10-hut! No, not as in the ultra-nationalist goose-stepping “10-hut!!!”
No. We’re simply focused on 10 AM today. Because that’s when a three-way (kinky econ?) split of financial attentions will occur.
- JOLTS report from Labor will give a sense of where the Jobs Picture is heading.
- Global Manufacturing PMI will hint at whether the Consumers are still buying enough (useless crap) to keep the Old Paradigm on life support for a while longer.
- And a factory orders report will be fun because it’s like a small dinghy on Trump-tossed tariff tempest seas.
So, yeah – 10-hut we figure is the word of the day.
This doesn’t get us past our OTHER “jolt” report we expect to be upcoming – you know – the one about Earthquakes. Because in “old man eyes” there’s a soft pattern to geomagnetic events and quakes shortly-thereafter. But, no point getting off the center of temporal perceptions – it will be along when it is.
Markets Treading
Early Futures prices had the market still very-much stuck trying to figure out which way to jump.
- God knows what Trump will do next on tariffs. One thing’s becoming clear, though: China’s president Xi may be about to “school” our Penn boy on tariff play: Auto companies worry China’s tariff response will STOP all US car production in days.
- Defense stocks (and Geiger counters for the home) still look like a good investment as two things roll on the foreign policy front:
- We can almost hear the whispers in Tehran “How can we get our nukes and not be leveled by Israel?” Which is precisely on point reading US will not allow any enrichment of uranium by Iran: Trump. But what exactly does that mean? (They already are, everyone knows it, so WTF? Not everyone is as stupid as the pols…)
- Then there’s the failing Peace Talks in Istanbul. Where Zelenskyy on the Russian attack on Sumy with MLRS: obviously, without decisive steps from the US, Europe and the world, Putin will not even agree to a ceasefire. As usual, all eyes are on Mr. Media as Trump stands firm as White House responds to Ukraine’s Spider web operation, but let’s look in later in that day. Global Stability doesn’t seem to be in style.
With all this (and 10-Hut!) it promises to be a dandy morning. But, for what it’s worth, the markets are looking a bit like Waffle Haus…
And let’s not forget, tomorrow is BSD. Whether that means “blue screen of death” as in operating systems, or Bank (reserve) Settlement Day, is something we can unwrap Thursday morning. Who knows? Might just be a “Boring, Stupid Day” too…
The Stupid Pile
Yes, gold couldn’t hold the $3,400 level, BTC is rolling $105,400. And in Europe a mixed bag after a split decision out of Asian markets overnight. Leaving us to ponder what “confidence shakers” might be lurking in outside the box land?
Walk with me…
Surely you won’t be surprised to learn that BREAKING: Explosives Used To Sabotage Russian Bridges Was Western C-4, can you? Not like you can get it overnighted from Amazon, but there’s only so many places brewing the suff…
No, this doesn’t mean Montana is leaving the United States. But it does mean Missoula, Montana is giving a run to Seattle, Sideshow Bob, and San Francrisco: Missoula approves pride flag as official city flag in opposition of new law.
Not that it is a surprise, but gotta be more “normies” than we used to think when comes to clot shots: Mary Talley Bowden MD on X: “”It’s undeniable that this was pushed upon the American people with the knowledge that it was going to kill a significant portion of the people who took it.” So why isn’t the Trump administration pulling them from the market? Because of why deems don’t get prosecuted and Epstein files are still in limbo, and….(shrugs his shoulders, reaching for more coffee…)
Prosecutions that we should be reading about? Like what? FBI and Mueller’s Team Hid Russiagate Documents with Special Coding in FBI Case Management Database. Yeah…well that’d be a conspiracy to overthrow, wouldn’t it?
Meanwhile, the radical retooling of racism continues as the Left worries about More White South Africans Arrive In the US Under a New Refugee Program. Wait! What about, oh, you know…equality?
And there goes our EV range concerns: China’s 1,000-Mile EVs Render Range Anxiety Obsolete – Bloomberg. Except, well, price points and charging stations still seem to matter. How many adapters will you need to carry, by the way?
Around the Ranch: The Ripples of Telecom
Back when we were flying our plane a lot, I used to spend hours going over FAA and NTSB reports on aircraft accidents. Not because I had a ghoulish sense of curiosity (although, maybe from my younger news-chasing days…). What I was after was a clearer understanding of how Life sets us all up for occasional accident chains.
