Category Archives: Uncategorized

If you’ve got an anti-electric vehicle Luddite in the family, perhaps in a few years you can give him this for a Christmas present – an electric tugboat:

Does your old baby need to be replaced finally?

Crowley Engineering Services has released the design details for the first fully-electric tugboat with autonomous capability for the U.S. market.

Crowley is promoting the design as a sustainable and high-performing solution for ship assist and harbor services in any port. It leverages a large battery system and power saving technology enabling a fully-electric mode of operation while producing zero air emissions or greenhouse gases. The 82-foot tug will provide 70 short tons of bollard pull, with an Azimuthing drive propulsion system with two 1,800 kW motors and a 6 MWh battery. [gCaptain]

A perk of all-electric:

With no exhaust stack, the tug has 360 degrees of visibility from the pilot’s station, allowing the operator to see without obstruction.

It just might win over that old curmudgeon of a relative.

CNN is reporting former Vice President Walter Mondale has passed away. He was one of the good guys. May he rest in peace.

When it comes to bitcoin, Megan McArdle is a believer … in utility:

Most of the value of a bitcoin has accumulated in the past 12 months, as the price of a bitcoin increased almost tenfold since April 2020. Yet underlying that value — bitcoin’s real-world, non-speculative, non-hobbyist uses — are things such as transferring money out of countries with currency controls or dealing in certain illicit goods or offering an alternative to currency in countries experiencing hyperinflation. In these contexts, it looks less like a currency than a substitute for expensive jewelry — something small, reasonably durable and highly valuable, which is thus relatively easy to move across borders undetected or to store and liquidate in case society collapses. But at least jewelry is pretty to look at in the meantime.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if that isn’t the right analogy. Maybe techno-utopians just like looking at bitcoin the same way brides like being able to see two months of their spouse’s work flashing on their hand. And what’s wrong with that? [WaPo]

I’ll be keeping an eye out for other skeptical opinions on cryptocurrencies. Given how wrong I’ve been about Paypal (“What unique utility does it have?”), unpublished, I’m looking forward to someone unveiling why I can’t live without cryptocurrencies.

This is our Pasque flower, an early spring bloomer.

Steve Benen’s rant concerning the acceptance of a huge donation by disgraced for RNC member Steve Wynn by a Republican House group headed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) cross-breeds into whimsy. First, the end of the rant:

And yet, here we are, watching Kevin McCarthy praise and thank Steve Wynn — even vowing to work with him again in the near future — as if the sexual misconduct allegations are simply less important than Republicans’ quest for power.

Quest for Power. Yeah.

Who here remembers the movie Quest For Fire (1981)? I think someone could do a screamingly funny parody of that film as a simple one minute video, with Quest For Power as the title.

Incidentally, one of my co-workers at the time (F. W. Woolworth’s, for those who were wondering) reported she heard a wee little voice ask, What are they doing, Mom? at a rather inopportune moment during that movie.

If you like Taiko drumming, this might tickle your fancy.

Over the weekend came the news that some of the farthest fringe-right House of Representatives members were considering forming something called the America First Caucus. While it already seems to be fading out under accusations that the proposal is itself a veiled racist document, I found this bit interesting from their proposal:

The America First Caucus recognizes that our country is more than a mass of consumers or a series of abstract ideas. America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.

These guys, they do realize that the dominant political tradition is monarchy? That, arguably, it’s absolute monarchy?

What a pack of chumps.

Joe Biden may turn out to be Donald Trump’s savior.

Hear me out.

The former President is motivated, as his family has said, by money and by fear of being seen as a loser. His entire “I won I won I won!” Trumpian bit is about satisfying those twin drives, as, in the latter case, Richardson notes:

In part, this appears to have been a fund-raising ploy. Thanks to a terrific story by Shane Goldmacher in the New York Times, we now know that the Trump campaign boosted revenues by tricking donors into making recurring donations before the election, replenishing its badly depleted funds. When unsuspecting donors found out and complained, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee ended up having to make more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million. That money came in after the election, as Trump promised to fight the election results because, he said, he had been cheated.

