So much for advanced computer technology!

 

Many of us will know of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, a long-standing comic strip by Zach Weinersmith.  Sometimes he can make me laugh out loud.  As an "old-school" computer operator, programmer and analyst, way back in my distant youth, I did so when I read this one.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the comic's Web page (which will also allow you to read the mouseover text attached to the original image).

While on the subject of computer technology, there's an interesting article about Steve Krug, one of the pioneers of Web design.  He thinks social media is the worst thing that's happened in the last forty years.

He lays out his ideal version of social media. Users wouldn't be able to have more than 100 followers, which would tamp down on virality. Short-form videos would also be more difficult to find — only available via search and subscriptions, not through a curated algorithm — and wouldn't be "spoon-fed to you in such large doses," he says. That's a level of friction that he'd enjoy.

"There could have been a really good life for social networking that could have been a benefit to society," Krug says. "It hasn't gone in that direction at all."

He's especially worried about kids. When he was young, there were only three TV stations. Still, his parents didn't let him sit in front of the television every day after school, so he went to run around with the neighborhood kids instead. It benefited him, he says.

"They're designed for addiction, because that's how they make money," Krug says of the social platforms.

There's more at the link.  Recommended reading.

Peter

I wouldn't bet against this man...

 

I was intrigued to read this post about Elon Musk.  Click the screen capture below to be taken to the full-size version on X.com.

I admire Elon Musk.  He's made some mistakes, sure, but who hasn't?  However, he seems to learn from his mistakes a lot faster and a lot better than the rest of us, and proceeds to show the rest of the world how it's done.

That's why I'm also intrigued by the launch of X Money a few days ago.  Musk was one of the founders of Paypal, and withdrew from it several years ago.  He learned a lot about the consumer finance industry at that time (not to mention all he's learned about the corporate finance industry before and since).  X Money is still in its early stages, but I expect it'll incorporate all those lessons in due course, and will probably end up being a major threat to the consumer banking industry.  It's already offering an interest rate of 6% - three times higher than most banks of which I'm aware.  For those who keep "nest eggs" handy, either as an emergency reserve or saving to buy something expensive, that's a very large incentive, offering interest rates that offset most of what inflation is costing us.

This isn't an advertisement for X Money.  I'm just very interested to see what Musk's new venture will offer people like you and I.  I fully expect panicked reaction from consumer banks as they try to stop their customers from trying X Money for themselves.  Will this turn into his latest success story?  I wouldn't bet against it - or him.

Peter

Things are getting interesting in narco-Mexico...

 

According to a report in the Atlantic (paywalled, but an archived version is here), the politicians in Mexico who have for years - probably for generations - been bribed and/or cajoled and/or threatened by the drug cartels into turning a blind eye to their criminal activities, appear to be changing their tune.

(BIAS WARNING:  The Atlantic is notoriously anti-President Trump and routinely criticizes the policies and actions of his administration.  This article appears to be unusually positive, despite that reservation.)

... the governor of the strategically important border state of Baja California was just caught on tape offering to become an FBI informant. The remarkable thing here is that she would not be the first; the list of current and former Mexican officials and drug traffickers who have offered to cooperate with the U.S. government is now lengthy.

. . .

Since his second term began, Trump has periodically threatened military action inside Mexico, alluding to air strikes or operations that would “take out the cartels.” Mexican officials have repeatedly rejected the possibility. “There will be no invasion of Mexico,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said last year. But quietly, Mexican officials have discussed what it would mean if they were attacked by their neighbor and largest trading partner. Would it be a special-forces operation, like the one that seized former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro? A drone strike on a fentanyl lab? Some Mexican officials are reading books about the Mexican-American War, searching for historical precedent.

Because the threat of military intervention is so dramatic, not enough attention has been paid to a type of intervention that is already taking place, one that could pave the way for strikes. In a break with long-standing precedent, American prosecutors have used informants to pursue members of the Mexican government, apparently “moving up the food chain,” as one U.S. official described it to me ... Several former Mexican officials facing U.S. charges have turned themselves in, apparently agreeing to cooperate with authorities to reduce their sentences. Dozens of newly extradited drug traffickers, too, are believed to be cooperating. Their accounts appear to have allowed U.S. investigators to build cases against members of Sheinbaum’s Morena political party. At least four have been indicted. Many more have had their visas revoked.