An interesting “accident chain” happened here on Monday.
As you may know, we have one (residual) landline. It’s a HDSL and voice-grade line. Drives the wireless phones and it’s one of the Alexa voice-controlled data channels.
Anyway, point is the voie services part stopped working Monday around 3:30 PM – right about the same time there was a big power hit. (5 seconds, black and then power popped back on).
Strangely, the internet on that landline was back working this morning, but no voice services. Talk voltage yes, ring voltage? No.
Which had me on the phone about 4 AM with R&L: Trucking (great carrier) because we have a pallet of solar panels landing today. Had to make sure our (usual) driver had the MagicJack over Starlink number and the cell phone (over Starlink because there’s no cell coverage here) in order to coordinate the delivery.
OK, here’s where the chaining begins: The only day that Bitespeed (the reincarnation of CenturyLate) could get out here to repair things was on June 5th.
Chain link: This is the same day that I am/was scheduled for a periodic BP check at our PCP’s office.
So , I asked Bitespeed “I have a doctor’s appointment, so what time will the tech be out?”
“We can’t tell you…but we’ll call you that morning….”
“Call me on WHAT???? My phone doesn’t work…remember????”
“Well, do you have another number we can call on? Cell phone or work phone?”
“Hell no. Not unless you’re paying for it. See, around here, phones are tools. For paying customers to call. If you don’t pay for my cell phone, or are a friend, you don’t get the number.”
“Well, then we can’t call you. But we will have a tech out there Thursday the 5th between 8 AM and 5 PM…”
Now the accident chain adds a link. I want to get in sooner than later (BP matters, meds matter, consistency matters, and this is crazy…). So I get on with my PCP’s schedule on MyChart and her first appointment isn’t until August 6th.
Now, I have a very good vision of how this “AOG [aircraft on ground] accident chain would play out.”
Move the doctor. Get the two backdoor phone numbers to the R&L driver – a really nice guy, by the way. And run one more test to eliminate a bad DSL filter as a possible cause of NO LINE on the phones.
I already know how the “accident recovery” will work out: My R&L guy with the solar panels will get a phone call from me mid-morning so we can rough out the time and set up to move the pallet from his truck to the back of the pickup so I can do the “last 1/2 mile” because big rigs on country roads is a PITA for the guys. Get that.
Then, the Bitespeed tech will show up sometime Thursday, but maybe not. See, when you live out at the “end of the wire” for almost 25-years, you know there’s a problem with the older “equipment cabinet” two roads down and it tends to blow out voice cards when there’s a lot of lightning around. Yep, been here before. Remember the 5-second blackout?
Started right then.
But it’s a fine discussion point over coffee, because everyone has these things happen (lifetime of shit piling up) and the FAA training on the recognition – and prevention – of accident chains – is what makes a safe pilot.
Applies here on taxiway Earth, it helps a senior curmudgeon (ahem, moi) maintain their sanity and sense of humus while the whirled, and a state like Montana, are busy losing it’s mind.
And that’s a good thing. But that’s only the start.
Just because you can spot one accident chain from a mile away, and have the correct alternative safe pathing into future penciled out, doesn’t ensure success. Something else will go wrong.
Life is like that long-trained-for losing an engine on takeoff. But, if you do, and it happens to be IFR, a second failure (like power out on the glass panel instruments) that’s when your future (and life) are at their most vulnerable. Because anyone can be taught to see one accident chain. But, although rare, second-sequential failures do happen.
Now, in my own “rest of week” I don’t know if it will be the R&L driver has to reschedule, the Bitespeed tech won’t have the voice card to repair Thursday, or if the BP will take me to an ER completely out of the blue.
BUT in behavioral economics class – working on multivariate future modeling – this is what keeps the course challenging.
And so it is. Especially today. Right on the heels of no antenna testing due to geomagnetic storming…Ah. the thunderstorms and the squall lines in life, eh?
UPDATE: 837 AM – R&L Dallas reports the solar panels will arrive DFW area around 11 AM, to they will have to resked delivery – see how much “accident chains” figure into life – almost constantly?
Write when you get rich,
George@Ure.net
What the smell is that hell ?
