Life takes us in many strange directions and wonderful discoveries. It never turns out the way we thought it would.
Saturday, April 30, 2022
Our Tesla Model X SUV Had A 25%+ Price Increase In 18 Months!
I got curious. 18 months ago, Elena and I bought a Tesla ModelX SUV. The total cost including State of California sales tax was $100,000. I looked at the price of the car today with the following results:
List Price of
Vehicle: $114,990.00 US
State Sales
Tax: $ 10,786.05 US
Total Drive Off
Cost: $125,776.00 US
This indicates a price increase of over
25% in 18 months. Part of this price increase is inflation that is racking us
now. Part has to do with chip shortages and higher prices of materials like
lithium, nickel, rare earths, etc.
Tesla has a unique system of selling cars.
One does not go to a dealer and buy a car. Rather, one goes to Tesla.com. The
car and all its features are selected. Payment is arranged for the vehicle. The
car is manufactured and sent to one of Tesla's distribution centers.
We
have a Tesla distribution center a couple of miles from the house. The last
time I drove by there I would estimate that in excess of 100 cars were on the
lot awaiting the pickup from buyers. The higher prices do not seem to be
hurting Tesla's sales or profits.
Friday, April 29, 2022
Someone On Facebook Posted A Simple And Thought-Provoking Question
Someone on Facebook posted a simple and most thought-provoking question as follows:
"If you awakened one morning and
found that it was 1965, what would you do?"
I assumed that I would awaken in the house
that I grew up in at 5715 Belarbor Avenue in Houston. I assumed that I would be
16 years of age and a sophomore at Jesse H. Jones High School. I responded
quickly as follows:
"I would walk down the hall to my
father's room. I would tell him how much I love him."
During the day I gave a lot more
thought to this question. How nice it would be to arrive all those years ago
with my youth and good health. I would understand all the mistakes that I had
made and know how to change them going forward.
Then one of my most beloved movies
from 1986 came to mind-"When Peggy Sue Got Married." Here is the
link:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091738/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
Peggy Sue was given the power to go back in
time and change the past. The end of the movie is sweet and touching. She
decides to change nothing.
This is a fun mental exercise. You can
substitute any year that you want.
Thursday, April 28, 2022
Twitter-Don't Bet Against Elon Musk!!
Many years ago I bought Tesla shares at $18.00 US each. Elena insisted that I sell the shares because Tesla would never make any money. This morning Tesla shares are selling for $902.00 US each. Tesla is the largest car manufacturer by market capitalization in the world. At times, it hits $1 trillion US dollars. There is a saying: "Those who bet against Elon Musk often come to regret it."
There is a lot of fear and worry about what
Elon Musk will do when he takes control of Twitter. I got to meet Elon almost
26 years ago. At the time, he was studying for a Ph.D. in material engineering
at Stanford University. He drove a 20-year-old Jaguar. He lived in a run-down
two-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto, California, with his first wife Justine and
his brother Kimbal.
I spent 90 minutes talking to him. He is
painfully shy and incredibly sensitive. He is obviously quite bright. He is an
engineer at heart. I found that he was not mean or cruel. He was not arrogant.
He was not overly aggressive.
A long email friendship between Elon and I
ensured. It ended with the launch of his first satellite into earth orbit on a
Falcon One rocket. I have a framed copy of a Musk email to me right near my
workstation.
Over the years I have read a few biographies
of Elon and read a lot of articles about him. One sentence would summarize his
whole philosophy in life as follows:
"When I die,
I want to leave the world a much better place than it was when I was
born." Elon's political philosophy is simple. He is neither a Democrat nor
a Republican. He is a centrist and a libertarian.
When he takes control of Twitter, get
ready for a lot of innovation and fresh new ideas. Yes, free speech will be at
the center of his leadership. He will have constraints. He borrowed $44 billion
US dollars to finance the purchase. He will have to earn a lot of money with
advertising to pay off the debt. He will have to keep the lender happy. If he
goes out on the fringes and the platform becomes a vehicle for fake news,
propaganda, and extreme politics, he will start to lose money and have a very
unhappy lender. He will make mistakes and have missteps. Please give him the
benefit of a doubt and keep an open mind.
