The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!
When even an acknowledged leftist like Bill Maher is so devastatingly sarcastic and caustic in his comments about California politicians, it's clear that politics in that state may be undergoing a sea change. Can Democratic dominance of politics there continue as before, or will anger and disgust at the mishandling of the fires and their aftermath lead to a new alignment?
This segment is about nine minutes long, and is worth watching.
The image of all those fire engines that were out of service because they hadn't been repaired (due to budgetary restrictions) is very telling indeed.
A Turkish woman who squashed five watermelons within a 60-second timeframe, using only her thighs, has set a world record ... She is handed a plaque and told she is "officially amazing," becoming the first person to earn the distinction of using the thighs to smash the most watermelons in 60 seconds, in the female category.
There's more at the link. Here's a video clip of her record-setting performance.
I'm glad her efforts were fruitful, so to speak . . . but if she'd failed, would she have been melon-choly over it?
The Swamp, or the Deep State, or whatever you want to call it, is well aware that it's fighting for its life against President Trump's agenda. It's spent months, if not years, preparing its counterattacks against the onslaught it knows is coming.
The first evidence of that occurred literally minutes after President Trump was sworn in yesterday. No less than three lawsuits were instantly filed against the proposed "Department of Government Efficiency", or DOGE, alleging that it had to comply with the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), but that it had not done so. Therefore, according to one plaintiff, "This shortcoming renders DOGE’s membership imbalanced and unfit for the function it has been directed to perform".
Sounds impressively legalistic, doesn't it? The only problem is, DOGE is still conceptual. It's been proposed, and its agenda discussed, and senior appointees' names have been mentioned: but as far as I'm aware, President Trump has not yet signed any executive order or other official document that establishes it in law. It's still only a concept. In other words, those lawsuits have been filed against a defendant that does not yet legally exist. Furthermore, FACA's constitutionality has been called into question, so the Trump administration may ask the courts to rule on that issue before anything else is done.
It's also worth noting who filed the lawsuits: Public Citizen, the American Public Health Association, and National Security Counselors. Those three organizations, and anyone working for and/or representing and/or supporting them, have thereby publicly identified themselves as members of, or allied with, the Swamp/Deep State/whatever. Those of us who regard the Swamp as the primary internal enemy of our Republic and its Constitution should take note of that, try to identify links between them and each other and other organizations and individuals, and watch them carefully. "Know your enemy" remains a cardinal rule, in lawfare as much as warfare, and the Mikado's "little list" is a useful thing to keep up-to-date.
The Swamp knows full well that if DOGE functions as expected, it will dismantle many of the foundational elements of the Deep State, and probably fire many thousands of the employees needed for it to function. It dare not risk that, so it's trying to derail the process before it can even begin. It will argule legalese until the cows come home, and seek suitably liberal courts where it can file its cases. I've no doubt some judges will be found to lend a sympathetic ear to its arguments.
However, this also gives the Trump administration a chance to re-focus DOGE's task, purpose and structure. If its lawfare opponents are attacking it on grounds A, B and C, DOGE can be reoriented to avoid those legal pitfalls and instead use legal elements D, E and F as its foundation. Furthermore, it need not necessarily be established as a government department at all. The Swamp has used non-governmental organizations (NGO's) to do its dirty work for years: things like censoring public discourse, or indoctrinating the education system, or what have you. There's no reason (at least in theory) why something similar to DOGE could not be set up by conservative NGO's, existing or new, and its reports submitted to the Administration just as left-leaning NGO's have done. After all, the three organizations filing these lawsuits advertise themselves as "think tanks", "advocacy groups", and influencers of government policy. As far as I know, none of them are subject to the provisions of FACA. Why can't DOGE be set up (under a different name, of course) as precisely the same type of organization, if push comes to shove? I'm sure the funds needed to do things that way would be forthcoming. Heck, one might even categorize some of the expenses involved as falling under President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, and use funds already allocated under that Act for the purpose. (And wouldn't that make the Swamp see red???)
The lawfare lobby is going to try to tie the Trump administration in legal knots in any and every way they can. It might be time to define the specific area or scope that a given level of federal court can affect. At present, even an entry-level federal court can issue an order affecting an issue nationwide. It may be time to codify a system whereby low-level courts' orders affect only that area under their local jurisdiction; appeals courts affect only the states under their jurisdiction; and only the Supreme Court can issue an order binding on the entire country. That would render a lot of low-level cases useless to the lawfare lobby, which would have to appeal cases higher and higher in the system to achieve their objectives.
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if that's practical. Would any lawyers among my readers care to weigh in on the matter?
"Woke"-ness, political correctness, sexism and sheer plain daftness are all evident in this one-liner:
“When Black female students are repeatedly disciplined for being social, loud, or goofy in the mathematics classroom, they experience mathematical violence.”
"Mathematical violence"??? What on earth is that? Perhaps it's a variation on the ancient Roman custom of decimation, where one legionary out of every ten was put to death to punish severe misconduct? There's certainly mathematics involved in that, and violence too (very much so) . . . but I haven't yet come across any school, college or university advocating the execution of one in ten students for "being social, loud or goofy". Perhaps someone should try that, on the grounds of being mathematically - albeit not politically - correct?
The toenail-curling stupidity and mindless blathering of the "woke" are still with us, it seems . . .
They're legal because our President does, indeed, have the power to pardon offenses against Federal law - even if those pardons have never been charged with or convicted of such offenses. The presumption is that they have, indeed, done so; otherwise there'd be nothing to pardon, would there?
They're also a stunning abuse of presidential power in that those pardoned today, according to all we know of what they did while in their respective offices, did indeed abuse the power(s) of those offices to wage a political vendetta against the man who will succeed President Biden in office later today. In other words, it's now a matter of fact, if not law, that a President can use "the system" to persecute, oppress and attack his opponents, then ensure that they get away with it and can never be held accountable for what they did.
