Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[Rob C]

This is not really breaking news, but it is new to me. China has developed a system whereby you can get a complete full charge on your EV within just a few minutes. It's done by battery swapping, and an automated system at a service station will take out your old battery and put in a newly charged one in just a few minutes. As usual, the United States is far behind in this, a technology that would remove one of the barriers that prevent many people from owning an EV. Here's a story about it.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250506-are-chinas-swap-stations-the-future-of-electric-cars

I’d imagine the capital investment requirement for running such service stations must be massive. Exit the little man - if any remains.

[Robert Roaldi]

I’d imagine the capital investment requirement for running such service stations must be massive. Exit the little man - if any remains.

To be fair, it's not as if the average joe can build and operate their own gas stations while maintaining the petroleum supply chain.

I seem to remember an Israeli company that proposed a battery-swapping technology several years ago. They may have gone the way of many early adopters. At first glance, such a system would seem proprietary, hard to believe that manufacturers would cooperate on standardization, they can't even agree on what plugs to use in current cars. OTOH, wall plugs are standardized, within countries at least, so it's not as if it can't happen.

I just wish that Canada would stop hitching its wagon to the USA and allow in smaller European and Chinese EVs into the country. I don't see why huge and expensive are our only options. Didn't Tesla announce a smaller and much cheaper model a while ago? I've lost track.

[Robert Roaldi]

I may have misjudged the NFL Bad Bunny controversy. The Secretary of Homeland Security Noem, at least, seems to think there's a lot to it, more than I would ever have guessed. She is threatening the NFL over the matter, https://variety.com/2025/music/news/kristi-noem-ice-bad-bunny-super-bowl-halftime-show-1236540306/.

She even invoked "God" in her condemnation of the NFL, so it must be serious. I don't understand why the Trump administration suddenly feels that it's important to shake down NFL team owners. Is the next Super Bowl not taking place in a red state?

I did finally watch a short clip of an interview with Mr Bunny himself. I know it was only a casual interview but he seemed pretty harmless to me. I read that he is a US citizen, but after Chicago ICE troopers took over an apartment building and incarcerated many citizens there, US citizenship doesn't seem to mean much anymore.

A judge has ruled against sending the National Guard into Portland Oregon, where the mystery war ravages on. Stephen Miller calls the ruling "legal insurrection". Most of Trumpistan's positions now simply assume that the President has absolute power, and any ruling that seeks to limit his powers is condemned. We're watching the thin edge of the wedge slicing away in real time.

All this culture war nonsense is hysterically funny to watch, from the outside anyway. But why has the Trump administration shut down medical research, why shut down renewable energy projects, surely those things benefit everyone, not just woke libtards. It must be virtue signalling then, but the thing about signalling is that it's fine to go ahead and make the correct announcements in the media, but you don't have to actually shut down the labs and solar farms. Nobody will follow up and verify in 6 months, hell, they've already forgotten. Even the most staunch Trumpeteer wants their cancer cured, don't they?

[Rob C]

Robert, they don’t get cancer: they won’t accept that it exists. Just like Covid, then, it simply requires a new name like, say, a bad cold, and that’s that taken care of until the next time. Sounds crazy; it would have to sound crazy - it is crazy.

[PeterAit]

 But why has the Trump administration shut down medical research, why shut down renewable energy projects, surely those things benefit everyone, not just woke libtards. It must be virtue signalling then, but the thing about signalling is that it's fine to go ahead and make the correct announcements in the media, but you don't have to actually shut down the labs and solar farms. Nobody will follow up and verify in 6 months, hell, they've already forgotten. Even the most staunch Trumpeteer wants their cancer cured, don't they?

The wind farms shut downs stem from an incident years ago in Scotland when the gov't refused to block/change a wind farm that would have "spoiled the view" from one of Trump's golf courses. Like many 4 year olds he does not take well to being told "no."