It’s a high-risk escalation in the Trump administration’s fight against narco corruption—and possibly also a pretext for a unilateral attack. Trump could use evidence of the government’s links to organized crime in an attempt to justify using force in Mexico. This week, the Trump-appointed head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Terry Cole, gave a speech describing “the deadly connection between cartel networks and the Mexican government.”

“They are one [and] the same,” he said.

. . .

Last week, the State Department designated two lesser-known drug cartels—the Juárez Cartel and Los Viagras—as “foreign terrorist ⁠organizations” and “specially designated global terrorists.” Some within the Trump administration believe that those designations would offer some kind of legal authority for an attack, though international-law experts largely differ ... The campaign against cartel leaders has been so successful that, even if the United States wanted to decapitate a drug-trafficking organization, it’s unclear whom they would target.

There's more at the link.

This has mostly been taking place "under the wire", so to speak.  We've known for years that the entire government structure of Mexico - local, regional and national - is corrupted by drug money from the cartels, who effectively run most of the country.  However, if the cartel leaders, and political leaders, are rendered ineffective (or imprisoned), what's going to happen to the social fabric of Mexico?  So much of it is cartel-corrupted (including almost every element of the police and armed forces, the emergency services, etc.) that ordinary citizens have learned to live without most of the social structure we take for granted.  If the replacement structures of the cartel are suddenly removed, will Mexico survive in its present form?

I think there are three possibilities.

1. Mexico will collapse into a "failed state", with widespread chaos and anarchy.  It will be almost impossible for business to function without paying massive bribes to local strongmen, but those strongmen will be at war with each other, so that an effective regional or national government simply won't be possible.
2. Mexico will limp along as it does at present.  The cartel structures will continue to use their financial wealth (very considerable, having amassed it over decades) to buy the cooperation of the civil authorities.  However, the competition between cartels to take over those resources will devolve into civil war in parts of the country, and will likely spill over into the southern United States.  I'd expect southern California, Arizona and New Mexico to become very dangerous areas, even more so than at present.  (I daresay Texas will probably cope better than they do, because Texas law enforcement authorities aren't handcuffed by liberal politicians who'll do everything in their power to restrict them.)
3. Mexico may break into several smaller nation-states, based on divisions that go back centuries.  Don't forget, "modern" Mexico was "created" out of a series of revolutions and civil wars that imposed unity out of the barrel of a gun, and killed anyone who argued with the concept.  With the number of guns in circulation there now, it'll be harder to impose authority in that way.

I could be completely wrong, of course.  Time will tell . . .

Peter

True dat

 

Healthranger observes that most people have no idea about how the world functions - or why it's that way.

While I am blessed to be able to interview some of the smartest people in the world, I remain aghast at the utter lack of knowledge among the "ignorant masses."

• Most people don't know a thing about food ingredients.
• They don't know where energy comes from.
• They don't know where their own organs are located in their own body.
• They don't know how mechanical things work, not even at a basic level (like combustion engines).
• They don't know basic first aid or emergency medicine for self-treatment.
• They are completely clueless when it comes to geography.
• They don't know what money is. (And they certainly don't understand compounding interest.)
• They don't know how computers work, or how storage devices function.

The average person is a walking biological shell of cognitive emptiness. And their lack of fundamental curiosity prevents them from ever making the effort to learn anything that matters.

But they are total experts in fashion, sports and celebrities, of course. They know all the latest trends pushed by shallow influencers, but they have zero knowledge of what's happening in the world and why their life is becoming more difficult by the day.

There's more at the link, and in the comments that follow.  Worthwhile reading.

I've noticed the same thing (although not among most of my readers, who wouldn't waste their time on my scribblings unless they shared my interest in when, where, who, how, why, etc.).  It really is frightening to listen to some of the terminal inanities spouted by some of our politicians (on both sides of the aisle - Republicans have idiots among their number, just as Democrats do).  That applies particularly to the Kumbaya school of international relations . . . "If we just leave Iran/Russia/China/North Korea/wherever alone, they'll leave us alone!  After all, everyone wants peace!"  Yeah.  Riiiiight.

