Elon Musk restarts the California factory with classy line: "If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me"

"If anyone is arrested, I ask that is only be me", Elon Musk tweeted May 11.
That puts him back in my "admired" column. Alameda County had health inspectors shut the plant down and put everyone out of work.

Space News May 2020

Mining asteroids will compete with earth mines.
They can be staggeringly rich in nickel, platinum, and gold.
Remember the gold on earth was made in the sun
and migrated outwards before
ending up here. 

The US supports "let's make a deal" for space business.  This is great, in my view. The Artemis accords are being drafted to draw in co-signatories and focus on the moon. They include social distancing:  "The Artemis Accords ... propose “safety zones” that would surround future moon bases to prevent damage or interference from rival countries or companies operating in close proximity. The pact also aims to provide a framework under international law for companies to own the resources they mine, the sources said."

Something uncommon with sun spots.  As we go into the next 11 year sunspot cycle, there are briefly co-existing spots from the previous and the upcoming cycle.  Some with magnetic spin sinister, some dexter.

Everybody loves this artist's impression

Omuamua was the first interstellar object confirmed to be passing through our system.  It is rather long and thin, a shape much less probable to have endured than a somewhat rounder form.  What's new is "excess acceleration" not explainable by gravity.  One way to make sense of this is if it is hollow and has a skin thinner than silk allowing it to function as a photon-driven sun sail.  Likelier is a jetting sublimation of surface ice from the tumbling object.

The Japanese have another success with the Hyabusa2 probe.
Not only did it land again on asteroid Ryugu but a slightly jerky movie has been released of it landing and rebounding immediately after capturing some dirt.   The dirt is coming home.


There's a black hole you can "see" with the naked eye.  Not very far away in our own galaxy is a triple star system, visible in the constellation Telescopium from the Southern Hemisphere.  Two are visible and one is not, but of the stars that shine, the one closest to the black hole "star" has a wobble with a 40 day period.  This is 1000 light years away in our galaxy which is over 100,000 light years across.  Two features:  It is the closest ever found and it isn't reacting violently with its environment.

High res infrared mapping of Jupiter was just released.

Do Californians Improve Texas By Moving There?

Comment at The Babylon Bee

Breaking: Iranian Navy Sinks Its Own Warship in Exercise. May be 40 dead.

An Iranian frigate sank their own warship with much loss of life.  Daily Mail.
(Update: 19 dead)

Georgia was scorned for opening two weeks ago. Critics went suddenly silent

When mockers are muted, that means they know they should apologize but won't.  Instead of hearing more about Georgia's Governor being "a monster with blood about to be on his hands", Governor Kemp tweets May 10th: 

“Today marks the lowest number of COVID-19 positive patients currently hospitalized statewide (1,203) since hospitals began reporting this data on April 8th,” Kemp posted to Twitter on Saturday."

The expanded article is at American Thinker.

SIdney BC Has Some Rusty Roads. The pavement has chunks of embedded iron.

Quite a few Sidney roads have spots of iron with rust tails sloping away.  Where did the asphalt mix come from? I've seen it nowhere else in Canada.  My favourite example is the bicycle lane west of the Airport where this picture was taken.

Oscars and Emmys went hard left because they lost their audience

"The Oscars and the Emmys: If the big, broad, general audience you used to have is gone, and deep down you think it’s never coming back, then why not make a harder bid for the loyalty of the smaller audience you’ve got left? In a time when the entertainment industry is (or thinks it is) a one-party state with no dissenters, you had better echo that politics back to your base.  What were once cultural institutions with a broad, bipartisan audience are becoming niche players with a narrow fan base. They no longer view partisan politics as a dangerous move that will shrink their audience."

For the original post, go to Instapundit and enjoy the comments too.

Tanzania outs WHO over testing a Papaya positive for Coronavirus? Be very suspicious

At first, this is a delicious story exposing wrongdoing by WHO in Tanzania, a useful bombshell for WHO's critics.    It goes like this:  President Magifuli of Tanzania says they played a trick on WHO and sent a sample of papaya, goat and pheasant for coronavirus testing at their national and all three came back positive.

This sounds like on of those jokes that start:  An Irishman, an Englishman and a Scot walk into a bar.   You can verify, however, that President Magifuli did make the claim, but don't bet the farm yet on its truth.  He has problems of his own at home and although some lab people have been sent packing,
"The Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention rejected claims of faulty tests by Tanzania’s president."   Wait before exploiting the story.  What technician would bother to make up a fake test reoirt for a piece of fruit?

Incidentally, although I saw this story a day earlier, search results seem suppressed on both Google and Duck Duck Go.

President Trump's Humor

As his daughter, Ivanka, said in a 2016 ad, "My father is absolutely fearless" and he loves to post stuff that cast him in a funny light that others would flee.  Preening scalliwags may not like this retweet.   More than CNN's Stelter fit as targets in this memorable week when the DOJ gave up all charges against General Flynn.