And that has led to this:

But the more they harden Trump’s base by pretending that the former president won the 2020 election, the harder it is for them to move away from Trump. In Republican primaries in Republican states, candidates are vying to get Trump’s endorsement.

It is a vicious downward spiral, based on a lie. As Utah Senator Mitt Romney, who was the Republican candidate for president in 2012, said after the insurrection, “The best way we could show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth.” And yet, Republican lawmakers continue to feed the narrative that Trump won in 2020.

But here’s the conundrum Biden may be solving. Each of those Republicans that publicly believe in the Big Lie that Trump really won the election – by a landslide – despite the multiple recounts and court cases that Trump unequivocally lost, even when they landed in the courts of judges appointed by Trump, these Republicans, whether they are outlandish fourth-raters like Gosar or Gohmert, or they’re nameless members of the base, are a signal.

They are a signal to the rest of the world that the moral depravity at the center of the Republican Party may also infect American society as well. International observers do take note, it’s part of their duty.

And what does moral depravity say about the dependability of the United States as a … pillar of international financial?

The value of those dollars will decrease.

Yeah. With every lie Trump tells in his desperate attempts to extract more and more money from his base, each of those dollars’ true value decrease as a result of international observers’ judgement that the United States is not as trustworthy as it once was.

Trump is, essentially, chasing the proverbial receding goal, with his every step causing it to recede ever more.

The error of short-term thinking, which is all Trump has.

His savior? JOSEPH R. BIDEN, President of the United States, who has displayed great energy in acknowledging and engaging with problems that Trump could do little more than cry out that they were minor and would go away, even as his Administration crumbled around him. While the results of Biden’s efforts are not known, and will not be known for a while, and will not all be positive, the character of these efforts are those of a highly competent, knowledgeable politician who knows to push back on hatred, how to successfully engage with his political opponents, and how to run a massive bureaucracy.

And that supports the stock of the United States in the world, and thus the financial worth of Trump.

Nothing, though, can support and advance the honor and trustworthiness of Trump.  At this point, the mass of lies has no excuse. And that’s part of the equation, too, isn’t it? Doing business with the dishonorable is always bad for business.

But right now it’s plausible to think that the efforts of Biden are playing some small part in keeping Trump from a disaster he could never forecast for himself.

For those readers interested in the fate of the newspapers owned by Tribune Publishing Co, there’s a hiccup:

A Wyoming-based Swiss billionaire who formed half of the consortium making a bid to buy Tribune Publishing Co. has backed out of the deal, according to two people familiar with negotiations.

Hansjörg Wyss had joined with Maryland business executive Stewart Bainum Jr. earlier this month in submitting the $680 million proposal to a special committee of Tribune’s board, in an attempt to beat out an offer from Alden Global Capital. The development casts further doubt on whether journalists at Tribune newspapers can avoid a takeover by the hedge fund, which has a reputation for deep cost-cutting. [WaPo]

But …

Bainum — who is said to still be committed to the deal to buy Tribune and is actively seeking investors to join him — informed the special committee of Wyss’s withdrawal verbally Friday night and confirmed it in writing on Saturday. A spokesman for the special committee of Tribune’s board declined to comment.

Bainum has also completed his due diligence into Tribune’s finances and found the numbers “more than satisfactory,” one of these people familiar with the negotiations said. (Both spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to comment publicly about the deal). Bainum has fielded interest from other wealthy individuals and foundations as well.

The drama continues – and perhaps the fate of the United States.

I always did like a trifling bit of drama.

Why does “pretty” have meaning other than as as a descriptor of a person or object of pleasing aspect? I’m not casting aspersions; I recall being interviewed in middle school, which was 40+ years ago, using pretty in just this way, later seeing the quote in the school newspaper, and being puzzled as to why I would have ever used.

Why oh why oh why?