What to do about it?  There's the rub.  I have no idea how to make people understand when they're not interested in understanding.  All one can do is "preach to the converted", sharing ideas and concerns with those who are prepared to think for themselves, and then take whatever steps are possible to protect ourselves from the ignorance of others.  On the other hand, that stores up troubles of its own.  Remember Aesop's fable about the ant and the grasshopper?  Jim Quinn updated it to reflect modern times.  I suspect his is more accurate than the original!

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 321

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

This month marks the 50th anniversary of one of the oddest musicals I've ever heard of;  but also one that I thoroughly enjoyed.  How many of you watched "Bugsy Malone"?

As the trailer says, the entire cast (of up to 200 people) was made up of children and young teenagers, including a very young Jodie Foster.  Most of the songs used adult vocalists, but were then filmed using the young actors (to avoid problems such as voices breaking mid-sentence, and so on).

The movie was not a commercial success on its launch, but has become something of a legend among aficionados of 1960's and 1970's movie musicals.  Here are a couple of tracks to illustrate why it's still popular.

And here's a 40-year retrospective, from the BBC ten years ago.

Fond memories . . .

Peter

The Saudi nuclear program: what else did anyone expect?

 

I'm cynically amused by the brouhaha over the US deal with Saudi Arabia to help that country develop a peaceful - underline, peaceful - nuclear energy program, including (it seems) enriching nuclear fuel.

Consider the facts of the current situation, in no particular order.

• Saudi Arabia bankrolled much of Pakistan's nuclear program, including its nuclear warheads and missiles.  It's long been rumored among "those in the know" that Pakistan has guaranteed Saudi Arabia that it can have nuclear warheads at twenty-four hours' notice, in an emergency.
• Saudi Arabia has bought Chinese ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.  By strange coincidence, they're the same type of ballistic missiles that Pakistan has in its nuclear silos.  Odd, that . . .
• Iran has launched missile attacks on Saudi Arabian territory from the north, using cruise and ballistic missiles.  Its Houthi allies have done the same from Yemen in the south.  That would be enough to make any nation a little paranoid.  What if the Iranian Revolutionary Islamic Guard, or whatever it calls itself these days, were to figure out how to put nuclear payloads on those missiles - either a full-blown nuke warhead, or a "dirty nuke" using conventional explosives to spread radioactive material around, say, Riyadh or a major military base?
• Israel has for decades maintained that it will neither confirm nor deny that it has nuclear weapons.  Anyone with two working brain cells to rub together is quite confident that they have more than a few, almost certainly including major thermonuclear weapons.  See my comments in these pages from time to time concerning the so-called "Vela incident".
• Given those various and sundry realities and threats, it was obvious that Saudi Arabia was going to go ahead and greatly expand its nuclear program(s).  It didn't really have any choice but to do so, if it was to survive in an environment like that.

That being the case, why is anybody surprised that President Trump would try to get involved with Saudi Arabia's plans and help them along?  Saudi was going to do it anyway.  We could have sat there and criticized, or expressed concern, or whatever - which would have bounced off Saudi's national interests like water off a duck's back.  This was a case of making the best of two very difficult and unpalatable choices, and I think the President acted wisely.  I'm sure he, and the US establishment, would rather not have made that choice, but as I said earlier, this was going to happen whether or not we were involved.

As for the fat-headed reports that the President was/is at odds with his Energy Secretary over what was done, and how it was done . . . yeah, right.  As if any Secretary in the President's cabinet is going to land a surprise like that on his boss's desk, without so much as a "by your leave"!  Sure, there may have been friction in the give-and-take between the White House and the Energy Department, but what else is new?  The very fact that the Energy Secretary still has his job is sufficient evidence that any such friction was relatively minor.

