Fragile Bird

Remember when the plane crashed in Toronto? The CBC had all kinds of experts making pretty interesting observations just from the videos. People are pointing out that it was 37 degrees at the time of takeoff, and planes don’t function as well in such heat. And they pointed out that birds don’t fly around in that heat either. And if two birds were sucked into the engines there should have been a flock visible in the video. And flames out of the engines. And very quickly you can see the jet has lost power and starts dropping. It’s possible one engine lost power and someone shut off the wrong engine, so both engines lost power. It’s difficult to imagine both engines lost power at the same time. And the landing gear didn’t go up. One possibility is that someone shut the fuel off by mistake, and that’s why the engines shut off. In case you hear the term RAT, that’s the ram air turbine Ran mentioned. If the power went off the RAT turns on. CBC showed a video done by a local CNN reporter. She shows the tail hanging on the roof of the first building. She shows debris scattered on the ground down below. One of the CBC experts identifies a large, unburnt section as the aft bulkhead and said the flight data recorder would be attached to it, so the data recorder survived unburnt. [eta: More from the aviation expert: the black boxes would be in the front of the tail section stuck on the roof, the unburnt bulkhead indicates the black boxes weren’t burnt up, but they weren’t attached to the section lying on the ground] Right beside it is a huge pile of luggage that must have dropped out of the plane when the tail ripped off and before it caught fire. The luggage will be all the memories families of the dead will have left from the passengers. The reporter talked to paramedics who immediately responded to the crash. It’s a hospital complex, the paramedics were eating lunch in the building with the tail sticking out of it. They rescued 25 people from the building that was hit by the plane. So far they think 50 died on the ground, including 5 medical students. There may be more victims under the plane. Everyone is stunned by the video of the survivor. Seat 11 is just a few rows in front of the wing, where the fuel is stored. The exit door must have blown out and him with it, obviously before the plane caught fire because otherwise he would have been burned. The person on the other side didn’t make it, perhaps the building was in the way. And as I am typing this I am watching a reporter there who spoke to an inconsolable 15 year old boy who’s brother was killed when he was hit by falling debris, sadly, a door off the plane. Who knows, maybe the door that saved the one survivor.

He didn’t have his Senate pin on, how were they supposed to know who he was? So what if the video shows he identifies himself as a Senator, he was obviously a crazy guy bent on harming Noem and they did their duty and protected her. And that’s their story and they’re sticking to it.

See, this is what I suspect. And it will be blamed on damned Ontario bastards.

I watched some woman, I dunno, Secretary of Agriculture, being interviewed on CNBC, and it was utterly bizarre to listen to her. She was talking about how farmers were being hurt, and the President never intended farmers to be hurt, and he was so wise and smart he would figure out how the bad criminals would get deported and the good, hard-working farm help would be able to stay. She said the Visa system was broken (HNA1 and HNA 2, or A and B, something like that) and he would fix it. And the farmers would get to keep their workers. The broadcast was on my phone and I wanted to pull over and puke but I didn’t have the time. The groveling was disgusting.

Oh lord no. That’s maybe entering middle age. Those suckers cost more than $250 M apiece, you need years to recoup the cost.

MBS means oil. Having a conversation about oil can’t hurt. You saw Ran’s comments about falling oil demand. Oh, Alberta! Do we in fact spend more billions on another pipeline?

MBS says he’s not coming, if that makes you feel better.

Well I’m glad I went to bed after my last post! My posts, DMC, were not against you and they weren’t anti-American, I was simply trying to talk realistically about the oil situation. I can’t do that without talking about Canada because of Trump’s “51st cherished state” bullshit. “We don’t need your oil” is obvious bullshit. If I were Venezuela I would be very, very nervous. It is what it is.

I think that was the first Dreamliner to crash. The plane was 11 years old. There are no answers yet, just questions. Was it a problem with the plane (Boeing), a problem with the engines (GE), or was it pilot error. Just now a reporter says there’s a rumor there was a mayday call just after takeoff. (The thought occurs, were birds sucked into the engines?) There were 242 people on the plane but don’t forget, it crashed in a residential neighborhood. There are undoubtedly people who died on the ground as well. All in all, a very tragic loss.

The important word is “proven”. There may be more oil. But it is not 100 years worth, or 50 years, or even 20 years. And I do not take for gospel “what CNBC says”, but I do listen to the presidents of oil companies who show up and oil analysts. It’s their business to know what’s going on. And back to the “why” questions of the previous post, why for the first time in history did three senior administration honchos travel to Alaska a few weeks ago? The EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, the Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. They’re going to strip the protections on Alaskan lands and drill baby drill. And to move the stuff they say they’re going to build a pipeline to the coast. They hope there is more oil to find. That pipeline’s gonna cost $44 B or more, they’d better find more oil. The point is, they’re doing this because they know the oil reserve situation is serious. Honestly, there’s a reason other administrations invested in and encouraged alternate sources of energy, like solar and wind, and provided people like Musk with billions in funding to make electric vehicles.

