More EV ‘issues’…

Posted on by August 9, 2024

This from the continent…

Germany’s leading car parts supplier ZF has recently been forced to cut one-fifth to one-quarter of its workforce, owing in part to Chinese competition and in part to “weak demand for electric vehicles.” Other firms like Bosch, Continental, and Webasto have also been forced to “restructure.” Yet the CEOs of these companies continue absurdly to believe in the future of “electromobility,” since the European Union plans to outlaw fossil fuel-powered vehicles as of 2035. The short-sightedness of EU bureaucrats will lead inevitably to market implosion and an economic collapse, and the car-makers have no option, it seems, but to comply with government fiat.

Full article, HERE from PJ Media.

As numerous people have said, they just ‘don’t’ work in rural areas. Not enough charging stations. And now, apparently the EU customers are finding ‘issues’ with charging, and with Germany closing their nuke plants, I can’t help but wonder if they are going to have power issues too.

As we’ve said here too, it’s about control. If you can’t charge your EV, you can’t go anywhere. And the EU seems to be ‘still’ determined to ban ICE vehicles by 2035. And there is definitely a move by those in power for the 15 minute cities.

Canada is also feeling the ‘pains’ and similar issues as we have with distances, etc.

And none of this really takes into account the amount of losses (in the billions of $$$) the big three in the US are taking and the fact that they are pulling back from manufacturing EVs. There are rumors Mercedes, BMW, and Volkswagen may also be relooking at their options, in light of the Chinese cornering the Asian market.

The next few years are going to be interesting, to put it mildly…

Book promo…

Posted on by August 8, 2024

Raconteur Press anthology number 33 is out- Coffee Adventures

As always, click the cover for the Amazon link!

The blurb-

What would you do for your daily cup of coffee? Where does coffee come from, really? Can coffee help you time-travel? These stories answer all those questions and many more you didn’t know you needed to ask. Fantasy, science fiction, and sheer silliness will entertain you, and are best consumed with a steaming beverage in the other hand.

Next up is our friend Alma Boykin with the 9th in her Merchants and Empire series- Wheels of Empire

The blurb-

Water driving wheels driving danger.

Without bread, hunger stalks the people of Jerwood. The old grist mill burned and a new one must be built. Count Ealdred of Jerwood hires Harald Tolson, called Halfpaw, to construct a larger, modern mill. A mill that the count will own.

Harald and his journeyman walk into trouble when they enter Jerwood’s gates. Why did the mill burn? Who doesn’t want a better, larger mill built? And what lengths will those people go to in order to get what they desire?

Harald finds himself battling the elements, suspicion, and danger in order to complete his contract. But his opponents underestimate how stubborn and determined a millwright can be. The Wheel always turns, something Harald knows full well.

And last but not least, D.A. Brock has a small anthology out with some backstory on his Texas Navy series- Tales of the Texas Navy

The blurb-

This mini-anthology contains two short stories in the ‘Republic of Texas Navy’ universe, revealing heretofore unknown facets of that world.

Wow!!!

Posted on by August 7, 2024

Obviously, us peons don’t have this stuff…

Few things appear to soothe the existential anxieties of the super-rich like a bunker designed to withstand anything short of total nuclear Armageddon. Yet it’s no longer enough for the security-conscious billionaire to stick an impenetrable safe room in the basement where it might sit empty forever. In today’s uber-prime properties, bunkers have gone seriously upmarket and hi-tech, in some cases growing to the extent that whole homes are becoming 21st century fortresses.

“We’ve seen a lot more of a focus on entertainment,” said Al Corbi, who has been at the forefront of secure luxury for 50 years as the president and founder of SAFE (Strategically Armored & Fortified Environments), based in Virginia, in the US. “If you’re going to be able to survive underground, we want you to be having fun.”

Full article, HERE from CNN.

It seems the ‘paranoia’ combined with unlimited $$$ has definitely changed the scope of what is considered a safe space! Zuckie’s 5000 sqft ‘bunker’ under his Kauai home (that they tried their best to hide from the public) appears to actually be fairly ‘small’ as these things go.

And of course this doesn’t count their ‘security’ forces, etc. etc.

Whereas us poor peons have to rely on ourselves to protect our homes and our loved ones with whatever we have ‘handy’.

But I honestly think ‘we’ have the better end of the stick, as the odds are on our side, and honestly I wouldn’t want to live where I had to be constantly in fear that something would happen and I’d need a bunker to hide in.  I like my freedom a bit too much for that!

What say you???

Hmmm…

Posted on by August 6, 2024

I usually stay away from politics on this blog for reasons, but this one…

Shades of Swift boaters against Kerry…

Vice President Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday, and will likely emphasize his military service as part of their campaign.

But when Walz was running for governor in 2018, former members of the National Guard spoke out about his service, with a retired command sergeant major saying he “embellished and selectively omitted facts of his military career for years.”

