Dark Eagle???

Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

In looking at this picture, lost in space applies. Pentagon Pete, Israel and Nosferatu, aka Stephen Miller, run the show, complete with the specter of reigniting the fubar known as Trump's war with Iran.

If the unthinkable happens, while Trump tries to get around the 60 day edict by Congress (The War Powers Resolution) by arguing the April 7th ceasefire gives an out to the edict, the possible endgame looms as hypersonic missiles may be part of the CENCOM strike package, promising intense damage to a country that's not a threat to the US. The minute the first strike happens, Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthi's will unload, with the end result, desalination plants and oil refineries go and the Levant becomes a wasteland.

To whit.

President Trump told Axios he's going to keep Iran under a naval blockade
until the regime agrees to a deal that addresses U.S. concerns about its nuclear program.

Why it matters: Trump is rejecting an Iranian proposal to first open the Strait of Hormuz and lift the blockade, while postponing nuclear talks to a later stage.

Behind the scenes: U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has prepared a plan for a "short and powerful" wave of strikes on Iran in hopes of breaking the negotiating deadlock, three sources with knowledge said.

After the strikes, which would likely include infrastructure targets, the U.S. would press the regime to come back to the negotiating table and show more flexibility.

Trump told Axios he saw the blockade as "somewhat more effective than the bombing," and the sources said he had yet to order any kinetic action as of Tuesday night. He did post an AI-generated meme of himself holding a gun with a warning to Iran and the tagline, "NO MORE MR. NICE GUY."

The possible CENCOM strike package may include this ...

LRHW Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, AKA Dark Eagle on
transporter erector launcher, 3 August 2024,
Exercise Bamboo Eagle 24-3, Nellis AFB[18]

Specs

If this catastrophe kicks off, Bibi gets his 40 year wish of annihilating Iran in hopes of creating 
Greater Israel with the unintended result of destroying his country in real time.

Grant" to Abraham consisting of all the land east of the Brook of Egypt and west of the Euphrates, north of Kadesh and south of Hamath, from a 1919 book by Clarence Larkin.

If the unthinkable happens, the midterms goes away as a national emergency and martial law must be imposed as chaos and an economic hell storm of biblical proportions will surely follow. 

Will the military stand down regarding this CF for the ages?

Lastly, Russia & China are players also. How will they react? A possible WW III scenario?

Channeling the Cuban Missile Crisis applies but this is worse, far worse in this writer's opinion
due to the occupant in the White House.

Whiteman

Chief Justice John Roberts attends the State of the Union address on February 7, 2023.
Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/Getty Images/File

Roberts is the worst Chief Justice in history in charge of the worst supreme court in history.
From Citizens United to Hobby Lobby and Greece NY and finally to Louisiana vs Callais, the case gutting the Voting Rights Act, he's Whiteman, bought and paid for by the powers at be. 

R. Crumb's Whiteman

The Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday rolling back protections for Black and Latino voters marks another dramatic turn in the long-fought effort by conservative justices to reverse measures vital to overcoming America’s legacy of race discrimination.

The decision also marks a defining moment for the court under Chief Justice John Roberts, who declared soon after joining the bench in 2005, “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Three years ago, the justices by the same 6-3 vote as Wednesday ended racial affirmative action in higher education admissions. The newest decision, which follows a series of rulings led by Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito restricting the reach of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, will reverberate deeper.

Taken as a whole, the pattern would mean fewer chances for minority voters to elect candidates of their choosing. That, in turn, would mean fewer opportunities for the voice of Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and other minorities in government.

Any questions?

Speaking the truth ... for a change

 

British Ambassador Christian Turner speaking at the Ambassador's Residence in Washington DC, as part of the St Patrick's Day Celebrations in the US capital. Niall Carson/PA Images/Getty Images

It's about time someone from the west speaks the truth about the entangled alliance of
Israel and the US, a relationship, proving yet again, that the national interest of one rarely coincides
with the national interest of the other.

Britain’s ambassador to Washington has said that the only country that has a “special relationship” with the United States is “probably Israel,” not Britain, in leaked comments which could overshadow King Charles III’s state visit underway in the US this week.

