toucana

Small correction - REN (Redes Energéticas Nacionals) operate the national grid of Portugal, and REE (Red Eléctrica de España ) operate the Spanish electrical grid system. The Carrington Event which took place in September 1859 happened at a time when high power electrical transmission systems and transformers in the 220/440 KV class simply did not exist. https://www.space.com/the-carrington-event Oddly enough, one of my relatives - a maternal great-uncle Sir Arthur Fleming (1881-1960) was a pioneering electrical engineer who was sent over to Pittsburgh USA in 1899 to train with Westinghouse Electrical Corporation, and he subsequently became an insulation specialist and head of transformer design with British Westinghouse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Fleming_(electrical_engineer) He was knighted for his war-time work in designing the high-power thermionic valves used in British RADAR systems during WW2.

Spain and Portugal have suffered major electrical blackouts affecting capital cities such as Madrid and Lisbon, plus many other regional cities such as Barcelona, Valencia, and Porto. Parts of southern France have also been affected https://news.sky.com/story/spain-portugal-power-outage-latest-large-parts-of-countries-affected-with-traffic-lights-not-working-and-phone-lines-down-13357538 REN the prinicipal electrical grid operator in Spain has blamed rare atmospheric conditions that have affected significant parts of the European power grid system for causing “induced atmospheric variations” which have impacted the operational stability of power transmission lines across the entire Iberian peninsula. They say that it may take up to a week to resolve the problems affecting their 400 and 220 KV transmission lines. What they are referring to appears to be a phenomenon known to power line engineers as GIC (geomagnetically induced currents) which are related to space weather - i.e. charged particles from the sun.The solar cycle is currently on an 11 year maximum for sunspot activity. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression A recent 2023 AGU article on ‘Expected Geomagnetically Induced Currents in the Spanish Islands Power Transmission Grids’ explains some of the problems: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2023SW003426 "When the Sun is active, it sends out more charged particles that can affect the regions around the Earth where those particles interact with the planet's magnetic field. This leads to a significant increase of electric currents in these media giving rise to geomagnetic storms. This generated electrical fields act like a voltage source and cause electrical currents to flow through the power networks, that can damage the transformers where the circuit is grounded. The currents thus induced in those technological systems are accordingly known as geomagnetically induced currents (GICs). The GIC component of the current flowing in a power transformer disturbs the normal power-frequency operation of the magnetic circuit, causing core saturation, increasing the leakage flux, and generating transformer heating (e.g., Gaunt, 2014). GICs also generate harmonic distortion and voltage unbalance that may lead to the misoperation of protective devices, causing the tripping of over-current relays. If the infrastructure damage and tripping of transmission lines spreads it may result in cascading outages and extended power disruptions."

According to this BBC report, president Trump “stands strongly behind Peter Hegseth” and thinks he is “Doing a great job”. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g8r701lrno Which implies that POTUS is completely satisfied with the performance of his hand-picked muscle-bound, alcoholic Fox TV mediocrity - complete with his Christo-Fascist Jerusalem Cross and Deus Vult tattoos - in destroying the military leadership of the USA.

It was always a given that other Signal threads of this type would come to light. The buried lede in this case is the recent chaos within the Pentagon that has prompted the disclosure of this latest scandal. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/20/ullyot-pentagon-hegseth-chaos-00300695 “The Pentagon is in total chaos” - according to this story from Politico - following the resignation of senior spokesman John Ullyot who resigned, and then went public two days later with an excoriating attack on Hegseth and his team for their “falsehoods” about why three top Pentagon officials were fired last week - supposedly for the unauthorised sharing of sensitive information - exactly the same offense that Peter Hegseth himself was quite blatantly guilty of. According to this account in The Independent, the latest Signal scandal involves a thread called ”Defense | Team Huddle” which was originally started by Peter Hegseth himself during his Congressional confirmation hearings back in January, in order to coordinate his support on Capitol Hill. But he carried on accessing this Signal thread on his personal phone after being confirmed in post, and used it to share the same attack plan details that were shared in another Signal group that Jeffrey Goldberg was party to, on Saturday March 15. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/hegseth-signal-second-chat-yemen-wife-b2736476.html "In the days before the Yemen attack, aides reportedly warned Hegseth not to use the “Defense | Team Huddle” group chat to discuss any sensitive operational details. He was also “encouraged” to move discussions from his personal device to his government phone. But Hegseth never made that transition." Exactly why he thought it necessary to share such sensitive information with his wife, personal attorney, and his own brother remains a matter of conjecture. Politico believes that Hegseth will shortly be fired by Trump.