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
8,000 High-End Luxury Vehicles Seized From Russian Buyers!
I found another great story that "slipped under the radar" for normal media outlets. Some 8,000 high-end luxury cars are stranded at the Belgium port of Zeebrugge. There are indications of a similar collection of unshipped luxury cars at a major Dutch port. Here is an excellent link:
https://luxurylaunches.com/
Very affluent Russians paid hard cash to buy these 8,000 or more luxury
cars. Now the cars are stuck. Sanctions have stopped their shipment. I'm sure
that the buyers have received a legal notice with wording like:
"We have probable cause to believe that the funds used to
purchase your vehicle were the fruit of illegal activity. Before we can release
your car, we will require documentary proof that the funds for this purchase
were lawfully obtained and properly disclosed to local taxation
authorities."
Corruption and a phenomenon called kleptocracy are a way
of life in Russia. Before the Ukraine war, European authorities knew that
illegal money was being used by Russians to purchase luxury cars, houses, etc.
They turned a blind eye rationalizing that it was not their problem. Now it is
their problem.
Anytime you get a notice like this concerning the seizure of an asset of
yours, "you're in for the hassle of your life." The legal fees,
accounting fees, etc., can easily run into a cost of hundreds of thousands of
dollars. Complicating matters worse is that any car buyer will have to get
certified translations of a lot of documents in Russian into English. One’s
legal bill would far exceed the value of the asset.
Most likely, most of these car purchasers used illegal means to obtain
the funds for these cars. There could be a few people who worked hard and
honestly to get the funds to buy the cars. Their hard-earned money is gone.
Eventually, these luxury cars will be sold and the money spent on
armaments for or rebuilding Ukraine.
The Food Crisis Is Already Here
Guns & Butter
MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA
Observers in Tunisia are wondering how much higher food prices can go before civil unrest breaks out. Supermarket shelves in the North African country have been bare for weeks. Staples like eggs, flour, rice and sugar are “almost impossible to find,” according to Middle East Eye.
If violence does occur, the victims will be additional casualties of the war in Ukraine. Soon after the Russian invasion, fuel-price spikes and food exports from both Ukraine and Russia plunged while Western sanctions sought to crack down on Russian trade. The two countries’ customers – especially those in the Middle East and North Africa who traditionally import much of their wheat through Eastern Europe – are now suffering, the Africa Report wrote. Russia and Ukraine supply around 30 percent of global wheat.
Climate change, drought and water shortages and disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic were already undermining Middle Eastern and North African agriculture production, explained the Council on Foreign Relations. The Islamic holy month of Ramadan also complicated matters. Starting in early April, families fasted and then ate large meals at the end of the day.
A group of scientists and others exhorted the international community to act or face the consequences of millions of people dying from starvation or suffering from malnutrition. “In the longer term, a global malnutrition crisis could lead to lifelong effects on education, diet-related chronic diseases and a decline in people’s capacity to thrive and contribute to their countries’ economic growth,” they wrote in Nature magazine.
Lebanon is an example of a country in crisis. Food prices had already increased by more than 1,000 percent in the past three years. Then the 2020 port explosion in Beirut damaged the country’s grain storage facilities. In late February, after the start of the Russian invasion, Lebanese officials said they had only one month of wheat reserves as supplies dwindled, National Public Radio reported.
The Lebanese government is now negotiating a $150 million World Bank loan for cash to buy more food, the Associated Press noted. It’s seeking a deal with the International Monetary Fund to stabilize the country’s banking sector, too. Meanwhile, the financial system is under pressure, as food and fuel prices skyrocket. Wildfires haven’t helped the situation, the World Food Program added.
Syrians can also expect lean times ahead. Spikes in food prices have forced the United Nations to reduce food aid to northern Syria, for example, Al Jazeera reported.
In a globalized world, more guns can mean less butter.
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Dinosaurs Flying Over Chile
Soaring Over the Sands
Flying pterosaurs soared through the skies of what is now Chile more than 100 million years ago, according to a discovery in the Atacama Desert.
