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April 27, 2025
Sunrise — 5:40, 5:40, 5:56, 6:19.
Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.
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58 comments:
If I was in a submarine on that lake, I would also want to up periscope to see the red sunrise in No. 2. Keep hoping for a photo of the full sub some day. ;>}
I almost got into a fight with my wife over this.
https://x.com/interneth0f/status/1891820167941816432?s=61
Men need facts. Women need context.
The female commentators on this blog can avoid having their purse stolen by using the Althouse Amazon portal to shop for “ Women's handbag hangers.” My wife has used a purse hanger for years. They are inexpensive and keep your handbag off the floor snd off your lap. With May coming up you males might consider a small but useful (and thoughtful) extra gift for Mother’s Dsy.
I've got a really bad spring cold, so I had to spend the past beautiful weekend inside (sigh). So I watched my all time favorite podcast (the only one I ever watch): The Rest is History, with hosts Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland. This one is the first part of a two part series on the Rolling Stones. These guys are fantastic. Whether they are discussing ancient civilizations or modern culture, they do it in such a way that I am enchanted. I wish I had either one of them as a history professor in college. This one is not only informative but hilarious as well. I personally saw the Rolling Stones during their Steel Wheels concert tour in Jack Trice Stadium at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. 50,000 people, and my best friend got me tickets on the ground floor 8th row center from the stage. I will never forget it. I know, it's only rock and roll, but I like it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95O2Zd24pvo
Just out of curiosity I asked Grok why gay men speak in that particular tone of voice. Short answer: no they don't, bigot.
Anyone besides Aggie and me interested in commenting about the amazing revelation that Captain Rebecca Lobach’s instructor pilot warned her that she was too high and that the controller had directed her to turn left, and she had ignored both warnings. Did she ignore the warnings because she outranked her instructor pilot? Was she too unskilled and afraid to go lower? (The Flight Data Recorder on the American Airlines passenger showed it to be at 313 feet, her helicopter was restricted to be below 200 feet.)
Commentator exhelodrvr, if you’re around, could you comment?
Here is the song that I referenced in my post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmgCy__eUa8
Plus one on The Rest Is History. They can be a little shaky on what drives American politics, but otherwise they’re exceptionally entertaining. The JFK series and anything on German or British political history are personal faves. And the Trafalgar series. And….
Tcrosse: Ask why gay guys put their hands on their hips with thumbs in front, while us breeders do it thumbs in back.
“Anyone besides Aggie and me interested in commenting about the amazing revelation that Captain Rebecca Lobach’s instructor pilot warned her that she was too high and that the controller had directed her to turn left, and she had ignored both warnings.”
Per my post above, women need context.
If I had anything interesting or insightful to say about the helo-jet collision I'd say it. I read and learn from what you people say about it.
Tom Holland is a whiz-kid of sweeping popular history, erudite and enthusiastic about any subject he turns to, a master of the mot juste and the illuminating analogy.
I know his books better than his podcasts, and I know Sandbrook only because he hangs out with Holland.
Holland's younger brother James is a prolific writer and podcaster in his own right, specializing in WW II. I haven't read any of his books so can't rate them.
@Jersey Fled (8:05), if you’re a woman in the army you’re supposed to be a soldier first and a woman second. That will keep you alive when an enemy — or “the context” — is trying to kill you.
There's zero reason for "Diversity" in Military pilots. Lives are at stake. Not just in war, but in peacetime. These crazy "dreamers" with power, play with people's lives.
Off topic: Just saw a great documentary on Lee Montgomery the Jazz player. "call him Morgan" . 1972 was 50+ years ago, but it seems like another world.
Also, was going to look up "The Black Guy" in Hogan's Heroes and learn his name, but fell asleep.
"Per my post above, women need context."
Coming from a male, wouldn't that be "mansplaining"?
Just read this:
BREAKING: Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ administration sent instructions to state employees on how to safeguard illegal immigrants and help them evade ICE.
@Althouse, your whole damnable state must be wall-to-wall scofflaws.