Christian Turner, who took office in February to replace Peter Mandelson – who was sacked over his ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – made the remarks privately to a group of British students visiting the US in the same month he was appointed.

“‘Special relationship’ is a phrase I try not to utter because it’s quite nostalgic, it’s quite backwards-looking, and it has a lot of sort of baggage about it,” Turner said in a leaked audio recording. “I think there is probably one country that has a special relationship with the United States – and that is probably Israel.”

For the recently-appointed ambassador to have cast doubt on the “special relationship” – which the British government and monarchy has been at pains to revive – is a cause for embarrassment for Downing Street and could make Charles’ state visit uncomfortable. The remarks were first reported by the Financial Times on Tuesday, shortly before Charles and Queen Camilla were greeted by US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump at the White House.

In unusually outspoken comments, Turner also told the students he thought it was “extraordinary” that the Epstein scandal “hasn’t touched anybody” in the US. By contrast, he said, senior British figures – including Mandelson, his predecessor, and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – had been “brought down” by the affair.

Question, how long will Turner last in his post as diplomacy is the art of lying most eloquently.

John Tenniel's illustration of the King and Queen of Hearts
at the trial of the Knave of Hearts

"Off with his head!" may apply

The cliff beckons ...

A cartoon depicting lemmings jumping off a cliff en masse (The German text translates to
"Turn back!? Now that we've come this far!?!")[12]

I don't speak German but the gist of this cartoon hits home regarding AI as literally trillions are being spent on tech we will never fully understand. What's worse, as stated before in BRT, so many companies ignore the wisdom of Fred Brooks and his wonderful The Mythical Man Month in doing the due diligence necessary to properly incorporate this tech into complex business operations. This is why the text below describes chaos corporate style regarding AI and how not to best use it.

Adding more people to a late project makes it later.

Recent tech layoffs would initially appear to indicate the great labor shift
from human workers to AI may already be happening.

Meta announced last week in a memo that it plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, about 8,000 employees, as well as scrap plans to hire for 6,000 open positions. It’s part of an effort to “run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making,” according to the memo. Microsoft has offered thousands of its own employees a voluntary buyout, the largest the company has ever offered.

“For my team, the cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees,” Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning at Nvidia, recently told Axios.

An MIT study from 2024 backs up Catanzaro’s experience. Analyzing the technical requirements of AI models needed to perform jobs at a human level, researchers found that AI automation would be economically viable in only 23% of roles where vision is a primary part of the work. In the remaining 77% of the time, it was cheaper for humans to continue their work.

In other instances, AI has proved to be fallible, with one engineer saying an AI agent destroyed his database and network as a result of what he called “overuse.”

Despite no clear evidence of AI improving productivity and, according to the Yale Budget Lab, no widespread data to support the idea of AI displacing jobs, Big Tech firms have continued to pour money into AI, announcing $740 billion in capital expenditures this year so far, according to Morgan Stanley, a 69% increase from 2025. The magnitude of spending has caused some companies to rethink their budget altogether.

This increase in spending has coincided with more layoffs in the tech sector. According to data from Layoffs.fyi, there have been more than 92,000 layoffs in tech in 2026 so far across nearly 100 companies.
The rate of these workforce reductions is already far outpacing that of last year, which saw about 120,000 layoffs in total.

The continued AI spending and layoffs, even as human labor remains cheaper, expose a meaningful discrepancy in the economics of AI, said Keith Lee, an AI and finance professor at the Swiss Institute of Artificial Intelligence’s Gordon School of Business.

“What we’re seeing is a short-term mismatch,” Lee told Fortune.

The siren call also applies. 

Funerary statue of a siren in Pentelic marble, found in the Necropolis of Ceramics at Athens. The siren laments the dead, wings folded, playing on a tortoiseshell lyre. The right hand, which would have held the plectrum, is missing. The strings, probably made of bronze, would have been attached to the holes which can be seen in the body of the instrument. The plumage and other parts would have been picked out in colour. The statue flanked the stele of the Athenian warrior Dexileo who fell in combat in 394/393 BC (Work of 370BC, National Archeological Museum, Athens).

