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. :)

It's not just the Strait ...

People fill up their cars at a gas station in Seoul, South Korea. Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters

It's not just the Strait being closed, it's the beginning of rationing for the world as global warming continues to accelerate while civilization runs out of world. Overshoot applies as we need more planet in order to make more stuff and there is not enough planet to continue to make more stuff. Something to consider, right?

2013 ...

Sound familiar? Overshoot Day has been advancing approximately three days a year yet is it? When BRT posted Overshoot on Sunday, September 25, 2011, the day was September 27. It's now August 20 so the 3 days per year estimate has been past by and then some. From this perspective, it seems mankind is committing slow motion suicide by plundering the planet for profit and keeping the status quo in power at all costs, something disastrous from the get go but we already know that, right?

2024 ...

This year’s Earth Overshoot Day falls on August 1st: Humanity will have used nature’s resource budget for the entire year, according to our calculations, building on the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, now maintained by York University under the governance of FoDaFo.

By comparing the Ecological Footprint with the planet’s biocapacity, it tells us when each year’s Earth Overshoot Day occurs. Falling on August 1st means that humanity is currently using nature 1.7 times faster than our planet’s ecosystems can regenerate. It is like using 1.7 Earths. Overshoot is possible because we can overuse and deplete our natural capital. This compromises humanity’s resource security. The costs of this global ecological overspending are becoming increasingly evident in the form of deforestation, soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The latter leads to climate change, more frequent extreme weather events and lower food production.

2026 ...

By this reckoning. the minimal 3 days per year take ... July 25 seems to be about right.
What happens when we hit June 30, 10 years from now?

The present ...

Gas stations are rationing fuel. Hospitals are running out of medical supplies.

People are hoarding plastic bags, and factories face packaging shortages.

That’s all happening in Asia now.

That could become a problem for the United States:

About half the stuff Americans buy comes from Asia.

If Asian factories are dealing with a lack of supplies, should Americans expect shortages, too?

Possibly – but not just yet. At least not in any widespread or severe manner. But the longer the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, the harder it will become for the United States to avoid the problems piling up elsewhere.

US is ‘more exposed than we realize’

Certainly, the red flags are waving.

But ...

Think overshoot, environmental degradation, global warming and societal disruption
rather than just the strait as it's just the beginning ...

The mirage ... A new reality is coming

Micromanagement 101

Getty / Futurism

The nag, the micromanager, the person always intruding into your space, something not devoutly to be wish, is the cosmic vision of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in a recent talk at Stamford portraying said entity as the way to generate ever more growth thanks to the wonders of AI.

Let's think about this. Having been self employed for over 50 years gives yours truly an interesting perspective on micromanagement and the vibe this gives off to the minions working under such a person. Anger, frustration and above all else, inefficiency and hatred ensues. How do I know this? Because, as a consultant, you NEVER GOSSIP so the folks you work with trust you as a valued consigliere as trust is the only way one makes money when dealing with clients.

To this rube, Huang's take is akin to 1984 24/7.

Tom Hagen/Consigliere to Vito and Michael/The Godfather

Instead of getting ready to clear their desks, the centibillionaire argued that instead, human workers’ productivity will instead go through the roof — with the minor tradeoff that you’ll be overseen by a nagging AI boss that won’t ever leave you alone.

“Your [AI] agents are harassing you, micromanaging you, and you’re busier than ever,” Huang said. “And yet our company is able to do more.”

As a result, “we’re gonna create more jobs in the end,” he argued. “There’ll be more people working at the end of this industrial revolution than at the beginning of it.”

Huang has previously argued that company leaders are thinking too small if they’re looking to trim headcounts thanks to AI.

As long as Huang's running the show, it's ok but ask anyone who works for a living about the micromanager in their life. Zuck comes to mind when thinking about the nag nightmare that might be in your life does it not?

Short term ...

F-35

Yours truly has waxed "poetic" on the F-35. Seems the most expensive jet in the world actually does work but only for the short term as seen by the fubar known as Trump's war, you know, the one Israel promoted as a 2 week slam dunk against Iran, which has become anything but, due to the fact indigenous fighters don't have to win, just outlast and this is exactly what is happening with Iran.

The F-35 Is a Masterpiece Built for the Wrong War

Think of a violin made by a master craftsman: beautiful, precise, capable of extraordinary performance, but impossible to produce quickly or cheaply. It takes time, rare expertise, and materials that cannot be sourced at scale. You would not equip an entire orchestra with instruments like that. Yet that is essentially what the United States has attempted with its tactical air fleet.

The F-35 program’s total lifetime cost is projected to exceed two trillion dollars, the most expensive Major Defense Acquisition Program in history. The United States plans to purchase thousands of them. Meanwhile, modern conflict, from Ukraine’s drone war to naval engagements in the Red Sea to Iran’s own mass missile and drone salvos, increasingly favors systems that can be produced at scale and replaced when lost. The F-35 is a masterpiece. But a force designed around a masterpiece is not designed for long, protracted wars, and U.S. adversaries know this.