The only useful thing about these pardons is that they prevent those pardoned from invoking their Fifth Amendment constitutional rights against self-incrimination. They can no longer be tried for any offenses they may have committed, but they can be subpoenaed to give evidence to any inquiry into what those offenses might have been. Furthermore, if they refuse to give evidence, or lie under oath, they remain liable to a conviction for contempt of court and/or perjury. They no longer have the right to keep silent about the actions that were pardoned. One hopes, at a minimum, that their mendacity, corruption and misuse of their office(s) will be thus exposed.
When the full tale of the Biden Presidency is finally unveiled, I suspect it might turn out to have been the most crooked, corrupt and criminal Presidency in our nation's history. Sadly, it now looks as if some of those most responsible for that will get away with their crimes, as far as the law is concerned. One hopes that since our judicial system is now prevented from holding them accountable, they will face justice in some other suitably condign way.
How many of you remember the Swingin' '60's? A familiar voice on British airwaves (and, to a lesser extent, American) at that time was a young lady stage-named Cilla Black. She was a close friend of the Beatles and many of their contemporaries, and they wrote several songs for her that became hits. She had a simple, unforced, almost little-girl-type voice that fitted the mood of the time.
To begin, here's my favorite of her songs: "If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind".
Here's her second No. 1 hit in the UK, in 1964: "You're My World".
Paul McCartney wrote "The Long And Winding Road" for the Beatles, but he went on record as saying that Cilla's 1972 rendition was the definitive version of the song.
Finally, here's "Something Tells Me (Something's Gonna Happen Tonight)".
Cilla Black died in 2015, aged 72, after a fall at her villa in Spain.
We've written a lot about that subject here over the years (see the sidebar for some article links), but we never stop learning - particularly from the experiences of others. After the Los Angeles fires, there's a lot more of that out there.
Eaton Rapids Joe has just published three articles on his blog that you may find useful:
It examines the pro's and con's (there are many of the latter!) of "bugging out" with a backpack to avoid a dangerous situation. There are times when one may have no choice in the matter (the Los Angeles fires being a prime example), but in general it's best to stay put and ride out a disaster in one's home (assuming one has applied basic forethought to one's preparations).
... here's a helpful tool from cartoonist Stephan Pastis. Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.
I don't know how many building and/or repair contractors there are in the greater Los Angeles area, but I suspect they're going to have enough work on their plates to keep them fully occupied for years to come.
I spoke with an acquaintance yesterday who's on the brink of abandoning his burned-out Los Angeles home and leaving the state. It was his grandfather's and his father's home before him. He had no mortgage on the house, but was under-insured compared to its current market value (or what was its market value prior to the fire). According to him, he's already been advised that the insurers will apply averaging to what they pay out, considering him to be self-insured for part of the value, so they won't give him the full amount for which he'd insured the house with them. Needless to say, he's not happy. However, his place of work went up in smoke along with several thousand houses, so he's suddenly free to consider a move. All things considered, he's probably going to take the insurance money for his house, sell the land on which it stood (which might still be worth a considerable amount in its own right) and head for a freer state with more opportunities for his teenage children. He was asking me all sorts of questions about Texas, particularly our housing prices, which are low enough compared to California that he can probably buy something acceptable for cash. If he can find a job that fits his qualifications and experience, I daresay he'll be heading this way within weeks.
I suspect he's likely to be the first of many . . .
This is one news story I would never have expected to read.
In a gleaming laboratory in Edinburgh, robotic machines whirr and mix. The final product that they are creating will be a pine-smelling chemical that can be used as an ingredient in perfumes. But the starting point is very different: a brown, gloopy, fat mixture, recently fished out from below ground - fatbergs.
Fatbergs are the foul phenomenon found lurking in (and blocking up) sewers. The development of the technology used to perform this apparent alchemy is being described by some as a new industrial revolution.
. . .
Prof Stephen Wallace from the University of Edinburgh is among those turning the fatbergs into perfumes. "It's a crazy idea," he admits to me, "but it works."
Fatbergs are accumulated lumps of fat from cooking oils, toilet and other food waste that people put down their drains. Prof Wallace gets his from a company that specialises in fishing them out of sewers and turning them into biofuels. They arrive at the lab in a tube.
The first step is to sterilise the material in a steamer. Prof Wallace then adds the specially modified bacteria to the remnants of the fatberg. The bacteria have a short section of DNA inserted, to give the bacteria their particular properties.
The fatberg gradually disappears, as the bacteria eat it, producing the chemical with the pine-like smell - this can be used as an ingredient in perfumes.
There's more at the link, including more maggot-gagging pollutant products that are being "reprocessed" into something useful.
Would you apply a perfume to your body that had started out as a fatberg? I find the very concept repulsive . . . but I guess it's not much different from drinking recycled, purified sewer water, as millions of us do in many cities every day. In this day and age, we have so much waste to dispose of that it makes sense to recycle and reuse it, rather than create even more pollution by dumping it somewhere.
Nevertheless, the thought of a fatberg being used as a perfume ingredient is about as cringe-worthy as anything I've ever heard!
The Wall Street Journal reports that a little-known change in California's insurance regulations last year means that the enormous property losses caused by the current Los Angeles fires may end up being paid by all California property owners - not just those directly affected.
The new policy affects the backstop for California’s Fair Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which sells fire-damage policies to homeowners who can’t get coverage elsewhere.
The worry is that the Fair Plan lacks the resources to pay for the quickly escalating cost of the fires, which have destroyed tens of thousands of structures.
The rules change means insurance companies can bill their customers if they are forced to bail out the plan, which has an estimated $200 million in cash and $2.5 billion in reinsurance, according to data it reported last year.