Interesting weekend. I encountered olive trees when I went to Summer camp in Northern California, but there aren't any olive trees in Oregon. Except, Oregon State University started a program a while back to identify olive species that would do well in Oregon, and found quite a few. I found some people on the internet who have a nursery for those species, and on Saturday I drove my hot-rod hatchback Honda Civic up 99W to buy 6 trees in 2-gallon containers. Very pleasant people, intelligent and knowledgeable. They have a nice acreage, up in what some would call the Oregon wine country. We talked olives, of course, and then the Missoula floods, which provided the topsoils throughout the Willamette Valley. No one wore a MAGA hat, and politics were not discussed. For all I know, they're renegade Presbyterians.
For several years, I drove 99W twice a week, when I was renting a room in a house in Hillsboro to work at Intel. I-5 is faster, but I-5 is soul-killing, and after driving it about thirty times, I was willing to spend an extra hour and drive the old highway, which is a much nicer drive, especially in a hot-rod.
This is how I came to encounter the Luckiamute Bridege, across the Luckiamute RIver. Upon investigation, I discovered the the Luckiamutes were one of the eight subtribes of the Kalapuya, who occupied the Willamette Valley before Europeans came here. There was very little conflict between white people and the Indians of the Willamette Valley. Most of them died without ever seeing a European, from European diseases.
Another taxpayer funded bailout for victims of Trump’s stupidity, most of whom are his voters.
Trumps usual playbook: Create a problem out of nothing and use tax payer money to pay for the damages he caused -- then act like he saved the industry.
"President Trump is ready to bail out American farmers if commodity exports continue to fall, particularly involving pork and soybean sales to China, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Sunday." ~ NewsMax
The Missoula flood is my favorite geological event, even though it probably would have counted more as a kind of weather? event at the time. As a fledgling geologist who also loved to write, I wrote a short sci-fi story for a creative writing class incorporating the idea of an ice dam that formed every winter across a narrow gap to create a lake on the up-elevation side, then melted back or calved each spring to cause a disastrous flood (though obviously not as epic as Missoula!), and the efforts of the human colony in the area to decide whether to continue to be seasonally nomadic on that account or to find a way to control the lake's spring flood so that they could stay in the flood plain and become agriculturalists. It was fun. The prof thought I plagiarized it. I got really mad about that until my advisor pointed out that the prof was, however inadvertently, paying me a compliment.
When the last glacial era was coming to an end, an ice dam developed across a narrow gorge in Montana, and a gigantic lake built up behind it, which has been named Lake Missoula. For whatever reason, the lake would eventually start to lap over the ice dam, and would then melt it completely in less than a day. An immense amount of water swept through Idaho and Washington, scouring the terrain. This is what produced the Grand Coulee, on the Columbia. At Portland, most went west but a lot went south, and provided the topsoils of the Willamette Valley. This happened ten or twelve times, probably in less than a century. Similar events happened all over the world, which is probably why everybody has Tales of The Flood. Except, the Kalapuya didn't. They had tales of the explosion of Mount Mazama, which created Crater Lake, about 8000 years ago. But they didn't remember the Missoula floods. Of course, anyone who lived here during those floods would have been wiped out. Here in Eugene, at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, the soil laid down by the Floods is a couple hundred feet deep.
The olive people said a neighbor had an isolate from Missoula. This would be a large rock, many, many tons, carried hundreds of miles by the flood waters and then deposited in a region where the local strata are totally different.
"The Missoula flood is my favorite geological event, even though it probably would have counted more as a kind of weather?"
I think it is safe to say, that anyone -- anyone -- who had witnessed one of the Missoula floods, and survived it, would have regarded it as an Act of God.
What, BTW, is a renegade? A renegade is one who has reneged, typically upon an agreement to cease warlike actions and reside, in quiesence, if not in peace, in a place reserved to him. "Agreements entered under duress are not binding!".
I suppose a person who seeks a divorce could be called a renegade.
I put this up on an earlier, now dead, thread, but as Kaka is still spreading his pernicious nonsense here I thought I'd repost it
***************
Kakistocracy said...
