Some Good News Out of Madrid

Spain has excluded Palantir from public contracts.

What a surprise.  It's in the pocket of the US State Security Apparatus, its founder is a literal vampire, its CEO is increasingly unhinged, and it's f%$#ing evil.

Spain just told Palantir to pack its bags. Or at least, to stop unpacking new ones.

On July 1, the Spanish government issued a directive through SEPI, the state holding company that oversees the country’s publicly owned enterprises, instructing its portfolio companies to avoid entering new contracts with Palantir Technologies. The reason: concerns over classified national security information and what officials see as risks to national sovereignty.

The directive targets firms operating in defense, communications, and infrastructure. We’re talking about heavyweights like Telefónica, defense contractor Indra, and naval shipbuilder Navantia

………

Spain isn’t acting in isolation. France announced similar restrictions on June 10, specifically linked to Palantir’s operations. Germany has been having its own version of this conversation.

The concept driving all of this is “digital sovereignty.” The basic idea is that nations should control their own critical data infrastructure rather than outsourcing it to foreign companies, particularly ones whose other clients include the CIA and the Pentagon.

Toxic assholes should not handle sensitive data.  Musk and DOGE demonstrated this quite clearly.

Meanwhile, in Air Force One Failures

For some unspecified security reason, Donald Trump decided to switch to one of the older 747s to fly back to the United States.

I am wondering just how many listening devices were planted in the plane. 

Nobody is buying President Donald Trump’s shady excuse for leaving Air Force One behind in Europe.

While taking questions from the press at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday, Trump was asked to respond to speculation that security concerns had forced him to ditch the newly renovated, Qatar-gifted plane after the president scrapped his own ceasefire deal with Iran.

You know, maybe it is a good idea to look a gift horse in the mouth.

 

Meanwhile, In Better Sexual Assault Related News

The judge overseeing the E. Jean Carroll case has told Donald Trump, "Dear Orcface, pay up or else!"

Judge Lewis Kaplan has said that Trump must pay the $5 million judgement immediately.

Call me a cynic, but given his reputation for paying his debts, I'm pretty sure that this will not be resolved for many months, if not years.

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered that the writer E. Jean Carroll should promptly receive a $5 million jury award, days after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by President Trump and despite his last-minute attempt to get the justices to reconsider.

In a two-page ruling, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Manhattan federal court cited the Supreme Court’s June 29 order denying Mr. Trump’s request that the justices review the matter. That cleared the way for the funds, which Mr. Trump had deposited with the court, to be released to Ms. Carroll.

A Manhattan jury awarded the multimillion-dollar judgment to Ms. Carroll in May 2023 after finding him liable for sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. The jury also found that Mr. Trump defamed Ms. Carroll by calling her allegations against him “a Hoax and a lie” on social media. He has continued to deny assaulting Ms. Carroll.

Even Trump's pet judges at the Supreme Court found no reason do deal with his sh%$.

………

After the court’s rejection last week, Ms. Carroll had immediately asked a federal judge to order the president to pay her, asserting that Mr. Trump had “consistently sought to obstruct and delay payment” of the jury’s award.

“In the last analysis, defendant has been stalling this case for years,” Judge Kaplan wrote in a six-page opinion issued Wednesday evening explaining the ruling. The judge cited the jury’s verdict, the fact that it was upheld on appeal and the Supreme Court’s decision not to review the matter, adding that it was time for Mr. Trump to “pay the judgment.”

The Supreme Court wrapped up its term last week and is now in summer recess. Although the justices continue to hear emergency applications, they are not scheduled to meet to consider other cases until September. That is when the justices will convene as they prepare to begin a new term, which officially starts on the first Monday in October. As a result, they may not consider Mr. Trump’s new request for months.

By then, the court may also need to decide whether to review a second case related to Ms. Carroll and Mr. Trump. Lawyers for Mr. Trump said in their petition on Wednesday that the president “will imminently file” to ask the justices to step in and overturn the verdict of a separate jury, which in 2024 had ordered him to pay Ms. Carroll $83.3 million after concluding Mr. Trump had defamed her in 2019.

 Here's an idea, seize the golf course at Mar a Lago, and erect a toll booth on it.

And He is Out

Graham Platner has officially suspended his Senate campaign.

The, "Suspended," rather than, "Ended," is an artifact of campaign finance law.

He ain't coming back.

It appears that the DSCC types are already flocking to Maine in an attempt to ensure that whoever replaces him will be a focus group tested non-entity.

