleaner before hitting them with a welder.

In 1995, the Journal of Accident and Emergency Medicine detailed another case of a man who was injured after trying to weld an old refrigerator, which had chlorinated fluorocarbons in it.

Phosgene gas is reportedly created after the Tetrachloroethylene-based cleaner is exposed to temperatures past 315 degrees Celsius, which is what you can get if you weld a part that you just cleaned with the stuff. Brake cleaner isn’t the only can of chemicals with chlorinated hydrocarbons, as you can find them in pesticides and other solvents.

Also, Tetrachloroethylene is a Group 2A Carcinogen, which means it’s “Probably carcinogenic to humans.” Chlorinated cleaners are really effective at destroying whatever uncleanliness is in your path. However, some wrenchers just avoid chlorinated cleaners because of the potential health and environmental risks. For those folks, non-chlorinated solvents exist.

You will also see carb cleaners and general parts cleaners out there. These will also usually be non-chlorinated and sometimes have similar ingredients to non-chlorinated brake cleaners, but they’re more formulated to break up varnished fuel without destroying the carb’s internals. You’ll often see these cleaners with high amounts of acetone. Of course, none of these chemicals are safe for you, so don’t treat non-chlorinated cleaners as something safe to use without caution.

The Tests

Todd brewed up a fascinating way to test the cleaners. The first test involved simply wiping the cleaner onto a table using a weighted squeegee to press a solvent-soaked paper towel against the surface. With gravity providing consistent pressure so each brand would be applied equally for each test, the time it took for each brand to evaporate was measured. This metric might be important to you because you might want the product to sit there and process for a moment, or you might want the product to just do its job and dry up so you can keep working. I won’t spoil the full results for you, but one of the chlorinated cleaners took 244 seconds to evaporate while one non-chlorinated parts cleaner disappeared in an impressive three seconds.

The next test was a two-in-one setup.

Todd marked the table with permanent marker, then applied grease over it. Then he tested how many wipes of the brush (again, weighted for consistent pressure from test to test) were required to remove the grease and reach the marker stains. This is where the things started blowing my mind. Again, I highly recommend watching the video to get the results, but the Gumout and Super Tech cleaners that I have been using for several years were at the back of the pack for performance. The fastest cleaner got the job done in three passes, but it took Gumout a lousy nine passes to do its job.

The next test is a wild one, and challenges the cleaners to remove a sludge of grease, brake fluid, motor oil, and sand off a test piece. While the test might seem a bit exaggerated, these cleaners are supposed to be able to dislodge built-up crud from your parts using the pressure from their sprays in addition to their solvents, and this test simulates that.

Once again, Gumout and Super Tech finished at the back of the pack. On average, the Super Tech blew away zero grams of sludge per gram of cleaner used. Gumout did only slightly better, blasting away 0.01 grams of sludge per gram of product used. As a result, these cheap sprays technically cost more to use on a cost per gram removed basis. Ouch.

The final test involved seeing what residue was left behind after the product evaporated from a test piece. Gumout and Super Tech took last place and second-to-last place, respectively, leaving behind some considerable residue.

Learning Something New

Todd more or less answered a question I’ve had for years. I long wondered about the effectiveness of carb cleaners because the stuff that I used didn’t seem to do its job unless I expended a whole can on one part. As it turns out, I’ve just been using the worst parts cleaners on the shelf, and I didn’t even know.

Todd’s testing had some clear winners in it. One of the best non-chlorinated cleaners was Permatex Non-Chlorinated Brake & Parts Cleaner. It evaporated slowly and left behind a lot of residue, but performed almost as well as the old-school chlorinated cleaners. So, I think I have a new cleaner to try this season!

The biggest lesson I’ve learned here, and honestly, I’m sort of surprised I already didn’t know this, is that not all parts cleaners are as effective as I thought. I figured that whatever’s on the shelf would get the job done. Apparently, I was right, but some cleaners do things vastly faster and better for not a whole lot more money.

I highly recommend watching this episode of Project Farm. If you use parts cleaner as often as I do, you might learn something new. I know I did. Todd, if you read this, keep up the great work! I probably wouldn’t have learned so much about how different similar products can be if it weren’t for the guy buying and testing tons of tools and chemicals so you don’t have to.

Top graphic image: Project Farm / YouTube

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