An archaeological team came across a peculiar cemetery holding the well-preserved bones of the ancient reptiles, which they described as a rare find.
“This has global relevance because these types of (discoveries) are relatively rare,” lead scientist Jhonathan Alarcon told Reuters. “Almost everywhere in the world, the pterosaur remains that are found are isolated.”
Pterosaurs lived among other dinosaurs and are considered the latter’s close cousins that evolved on a separate branch of the reptile family tree, according to the American Museum of Natural History. They are believed to be one of the first animals to develop powered flight – meaning they could flap their wings to generate lift and travel through the air, not just glide.
They differed in size: Some were as big as an F-16 fighter jet but others could be compared to the size of a paper plane. They fed by sifting water via their long, thin teeth, similar to modern-day flamingos.
The discoveries will allow scientists to better study the creature’s anatomy and their habits.
“We could determine how groups of these animals were composed if they raised their babies or not,” Alarcon added.
The find was made about 40 miles away from another site where pterosaur remains were found, which further supports previous theories that the ancient reptiles were widespread in northern Chile.
Twain Harte, California And A New Law That Will Surprise You!
I am always on the lookout for interesting stories that major news outlets missed. I bet that none of you have heard of the town of Twain Harte, California. The town sits near Yosemite National Park. Its population is roughly 2,226. It is named in honor of two famous 19th Century authors who lived in the area-Mark Twain and Bret Harte.
One of my swim friends and her husband
fell in love with the town. Some years ago, they bought a dilapidated house in
the town and went to work on renovating it and bringing it back to life. It has
been a labor of love full of all sorts of challenges and unexpected expenses.
They recently made an amazing discovery
about California law. Sometime in the past, Texas suffered a spell of
record-breaking cold. The electricity grid collapsed in part. Natural gas
deliveries were disrupted. Sadly, some people froze to death.
California authorities took note of this
tragedy. They passed a new law. Any home, townhouse, condominium, or apartment
built in California is now required to have two heating systems. In that
manner, if one heating system fails there is a backup. My friend installed a
wood-burning stove as her backup heating system. Elena and I have already followed
this new law. We have the main central heating system. We have a natural gas
heating system in the master bedroom fireplace. We also have electric space
heaters filled with oil as the third backup system.
Monday, April 25, 2022
A New Way To Store Solar Power
MOST Promising
An international research team developed a novel system that can store solar energy in liquid form for 18 years and release it when needed, the Independent reported.
Named molecular solar thermal energy storage (MOST), the technology uses a specially designed molecule of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, scientists explained in a new study.
Once it comes into contact with sunlight, the molecule changes into an energy-rich isomer, which can be stored in liquid form for years, according to New Atlas.
The team then developed a compact thermoelectric generator to turn that heat into electricity.
“The generator is an ultra-thin chip that could be integrated into electronics such as headphones, smartwatches and telephones,” said co-author Zhihang Wang
Wang acknowledged that the current output generated by the chip is very small but added that the results of the system were “very promising.”
Researchers hope that MOST will lead to self-charging electronics that use stored solar energy on demand. The system also holds the potential to change the production of renewable and emissions-free energy.
“This is a radically new way of generating electricity from solar energy,” said lead author Kasper Moth-Poulsen
"Where There Is This Much Smoke, There Has To Be A Fire!"
We have all heard that saying: 'Where there is that much smoke, there has to be some fire." We have a fascinating story developing this morning out of Russia. Kremlin authorities have disclosed that a major fire has broken out at the Druzba Oil Depot in the Russian city of Bryansk.
All sorts of wild conspiracy theories are
floating around including:
1) A
20-person British Special Air Services team attacked the oil complex.
2) Ukrainian
missiles struck the oil storage complex.
3) Ukrainian
special operations forces attacked the plant.
I was raised in Houston, Texas. It is a
city surrounded by oil refineries and petrochemical plants. Fires and
explosions happened from time to time. I do not remember an incident where
actual sabotage was involved. Causes of such tragedies included:
1) Human
errors by plant operators.
2)
Maintenance procedures not being followed.
3) Safety
systems wearing out and not being replaced.
4) Flukes of
nature like a lightning strike.
