Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 12. Don't look . . . everything's just fine edition.

 

November 25, 2025.

The consolidation of the meat packing industry, which we've long complained about here, hits home, again:

Wyoming Cattle Ranchers Say Nebraska Plant Closure Is A Sign Of Deeper Problems

And the Federal Government gives a boost to the technology that's going to 1) take all our jobs, and 2), kill us.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1.  Purpose.  From the founding of our Republic, scientific discovery and technological innovation have driven American progress and prosperity.  Today, America is in a race for global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), an important frontier of scientific discovery and economic growth.  To that end, my Administration has taken a number of actions to win that race, including issuing multiple Executive Orders and implementing America’s AI Action Plan, which recognizes the need to invest in AI-enabled science to accelerate scientific advancement.  In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories.

This order launches the “Genesis Mission” as a dedicated, coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery that can solve the most challenging problems of this century.  The Genesis Mission will build an integrated AI platform to harness Federal scientific datasets — the world’s largest collection of such datasets, developed over decades of Federal investments — to train scientific foundation models and create AI agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs.  The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites — to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization.  We will harness for the benefit of our Nation the revolution underway in computing, and build on decades of innovation in semiconductors and high-performance computing.  The Genesis Mission will dramatically accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen national security, secure energy dominance, enhance workforce productivity, and multiply the return on taxpayer investment into research and development, thereby furthering America’s technological dominance and global strategic leadership.

Sec. 2.  Establishment of the Genesis Mission.  (a)  There is hereby established the Genesis Mission (Mission), a national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing national challenges.

(b)  The Secretary of Energy (Secretary) shall be responsible for implementing the Mission within DOE, consistent with the provisions of this order, including, as appropriate and authorized by law, setting priorities and ensuring that all DOE resources used for elements of the Mission are integrated into a secure, unified platform.  The Secretary may designate a senior political appointee to oversee day-to-day operations of the Mission.

(c)  The Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST) shall provide general leadership of the Mission, including coordination of participating executive departments and agencies (agencies) through the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and the issuance of guidance to ensure that the Mission is aligned with national objectives.

Sec. 3.  Operation of the American Science and Security Platform.  

(a)  The Secretary shall establish and operate the American Science and Security Platform (Platform) to serve as the infrastructure for the Mission with the purpose of providing, in an integrated manner and to the maximum extent practicable and consistent with law:

(i)    high-performance computing resources, including DOE national laboratory supercomputers and secure cloud-based AI computing environments, capable of supporting large-scale model training, simulation, and inference;

(ii)   AI modeling and analysis frameworks, including AI agents to explore design spaces, evaluate experimental outcomes, and automate workflows;

(iii)  computational tools, including AI-enabled predictive models, simulation models, and design optimization tools;

(iv)   domain-specific foundation models across the range of scientific domains covered;

(v)    secure access to appropriate datasets, including proprietary, federally curated, and open scientific datasets, in addition to synthetic data generated through DOE computing resources, consistent with applicable law; applicable classification, privacy, and intellectual property protections; and Federal data-access and data-management standards; and

(vi)   experimental and production tools to enable autonomous and AI-augmented experimentation and manufacturing in high-impact domains.

(b)  The Secretary shall take necessary steps to ensure that the Platform is operated in a manner that meets security requirements consistent with its national security and competitiveness mission, including applicable classification, supply chain security, and Federal cybersecurity standards and best practices.

(c)  Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall identify Federal computing, storage, and networking resources available to support the Mission, including both DOE on-premises and cloud-based high-performance computing systems, and resources available through industry partners.  The Secretary shall also identify any additional partnerships or infrastructure enhancements that could support the computational foundation for the Platform.

(d)  Within 120 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall:

(i)   identify a set of initial data and model assets for use in the Mission, including digitization, standardization, metadata, and provenance tracking; and

(ii)  develop a plan, with appropriate risk-based cybersecurity measures, for incorporating datasets from federally funded research, other agencies, academic institutions, and approved private-sector partners, as appropriate.

(e)  Within 240 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall review capabilities across the DOE national laboratories and other participating Federal research facilities for robotic laboratories and production facilities with the ability to engage in AI-directed experimentation and manufacturing, including automated and AI-augmented workflows and the related technical and operational standards needed.