Dear Mr President According to a recent memo sent by Thomas Lee, managing partner and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, some macro fund managers he has spoken to recently are quietly wondering if you are insane ? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fund-managers-worry-trump-might-174000541.html Do you have any views on this matter ?

Speaking of which..

It has many uses..

The Chinese captions in that video use the expression 乡巴佬 xiangbalǎo - “country bumpkin” - (lit. ‘countryside - close to - fellow’) to mimic JD Vance’s attempt to use the word ‘peasant’ as an insult.

JD Vance is now being mercilessly trolled by the Chinese government on 小红书 xiǎo hóng shu - (‘little red book’) - China’s equivalent to Instagram - with humorous little animations of Chinese ’peasants’ pointing out that US tariffs will make his eyeliner cost more ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmUs6sL4vwc

The current proprietor of The Atlantic is Laurene Powell Jobs https://www.thewrap.com/laurene-powell-jobs-atlantic-praise-signalgate/ Laurene Powell Jobs is the widow of Steve Jobs who founded Apple. She purchased The Atlantic in 2017, six years after the death of her husband in 2011, and she is a billionaire (worth $15 billion) in her own right. She also seems to be in the process of inheriting the mantle of the legendary Katherine Graham who became the publisher of The Washington Post after the death of her husband Philip Graham in 1963. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Graham Graham appointed Ben Bradlee as editor, and backed him fearlessly in the face of enormous hostile pressure from the Nixon administration over the publication of follow-up articles about the Pentagon Papers (first published by the New York Times in 1971), and then memorably backed her editor when he went to press with articles about the Watergate Scandal written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein from 1972 onwards. Watch this space..

Yes. I’d agree with all of that. The Song dynasty (960-1279) was a period of quite violent social transition. It was progressively conquered and pushed southwards, before the surviving members of the royal court were quite literally driven into the sea by the Mongols at the Battle of Yamen. The attachment that many Chinese still feel to their ancestral roots is seen quite dramatically during the ‘Golden Week’ of the 春節 chun jíe Spring Festival, when many millions of Chinese travel back to their rural villages to celebrate the Chinese New Year with their parents and extended families.

Because the Chinese are literate (and subtle) enough to understand that he meant it as a crude insult ! The contrast in traditional Chinese social hierarchy between 农民 and 商人 which I alluded to, was one that existed in Imperial China all the way back to the Tang dynasty (618 - 907) - if not before. The present relationship between the agrarian values of rural China, and their modern high technology industrial base are fairly complex and quite ambivalent at times - yet one more reason why they don’t appreciate derogatory comments from westerners, and sometime colonial oppressors like JD. Vance.

If JD Vance was looking for media attention when he spoke to Fox news last Thursday then he probably succeeded beyond his wildest ambitions. While defending president Trump’s insane trade tariffs, the vice-president launched into a tirade against the ‘globalist economy’ which included this gem: "To make it a little more crystal clear, we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.” https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/08/china/china-slams-vance-peasants-remarks-intl-hnk/index.html This remark has now gone viral on Weibo 微博 - the Chinese microblogging site - with some 140 million views, and countless downvotes and negative responses from many commentators, including Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian who replied “It’s both astonishing and lamentable to hear this vice president make such ignorant and disrespectful remarks.” JD Vance who in the past proudly embraced his own poverty stricken childhood in rural Appalachia with a 2016 memoir entitled “Hillbilly Elegy” completely overlooks the fact modern China is a country where factory floors are lined with industrial robots, cities are embracing homegrown electric vehicles and remote counties are connected by a nationwide web of high-speed railways. The Chinese word for a ‘peasant’ is 农民 nong min which simply means a ‘farmer’. If JD Vance had ever done the slightest research on this subject, then he might have found out that historically speaking 农民 is not a term of reproach in China. The ‘peasants’ are in fact traditionally regarded as the foundation and bed-rock of the entire Chinese social system. It was the 商人 shang ren or merchant class who were always despised and regarded as the lowest of the low in China !

Testing

During a recent House foreign relations subcommittee on 1st April 2025, Republican Texas Congressman Keith Self had this to say from the podium: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/keith-self-congress-quoted-joseph-goebbels/ The full significance of this quotation might be better appreciated by citing the language and context in which it was originally spoken (see below): The words first came from Jospeh Goebbels on October 16th 1933 when he was announcing a new National Press Law making it a crime to practice journalism in Germany except as a licensed member of a nationwide closed shop called Der Reichsverband der Deutschen Presse - headed by one Dr. Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. https://time.com/archive/6751737/foreign-news-consecrated-press/ “Houston - You have a problem ! ”

Congressman Jake Auchincloss (D-Massachusetts 4th) has raised an interesting point about a possible interplay between these latest trade tariffs, and meme crypto-currencies which the Trump administration recently quietly exempted from Federal Securities & Exchange regulatory oversight. https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/senator-warren-and-representative-auchincloss-call-on-sec-to-explain-legal-loophole-for-trumps-meme-coins

They would probably ask 'Mr Green' (his father Fred) what to do next..