"The US exports $150B to China at 20% margin ($30B profit) and imports $450B at 5% Chinese margin ($22.5B). That’s a win. High-margin exports beat low-margin junk."
************
Where did you get this bullshit.?
"Margin" means nothing. "Gross margin" means *gross* profits on products sold. It does NOT mean NET profits, which are profits net of all other overheads, and are almost always less than "gross". (aside from royalties on IP, e.g.)
What's more, "gross margins" vary tremendously from market sector, e.g. pharma high, agrricultural low.
DERP.
So where, one asks, does Kaka get his bogus info? What Chinese statistics does he actually believe reveal **their real**situation? Who exactly audits the financials of the state-owned enterprises forming most of China's export economy?
If the Chincoms are actually selling their products at a 5% gross margin, that most certainly means their entire export economy is operating at a LOSS, given these overhead expenses:
Facility-related expenses:
Administrative costs:
Sales and marketing:
Technology infrastructure:
Supply chain management:
Research and development:
And, of course, the labor needed to perform all these functions.
How, one asks, can a gigantic economy grow, if it has been operating a loss for years on end?
Thanks very much, Jupiter, for telling me and the rest of us interesting things I and they never would have otherwise known. And as for effingayright, we're in the fog of war as to Chicom accounting. I keep thinking that they must be smarter than they seem. And I also think: don't invest in a Chinese business.
If you are interested in the nature of Chinese society, read Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962, by Yang Jisheng. 36 million dead, and nobody even talks about it. Mass amnesia is a powerful political weapon. When 36 million is a footnote, thermonuclear weapons don't even get a paragraph.
Guy on X is predicting mass shortages in 7-10 days, sort of like what happened just before the lockdowns in 2020:
https://x.com/Tazerface16/status/1916571948198552005?t=DvOB2Nr4HjVeUA6BDotrQQ&s=19
"We're about to face supply shocks and empty shelves.
You'd be wise to stock up on essentials now.
Purchase all major electronics and appliances for the year if you can.
Staples like rice can be purchased in 20+lbs bags and it lasts forever.
Panic buying is days away."
He blames it on tariffs. I screenshotted his post. If it actually happens, my suspicion is that it will either be the result of inciting panic, or that it will be a manufactured crisis. If it doesn't happen, I'll remind him of his failed prophecy.
Ampersand, thanks for the mention of the Great Chinese Famine. I had never even heard of it before now. Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia article (yeah, I know);
"During the Great Leap Forward, farming was organized into people's communes and the cultivation of individual plots was forbidden. Previously farmers cultivated plots of land given to them by the government. The Great Leap Forward led to the agricultural economy being increasingly centrally planned. Regional Party leaders were given production quotas for the communes under their control. Their output was then appropriated by the state and distributed at its discretion. In 2008, former deputy editor of Yanhuang Chunqiu and author Yang Jisheng would summarize his perspective of the effect of the production targets as an inability for supply to be redirected to where it was most demanded:
In Xinyang, people starved at the doors of the grain warehouses. As they died, they shouted, "Communist Party, Chairman Mao, save us". If the granaries of Henan and Hebei had been opened, no one need have died. As people were dying in large numbers around them, officials did not think to save them. Their only concern was how to fulfill the delivery of grain.
The degree to which people's communes lessened or worsened the famine is controversial. Each region dealt with the famine differently, and timelines of the famine are not uniform across China. One argument is that excessive eating took place in the mess halls, and that this directly led to a worsening of the famine. If excessive eating had not taken place, one scholar argued, "the worst of the Great Leap Famine could still have been avoided in mid-1959". However, dire hunger did not set in to places like Da Fo village until 1960, and the public dining hall participation rate was found not to be a meaningful cause of famine in Anhui and Jiangxi. In Da Fo village, "food output did not decline in reality, but there was an astonishing loss of food availability associated with Maoist state appropriation"."
And here I thought the means of production, and the products, were owned by the workers. Compare this to what happened in Sri Lanka after 'sustainable' agricultural methods were enforced: www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-lanka-organic-fertilizer-pesticide-agriculture-farming
Regarding DCA crash and those blaming the woman pilot, remember that the instructor pilot had the authority and sits at the controls to say “I got the controls, my aircraft” when the other pilot is not meeting the standards.