In an open letter posted to Facebook that year, retired Command Sergeants Major Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr wrote that Walz retired just a few months after receiving a warning order that his battalion would be deployed to Iraq – even though he told military personnel he would be going on the mission.

Full article, HERE from the Daily Wire, and link to the open letter, HERE.

At the time, I was working with two of the former Swift boat crewmen, both had been in the same squadron as Kerry and knew first hand. One of them was a retired officer and boat commander ‘with’ Kerry.

Yes, there were those who said Kerry was pure as driven snow… yeah, right.

I see much the same thing here, and this accusation is NOT new, going back to 2018, but it does raise questions in my mind as to what Walz was thinking/doing. He’d made a commitment to get the E-9 slot, then ‘retired’ when he found out they were going downrange. OBTW, he never actually DID what he’d obligated to do to get the E-9 slot either.

Based on what he did and didn’t do as governor, e.g. the BLM riots and the whole Wuflu lockdowns, he obviously ‘likes’ being in power.

If he was willing to walk away from his troops, what do you think he will do to John Q. Public if a hard choice has to be made???

Your thoughts???

Another NASA oopsie…

Posted on by August 5, 2024

Welp, first it was the Boeing Starliner issues (now 55 days and continuing, HERE). And a ‘contrary’ opinion of their options, HERE.

And now the NG supply capsule Cygnus didn’t make the original Targeted Altitude Burn…

A Falcon 9 launched a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station Aug. 4, but the spacecraft suffered problems that have delayed maneuvers needed to reach the station.

A Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:02 a.m. Eastern. The launch appeared to go as planned, with the Cygnus spacecraft separating from the Falcon’s upper stage in low Earth orbit nearly 15 minutes after liftoff. The liftoff, delayed a day because of poor weather, dodged the effects of Tropical Storm Debby to the west that, at one point, offered only a 10% chance of acceptable weather for the launch.

There were no updates from NASA or Northrop Grumman after spacecraft separation for several hours. However, communications between ISS astronauts and mission control indicated that the spacecraft had not performed initial burns to raise its orbit to enable an arrival at the station early Aug. 6.

Full article, HERE from Space News.

NG apparently had to override a low pressure alarm to get Cygnus to do two burns that put it in a ‘catch up’ mode, and it is supposed to arrive at the ISS sometime this morning.

At least now the Starliner pilots will have clothes to wear, and Cygnus is bringing replacement food for the ISS to replace what they’ve eaten out of the emergency supplies…

But, this will block all of the ‘parking spots’ at the ISS, which now puts the next Dragon flight in jeopardy, as there is no place to put the capsule when it arrives.

So, NASA is having to do a LOT of re/preplanning until they get this mess unscrewed. I really don’t envy them…

A little humor…

Posted on by August 5, 2024

To start the week…

EDIT- Sorry it’s late, something hung up somewhere!

The Importance of walking

My grandpa started walking
Five miles a day when he was 60.
Now he’s 97 years old
And we have no idea where the hell he is.
***********************************
I like long walks,
Especially when they are taken
By people who annoy me.

The only reason I would take up walking
Is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
************************************
I have to walk early in the morning,
Before my brain figures out what I’m doing…

Every time I hear the dirty word ‘exercise’,
I wash my mouth out with chocolate.

I do have flabby thighs,
But fortunately, my stomach covers them.
************************************
The advantage of exercising every day
Is so when you die, they’ll say,
‘Well, he looks good doesn’t he.’

If you are going to try cross-country skiing,
Start with a small country.
************************************
I know I got a lot of exercise
The last few years,……
Just getting over the hill.

We all get heavier as we get older,
Because there’s a lot more information in our heads.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
************************************
Every time I start thinking too much
About how I look,
I just find a pub with a Happy Hour
And by the time I leave,
I look just fine.

+++++++++++

Dorothy and Edna, two “senior” widows, are talking.

Dorothy: “That nice George Johnson asked me out for a date. I know you went out with him last week, and I wanted to talk with you about him before I give him my answer.”

Edna: “Well, I’ll tell you. He shows up at my apartment punctually at 7pm, dressed like such a gentleman in a fine suit, and he brings me such beautiful flowers! Then he takes me downstairs. And what’s there: a limousine, uniformed chauffeur and all. Then he takes me out for dinner; a marvelous dinner, lobster, champagne, dessert, and after-dinner drinks. Then we go see a show. Let me tell you Dorothy, I enjoyed it so much I could have just died from pleasure! So then we are coming back to my apartment and he turns into an ANIMAL. Completely crazy, he tears off my expensive new dress and has his way with me three times !!!”

Dorothy: “Goodness gracious!… so you are telling me I shouldn’t go ??”.

Edna: “No, no, no… course not…  I’m just saying, wear an old dress”.

This one tripped off the giggle box…snerk…

Free tickets???

