Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Gasline
2. AI
3. Bread
4. Maps
5. Xbox
6. DST
7. Seattle
8. Drones
1. Gasline. The Alaska senate majority might just have managed to murder enabling legislation for the proposed Glenfarne financed natural gas pipeline in Alaska last week. They are at the end of their second special session, a mere 60 days after the end of their normal 120-day legislative session. The House, with a similar majority combination of less than a plurality of democrats caucusing with enough RINOs to put them in the majority managed to pass enabling legislation 34-5 June 12. After that, the Governor called a couple special sessions, with the House continuing to pass what they came up with in June while the Senate majority worked hard on killing the beast. Sadly, they may have just been successful. As the special sessions and conference committee process ground on, we were treated to a remarkable demonstration of bad faith negotiation, bad faith legislation, and bad faith voting. In a sense, it was a lot like negotiation with the IRGC without the ability to bomb them into doomsday. At the end, the senate in their black little hearts only want to find a way to legislatively screw over Hillcorp, a mid-tier oil and natural gas producer who they believe aren’t being gouged for enough money producing Alaska’s oil and natural gas. The final straw came midweek, when the majority from the conference committee offered a final version of gasline enabling legislation at the last minute, that they embargoed from any minority review, including provisions far outside anything discussed over the last 4 weeks. Still, the final product, rejected by the House 19-19, did manage to screw over Hillcorp. Helluva way to do business, that – demanding the ability to screw over your current business partner (Hillcorp) in return for passing legislation that will screw over your new business partner (Glenfarne). Nothing like destroying the ability of resource development corporations to invest in projects in Alaska while demanding more money from them in taxes. In normal times, this might be the end of the story for at least a little while until local politics change (which they always do), this one might end up differently, as the Canadians are already making the rounds of customers who have supply contracts with Glenfarne, hoping to peel them off as customers of Mackenzie River natural gas. The clock keeps ticking. Final comment: I was a long-time skeptic on the economics of an Alaska natural gas pipeline and cannot prove or disprove the current revenue forecasts. But it occurs to me that a new company with transparent cash flow estimates is likely to be on the right path.
2. AI. The most recent flashpoint between the US and the CCP is likely to be AI, with the battle lines being drawn daily. Most of the anti-data center agitprop targeting AI power and water use requirements appear to be fully funded by the CCP. Using that logic, if the CCP manages to shut down construction of AI datacenters here in the US via environmental, power, water, NIMBY / BANANA concerns, the CCP gets an easier, less competitive marketplace for their AI. If, on the other hand, the Jay Valentine distributed architecture AI approach (count me among those who believes this is the Next Big Thing) may very well render all massive datacenters (sadly, including Elon’s million orbiting satellites) obsolete. CCP agitprop has been effective with multiple states (NY is a recent example) banning construction of AI datacenters in NY. What does this solve? Nothing, though it does provide a brief warm fuzzy in the culture wars. The problem with AI is that it is coming at us like the proverbial freight train. We can either choose to be the train or choose to be under it. Democrats these days typically choose to be under. Refusing to participate in the competition is the worst choice, as it actively suppresses everything happening here in the US for the promise of some wonderful future. For my current money, the best AI model is currently Grok, by SpaceX/AI0. The difference in various models is what they are trained on. All CCP AI is trained by lying liars to lie in China and with stolen or publicly available information from the west. Anthropic AI is trained by Biden WH denizens. Grok is trained on a wider fire hose of information, and to the best of my knowledge, specifically not taught to lie.
3. Bread. We tend to forget that life in the Middle East is at its heart, Biblical, as in “Gives us this day, our daily bread.” And it might be bread shortages that finally torpedo the last existing vestiges of the Khomeini – Khamenei regime. A TownHall piece midweek attempted to make the case that new civilian shortages of bread might be enough to push the IRGC regime controlling Iran over the edge into the dustbin of history. The piece reviews the typical shopping list of things what would potentially push the IRGC Junta over the edge. While the citizenry has endured much awfulness over the last 47 years, the civilian economy is collapsing to the point where electricity, water and youth unemployment are hitting everyone. Remaining factories operate below capacity. Worst of all, when bread, the essential daily staple of Iran, which carries an immense symbolic and practical importance nationwide, becomes unaffordable, it forces the general public into an inevitable, uncomfortable decision. Will this be the point where the public rises up against the IRGC? Unlikely, as they have murdered far too many since the last street uprising for this uprising to be successful. Still bread shortages are another brick in the wall.
4. Maps. One of the favorite communist tools is to erase the past. The administration of the “amazing” Zhoran Mamdani released an official map of “Immigrant Enclaves” to “guide visitors during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The map was notable for erasing all while ethnic enclaves, Italian, Jewish and Irish, while listing at least 30 specific neighborhoods across the five boroughs. He made sure to include every single neighborhood with Muslim residents while minimizing those with non-Muslim majorities. When you get into the business of picking and choosing sides on a racial basis and there are over 200 ethnicities in NYC, there is a lot of room to get yourself into trouble, trouble which he actively chose to embrace. Mamdani is essentially erasing the past, which is what communists always do, to favor his current list of preferred peoples. Mamdani is digging for the bottom much faster than any opponent could possibly do to him. We hope for his continued success (/sarc).