When my parents moved to Chelan I drove there from Spokane. The trip over passes all the pot lakes dry canyons and the wheat fields are dotted with these isolates- you can see them on Google Maps easily as the farmer’s tram lines run crooked around them. I had to stop and marvel at one beside the road that was nearly a perfect sphere, like a two story shot put…
Demand slump fueled by Trump tariffs hits US ports and air freight ~ FT
'Bookings plunge as importers hold off on shipping goods to America in hope of Beijing-Washington deal'
Only when retail shelves are empty in June and unemployment and inflation are rising at the same time will the majority of delusions amongst American voters be shattered. The FA of FAFO has happened, the supply chain means the FO takes two months to happen, and a good quarter later minimum to undo the logistics mess, in the best case.
It’s easy to see how the uncertainty will serve to bring trading to a halt. Why ship product into theUS which will currently be due to be tariffed if, Trump is likely to announce backpedaling decisions on those tariffs? You wouldn’t do it, you’d hold the stock somewhere and wait to see what pans out.
Similarly, why would a US buyer order goods that carry a high tariff today, if the suspicion is that tariffs will be reduced or removed, say next week? The logical thing to do, is to wait till the price falls, then order.
In the meantime, the economy grinds to a halt and quite rapidly, more and more companies and jobs become affected.
This is why stability in politics and in trading rules and processes are necessary.
The next few weeks are going to be…. Illuminating.
Communism derived death tolls are rarely discussed in contrast to Nazi death counts, even though the communists were likely the more efficient killers - 100’s of millions.
Speaking of floods and the ice ages settling, think about the Great Lakes and Niagara Falls. It was moving, I assume we stopped it when we built the power dams there, but it was moving at a rate where in 10,000 years or so it would reach Lake Erie and begin a flash drain of that lake, it will start slowly, and happen suddenly, scouring away Buffalo, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, and leaving a moonscape. That would be something to see. The Grand Canyon formed in a similar fashion. This is what happens when a course for disaster has been set, and nothing so that we can maintain smooth "stability." It's like when an airplane is flying into a mountain side, but the pilot prioritizes the immediate comfort of the passengers and so does no sudden moves.
Economically, the industrial areas of the US have already been hit by a slow motion economic hurricane, devestating communities across America, but these were not wealthy people, important people, who lost their livelihoods and ways of life, like the people getting beat up by the stock market right now, these were flyover people, so they didn't matter. Except you can wipe out all of the well paying jobs available to them in the name of "economic efficiency" but you can't make them disappear and no longer be able to vote.
I’d like each of the Department Secretaries to compile and communicate a complete list of their DOGE-related actions, including what’s remaining to be scoped out, if anything. There’s too much noise in the air about this right now.
Also, I’m gonna be disappointed if they find only $160 B annual savings.
Kak assures us that the preceding tariff regime was and is the best of all possible worlds.
Does anyone recall Kak/Rich complaining* when the market lost 25% in 2022? When lumber tripled in price and was nowhere to be found? When inflation fueled by Biden's Orwellian "Inflation Reduction Act" was cranking along in double digits? No "uncertainty" there, right?
*cutting and pasting unattributed criticisms
Also, I’m gonna be disappointed if they find only $160 B annual savings
Prepare to be disappointed. Congress, Republicans specifically have more or less kept their mouths shut but now they’re beginning the public stage of the budget fight. Expect carefully crafted ‘conscience searching’ from the McCain wing of the party what gets them to continued funding of all the leftie garbage in addition to the usual waste and fraud…
…I went back this morning to quote my NYE prediction as such. I know my post was there a few days after the new year but it and the commentariat’s response to same were disappeared, likely by the intolerant algorithms or the blogger’s magic wand of bad faith and/or off topic. Too bad…🤨
Kahkahkasocricy: “ Only when retail shelves are empty in June and unemployment and inflation are rising at the same time will the majority of delusions amongst American voters be shattered. The FA of FAFO has happened, the supply chain means the FO takes two months to happen, and a good quarter later minimum to undo the logistics mess, in the best case.”
