Daily Life and the War of Stupid

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?  

Daily Trivia and the War of Stupid

Yesterday was a good day.  We were up and out very early (for us) for a ride.  We returned and had time for a cup of coffee before the landscapers arrived.  They trimmed all of the sages, and they look really good.  There are eight of them, two are huge, and that is something I don't want to do.  Also, debris disposal is a big issue.  They they fixed the irrigation leak we discovered the day before.  Again, they did in minutes what would take hours.  So, that was a good day, ride plus no effort yard work.

I can't remember if I've posted these cactus before.  I have no new pictures, so I'll used these anyway.  The top photo are Mammalaria,  I don't know what the cactus in the second photo is, probably in the Cholla family.  They look dangerous.

It's not possible to know exactly how the war in Iran is going.  The media is afraid to cover it in detail.  It's still possible to know that it didn't need to happen.  Iran had told Witkoff and Kushner that they would give up their uranium.  Those two either did not understand what was said to them, or failed to relay it up the chain.  So, here we are.

Sources say Trump purchases specific shoes for his inner circle, and that everyone is "afraid not to wear them." Marco Rubio was photographed wearing the alleged shoes despite them being too large. This is just sad.  Apparently all the men have received shoes that are too large.  They're cheap shoes, as well.  Florsheims from China.  People keep asking about the 25th Amendment. His entire Cabinet is walking around in shoes that don’t fit because they’re scared to take them off. The 25th is never happening.

Secretary of State Rubio's feet.

Top Trump officials acknowledged to lawmakers during recent classified briefings that they did not plan for the possibility of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz in response to strikes.  Think about that.  How stupid are they to not plan for that contingency.  Hegseth has said that the Strait is actually open, unless the Iranians fire weapons at ships coming through.  He's such a genius.

I think this is the tweet of the week. "I feel like if I was tasked with not starting a war and bringing back US manufacturing jobs, I could have done a better job than this."
Derek Guy
Derek is a frequent poster on twitter, he writes about style and menswear.  He's also very knowledgeable about shoe construction techniques.  I have learned much about collar gaps, buttoning points on the suit jacket and why a man must wear a cummerbund with a tuxedo.   

It is supposed to be 102F (38.89) this coming weekend.  The weather heads are talking about the mother of all heat domes sitting over the west.  Looking forward to it!

That's it, that's all I've got.

Local News and a LIttle on the War of Stupid

It rained yesterday.  That was very exciting.  Cells marched through the area bringing straight line winds and then thunder and lightning.  I realize that this is old hat for most of the country, but rain in March is pretty wonderful.  

There was lightning, I scraped this off the neighborhood Facebook page.
 

I took this earlier while we were sitting in a huge backup of traffic on La Cholla trying to get home.  It's a nice sky.

The fruit trees have decided to bloom.  I don't understand their timing at all.  The scent over there is really strong.  And they're covered in bees.

This is the first of the three waves of steenking yellow trees, the dreaded Acacia.  There are four of them in close proximity to the house.  Which reminds me I need to go squirt Flonase up my nose to help with the seasonal allergies.

Today is overcast and gloomy.  The sun is unable to burn off the clouds.

From twitter we read the following.

The US bombing of schoolchildren in Iran is the biggest single US massacre of civilians since My Lai. The Israeli bombing of Tehran’s oil storage constitutes the biggest single act of chemical warfare against a civilian population in history. Grotesque new depths of barbarism.
Jason Hickel

You know, the reality is that there are basically only two countries right now that actually know how to fight drones at scale – Ukraine and Russia. So Ukraine really had two options. Either help the Gulf states intercept those drones, or step aside and watch them go to Russia for help instead. And let’s be honest – Moscow would happily take that money, because as we’ve already seen, Russia doesn’t really care about its allies, even if it’s Iran.  So says Saint Javelin

The Strait of Hormuz remains mainly closed.  A few brave souls have turned off AIS and run the strait and have not been sunk.  The price of everything continues rise.  Thanks 47!

So, on that happy note, I will arise and go now. 

The Usual and Iran

Last Tuesday was our final baby hummingbird sighting.  There has been nothing since then.  So, maybe the baby fledged successfully, or maybe it was eaten.  Based on the timeline provided by the internet, it didn't seem like enough time had passed since hatching and flying.  But it was hard so say, since we could not see inside the nest.  The bird is centered in the photo, it's hard to see.

Other than that, bike, hike, row, and lift weights.

Currently there is no ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.  Jim and I are wondering if gas will be available to return to Spokane by mid-April. The sticking point is ship insurance.  Underwriters have cancelled existing policies and made it really expensive to insure for travel through there.  In addition to fuel shortages, we will see shortages of urea, ammonia, sulfur and phosphate; four key ingredients of fertilizer.  They need to be on the ship now in time to make it for spring planting.  This is bad.