[degrub]

I may have misjudged the NFL Bad Bunny controversy. The Secretary of Homeland Security Noem, at least, seems to think there's a lot to it, more than I would ever have guessed. She is threatening the NFL over the matter, https://variety.com/2025/music/news/kristi-noem-ice-bad-bunny-super-bowl-halftime-show-1236540306/.

She even invoked "God" in her condemnation of the NFL, so it must be serious. I don't understand why the Trump administration suddenly feels that it's important to shake down NFL team owners. Is the next Super Bowl not taking place in a red state?

I did finally watch a short clip of an interview with Mr Bunny himself. I know it was only a casual interview but he seemed pretty harmless to me. I read that he is a US citizen, but after Chicago ICE troopers took over an apartment building and incarcerated many citizens there, US citizenship doesn't seem to mean much anymore.

A judge has ruled against sending the National Guard into Portland Oregon, where the mystery war ravages on. Stephen Miller calls the ruling "legal insurrection". Most of Trumpistan's positions now simply assume that the President has absolute power, and any ruling that seeks to limit his powers is condemned. We're watching the thin edge of the wedge slicing away in real time.

All this culture war nonsense is hysterically funny to watch, from the outside anyway. But why has the Trump administration shut down medical research, why shut down renewable energy projects, surely those things benefit everyone, not just woke libtards. It must be virtue signalling then, but the thing about signalling is that it's fine to go ahead and make the correct announcements in the media, but you don't have to actually shut down the labs and solar farms. Nobody will follow up and verify in 6 months, hell, they've already forgotten. Even the most staunch Trumpeteer wants their cancer cured, don't they?

Robert, you might like this comic strip. i do. He has some real political zingers for the orange haired one.

https://www.gocomics.com/robert-ariail

[Rob C]

The wind farms shut downs stem from an incident years ago in Scotland when the gov't refused to block/change a wind farm that would have "spoiled the view" from one of Trump's golf courses. Like many 4 year olds he does not take well to being told "no."

It’s a funny psychology in Scotland.

They already had famous courses for the hitting of tiny white balls with the most impractical weaponry imaginable; why was it thought a good idea to sell to Mr Trump? The creation of all new courses could have been just as simply achieved by local entrepreneurs, but it didn’t happen. If the existing ones were already profitable, then the need to sell seems odd: surely, continuing, long-term profits are more attractive than one-off gains? If they didn’t turn a profit before Trump, why would he buy them unless to put against tax as losses - if foreign investments work that way in US accountancy rules?

Whisky. Very rich owner barons sold out to England-based conglomerates, then many people came to hold the view that foreigners had stolen “our” whisky… Water supplies hold the same magical fascination, the underlying belief that foreigners control the taps to the discomfort of local people. Where the tankers exporting this stuff to foreign parts are, nobody knows. There exists an entire Scottish government that, despite decades of malpractice and ineptitude, manages to stay in power because it touts this kind of pathetic nationalism.

Maybe Scotland needs its own, Scottish, Trump? 007 seemed destined for the rôle, but as with so many things there, it didn’t actually materialise. I guess life in a little community outside Nassau beat the Scottish alternative.

[Robert Roaldi]

It may be happening again. Remember in 2008 when dumbass finance guys with too little oversight nearly ruined the economy because they couldn’t resist tampering with a stable home ownership mortgage industy and just had to jimmy with it to siphon off profits while providing little benefit to anyone? (My interpretation    )

Again, only this time with cars, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrTd6SsBa_g.

Our lives are so much better after deregulating the finance industry.

[Rob C]

It may be happening again. Remember in 2008 when dumbass finance guys with too little oversight nearly ruined the economy because they couldn’t resist tampering with a stable home ownership mortgage industy and just had to jimmy with it to siphon off profits while providing little benefit to anyone? (My interpretation    )

Again, only this time with cars, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrTd6SsBa_g.

Our lives are so much better after deregulating the finance industry.

Of course they are.

I remember November 2008 all too well: my wife wrote her final signature as we tried to beat the clock and shift our accounts from one jurisdiction to another, safer one. A week later she was gone. Some things haunt one for ever. I truly hate those financial charlatans who cause so much pain. I don’t think any of them served time, did they?