U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner, the political upstart who overwhelmingly secured the Democratic nomination just one month ago, has ended his candidacy. His withdrawal from the race now sets up a frantic scramble to replace him on the November ballot. 

Platner announced Wednesday that he's quitting the race in a defiant video statement that blamed the political establishment for his downfall, saying that it conspired against him.

"We believe that for the movement to continue, it can't be me," he said. "And for that reason we are suspending campaign operations."

He also framed his plight as one shared with his base of supporters.

"We live in a political system that is not built for normal people. It is built structurally so that movements like ours cannot flourish, that if they begin to succeed they can be crushed," he said. "What we have accomplished here you made possible ... and I have all the faith in the world that we could win if we continue to harness that. But the brutal political reality is that they're going to take everything away from us."

The moves followed a report by POLITICO that detailed allegations that he sexually assaulted a former girlfriend five years ago. The oysterman and combat veteran strongly denied the report, but it quickly led to a cratering of support from national and local Democrats who had endorsed him. That included leaders in the Maine Democratic Party who will now decide who will replace him on the November ballot to run against Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

They need to select a replacement before July 27, so less than 3 weeks. They are planning a state Party convention.

I expect extensive rat-f%$#ery in the process.  Hopefully this will be both sides, and not just exclusively from the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

The progressives need to play the same hardball that the Schumer wing of the party does. 

Platner

This appears to be catastrophic.

Whether he stays in or drops out it's a clusterf%$#.

If he stays in, he's a crippled candidate, and if he is replaced by one of the usual suspects by the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) it will demoralize a significant portion of potential Democratic voters.

One of the biggest challenges in the November elections is that voters will choose the couch (aka JD Vance's girlfriend) over the voting booth, and I do not see how this won't make this more likely regardless of final outcome. 

If he drops out, and he is replaced with Janet Mills or someone of her ilk, that would just make a bad situation much worse, but this won't stop the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) from doing just that.

It's the Iron Law of Institutions, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution." (Not my idea or term, this term was coined by Jon Schwarz) 

Finally

 The power is back on.

STILL Waiting for BGE

 Being without power is no fun at all.

Still No Power

 It appears that we have been collateral damage to God smiting Donald Trump's July 4th celebrations.

No Blogging Tonight

Power has been out since about 7pm, and as yet, a crew had not been scheduled. 

As to what I did today, I was down in Cheverly for a sewing circle and terrorist society meeting, and I caught the July 4 flyover. 

I just saw some F-18s, some F-22s, a VC-25, a KC 135, and a KC 46.

Posted via mobile.

Today in Experimental Archeology

Specifically, archeologists at the University of Tokyo demonstrated long distance canoe travel across the Pacific Ocean, which demonstrates how the Austronesian people could have spread throughout the region.

Long-standing questions about the migration of early modern humans in East Asia may finally be answered, thanks to a rare and remarkable journey made in a dugout canoe.

The timing and destinations of the earliest modern human migrations into East Asia are fairly well established. What remains unclear is how these early populations managed to travel between islands separated by dangerous ocean passages.

To address this gap, a research team from Japan and Taiwan, led by Professor Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo, explored the types of methods ancient people might have used. They also recreated the journey themselves, building canoes with replicas of the tools available at the time.

Archaeological and environmental evidence indicates that roughly 30,000 years ago, humans completed a sea voyage from what is now Taiwan to islands in southern Japan, such as Okinawa—without the aid of maps, metal tools or modern seafaring vessels. To better understand how this journey could have taken place, Kaifu’s team conducted both experimental reconstructions and computer-based simulations.

One of their two recent studies used digital modeling to test how a vessel could cross the powerful Kuroshio Current, one of the world’s most forceful ocean flows. The results demonstrated that a craft built with Paleolithic-era tools and navigational knowledge could indeed manage the crossing. The second study focused on building and trialing an actual canoe, which the team used to paddle more than 100 kilometers between islands, successfully replicating the hypothesized ancient route.

Once again, we see that our ancestors were far more capable than was previously thought.

There Is No Way That You Can Improve a Banksy Artwork………

Banksy original


After censorship by the Royal Courts of Justice OK, I was wrong. 

When the Royal Courts of Justice attempted to efface one of his works, one that protests the prosecutions of pro- Palestinian they made the work more striking and effective.

British judges have been harsh in their actions against pro-Palestinian protesters.

Banksy the artist pointed to this with a mural at a wall of the Royal Courts of Justice.

The mural in more detail.

As Banksy's art accused the British government to censor too much, said government responded by censoring Banksy.

Attempts were made to remove the mural.

But what is left now is still sufficient, if not stronger, in making the point. 

