I have a few photos. First up is the hummingbird nest. If you look at the lining carefully, you can see that it's dryer lint. Our neighbor has dryer lint on the screen of his dryer vent. She made a nice cozy bed for the baby. I think those are shell fragments in the bottom of the nest.
We've had some good sunsets, not a lot, but more than I would expect for March. Jim took this one. His phone camera tends to saturate more than mine, but that night really was a red one.
We're beginning the second wave of allergy season. The Palo Verdes are blooming. This tree is enormous.
We rode today. We were up and out early. It's really hot. I'm not sure what happens after Sunday.
This is a Gopher Snake. They are often mistaken for rattlesnakes, but the shape of their heads is different, and there are no rattles. He's a good sized snake.
The UAE — third biggest OPEC producer — just announced its oil and gas production is at ZERO.
This is not a headline from a movie.
Fujairah terminal: shut down.
Shah gas field: suspended after drone attack.
Hormuz: 20 million barrels a day stuck.
First,
the Omani FM came out and revealed that there was a deal on the table
that met Trump's demands, but that he instead chose war.
And now, it is revealed that the British National Security Advisor was
also part of the talks, and he too attests to the fact that A) there was
no imminent threat from Iran, B) Trump could have gotten a surprisingly
good deal if he stuck to diplomacy.
But the perhaps most damning quote in the story comes at the end,
attributed to an unnamed diplomat:
“We regarded Witkoff and Kushner as Israeli assets that dragged a
president into a war he wants to get out of.” Article is here, you can get past the begging for money.
It feels like we're living in the end times. The US, Israel and Iran are kicking the support pins out from under the energy structures in the Middle East. One of the least appreciated is nitrogen. Without nitrogen, there will be famine. There are no strategic reserves. In addition to nitrogen, the precursors to generic drugs come through the Strait of Hormuz. If you can, you might consider stocking up. This is so bad. What's worse is that our president is a lunatic, with no plan, and no advisors to guide his decision making. Here are two things worth reading. The Nitrogen Trap, how a 21 mile strait threatens half the world. A related article is The Seven Clocks. The shortest clock expires in twelve days. The longest runs for over a year. The planting window, the USDA report, the FAO index, the drug buffers, the Chinese crude draw, the helium inventory, and the insurance cycle are all counting down simultaneously. None of them pause for diplomacy. None of them respond to presidential directives. None of them read sealed packets.
This is a tweet I don't want to lose. It's long, and it's OK if you don't feel like plowing through it all. It resonated with me. Make sure you read the last paragraph about Larry Ellison's great new idea for us.
I believe
we are standing on the precipice of the most profound, intentional
collapse of human civilization in recorded history. The trigger isn’t a
meteor, a supervolcano, or even a world war in the traditional sense.
It’s the potential destruction of a single industrial facility: the Ras
Laffan liquefied natural gas (LNG) complex in Qatar. Modern civilization
doesn’t just run on energy; it is fundamentally architected on a
steady, massive flow of natural gas, supercooled and shipped as LNG.
This isn’t an abstraction. Our global food supply, our industrial
chemical production, and the very stability of nations are tethered to
this flow.
That tether is frighteningly thin. Qatar's Ras Laffan is the heart of
this system, a nexus of technology and geography that is effectively
irreplaceable. Its 14 processing 'trains' and the critical Main
Cryogenic Heat Exchangers (MCHEs) that chill gas to -260°F are marvels
of engineering, but they represent a catastrophic single point of
failure. As noted in energy literature, the specialized machinery for
this process is made by only one or a handful of companies globally.
This infrastructure isn't just important; it is singular. Its loss would
not be a temporary market disruption. It would be a decade-long
severing of the global energy artery.
The recent, deliberate sabotage of critical infrastructure like the Nord
Stream pipelines has shown us that such attacks are not theoretical.
They are tools of geopolitical warfare. When you understand that over
half the world's food depends on fertilizer made from natural gas, the
picture becomes horrifyingly clear. We have built a world of astonishing
abundance on a foundation of shocking fragility. One facility, in one
volatile region, now holds the key to whether billions eat or starve.
Two of QatarEnergy's 14 LNG trains have now been destroyed. The rebuild
time is 3-5 years.
If all 14 trains are destroyed, 25% - 50% of the world's current
population will starve.
Trump did this.
And now, a word from a US wing nut. Oracle
co-founder Larry Ellison delivers a sales pitch for his company's new
AI-monitored body cameras, which live stream footage back to
headquarters and cannot be turned off.
"Citizens will be on their best behaviour, because we're constantly
recording and reporting everything that's going on."
"These are the kind of next generation systems we can build using AI." Doesn't this sound like a great way to live?
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