About 45% of all American imports are used as intermediate inputs to the production of American goods. The American military complex manufacturing base for building the "instruments of war" is substantially dependent on very large imports of steel, mineral ores and many other raw materials from abroad - which are all in the process of being hit by the new import tariffs announced by Trump - which will amount to a consumer tax hike 3 times larger than the one imposed in 1942 to pay for WW2 (by some estimates).

Lawrence Summers —> 71st Secretary of Treasury(1999 - 2001). Professor of Economics Harvard University (1983 - 1991). Currently a board member of Open AI.

The intellectual author of this pseudo-economic gibberish and voodoo maths appears to be a Trump advisor and cabinet member called Peter Navarro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJbZCbBLqkk A Rachel Maddow MSNBC segment (above) tells the story of how he was originally recruited by Jared Kushner during Trump’s first term campaign on the strength of an Amazon book review of Death By China - one of a series of books by Navarro who is a fierce pro-tariff hawk, and a self promoting charlatan who frequently refers in his writings to a fictional economic genius called ‘Ron Vara’, which is an anagram of his own surname Navarro. Peter Navarro was convicted and jailed for 4 months in 2023 on two charges of contempt of Congress after refusing to answer subpoenas from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on Congress. After being released in July 2024 he subsequently rejoined Trump’s second term campaign and was reappointed as senior counsel for trade and manufacturing in December 2024 after Trump won the election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Navarro Navarro is likely to be thrown head-first under the bus as this crisis develops, and will probably go down in legend - along with ♫ ♫ “The Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo” ♫ ♫ - as the presidential advisor who singlehandedly wiped $6.6 trillion off the US stock markets in just two days.

They were just cherry-picking input parameter values to get (4 x 0.25) = 1, and then dividing the final result by 2 in order to look generous. But they don't seem to have understood the significance of a delta symbol Δ which represents a *change* in tariff required, not the value of the actual tariff itself. https://x.com/i/grok/share/OMmVAUdtAgC88lBfXN1TvYZbA

As economists struggle to make sense of the bizarre list of punitive tariffs announced yesterday by president Trump, some noticed that the listings appear to have been organised by TLDs (top level domain) i.e the internet country code suffix - which provides one clue (amongst several) that this list was compiled with the help of an LLM (large language model) AI chatbot system such as ChatGPT Vibe Code https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/did-an-llm-help-write-trumps-trade A surreal list of obscure and largely uninhabited islands that are being punished with trade tariffs was compiled in this report by Rachel Maddow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lStWAhGfxn0 It includes: * Tokelau (.tk) - 3 small Pacific islands mainly famous for their ‘swimming pigs’ - 10% tariff * Keeling Islands (.cc) - 2 small Indian Ocean islands pop. 593 -10% tariff * Jan Mayen (.sj) - volcanic island in Arctic Ocean, uninhabited - 10% tariff * Heard Island & Macdonald Island (.hm) - uninhabited Antarctic islands -10% tariff *Falkland Islands (.fk) - South Atlantic, pop. 3200 + 1 million penguins - 41% tariff ! Paul Krugman. a Nobel Prize-winning economist had this to say: When approached for comment, the White House claimed that their new tariffs were calculated using the formula shown below, and gave a link to this webpage: https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations The problem is that every single academic economist interviewed has denounced this formula as being completely meaningless ‘Voodoo Mathematics' of a type never previously seen in international economic modelling. Critics point out that the selected parameter values for ε and φ cancel out According to the BBC Verify this formula actually boils down to:

I really wouldn't bother. Most ppl who have read your comments in this thread will probably concur with a piece of advice originally attributed to Mark Twain:

Are you kidding me ? I grew *up* with the music of David Bowie and many others of the era (I recall watching him perform ‘Space Oddity’ his very first hit on TOTP in 1969). I lived through the summer of ’69 and heard all the music of the Doors, the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead etc. the first time round, as well as the second and third… On the subject of language - I’m currently on a 1,932 day unbroken streak on Duolingo (Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Scottish Gaelic) - Check me out there if you wish to have a discussion about language