5. Xbox. Microsoft is back in the news, and not in a good way, announcing 4,800 layoffs while requesting nearly 2,300 new H-1B hires. 1,600 of those fired were from Xbox, 20% of its workforce this fiscal year. Xbox layoffs have been expected for several months since new CEO called for a reset / restructure of the business. What was not expected was a mass firing of US workers while simultaneously hiring H-1B workers. This should be a fun discussion during the upcoming congressional campaigns. Here’s the fun part. The Xbox CEO is an Indian woman. Any guesses which H-1B hires they will be pursuing? For his part, VP Vance announced Tuesday a large-scale investigation into H-1B visa fraud. On a related note, Vance made headlines in a June interview in the Daily Wire rejecting Milton Freidman free market economic policy, noting that Alexander Hamilton is much more in line with modern social economic challenges than Freidman who made sense in the 1980. Vance supports government intervention such as tariffs and corporate regulation to ensure the economy serves families and local communities. While the economic discussion started by Vance is just beginning, it has the potential to be the seminal discussion that will drive the 2028 presidential nomination. Remember that the direction is always important, even crucial. The goal is to figure out how to minimize government intervention in the marketplace rather than figure out how to justify it. Today, Vance sounds like he is looking for justification for government meddling in the marketplace rather than figuring out how to minimize it, a position which may very well cost him the nomination.
6. DST. Daylight Savings Time may be on its way out. Maybe. The House passed HR 139 – the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025 last week, sending it on to the senate where it may or may not die. While I am not fundamentally opposed to this, nor do I come down on settling on Daylight Standard Time (DST) or Standard Time (ST), I do want to remind readers that we did try this before, half a century ago in 1973. The 1973 legislation was passed as a test during the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, as an attempt to reduce national energy consumption during fuel shortages caused by Nixon’s idiotic decision to inflict price controls on fuel during the embargo. Price controls always instantly cause shortages. The legislation was passed as a one-year long test, initially with 79% public approval. Once winter arrived, the days got short and kiddos started waiting for school buses in the dark, the polling dropped. Note that up here in Alaska, kiddos are always in the dark in the morning due to our short winters. Either way, polling in support quickly dropped below 50% and the test was canceled less than 6 months later. Are we about to make the same mistake again?
7. Seattle. Austin might be in the process of losing its “Keep Austin Weird” moniker, applied by local Red Wassenrich in 2000. The problem is that Seattle is quickly catching up, if not passing it while accelerating outbound. Seattle turned itself into the preferred destination for LGBTQWTF people starting 2012 after WA legalized gay marriage. That preference has accelerated in recent years as Seattle mayors pandered to that community. Bottom line is that practitioners believing they must escape the red states in recent years started flocking to Seattle, overwhelming local public resources. And every day, more of them arrive. Note that none of this is happening because of actual anti-LGBTQWTF ugliness in the red states. For its part, Seattle claims it is not overwhelmed, likely meaning the free money brought in by graft and corruption is still greasing all the right palms.
8. Drones. I always find advances in warfare fascinating. We are seeing a big change in the use of drones by Ukraine, most recently demonstrated by drone attacks on the Russian shadow fleet in the Black Sea and as far away as St Petersburg last week. Drone attacks hit 10 vessels on the Black Sea, 5 oil tankers, one LNG tanker, 3 cargo vessels and a pair of tugboats. Vessels on the neighboring Sea of Azov were also hit. Attacks shut down Russian grain exports through the Rostov Oblast. Up to 30% of Russian grain exports used those waterways. The strikes had similar effect to Russian oil exports not traveling through pipelines. Whatever Ukraine is doing is effective. A John Sexton Hot Air piece, Jul 17, describes what is going on. Launch teams are mobile brigades. They prep the drones for launch. Drones are little guys that carry 8 kilo warheads and 7 – 8 liters of fuel (gasoline in this case). 7 – 8 liters gives you a range of 200 km plus some loiter time at the target. Drones are launched with a catapult, so no runway is necessary. The drone is piloted for a short time immediately after launch to altitude and a stable flight profile and then handed off to AI to get them (they are always used in pairs) to the target area. Once the drones approach the target a couple hours later, a pilot somewhere in or near Kyiv takes over and completes the mission. The second drone flies over the site, records impact, and transmits images allowing near real time bomb damage assessment. The terminal pilot can operate multiple drones at once. The team launching the drones has no connection to the pilots who complete the missions. They generally don’t even know where the drones are going. Their mission is simply to keep launching drones. The more successful the mission is, the more resources the team gets for future missions, essentially a free market reinforcement for performance.
More later –
- AG