Authoritarians don't get art.

Finally, Some Good News from the UK

Unfortunately fro British subjects, the https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30yrqem5l6o, and not one of the myriad of problems in the island nation.

A yellow eel spotted for the second time in Coventry is "rare and exciting", says an expert, who is appealing for help from the public to track further local sightings.

Alexander Jones, ecology and biodiversity officer at Coventry City Council, saw one in the River Sherbourne in 2024 but was shocked to see a second this year, since the fish used to be one of the most common species locally, but is now one of the rarest.

The second sighting in the river suggests it is making a slow comeback, Jones said.

"We've lost over 90% of our eels in the last few decades, so they are critically endangered," he explained. "The fact we're starting to see them in Coventry is really... positive."

The European eel is a critically endangered species of fish, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

 The British are not yet ready to start serving jellied eel again, but that is a good thing too.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Because tomorrow is when the July 4 holiday is observed, in addition to the unemployment claims report, we also have the monthly jobs report a day early.

The short version if all of this, initial unemployment claims fell from slightly to 215K with continuing claims rose slightly to 1.814M.

More significantly was the monthly jobs report, where only 57K jobs were created, well under what is needed to account for workforce growth.

Additionally, while the unemployment rate fell from 4.3% to 4.2% this was because workforce participation fell to a 5 year low. 

Neither of these are good economic news. 

Will Wonders Never Cease

Both the The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have deigned to notice that Trump's self-dealing and corruption are without precedent in the United States.

This is an obvious state of affairs, but the fact that two of the bastions of self-important hack journalism are acknowledging reality is a a  pleasant surprise. 

Today in Stopped Clocks

The Supreme Court has ruled that geofence demands from law enforcement are a 4th Amendment search which requires a judge issued search warrant, and not just an administrative warrant.

Good.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Monday that geofence warrants count as a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, a decision that will likely impact how police departments around the country seek cellphone location data in the future.

Geofence warrants compel tech companies like Google to provide information about electronic devices that are present in a given area on a particular date during a specific window of time. The case, Chatrie v. United States, involved a man who was convicted of robbing a credit union outside Richmond, Virginia, in 2019.

………

The question at hand was whether these geofencing techniques are considered a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Supreme Court found on Monday that police had conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Chatrie’s location data from Google “because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information.” But it didn’t ban the practice completely. Police will now need to show probable cause.

………

“In recent years, police around the country have relied on geofence warrants like the one in this case tens of thousands of times to cast dragnets that violate the privacy of innocent bystanders, all without even targeting a known suspect or device. Although the Court stopped short of striking down these warrants as inherently unconstitutional, we look forward to pressing lower courts to eliminate these warrants once and for all.” 

Here's hoping that these digital dragnet will eventually be made unlawful.

Good News Everyone!

For the first time ever, solar energy has generated more electricity than coal in the United States.

This is not a surprise.  Solar energy is now cheaper than coal power, the capital investment is lower, and the time from concept from rollout to service entry is lower.

For the first time on record, solar power has generated more electricity than coal in the United States, marking a structural shift in the country’s electricity mix and the accelerating role of renewables in the grid. In May 2026, solar accounted for approximately 12.8% of U.S. electricity generation, while coal accounted for about 12.2%. This marks the first monthly period in which solar surpassed coal in electricity output.

Solar’s record output during the month is is due in part to the seasonal conditions that increase daytime generation. Growth in solar also comes from both utility-scale installations and distributed systems across multiple states. At the same time, coal generation continued its long-term downward trend due to plant retirements, reduced utilization, and competition from lower-cost energy sources. Coal plants also increasingly operate below full capacity, which reduces their overall share of total electricity generation even when facilities remain active. This moment does not signal the end of coal, but it confirms a shift in the structure of electricity production in the U.S. The result is a grid that now relies more heavily on variable renewable energy, with solar playing a growing role in meeting daytime demand and offsetting fossil fuel generation.

………

Across regions, solar growth is being driven by declining technology costs, faster deployment timelines compared to fossil fuel infrastructure, and policy frameworks that prioritize renewable energy expansion. The solar-over-coal crossover reflects more than a statistical milestone. It signals a broader reconfiguration of electricity systems toward modular, rapidly deployable energy sources that can scale faster than traditional fossil fuel infrastructure.

This is a good thing.  The faster that we get off coal, the better.