Read Roger Kimbal;s, "The New Normal? Ridiculous"

Here's the link.
Here's some reasons.

"Thucydides noticed this. ... The great historian wrote that in a time of civil war certain words changed their usual meanings and took on new ones. For example, “reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question inaptness to act on any.”     It’s not only civil war that produces such linguistic deformations. Any crisis will do...

“The new normal.” Is there a more nauseating flake of smug linguistic presumption? I think that the imperative “stay safe,” born of our coronavirus panic, comes close. But “the new normal” is worse because it pretends to knowledge not just solicitude.

Julie Kelly raised a question that has to have been on the minds of many people. What if “social distancing” doesn’t work?
“We have,” she notes “been assured by the credentialed class that keeping a distance of six feet between healthy people for weeks on end was the only tried-and-true way to prevent the deadly spread of the novel coronavirus.” But what does the evidence show? We’ve shuttered the economy for almost two months. We’ve destroyed trillions in wealth. We’ve put millions out of work. We’ve denied tens of thousands of people access to medical care for anything except treatment of the coronavirus. We’ve imperiled hospitals across the country.

New Evidence the CCP lied about the Wuhan Lab

Senator Tom Cotton reports that the Wuhan lab was sealed off in October.  The writeup at Gateway Pundit includes "Cell phone data suggests the roads around the Wuhan Lab were shut down for a number of days in October.  This was around the time of the expected viral release."  (Interview with Maria Bartiromo at the link.)

This kind of granular data is increasingly probative. It predates the Wuhan wet market misdirection.  The Communist Party of China knew there was trouble and dissimulated from the start, shaping the narrative.

Donald Duck flips to Donald Trump gif

Pictures lie. Social distance manipulated in telephoto and wide-angle shots

Check the clothing.  The people crowded in one picture and widely spaced in the other picture are dressed the same.  They are the same people.  The photographer's choice decided what you got to see.  See rest of the story at Powerlineblog.  In this example, the intent of the cameraman was to educate, not to push a "progressive" agenda.

When Thrift Stores Re-Open They Will Be Swamped

During lockdown, thrift stores closed.  People at home have been finding things they no longer need and nowhere to take them.  They have also had more time to do spring cleaning than usual.  When thrift stores re-open they will be swamped with donations.  This is an opportunity for shoppers and a burden to the volunteers that run the stores.

1619 Fabulaton at NYT. Is that Pulitzer Prize or Pullet Surprise?

Pulitzer Prize or Pullet Surprise.
Humor found at Ace of Spades commenting on NYT's effort to skew the narrative.

.

"Fauci Follies". Field Hospital Data at Gateway Pundit

Gateway's headline says it plainly:

Fauci’s Follies: US Coronavirus Field Hospitals Shut Down – Most Without Treating a Single Patient — Because Garbage Models Used by US ‘Experts’

An estimated $660 million was spent on field hospitals across the US and 

outside of New York City only 82 patients used them.   Institutions captured budget money and increased in power.

"Don't Bet The Farm On One Model". Bat Flu fails have a message for "Sky Is Falling" climate people"

As Richard Fernandez says, don't bet the farm on one model.

It will be interesting to see whether the demonstrated fallibility of Corona pandemic models will modify the unconditional belief some feel for Climate Change models that deal with even far more complex phenomena over far longer periods. Both recommend incredibly expensive economic solutions to disasters predicted by their respective models. But as we have seen, models while of some use, can be wrong or very inaccurate. It's not always wise to bet the farm on them. Experience suggests that one should always leave room to change course or go into reverse in case the model doesn't pan out.

Without fire, snow pack declined

When fires are suppressed, people pretend to be forest fires.
Their forest management changes snow pack.  Who knew?

Picture is from a Japanese study and gives
an idea what "thinning" might be like.

Absent fires, tree density climbs in managed forests. (I believe this is not true of a climax forest but we don't have them)    With tighter canopy,less snow reaches the ground and the sheltered ground by the trees is slightly warmer.  University of Nevada researchers tried thinning strategies on the shores of Lake Tahoe and learned that removing mid-size leafy trees had the most impact.  (The linked article doesn't give numbers for the reader to judge).

Five Lessons From History Fit The VIrus Crisis Like A Glove

Here are the best parts of Housel's insight, found at "Frontline Thoughts" by Mauldin.

Lesson #1: People suffering from sudden, unexpected hardship are likely to adopt views they previously thought unthinkable.
Lesson #2: Reversion to the mean occurs because people persuasive enough to make something grow don’t have the kind of personalities that allow them to stop before pushing too far.
Lesson #3: Unsustainable things can last longer than you anticipate.
Lesson #4: Progress happens too slowly for people to notice; setbacks happen too fast for people to ignore.
Lesson #5: Wounds heal, scars last.

It's a good read.  Continue here.
There is a link to Mauldin's free newsletter.

Critical comment:  Lesson #2 is phrased poorly in my view.   The people and policies needed to sustain something are different from the ones needed to grow something.

Good joke on the lockdown beach cop patrol