[Robert Roaldi]

There are online reports that Pam Bondi has filed an "official petition" to the NFL to cancel Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show. The articles I saw don't really define what an "official petition" is. Did they just make that up?

This just gets funnier and funnier.

[Rob C]

Regarding the 2008 meltdown: there is a documentary about it, excellent on all points including some amazing filming of Iceland scenery, entitled Inside Job.

It’s been a long time since I watched it, but I have a trace memory in my wiring telling me that I had either linked or mentioned this production on LuLa several long years ago. Have you noticed that about time? The very same period in our life can appear, to ourselves, as sometimes being a long, long time ago, yet on other occasions the very same period seems as close as yesterday.

[Robert Roaldi]

Regarding the 2008 meltdown: there is a documentary about it, excellent on all points including some amazing filming of Iceland scenery, entitled Inside Job.

It’s been a long time since I watched it, but I have a trace memory in my wiring telling me that I had either linked or mentioned this production on LuLa several long years ago. Have you noticed that about time? The very same period in our life can appear, to ourselves, as sometimes being a long, long time ago, yet on other occasions the very same period seems as close as yesterday.

Oh yeah. It's all a blur.

[Robert Roaldi]

The Bad Bunny/NFL pseudo-controversy just keeps getting better and better. Marjorie Taylor Greene said this,

“Bad Bunny says America has 4 months to learn Spanish before his perverse unwanted performance at the Super Bowl halftime. It would be a good time to pass my bill to make English the official language of America,” she posted, adding that the NFL “needs to stop having demonic sexual performances during its halftime shows.”

"Demonic sexual performance"?  You cannot buy publicity this good.

I saw it here https://www.huffpost.com/entry/marjorie-taylor-greene-english-only-law-bad-bunny-super-bowl_n_68e3eb9be4b0bd1928fb8179 but it must be all over the interweb.

[Robert Roaldi]

Gwynne Dyer reflects on the USA and Brazil, https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/brazil-and-the-united-states-same-crime-different-fate/.

[Robert Roaldi]

Gwynne Dyer's non-prediction about the future of the USA https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/the-united-states-things-to-come/.

[Rob C]

Gwynne Dyer's non-prediction about the future of the USA https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/the-united-states-things-to-come/.

 

To ruminate upon “Things to come”.

For forty-four years I have enjoyed a country view from my ground floor verandah; yes, the field onto which it looks used to be farmed, and in season, the wheat blew in the wind like a golden sea. Later on, thanks to European agricultural policies, the farmer was financially encouraged to stop cultivating and keeping his cow, goats and pigs. He took the pieces of silver and retired to a life in town, where the boredom and lack of steady physical labour killed him.

The field returned to nature, and pines from the nearby mountain blew their seed at the field, and lo, new life was created. Unfortunately, it also cost me my fantastic view of the Tramuntana mountain range as well as of Puig Mayor, the highest point on the island, at some 1440 metres. But hey, it’s only natural, right?

Yesterday, as well as today, the sound of a pile driver and what, in the restricted view through the pines, looked like a pipe-laying device. Am I seeing a third of the value of my apartment being burned? That feels decidedly not natural.

As some wag wrote: I’m in favour of progress; it’s change that I hate.

[Robert Roaldi]

 

To ruminate upon “Things to come”.

For forty-four years I have enjoyed a country view from my ground floor verandah; yes, the field onto which it looks used to be farmed, and in season, the wheat blew in the wind like a golden sea. Later on, thanks to European agricultural policies, the farmer was financially encouraged to stop cultivating and keeping his cow, goats and pigs. He took the pieces of silver and retired to a life in town, where the boredom and lack of steady physical labour killed him.

The field returned to nature, and pines from the nearby mountain blew their seed at the field, and lo, new life was created. Unfortunately, it also cost me my fantastic view of the Tramuntana mountain range as well as of Puig Mayor, the highest point on the island, at some 1440 metres. But hey, it’s only natural, right?