Today CNN/Business notes some volatility in bitcoin:

After a hype-filled week for cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin experienced a flash crash over the weekend, plunging nearly 14% in less than an hour, from about $59,000 to $51,000, on Saturday night before rebounding. Other popular cryptocurrencies including etherium and Dogecoin also fell dramatically, before recouping some of their losses.

Bitcoin has skyrocketed in value this year as it gained more mainstream acceptance, but the sharp price fall this weekend seems to have been triggered by an unconfirmed Twitter rumor that the US Treasury was planning to crack down on money laundering schemes involving cryptocurrencies. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

Bitcoin’s rapid overnight plunge is the latest indicator that the crypto market remains wildly volatile.

Last week crypto enthusiasm seemed to reach a peak as trading platform Coinbase went public at a valuation of $86 billion, followed by a wild 500% rally in Dogecoin — an asset that was created as a joke in 2013. Cryptocurrency backers have spent years insisting that bitcoin, ethereum and other digital coins could revolutionize the world of finance, and with the success of Coinbase’s Wall Street debut Wednesday, those backers are finally having their moment.

While 14% could be worse, it’s interesting. It makes me think one of two things is happening, if it’s not the rumor cited in the CNN/Business article.

1. Someone’s compromised one of the bitcoin exchanges. While wealth is always being compromised in most liquid wealth systems, I worry more about bitcoin as it’s not backed by a central agency. If your ‘wallet’ is compromised, who guarantees its restoration?
2. The currency is under stress. The Treasury Department rumor itself may be a primary symptom of a current that is under stress. Keep in mind that this is not a currency with hundreds of years of experience behind it, centuries of mistakes and corrections. It’s a new thing: a network computer process which is designed to become harder and harder to generate new fungible elements, whose philosophy was based on the arrogant concept that, while governments often mismanage currency, they will not; indeed, whose primary designer(s) and coder(s) lurk in the shadows of the Internet.

It’s becoming harder and harder to not conclude this is actually a scheme to make the founders rich.

But that’s just an idle observation by an outsider who’s never had a virtual wallet or possessed a bitcoin. It’ll be interesting to watch its evolution and how society uses it over the next few years.

Here’s some blue things, whose name I forget.

Yeah, I like that last one.

Kazakh Steppe.

If you think you know about the steppe, here’s a funny little quiz for you from Razib Khan. I scored a 21, which his quiz says is very good, and I did that despite not knowing much at all about the steppe – just a lot of archaeological reading.

North Carolina state senator Jeff Jackson (D) has decided to move up in the world and is running to replace retiring US Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) in 2022. Somehow I “friended” him on FB quite a while back, and I saw this morning that he had decided to show a little of his day:

Running for U.S. Senate is a unique experience.

So this Sunday morning, I thought I’d pause the policy posts and give you a sense of what life looks like from inside our campaign.

Yesterday morning I got a call from a national reporter asking me a question about policy.

Happy to talk, but… what he was really doing was inviting me to attack one of my opponents and hoping I’d give him a quote to create confrontation. I didn’t want to do that, so I kept my answer positive and non-combative.

I could hear the disappointment in his voice as he gave me multiple opportunities to wage an attack:

“Ok Senator, but do you feel it’s unfortunate that other people in this race don’t share that view…?”

Fishing, this reporter is. I’d be tempted to call up the reporter’s editor and demand a better class of reporter next time. Mention that reporters should be reporting, not creating, news. Move him to the opinions page if he wants to make news.

WaPo’s Kathleen Parker seems afraid of debate when it comes to the question of whether SCOTUS should be expanded. She notes that President Biden has named a commission to examine the idea:

George F. Will, WaPo:

Those who believe that the nation’s real founding was the arrival of slaves in 1619, that the American Revolution was fought to defend slavery, that the nation remains saturated with “systemic racism,” that the economic system has always been fundamentally exploitive, that the social order is rotten with injustice and that even the nation’s most revered historical figures are unworthy of respect — those who think like this can be credited with moral earnestness, but not with patriotism: They cannot love what they will not praise.

