So, let’s do another quick takes. I’m feeling slightly compulsive about clearing out some of my backlog of stuff I should write about but never get to.
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One of the signs of Boeing’s decline (other than massive price over-runs and planes falling out of the sky), was when they decided to get rid of their wind tunnel and use computer modeling, and it’s something I noted at the time. So it’s interesting to me that the Chinese have just completed the world’s largest wind tunnel, specifically meant for testing hypersonic plane and missile models.
Computer models can be useful, but they aren’t the real world and relying on them when you can do direct observation is—stupid, and the sort of cost-cutting that leads to huge errors and costs down the road.
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State Farm has decided to no longer insure new customers homes in California! Why? Because of forest fires. Having worked for an insurance company home office, I can assure you that this is a cold mathematical decision. It will spread beyond California and if the government wants home insurance in a lot of places, it’s going to have to subsidize it or just do it themselves. (Government insurance is almost always cheaper than private but insuring stuff that truly is at very high risk is basically stupid.)
This is a half climate change, half capitalism issue. PG&E, the California electricity company has not been clearly brush around its poles and lines or replacing old poles, lines and equipment. They have, however, been paying huge dividends. Power supply is also something that government does best, though there’s some room for private (heavily regulated) generation.
The easiest way to make outsize profits is to push your costs onto other people. Walmart and Amazon telling their employees to get food stamps is another example, but neglecting maintainence that leads to thousands of houses being burnt down is another.
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Another of those “it’s happening faster than we expected” stories about climate change, in this case, ocean circulation slowing more quickly than expected. This leads to the oceans being a worse sink for carbon, leading to faster overall climate change, so it’s a compounding thing and it leads to less nutrients and oxygen for ocean life. If you’re young or maybe even middle aged, you will see the full collapse of fish stocks.
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In the “end of the dollar” news, ten Asean countries have agreed to cooperate in creating a currency for trade among themselves.
They are “Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.”
The end of the US dollar as international trade currency isn’t here yet, but it’s getting closer. The BRICS are acting on this (and multiple countries want to join BRICS) and oil deals are being cut in non-dollar terms.
A great deal of US privilege and US standard of living comes from having the global trade and reserve currency, and so does much of America’s ability to sanction other countries. It is, indeed, other countries desire to not be subject to US currency/bank based sanctions that is driving much of this, and the seizing of Russia’s reserves was the wake up call, whether one thinks it was justified or not.
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Back in the 70s one of my uncles was friends with a marine biologist in British Columbia, Canada. He stated that he expected to see the end of the BC salmon run in his lifetime. I suspect he was wrong, he probably died in the 2010s, but he wasn’t far wrong. It looks like the Alaska (and therefore BC) salmon run has collapsed, and it’s unlikely to come back. If it does, it will be brief.
The end of wild seafood is on the horizon.
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And that’s it for today’s quick takes.
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