I hate to tell you this but at the current rate of consumption the US has about 5 years of proven reserves left. The US currently uses about 7.39 B barrels of oil a year. US proven reserves are about 35.2 B barrels. 7 x 5 , to round things off, is 35. It’s actually 4.9 years, not rounded off. As I have mentioned on numerous occasions I’m a pretty faithful watcher of CNBC, and I do pay attention to the oil analysts. Why do you think Drumpf made his big trip to the Middle East? Why do you think people Drumpf once called murdering terrorists are getting those Invidia microchips the Chinese aren’t getting? Canada uses about 2.4 M barrels a day, about 873 M a year. We have 171 B in reserves, good for almost 200 years. But only 23 US years. The country with the biggest oil reserves in the world is Venezuela, over 300 B barrels. Oh, what country does Drumpf say is one of the sources of murderers, rapists, gang members and terrorists? Oh, Venezuela! What is one of the recent travel ban countries? Oh, Venezuela! If you buy Venezuelan oil, how much in tariffs will the US hit you with? 25%, on top of any other tariffs. I’m willing to bet that long before Canada becomes the 51st state, the US will put the screws to Venezuela and the only way Venezuela will get relief is by “sharing” it’s oil with the US. Or get invaded.

There’s been lots of discussion about “drill baby drill” on CNBC and people keep pointing out that when the price falls below $60 nobody wants to drill because, ya know, people want to be paid for the work they do. Companies can’t operate at a loss for very long, they go out of business. Drumpf of course wants the price to fall more and more so he can keep his election promises. This is the guy who contracted services for his hotels and casinos and then laughed when folks expected to be paid the contract price. I remember lots of stories about him offering 50 cents on the dollar or even less. There’s a famous story about the guy who custom made the grand pianos in his casinos and Drumpf refused to pay the contracted price, saying it was an honor to get his pianos in his hotels and he’d get lots of business out of it and besides that, Drumpf was a billionaire and he’d just wipe him out in court if he tried to sue. But the other big issue is dwindling reserves of oil. The reason why oil production exploded upward in the US was the invention of fracking technology, and otherwise undrillable oil could be fracked. Well, here in Canada environmentalists have pleaded with Alberta not to mine so much of the bitumen that holds the oil, keep reserves for the future. The Saudis have huge reserves and they cut back production. In the US all the drillers were gung-ho to drill as much as possible and reserves are dwindling. They don’t have the resources to increase production.

Geez, guys, go read the story posted in the UK thread about anti-immigrant riots in Northern Ireland and compare what happened in a town with a population of 31,000 with what happened in LA. The northern Irish don’t screw around when they riot

Oh wait, the “done deal” with China, according to China, is for 6 months. No one trusts Drumpf.

A friend just posted a great meme on faceless book. ”NRA Accidentally Forgets To Rise Up Against Tyrannical Government” ”An embarrassed National Rifle Association says it totally forgot to do the one thing it has been saying for years it is solely there to do.”

Joking aside, I saw Nutnik being interviewed on CNBC this morning and yes indeed, HE BLAMED BIDEN for not negotiating a deal on magnets with China. And rare earths as well, I think. “They could have done it, they talked about it, but they didn’t do it, but this wonderful President with his great experience, he did it!” I kid you not.

Just think of a Drumpf-policy future. Ain’t no more CVs like that. No more flight school. Probably no more combat. No stinking DEI policies for ‘lady lawyers’. Presumably the LSE is beyond the reach of Drumpf, but boot licking seems to be the approach of the UK, maybe they’ll ban women from attending.

That’s not quite what they said, it’s a bit more complicated than that. I think tests show simple problems are being solved, but if you load more factors things get slower and they don’t get better. The analogy I heard was that if the problem was a checker board, it’s fine if there are just a few pieces on the board, but load up the board and AI can’t handle it. It doesn’t seem to get “smarter”, which all of us are expecting. Advanced AI suffers “complete accuracy collapse”. Load more complexity and it slows down and loses accuracy.

The Auditor General has announced that the cost of the 88 F35s we ordered will actually be $27.7 B, not $19 B, plus another $5.5 B in additional associated costs. And the two new airfields that are supposed to host the planes are 3 years behind schedule. And to top it all off, we might not have enough pilots to fly the fucking things. The previous Minister of Defense, Blair, talked about cancelling the contract, though this has not been mentioned by the new government, although Carney did make his comment about why are we sending 75% of our dollars to the US. And of course, we are now ratcheting up our defense spending, so I’d like to see where this ends up.

I’ve opened a new thread.

I decided not to mention death and destruction, the world is more than that, right? And holy crap, nine shot dead in Austria, where a former pupil killed 9 and injured 12 and then killed himself at his former secondary school. A 21-year old with two guns. Damn damn damn. My heart goes out to the victims and their families. And of course, Gaza. Israel has deported Greta Thunberg.

I was reading the news stories that popped up on my Google page the other day and I was in the middle of one and I wondered if the story came from Asia or a former Soviet republic, or from the Onion, because the twist to the news was so bizarre I found myself asking wtf is this. Stanford University is a nest of Chinese spies. Chinese students smuggled in a fungus virus that will kill all the crops in the US (the fungus is currently widespread in the US and researchers are studying it). I think there was something about murderous, rapist, illegal immigrants. And more of that ilk. It was a news round-up from Fox. No wonder you guys are so twisted.

Finally, votes for a clue of mine!

Made me laugh out loud!

1. 2 2. 4 3. 8 I actually considered most of the characters that I did not correctly identify. Picking the right characters is a talent I need to sharpen. I have to admit I did not do any work before the mediation, and as I explained to Jez, friends of mine thought getting me drunk in celebration was appropriate afterwards, so I could have worked harder. This round, I’ll do better this round!