That is likely not enough to cover the Fair Plan’s share of the losses from the fires, forecast at up to $6 billion by analysts at Evercore ISI.
. . .
Analysts at Morningstar DBRS now forecast insured losses of up to $30 billion—the highest for any fire in the world in recent times ... the spiraling cost could financially overwhelm the Fair Plan, the decades-old, government-created insurance safety net.
Like similar insurance safety nets in more than 30 other states, including disaster-prone places such as Florida, the Fair Plan wasn’t set up as a typical insurer. It operates with little cash in the bank, as a way of keeping rates—while higher than private insurers’ premiums—within reach of policyholders. Regulated insurers agree to bail out the plan, if needed, as a price of doing business in the state.
The Fair Plan is required to take all-comers, which means its customers are heavily concentrated in fire-prone areas.
. . .
If the Fair Plan breaches its financial resources, the state can call on commercial home insurers to pay the rest of the claims, by imposing what’s called an assessment on the companies.
The charge on each company would be roughly proportionate to its share of the home-insurance market ... companies can add to their customers’ bills 50% of the first $1 billion of an assessment, and 100% of any amounts over that, subject to [the California insurance commissioner's] agreement.
. . .
Consumer advocates are up in arms about the prospect of a potential charge of hundreds or even thousands of dollars being added to home-insurance bills.
“Homeowners across the state shouldn’t pay because insurance companies dumped homeowners on the Fair Plan,” said Carmen Balber, the Los Angeles-based executive director of Consumer Watchdog.
There's much more at the link. If you own and/or insure property in California, it's a must-read article.
Think about it like this. You own a house in, say, Redding, a city in northern California, about 550 miles from Los Angeles as the crow flies. You're paying your regular homeowner's insurance on your property, presumably a manageable amount, because you're not in a high-risk zone. Suddenly your insurer demands that you pay double that insurance premium for 2025, because that's "your share" of its bailout costs for California's Fair Plan insurance scheme, which has been drained by fire losses in Los Angeles - losses with which you had nothing to do. You object? So what? California's rules, regulations and laws make it legal to rob Peter to pay Paul - and in this case, you're Peter. You say you can't afford the bill, and don't have the money? Then your insurers will sue you, and may end up taking your house and selling it out from under you to get the money the State of California says you owe them. Doesn't that give you a warm, fuzzy feeling?
I am so very, very glad that I don't live in the socialist hellhole known as California . . .
Fire all 8,222 Federal Senior Executive Service (SES) employees. Rehire if needed as Limited Term appointments only as defined under 5 U.S.C. 3132 (a)(5): limited term appointee means an individual appointed under a nonrenewable appointment for a term of 3 years or less to a SES positions the duties of which will expire at the end of such term. In 2024, the basic annual salary for SES members ranges from $180,000 to $246,200.
Fire all 93 federal district attorneys.
Fire all Ambassadors (they have to submit their resignations with each new administration, they serve "at the pleasure of the President",) and all 7,999 Foreign Service officers, called "generalist" diplomats.
Fire all serving active-duty general and flag officers (GFOs) and impose a ten year moratorium on working for industry after retirement. Employ two phases: retire all flag officers with an odd number in their SSN in February 2025 and even numbered SSNs in March 2025. As of March 2024, the number of GFOs in the US Department of Defense (DoD) was 809. This was 48 fewer than the maximum of 857 authorized by law. Reduce the GFO authorization to 100 authorized by law immediately.
Relocate all 168 Foreign Embassies and 727 Consulates placed in the territory of United States to Greenland once it is acquired.
. . .
Close the UN in New York and reflag it as Trump Tower. Relocate the 6500 NY UN personnel to Diego Garcia in Quonset huts or barges in the atoll.
Just think of the kerfuffle if the Trump team were to take such advice literally! It'd have a seismic impact on the USA. Unfortunately, it's not practical as written, but it contains a whole lot of things that I'd like to see implemented on as wide a scale as possible, given the constraints of reality.
I'm seriously thinking of recommending that FEMA staff be retroactively and immediately relocated to any and every disaster that they try to alleviate, 24 hours after it occurs. Let them live and work under the same conditions the survivors have to endure, and see how long their bureaucrats remain disdainfully ignoring the reality they're supposed to administer!
The city’s subways aren’t just on the brink of collapse — the breakdown of the aging system has already begun. The number of train delays caused by faulty infrastructure and equipment last year shot up by 46% since 2021, MTA data shows. Major incidents — defined as problems that delay 50 or more trains, like the one on Dec. 11 — reached their highest levels last year since 2018.
During a three-month investigation, Gothamist reporters toured eight transit facilities that are off limits to the public and got a first-hand look at the MTA’s old, crumbling infrastructure. Reporters interviewed more than 100 riders on nearly every subway line across the city about the daily inconveniences they endure due to the shoddy system.
"The way the world looks at New York, it's like there's so much money here. It's like the capital of capitalism, everything's great and whatever. And the train is terrible," said J train rider Marcela Toro, 34.
Internal MTA records obtained by Gothamist and the agency’s public data reveal that service breakdowns are on pace to become more frequent in 2025 than during New York’s infamous “summer of hell” in 2017, when the subway’s reliability fell to its lowest level in decades. MTA officials blame those problems on “deferred maintenance,” or decades of cost-saving measures that kept equipment in use far past its expiration date. But those same problems persist, and experts warn the same thing is about to happen again, creating cascading issues throughout the system.
"If you don't invest in the foundation of a house, the house is going to fall down when the wind comes,” said John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union.
. . .
The subway system runs on electricity, which makes the system vulnerable to the growing number of flash floods fueled by climate change. On a dry day, 254 pump rooms pump about 14 million gallons of water out of the subways. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the system was inundated with more than 60 million gallons.
The equipment that expels water from the system includes technology installed in the 1920s, according to Jamie Torres-Springer, the MTA’s head of construction.