We will have to wait for the investigation
that will follow before we draw any conclusions. If you're sitting in Europe
right now, this is not good news for you. This complex is part of the oil
pipeline that supplies oil and natural gas to European countries.
Were this pipeline to be cut, Russian oil
and natural gas shipments to Europe would stop. Who knows if the Nordstream 2
pipeline could be brought online to replace the loss of this source of oil and
gas? Here is a fascinating link if you want to go in-depth:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1600623/russia-news-druzhba-oil-pipeline-fire-ukraine-eu-energy-germany-austria-hungary
Sunday, April 24, 2022
Elon Musk Gives A Brilliant Interview On The Future
I met Elon Musk many years ago before he was, shall we say, "rich and famous." I have watched his incredible progress in life and great achievements. Yesterday I saw a TED interview with Elon that is very special. Here is the link for those interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRvf00NooN8
This interview is mentally stimulating and
fascinating. It will give you a good idea of what comes in the future.
Saturday, April 23, 2022
Chevy Bolt Electric Cars At The Same Price They Were 5 Years Ago?
I paid a pleasant follow-up visit to Stewart Chevrolet yesterday to thank them for the great work that they did on Elena's car. I got a huge surprise as I parked. I saw at least 10 new Chevy Bolt all-electric cars for sale.
Right
now, we hear all sorts of horrors stories about the new car and used car
market. Prices are at an all-time high. The inventory of vehicles for sale is
low. When we get into the area of electric cars, things get worse. We hear of
critical shortages of computer chips, nickel, titanium, cobalt, and other rare
earth minerals.
I got curious. I walked around and looked at
all the cars for sale. I got an incredible surprise. The price sticker on each
car's side window indicated a price that was the same that Elena paid for her
Chevy Bolt over 5 years ago!
How is this possible with all the
inflation, supply chain problems, and market distortions due to the Ukraine
war?
I can only guess that General Motors is
selling the vehicles at a loss. If you are tempted to buy an electric car, I
highly recommend that you take a serious look at the Chevy Bolt electric car!
Friday, April 22, 2022
A Prophet Predicts Putin
Wanted: Redemption
RUSSIA
A few years before the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian satirist Vladimir Voinovich imagined a story about a former KGB agent who became head of state, created a class of corrupt oligarchs around him, draped himself in the mantle of the Russian Orthodox Church and launched a bloody war to remain in power.
Voinovich’s 1986 novel “Moscow 2042” predicted Vladimir Putin, the Washington Post reported. It was not necessarily a hard thing to do. Putin and his crony elites put Russia on the road to autocracy after the fall of the Berlin Wall, noted JSTOR Daily, the magazine of the not-for-profit academic institution.
However strategic the strongman was, however, Putin failed to predict how events would play out, however. He underestimated the ferocity of Ukrainian resistance and misjudged ordinary Russians.
“It’s the classic mistake of every tyrant: Surround yourself only with sycophants, suck-ups and yes-men, and you never get a reality check in your echo chamber,” argued Zoya Sheftalovich in a Politico opinion column. “Eliminate dissenting politicians, and you assume that means you’ve eliminated dissent.”
The Russian president is now playing a “face-saving” game in Ukraine, University of Toronto political scientist Olga Chyzh wrote in the Guardian. The Ukrainians sunk Russia’s Black Sea flagship, the cruiser Moskva, and have killed six generals. Low morale and defection plague conscripts, some of whom blow up their own equipment, according to Ukrainians. Mercenaries are being called in.
Shrinking his ambitions, added NBC News, Putin appears now to be aiming only to seize the eastern Ukrainian region of the Donbas, where Russian separatists already held sway. Meanwhile, with the ferocity of this war, even some of those pro-Russian Ukrainians are questioning their past allegiances.
Voinovich died in 2018. His obituary in Radio Free Europe portrayed him as a dissident writer who foresaw the rise of a Russian regime that looked nostalgically and bitterly to an imagined past rather than forward to a better present.
Another iconoclastic Russian writer, Vladimir Sorokin, took aim with a similarly withering perspective. In an interview with the New York Times, Sorokin said that Putin was trying to manipulate the truth to misrepresent the invasion to ordinary Russians.