Kristi Noem has been fired from DHS, her new job is Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas.  Every time I hear that, I picture her in the Wonder Woman suit, holding the Lasso of Truth.  George Conway said it best, "replacing Noem with MarkWayne Mullen is like shitting your pants and then changing your shirt."  I laugh every time I think about that.

This is a stupid war.  The US does not have enough interceptor drones to counter Iran's thousands of Shaheds.  Iran cranks those out like crazy, as does China.  We're spending millions of dollars per missile to knock down cheap drones.  Today WAPO had a headline that Russia is giving Iran targeting data on the US positions.  Meanwhile, the US is asking Ukraine for help on how to swat down these pesky drones fired by Iran.  Personally, if I were Zelenskyy I would give the US nothing, 47 will just turn around and give information to Russia.  Zelenskyy has said, it's not like we can just send you a box of drones, it took them years to develop a layered defense and to know how best and when to fire what at the Shaheds.  I do not think the US has that kind of time with limited resources.

The girls' school that was bombed was bombed by the US.  It wasn't Iran.  Why, exactly this happened, is either not known, or they don't want to say.

Phillips P Obrien has an excellent substack up about the rot that infests the military.  It can be summed up by lack of education and moral fiber.  Rot. It really is worth a read.

In a substack written by Jonathan Larsen, we read the following:  
"A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer."
This is so off the mark, I can't believe this is allowed.  This is what happens when the Secretary of Defense is a Christo-Fascist.

47 has gone on record as saying that HE will name the next leader of Iran.  Right, then.

I feel so fortunate to live in interesting times.

Ride and Current Stuff

We were up and out early to ride.  Apparently summer is just about here.  I really hate up and out, I like dawdle and drink coffee much better.  Anyway, there was some cloud cover which really softens the sun's rays on one's flesh.  See the yellow stuff?  We're in the season of steenking yellow trees.  Acacias are in bloom now, they're really full of pollen.

This evening, the remnants of the cloud cover gave us a small sunset.

February 26, Hilary Clinton testified about her knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.  Her knowledge was exactly zip.  Didn't ride on the plane, didn't go to the island.  They took six hours to accomplish this by asking the same questions repeatedly.  In short,  a woman was forced to testify in a closed-door deposition about the crimes of men who are not being forced to testify at all.  She also had this to say in her opening statement.  “I did not dedicate my life to advocating for women and girls just so that I could be lectured by a bunch of pedophile protectors.”  

OpenAI (ChatGPT) has been chosen to do the work originally awarded to Anthropic (Claude).  It's been said that the terms for each company were the same.  Josh Kale has a concise statement of what's different.  Everyone’s saying OpenAI got the “same deal” Anthropic was banned for. Read the fine print. They’re not the same: On weapons: Anthropic asked for “no fully autonomous weapons without human oversight” = a human involved in the decision. OpenAI’s deal says “human responsibility for the use of force” = someone accountable, which can happen after the fact. Oversight ≠ Responsibility. One requires a human before the trigger. The other requires a name on the paperwork after. On surveillance: Dario said explicitly: current law hasn’t caught up with AI. The government can already buy your movement data, browsing history, etc without a warrant. AI can assemble that into a complete picture of your life, at scale. That’s mass surveillance without breaking a single law. Anthropic wanted protections beyond current law. OpenAI’s deal says the Pentagon “reflects them in law and policy.” That’s existing law as the safeguard, the exact law Anthropic said is insufficient. Same words. Different agreements. Read them carefully.  As it turns out, Jared Kushner's brother is involved in the OpenAI IPO, and stands to make a ton of money from it.

Yesterday we bombed Iran and killed the Ayatollah.  Iran retaliated.  For some reason, Iran sent drones to Dubai and closed their airport and did a lot of damage.  Israel killed a hundred or so school girls by bombing their school.  Oil prices are already up.  Who knows where this will end.  Talk about something that was not necessary.  Whether or not the US has a sufficient number of drone interceptors in now in question.  What could go wrong?

Hoo-boy. 

Current Events

I just put stuff in my "things to blog about" file, and noticed that it's quite large.  This may be a very long post.  If you don't make it through all of it, I will certainly understand.

Here is a cactus in the parking lot of our Primary Physician, aka Family Practitioner, aka General Practice.  She is an excellent doctor.  I'm hoping we die before she retires. There are more arms on the other side of him.  He's been busy.

Other than that, it's bike, hike, row, lift weights.  That's pretty much it.  Also, going to the grocery store too often.