Quote of the Day

Regardless, I Have a Larger Point: It’s Time to Start Mocking These People and Tearing Down Their Legends as Geniuses of Industry. They Are Not Better than Us, nor Are They Responsible for Anything That Their Companies Build Other than the Share Price (Which Is a Meaningless Figure) and the Accumulation of Power and Resources. These Men Are neither Smart nor Intellectually Superior, and It’s Time to Start Treating Them as Such.

—Ed Zitron on the broligarchs.

They are lucky incompetents, beneficiaries of privilege, and con men. 

True as Turnips is

True as taxes is, and nothing is truer than them.

I Knew That They Were Somewhere

I've been looking for my toolbox, and I am not sure how it ended up in southern Greece.

Early hominins in Europe were creating tools from raw materials hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens arrived there, two new studies indicate, pushing back the established time for such activity. The evidence includes a 500,000-year-old hammer made of elephant or mammoth bone, excavated in southern England, and 430,000-year-old wooden tools found in southern Greece — the earliest wooden tools on record.

The findings suggest that early humans possessed sophisticated technological skills, the researchers said. Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany and a lead author of the wooden-tool paper, which was published on Monday in the journal PNAS, said the discoveries provided insight into the prehistoric origins of human intelligence.

Silvia Bello, a paleoanthropologist at London’s Natural History Museum and an author on the elephant-bone study, which was published last week in Science Advances, concurred.

The artifacts in both studies, recovered from coal-mine sites, were probably produced by early Neanderthals or a preceding species, Homo heidelbergensis. Homo sapiens emerged in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, and the oldest evidence of them in Europe is a 210,000-year-old fossil unearthed in Greece. By the time Homo sapiens established themselves in Britain 40,000 years ago, other hominins had already lived there for nearly a million years.

Kewl.

Of Course They Are

It appears that some of Elon Musk's DOGE Bros are redesigning government websites to spy on US citizens.

Tech bros gotta tech bro.

An opaque White House office staffed largely by veterans of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has quietly rebuilt some of the federal government’s most sensitive websites – for passport applications, voter registration, prescription-drug pricing and children’s savings – in ways critics say appear to violate federal law.

The National Design Studio (NDS) was established by a Donald Trump executive order last August, and is led by Trump-aligned Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and staffed by Doge veterans.

A Guardian investigation has found the office has apparently been developing or redeveloping sensitive federal websites, including those connecting Americans with prescription drugs, children’s savings accounts, passports and voter registration. The investigation corroborates and advances earlier reporting by the Drey Dossier, a YouTube and Substack investigative outlet.

The NDS built and now operates four public federal websites: ndstudio.gov, trumprx.gov, realfood.gov and trumpaccounts.gov. All four ran commercial visitor-tracking software, configured to evade the privacy tools many web users install, and none carry the public filings federal privacy law requires under laws including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E-Government Act of 2002.

They all need to spend the next decade or two in jail. 

6 — 3 (More like 5½ — 3½)

The Supreme Court just came frighteningly close to invalidating a Constitutional amendment because Donald Trump wanted them to.

I am, of course referring to their ruling on the birthright citizenship case, where 5 justices said that the black letter text of the US Constitution said what it said, 1 justice said that federal law would have to be changed, and 3 justices wanted to give Trump a blank check. (How I get to 5½ — 3½)

The Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed the principle that almost everyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen, a major decision that rejects a push by President Donald Trump to fundamentally redefine who is American in ways not seen for more than 150 years.

The justices struck down an executive order by the president that said citizenship would not be granted to children born to parents who are in the country illegally or those on temporary visas for work, travel, school or humanitarian reasons.

Trump’s order would have had sweeping political, economic and social ramifications, changing the definition of citizenship in the most significant way since the 14th Amendment guaranteeing citizenship to formerly enslaved people was ratified shortly after the Civil War. 

The ruling reaffirms the long-settled understanding that the 14th Amendment automatically confers citizenship on any child born in the United States, with limited exceptions for children of diplomats and other rare cases. The principle was established in a landmark 1898 high court decision that found that Wong Kim Ark, a man born to Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, was a citizen. ………

Conservative Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh dissented from the 5-4 majority in ruling the executive order violated the 14th Amendment, but he joined the 6-3 majority in finding the order violated federal law.

………

The opinion came over the objections of conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Alito wrote a dissent, while Thomas wrote another that Gorsuch joined.

Alito said birthright citizenship acts as a magnet drawing migrants to the United States to give birth so their children could be citizens, echoing an argument the Trump administration has made.

………

Thomas said the court “adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.”

So, Alito just let his bigot flag fly, and Thomas just showed himself to be a worse historian than he is a jurist, which is a pretty heavy lift.

