Monday, July 17th - Power Loss in S.W. Palisades + More

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MILES vV, HOST: Good morning! I'm Miles, guest-less for the first time in months, and this is Jump Start.

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MILES: Power outages cripple the tech industry out of South West Palisades - how this will have ripple effects on the market at large. Also, long haulers going on strike - the hidden heroes of the Empire and how you can support the effort. Last, a new form for the show - how transcription software has opened new doors here at EFPR.

MILES: Let's get a Jump Start on the week.

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MILES: Severe electrical storms over the weekend took out power to major portions of the South West Palisades, causing social media spell Glamr to shut down for the weekend - as many of you well know - as well as major server disruptions at arcanotech giant Meta's HQ. Residential and small businesses were back up in hours thanks to city-provided mana reserves - but was it enough? We go to EFPR's business correspondent Grimmax the Hungering for more.

GRIMMAX: "Unexpected weather conditions" is the name of the game at Crixo, the major mana provider for the still-without power Palisades. They cite a change in Thunderbird migration patterns for multiple strikes on under-shielded arcane reservoirs in their first post after the spell's return. Left out of the post, that the resulting explosion tragically ended the lives of one goblin and three elven crew at the scene - something they decline to acknowledge until a full investigation has completed, according to comments in their post. But was this fatal mistake really so difficult to predict? Experts - and locals - think not.

GRIMMAX: Every year, migrations of Greater Thunder Birds famously pass what some have come to call the Social Media Mesa at a safe distance. These birds, each over two dozen feet across, have taken this same route since before the Empire. Tourists from across the world gather to take pictures with the ancient birds. You may have seen EFPR's coverage, just last month, of the innovative conduits lining the nearby valleys that keep most of the region with a steady supply of mana. Here's a clip from an interview I had with ferrofowl expert John L'chleign last month.

GRIMMAX: So John, tell us a little about these Thunder Birds.

JOHN: Sure can. Despite the name, they're have the least to do with thunder - they don't even make the lightning.

GRIMMAX: They don't? Can you tell us more?

JOHN: I'd be happy to, Grimmax. As with their reclassification to "Ferrofowl" last decade, we've found that they're mostly animated metal.

GRIMMAX: Mostly?

JOHN: That's right, which is why there's some contention on the classification - trust me I could do my own podcast on it.

GRIMMAX: I believe you! So they aren't strictly arcane, then?

JOHN: Right. The birds, neither chick nor full grown adult, cannot produce lightning on their own. Each are merely conductors to a natural electrical phenomenon found in a few magically dense places in the world. These birds, powerful as they are, don't control this weather - no. It's no more arcane than the average Ironhide Dove.

GRIMMAX: ... and here's a short interview I had with local witch Bauhinia P. as she was charging her broom at a neighborhood Locus about the storms.

BAUHINIA: "Well, yknow, people have been living here since before Glamr and them all moved in. We've been putting up towers and whatnot since before the birds, I'd say. And we've been tellin Ol' Joe and his lot for years that those reservoirs they have are gonna get hit one day. Tellin' them for years we have."

GRIMMAX: Joseph Amplos, better known simply as Ol' Joe, has been the mayor in this town for over sixty decades, but a resident since before The Traveller arrived. He acknowledged the problem, promised a swift resolution, but made clear they were not responsible for the oversight. His office wanted to emphasize that the city infrastructure was entirely unaffected thanks to the historic architecture - it's the many private networks brought in by Crixo that have failed. And while Crixo engineers have been more than visible across the city restoring power to the businesses most affected, no official company representative was available for comment by this broadcast.

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