Notes Today: 

• Texas paid bitcoin miner Riot $31.7 million to shut down during heat wave in August.    

• Utah officials sued over failure to save Great Salt Lake: ‘Trying to avert disaster’. Unless dire action is taken, the lake could decline beyond recognition within five years. 
• Already, the lake has lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area.

• ‘Totally devastating’: borrowers on the start of student loan repayment..Republicans forced an end to the pause in student debt repayments during the debt ceiling debate and student loans payments will begin again in October. In a second blow, the supreme court struck down Biden’s forgiveness plan earlier this summer.

• German economy gloomy - industrial orders fell by 11.7% in July

• To help Trump reelection, Saudi Arabia and Russia, the world’s second- and third-largest producers, said they would continue to limit output. Saudi Arabia is constraining supply at around 25% below its declared maximum output.

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• China ordered officials at central government agencies not to use Apple's iPhones and other foreign-branded devices for work or bring them into the office, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. 

•  Mexico supreme court decriminalizes abortion across country

Problem with these notes: some tend to run up against a deeply rooted feature of human cognition - the desire not to think about anything unpleasant…Sorry about that.