Primary in Colorado Tonight

While I am a bit bummed about pro-business stooge and current Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper winning the Senate primary, I am heartened that centrist empty suit Michael Bennett lost to Colorado AG Phil Weisner in the Gubernatorial primary, and that DSA candidate Melat Kiros defeated 15-term Congresswoman Diana DeGette.

DeGette is problematic for a number of reasons:

• 30 years is enough.
• She is deeply enmeshed in the Democratic Party Congressional leadership, having being Chief Deputy Whip for 6 years. The out of touch Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) gerontocracy in the US Congress needs to be removed.
• AIPAC was stealth funding a number of anti-Kiros PACs. 

That last point does not mean that I am no longer a Zionist.  It means that I consider AIPAC to the the 2nd greatest threat to the State of Israel in the world today after Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The Last Refuge of Scoundrels

So, the Pentagon has been refusing to review new wind power projects, and now a group of renewable energy organizations have filed a lawsuit to end this mishugas.

About f%^$#ing time.

A coalition of renewable energy groups asked a federal court on Friday to order the Pentagon to resume reviews of onshore wind projects, in an attempt to end delays by the Trump administration that have brought the U.S. wind power industry to a standstill.

Since April, the Pentagon has stopped all military reviews of proposed wind farms, which are meant to ensure that turbines don’t interfere with local radar or flight paths. Virtually every new wind project in the country needs to undergo these reviews, which until recently were considered routine and often completed within months.

………

The delays have led to a “total halt of all wind development in the United States,” the groups told the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon in a lawsuit filed against the Defense Department last week. At least 106 planned wind projects in 21 states have been stalled indefinitely, representing an estimated $47 billion in potential investment.

The delayed reviews are the latest in a series of extraordinary actions by the Trump administration to halt the expansion of wind power in the United States. On his first day in office, President Trump issued a moratorium on all approvals for wind farms on federal lands, and the Interior Department last year issued stop-work orders for five wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean that were already under construction. More recently, the administration agreed to pay several companies $1.8 billion to abandon their offshore wind plans.

Mr. Trump has called wind turbines ugly and expensive, and has instead pushed to meet rising power demand with fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

“My goal,” he said in January, “is to not let any windmill be built.”

One does hope that whatever judge gets assigned to the case makes it clear to the government that there is no presumption of regularity, and so they will have to provide evidence supporting every "and" and "the".

I Have One Comment About the Bricks and Minifigs Thing

Do not enter into a franchise agreement without consulting a lawyer. Don't attempts to make changes to any deal without consulting a lawyer.

The whole lawyer thing more generally applies to running a business.

Basically, listen to Mike Monteiro.

He said this 15 years ago.

I will post no more on this subject, even though I will continue to follow it, because it holds a perverse fascination for me.

Flock You!

Denver removed Flock cameras, and car thefts fell:

Given Flock's history of ethically questionable business practices, I am not surprised that their services fail to deliver on the promised crime reduction.

It is likely that the reduction in car thefts came from a change in the law, it used to be that only stealing rich people's cars was taken seriously, but it does show that the surveillance state favored by Flock and law enforcement does not meaningfully contribute to public safety. 

Not a Surprise

This is my Shocked Face

The news that used fraudulent data to get approval for its self-driving systems.

Gee, who saw that coming?

As if things couldn’t get any worse for Tesla in Europe, traffic safety researchers now say they’ve caught the company cooking numbers they gave to regulators in order to get its “Full Self-Driving” system approved.

The discrepancy was spotted by Reuters, which claims that data Tesla gave to authorities in Sweden and the Netherlands grossly exaggerated the safety record of FSD in the United States.

Reuters reports that in a presentation meant for Swedish regulators, Tesla’s policy manager Ivan Komusanac claimed that Tesla’s FSD can travel over seven times farther between crashes than human drivers in the US. Using that claim as a jumping-off point, the presentation continued by claiming that Tesla’s FSD could have saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 million injuries over an indeterminate period of time, the publication reports.

In the old days, Elon Musk would be in jail for fraud.

Epstein Island 2

I cannot understand why the Albanian people are so upset about Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump stealing the largest Albanian island on the Aegean.

Actually, I can understand why there are massive protests in Tirana.

The plan to gift the Sazan Island to the Trump Crime Family is infuriating to me, and I am 7 time zones behind the Balkan nation.

