Big Mouth Prick
Ars Centurion
LinkedIn is for corporate shills. Trump is their god, strategically leveraging novel innovative solutions into new paradigms.
🦄 Current Events Monday March 31, 2025 through Sunday April 6, 2025
- Thread starter SunRaven01
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This atoll has already been a US military base for ~90 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston_Atoll
Johnston Island itself is almost entirely developed. Since the article is paywalled I'm not sure if they are planning on siting there or one of the smaller adjacent islands
It was also undeveloped, it was torn down and abandoned many years ago. There's still a footprint there but there would have to be fairly extensive construction before it would be usable again.
Don't forget about the synergies, "break-it" thinking and the "swarm"!
(I just retired last year from a 29.5 year career at a major company last year and man was that "consultant-driven corporate initiative-of-the-quarter" stuff getting old.)
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As usual for Dr. Jill Lapore, she's done some great research, pulling together various sources to examine the nefarious history of Musk's grandfather Joshua Haldeman and his support of a movement called technocracy.
A good read, full of family secrets and intrigue.
NY Times Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/...e_code=1.9E4.DNhr.mHjrqFT0gjOy&smid=url-share
It goes to show that nothing is new, this movement died of its own accord years before it was resurrected by Musk and his compatriots Marc Andreessen et al, who helped him stage the debacle we've just witnessed in DOGE, the death of the hated New Deal.
A good read, full of family secrets and intrigue.
NY Times Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/...e_code=1.9E4.DNhr.mHjrqFT0gjOy&smid=url-share
Saw this on the book of faces and thought it perfectly described the new reality:
America is finally being run like a business: a business acquired by private equity that’s being stripped for parts before being liquidated.
America is finally being run like a business: a business acquired by private equity that’s being stripped for parts before being liquidated.
Saw this meme going around (sorry, don't really have a source for it) and....yes.
To add some substance here, Trump is openly bragging about crashing the markets:
Not a chance hell Powell is dropping rates anytime soon. Unfortunately, his term is up in 2026, so I'm sure Tim Pool will be the new Fed Chair nominee or someone along those lines.
Yes, there are. California is the first that comes to mind. Mail in voting is a whole other can of worms, the security by only signature matching is just not that strong, not saying it can't be made secure though.
Ironically, Powell is a nominee from Trump 1.0. He’s done an admirable job, considering the circumstances. But you’re right—we’re now in uncharted territory where reasonable decisions apparently don’t apply.
Ahhahha, you're really getting turbo-fucked now: TV's Dr Oz confirmed to lead Medicare and Medicaid
I’m seeing a distressing amount of revisionism and pining for the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the wake of the tariffs and like… as much as the tariffs and economic turmoil right now are bad, the TPP and its effects would have been a different flavor of garbage. The shit that the MPAA and RIAA wanted in that thing which would have expanded the worst of the American copyright system out to the member nations, alongside ISDS and binding protections for corporations and non-binding vague gestures toward good stuff like green energy and Net Neutrality that would never be implemented, painted a clear picture that it was going to be more of the same that we got with FTAA, NAFTA, the WTO, and so forth.
Longtime comic artist and cartoonist John Backderf posted this thread on Bluesky today about how Globalization, the way it killed off unions and enriched the upper class, was a right-wing centerpiece that started with Reagan and Reaganomics. As Backderf put it:
My opinion is that Globalization, as perpetuated by the GOP as well as adopted and supported by Neoliberals, was a disaster as well as a case of politicians full-on lying to large swaths of the American public. It was a disaster that should have been slowly, but deliberately and publicly unwound.
Longtime comic artist and cartoonist John Backderf posted this thread on Bluesky today about how Globalization, the way it killed off unions and enriched the upper class, was a right-wing centerpiece that started with Reagan and Reaganomics. As Backderf put it:
My opinion is that Globalization, as perpetuated by the GOP as well as adopted and supported by Neoliberals, was a disaster as well as a case of politicians full-on lying to large swaths of the American public. It was a disaster that should have been slowly, but deliberately and publicly unwound.
