Yes my friends it is that time again….the Dump of the week.
Does anyone remember when ‘Black Friday’ meant the day after Thanksgiving?
Locally–we finally got some cooler temps….up to Thursday it was in the high 70s now we are ranging in the low 60s…..and we got a bunch of rain that has been sorely needed…..but not to worry next week it will be back to high 70s….
Personally….last week between Sue and I we had doctors appointments every damn day……I am so tired of hospitals.
Since we have a new president-elect with some crazy ideas for the economy I thought this would be a good place to start….
Walmart had a better-than-expected third quarter, but consumers might not reap the benefits of that for long if President-elect Trump’s threatened tariffs on imports come to pass. Trump said during his campaign that he plans on imposing a 10% to 20% tariff on imports in general, with fees as high as 60% to 100% if those goods come from China. Now, Walmart CFO John David Rainey is weighing in on what that could mean for consumers—and it’s not looking good in the short term. “Tariffs will be inflationary for customers,” he tells the AP. He adds, per CNBC: “We never want to raise prices. Our model is everyday low prices. But there probably will be cases where prices will go up for consumers.”
- NRF: Earlier this month, Matthew Shay, CEO of the National Retail Federation, issued a red flag about potential tariffs, calling them “a tax on American families” and noting they would “drive inflation and price increases and will result in job losses,” per CNBC. An NRF study from earlier this month noted that tariffs could cost consumers an additional $46 billion to $78 billion annually, per Axios.
- Other companies: Walmart isn’t the only company warning of higher prices should the Trump tariff proposal come to pass. Lowe’s CFO Brandon Sink said on a Tuesday earnings call that tariffs “certainly would add product costs”; execs from AutoZone, Columbia Sportswear, and Stanley Black & Decker made similar statements.
This is the first consequence of the vote of stupidity.
I know if you watch the tube you have seen the corporations jumping on the green and clean bandwagon….but it is nothing more the ‘greenwashing’….a con!
In 2019, leading oil and chemical companies joined together to form the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW), vowing to divert more than 15 million tons of plastic from the environment by the end of 2023. Weeks into 2023, the alliance gave up the goal as “too ambitious.” Now, documents reveal what critics argue is further evidence of AEPW’s greenwashing. An analysis by energy consultants Wood Mackenzie shows five Alliance members—AEPW chair Dow, ExxonMobil, Shell, TotalEnergies and ChevronPhillips—produced 145 million tons of polyethylene and polypropylene over five years, but cleaned up just 130,000 tons of plastic waste—or 0.1% of the plastic they produced, per the Guardian.
According to Greenpeace, the five companies “produce more plastic in two days than the Alliance’s projects have cleaned up over the past five years.” What’s more, the amount of plastic produced is likely an undercount, as other forms of plastic, like polystyrene, were not assessed. “It’s hard to imagine a clearer example of greenwashing in this world,” says Bill McKibben, a US environmentalist. “They’re letting the running tap flood the house while trying to scoop up the water with a teaspoon,” says Will McCallum, a co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, adding “the only solution is to cut the amount of plastic produced in the first place.”
The AEPW denies the allegations of greenwashing in a statement, saying “the alliance aims to accelerate innovation and channel capital into the development of effective scalable solutions to help end plastic waste and pollution.” However, its representatives continue to lobby against plans to curb plastic production in negotiations for a global treaty to end plastic waste, the Guardian reports. In its report, Greenpeace cites documents from a PR company that worked with the AEPW as noting the alliance’s goal was to counter the “demonization of plastic” and to “change the conversation away from short-term simplistic bans of plastic.” It adds the Alliance has spent more than $10 million on communications consultants since its founding.
A big deal in the space industry is the mining of asteroids…..for huge profits like one full of gold, nickel and iron worth to the tune of $10,000,000,000,000,000,000. (damn that is a lot of zeros)
Back in 2023, NASA launched a spacecraft from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to investigate an asteroid believed to be worth $10,000,000,000,000,000,000.
The faraway asteroid, named 16 Psyche, is one of the largest M-type asteroids ever discovered and is thought to be composed of precious – and lucrative – metals, including gold, iron and nickel.
The asteroid is said to be so valuable, it could, hypothetically turn every single person on the planet into a billionaire, should its profits be shared among the entire population of the globe.
But, unfortunately, that’s not a realistic outcome.
