Durables Today, Housing and Fed #s Coming, Greenhouse Blues

Another World War III weekend, I see:  Ordnance Friday and Saturday then a “peace pause” play. US and Iran pause strikes for third night to make space for talks, US ambassador says.

Our (surprisingly keen) observation that WW III would be played as a “weekend war” is turning into a real “NSS” (“No shit Sherlock”) call.  But there’s the calendar and here’s the Dow putting on more than 500 points of smiley face in futures trading.

Durable Orders Roll

Being a “dumb schmuck in the woods” I’d think that Durable Goods would have to rise –  because America runs on the death industries.  And what do you know?

New Orders
New orders for manufactured durable goods in June, up three of the last four months, increased $1.1 billion or 0.3 percent to $334.8 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This followed a 4.0 percent May decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 0.6 percent. Excluding defense, new orders increased 0.3 percent. Computers and electronic products, up nine of the last ten months, led the increase, $0.9 billion or 3.1 percent to $31.1 billion.

Tomorrow is “Bikini Tuesday” – when we do a two-part column due to the Housing data release. Covering everything (but just barely…).

News Compressor: ON

We’re working on a solid PN tomorrow, which subscribers will get Wednesday.  It deals with “Human Life Compression: Limits and Opportunities.” Some of the early work, as you know, was devoted to limiting attention to “news” and we do that via systematic summarization:

What changed overnight is a pause in direct US-Iran attacks for another day after two weeks of intensified US bombing, with Iran confirming it has also halted fire while asserting continued control of the Strait of Hormuz and stating it is not seeking talks.

War marketing stats note: The Pentagon shifted four recent US troop deaths from the main Iran war casualty tally into a new “Overseas Operations” category.

Now let’s visit The War Book.  (Am I the only one who misses the old Frontier Casino sports book?  Aging well is outlasting a casino.  There was the Desert Inn and….)  Odds only, please:

• A ceasefire without commercial reopening — 83%.
• Two maritime chokepoints acting at once — 90%.
• Odds of Fed hike 31.7%

The Daily Warring Form Odds: Brent crude fell 8.8% to about $88.30 and U.S. equity futures rose roughly 1%, but fewer than 10 commodity vessels a day crossed Hormuz over the weekend. Houthi attacks on Saudi Red Sea oil facilities keep a second chokepoint active.

A mass shooting at the Bite of Seattle food festival near the Space Needle on Sunday evening killed three people and wounded four (including a toddler); one suspect was arrested and another remains at large, with investigators indicating the pair were shooting at each other and no ongoing public threat.

Public gathering risk? Not enough to generalize yet but… A van-ramming attack near Berlin Pride on Saturday killed one and injured about 29; the suspect was later shot by police.

A heat dome expanded across the central and southern United States. Large wildfires in France and Spain drove roughly 250,000 evacuations.

Action Figure Plans

The Wild Wild Weather: Category 5 Hurricane Genevieve is far from the U.S. mainland but is producing dangerous eastern-Pacific marine conditions. Hurricane Fausto remains active farther west. The Atlantic currently has no listed tropical cyclone.

Midwest and Ohio Valley businesses: Charge backup batteries, secure outdoor inventory, confirm generator fuel and review employee travel plans before afternoon storms develop.

Western operators and travelers: Check local fire restrictions immediately before field work or travel. National resource competition means small fires can wait longer for outside assistance.

Microsoft SharePoint administrators: Patch CVE-2026-50522, rotate affected machine keys and hunt for persistence. Reporting indicates attackers may retain access after patching when stolen keys remain valid.

Patch-after-compromise is no longer enough — 96%. The SharePoint case reinforces that stolen cryptographic material can survive software remediation. Key rotation and forensic review are becoming standard steps after exploitation.

HF and satellite operators: NOAA places the daily chance of minor-to-moderate radio blackouts at 45% through Wednesday, while forecasting no geomagnetic storm. Expect occasional daytime HF degradation rather than a broad magnetic disruption.  We’re not sure what it means when the Sun is noisy without being stormy.

Wait!  Whatever happened to Stormy?

Around the Ranch: Greenhouse Blues

Our lean-to greenhouse is finally staying in the summer vegetable zone I’ve been chasing. But it hasn’t been easy.

The biggest lesson has been confirmation—again—that you cannot bend the rules of physics. A compact Asian-made evaporative cooler may sound efficient on the sales page, especially when the advertised airflow number is large. But evaporative cooling is ultimately limited by how much water can be transferred into the passing air.

That is where thicker pads, more wetted surface and massive but slower airflow—as used in the Hessaire units—kick the pants off smaller, thin-pad coolers screaming air through at higher velocity.

Headline CFM is not the whole problem.

Sunday, I finally accumulated enough working parts to make one good Hessaire MC37 out of two dead ones. It was not a ten-minute repair.

For starters, the fan-blade assembly would not come off the motor shaft. That became 45 minutes in Adventureland with pry bars, penetrating oil and generous applications of Kroil anywhere something looked dry.