There is a nonzero chance that Jared Kushner will play a pivotal and entirely accidental role in bringing down the government of Albania. Over the last several weeks, the Balkan nation has been roiled by protests stretching from the capital, Tirana, to rural coastlines and cities around the world. The demonstrations were sparked by the government’s giving the green light to firms linked with Kushner to develop a 10,000-bed luxury resort near the city of Vlorë on the Narta Lagoon and protected wildlands in Zvërnec. Kushner and Ivanka Trump also have plans to turn Sazan Island, which belongs to a national park, into a smaller coastal enclave for the wealthy. On Saturday, some 200,000 people turned out as anger spread from the Kushner project to other luxury developments. Roughly 200 protesters in northwestern Albania tore down barbed-wire fencing around the construction site of a non-Kushner-linked five-star resort on the Adriatic Coast. As one participant told Reuters, they were demanding “compensation” for 200 local families whose “land has been seized.”

International coverage of the protests in Albania—a country relatively unfamiliar to many in the United States—has focused largely on the environmental concerns being raised by demonstrators, and the projects’ ties to the Trump family. The fledgling Kushner resorts threaten pristine wilderness and critical ecosystems that sustain a rare colony of the world’s largest freshwater birds, endangered Albanian water frogs, and loggerhead turtles. Among the species that stand to be affected are flamingos, whose last remaining habitat in Albania could be threatened by the developments. But the “Flamingo Revolution,” as the wide-ranging, horizontalist movement has become known, is about much more than flora, fauna, or Donald Trump. As Albania vies to become a top tourist destination and a member of the European Union, the ongoing protests aim to do nothing less than upend its political system. “At the core of this protest is not just environmental issues,” said Gresa Hasa, a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law and the Center for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz. “This is a fight for freedom and democracy, and a future where the resources and the state works for all of us and not just for some of us, and where we are not excluded from our own beaches and public spaces.”

………

It’s no secret that the Trump family has been eager to make itself richer while the patriarch occupies the White House. Here in the U.S., awareness of these activities hasn’t yet made much of a dent in Trump’s grasp on power. Abroad, however, it may help bring down politicians who thought they could use that grift to their advantage. Let’s hope Americans take note.

The Trumps are a cancer on the entire world.

It's Called "Rods from God"

Call me paranoid, but I think that Elon Musk's plan to set up a rocket based cargo delivery system sounds more like a ploy to provide a cover for developing an orbital mass driver with which he can hold the world hostage.

I'm pretty sure that this has been covered in any number of James Bond novels and movies over the past 80 years.

Elon Musk is officially a Bond villain.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on Tuesday to test a new reentry vehicle designed to deliver cargo anywhere in the world from low-Earth orbit.

The company developed the new saucer-shaped reentry pod, called Starfall, under a veil of secrecy. Its purpose is to support the “transport and delivery of goods through space,” according to an environmental assessment published by the Federal Aviation Administration last month.

The first demonstration of the Starfall vehicle began at 6:53 am EDT (10:53 UTC) with liftoff aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. At least one Starfall reentry pod rode to orbit on the Falcon 9, perhaps alongside another undisclosed payload. After circling the planet two times, the Falcon 9’s upper stage was expected to release Starfall for atmospheric reentry, targeting a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean around 800 miles west of California.

On the brighter side, Elon Musk's history of actually executing on this sort of crap is profoundly bad.

 

Headline of the Day

CEOs Who Think AI Replaces Their Employees Are Just Bad CEOs

—Techdirt, stating the obvious about American business management.

I have come to the conclusion that any business management fad is inherently wrong.

This time, it is AI. 

F$#@, I'm Old!

I just got back from upstate New York, a 6-hour drive.

In my younger days, I'd follow this up by 3 hours of blogging. 

These days? Not so much.

The Term for this is Inflation

So, the Wall Street Journal is lauding the end of the 4 year trucking slump, trumpeting the increasing freight rates in recent weeks.

This is inflation marker, not an essential turn around in industry. 

Truckers who held on through almost four years of slumping freight rates finally have something to celebrate. 

“It feels like a breath of air for an industry that maybe felt like they were running out of air,” said Webb Estes, president and chief operating officer of Estes Express Lines, a Richmond, Va.-based carrier with revenue of about $6 billion. 

Trucking executives are calling an end to one of the longest freight downturns in carriers’ memory. They say rates have risen to more sustainable levels after a period of low earnings coupled with Trump administration crackdowns on immigrant drivers pushed many carriers out of the market. 

The Logistics Managers’ Index, a monthly survey of supply-chain managers, showed transportation prices increased in May at the fastest rate for any metric in the report’s 10-year history.

This is not a good thing

It's Not About Global Insecurity

The fact that many central banks are repatriating their gold reserves from the UK and US stems from the belief that if their government falls afoul of Washington, DC, they will lose access to their gold stores at a critical point.