I don’t often like George Will, even when I agree with him, but I think this is a paragraph worthy of meditation, extraction of questions with regard to one’s own beliefs – especially for the woke – and derivation of answers to those questions that are more than “But, but, but!” and bulgy eyes.

We’ll open with a hand of tulips.

Mummiform:

1. Having the shape of a mummy. [Wiktionary]

Noted in this Ask A Mortician video at roughly the 1:40 mark.

The title says it all:

One side of Earth’s interior is losing heat much faster than the other

This article from NewScientist (20 March 2021) explains:

Our planet is a bit lopsided. One half of Earth is losing heat from the planet’s interior faster than the other, and has been for much of the past 400 million years.

The uneven heat loss is probably a relic of past supercontinents, when all the land masses were joined together on one side of the planet.

“We see that the Pacific has lost more heat,” says Krister Karlsen at the University of Oslo in Norway. “That is in large part due to the distribution of the continental land masses.”

Why?

The first [dataset] concerns the amount of heat from Earth’s interior that flows up through the crust. This data set shows that oceans aren’t as good at trapping heat inside Earth as the continents are, says Karlsen. That is partly down to the thickness of the rock: continental crust is often many kilometres thicker than oceanic crust, so it is a better insulator.

The second data set relates to the movement of the continents deep in prehistory. Some continental rocks carry telltale traces of Earth’s magnetic field, which varies around the globe.

Data from these rocks can be used to show that Earth has, on several occasions, been home to a supercontinent – and it can help establish some of those supercontinents’ approximate position. The most recent supercontinent was Pangaea, which existed from around 335 to 175 million years ago, and was centred roughly where Africa lies today.

Which leaves me to wonder: is the imbalance enough to impact Earth’s orbital dynamics around the Sun?

I didn’t realize spaceships came with so much furniture these days!

Devil Girl From Mars (1954) is a surprisingly good rendition of the conquering monsters from Mars tale. There’s drama already at the Scottish rural hotel Bonnie Charlie, as a convicted murderer escapes from prison and ends up at the Charlie where his girlfriend awaits him, supporting herself as a barmaid. It’s the off season, so the hotel owners are a little overwhelmed when as astronomer and a journalist, investigating reports of a flying saucer in the area, show up.

Nyah, right, and the exceedingly slow robot, Chani during a vacation trip to Saturn. He’s useful on those long, lonely interplanetary trips.

The hotel owner may be a flying bitch, her husband suffering from the blues of old age, and that little grandson of there’s is the usual pain in the tuckus, but it all fades at the entrance of Nyah, Martian flying saucer commander. She screwed up, as she miscalculated the density of Earth’s atmosphere and thus sustained damage on entry and missed her destination of London, but don’t mistake her for some frail lass; this imperious, arrogant invader has little time for the inferior beings before her. A few repairs by her robot, Chani, and she’ll be off to put an end to the sorry charade that is humanity.

The herd of humans are soon jostling each other uneasily, aware that their very species’ continued existence may be at risk. The astronomer can do little to counter the plans of Nyah, and he’s the best of the bunch. Technologically speaking, at least.

Who’s willing to go off with Nyah and stand at stud for her own wounded species? Stick around and find out. The acting’s 1950s British, which is to say not bad, the science is laughable, and you’ll really hate Nyah by the end.

But Chani the Imperturbable is the real scene stealer here.

From WaPo:

The nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, Ariz., last fall are currently packaged in 40 cardboard shrink-wrapped boxes and stacked on 45 pallets in a county facility in Phoenix known as “the vault,” due to its sophisticated security and special fire-suppression system.

But on order of the Republican-led [Arizona] state Senate, the ballots and the county’s voting equipment are scheduled to be trucked away next week — handed over for a new recount and audit spurred by unsubstantiated claims that fraud or errors tainted President Biden’s win in Arizona’s largest county.