Cant you smell that smell, that smell that smells smelly?
THAT smell -https://youtu.be/hib4n9RmFrQ?
African sub saharah dust storm combined with Canadian wildfire smoke makes for a very rich environment..rich in suspended particles for optimal Lung health. All we need now is a thunderous super Volcano to pop off.
Hmmmm – are “dormant” super Volcano’s legit hypersonic missile targets here in USofA ? Chilling idea, no?
Will need to be digging like Reptiles to survive a nuclear winter.
Anyone getting tired of this groundhog day BS yet, or do youse still need few hundred more reincarnations to figure you already been here and done this before ?
1,000 EV’s? Bullfeathers! Only 224 miles on all-electric: it needs the much-maligned gasoline engine to make to to 1k.
The EV industry needs to change it’s model to the cordless power tool type. We all love our cordless drills, drivers, saws and etc., because we have spare batteries. When the one in-hand goes dead, we just swap in a fresh one. Easy-peasy and just a trivial loss of time. EV’s, however make you WAIT for a charge ’cause you’ve only got the one battery.
So, the EV engineers need to come up with a quick-and-easy, standardized size(s)/type(s) battery replacement and exchange system and the service stations to install them. You see you are low on charge? Go to the nearest station, the tech unplugs and removes your dying battery, selects your size/type of fully-charged battery off the rack, installs it and you are on your way in minutes. Plug-n-play. An electric “gas” station, so to speak.
Yes, this would take MAJOR re-design of the EV as we now know it, and the infrastructure would have to be built to support it, but much like the early gasoline auto industry took 20-ish years to get it’s standards and infrastructure in place it can still be done if they are so hell-bent on getting us all into EV’s.
North of 45
Not only that, but those of us who followed the HEV challenge series (Argonne Nat Labs 1999-2000) knew that there would be a future in “battery trailers” – but no one in the industry wanted the capex that went with that (OBVIOUS AS SHIT) idea…
The problem is anti trust law wont let the industries standardize on a config for the battery.
Good thing dry cells got standardized first.
Designers like to build these things into the chassis instead of a footlocker sized container you could lift into place at your Jiffylube/Battery shop.
And the idea of a trailer is good but I would just put another footlocker in a bumper carrier to hook up for family vacations.
I think the “battery trailer” could well be built with a small battery(if any) and a highly efficient constant speed gas or diesel engine! It could provide sufficient power to maintain charge to the main vehicle under most circumstances and could top up as needed. Self-starting engines are common on reefers, so that’s not new tech. Solar could help, but there’s only so much roof area, so that would be more like a battery maintainer.
Battery trailers that only contain batteries will be heavy and defeat the purpose of EV’s in the first place.
“The EV industry needs to change it’s model to the cordless power tool type.”
The Chinese and Taiwanese have had those for years. You don’t take your mini-ev or scooter to a charging station. You take it to a “battery exchange station” where you feed it your plastic, swap your dying battery for a fully-charged model, and are on your way in less than a minute.
One of the Taiwanese companies was going to bring the tech to the U.S., but the Biden Administration didn’t think it a good idea, therefore some alphabet agency (NHTSA? OSHA? FEC?) didn’t approve, so the tech stayed on Formosa…
After reading this morning’s column, I think it is time for a re-read of Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies.
Or at the very least a lovely tune from Ella. “Give me the simple life.”
https://youtu.be/6KPrxPZJrSQ?feature=shared
BIC,
You offer a fine selection. I wonder if engineers recorded Ms. Fitzgerald back in the day with your link-pictured Telefunken Magnetofon15 Tape Machine? “Magnetic Fidelity” compliments the Made in Germany (until ~1990) reel-to-reel player as “overengineered” and declares its motors could “drive a truck”. The unit might be considered somewhat portable for its era weighing in at 100 lbs.
As an aside, the “Wikipedia” page of Telefunken co-founder Count Georg von Arco appears to erroneously credit him as being the naming inspiration of Arco, Idaho, home of the Idaho National [nuclear] Laboratory. Wiki edit history of the item notes a last revision 11 years ago by an editor whose public account image backdrop is a monument in the former Konigsburg (King’s Mountain), now Russian-controlled Kaliningrad. The monument celebrates its local star, Immanuel Kant, a founder of The Enlightment.