(f)  Within 270 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall, consistent with applicable law and subject to available appropriations, seek to demonstrate an initial operating capability of the Platform for at least one of the national science and technology challenges identified pursuant to section 4 of this order.

Sec. 4.  Identification of National Science and Technology Challenges.  

(a)  Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall identify and submit to the APST a detailed list of at least 20 science and technology challenges of national importance that the Secretary assesses to have potential to be addressed through the Mission and that span priority domains consistent with National Science and Technology Memorandum 2 of September 23, 2025, including:

(i)    advanced manufacturing;

(ii)   biotechnology;

(iii)  critical materials;

(iv)   nuclear fission and fusion energy;

(v)    quantum information science; and

(vi)   semiconductors and microelectronics.

(b)  Within 30 days of submission of the list described in subsection (a) of this section, the APST shall review the proposed list and, working with participating agency members of the NSTC, coordinate the development of an expanded list that can serve as the initial set of national science and technology challenges to be addressed by the Mission, including additional challenges proposed by participating agencies through the NSTC, subject to available appropriations.

(c)  Following development of the expanded list described in subsection (b) of this section, agencies participating in the Mission shall use the Platform to advance research and development aligned with the national science and technology challenges identified in the expanded list, consistent with applicable law and their respective missions, and subject to available appropriations.

(d)  On an annual basis thereafter, the Secretary shall review and update the list of challenges in consultation with the APST and the NSTC to reflect progress achieved, emerging national needs, and alignment with my Administration’s research and development priorities.

Sec. 5.  Interagency Coordination and External Engagement.  

(a)  The APST, through the NSTC, and with support from the Federal Chief Data Officer Council and the Chief AI Officer Council, shall convene relevant and interested agencies to:

(i)    assist participating agencies in aligning, to the extent permitted by law, their AI-related programs, datasets, and research and development activities with the objectives of the Mission in their respective areas of expertise, while avoiding duplication of effort across the Federal Government and promoting interoperability;

(ii)   identify data sources that may support the Mission’s aim;

(iii)  develop a process and resourcing plan in coordination with participating agencies for integrating appropriate and available agency data and infrastructure into the Mission, to the extent permitted by law and subject to available appropriations, including methods under which all agencies contributing to the Mission are encouraged to implement appropriate risk-based security measures that reflect cybersecurity best practices;

(iv)   launch coordinated funding opportunities or prize competitions across participating agencies, to the extent permitted by law and subject to available appropriations, to incentivize private-sector participation in AI-driven scientific research aligned with Mission objectives; and

(v)    establish mechanisms to coordinate research and development funding opportunities and experimental resources across participating agencies, ensuring agencies can participate effectively in the Mission.

(b)  The APST shall coordinate with relevant agencies in establishing, consistent with existing authorizing statutes and subject to available appropriations, competitive programs for research fellowships, internships, and apprenticeships focused on the application of AI to scientific domains identified as national challenges for the Mission, to include placement of program participants at DOE national laboratories and other participating Federal research facilities, with the purpose of providing access to the Platform and training in AI-enabled scientific discovery.

(c)  The Secretary, in coordination with the APST and the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, shall establish mechanisms for agency collaboration with external partners possessing advanced AI, data, or computing capabilities or scientific domain expertise, including through cooperative research and development agreements, user facility partnerships, or other appropriate arrangements with external entities to support and enhance the activities of the Mission, and shall ensure that such partnerships are structured to preserve the security of Federal research assets and maximize public benefit.  To facilitate these collaborations, the Secretary shall:

(i)    develop standardized partnership frameworks, including cooperative research and development or other appropriate agreements, and data-use and model‑sharing agreements;

(ii)   establish clear policies for ownership, licensing, trade-secret protections, and commercialization of intellectual property developed under the Mission, including innovations arising from AI-directed experiments;

(iii)  implement uniform and stringent data access and management processes and cybersecurity standards for non-Federal collaborators accessing datasets, models, and computing environments, including measures requiring compliance with classification, privacy, and export-control requirements, as well as other applicable laws; and

(iv)   establish procedures to ensure the highest standards of vetting and authorization of users and collaborators seeking access to the resources of the Mission and associated research activities, including the Platform and associated Federal research resources.