Yeah, the copyright and pharmaceuticals side of the TPP made it pure poison here in Australia. No way were we accepting that.
Source: NY Times
More defiance of court orders.
More defiance of court orders.
The US sent a team of disaster assessment experts to Myanmar then fired them all once they were there.
View: https://x.com/LisaDNews/status/1908323619723157521
View: https://x.com/LisaDNews/status/1908323619723157521
It doesn't matter how low I set my expectations, they always manage to find creative ways to go lower.
…from March 16th, so not exactly breaking news. Past defiance of court orders, at this point.
We don't need no highly qualified doctor's to save lives. Throw the bums out. /S
How many patients will suffer because she isn't at their bedside?
edited for: added an s to make it correct gender.
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A source that isn't from the Nazi Bar
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us...-earthquake-zone-ex-official-says-2025-04-05/
BTW, I had Twitter embeds blocked before Musk even made noises about buying it as a matter of my browser's security policies.
Perhaps we should make the effort to find outside links for anything we're linking from Twitter?
Old news but... So when do judges start holding people in contempt, beginning with the government agents represented in the court and working their way up the chain of command, until this unconstitutional abuse stops?
D.C. rally draws tens of thousands as Trump protests held across US:
There's also a corresponding piece, paywalled, she marched against Trump in 2017. Now, she says, ‘just let it all burn.’ Don't have access, but those of you who do, may be interested.
So anyway, people are protesting, but we're nowhere near Tahrir/Maidan Square numbers. It's also buried beneath stories like "Your clothes will be more expensive" because....America (NYT is ignoring things for now).
There's also a corresponding piece, paywalled, she marched against Trump in 2017. Now, she says, ‘just let it all burn.’ Don't have access, but those of you who do, may be interested.
So anyway, people are protesting, but we're nowhere near Tahrir/Maidan Square numbers. It's also buried beneath stories like "Your clothes will be more expensive" because....America (NYT is ignoring things for now).
Bluesky is festooned with pictures and videos from all over the US. It's distributed, but at least it's real. Happy to see people turning out.
Doesn't get much more real than this:
Doesn't get much more real than this:
California is not part of the deep south where there is a tradition of suppressing the vote, most of the states that go out of their way are looking to strike off citizens from the right to vote.
And the evidence for mail in voting fraud is? Heck, point to instances of any kind of voting fraud that actually matter. Because when people actually look for voter fraud, they find almost none.
Cory Doctorow also put out a piece about Free Trade on April 2nd. Which also links to a piece on The Sling that was published the same day.
Cory uses the article by Mark Glick and Gabriel Lozada to explain that some tariffs can be good, with the right amount of industrial policy, social safety nets, and retraining.
That's happening right now in North Carolina. It's "prove you are who you say you are or we're striking your vote you already cast and we already counted" because we don't like the way an election turned out.
I’m probably about to write way too many words as preface for what I really came here to post. It's a known failing of mine.
The tariffs announced this week are the dumbest, most asinine, most magnificently reckless, etc. economic/foreign-policy move in this nation’s history and the methodology by which they were derived is possibly even more intellectually bankrupt and incandescently stupid. I am trying to rein myself in a bit but Roget himself doesn’t have enough words for what I think about all this.
I’ve been happily signed up to the Heatmap organization’s newsletter for a while now. They cover the renewable energy transition primarily. Yesterday they sent a full length article about the potential effects of the tariffs on the Oil and Gas industry. If you follow that link you may need to create an account to read the whole thing but don’t feel obligated: one of the benefits of me writing so much is that you shouldn’t have to!
Trump's energy policy, like all the others, is completely incoherent. He wants to empower O&G again by opening up land for drilling again and fast tracking permits. Drill, baby, drill! The earlier tariffs on steel have increased the cost of new tubular stock (liner casing and drill stems) by about 30% already. This is not the end of the world since all of those get reused quite extensively from well to well. Still a pain point.