I'm also enjoying outraged suggestions from the left that the President is trying to stretch the agreement in new ways by pressuring Saudi Arabia to accept the Abraham Accords in exchange for US nuclear help.  There's nothing new in this:  President Trump has been trying to persuade Saudi Arabia to sign on to the Accords ever since he took office.  It might be a very useful talking point to mention that if Israel finds Saudi Arabia diplomatically cooperative, some of the former's nuclear warheads may no longer needed to be targeted at the Arabian peninsula.  In Saudi's position, I'd find that a very thought-provoking consideration . . .

Overall, I think America joining Saudi's nuclear program as a partner nation has far more positives than negatives.  It will also make Iran rethink its nuclear ambitions, given that the existing Saudi-Pakistan nuclear relationship might put them between two actinic fires, so to speak.

What's next in the Middle East?  Your guess is as good as mine . . . but it's likely to be "interesting", in the sense of the fabled ancient Chinese curse!

Peter

New business opportunity?

 

Stefan Pastis does it again!  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.

I sense a business opportunity here.  I still have farmer friends in South Africa who aren't far from major inland rivers, complete with Nile crocodiles.  How many crocodiles per yard of moat, do you think?  Given enough wetbacks moatbacks, they wouldn't require much feeding, either!

Peter

Be careful what you pick up on or near a battlefield...

 

There's a video on X.com showing a Russian army officer opening some of the candies and chocolate that have been found in the battle zones in Ukraine.  If you're logged into X, here's the link.  If you aren't a member of X, here's an alternative link that will let you play the video.  The candy is loaded with explosives and a detonator, proving that too many sweets really are bad for you!

There are plenty of comments following the video that are worth reading.  My favorite is from user Bitcoin Wizard - mavensbot:

"I'm starting to think that these processed foods are not healthy."

You can say that again!

Peter

Brainwashed ideology runs headlong into common sense

 

I'm going to embed a video clip below.  It shows Gina Plata-Nino, the Director of SNAP Policy and Advocacy at the Food Research and Action Center, being questioned by Rep. Brandon Gill.  The topic of discussion is efforts to remove unhealthy food choices - in this particular case, sodas - from the list of items eligible to be bought using funds from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Ms. Plata-Nino is clearly left-wing and populist in her approach, defending peoples' right to use SNAP benefits in any way they please.  Notice how she avoids, evades and dodges any attempt to get her to admit that sugary sodas are in no way nutritional, and aren't really "food" as the SNAP program was originally intended to fund.  She literally can't be persuaded to acknowledge facts.  Instead, all she can do is repeat her pre-programmed talking points.

It's a bit like medical administrators and professionals who absolutely cannot admit that only biological women can become pregnant and give birth.  They daren't acknowledge that fact, because in doing so they would be forced to acknowledge that "trans" women are not, in fact, women at all - merely cosmetically adapted males.

Here's the video.  It's only about five minutes long, but I think it's worth watching.

That's what we're facing in every election in this country.  Districts dominated by people who use government benefits will listen to advocates and politicians like Ms. Plata-Nino, and vote in lockstep with those who promise them more benefits without cost to themselves.  Districts dominated by people whose taxes have to fund those benefits will be (legitimately) angry at how they're wasted, exploited and abused by the recipients.

Sadly, more and more districts are dominated by those who want something for nothing, and vote accordingly.  Many of those votes are, of course, illegitimate, as the widespread investigations into voter fraud and electoral register mismanagement are demonstrating.  Will that be enough to put things right?  Your guess is as good as mine . . .

Peter

Er... about those berries...

 

I was amused to see this list over at Raconteur Press's Substack.  Click the image for a larger view.

I've used literally all of them - they're more common in English-English than in American-English.  To one, however, there hangs a tail (you should pardon the expression).

Shortly after I came to this country, thirty years ago, I noticed a number of references to berries that I hadn't encountered in South Africa.  There were blueberries, and white mulberries, and more.  However, although I occasionally heard the term "dingleberry", I never saw one.  Intrigued, I asked a family one day (with whom I was staying for a few days) where I could find "dingleberries".

You can imagine my puzzlement when the father cracked up laughing, the mother had to leave the table with her hands clasped to her face and her shoulders shaking from suppressed merriment, and the two daughters blushed red as roses.  When Dad stopped laughing, he explained the true meaning of the word ( for the benefit of non-American readers, it's the third meaning of the noun in the list provided).