In fact, despite NASA sending a spacecraft 2.5 billion miles away to investigate the space object, there are some pretty big hurdles that would need to be crossed before the metals could actually be mined from the asteroid.
But first, it’s important to understand why NASA is so keen to investigate this asteroid in particular.
https://www.unilad.com/news/asteroid-16-psyche-challenges-mining-metals-value-529215-20241120
We know that those possible profits will NOT be shared with anyone but Congress.
As long as we are in space I will keep with the meme….
A military spacecraft launched 55 years ago was moved from its orbit – and nobody is quite sure who did it, or why.
In 1969 the UK launched Skynet-1A, a military communications satellite placed in orbit above the east coast of Africa in order to relay information to British armed forces. It stopped working due to hardware issues around 18 months after it started operating, and the spacecraft was left to the laws of physics to orbit the Earth – it is now the oldest UK spacecraft still in space.
It’s a good idea to check on defunct satellites, to make sure the space debris is not on course to collide with any working satellites or populated areas of the Earth below. In the 1970s, when the satellite was closely tracked, it was in a geostationary arc at a longitude of around 40 East, where it remained when it was decommissioned. Such orbits are subject to gravitational perturbations by the Sun, Earth and Moon.
“If Skynet-1A had failed at its operational location of around 40 East, we would now expect it to be oscillating by +/- 35 degrees either side of 75 East,” satellite-system engineer Dr Stuart Eves explains in a blog post for The Global Network on Sustainability in Space.
Does anyone else think it is strange that the thing is named….Skynet?
Is it nuclear power rush for big tech?
Meta, like rivals including Microsoft and Amazon, has been seeking to use nuclear power to meet the vast power demands of its artificial intelligence projects, but the quest has been complicated by bees. The company had planned to build an AI data center near an unspecified nuclear plant in the US, but the project was scrapped after rare bees were found at the site, sources tell the Financial Times. The sources say the discovery of the rare species added to the environmental and regulatory challenges holding back Mark Zuckerberg’s proposed deal with a nuclear plant operator in the US.
Zuckerberg told staffers at an all-hands meeting that the plan would have made Meta the first Big Tech company with nuclear-powered AI, according to FT. The sources say the CEO told staffers that Meta is still looking into emissions-free power sources, including other nuclear options. In September, Microsoft announced a deal to revive one of the reactors at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania to power its data centers. Earlier this year, Amazon announced plans to build a data center next to the Susquehanna Steam Electric nuclear plant, though the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected the proposal last week, Axios reports.
Google has also joined the Big Tech nuclear race. In a blog post last month, the company said it had signed the “world’s first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors” in a partnership with Kairos Power. “The grid needs new electricity sources to support AI technologies,” Google said. Popular Science notes that it’s not clear where Meta had planned to build the data center—there are 55 nuclear plants across 28 states in the US, and dozens of endangered bee species. One possibility is the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County, the only operational nuclear plant in California
Is this a good idea when there will soon be an assault of environmental regulations?
Finally a gross report that has me shaking my head.
Tattoos….it seems to be the fad now that everyone wants to decorate themselves like some yakuza enforcer….but this trend is just NUTS!
An unusual cosmetic surgery procedure that involves permanently changing the color of your eyes using tattoos soaring in popularity.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, experts are warning that the procedure — called keratopigmentation, or corneal tattooing — could leave lasting damage.
The procedure involves cutting a donut-like tunnel into the cornea of the eye. The surgeon then widens this tunnel and fills it with a special dye that immediately and permanently changes the color of the eye.
Conventionally, the procedure has been used to correct a cosmetic disfigurement from an injury or disease, as The Guardian reports. For some patients, the procedure can reduce glare following corneal damage
But as the WSJ reports, European doctors began injecting dyes for solely cosmetic reasons in the 2010s.
“I see it as an enhancement,” New Jersey resident Jason Jimenez, who underwent the procedure, told the newspaper. “People get their teeth done, they get implants and Botox. If it’s something that could make you happier, make you look better — then why not?”
The US Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve keratopgimentation as a procedure in the US. But that hasn’t stopped surgeons from finding workarounds: some are using lasers designed for vision correction off-label and buying dyes from companies overseas where they’re certified, the WSJ reports.
https://futurism.com/neoscope/eye-color-tattoo
Stupidity strikes again!
That does it for me this Saturday….I hope you guys found it entertaining and possibly a little informative.
I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and as always….Be well and Be Safe….
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”