BIC, in accordance with your suggestion, I will endeavor to pursue simple but productive projects for the remainder of my afternoon.
Indeed, life out where the busses don’t run is indeed the only way to go.
When we bought the new ranch, the solar system already in place was apparently one of those “Never pay for electricity again” sucker deals. The house contract lists it as non functioning and the grid tie equipment had been removed. The previous owners stated they had the system disconnected and the grid tie equipment removed but left the roof panels in place to protect the roof integrity. It has not cooperated with any of my attempts to troubleshoot it. Dead with no incoming power at the panel. Install date was in 2012. Tried reaching out to the company on the sticker located on the Solar main panel with negative results. No surprise there. We’re looking ahead to a roof upgrade this year or next I need to get those panels and mounting hardware off the roof and I have plans to reuse everything. Been trying to locate skilled people who can work on steep roofs while removing said 28 panels by my count and their mounts without damage or setting the house on fire, if in fact they are still operational. I was on the phone a couple days ago and the fellow asked if I could disconnect the panels before his guys started removing them. I told him I had no intention of getting up on the roof. Diana walks in and only overheard me saying getting up on the roof. “Don’t even think about that Cowboy.” This shaping up to be a real clusterferk.
Make that BP check appointment priority 1.
Stay safe. 73
Hi Jim, I wish I was closer. Removing those panels seems like a fun job. What do you call steep? 12/12, 9/12, or 6/12? I have to go up on my own roof today to finish some repairs on metal roofing. Minor stuff, but it does involve a chicken ladder since metal is slippery, even when dry. The winds are the hardest on roofs here.
For better or worse, I don’t have my own Diana, so there’s no relationship at risk.
Not sure but it’s really steep and 2+ stories on one side with 3 in the back. Regardless, I wouldn’t even try this job if I was 40 years younger. We’re replacing the roof with steel so, as much as I hate to admit it timing is influenced by politics right now. Sheesh.
I truly wish that everyone was as fortunate as I to have a spouse or significant other like my Diana.
Stay safe.
Thanks Jim, for all the good thoughts. Best of luck with the panels. Many/most have either a plug arrangement or a pigtail with a plug, so other than clipping zip ties, it should be simply a matter of unplugging things and unscrewing from the mounts – then getting them safely to earth.
My best wishes for both of you!
https://www.temu.com/-g-601099616956331.html
Just sayin’,,,
Great prices for essential gear! It’s worth tossing $30 bucks at to see what the quality is like. The units all seem to have D-rings in front as well as the OSHA required back ring, though for self-rescue, the back ring is worse than useless. Last night I was on the roof with a headlamp finishing some stuff before the thunderstorms got here. Sometimes you just have to get it done.
” It’s worth tossing $30 bucks at to see what the quality is like.”
‘Bought mine last summer. I have a 12/12 roof and a brick chimney. Quality was excellent, but that’s irrelevant, since the manufacturer probably doesn’t exist any longer. If you flip through the pages of a Temu search, you’ll see 30-50 vendors selling 6-12 products, all of which bear a striking resemblance to one-another. Product quality is left to the imagination of the purchaser. Caveat emptor…
“… JOLTS report from Labor will give a sense of where the Jobs Picture is heading …”
Sense being a qualifier works but … almost all data sets are backwards looking. My sense is we have quite a slowdown underway but … the Atlanta Fed barometer says “party on Garth” …? Really. Ok.
Sorry to read about the ongoing struggle to remain in the loop, online, able to take incoming convo with (ex: delivery folks). My guess is a “usual” delivery dude would move in regardless.
Not to add to your to-do list but … my guess is there are other people (like me) who would like to own, store, prep for pop-up solar but, need guidance to minimal how-to. And links to sellers.
Me? Given my Padawan is offsite for 10-ish days I’m going to mow my own lawn. Tractor so no big but we B old and?
Write when you get help.
Egor
HF radio is never all that reliable. which is why GovDome so loves its ALE radios for their disaster comms. (Automatic Link Establishment)
I’ve spent many hours researching and monitoring 3.999 and 7.295. If you consider America as eastern, central, and western thirds, and when propagation is normal, those two frequencies should work fairly well. There are other users, but they are infrequent, and rarely of long duration.