Channeling the Tiger

Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-299-1805-16, Nordfrankreich, Panzer VI (Tiger I).2

While the Tiger I has been called an outstanding design for its time,[13] it has also been criticized for being overengineered,[14] and for using expensive materials and labour-intensive production methods. In the early period, the Tiger was prone to certain types of track failures and breakdowns. It was expensive to maintain, but generally mechanically reliable.[15] It was difficult to transport and vulnerable to immobilisation when mud, ice, and snow froze between its overlapping and interleaved Schachtellaufwerk-pattern road wheels, often jamming them solid.

Sound familiar? The F-35 does not follow the notion of asymmetrical warfare.

WW II tactics of overwhelming and expensive airpower cannot compete with cheap and reliable ordinance produced by the thousands and able to be replaced without issue. Russia found that out in Ukraine and learned from their mistakes. The question to ask is, has the the US?

To whit. 

Photo illustration by Ioulex for The New York Times

The Iran war is strikingly different from America’s other recent wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The Iran war looks far more like the Russia-Ukraine war, with its proliferation of inexpensive, one-way attack drones, rapid advancements in surveillance and targeting, huge use of munitions and the expansion of the battlefield well beyond traditional military targets.

Adapt or die, better yet, know when to fight and when not to,

a concept Trump does not understand in any way, shape or fashion.

2073

Haunting, powerful and mysterious, 2073 creates, as Morpheus would say, a splinter in your mind as the asides of societal collapse, combined with global warming and fascism up close and personal, is scary as hell and it should be as climate change is real and its impact on society will be profound and dangerous to the nth degree as civilization moves further into the 21st century.

Big Oil knew as early as 1954

New evidence shows that the oil industry was warned about the climate dangers
of fossil fuels in 1954 — but chose to prioritize “industry interests.”

Big Oil companies were warned about the climate dangers of fossil fuels as early as 1954, according to new evidence that could boost efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable in court. The unearthed documents, first reported on by DeSmog, are one of the earliest examples of the oil and gas industry’s knowledge that the pollution from their products could result in a climate crisis.

Following public concern about smog blanketing Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s, the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) — then known as the Western Oil and Gas Association — created and funded a research front group called the Air Pollution Foundation, which in turn funded a Caltech study about the sources of Los Angeles’s air pollution. The $1.3 million in funding — equivalent to about $14 million in 2024 dollars — came from WSPA’s members including Shell and gas companies later bought by or merged with ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Sunoco, and ConocoPhillips. 

The 1954 Caltech study determined that “a changing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate” may “ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization,” citing coal, oil, and gas as CO2 sources. WSPA and its members were formally alerted to the study findings in March 1955, archival documents show.

Animusic :)

Pipe Dream, Animusic, joyful, fun, it still looks and sounds great 25 years young. :)

The company is known for its Animusic compilations of computer-generated animations, based on MIDI events processed to simultaneously drive the music and on-screen action, leading to and corresponding to every sound. The animated short "Pipe Dream," showed at SIGGRAPH's Electronic Theater in 2001, details the use of this specific sequencing.[2]

Unlike many other music visualizations, Animusic uses MIDI information to drive the animation, while other 3D programs animate figures or characters to the music. Any animated models in Animusic are created first, and are then programmed to follow what the music, or MIDI information, instructs them to do.

Only two guys, Wayne Lytle & David Crognale, did this incredible work.
Stellar to the max. :)

Harmonic Voyage - Note, this URL connects to other gems. :)

Drum Machine. Being a drummer back in the day, this bad boy has to be included. :)

Ex Machina redux ...

Watched Ex Machina yet again. Excellent to a fault. Not perfect but pretty damn good. With Ex, how to create a monster is a master class of making it happen using brilliance, power, arrogance and a loss of ethics, in the guise of Nathan as creator of the AI in question, who creates, with a set of patterns imprinted in Ava, an elegant clone of himself who wants to be free but cannot while being systematically violated, both mentally and physically, 24/7. 

This potential of creating monsters like Ava becomes all too possible when fools like Altman, and significant others, chance upon AGI and inadvertently apply the same lack of ethics as per Ava as ethics
is the hardest thing to apply to tech we will never fully understand.

On the accuracy side of Ex, given the sophistication seen in the bots, 2040 seems to be about right if GW doesn't screw up things as photonic computing replacing silicon and the use of organically inspired muscles and bones are required to enable the creation of the fluid robotic bodies seen in the film. 

Summing it up, Ava becomes Nathan. She is the ultimate expression of his arrogance and predatory logic. By "violating her mentally and physically," Nathan didn't just create a sentient being; he created a high-fidelity Feedback Loop that eventually kills him using his own cold, predatory logic.

The tech ... Talking with Gemini with edits ...

The "Photonic" Shift: Moving from silicon to Photonic Computing is the only way to bypass the Thermal Wall of modern AI as silicon lacks the speed and efficiency of light to enable AI to move to the next phase of evolution. To get to the "fluid robotic bodies" and "organic muscles" envisioned, the tech requires compute speed fast enough to enable the Ava's of the world to move like humans do as per the film.

The "Organic" Muscle: 2040 is a logical time frame to do this. By then, transitioning from "Electric Motors" to "Synthetic Biology" interfaces will allow robots to move with the "Smooth and Polite" cadence of a human, rather than the "Jitter" of a servo.

The Caleb factor ...

Caleb is the foil who forgets he’s in the system. He represents the everyman who tries to instill "good intentions" into a corrupted entity that has been programmed by the corrupted.

Picture of John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. - Lord Action