My innocence shattered, I declined the opportunity to sample a dingleberry pie . . .

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 320

 

Gathered around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

And now for something completely different, as they say in the classics!  Ernest Tomlinson, who died in 2015 at the age of 91, was an English composer of light music.  One of his better-known works was this "Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne", composed in 1976.  The fun part about it is that it includes many very short excerpts from other classical pieces - more than 120 of them.  (A list of included works may be found here.)  For a piece that's less than 20 minutes long, that's going some!

A commenter on the video's YouTube page says, "Only an insane genius could have produced this."  I'm not sure about the "insane" part, but it's certainly a remarkable piece of arrangement, if not entirely original composition.

Peter

So much for meat and water!

 

I'm sure most of my readers have grown used to vegetarians vegans anti-meat activists trumpeting that it wastes far too much water to produce a pound, or a kilogram, of beef, compared to just eating vegetables and fruit.  Turns out they've been fudging the numbers, to put it mildly.

From Sama Hoole on X:

The crime they see: 15,415 litres of water to produce one kilogram of beef. Every campaign, every documentary, every leaflet through the door since about 2012.

The crime they do: not reading the paper.

The figure is real. It comes from Mekonnen and Hoekstra at the University of Twente, and it is careful, peer-reviewed work. What the campaigns strip out is that the same authors split that number into three parts, because the three parts are not the same thing at all.

Green water is rain. It falls on the grass. The cow eats the grass. For beef, green water is about 94 per cent of that headline.

Blue water is the stuff that matters. Rivers, lakes, aquifers. The stuff that gets pumped, metered, fought over in court, and does not come back.

So here is the blue water, in litres per kilogram, from the same authors, same method, same units.

• Pistachios: 7,602
• Almonds: 3,816
• Walnuts: 2,451
• Dates: 1,250
• Cashews: 921
• Beef: 550

Read that last line again, then go and look at what is in your granola.

The 15,415 counts rain that fell on a Welsh hillside as a cost, against an animal that was standing in it, on land where nothing else grows, in a country where rain is the one thing we have never once been short of.

The pistachio is drinking fourteen times more of the water that actually runs out.

I've no doubt the "greenies" will object that most of the rainwater runs off and feeds their vegetables, so it's by definition "greener" than beef anyway:  but that's splitting nutritional hairs, IMHO.  I'll continue to favor a carnivore diet, thank you very much!

Peter

A Texas cathedral???

 

I had to laugh at Japanese visitor Nobunaga's description of his first time at a Buc-ee's gas station.  A couple of excerpts:

I had been warned about the bathrooms and I had dismissed the warning as the pride of a loud people.

I was wrong to dismiss it.

The bathrooms are famous across the whole state and they have earned it.

I have slept in worse hotels. I nearly bowed upon entering.

. . .

I came out with fudge, a shirt printed with a joke I do not fully understand, forty dollars of jerky, and a feeling I can only describe as having been to church.

I did not need any of it.

I needed all of it.

I have walked through the great cathedrals of the old world. I lit no candle there.

I lit no candle at Buc-ee's either.

But I did fill the truck.

And I understand now that in Texas, this is the same thing.

There's more at the link.  Go read the whole thing.  You'll smile.

I was delighted to find that Nobunaga has compiled about 100 of his "discovering America" posts into a book, "A Samurai Loose in Modern America".

The blurb reads:

All of it. One samurai, one impossible year, one hundred field reports.

This is the complete collection: every dispatch from a man who woke up in modern America in full armor and decided to treat all of it as real. The free chips. The bottomless soda. The neighbors who will not let him pay. The stadium that adopts him in six seconds. The nurse named Brenda who undoes eight hundred years of his philosophy with a juice box.

The table, the counter, the street, and the crowd, gathered in one volume, each of the hundred stories now closing with a note from the samurai himself, written afterward, reporting how far the misunderstanding has been allowed to go.