But! He also wants oil prices to be cheap for consumers. To that end apparently he's been pushing OPEC to increase production and according to the newsletter, "early Thursday morning, the oil cartel OPEC+ announced that it would boost oil production by 411,000 barrels a day next month — far more than expected — which will essentially compress three months of supply increases into one." Now, I have absolutely NOTHING to base this on but I'm interpreting this as some malicious compliance.
Who knows, though!
Anyway, oil futures for West Texas Intermediate dropped from $71.71 to $61.99 by the close of yesterday. 14% in two days is an unusually large drop, shall we say. In general terms, new wells are cheapest to drill in the Permian Basin and while every well is different, the break-even oil price these days is mid-$60's.
These new tariffs, if they precipitate a global recession as pretty much any working economist who hasn't drunk themselves into sweet oblivion by now expects, will cause aggregate demand of all sorts to crater which would likely cause compounding effects for energy demand. I guess that's another way to make it cheap for consumers! But nobody's going to want to drill any new wells. Oops!
I grew up in Midland, Texas, the heart of the Permian Basin and worked for a local O&G company for eight years earlier in my career. The people I worked with and went to church with and bumped into at the grocery store (HEB, buddy! Wooo!) pretty much all fell into whatever stereotype you're thinking of now. In general the only other political misfits I encountered were those of us who did a lot of community theater but even there the Majority had a near majority. I maintain my Facebook account only to keep a last, tenuous connection to that crew years after getting yeeted out into the world. I don't add new friends (not that I make many these days, but still) and I really hate that damn app most of the time.
If I were a little less conflict-averse and a little more willing to torch some bridges, this is what I'd be posting there, so instead, I offer it to y'all:
Thoughts and prayers for my family and friends in Midland
As much as I love and miss everyone, you dumb motherfuckers voted for everything that is now about to happen to you. It's okay, you can tell yourselves you didn't know what you were doing. A lot of us knew exactly what could happen, though.
If you think the busts of 2009 and 2014 were bad, just wait. Those were just run-of-the-mill market corrections that we all think we're accustomed to. This time you've been deliberately shoved off the financial cliff by His Royal Orange Highness who then immediately fucked off to go golfing for a long weekend.
Every one of you ought to be calling and raising unholy Hell with Pfluger, Cornyn and Cruz every single day. It's literally your only hope.
And next time, try voting for someone who actually gives a shit about you.
And don't forget to look into Enhanced Geothermal Energy, it might be the way you get to keep your jobs for the next little while.
Scorn and hisses!
P.
The tariffs announced this week are the dumbest, most asinine, most magnificently reckless, etc. economic/foreign-policy move in this nation’s history and the methodology by which they were derived is possibly even more intellectually bankrupt and incandescently stupid. I am trying to rein myself in a bit but Roget himself doesn’t have enough words for what I think about all this.
I’ve been happily signed up to the Heatmap organization’s newsletter for a while now. They cover the renewable energy transition primarily. Yesterday they sent a full length article about the potential effects of the tariffs on the Oil and Gas industry. If you follow that link you may need to create an account to read the whole thing but don’t feel obligated: one of the benefits of me writing so much is that you shouldn’t have to!
Trump's energy policy, like all the others, is completely incoherent. He wants to empower O&G again by opening up land for drilling again and fast tracking permits. Drill, baby, drill! The earlier tariffs on steel have increased the cost of new tubular stock (liner casing and drill stems) by about 30% already. This is not the end of the world since all of those get reused quite extensively from well to well. Still a pain point.
But! He also wants oil prices to be cheap for consumers. To that end apparently he's been pushing OPEC to increase production and according to the newsletter, "early Thursday morning, the oil cartel OPEC+ announced that it would boost oil production by 411,000 barrels a day next month — far more than expected — which will essentially compress three months of supply increases into one." Now, I have absolutely NOTHING to base this on but I'm interpreting this as some malicious compliance.