(d)  The APST, through the NSTC, shall, to the extent appropriate, identify opportunities for international scientific collaboration to support activities under the Mission.

Sec. 6.  Evaluation and Reporting.  

(a)  Within 1 year of the date of this order, and on an annual basis thereafter, the Secretary shall submit a report to the President, through the APST and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, describing:

(i)    the Platform’s operational status and capabilities;

(ii)   progress toward integration across DOE national laboratories and other participating Federal research partners, including shared access to computing resources, data infrastructure, and research facilities;

(iii)  the status of user engagement, including participation of student researchers and any related training;

(iv)   updates on research efforts and outcomes achieved, including measurable scientific advances, publications, and prototype technologies;

(v)    the scope and outcomes of public-private partnerships, including collaborative research projects and any technology transitions or commercialization activities; and

(vi)   any identified needs or recommendations for authorities or interagency support to achieve the Mission’s objectives.

Sec. 7.  General Provisions.  

(a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

(d)  The costs for publication of this order shall be borne by the Department of Energy.

                            DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,

    November 24, 2025.

$$$

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Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 11. The blistering ignorance edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2025, Carpetbaggers, Chuck Gray, Diaper baby, Economics, Education, Ignorance, National Outdoor Leadership School, Nuclear power, Wyoming (Bar Nunn), Wyoming Freedom Caucus, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Stop the presses: Wyoming press corps suffers historic blow

Stop the presses: Wyoming press corps suffers historic blow: Uinta, Platte, Niobrara, Goshen and Sublette counties become "news deserts" as News Media Corp shutters eight local Wyoming newspapers with no notice. The oldest had been in print for 122 years. Thirty people lost jobs.

This is sad indeed. 

This is part of a long term trend. . . the death of the written newspaper, and its a feature of the evolution of technology.

It's also part of what's made the United States a meaner, ruder, and stupider society in recent years.

Small town newspapers once thrived.  Every town had a newspaper, and even minor cities had more than one. Casper had two daily newspapers for years.  When traveling, one of the things I always used to do was to buy a local newspaper, usually first thing in the morning.  I'd normally read it as I ate breakfast.  For that matter, lots of cafes had newspaper machines there in anticipation of people doing just that.

Now my local paper, barely hanging on, comes to me with a digital format.  It's a shadow of its former self.

Also specter like is respect for the press.  People have always tended to hate the press, just as they hate lawyers, but for a different reason.  People don't like having their dirty laundry aired in public, even if they like looking at the dirty laundry of others, and people always feel that bad news is, somehow, a conspiracy.  But when the news was mostly distributed by print media, people still had to largely accept that the news was real.

This started to erode even when the internet was in its infancy.  Buffoons like Rush Limbaugh, who came on the radio and spouted propaganda, began to be taken as news.  Now they're everywhere.  People who'd prefer to get their news from the high school locker-room, for instance, can listen to Joe Rogan.  Fox News and  the like can provide streams of one sided blather a la Tass or the Völkischer Beobachter.  People, who don't really like to be distressed by the news, can take comfort in these sources that tell them exactly what they want to hear.

What they won't be hearing much about is local events, as the local papers pass away.

Cellmate of Boethius: Progressives Are Driving Themselves Into Extinctio...

Cellmate of Boethius: Progressives Are Driving Themselves Into Extinctio...

Donald Trump insults Catholicism.

There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President. We just buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St. Peter. Do not mock us.

New York State Conference of Catholic Bishops. 

Trump, in something that's supposed to be a jest, posted a photograph of himself dressed as a Pope, no doubt generated by the onrushing curse of our age, AI.

I'm not going to post it.

This should serve as as warning to Trump supporting Catholics.  Trump, who received widespread Evangelical Christian support and who has housed an faith advisor office in the White House which is staffed by a rather peculiar Evangelical pastor, shows no signs at all as taking religion seriously, and never has, but he is comfortable with coopting it.  In spite of that, and this was inevitable, he doesn't mind mocking the oldest and original Christian religion.