And when that doesn’t happen, I expect you will recant.
Right?
They need Trump’s excessively popular budget and economy numbers to soften this week in order to justify what the GOP wants to do- squash any dreams of waste, fraud and abuse reduction…
According to Joe Biden's numbers, there was hardly any inflation during his presidency, well, none to get bothered about, but I went to the boat show, just to, you know, read the articles, and anyway, the boat I bought four years ago is now double the price. It used to be that if I had a twenty or two in my wallet, I was good to go for the wifey and I at a breakfast restaurant, now I carry fifties.
If things were as great as Mr "longing for the recency expired kakistocracy" tells us, Trump would never have won. But you know what? They weren't. We were already in a recession, his jobs numbers were right out of 1984, same as his inflation numbers, "chocolate rations increased from 30 to 20 grams" type numbers.
"I personally saw the Rolling Stones during their Steel Wheels concert tour in Jack Trice Stadium at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. 50,000 people, and my best friend got me tickets on the ground floor 8th row center from the stage."
1975 Chicago Stadium. 13th row center. Stones in their prime, and now had Ronnie Wood in the band. Cost me $100 each for two tickets, a lot of money back then. Worth it.
I remember hiking in the hills when I was a boy, and you could see the sky over the valley where my hometown was was kind of polluted with what they called in Denver when I lived there, a "brown cloud." You know what that was? Jobs. Good paying jobs. Making firetrucks, TV sets, that's right, they used to make TV sets in the US, and ordinary people could get good paying jobs in the factories, they made typewriters, etc, etc, all in my little hometown. Now the air is clean, and you have zero problem finding a place to park your RV on the street downtown, because there are no stores, no jobs, nothing. It's like the economy had been scoured out and shipped off to China.
BTW, my old hometown is deep MAGA country. I think that there is a connection. The were all Democrats when I grew up there, and if the Democrats had protected their jobs, they would still all be Democrats. Probably so would Trump.
rehajm said...
"When my parents moved to Chelan I drove there from Spokane. The trip over passes all the pot lakes dry canyons and the wheat fields are dotted with these isolates- you can see them on Google Maps easily as the farmer’s tram lines run crooked around them. I had to stop and marvel at one beside the road that was nearly a perfect sphere, like a two story shot put…"
The rich black soil of the midwestern prairies overlays glacial gravel, boulders, loess and sand that was deposited here by glaciers all the way from Canada. In Palos Heights you can find deposits of glacial loess as fine as talcum powder.
A lot of MAGA country was formerly populated by FDR Democrats. People intensely grateful to FDR and the Democrats for dragging them out of poverty. Grandpa farmed dirt with mules and grandma baked bread in a wood-fired oven, the same stove she used to fry bacon and make coffee. They had no electricity until the Democrats brought it through rural electrification, etc, etc. Then the Democrats forgot these people, and now Trump is their new FDR and he would have to do a lot of wrong to make people turn on the one man who does not seem to have forgotten them, and is fighting for them as best he can.
@Leland, absolutely she was in the wrong. She was more 100 feet above the maximum safe altitude and she ignored a controller’s explicit command to move left.. I don’t know why she ignored ATC and her instructor pilot and I don’t know why the instructor was slow to take control of the aircraft, and I hope that will be honestly investigated (though I doubt that last, given all the.Biden-era officers still floating around the Pentagon).
I don’t mind that all that Lobach died horrifically — it’s what happens when you take on a dangerous job tor which you are ill-prepared and then you resist direction. It’s all the people she took with her.
I would love to visit the Pacific Northwest and see the Scablands and the other areas impacted by the Missoula floods. We talked about them in my college geology class. Two points the professor mentioned:
Until then, the common viewpoint was that changes to the landscape largely happened gradually over long periods of time. The flooding was slow to be accepted at first because it showed that catastrophic reshaping of the landscape occurred more frequently than believed.
There wasn’t just one Missoula flood. The catastrophic flooding occurred several times as the ice sheets advanced and retreated.