Eventually, I removed the donor motor from its frame and “walked” the old fan assembly off the shaft using the claws of two large framing hammers, working opposite sides a fraction at a time. Primitive? Sure. Sometimes, though, primitive just works.

The replacement motor—by now afraid to cross me—went in and the fan blades went back on without much drama once I remembered the retaining nut uses reverse threads. Then I wrestled the assembled unit into place in the greenhouse, connected the water and fired it up.

It leaked like Johnstown.

Fine. Detective time.  By then I was seriously five pounds lighter from sweating, but the culprit soon revealed itself: the old float-valve assembly had split along the threaded water inlet. Which raised the obvious Sunday-morning question:

“Where do you find a swamp-cooler float valve assembly at 7:45 AM?”

The answer? Ure’s shop. Amazingly, I had bought a spare several years ago. Normally, such a part would enter a quantum storage state—existing somewhere on the property but impossible to observe. By happy accident, the valve was sitting beside a box of fresh media pads.

In it went.

With the outside temperature climbing above 94°F, the greenhouse barely kissed 90°F Sunday. Later, with both Hessaires running, we held 86.7°F while the outside temperature remained in the mid-90s. At that point I was ready to have my Cheap Air Conditioning ticket endorsed.

With my pulse briefly peaking around 130 and five pounds of water sweated off, I spent the rest of the morning in the recliner drinking water and dill pickle juice. Pulse stays high until water’s back.

There, I contemplated the YouTube video showing “How to Replace a Fan Motor in Ten Minutes”—and how I had once again ended up in, drinking and chewing on, a real pickle.

Turgor Tracking

Once the greenhouse began cooling, the plants changed almost immediately. Leaves that had looked tired and limp by afternoon (like the farmer) began standing firmer and moving in the airflow. That sent me off to learn a useful new word: turgor.

Turgor pressure is the internal water pressure that keeps plant cells firm. Water enters the cells, pushes outward against the cell walls and helps leaves and stems hold their shape. High turgor means the plant looks firm and upright.

Low turgor means wilted, soft and droopy. Think of turgor as the plant world’s version of Viagra: everything stands up better.

What helped? A combination of cooler leaves, reduced heat stress and the roots keeping up better with water loss. The plants looked visibly happier once the temperature dropped. Evaporative coolers also perform better as the outside air gets drier. So when the forecast returns to 105°F with humidity around 30 percent?  Bring it.

Turgor may not seem like a critical word today. But if the web ever flutters, supply chains wobble or grocery prices get seriously entertaining, these “pointless” gardening facts may suddenly become indispensable. Especially for people who enjoy eating.

Coffee Jitters?

At breakfast Saturday, Elaine—yes, the one whose Selectric never showed up, although the refund finally did—was offered more coffee. I am an attentive waiter and caregiving hubby.

“No thanks,” she said. “I don’t want to stain my teeth.”

Now, understand that Elaine is past 83. So I pointed out that we get regular dental cleanings, and any coffee stains accumulated now probably would not become a serious cosmetic problem until way after age 90.

She demurred again, shaking her head.

That was when the research brain kicked in. “Alexa, I figure I have consumed about 14 ounces of coffee per day for 70 years. How many gallons is that?”

“Around 3,000 gallons.”

That is roughly the volume of a ten-foot-square backyard plunge pool four feet deep. Then it occurred to me that if you run the lights low enough, coffee stains do not really matter.

Problemology.org

Having more money than sense—and not much of either—I naturally registered the domain name after the word Problemology revealed itself in Peoplenomics this weekend.

Here’s my thinking: We live in a confused world where people rush around measuring skin shading, testosterone levels and dozens of other variables before pausing long enough to ask the most important question:

“What is the actual problem?”

This is where the world repeatedly falls into Test-Fitting Apes mode. We begin fitting solutions before the right question has been asked. Then the meetings begin.

Consultants arrive. Committees form. Grant applications are written. New departments appear. Mission statements are printed. Before long, millions of dollars are being spent to solve something nobody properly defined in the first place.

We now have whole colleges focused on minutiae. Is it just me, or are gender-studies programs mainly showing off that they can count past two?

Our curriculum is more direct: We issue every student a mirror and tell them to return in a year or two. (For another $10, we include a law-school application.)

Problemology will offer discounts to government agencies and higher education because those will be our anchor markets. It may also be a better business than money or finance, both of which have “transitioned” from factual to fictional.

Real problems may be limited, but—like crypto—anyone can manufacture more. And they do, especially inside large organizations.

• First, they create a problem.
• Then they charge taxpayers to study it.
• Then they apply for additional funding to manage the unintended consequences of the original study.
• Finally, they hire themselves to pretend they are solving it.

It is a wonderful business model.

The greenhouse offers a simpler approach.

• The plants are hot.
• The cooler is broken.
• The valve is split.

Those are problems. Everything else is a committee meeting consuming time nobody can replace.  Which is the real problem Problemology ought to solve first.

Write if Reality is sighted again,

George@Ure.net