Posted on by August 3, 2024

To where? Oakland, Portland, San Diego, LA, or???

San Francisco Mayor London Breed is having city workers and police who are conducting sweeps to get the homeless out of their tent encampments offer bus tickets out of town instead of a shelter bed.

It’s just the latest signal from Breed that times have changed in San Francisco and a real attempt is being made to address the crisis of homelessness.

Full article, HERE from PJ Media.

Of note, LA is basically blowing Newsome et al off, as they don’t have any way to move ALL of the homeless they’ve got down there, and more coming in the fall/winter as the homeless move south from Seattle and Portland.

As we’ve discussed before, there is a ‘cycle’ to the homeless on the left coast moving south to north as the weather warms, then back south as the weather gets cold.

This has been going on at least 20 years, if not longer, because the state governments don’t want to ‘upset’ the LWLs that donate money to the various Dem organizations.

Personally, I think this is going to be swept under the rug as quickly as possible, and nothing ‘concrete’ will actually be done to upset the homeless ‘applecart’.

It will be ‘business as usual’ on the left coast.

More quotes…

Posted on by August 2, 2024

George Orwell — mastermind of dystopian fiction or enlightened prophet?

It seems the latter may be the truer answer.

If you haven’t read the classic “1984,” the novel is a cautionary tale that follows a futuristic society dominated by a surveillance state that aims to redefine truth through rigid thought control.

Sound familiar?

While Orwell’s “1984” is technically categorized as fiction, a recent article, HERE, from The Federalist by Monroe Harless poses the argument that the book contains a disturbingly high number of “descriptors of reality.”

  1. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
  2. “They add nothing to the wealth of the world, since whatever they produce is used for purposes of war, and the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.”
  3. “Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution … children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen.”
  4. “I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.”
  5. “… one knows the news is all lies anyway.”
  6. “The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account. They had played a similar trick with the instinct of parenthood. The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police.”
  7. “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it.”
  8. “Power is not a means; it is an end … The object of persecution is persecution.”
  9. “How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?“ Winston thought. “By making him suffer,” he said. “Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own?”
  10. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.”
  11. “The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.”
  12. “DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
  13. “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.”
  14. “We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends.”
  15. “The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen. As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies — more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity.”

Just sayin…

Posted on by August 1, 2024

TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR SENIORS

  1. Talk to yourself. There are times when you need expert advice.
  2. “In style” are the clothes that still fit.
  3. You don’t need anger management. You need people to stop irritating you.
  4. Your people skills are just fine. It’s your tolerance for idiots that needs work.
  5. The biggest lie you tell yourself is: “I don’t need to write that down. I’ll remember it.”
  6. “On time” is when you get there.
  7. You’ve noticed people your age are much older than you.
  8. Ageing has slowed you down, but it hasn’t shut you up.
  9. You still haven’t learned to act your age and I hope you never will.
  10. “One for the road” means peeing before you leave the house.

They aren’t wrong…

h/t Keith

Grumble…

Posted on by July 31, 2024

Once again the Navy is having training jet problems…

The Navy lifted an operational pause on the its T-45C Goshawk jet trainer fleet last week, after grounding the entire fleet on July 10 following an engine malfunction.

The grounding marked at least the second such pause the fleet has implemented this year, and the third since October 2022, according to a tally by Navy Times.

Full article, HERE from Navy Times.

This is NOT a new issue, and it comes down to the Adour engines from Rolls-Royce, provided by BAE. It’s also NOT a new issue for the Brits either.

In written evidence to the UK government’s Defence Select Committee on January 11, the firm said the problem meant the Hawk T2 training aircraft fleet would only be able to fly half of the hours contracted to train Royal Air Force (RAF) fast-jet pilots. In its written evidence, BAE Systems said: “On March 25, 2022, Rolls-Royce reported that significant technical issues had been found in the Low Pressure Compressor (Module 01) of the Adour Mk 951 engine. The result was that the 4,000-hour planned design life of each engine was reduced to a clearance of 1,700 hours. 

Full article, HERE from Key Aero in 2023.

I can’t help but wonder how much the salt water corrosion has played into these problems, especially for the Navy. Training aircraft are crucial to the student aviator pipeline, and loss of aircraft and/or training cycles due to operational groundings aren’t good either for progress, morale, or peace of mind in a new aviator.

As good as simulators are these days, they still do not replace butt in the seat, flying the aircraft, pulling Gs and watching the world spin around you.

When you’re already sweating out a hop, the last thing you want is to be worried about the engine quitting, or not being able to fly for a month. Once you get in a ‘flow’, you want to keep going.

And cutting engine availability in half is going to hurt, not only in costs, but in availability of flyable aircraft. This could also back the ‘pipeline’ up, causing students to spend months in what are called ‘pools’ doing effectively nothing but sitting around waiting.

Not good, especially in the austere budget cycle all the services are in right now!