That tells you what you need to know.

I've long held that a real Christian can't be comfortable with either of the two major US political parties or with their recent leaders.  Only the American Solidarity Party comes close to being a party Christians can really be comfortable with.  The presence of Catholic politicians at the forefront of either party does not change this.  Biden advanced the sea of blood objectives of the infanticide supporting Democratic Party.  J.D Vance has supported the IF policies of the bizarre Trump protatalist agenda and that's just a start.  The Church has rarely attempted to hold Catholic politicians directly to account for reasons known to itself.

Before the Trump regime concludes, this is going to get worse.  Trump will conclude that he doesn't need Catholics for anything, because he does not.  A religion which is catholic, ie., universal, by nature will not ultimately be comfortable with a political philosophy which aggressively nationalist and nativist.  This, indeed, has been the history of Catholicism in the US, with it only being after the election of John F. Kennedy that things changed.

Some will claim, of course, that this means nothing and its just Trump trying to be funny. That's politically disturbing enough, as Trump is already an embarrassment to the country.  But those who think this should ask if Trump would have dared to depict himself as, for example, an imam. . . not hardly.

Trump's insult is offered as its safe to offer it.  As has sometimes been noted, anti Catholicism is the "last acceptable prejudice".  Trump offered this insult as it fits in nicely with his contempt for Christianity in general, but more particular, for his contempt for the Church, something that fits in nicely with the most extreme of his Evangelical supporters.

Catholics need to review the meaning of The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus.  We're part of something larger, and once we surrender to something smaller, we need to be cautious.  We can expect to be mocked and held in contempt, and if we aren't, there may well be something wrong with our witness.

But we don't have to accept the situation, nor tolerate it, where we do not need to.

Blog Mirror: Wyoming Catholic College Students Surrender Their Cellphones For Four Years

 

Wyoming Catholic College Students Surrender Their Cellphones For Four Years

No focus, no fights, and a bad back – 16 ways technology has ruined my life

 No focus, no fights, and a bad back – 16 ways technology has ruined my life

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 54th Edition. The swift and the not so swift edition.

• Twitter has banned searches for Taylor Swift.

This tells us something about the danger of AI, as what they were searching for is AI generated faux nudes of the singer.

It also tells us something about entertainers we already knew.  Yes, their art counts, but part of their popularity, quite often, is that they're a form of art themselves. Which leads us to the next thing.

Everything about this is wrong on an existential level.  AI, frankly, is wrong.  

And once again, presented with the time, talent, and money to be sufficiently idle to do great things, we turn to the basest. 

• There's a creepy fascination going on with Tyler Swift

I don't know anything about Tyler Swift, other than that she's tall, and from the photos I've seen of her, on stage she wears, like many female singers, tight clothing.  She appears to be very tall, and is sort of a classic beauty.

I suppose that's the root of it.

Apparently, right wing media and MAGA people are just freaking out about Tyler Swift.  This has been headline fodder for some time, but I only got around to looking it up now, as I don't follow entertainment at all and don't care that much.

Swift is dating some football player.  I don't follow football either, so that doesn't interest me.  Beautiful female entertainers dating sports figures, or marrying them, isn't news, and it isn't even interesting.  Consider Kate Upton and Marilyn Monroe.  Indeed, under the evolutionary biological precept of hypergyny, most rich women in entertainment would naturally gravitate in this direction, as much as we like to pretend that our DNA does not push us in one direction or another (lesser female entertainers, such as Rachel Ray and Kathy Ireland, tend to marry lawyers).  Billy Joel may have sung about the opposite in Uptown Girl, but that truly is a fantasy.  There's really very little direction from them to otherwise take, whether they are cognizant of it or not.

And so now we have this total weirdness:

Right wing conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec: 

People who don’t understand why I have been commenting on Taylor Swift and Barbie are completely missing the point and NGMI These are mascots for the establishment. High level ops used as info warfare tools of statecraft for the regime.

Newsmax host Greg Kelly:

They’re elevating her to an idol.

Idolatry. This is a little bit of what idolatry, I think, looks like. And you’re not supposed to do that. In fact, if you look it up in the Bible, it’s a sin!