Two of those old pumps are behind a door at the 116th Street station on the 2 and 3 lines. Commuters who pass by likely have no clue they’re standing just feet away from infrastructure that looks like it should be in a museum.
The two oldest pneumatic pumps in the room are so old they can’t be automated and run on air pressure that’s calibrated by the twist of a handle.
. . .
“A pump room like this, the equipment is over 100 years old, so it's often in poor condition,” said Torres-Springer.
“It's being held together with chewing gum and twine in a lot of cases and it doesn't have the capacity to handle the water flow that we see because of heavier rainfall events.”
The MTA wants to spend $65 billion on upgrades and improvements, but there's no guarantee even that enormous sum will be enough - and it'll be yet another immense financial burden on the shoulders of already overtaxed and overextended New York residents.
If I knew that the odds of my suffering a criminal attack, or a breakdown that prevented me getting to my destination on time, or a weather or other natural disaster-related event that might threaten my safety (even my life) . . . why would I even think of spending my hard-earned money on a service that increasingly appears to guarantee all three outcomes?
I've just had the unpleasant (!) news that I'm going to have to pay over $3,500 up front for two medical examinations, one involving nuclear medicine (to compare the function of my kidneys) and the other a CT scan of their current physical state. Of course, it's the new year, and whereas last year I paid my entire deductible in the first half of the year (plus some charges my insurance wouldn't cover), and thus had a "free ride" for the second half of the year, we're back at square one for 2025. Very fortunately, my wife and I have been saving our shekels for this, knowing it was coming. Even so, it's a big hit, and we'll have to pay twice that before I hit my maximum deductible this year. That's bound to happen.
However, I also have to admit that despite medical costs being (seemingly) very high in this country, there are valid reasons for that. DiveMedic addresses some of them.
This woman here had a child that was born prematurely. That child spent a month in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The bill came to $738,360, and the mother complains that the cost is too high. There are many in the comments that agree, and it’s filled with comments about how other countries have free healthcare, which is of course false.
The bill for that child’s care is completely reasonable. Let me explain why:
Nurses work 3, 12 hour shifts per week, and NICU nurses are frequently on 1:1 care, meaning one nurse to one patient. A 30 day stay in the NICU means that your child had the undivided attention of 5 nurses for a month. An experienced nurse, (for obvious reasons NICU nurses tend to be fairly experienced, qualified, competent, and educated) aren’t cheap. The average pay for a NICU nurse in the US is about $130,000 a year. Night shift makes even more, thanks to shift differentials.
The nurses in charge of your child’s care cost the hospital $70,000 in direct compensation, plus the costs of insurance, training, and other HR expenses. In all, just the nursing care for that month in the hospital cost that hospital about $140,000. Now add in the costs of everyone involved in that from the doctors to the lab technicians, and even the janitors.
Each of those people is highly educated, even the janitor. Yes, the janitor. To comply with Federal law, that janitor has to be instructed on CPR, stroke procedures, HIPAA compliance, Medicare and Medicaid laws, sex trafficking, recognizing child abuse, disposing of medical waste, and a host of other laws. He also needs to be background and possibly drug checked, especially to work in a pediatric wing. All of this raises the cost of hiring that janitor.
Back to the nurses. It takes 3 years of schooling to become a registered nurse. Then it takes years of experience, training, and work to specialize as a NICU nurse. In all, the average NICU nurse has been a nurse for 5 years or more and has attended far more schooling than a beginning nurse. Pediatrics is a specialty. So is neonatology, as is critical care. NICU nurses have to certify as all three. That’s why they make what they make- competence costs money.
Then there is the lab work, the cost of provider that supervises those NICU nurses (usually a nurse practitioner), lab technicians, respiratory therapists, medications, medical equipment, supplies, meals, and even the guy that empties the trash. Then there are the doctors, as well as the regulatory costs of compliance.
In total, labor costs alone for that stay were probably in the neighborhood of $300,000, so I don’t think $700k is out of line once you do the math.
That isn’t even considering what procedures may have been done- if surgery was involved, you can also add anesthesia, scrub nurses, surgical nurses, and a host of other specialties and specialized equipment.
DiveMedic acknowledges that in many countries with so-called "free" or "public" health care, these costs are never seen by the patient: but that's because they're paid by taxpayers in general. Whether the patient pays them directly or pays a wodge of extra taxes to subsidize them, she's going to pay, one way or the other. "Free" healthcare isn't.
That's why I can't complain too hard about having to pay close to five figures last year in insurance deductibles, plus pretty much the same again in costs not covered by insurance. At least I live in a country where the medical system is good enough to treat me, and advanced enough to offer the latest technology, and I don't have to wait forever to see a doctor who may or may not be competent! I can certainly understand the frustration of those who need treatment but can't afford it, but even there, many hospitals offer arrangements whereby they take the financial hit and offset it against their taxes as a charitable donation. Other generous individuals donate to help cover the cost of expensive procedures (as one reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, did for me last year - for which my eternal gratitude!). There are ways.
These two examinations, later this month, will determine whether I need further kidney procedures (up to and including losing a kidney if things don't look good). I'm hoping and praying for the best. Thereafter, as soon as the kidney situation is dealt with, I have to look at further spinal fusions near the site of my existing one. After 21 years, that area of the spine is showing the strain, and needs reinforcement. That's going to be very painful and very expensive, I suspect . . . but we'll see. Again, thanks be to God that I live in a country where such advanced care is available! I shudder to think what the fusion procedure might be if I still lived in Africa. It would probably involve baling wire and strips of rubber tire!