Maintaining one's own gold reserves is a PITA compared to allowing the gnomes in The City of London and Wall Street keep them in their vaults, unless you stop believing that they can be relied on.

Global central banks are removing gold from vaults in London and New York as they become more skittish about storing bullion outside their own borders, according to a new survey.

The central banks of India and France are among those that have relocated huge volumes of gold out of the US and UK in the past year to store more domestically — part of a trend of the institutions bringing bullion home and also diversifying the storage location of their reserves.

For years, central banks have been increasing their holdings of gold, which recently surpassed US Treasuries to become the world’s top reserve asset, as many seek alternatives to the US dollar, the world’s de facto reserve currency.

However, increasing geopolitical conflict, sanctions regimes and a decline in trust have put strains on a gold trading system that relies heavily on London — where huge vaults at the Bank of England store more than $700bn of the yellow metal — and on New York, the world’s largest gold futures market.

………

The news comes as Singapore and Hong Kong have been working to offer vaulting services to central banks that are looking to diversify their storage. Singapore’s deputy prime minister on Monday said the city-state would launch an over-the-counter clearing system for gold this year, along with a vaulting service for central banks.

One of the biggest recent repatriation programmes has been in France, which removed 129 tonnes of gold from the New York Federal Reserve between July 2025 and January 2026 and now stores all its gold domestically.

………

Over the past three years, India’s central bank has also repatriated most of the gold it held overseas with the Bank of England and the Bank for International Settlements.

The share of its gold held overseas by the Reserve Bank of India dropped to 22 per cent in March 2026 from 55 per cent in March 2023, according to the central bank’s data. The RBI did not respond to a request for comment.

Let me be clear here, I do not believe that gold reserves are that significant in the modern financial system, but the movement of these assets is an indication of reduction of trust in the US and UK, and that is significant. 

No Blogging Tonight

I just finished a drive up to Central New York.

One of Sharon's oldest friends is getting an arts award this weekend. (A Laurel on the SCA)

I have just finished a 6-hour drive, and I am completely done.

Well, Duh!

So, some psychologists at Penn have looked into why so many bosses are so insistent on a return to the office 5 days a week, and their conclusion is that executives are a bunch of malignant narcissists.

Well, paint my ass and call me Susan! 

When the pandemic came to an end, many people who had been working from home assumed they would be allowed to maintain that habit at least a few days a week. But today in the U.S., a third of companies have forced everyone back to the office full time and have banned remote and hybrid work.

Some leaders say they insist on full-time in-person work because it boosts productivity, despite clear evidence that it does not. Others claim it’s about collaboration, creativity or culture. Our new research reveals that the objection to any work from home is more likely to be driven by something else entirely: ego.

Case by case, there may be good reasons for teams to work together in person. As a general rule, though, it turns out that ordering people back to the office full time is a power and status move. It’s a signature strategy of leaders who exhibit narcissistic qualities. They see any kind of remote work as a threat to their authority and admiration. They want to be worshiped at the office altar.

Welcome to America.

F%$#! I May Have to Read Jane Austen Again

Youtuber Farm to Taber has a fascinating video about how Jane Austen explains how the issues of rural America are really issues of not particularly competent landed gentry, and not corporate agriculture.

I had to read Pride and Prejudice in high school, and I hated every page. 

I had little interest in the topic, which at the time I saw as little more than a Regency romance.

She makes a compelling case that the novel is a trenchant critique of the society of the time which can be applied to rural areas today. 

I am now thinking that I may have to reread that book 46 years after I nearly threw it out the window.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, initial claims fell, continuing claims rose, and PCE inflation hit a 3 year high.

Notwithstanding the increasingly precarious deal between Iran and the United States to end hostilities, ships are still only trickling through the Strait of Hormuz.

The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, consistent with labor market resilience.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits ​dropped 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 215,000 for the week ended June ‌20, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 225,000 claims for the latest week.

The data included last Friday's Juneteenth public holiday, which could have contributed to ​part of the larger-than-expected decline. Claims are typically more complicated from the ​end of May through June when the school year ends, as ⁠some states allow non-teaching staff to file for unemployment benefits during the long ​school holidays. Seasonal factors, the model used by the government to strip out ​seasonal fluctuations from the data, do not always capture these moves.

………

The number of people receiving unemployment benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, increased 21,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.821 million during the week ended June 13, the claims ​report showed. The so-called ​continuing claims data ⁠covered the period during which the government surveyed households for June's unemployment rate.