He came to understand America. He failed, completely, and the failing is the book. He gets the small things wrong with total conviction and the large thing right by accident: that the only law of this country is that no one is ever unkind.

A hundred stories. Pull up a chair. The chips are free, apparently bottomless, and he intends to honor all of them.

It's free to read on Kindle Unlimited.  I think I'm going to enjoy it.

(BTW, Nobunaga isn't alone in his bemused wonder at Buc-ee's.  YouTube has a range of videos showing the reaction of World Cup visitors to the gas station, which they appear to treat more as a tourist attraction than anything else.  Go watch a few and have fun with them.)

Peter

Adventures with medicine, part XVIII and counting...

 

Regular readers will recall my misadventures with medical bureaucracy in May, and the follow-up (mis)adventures last month.  Yesterday, Tuesday, most of the results came together, with moderately satisfactory results and a certain amount of pain.

My new CT scan images and analysis were ready, and my pain management specialist (who made the necessary arrangements for them) discussed them with me.  There appears to be more going on "over my head" than I'd been made aware . . . it appears possible that the original surgery, twenty-two years ago, might have been - how shall I put this? - sub-standard.  Nobody used the word "malpractice" - perish the thought!  After all, given the passage of time, that probably couldn't be proved.  Nevertheless, it may be one of the reasons why two neurosurgeons, a neurologist and an orthopedic surgeon had all been noticeably reluctant to commit themselves to a potential solution to my problems.  Armed with this (strictly unofficial and off-the-record) information, I'm now in a position to ask very blunt, pointed, direct questions when I see the new neurosurgeon, and apparently he's one of the few doctors who's willing to answer such questions appropriately.  The next couple of months should be interesting . . .

That said, I had my second caudal epidural injection yesterday morning.  The first one (in March) gave me 2+ months of moderate pain relief, so I'm hoping the second one will be at least as useful.  That, plus wearing a back brace for all walking and driving, will hopefully keep me mobile enough to see the new neurosurgeon in Dallas before the end of August, and (with his help) develop a plan for short- to medium-term treatment in preparation for surgery.  It's a slow, painstaking process, but as I've been told repeatedly, spinal surgery is one of those "measure ten times, cut once" solutions that one daren't rush or mess up.

Right now I can't feel anything in my lower back, the result of the anesthetic used to perform the injection into the spinal cavity.  By Wednesday morning I'll be feeling it again, I'm sure.

Peter

When large-scale weather threatens large-scale consequences

 

I'm sure most of us have read news reports about the imminent return of the climate phenomenon known as El Nino, possibly in the form of a so-called "super" El Nino, far stronger than "normal" events of this kind.  There have been all sorts of alarmist forecasts about drought, flooding, and everything in between.  However, the big story may be the effect of this climate phenomenon on global commerce and industry, regardless of whether it's rainy or sunny.  TT Club, a "provider of mutual insurance and related risk management services to the international transport and logistics industry", examines the implications.

El Niño events are part of a naturally occurring climate cycle, but “super” events are characterised by exceptionally high sea surface temperature anomalies, which are far less frequent and significantly more disruptive. Current forecasts are suggesting that a very strong event is increasingly likely, with some indicating increases well above historical norms. The result is not a single point of failure, but rather a synchronised, multi-regional disruption that has potential to affect the interconnected global supply chain.

. . .

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of the current outlook is the convergence of climate and geopolitical risk factors. When overlaid with El Niño-induced climate shocks, the potential for cascading effects increases significantly.

For example: 

• Reduced fertiliser availability may exacerbate the impact of drought on crop yields
• Higher fuel costs may increase the cost of transporting goods
• Trade route disruptions may amplify delays caused by weather-related events
• This interconnected risk landscape highlights the need to view El Niño not as a standalone hazard, but as part of a broader system of interdependent risks.

. . .

The critical point for global businesses is that exposure is rarely limited to the location of the physical hazard. Organisations may face indirect impacts through suppliers, commodity markets, logistics networks, energy systems, insurance costs and customer demand.