The ballots will be scrutinized not by election officials, but by a group of private companies led by a private Florida-based firm, whose owner has promoted claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent and who has been cited as an expert by allies of former president Donald Trump seeking to cast doubt on the election in other parts of the country.

If you live in Arizona and your state Senator supports this, you know they’re a petulant five year old, stomping their feet in frustration. They have no respect for ethics. Don’t believe that? Ask them if they’d be angry if Democrats pulled the same stunt. Watch them agree, not realizing the trap you just sprang on them. Or watch them stutter, if they’re paying more attention and see the trap.

Toxic team politics and RINO-ing has led to the dominance of the Party by third-class personalities who don’t know enough to be ashamed. The American electorate needs to kick them out as a reprimand to the entire Republican Party.

I see Matt Gaetz has chosen a traditional focus for his defensive maneuvers when it comes to recent revelations concerning Justice Department criminal investigation of his activities:

Rep. Matt Gaetz on Wednesday announced a six-figure ad buy for a spot that targets CNN, as he fights to save his political career amid sexual trafficking allegations.

The new 30-second ad will be featured in the Florida Republican’s congressional district and nationally on select cable networks, according to a statement from Gaetz’s congressional campaign. The ad marks the beginning of Gaetz’s counteroffensive, as he “fight[s] back against a multiweek fake news cycle against him,” it said.

“Now we see what’s really behind all of this: Democratic Party and media-driven smears aimed at taking out a Congressman of the United States,” a spokesperson for the Friends of Matt Gaetz said in the statement. [Politico]

Sadly for him, neither CNN nor the Biden Administration started this investigation; it’s the product of the Trump Administration.

Which is not to say Trump is rewarding Gaetz’s loyalty with a spike up the backside. Perhaps former AG Barr didn’t much care for him. Perhaps a lower level official carried out a political hit on Gaetz.

Maybe Gaetz is even guilty.

But Gaetz is faced with a conundrum here. If he goes after the real source of his investigation, he may find himself attacking influential figures in the conservative movement, and as a firebrand conservative himself, he knows the movement is fragile at the moment. The January 6th insurrection did not play well outside of the Republican Party, and even within the party it’s only acceptable due to self-deception. This has lessened support for the Republican Party, and while it’s not yet in danger of sinking into the self-made swamp of mass irrelevance, it’s been moving that way since the term of Gingrich as Speaker of the House.

Gaetz needs to survive without knocking over any Republican kingpins.

So he’ll go after traditional targets and hope that he can make it stick. Will he? I doubt it. If he is put on trial, I think he’ll be done. But until then, he’ll scrabble around and look worse and worse.

Or he’ll be vindicated. That is looking less and less likely, but it’s not impossible.

Erick Erickson:

Kim Potter should be prosecuted for her negligence, but [Daunte] Wright would be alive but for his actions too. Ashli Babbitt [the January 6th insurrectionist who was shot and died at the insurrection] should be alive as well. In our tribal times, we have broken our bond with truth. We have an obligation to the truth that must outweigh our obligations to our tribes.

If, indeed, the facts as presented are true, then I think the protesters should consider finding the local National Rifle Association office and protesting them. Without guns, many of these tragedies would not have happened.

Keepwell:

It’s a type of credit protection mainly seen in China’s $885 billion market for dollar bonds (those sold outside mainland China, denominated in U.S. dollars). The keepwell provision often involves a Chinese company’s pledge to keep an offshore subsidiary that is issuing the bonds solvent — but without any guarantee of payment to the bondholders. (Actual guarantees require regulatory approval but keepwells don’t.) The clauses often include an agreement where the parent will purchase equity interest or assets in the offshore subsidiary as a way of servicing payments on overseas notes, according to an analysis by Fitch Ratings. Terms can vary, with different definitions of default, trigger events or what actions the keepwell provider promises to take. [“What ‘Keepwell’ Means in Case of China Bond Defaults,” Bloomberg/WaPo]