Far right activist Laura Loomer:

The Democrats’ Taylor Swift election interference psyop is happening in the open … It’s not a coincidence that current and former Biden admin officials are propping up Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. They are going to use Taylor Swift as the poster child for their pro-abortion GOTV Campaign.

Donald Trump fanboy and poster child for political train derailment, Vivek Ramaswamy:

I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall …

And if all of that isn't weird enough for you, a host on the right wing  OAN claims the Swift football dating is a deep state psy op, because sports brainwash kids when they should be focused on religion. 

This is insane.

Liz Cheney warned us that idiocy had crept into the nation's politics.  What more evidence of this is required than this?

• Celebrity endorsements.

Some of this stems from a fear that Swift might endorse President Biden.  I read something that claimed she had in 2020.

I don't know if she did or not, and I don't particularly care.

There are a host of celebrities who have endorsed Trump.  Nobody seems to get up in arms about that, or even notice it.  So why the concern.

Probably because Swift is seen as the voice of her generation, and that sure ain't the generation that MAGA is made up of.  I.e, she's young and an independent female.  

Look at it this way, would you rather have her endorsement, or Lauren Boebert's?

I frankly don't get celebrity endorsements anyhow.  I don't know why we care what any actor or singer thinks about anything.  Freaking out about it is just silly.

• Jay Leno is seeking to be the guardian and conservator for his wife, Mavis, who is 77, and has dementia.

This is a tragedy.

It's also a tragedy in the nation's eye. Most of the time really notable figures endure something like this, it's out of the public eyesight.  We didn't watch Ronald Reagan decline on the news.  Of course, we're unlikely to see Ms. Leno endure this either.

But this serves as a warning.  Old age, we often hear, isn't for wimps.  And one of the things about it is that those who remain mentally fit have to take care of those who do not.  Most families find this out.

But what about when they're running for office?

• The National Park Service reports a 63-year-old man died on a trail in Zion National Park.  Heart attack.

This headline tells us something, too. 63, we're often told, isn't old. But then we're not too surprised when a 63-year-old dies hiking, are we?

• A concluding thought.  We're getting scary stupid.

Freaking out about Tyler Swift, letting two octogenarians run to carry the nuclear football, engaging in endless weird conspiracy theories. . . we've really let the dogs of insanity out big time.

Frankly, a lot of the time the "elite", by which we mean the educated elite, the cultural elite, etc., kept a lid on this.  It wasn't as if the opinions of "the people" didn't matter, but they were tempered.

That's not happening in the country now at all.  Swift is part of a left wing conspiracy, efforts to prevent gender mutilation are due to right wing meanness.  This is out of hand.

Last Prior Edition:

The Lost Cause and the Arlington Confederate Monument. Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 53d Edition.

Saturday, December 29, 1923. The dawn of television.

Russian-born engineer Vladimir K. Zworykin filed for a patent on his Television System, which would evolve into television.  He was employed by Westinghouse at the time, having immigrated to the U.S. during the Russian Civil War.  He died in 1982, living to an undetermined age in his early 90s.

Television advertisement from 1939.

Zworykin wasn't the only individual working on televised images, and his system wasn't the only one that was around.  A system by a rival inventor,  John Logie Baird, would be the first one on the market, coming at an amazingly early 1928, with the first television station, WRGB, then W2XB, broadcasting from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, NY.  For various reason, however, television didn't really take off until after World War Two, with the 1950s really seeing an explosion in its use.  Even at that, however, many households did not have televisions until the 1960s.  I can recall the first television our family had, which must have been acquired in the mid 1960s.  My mother bought it as a gift for my father, but had as an additional motive the hope that he'd spend more evenings at home rather than stop by to visit his mother, who lived a couple of blocks away.  Indeed, my father took to television (my mother never did), and her hopes were realized.

Test pattern from when local television stations quit broadcasting at night, and reappeared in the morning, with this image.  I can recall this appearing on our television early in the morning when my father first turned it on.

That experience really shows one of the frankly negative aspects of what would prove to be a groundbreaking technology.  Prior to television, while radio had arrived, there was still a great deal of "make your own entertainment" and the visiting of friends and relatives in the evenings.  Television helped end all that, which proved to be a radical shift in long held societal patterns.  Interestingly, television itself has never portrayed that change, and continues to depict life in large part as it had been before its arrival.  You don't see television programs in which people sit around and watch television.