The power over the truth will be a potent weapon in Putin’s upcoming great battle against allegations that he allowed war crimes to occur in Ukraine while pursuing a genocidal war against the country, according to the BBC.
Officials at the International Court of Justice in the Hague don’t have the power to seize a head of state and drag them into the court, the New Republic explained. But leaders could convene some kind of entity to begin an investigation to grease the creaky wheels of justice and get them moving.
As a Russian writer might say, the souls of the Russian and Ukrainian nations will need closure to find redemption.
The War In Ukraine ANd The Imminent Impact On Food Supplies-What You Need To Know
| The War in Ukraine and the Imminent Impact on Food Supplies... What You Need To Know |
| by Chris MacIntosh |
 |
Everyone understands by now that Russia is a large energy producer, but what many don’t know is that when they sit down at the dinner table at night, the entire supply chain (aside from the energy required for transportation) that gets them that dinner involves Russia and Ukraine to a frightening degree.
Our current globally integrated food supply system and mass food production cannot exist without, among other things, fertilizer.
This includes three main categories: nitrogen, potash, and phosphorus fertilizers. Potash is a potassium-rich salt fertilizer that enhances plant quality and is responsible for 20% of global fertilizer demand.
Together with Belarus, Russia has a 40% market share in global production and export of potash fertilizer. What OPEC+ is to the oil market, Belarus and Russia are to the potash market. The two monopolies in this space are Uralkali and Belaruskali, with the Belarusian Potash Company being the latter’s export arm.
With 16.5% of the nitrogen fertilizer market, Russia may not appear to be that dominant until we look at the key ingredient (ammonium nitrate) and then we realize… oh, yes it is. Why? Russia holds a whopping 66% of the global market share in the production of this chemical, and without it there’s no nitrogen fertilizer.
All this matters a great deal for those of us who like to eat, because last month the Russkies imposed an export ban on the ammonium nitrate mentioned above. Their reasoning, true or not, was to ensure an affordable supply for its own farmers. This ban comes off in April 2022.
"Fine, what’s a few weeks to wait," you might ask.
| Recommended Link |
Thursday, April 21, 2022
Are German Homeowners Financing Putin's Ukraine War????
Zeitenwende
GERMANY
Are homeowners in Frankfurt to blame for the atrocities in Ukraine?
Some critics think so. “Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression runs on the money Russia gets by selling fossil fuels to Europe,” wrote New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently. “Germany…has in effect become Putin’s prime enabler.”
That’s arguably a harsh judgment. But some think it’s warranted, not least because it chose to ignore warnings about its increasing dependence on Russian energy for decades.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz inaugurated a Zeitenwende (historic turning point) when he announced that he would hike military spending by more than $100 billion and increase military spending to more than two percent of Germany’s gross domestic product, reported National Public Radio.
The move was significant because Germany has long declined to beef up its military to match its economic strength in Europe, preferring to allow Britain and France to play preeminent roles in NATO and European defense, the Local explained. The country’s Nazi past and the guilt associated with the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust were the contexts for those pacifist inclinations. Even so, Germany is a major arms supplier to countries around the world, and many at home and abroad have suggested it has used its past to avoid its military responsibilities in lieu of business opportunities both in arms and other products.
Still, columnist David Von Drehle was ebullient in praising Germany for emerging from 77 years of a “timeout” from geopolitics.
The turning point might not be so dramatic as some might think, however. The German Marshall Fund cast doubt on whether Germany will really assume a military leadership position in Europe, given how it will take years to build up the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces. It’s also not clear exactly how the additional money will be spent, noted the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Then there is the lukewarm support for the West and Ukraine that lingers, especially in the East, as the Washington Post noted. “Both sides have made mistakes,” said one resident of the eastern state of Saxony, echoing opinions that have been prevalent also on German talk shows and in the west of the country. “The truth is in the middle.”
Still, in the short term, it’s business and the energy that fuels it that matters. Germany is one of the holdouts in the European Union on a complete ban on Russian energy. Still, Germany wants to end coal imports from Russia this year, Euronews wrote. Scholz recently said that oil purchases from Russia could end this year, too, reported Reuters. Stopping Russian gas imports won’t be as easy. Russian gas accounts for 40 percent of Germany’s gas needs. Scholz hopes to reduce that number to 24 percent in the next few months.