Blue-collar workers (on manufacturing assembly lines, transport drivers, maintenance, etc.) have seen some impact from robotics so far. That's generally been in the form of big machines permanently planted in given locations on an assembly line, performing one or more functions under supervision, then sending the article onward to the next assembly station. In terms of transport, artificial intelligence-boosted computerized copilots have already flown, some of them capable of taking an aircraft from takeoff to landing without human intervention. Driverless vehicles are already riding America's roads, and becoming more common. However, the basic structure of the workplace - a "traditional" factory, or transport, or whatever - has not (yet) been fundamentally challenged.
That's about to change. It looks as if Elon Musk and Tesla are in the vanguard, developing humanoid robots that can run their own assembly line, moving and functioning in a human fashion rather than being restricted to one place and one job. Because the robots are now (or soon will be) autonomous, the entire nature of the factory as we know it may change drastically.
Tesla is Revolutionizing Manufacturing—And Few Are Talking About It
"The most under-discussed thing in the analyst world about Tesla is not the new vehicles coming, nor the growing discussions about autonomy, but rather Tesla's next product: their new way of manufacturing.
It's a big deal, a huge step in how products are made today, and I don't think many investment firms have the right research people actually looking into what this impact is and what it's going to enable.
It's going to enable the variable cost to build products to shrink further and further, approaching zero. This is the step function needed for cost reduction to achieve further scale, and I don’t think enough people are talking about it.
It’s going to be how the Cybertruck is made, how Optimus will be made. Tesla versions its factories like they version their product.
They spend time perfecting it and have design reviews of their factory designs just as they do with their products. They have specs and performance attributes they are trying to meet. This is very different from what happens at other companies at the executive level."
That's an excerpt on X.com from this hour-long discussion of what Tesla is doing, and how it may impact other manufacturers and interests.
It sounds very similar to what SpaceX has done with its rocket engine design and manufacture. It has three generations (so far) of its Raptor rocket engine (click the image below for a larger view):
Each generation has been "smarter", lighter, more powerful and simpler than the preceding one. Furthermore, production has speeded up immensely. According to Elon Musk, SpaceX is producing one of the third-generation Raptor engines every day at its factory in California - and that'll have to increase significantly if SpaceX hopes to launch two of its mammoth Starship rockets every month this year. Only ultra-modern manufacturing techniques, using robotics and computer-aided manufacture whenever possible, can hope to achieve that rate of production. Traditional manufacturing, with its high number of human employees, literally could not work fast or accurately enough to produce them. Sounds like a poster child for the new manufacturing techniques discussed above . . . and for other industries too.
This is such a profound statement because a lot of the stories that I hear are related to, like, say Tesla capitalizing on making manufacturing the product—really just honing in so much on the factory that it becomes the product, the you know, and where we throw around 2 million cars per year, five million cars per year per factory, tens of millions of bots per year sooner than people think. The usual narrative is crazy, pie-in-the-sky; they can’t do that, look at Ford, look at BYD, they can only do so much.
But what we’re missing here is that we’ve had decades of just sitting on our asses, leveraging cheaper labor versus going out of our way to really push the boundaries of engineering and manufacturing. And now that we have a company that’s willing to do that because the leader is viewing that as a first principles approach to manufacturing, right? Instead of like, okay, cheap labor is good, but why aren’t we pushing manufacturing and engineering as much as we can to make this as efficient and as productive as possible?
Of course they’re extremely talented, they’re doing something very unique, but it’s also on the backs of 30-40 years of, I’m going to call it laziness. Like, you’re just taking the easy way out, and I get it, more profits, you’re taking care of shareholders—I get it—but you’re not really pushing the boundaries of manufacturing. I think what this leads to is, if companies and leaders truly take this to heart, we’re going to see an explosion in manufacturing across the board. It’s not just going to be a Tesla thing; I think we’re going to see it all over the place.
Another aspect is the introduction of robotics into areas like farming, where human labor has until now been indispensable. We've discussed in these pages robots that dispense insecticide and fertilizer, or harvest certain crops; but now robots are set to play a much larger role, simply because some jobs require labor that is no longer available (or willing to work for affordable wages), and/or are too dangerous to risk human lives. One commenter on the video embedded above said:
As a "small" scale rural farmer (no tractors) our biggest expense is labour, about $28,000 per employee (40 hrs/ week @ $20/hr for 8 months/year). And that is IF we can find any willing workers. IF we can they often make many costly mistakes, take time off for vacations, and productions plummets if it is too hot, too cold, too rainy, or when they are too tired.
Humanoid robots are terrifying to me, but at the same time I can't help but be drawn to the possibility that they could be the solution we have been looking for...
The remote-controlled robot was created by a Nebraska family whose farmer friend pleaded with them to build him a robot so he never had to risk going into a dangerous grain bin again.
Noting on their website that there are around 25 grain-bin engulfment deaths a year, Grain Weevil has adopted the motto “No boots in the grain.”
That’s a motto that sits well with Rabou, who grows wheat and other grains near Cheyenne.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of grain you’re raising, it’s all dangerous when it’s in a bin,” Rabou told Cowboy State Daily. “All you have to do is just collapse one empty pocket, and it can just, as soon as it has pressure on it, collapse and pull everything into it.”
Everything, in the case of many family farms, is likely to be either a good friend or family member. That makes grain-bin entrapment a very personal tragedy, both for the farm family and the surrounding farming community.
Rabou said given the choice of sending a robot into a grain bin or a person, it’s going to be the robot every time.
Add to that experimentation in other countries for new ways to use robots, particularly humanoid ones (for example, Japan has a great need for elder care, and nowhere near enough people to fill all those jobs, so it's experimenting with robotic delivery of elder care instead), and it looks as if traditional blue-collar work across many industries and economies is about to be severely shaken up. That's an important consideration for young people looking at their future careers. Can their chosen field be automated, and is it cost-effective to do so? If so, they might want to look somewhere else.
