Cactus and the Administration and Science

Greetings Earthlings.  It's been a week hasn't it?  Oh wait, it's only Tuesday.  There has been some hiking.  We're trying to get more weight bearing exercise, so we've been lifting weights more consistently, and walking more.  We've not seen much that's interesting.  

The tall plants are Chollas.  They're very unattractive, but also very successful survivors of the desert.  Each spine has a tiny hook on the end, so they can latch on and travel with you.  Carry a pocket comb to remove a pup, slide the teeth under the pup and pull it away.  Never use fingers for that.

A member of the Mammilaria family.  They're small, and sometimes live under other plants.  If you look for them, they're everywhere.

A Teddy Bear cholla.  These are wicked for sticking to your skin.  

Other than that, I have not much of interest to recount.  So, on to the horrors that is our country.

The shootings in Minneapolis have been documented up the ying-yang with video.  And yet, the administration continues to lie about it, blaming the victim of brandishing a gun and like that.  They're contemptible.  Bovino has been sent back to El Centro California, which almost counts as cruel and unusual punishment.  There are rumors that the poison dwarf, Stephen Miller, may be thrown under the bus for his role in inciting violence by ICE.

Trump  has been threatening us with a $300 billion tax increase (a 100% tax on Canadian imports), the largest tax hike ever, because Mark Carney made a fool out of him at Davos.  Apparently he has backed down on this threat after Canada said they were not pursuing a free trade agreement with China.  

The soon to be announced EU / India trade agreement will see a seismic shift in global trade. The impact on both China and the US is going to be felt for generations to come. This opens many markets for trade.  The US has no involvement here, as you recall, the EU put the recently negotiated trade agreement with the US on hold.

This is not good.  "The International Monetary Fund is preparing for the possibility of a rapid sell-off of US dollar-denominated assets, its managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, said," per Euractiv. Also not good is the current price of gold and silver.  When people have lost faith in the dollar, they head for metals.  

This is a good article about how Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, is not helping things.  I enclose an excerpt.

It doesn’t reflect well on a treasury secretary when the price of gold goes through the roof. As I explained in October (“Gold Is Booming and That’s Really Bad News”), it means people expect higher inflation and are losing faith in the stock market along with the overall health of the economy. In such moments, Wall Street longs for a steady hand at the helm. Instead, they get Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hurling insults in every direction and giving every impression that he’s about to have a nervous breakdown.

Bessent previously enjoyed a reputation as the sole grown-up in Trump’s Cabinet. But at Davos last week, Bessent engaged in a frantic sort of MAGA minstrelsy, or possibly he converted under duress into a true-believing thug. I’m not sure it matters. But the more Bessent shoots his trash-talking mouth off, the more the dollar’s value falls and the higher the price of gold rises. Probably the best thing Bessent could do right now—for himself, for the dollar, and for your 401(k)—is to shut the fuck up.

Canada is still mulling over which aircraft to buy.  The F-35 order appears to be in jeopardy.  Sweden makes the Gripen, which is a seriously good airplane, and it's not from the US.  I cut and pasted this off twitter.  

The Gripen E outperforms the F-35 in key areas: quicker acceleration, higher top speed, longer range, shorter and narrower runway requirements, superior maneuverability, lower maintenance downtime, and better value - we can acquire more jets per dollar. 

Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra warns that if Canada skips the 88 F-35s, American F-35s will need to fly over our airspace to defend the Canadian North. Good luck enforcing that! It appears Americans are intent on terminating the Canada United States relationship.

From whom would the US be defending Canada?  Greenland, perhaps.  You don't get to violate a country's airspace.  They could shoot us down.  The F-35 is a maintenance hog, their reliability numbers are bad.

I find this to be extremely interesting.  There is still a fair amount of science posted on twitter, which is where this came from .  It's worth a read, especially if you're plagued by kidney stones.

For decades, doctors believed the most common kidney stones (calcium oxalate) were lifeless lumps formed purely by chemistry—minerals building up in the kidney. ​A groundbreaking study published this month (Jan 2026) by UCLA Health has proven this wrong. ​ Using high-tech fluorescence microscopy, researchers discovered that these stones actually contain live bacteria and fungal-like biofilms "entombed" inside them. The bacteria act as a scaffolding (nidus), allowing the minerals to crystalize and grow layer by layer. ​ This solves a long-standing medical mystery: Why do patients sometimes get severe infections (sepsis) after stone-breaking treatments (lithotripsy), even when their urine was sterile? The answer: breaking the stone releases the bacteria trapped inside. ​This could revolutionize treatment, shifting focus from just diet changes to targeting the hidden microbiome within the kidney.                                      Journal Reference: Wong, Gerard C. L. et al, Intercalated bacterial biofilms are intrinsic internal components of calcium-based kidney stones, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2517066123. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2517066123

Pretty cool, eh?