But a mirage ...

Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images

Finally, the truth. Safe, self driving Teslas are but a mirage. Why? Because Tesla only uses cameras to detect the real world while Waymo uses radar, lidar AND cameras to do the same thing and even that is iffy given the inherent complexities of the real world bombarding Waymo at rates boggling the mind.

After over a decade of promising that fully autonomous driving is right around the corner,
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has yet to bring his ambitious vision to fruition.

In early 2019, Tesla started installing a system called Hardware 3 (HW3) in its cars, which according to Musk would enable what the company continues to misleadingly refer to as “Full Self-Driving” (FSD). (As it currently exists, the feature still requires owners to be ready to take over the wheel at any point.)

Over the next four years, Tesla sold millions of vehicles with the hardware, only for Musk to finally admit in January 2025 that HW3 actually wasn’t good enough after all, and that a retrofit would be required to enable fully autonomous driving.

The news came to the dismay of countless owners who shelled out thousands of additional dollars to access FSD, and who claim Musk had lied to them all these years, triggering numerous class action lawsuits.

During Wednesday’s earnings call, the mercurial CEO put it as bluntly as ever.

“Unfortunately, Hardware 3 — I wish it were otherwise — but Hardware 3 simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD,” he said, saying that its “memory bandwidth” is the “chokepoint.” Tesla introduced a confusingly-named version of the software, called “FSD (Supervised)” in April 2024, while an “unsupervised” version would seemingly refer to actual, autonomous driving.

Despite Musk first making the concession well over a year ago, Tesla has yet to make good on its promise of providing millions of owners with the necessary hardware upgrade — a process that will be long and painful.

As an aside, Think Anonymous gives an in-depth analysis as to why the Waymo take rings true.

Just a tiny tidbit here, go to TA to get the complete skinny.

Waymo's sensor stack Waymo: 29 Cameras, 6 RADARs, 5 LiDARs

Just in terms of calibration, it must be an absolute nightmare for engineers. Calibrating a camera with a LiDAR is already a long task, but 29 cameras with 5 LiDARs? Then there is the fusion of all of these sensors together, and this is ONLY the "robotaxi" version, because if you look at their Zeekr shuttles, they also have their own types of sensors, with different generation codes. Their stack is therefore always evolving, and depends on the vehicle they drive on. 

Tesla's sensor stack used 8 cameras (red) and 12 ultrasonics (orange)

On this illustration, you can see a very simple design that almost never changed. In red, you can count 8 outside cameras, and in orange, you can see 12 ultrasonic sensors used to detect static objects when parking. Among the 8 cameras, there 2 on the windshield, used for stereo vision, one on the front bumper, one on the rear bumper, 2 on the doors, and 2 on the wheels. See the difference? I can't even begin to count Waymo's cameras, but I can easily show you Tesla's sensor stack.

The cost of doing it right is $, compute and research, the cost of cutting corners, let's not go there.

Said approach to solving a difficult problem reminds your truly of this ...

Department of Government Efficiency

And we all know well how that initiative went, right?

In the short term ...

A record number of super-sized tankers are now headed to the US. Photograph: ClassicStock/Alamy

In the short term, oil and renewables won. On the US & the Americas side, oil, on the Chinese side, solar but both winners will soon be eclipsed by the gorilla in the room, climate change as said entity ignores all borders as the world moves further into the 21st century.

In the open seas, an armada of empty tankers has quietly turned west. A record number of super-sized vessels are now heading to the US, where oil drillers and refineries are preparing to profit from Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East.

Almost 30 of these vessels, each able to hold 2m barrels of oil, are contracted to load US crude, destined for a global market facing the biggest supply crisis in history.

It is just over five years since the shale revolution made the US a net energy exporter and the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas. Now the White House is poised to strengthen its claim to an even greater share of the global oil market as the Middle East’s decades-long dominance is dismantled by war.