Meanwhile in inflation land:

US consumer spending accelerated in May even as prices rose at the fastest pace in more than three years, suggesting Americans are powering through the fallout from the Iran war.

The personal consumption expenditures price index rose 4.1% from a year earlier, the most since April 2023, Bureau of Economic Analysis data out Thursday showed. Excluding food and energy, prices were up 3.4% from a year earlier.

Inflation-adjusted consumer spending rose 0.3% last month after stalling in April.

 

Good News on the Renewables Front

Arizona's extra fees to solar power users has been struck down in state court.

After years in the courts, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Vote Solar, striking down the Arizona Corporation Commission’s (ACC) approval of discriminatory charges for customers of Arizona Public Service (APS) who have rooftop solar. In its decision, the Arizona Court of Appeals vacated the solar fees, ruling that they were imposed in an unfair manner that violated due process requirements.

APS, a regulated utility powering 1.4 million households and businesses in Arizona, first created the solar fees in its 2022 rate case, and they currently amount to roughly $2 to $3 in additional monthly charges for households with rooftop solar. Vote Solar filed an appeal in 2025 against the “grid access charge.”

APS has proposed to increase the fees to roughly $6 per month in its current rate case, which is under consideration at the ACC. Vote Solar, the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest (ACLPI) and Earthjustice are opposing the fee in that case as well.

This ruling is about not notifying the public, and not following their own rules, and not about the underlying merits of this fee.

I don't think that the fee will be reinstated, because the ruling requires proper procedure and advance public notice, and if they cannot sneak it in, public outrage would likely force the utility and the regulators to back down. 

Of Course He Did

It's no surprise that Donald Trump has announced that he will block a popular and bipartisan housing bill unless Congress makes it illegal for Black and Brown people to vote.

OK, "Illegal," is a bit of hyperbole.  He just wants to make it as difficult as is humanly possible.

What does the "Save America" Act have to do with housing?  Nothing at all.

Despite rare and overwhelming bipartisan support, a US bill aimed at lowering the cost of housing for Americans is being held hostage by Donald Trump.

The president said he won’t sign the 21st Century Road to Housing Act until the Senate meets his demand to pass the Save America Act, which would dramatically change voting regulations by requiring proof of citizenship at voter registration and significantly curtail mail-in voting.

The housing bill, which was passed with large majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives after months of negotiations, represents one of the biggest efforts in decades to increase the supply of housing and reduce prices. On Wednesday morning, however, Trump claimed it was of “minor importance”.

Trump is trying not to spend the rest of his life in prison, so the voter suppression bill, and the ballroom, and the f%$#ing reflecting pool, are all that he cares about.

Congress Found Some Cojones

Both houses just passed a joint war powers resolution resolution directing Trump to cease all hostilities against Iran.

I think that this is  second or third time in the 50+ year history of the War Powers Act that it has been used to end hostilities, rather than authorizing them.

The Senate voted to limit President Trump’s ability to conduct military operations against Iran without congressional authorization after four Republicans joined with Democrats in a stinging rebuke to Trump a week after he signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran.

The resolution passed by the Senate on Tuesday afternoon, in a 50-48 vote, directs the president to remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities against Iran unless explicitly authorized by Congress, other than to defend America, an ally or partner from “imminent attack.” The resolution, previously passed by the House, is nonbinding but marks the first time both chambers of Congress have passed the same measure to curb Trump’s power to wage the war against Iran.

………

The House passed the same resolution on June 3, in a 215-208 vote, with four Republicans joining Democrats in support.

I do not think that this will amount to a hill of beans, the Trump administration is not one to follow the law, and the constitutionality of a joint resolution is confusing.

Still, it does appear to be a shift in the political direction of the Republican Party. 

Took Our Cats to the Vet Yesterday

Hercules giving his cat Bella a pill

They are both getting up in age, and our 15 year old void cat Meatball/Mousetrap has experienced some weight loss, so we were concerned.

Thankfully, it was "just" hyperthyroid, which is better than the alternatives, (diabetes, cancer, FIP, etc.) but we have to give her a pill twice a day.

She is about as cooperative as one can expect from a ferocious predator under such circumstances.

Meanwhile, our large (17 lb, probably a Maine Coon mix) 12 year old gray and white longhair, needed some matting addressed, and the doctor heard a slight heart murmur, so we are going to a veterinary cardiologist shortly.

We need to brush him more frequently. 

In terms of overall fitness and affect, both seem to be fine. 

I am not sure if the cats have forgiven for taking them to the vet, or if they are biding their time planning revenge.

It's probably the latter.