Who knows, though!Anyway, oil futures for West Texas Intermediate dropped from $71.71 to $61.99 by the close of yesterday. 14% in two days is an unusually large drop, shall we say. In general terms, new wells are cheapest to drill in the Permian Basin and while every well is different, the break-even oil price these days is mid-$60's.
These new tariffs, if they precipitate a global recession as pretty much any working economist who hasn't drunk themselves into sweet oblivion by now expects, will cause aggregate demand of all sorts to crater which would likely cause compounding effects for energy demand. I guess that's another way to make it cheap for consumers! But nobody's going to want to drill any new wells. Oops!
I grew up in Midland, Texas, the heart of the Permian Basin and worked for a local O&G company for eight years earlier in my career. The people I worked with and went to church with and bumped into at the grocery store (HEB, buddy! Wooo!) pretty much all fell into whatever stereotype you're thinking of now. In general the only other political misfits I encountered were those of us who did a lot of community theater but even there the Majority had a near majority. I maintain my Facebook account only to keep a last, tenuous connection to that crew years after getting yeeted out into the world. I don't add new friends (not that I make many these days, but still) and I really hate that damn app most of the time.
If I were a little less conflict-averse and a little more willing to torch some bridges, this is what I'd be posting there, so instead, I offer it to y'all:
Thoughts and prayers for my family and friends in Midland
As much as I love and miss everyone, you dumb motherfuckers voted for everything that is now about to happen to you. It's okay, you can tell yourselves you didn't know what you were doing. A lot of us knew exactly what could happen, though.
If you think the busts of 2009 and 2014 were bad, just wait. Those were just run-of-the-mill market corrections that we all think we're accustomed to. This time you've been deliberately shoved off the financial cliff by His Royal Orange Highness who then immediately fucked off to go golfing for a long weekend.
Every one of you ought to be calling and raising unholy Hell with Pfluger, Cornyn and Cruz every single day. It's literally your only hope.
And next time, try voting for someone who actually gives a shit about you.
And don't forget to look into Enhanced Geothermal Energy, it might be the way you get to keep your jobs for the next little while.
Scorn and hisses!
P.
Which clearly means that if Psychophant is serious about election security, the first step should be preventing Republicans from voting.
But! He also wants oil prices to be cheap for consumers. To that end apparently he's been pushing OPEC to increase production and according to the newsletter, "early Thursday morning, the oil cartel OPEC+ announced that it would boost oil production by 411,000 barrels a day next month — far more than expected — which will essentially compress three months of supply increases into one." Now, I have absolutely NOTHING to base this on but I'm interpreting this as some malicious compliance.
Anyway, oil futures for West Texas Intermediate dropped from $71.71 to $61.99 by the close of yesterday. 14% in two days is an unusually large drop, shall we say. In general terms, new wells are cheapest to drill in the Permian Basin and while every well is different, the break-even oil price these days is mid-$60's.
You would think we would have learned by now, because this is not the first time the Saudis have played this particular game with production and prices. Their goal is always the same, drive the price to where US production is not economical so they can maintain their stranglehold. But the Trump administration is far too stupid to see what's going on.
Or that to break the Saudi stranglehold, the best strategy is to go green and significantly reduce the market for oil.
For real.
I was always the token hippy-dippy treehugger in the office but I've always felt that the entire industry needed to actually try to live up to their branding as "Energy" companies. STOP SUCKING ON THE OIL TEAT AND DIVERSIFY YOU DUMB MOTHERFU--
Ahem.
They could have been keeping a hand in the wind and solar plays. I think Shell tried and BP made some noises about it but neither of them are the major American names. I'm really not kidding about enhanced geothermal though. Everyone I worked with could jump to that kind of work tomorrow. The skill set is an exact match, no retraining. Just have to hire some extra engineers* for the generation plant. (*- Yes, I'm oversimplifying but not by a crazy amount.)
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