Guardian graphic. Source: The Oil & Gas Journal. Note: China and Taiwan and Sudan
and South Sudan are combined in the data. *Estimates for the Saudi Arabian-Kuwaiti Neutral Zone
are divided equally between the two countries

As doubts over the future market dominance of the Gulf’s petrostates deepen, the surge in market prices has begun fuelling the rise of the Americas. The growth in US and Canadian crude production – which has accelerated in recent years – is expected to continue through the 2020s. However, almost half of the world’s oil supply growth over the rest of the decade is expected to come from Latin America’s oil boom.

On the solar side, China dominates ...

China’s exports of solar capacity doubled to a record high of 68GW in the
first month of the Iran crisis alone. Photograph: AFP/Getty

China has long dominated the supply chains for the key building blocks of clean energy technologies, from wind turbines to solar panels and batteries. Beijing’s industrial prowess has helped the world’s biggest energy importer to capture between 60% and 85% of the world’s renewables market at a time when countries are preparing to accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels.

As the world’s first “electrostate”, China stands in contrast with the White House pursuit of fossil fuel dominance. The country also stands to play a significant role in creating the new energy order.

“China derives strategic leverage from its leadership across renewables and electrification, manufacturing and innovation, domestic deployment and global exports,” said Ember, a climate and energy thinktank. “China is not merely manufacturing electrotech hardware, it is manufacturing an energy future in which it holds a commanding position.”

The crisis has meant the world’s greatest supplier of clean technologies is selling these components at record rates as countries prepare to cut their use of fossil fuels for good.

The intent for countries to leave oil for good is all well and good but long term implications regarding the intent to ameliorate global warming using said tech centers on undeniable facts regarding renewables and related factors impacting the spread and maintenance of same: 

• habitat destruction  
• environmental degradation
• resource depletion
• The limits to Growth

We are running out of planet.

Getty/Futurism

It's the water ... seems the inability to plan is not part of the plan when it comes to Corpus Christi, Texas.

A massive drought coupled with political mismanagement might fully deplete water in a major city: neither in West Asia nor the Horn of Africa, but in the United States of America. According to

Inside Climate News, the city of Corpus Christi, Texas could soon completely out of water in the next year. It’s the eighth largest city in Texas, and a major industrial node in the Gulf Coast. Its water infrastructure provides access to over 500,000 Texans, as well as the major chemical plants, oil facilities, and plastics factories which call the Gulf region home.

As Climate News notes, Corpus Christi is on track to be the first American city to completely run out of water, as its reservoirs near empty following a five-year drought. Though nobody can snap their fingers and end a drought, the extremely dry conditions follow decades of warnings that South Texas is posed for a water crisis.

60-70%

 60-70% of all data traffic from Europe to the East runs through the strait and the Red Sea, next to Yemen, which means Iran controls both check points. Methinks the Orange Menace and his minions better think things through before doing something even more catastrophically stupid then the unnecessary action foisted upon the world by Israel telling the US to jump and kick off an event that could expand into WW III if we let it. 

A conversation with Gemini. Just the facts Ma'am - Joe Friday/Dragnet

The "Backyard" of Global Data

While many focus on oil, the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea
are also the physical foundations of the internet.

Massive Reliance: Approximately 95% of all global internet traffic, including bank transfers and communications, travels through thin glass cables at the bottom of the ocean [00:06].

Critical Choke Points: Over 15 major submarine cables run beneath the Strait of Hormuz [00:30]. Iran and the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen effectively control two key corridors that carry 60% to 70% of all internet traffic between Asia and Europe [01:07].

The Economic and Social ImpactA disruption in these waters would have
immediate international consequences:

Global Isolation: Cutting these cables would isolate the Middle East and disrupt
operations for global IT and call centers, with India alone having 20% to 40% exposure [00:48].

Market Paralysis: Major cloud infrastructure from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft
runs through this region. A disruption could freeze trillions of dollars in daily trade,
forex markets, and banking systems [01:43].