So, we all know that the women's and men's hockey teams took gold at the Winter Olympics, by beating Canada.  I was really disappointed in that outcome, I wanted Canada to win.  Kash Patel, director of the FBI, was with the men players in their locker room.  He was drinking.  So if he was drinking, he wasn't working.  Agents can not drink on the job.  However, he took an official FBI plane to Italy.  It's a conundrum.  Then they got the president of the US on the phone who invited them to the White House.  In the process he made a joke about he would have to invite the women or face impeachment.  Everybody laughed.  

From twitter:
So let me get this straight, 8 of the 12 US’s gold medals were won by women. The US women’s hockey teams score across the games was 31 goals made and only 2 made on them While the men’s team scored 24 goals across the games and let in 8… And now a room full of those hockey men are on the phone with a pedophile, laughing at the idea of including their female peers who out performed them in every aspect of the game in the celebration? Remind me again, how these people care about protecting women’s sports and women?
Aria Frey   

The men’s hockey team will be forever remembered for aligning with Kash Patel, while laughing at the demeaning remarks Trump made about the women’s team.  Karma stepped in, however.  Here is the men's team having a delicious dinner of McDonald's burgers and fries at the White House.  On the right we have the women's team having a gourmet lunch in Italy with Stanley Tucci.  Score one for the women.  After their dinner, the men than had to sit for close to three hours listening to 47 bloviate through the State of the Union address.

The men's team is being dragged on social media for being dicks.  The women are on their way to Las Vegas in July, hosted by FlavorFlav for shows, dining and spa treatments.  

A submariner on the SS Delaware, a Virginia class attack boat, had some sort of dire medical emergency at sea.  They took the sub into Greenland's territorial waters, with permission, and a Danish helicopter picked him up and took him to hospital.  When told of this, 47 confabulated this into Greenland needs our help immediately, we'll send a hospital ship.  Hah!!!  Hah Hah Hah.   

We have two hospital ships, Mercy and Comfort.  They're 50 years old, and are repurposed oil tankers.  They are interesting boats, because they used to haul oil, they now have to have huge amounts of ballast to stay at the proper height in the water.  They're soft sided single hulled boats, and can not be taken into ice, which sort of rules out Greenland.  Mercy just finished up time in dry dock in the Alabama Shipyard, and is now on the way to Portland, OR to the Vigor yard for a midlife maintenance. She is currently southeast of Cuba headed for the Panama Canal. There is a contract that stipulates that she arrive by March 20, other wise there will be significant fines.  So, no, Mercy will not go to Greenland.  Comfort just currently moored in Alabama prior to entering dry dock for extensive maintenance.  So, Comfort is not going to Greenland, either.  Someone needs to put a muzzle on 47, and not let him post stuff that's completely wrong.

Anthropic is a leading developer of an AI, named Claude.  Claude was used in the planning for the kidnapping of President of Venezuela.  It's a good LLM.  

This is receiving virtually no coverage in main stream media.  It should be.  The thought of an uncontrolled AIs killing people should chill your soul.  Palantir, a Thiel company, pretty much has data on all US citizens, combined with facial recognition, the future looks a lot like a gulag in all of those repurposed warehouses.  This is bad.

Update to post:  Anthropic has replied to Hegseth and said no to autonomous killing and surveillance.  You can read their statement here. 

47 has sent two carrier groups to Iran.  Originally he said help was on the way for the thousands of protesters killed by the Iranian regime.  Now, this has morphed into a demand that Iran give its enriched uranium stockpiles to the US.  The Iranians are saying no.  Iran is being threatened with the mighty US Navy.  There's a hitch in the plan, however.  Senior officials have reportedly warned that current US weapon stockpiles could only sustain strikes for 7 to 10 days before running dry, the consequence of years of supplying both Ukraine and Israel.  Think about it, this information is out there.  Everybody on the planet with an interest in attacking the US knows that our cupboard is bare.  Now would be a great time for China to invade Taiwan.  The US can't do a thing about it.  However, our stalwart negotiating team of Kushner and Witkoff are on it, and I'm certain all will be well.  They've done such a great job of negotiating peace between Ukraine and Russia. 

A draft executive order which is said to be based on a conspiracy theory that China interfered with the 2020 election would allow Trump to unilaterally ban mail-in ballots and voting machines on the basis that they are susceptible to foreign interference. There is a good piece on the subject here.  States control elections, it's in the Constitution.

I don't like how much of my information is out there.  Today I ordered a pair of arm warmers from Primal, which is a stand alone company.  Somehow I was given over to an app called shop.  Shop had my shipping address, mailing address, and credit card number on file.  I do not recall ever using them, and I don't like the fact that they have my info like this.  I know I'm on the dark web from a credit reporting agency breach years ago.  All of this snooping is wearing on my last nerve.  A former health insurance company we were with had a breach, so now we have to go confirm our accounts are still frozen and sign up for more credit monitoring.   It's just one more thing.

If you made it this far, I commend your attention span.