The Missoula flood was not the only catastrophic flooding to occur.
At one point, the Mediterranean Sea had largely dried up, leaving just a few small salty lakes. Then about 2 million years ago, the dam from the Atlantic burst and the Mediterranean refilled in a matter of a few months. The waterfall at Gibraltar would have dwarfed any existing waterfalls in the world.
And the Black Sea flooding 11,000 years ago was initially suggested to be the inspiration for the story of Noah, until more evidence came up showing there was a lot of catastrophic flooding throughout the area that could have been inspiration as well.
Facts about the Niagara erosion: https://www.niagarafallsinfo.com/niagara-falls-history/niagara-falls-geology/niagara-geological-areas/erosion-in-the-niagara-region/
@Big Mike, when safety experts look at disasters like this, they try to avoid simply blaming it on a person. The reason is not to deflect blame from an individual. The reason is to question how was the individual put in a position to allow the disaster to occur? My point is the first safeguard from a pilot like this is the Instructor Pilot, who should be the Pilot in Command for that mission. Someone made a good point yesterday, might have been you, that in the military, you are a soldier first and a woman sometime later, because survival requires you to be a soldier first. The same is true in aviation, military and civilian, the PIC is in command of the aircraft regardless of rank, and especially of gender.
If you want to knock the DEI aspects, then you should go beyond the pilot at the controls and ask how did she get there? Why didn't the CWO PIC take over? Does the DEI environment suppress what should be the primary objectives of the PIC regardless of rank and gender? How was the pilot performing previously before anyone thought it was a good idea to have her navigate Class B airspace?
Based on the reports, this training flight should have been performed elsewhere until the pilot showed proficiency of controlling the helicopter within 50ft of intended altitude.
Wowsers, those are some gorgeous pictures.
"BREAKING: Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ administration sent instructions to state employees on how to safeguard illegal immigrants and help them evade ICE." @Althouse, your whole damnable state must be wall-to-wall scofflaws."
As a matter of federal constitutional law, the state and local authorities cannot be commandeered to enforce federal law. This is one of the structural safeguards of the U.S. Constitution.
I'm going to guess that Evers's lawyers are working to inform state authorities of the scope of their power here. They are not the handmaidens of federal authority.
Read Scalia's opinion for the majority in Printz.
That opinion used to drive liberals crazy.
"Demand slump fueled by Trump tariffs hits US ports and air freight"
That doesn't comport with my experience. I just air freighted my telescope from New Zealand to the US. I got it, delayed, just in time. DHL just suspended high value shipments to individuals (as opposed to businesses) because of a surge in volume.
@Leland, I am not taking any position on the “DEI aspects.” Lots of women have served well in the armed forces and, famously, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) was not merely a proficient helo pilot during the Iraq War, but she was notorious for flying in the “wrong seat” as PIC so she could simultaneously hose Tangos with the door gun. I honor her service and her warrior spirit even as I view Duckworth’s politics with raw contempt. So, yes, women can fly army helos, in combat or in peacetime.
Your comment triggered me because too often I’ve seen men blamed for not intervening when a woman does something stupid.
Looking forward to Trump blaming Biden for the pending empty shelves.
Are there any goods from China stored in “bonded warehouses” awaiting lower tariffs? Are there any goods from China sitting in container ships that are idle in the ocean awaiting lower tariffs?
@Big Mike, not intending the trigger you. Not blaming the man vs woman. I have good college friend that is a woman who flew "Dust Off" Blackhawks for the Army. I have also worked with one of the first woman to fly B-1s, meaning she is also one of the first woman to hold a combat role in the US military.
My concern is this pilot didn't seem to meet basic proficiency to be operating a helicopter, yet she was given a training mission that put her in Class B airspace. That shouldn't happen.
@Leland, we appear to be in strong agreement. Now let’s do World Peace.
@Althouse, I interpreted what I read of the Evers memo to go way beyond Printz and involve actively impeding federal law enforcement in the performance of its duties. That is not acceptable.
The colors in the first two pics remind me of sunny mountain days catching a line of brook trout. Red bellies.
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