The Difficulty of Repair: The video emphasizes that "cutting a cable is not as simple
as repairing it" [01:22]:

Limited Resources: There are only about 50 to 60 specialized ships in the world capable of fixing these cables [01:29].Wartime Delays: These ships move slowly, are rarely covered by insurance in conflict zones, and repairs can take a minimum of 8 weeks [01:37].

The core message of the clip is that Iran doesn't need a bomb to disrupt the world;
it simply needs "scissors" [02:00]. 

This reality is presented as a primary reason for the delicate diplomatic
handling of the region by global powers.

Watch the full clip here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/177PpNKzmqQ

The Kraken ... for real

 An artist's reconstruction of a finned octopus of the species Nanaimoteuthis haggarti

that reached a length estimated at up to 18.6 meters (61.02 feet) and lived about 86 to 72 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, released on April 23, 2026. 

Yohei Utsuki/Hokkaido University/Handout via REUTERS

The Kraken lived. Think about the smarts of this monster! The question to ask is, why is ocean life so small today. Boffins think it's the temperature along with the introduction of man and his baggage
as root causes of this happenstance.

Works for me.

The Kraken, the giant cephalopod of legend, was feared by sailors for centuries. Later interpretations suggested that it may have been based on sightings of the giant squid, which can be 10 meters long. Although they lived far too early to have been the source of the legend, Ikegami et al. describe fossil octopods from the late Cretaceous that truly would have fit the description of the monster, reaching up to 19 meters in length. Wear patterns on their jaws suggest that these octopods preyed upon the large reptiles present at the time, including plesiosaurs and mosasaurs. The authors interpret asymmetry in these wear patterns as an indication of corresponding asymmetry in behavior, suggesting complex brain development and, potentially, high intelligence. —Sacha Vignieri

Fig. 4. Body size estimation of Late Cretaceous octopuses.

The graph shows an allometric relationship between the length of the jaw and mantle in long-bodied species of extant finned octopus (tables S3 and S4) (31). The name of the corresponding species is shown along each growth curve. The sizes of N. jeletzkyi and N. haggarti based on their largest specimen are indicated by black vertical lines. Reconstruction of these two species, the extant giant squid (36), and gigantic vertebrate predators (37–40) in the Late Cretaceous are shown with their maximum total length.

A true apex without question.

A "colossal octopus" attacking ship, pen and wash[1] by Pierre Denys-Montfort,
engraved by Étienne Claude Voysard, 1801[2]

If the monster was alive today, this engraving would be for real. :)

Death by firing squad ...

The U.S. Department of Justice logo is seen on a podium before a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, on May 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)

Yours truly used to be ok with the death penalty until data came out regarding people executed who happened to be  innocent, something not acceptable in this writer's opinion. With this administration, reinstituting firing squads is more political than functional as this is a methodology used by dictatorships to quell dissent. Think Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia as examples. 

Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-212-0221-07, Russland-Nord, Erschießung von Partisanen

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials said Friday.

The Justice Department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration — more than under any president in modern history. The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering.

The moves were announced as part of a broader push to step up federal executions after a moratorium under the Biden administration. Only three defendants remain on federal death row after Democratic President Joe Biden converted 37 of their sentences to life in prison, though the Trump administration has so far authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.

US executions since 1977

Since capital punishment was reinstated in the 1970s,
more than 1,600 prisoners have been executed in the United States,
the vast majority by state authorities.

Factoid.

Research estimates that at least 4.1% of defendants sentenced to death in the U.S. are innocent, meaning over 1 in 25 death row inmates is likely wrongly convicted. While over 200 people have been exonerated from death row since 1973, experts believe many innocent people are executed without their innocence being officially recognized. National Institutes of Health (.gov)

Any questions and ... think midterms. I know I have.

Goof Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

Never made money, violent and funny as hell, spot on in terms of AI, They Live, Pulp Fiction
and Smart Phones, the flick's a hoot, showing there's a cost to everything and not realizing
that fact is terminally stupid and unwise. :)

See the film. Unhinged to the max, 

something society needs in these uncertain times. :)