Putin has responded by demanding that Germany and other European nations pay for Russian gas in rubles, a move that would help Russia circumvent economic sanctions that the international community slapped on the country as punishment for the Ukraine invasion, Bloomberg reported. Scholz and other leaders have yet to respond to the demand.
If a full-blown trade conflict erupts between German and Russia, meanwhile, it could trigger a worldwide financial shock, CNBC added.
Germany chose to intertwine its economy with Russia in hopes of preserving peace and bringing Russia into the fold. Now Scholz is dealing with the fallout of that fallacious assumption.
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Some Amazing Facts About Dogs In The U.S. Military
The latest
Sunday night episode of NCIS Los Angeles had a fascinating episode on dogs in
the military. The storyline of the episode concerned a German Shepherd dog and
his female handler who both retired from the U.S. Marine Corps. The female
handler became a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff. Her dog became a most
accomplished drug-sniffing dog.
This dog caught the attention of a major
drug cartel. They sent some thugs to the apartment that the dog shared with his
handler. They kidnapped the dog. Instead of killing the animal, they sold the
animal to a group of violent criminals running illegal dogfighting events.
The NCIS agents used video footage and the
Dark Web to track down the dog. When the dog is rescued, the leader of the NCIS
team instructs his team members to call animal control to pick up all the dogs
involved in dogfighting and take them to a shelter.
In the military, a dog has a first name and a last name. The first name is the dog’s name. The last name is the name of the handler. Dogs get military ranks like private, lance corporal, corporal, sergeant, master sergeant, etc. Dogs get a military ID card just as human military personnel get. Their large picture is on the card. Military dogs are eligible to retire with benefits after some years of service.
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Monday, April 18, 2022
Twilight Of The Gods-Russian Oligarchs
Twilight of the Gods
RUSSIA-UKRAINE
The island of Jersey, a British territory and tax haven in the English Channel, recently froze $7 billion of assets owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. That’s around half the Chelsea football club owner’s wealth, noted Fortune. He’s been ordered to sell the team too, by the way. At around the same time, France seized an Abramovich-owned chateau worth nearly $100 million, added Insider.
British officials also seized $13 billion worth of assets owned by two other Russian oligarchs, CNBC reported. Germany recently confiscated the world’s largest yacht – almost 1,700 feet long – from a fourth oligarch, wrote Agence France-Presse. The boat was worth around $600 million. Cyprus has also stripped citizenship from four Russian billionaires who had qualified for the Mediterranean island nation’s “golden passport” program, which gave residency documents to high-flying investors, according to Radio Free Europe.
A breathtaking list of seized wealth can be viewed here in this CNN story.
The crackdown in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine brings a good run for these rich and powerful Russian men to an end.
As the Australian Broadcasting Corporation explained, Abramovich and other jet-setting Russian tycoons took advantage of the chaotic days after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s to buy up state-owned companies that were being privatized. Supporting ex-President Boris Yeltsin and his successor, Putin, they used political favoritism and corruption to cement their gains and secure more sweetheart deals.
As the Russian oligarchs grew rich, ordinary Russians experienced economic shocks, poverty and decreasing life expectancies.
When Putin sought to consolidate power after he became acting president in late 1999, oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was critical of Putin’s regime, coincidentally ran afoul of the law. Jailed for 10 years, he fled the country after Putin pardoned him in 2013. The arrest and imprisonment sent a signal to the oligarchs that they should fall in line or face the power of the state.
Today, Khodorkovsky, who lives in exile in London, regularly pleads with other oligarchs to rise up against Putin, the Washington Post wrote.
His appeals might be prescient. The era of the oligarchs might be over, argued Bloomberg. Dependent on an international financial system that allowed them to move ill-gotten gains from poor Russia to tony properties in London and elsewhere, the oligarchs now face tough sanctions and a dragnet that is stripping them of their wealth.
They enabled. They tolerated. Now they pay.