On the other hand, could the advent of such advanced automation save older industries that have become too expensive with human labor, and can't recruit enough skilled workers to produce their output? We spoke a few days ago about the USA's shipbuilding industry crisis, and how we might have to look to other countries to manufacture our ships. Could the extensive automation of US shipyards change that picture?
Finally, we have to ask what we'll do with thousands of blue-collar workers, particularly those who are untrained or without complex, in-demand skills, who will be left without work as a result of this new wave of automation. How are they to support themselves? Will some sort of universal basic income become a necessary, even an essential element of our society? Will our cities become merely residences for unwanted former workers, while factories migrate from them to new industrial zones organized around and built upon automated systems, with minimal human involvement? Who knows?
Victor Davis Hanson calls the current and ongoing California wildfires "a DEI, Green New Deal Disaster, something out of Dante's Inferno". In the blurb accompanying the short video below, he "discusses the mismanagement of resources, lack of effective forest management, and prioritization of diversity and inclusion over merit in firefighting efforts. He labels the situation as a 'systems breakdown' and warns of the larger implications for California's future."
It's a very succinct look at why and how the wildfires got so big, so quickly, and so far out of control. It's less than eight minutes long, and well worth your time to watch it.
He concludes:
I don't want to be too pessimistic or bleak tonight, but this is one of the most alarming symptoms of a society gone mad, and if this continues and if this were to spread to other states, we would become a Third World country if we're not in parts already.
Here's an intriguing tune I came across on social media the other day. I enjoyed the foot-tapping rhythm without knowing what the song was about (it's in Romanian): but then I found a lyrics site that offered a translation, and became doubly intrigued. Go read the English lyrics to discover why, and then enjoy the music.
I don't know if it's an older, traditional tune, or a more modern composition. Can anyone shed more light on it? If so, please let us know in Comments.
I'm sure there will be many longer-term lessons coming out of the Los Angeles fires; the importance of locating oneself as far from predictable hazards as possible, fireproofing one's home, and so on. However, some lessons jump right out at us, and confirm a great deal of what we've discussed in these pages. Others shed new light on some issues that we may not have considered.
First, getting away from the danger. Countless reports from Los Angeles speak of gridlock on the roads. One woman said it took her two hours to travel two city blocks! Others speak of abandoned cars, blocking roads so completely that they had to be moved by bulldozer (with inevitable damage to the vehicles concerned). If we live in an area where such gridlock is likely (including most modern cities, sad to say), we need to take that into account. Will we be able to "get out of Dodge" if we need to? If not, we need to place greater emphasis on staying in place, and making our homes more secure against likely hazards.
Second, consider whether our local and regional governments are worthy of trust. Those in Los Angeles appear to be anything but! Their handling of this emergency has been nothing short of catastrophic. In part, I accept that the sheer scale of the disaster is partly responsible for that; but the lack of leadership, poor implementation of basic emergency measures such as adequate reserves of water for firefighting, emphasis on political correctness rather than practical training in the Fire Department, and other factors are equally to blame. Can we trust our lives to our local authorities? If not, what are we going to do about it? If we can't change the situation, shouldn't we be considering a move to a safer area, where we are more likely to be able to make it on our own or with the help of neighbors?
(Speaking of help from neighbors, it's worth looking at video of the areas that have burned, taken before the fires started. In a semi-desert environment, where fires are a known hazard and occur routinely, it astonishes me how many homes had trees and other vegetation right up against their walls. They effectively made themselves into firetraps. If everyone in the area had planned their gardens defensively, agreeing (or being coerced through regulations) to minimize flammable vegetation and implement basic anti-fire methods of construction and decoration, how many more houses would have survived? I'm willing to bet that at the very least, the fires would have spread more slowly, allowing firefighters more time and space to contain them, and possibly making evacuation easier as well.)
A really big problem has just been laid bare for all to see. If we've laid in emergency supplies, are they protected against this sort of disaster? If we have them in our homes, along with everything else we hold dear, they're anything but protected. They'll burn along with our houses. If we have some at home, and others stored nearby (e.g. at a friend's house, or in a storage unit at a local facility, a few blocks or miles away), will the latter be secure? In a fire as widespread as those in Los Angeles, that location may burn too. Furthermore, what about getting there? If the roads are gridlocked, choked with abandoned vehicles, there may be no way for us to get to our remotely stored supplies with a vehicle big enough to carry some or all of them to where they're needed. Another thing: we may be able to get there only on foot or by bicycle, thanks to blocked roads. How many supplies can we carry on our backs or bikes, and for how far? Are they packaged in small enough containers, by both weight and volume, to make that feasible? Do we have backpacks, wheeled folding carts, etc. available at our storage location to make moving them easier? Who's going to protect them from looters while we're taking some to another location?
I know two people who are pretty well prepared for such emergencies, as far as their respective budgets allow. One is fairly well off. He's bought a two-ton cargo trailer that he can hitch behind his family's primary vehicle (a big SUV). It's parked behind his house, and kept in good condition. In it he keeps, permanently stored, 30 days' food for his family and pets, and five or six days' water. There's a suitcase of clothing per person, seasonally adjusted for cold or hot weather. There are also camping supplies (tent, sleeping-bags, pads, camp cooking gear, etc.) and a few containers of propane, gasoline, etc., so that they can get a safe distance away from danger and stay mobile. The remaining space in the trailer is left open for whatever they need on departure, including pet travel cages, etc. They'll grab essential documents, money, etc. on their way out of the door, if necessary.
The other family I know isn't nearly so well off, and can't afford that level of preparation, but they've done what they can. They bought a fold-up trailer from Harbor Freight, which can nominally carry up to 1,720 pounds weight (although they figure a practical load will be about half that in a cheap Chinesium product). They've built a removable wood framework around it to secure boxes and totes, and added a spare wheel. It's normally stored folded and upright in their garage. In time of need, they'll take it out and assemble it, then add a series of plastic weatherproof totes containing a week or two's food and water, short-term clothing needs, and other emergency supplies. A couple of the totes are kept ready packed; others are on standby, empty, to be filled when needed. A tarpaulin or two are ready to cover the load, giving at least some protection against wind, weather and prying eyes and fingers. They reckon they can be ready to go in twenty to thirty minutes after receiving the evacuation warning.