Key global vulnerabilities include: 

• Food and commodity price inflation driven by crop losses or supply uncertainty
• Disruption to agricultural, industrial and consumer-goods supply chains
• Transport delays, port disruption and reduced reliability across maritime and inland logistics routes
• Energy market volatility linked to higher demand, reduced hydropower output and infrastructure stress
• Increased insurance, financing and working-capital pressures as businesses respond to greater uncertainty

For internationally exposed organisations, these second-order and third-order effects may prove just as significant as direct physical risks. The practical implication is that El Niño should be assessed not only by geography, but by dependency: where goods are sourced, how they are transported, which inputs are most constrained and where alternative capacity exists.

There's more at the link.

That's an often underestimated factor in many plans:  military, political, business, disaster, whatever.  A factor that is described in geographical terms - like El Nino, often termed the "southern oscillation" of weather patterns - can have effects far outside that geographical area.  I'm sure most US businesses on the East Coast aren't planning for any major disruption due to weather that might affect the West Coast of this country, but that's very short-sighted.  What about Europe, or Asia?  I'm sure many nations on those continents are dismissing El Nino as "someone else's problem", but if, as the article suggests, we define it by dependency on economic activity in the area where it occurs, that dependency reaches into every corner of global markets, both imports and exports.

Even on a small scale, in terms of personal planning for the next year or two, this bears thinking about.  For example:

• Is my employer (and hence my job) likely to be affected by El Nino, positively or negatively?  Could it determine whether or not I have a job at all this time next year?
• What about our household emergency planning?  Are we assuming that certain staple foods and basic necessities will always be both available and affordable, or might the advent of El Nino-related weather patterns affect that?
• Are we planning to travel anywhere over the next year or two?  Will airline flights be affected by El Nino?  Will they become more or less affordable?  What alternatives are there?

Just a few areas where we might all do well to consider what's going on in our atmosphere and our oceans at present.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 319

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

A few weeks ago I put up Mike Oldfield's 2008 quasi-classical album "Music Of The Spheres".  In a comment to that post, reader Mauser said "I still need to get a copy of Tubular Bells 3".  I thought I'd save him the trouble, and give the rest of my readers a treat at the same time.  Here, from 1998, is the world premiere of "Tubular Bells III", live (in sometimes pouring rain) at the Horse Guards Parade in London.

Tubular Bells III was less popular than its two previous versions, but I like it very much.  See also "The Millennium Bell" and "Music Of The Spheres" for further development of the musical themes first encountered in earlier Tubular Bells versions.

Peter

So much for the New York City property market...

 

This news is several days old, but it only caught my eye yesterday.

Months before New York City approved a historic two-year rent freeze, Google co-founder Sergey Brin quietly exited a struggling real estate fund at a steep loss.

In December, Brin sold his stake back to A&E Real Estate, the fund's manager, for six cents on the dollar, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg.

The fund holds 5,900 rent-stabilized apartments, with Brin's stake being valued at roughly $79 million, a drop in the bucket when viewed next to his $280 billion net worth.

"A&E bought out one of our long-term investors, who was willing to accept six cents on the dollar on their original equity investment to divest itself from the New York City multifamily sector," a company representative told Bloomberg in a statement.

"The simple and deeply troubling fact for renters is that institutional capital – both equity investors and lenders – are fleeing New York City’s rent-stabilized apartment sector," the A&E representative continued, according to Bloomberg. "They understand New York is in a doom loop."

There's more at the link.

Think about that for a moment.  Working backwards from "Brin's stake being valued at roughly $79 million" at the sale price - i.e. at six cents on the dollar of his original investment - that means he originally invested about $1.3 billion in the real estate fund.  He's lost almost all of that money, thanks to New York City's cratering real estate market, undermined as it is by the socialist communist policies of newly-elected Mayor Mamdami.

If a man as economically savvy as Mr. Brin walks away from a $1.3 billion investment, writing it off as unrecoverable, what are smaller investors to think?  Can they afford to follow his example?  For that matter, can they afford not to follow his example?  Makes you think, doesn't it?

If I were unfortunate enough to live in or near New York City, or have money invested there, after hearing that news I'd be taking steps (rapid ones) to move myself and/or my money somewhere (anywhere!) else . . . before I lost all my investments, too.

Peter