I was seeking something reasonably easy to remember, and workable in the 80% space.
To have a specific spot to make a connect with certain folks ya know is the beginning of things.
KW1B
100w TS430S, G5RV at 35′.
George… no mention of ‘Murphy’s Laws’? The root cause of every accident chain!
If anything can go wrong, it will… and at the worst possible time.
Nothing is as easy as it looks.
Everything takes longer that you thought.
re: not Istanbul Peace Talks
Folks,
Yesterday the Vilnius Summit 2025 was held in Lithuania featuring The Bucharest 9 and the Nordic Countries. Yes, the President of the Ukraine attended and posted a gallery of photo ops with vips. Interestingly the images were taken in a room not unlike a storage space outfitted with a small window. A wall backdrop displayed floor to ceiling cheap shelving crammed with books perhaps reminiscent of a pre-internet librarian “stack overflow” situation.
An opulent Palace of The Grand Dukes of Lithuania served as Summit venue. The palace replica is already a dozen years old. Original 15th century buildings became lost in the sands of time topped off by a Russian invasion around 1800. Apparently palace remnants and lands then had been sold by the Russians to a Jewish merchant who took up residence. I looked around for more about him but instead was directed to Linkuva. It seems the town is “a state-protected urban monument” according to the following “Wikipedia” link. The page speaks positively of Lithuanian partisans, and even mentions the construction of a gymnasium in 1923!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkuva
Separately “JewishGen” offers a transcription of the 2009 work “The Holocaust in 21 Lithuanian Towns”. According to the book, Lithuanian partisans supported by immigrating Germans began Jewish roundups in June and July, 1923 in Linkuva. Mass murder ensued and the formerly Jewish majority town population was largely exterminated. There is no mention of a 1923 gymnasium construction at the following “JewishGen” link:
https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/lithuania3/Lithuania3.html#TOC
With the Vilnius Summit 2025 now complete, one is left to imagine that the nazi situation in Lithuania had been previously resolved.
re: a Rodney Dangerfield
feat: via Telegram
Folks,
0053 / 03June
Privately owned Moscow media outlet RBC advises that (President) Zelensky’s Airbus is flying over Canada enroute to Andrews AFB per (public flight radar).
0055 / 03June
Privately owned Kyiv media outlet RBC-Ukraine, divested by RBC-Moscow in 2012, advises an “Exclusive” from “a source”.
“444 (sic [country 404/Ukraine]) Head of OP Andriy Yermak flies to the USA.”
1134 / 03June
Mr. Yermak takes centre stage in a group photo in Washington. The team looks polished. They have just finished meeting with Mr. Kellogg and are waiting to see Mr. Witkoff. Mr. Yermak has brought a separate suit and tie outfit to Washington in addition to his Vilnius trip attire of yesterday when seated alongside the President.
Speaking of the President:
1149 / 03June
The President of the Ukraine and First Lady distribute “Future of Ukraine” awards to assembled children. The President noted the ceremony event decamped to a shelter “due to the air raid alert”.
Urb Surv Hams — so far (6 / 3 / 2025)
7.295 USB by day, 3.999 LSB by night
(Callsigns NOT required for this list.)
George Ure AC7X Fearless Leader
Central TX.
Wlliam of the Radio Ranch KW1B
Central North Carolina. (Pinehurst)
Very vanilla. 100 W PEP to dipoles.
Mike, K4QET, AM SSB CW 160-10
800 WATTS. OCFD/multi band vertical.
NW Virginia.
Hank in Hawaii.
Ray
Someone on here suggested reading John M. Allegro’s book called The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. I just finished it. If you enjoyed Hillman you might like this book. He translates words into the original ancient languages, and it’s amazing how many different languages he includes. About a fourth of the book is reference notes, vocabulary notes, and other reference material. It’s quite a scholarly book.
He believes that most of the material in both the new and old testament are really about the use of a sacred mushroom. He states the possibility that all the people mentioned, including Jesus and his disciples are different terms for the mushroom. Just about every page uses the words penis and vulva or alternate vocabulary to describe the sacred mushroom, people and name places, and common Bible texts. It’s not a fast read but it is interesting.