Both those families are probably as well prepared as they can be for an emergency like the Los Angeles fires. They may (probably will) lose everything in their homes, if worse comes to worst: but they're ready to take enough with them to ensure they'll survive, and have a foundation on which to build as they recover. My wife and I aren't in either of their leagues right now, largely due to financial issues: but believe me, after Los Angeles, I'm looking very hard at buying a small folding trailer to store in our garage for emergency use, and thinking about what to pack on it. That suddenly seems like a very useful idea indeed! I'll start putting money aside towards that need.
Finally, consider communications. Cellphones are all very well, provided that there are cellphone towers available and unburned! Small, low-cost FRS or GMRS radios can be bought at many camping stores and supermarkets, and offer another useful option. CB radios are a little more powerful, and after the decline of the CB "craze" some years ago, aren't as heavily used as some other channels. I think every member of your family (except perhaps small children) would benefit from having their own communications device, along with clearly understood instructions on when and where and how to use it. If you're dependent on the availability of the Internet for business purposes, consider Starlink's Roam option, which uses a small portable satellite dish that fits into a backpack. There are many other options available - although in a big fire situation like Los Angeles, I suggest avoiding smoke signals!
Anyway, those are just some thoughts that have come to mind over the past few days. Do you have any others to contribute? If so, please let us know in Comments.
Given the current parlous state of US shipyards and shipbuilding, is it time to seriously consider building our warships overseas? The Telegraph thinks so.
As an aside, the Constellation class is a live case study in what happens if you select a foreign design and then meddle with it. It is now estimated that 85 per cent of the Constellation design is different to the FREMM, undoing any savings in cost and time and throwing away most of the guarantees of capability and reliability. President-elect Trump commented on it this week, saying, “people playing around and tinkering and changing the design… they’re not smart and they take something and they make it worse for a lot more money”. Given how the Franken-FREMM is taking shape, this is actually quite polite.
Much of Trump’s interview was in response to the Congressional Budget Office’s “analysis of the Navy’s 2025 shipbuilding plan” which outlined the following key points:
First, the 2025 plan increases shipbuilding costs by 46 per cent annually in real terms compared to recent averages. The CBO estimates $40 billion yearly over 30 years, 17 per cent above Navy projections, with the total budget rising from $255 billion to $340 billion by 2054.
Second, the fleet would decrease to 283 ships by 2027 before growing to 390 by 2054 from the current 295. The Navy will buy 364 new ships, focusing on current generation and smaller vessels. Firepower will dip initially but increase as the fleet expands.
Third, a significant increase in the size of the industrial base, especially for nuclear submarines, is required.
So: can’t afford the plan, will reduce in size and lethality in the short term, major industrial expansion is required to reverse this decline. This makes for difficult reading for two reasons. First, it is clear the US cannot scale up its shipyards as it needs to on any reasonable time scale: it cannot even fully staff its existing yards, let alone open new ones. Second, you could change dollars and pounds and reduce the numbers (a lot) and a report on the Royal Navy would say almost the same.
Trump carries on in the same interview saying, “We’re going to be announcing some things that are going to be very good having to do with the Navy. We need ships. We have to get ships… We may have to go to others, bid them out, and it’s okay to do that. We’ll bid them out until we get ourselves ready”.
Looking for signs as to what he meant by ‘others’ and ‘bid them out’, many have looked to South Korea based on something he said last November shortly after being elected. “The US shipbuilding industry needs South Korea’s help and cooperation. We are aware of Korea’s construction capabilities and should cooperate with Korea in repair and maintenance. I want to talk more specifically in this area.”
As if to show the Trump effect, just the hint was enough to see Korean ship builders Hanwha Ocean and HJ Shipbuilding & Construction stock prices showing strong gains on the day (10 and 15 percent) while the shares of Hyundai’s shipbuilding subsidiaries and Samsung Heavy Industries increased a little (three percent).
It’s also not clear if he was referring to warships or support vessels but either way, South Korea has pedigree. He could certainly use them to build ships for the Military Sealift Command ... Fleet auxiliaries aren’t as complicated to build as warships, though more so than most kinds of commercial shipping. But Korean yards have also produced some very complex warships, including ones carrying the powerful US-made Aegis combat system – the gold standard of warship technology.
. . .
Consider this: Hyundai Heavy Industries’ shipbuilding division in South Korea is the biggest shipbuilder in the world. It produces most classes of warship, including submarines, as well as huge tonnages of commercial vessels. It has around 14,000 employees. This is actually fewer people than work in the shipbuilding divisions of BAE Systems plc, which are only capable of producing sharply limited numbers of warships and auxiliaries, very slowly and expensively.
I know "America First!" purists will scream blue murder at the thought of offshoring the Navy's new ships, but our own shipyards are simply too backlogged on current maintenance and construction to even consider working faster or harder. In many cases, they're hampered by a severe shortage of skilled labor, which can virtually name its own price to work in other industries as well.
We could start by contracting for support ships - unarmed vessels. These are basically merchant ships built to military specifications, perhaps with tougher hulls and plating to withstand prolonged sea time, plus specialized equipment for refueling and replenishment at sea. There's no reason why actual warships could not be built as well. South Korea already produces its own designs, armed with American weapons and electronics and technology. To add a production line for Constellation-class frigates or Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers wouldn't appear to offer any significant problem on the face of it. It's certainly no more of a security risk than already exists, because almost all our current weapons systems have already been sold to South Korea and installed by its builders in their own warships. If anyone planned to steal information about them, they've already had the opportunity.