Yesterday, as well as today, the sound of a pile driver and what, in the restricted view through the pines, looked like a pipe-laying device. Am I seeing a third of the value of my apartment being burned? That feels decidedly not natural.

As some wag wrote: I’m in favour of progress; it’s change that I hate.

My eastern suburb of Ottawa used to be farmland, but tract housing is slowly replacing it all. People do have to live somewhere and there's more and more of them all the time. But how much sense does it make to have all those deserted hectares of green lawns and asphalt roads sitting there 24/7 while their owners spend half their lives at jobs to pay for it all. I guess the squirrels like it.

I saw a cartoon the other day, cannot remember where. Parents are watching their son's marching parade at a military college graduation ceremony. The cynical caption read, "I wonder which oil company he's going to die for."

[Rob C]

After I wrote my earlier post, I walked into a bunch of neighbours who had been in contact with the excitement in the field. It turns out that the local council is taking soil samples and making soundings with a view to the construction of “social housing’ so yep, that’s the value of my place gonna fall by a third! From quiet, holiday homes and older residents, to a neighbourhood of kids, footballs kicked around the parked cars, dogs running free to shit on the pavements. We already have a parking problem: five places for nine apartments, which kinda works because not everybody wants or has a car. Throw in new buildings…

I should have sold immediately after my wife died, and looked for a life somewhere else. I’d vaguely thought of Rome, but probably a lot more crime, and any place I could buy wouldn’t have been up to much. A return to Scotland would have felt like a personal defeat. I would probably have shed my mortal coil a long time ago. Mum always used to say: the cold kills the old!

I guess that pretty much indicates that the family presence here ends with me.

Kinda sad, when you think that the philosophy had always been to leave your world a little bit better for your next in liners than you’d maybe found it. Oh well, an old Nikon F3 (with box!), hardly used from new, should be worth a cup of coffee.

[Robert Roaldi]

In case you've been wondering about Trump's use of pardons, here are video shorts on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nclqi23yZ5I

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z5aXVxfdU6k

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/a1ANR5kSDa4

this one hints at Trump's price for granting pardons, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ktyjH0ff4hI

[Robert Roaldi]

At a presser last week, a reporter asked Trump if he intended to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump replied "Ghislaine who?" Geez that was funny. He's just shining everyone on, isn't he?

The fact that people are even discussing pardoning someone who facilitated sex trafficking of under-age girls is mind-bending, and yet that's where we're at. And no one would be surprised if it happened.

Some people are still astonished that ICE is targeting non-criminal undocumented immigrants in a very cruel way. Wake up, drug dealing criminal illegals are hard to catch, they resist arrest and are probably armed. The ones who have jobs and pay rent are much easier to find and arrest. Come on, it's not like ICE is a crack squad of super cops. If they were, they might be trying to track down ties between foreign drug cartels and domestic drug dealers like the mob and biker gangs, but man that's hard. Be interesting to see what would happen if all those undocumented immigrants were white.

I also keep seeing online videos testifying to how Trump policies are making life difficult for farmers. That's just funny. Since when has this crowd cared about the average working stiff. If farmers have to sell up it just makes it cheaper for private equity to buy all the land. Who does Trump go to lunch with, farmers or billionaires. It's astonishing to me that there seem to still be people who think that the Trump administration is there to serve the public.

They are trashing the CDC. Good plan. What could go wrong with that?

They talk "free speech" "free speech" "free speech" then they require the press to sign onto guidelines to be allowed into Department of War/Defense press conferences. They need to agree on what to say or not say in their reporting, as if the press is the government's marketing department. How Soviet. That met with some resistance, but it's probably ok with the cultists. It struck me that the US is becoming a lot like what anti-American protesters have always said it was.

The latest is the fanfare around what they're calling Trump's middle east peace plan. Is it too cynical of me to laugh out loud. Has there been a recent US President that has not brokered a mid-east peace? My guess is that it will end up meaning about as much as any of the so-called trade deals that Trump has "signed". What are the tariffs now, does anyone know?