I saw a Why Files video this morning that said that mushrooms that caused hallucinations created man by changing/rewiring and enlarging our brains. So maybe there is something to this.
That’s fascinating! I do know one bible zealot that would melt down on reading that – calling it blasphemy. For the rest of us, it’s an interesting take, and quite respectful.
Magic mushrooms contain psilocybin that’s metabolized to psilocin, aka 4-PO-DMT. DMT is IMHO and that of others, the master molecule that connects us to consciousness itself, and is definitely something to be reckoned with and respected. Interestingly, it’s an “illegal drug” that’s present in our own brains all the time, though manifesting quantitatively on a diurnal cycle and seems to be the stuff of dreams.
George and others: Has anyone used Magic Jack and Ooma that can share feedback about their relative benefits, or any other VOIP to POTS type phone connection? I’ve tried Ooma and it seems to work OK with a POTS line on the other end, but seems to pick up all kinds of noises randomly if connecting to a cellphone. It’s OK for essential communication, but less fun for a friendly conversation. I think it’s probably the compression algorithms on the cellphones, but that’s just a guess. I do want to drop the POTS line here because of the expense – it seems terribly overpriced and an unnecessary bill for the amount I use it.
M
M? Was this a truncated comment? I see redundancy as a benefit, but certainly not worth $1300 + a year with bundled DSL that I no longer need – especially since it’s Centurystink.
I have used Magic Jack for years, probably 25 years. They greatly improved their voice compression software about 10 -15 years ago and while NOT old Ma Bell hard copper quality it is much much better than any cell phone.
The biggest problem these days with Magic Jack is finding a good quality phone to match it to. On it’s own it will only power 1, maybe 2, hard wired phones … just not much current coming out of the MJ box. If only using one phone one of the OLD AT&T touch tone phones will give you the best quality “out of the phone” handset, better than anything currently made.
The ONLY wireless phone that works OK with regular MJ that I could find are the Panasonic wireless phones. (most people want to use a multi station wireless phones so they can have extensions scattered around the house since MJ can NOT drive an entire house’s old phone wiring.
At the office we switched our IP phone system to “Magic Jack For Business” … different company run out of a different location but part of the same universe. That system is an actual IP phone system set up (we moved from Nextiva after years of good service from them, prior to that we used 8X8 which was also good while also using hard wired AT&T phones for some applications). The NEW phones we use for our Magic Jack For Business IP system, Yealinks, are MUCH better than our old Polycom IP phones we used with Nextiva fwiw.
The BEST current phone we have found at the office for a regular Magic Jack line is the top end single line AT&T phone (they also have a decent two line model which also gives good voice quality) … everything else ended up being crap (we use regualr Magic Jack lines for some low usage areas such as the Library etc. so sound quality IS important).
I highly recommend Magic Jack for a low cost phone option. In my 25+- years of using it IF the internet is up it has only been down twice, under an hour each time.
If you NEED old style AT&T voice quality … go with Magic Jack For Business (but you can’t have multiple extensions without buying more lines … the nature of the beast with an IP phone system). That is the best audio quality I have heard ever since we left AT&T hardwired phones in the dust.
(of course you do NEED a stable internet connection for any IP phone system to work well)
Magic Jack works as advertised. Set-up can be a bit confusing, but it is manageable. The call screening works.
Being at the end of the line for any utility can be interesting. I live in a tiny town and my home is the last one on the water line. A year ago, we had a geyser boil up in our yard where the aging 50+ year old water lines deteriorated. Was fascinating to watch happen,and it took the water guys a couple of days, lots of equipment, pipes, and end capping. I became envious of his backhoe tractor that day he drove up the drive in it!
You silvermityt, there is a real joy to some of the human manual arts. My dad as a firefighter got a rush out of running into cburning buildings and though no comparison, in past past the 70s now, I still love the art of ‘tractorfying” Tools – are “world changers” and we seldom take the time to give them their due…
That reminds me of an adventure two years ago where part of the land I don’t frequent became a swamp. The water supervisor actually called me and told me what was happening – unfortunately on my side of the meter. I ended up doing a lot of digging(machine and manual) to replace the pipe. The water folks just watched for a while and billed me for my average consumption rather than the meter reading. Yet one more bullet dodged! The problem with machines is that they tend to break at the most critical times!