I think this idea has tremendous possibilities. Why not try it and see?
Two of my favorite and most knowledgeable bloggers have weighed in on the fires currently ravaging parts of Los Angeles. What they have to say is anything but comfortable . . . but it's true, and until that truth is addressed, the problem will simply recur. Let's take them in alphabetical order.
At the end of the day life is about balancing risks, rewards and costs.
. . .
The same is true out in Southern California. Fires aren't new there and the Santa Ana winds are an annual phenomena that have occurred long before the California Gold Rush brought a large influx of humans. No, humans are not making it worse but we are putting more and more "stuff" of ever-increasing value in the way that can be destroyed. Couple high wind with dry conditions, given that part of the country is borderline desert, and you've got a high-risk environment with vegetation which reflects that and in some cases actually requires fire to propagate! Add to that state government policies that do not clear brush (on purpose!) and in other areas do not conduct control burns during the part of the year when high winds do not occur and you've got the natural environment and its oscillations -- including much larger fires simply because there's more fuel available and you refused to reduce said fuel load despite having the opportunity to do so in advance. Now add deliberate refusal to build out fire-suppression infrastructure (in this case California residents approved a bond issue many years ago to do exactly that but it wasn't done!) and you have all the ingredients for what is now occurring. If you want to know why insurance companies left they asked for rates that reflected this deliberate neglect and foolish set of decisions by said government agencies and, when you get down to it, the people who live there and kept voting those government agents into office. The firms had already taken large fire losses as a result and thus they had no evidence any of that would change. The rate adjustments were refused and thus their only sane option was to withdraw offering coverage and leave.
. . .
The remaining question is whether those impacted will force those who had responsibility for said mitigations, in many cases explicitly funded with tax dollars yet they did not act in accordance with their responsibilities and either did nothing or spent the funds elsewhere, to be held personally responsible for any and all of their malfeasance.
Larry Lambert, writing at Virtual Mirage, has this to say.
In the 1950s, the average timber harvest in California was around 6.0 billion board feet per year. That number has dropped to ~1.5 billion board feet per year. California’s forests cover a third of the state and are now choked with nearly 163 million dead trees. California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other regulatory policies limit the ability of local government and fire management services to clear dead trees and vegetation. (This is a big deal and prevents much of the controlled burns desperately needed.)
Multiple bills, including AB 2330, AB 1951, and AB 2639, were rejected by the Democrat-controlled legislature or vetoed by the Governor that would have exempted wildfire prevention projects from CEQA and other permitting issues. Other legislation, including SB 1003, would have provided CEQA exemptions for utility undergrounding projects, as power lines that are not adequately cleared of debris present creating wildfire risks. These bills also failed to reach the Governor’s desk. California has prioritized “suppression-only” strategies and failed to remove accumulated vegetation, leading to denser forests with increased fuel loads – our forests have become tinderboxes, leading to devastating outcomes when a fire starts.
The bottom line is that many of the wildfires CA experienced could have been prevented or significantly mitigated with better management, policies, and funding.
And yet, despite the undeniable truth of both bloggers' comments, we see and hear plaintive cries from those who've lost their homes to the fire, "Why didn't the government do something to stop it? Why isn't the government doing something now to help us?"
My dear people, you voted that government into office, and you kept it there, with all its daft, ineffectual, touchy-feely, environmentally sensitive policies that doomed your neighborhoods to the death by fireball that they're currently enduring! When push comes to shove, it's your fault that your government isn't doing anything, because you elected politicians, and they appointed bureaucrats, who don't know how to do anything and are incompetent to act!
Do you think that truth will seep through into the California-dreamin' consciousness? Or is it too far gone to be able to distinguish reality from pie-in-the-sky happy dreams any more?
“Effective immediately, Daimler Trucks North America is pausing all orders for new internal combustion vehicles intended for registration in Oregon,” wrote Daimler’s general manager of product strategy and market development, Mary C. Aufdemberg, in a message to Oregon truck dealers.
. . .
Daimler, through its Freightliner and Western Star brands, is the leading producer of large trucks in the U.S., accounting for 40% of all new Class 8 trucks (tractor-trailers) sold in 2023, according to the American Truck Dealers association. (PACCAR Inc., the second-largest heavy truck maker, declined to comment on its sales plans.)
More pointedly, Daimler Trucks’ North American headquarters is in North Portland. The company is one of the state’s largest manufacturers and employs 3,000 people here.
But for now, the company that builds diesel trucks in Oregon has stopped selling them in the state.
The reason for that halt, the Oregon Journalism Project has learned: a new rule issued by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality that took effect Jan. 1.
Here’s how DEQ’s “Advanced Clean Trucks rule” works: Out of every 100 new Class 8 heavy trucks a manufacturer sells in Oregon in 2025, seven must be electric. That percentage of electric trucks will increase every year, reaching 40% of all heavy trucks sold in 2032. (In 2023, according to DEQ, Oregon dealers sold 1,708 new heavy trucks. Nine were electric.)
. . .
The company says that’s because there is “ambiguity” in how Oregon accounts for electric truck sales. Daimler fears it might fail to meet Oregon’s quota, triggering penalties. The company says that’s an unacceptable risk.
So, the leading US truck manufacturer can no longer sell its products in its home state. That means reduced production, which means lower wages paid to local staff, who have less to spend on products they need for their homes, which means the state loses all the taxes and duties it would have charged on those monies.
I hope the Oregon state politicians and bureaucrats are feeling particularly self-righteous and pure over its "woke" policies, as they fracture its economy and drive the state ever downward.
Oh - and Daimler, if you're interested: Texas' economy is booming, we have lots of room to expand, and we don't have daft "Advanced Clean Trucks" rules! Come on down!