As we've noted here before, early television was all locally broadcast, from locally owned stations.  Indeed, the FCC strictly regulated this latter aspect of television, which of course broadcast over the public airways.  Cable made major inroads, however, not television and a near deregulation of the industry has mean that it now broadcasts over multiple channels, in multiple ways, 24 hours a day, with local ownership often not existing.

Televisions ultimately became so common that by the early 2000s, most American households contained three of them.  The number is now down to 2.5, reflecting the advance of computers, which has cut into television use.  

All in all, while undoubtedly there are other opinions, television has been enormously corrosive and detrimental to society.

Germany agreed to pay France's and Belgium's expenses for occupying the Ruhr.  The UK objected to the French collecting taxes on a British owned mined in the region.

The SS Mutlah disappeared in the Mediterranean with all of its 40 hands lost.

The Mexican Federal Army was advancing towards Vera Cruz, the rebels having been routed. . . and industrial school girls were on the warpath.

The Saturday magazines were out.

Wednesday, October 17, 1973. The Arab Oil Embargo begins.

OPEC having doubled prices the day prior, Arab oil producing nations, led by Saudi Arabia, now went further and cut production overall by 5% and then placed an embargo on the United States, the Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom, West Germany,  Japan, Rhodesia, South Africa, and Portugal.  Western oil producers Venezuela nor Ecuador refused to join the embargo.

This causes us to recall part of what we recently posted here:

Friday, October 12, 1973. President Nixon commences a transfer of military equipment that leads to a Wyoming oil boom.

Congressman Gerald Ford was nominated to be Vice President by Richard Nixon.  

Also on that day, President Nixon authorized Operation Nickel Grass, the airlift of weapons to Israel.

 

M60 tank being loaded as part of Operation Nickel Grass

The operation revealed severe problems with the U.S. airlift capacity and would likely have not been possible without the assistance of Portugal, whose Azores facilities reduced the need for air-to-air refueling.  The transfer of equipment would also leave the United States dangerously short of some sorts of military equipment, including radios, something that was compounded by the fact that the U.S. was transferring a large volume of equipment to the Republic of Vietnam at the same time.

This would directly result in the Arab Oil Embargo, which had been threatened. The embargo commenced on October 17.  

U.S. oil production had peaked in 1970.  Oil imports rose by 52% between 1969 and 1972, an era when fuel efficiency was disregarded.  By 1972 the U.S. was importing 83% of its oil from the Middle East, but the real cost of petroleum had declined from the late 1950s.

The low cost of petroleum was a major factor in American post-war affluence from the mid 1940s through the 1960s.  The embargo resulted in a major expansion of Wyoming's oil and gas industry, and in some ways fundamentally completed a shift in the state's economy that had been slowly ongoing since World War One, replacing agriculture with hydrocarbon extraction as the predominant industry.

We often hear a lot of anecdotal information about this topic today.  

In this context, it's interesting to note that petroleum consumption is not much greater today in the U.S. than it was in 1973, but domestic production is the highest, by far, it's ever been.  Importation of petroleum is falling, but it's also higher than it was in 1973, but exportation of petroleum is the highest it's ever been, exceeding the amount produced in 1973.  If experts are balanced against imports, we're at an effective all-time low for importation.  In effect, presently, all we're doing with importation is balancing sources.

People hate this thought locally, but with renewable energy sources coming online, there's a real chance that petroleum consumption will fall for the first time since the 1970s, which would have the impact of reducing imports to irrelevancy.  Any way its looked at, the U.S. is no hostage to Middle Eastern oil any more.

It turned out that Europe wasn't hostage to Russian hydrocarbons either, so all of this reflects a fundamental shift in the world's economy.

Price has certainly changed over time.

Juan and Isabel Person were sworn into office as the elected president and vice president of Argentina

Judge John Sirica ruled that the Senate Watergate Committee was not entitled to have access to President Nixon's tape recordings, but that the U.S. Department of Justice special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, could subpoena them as evidence.

Motorola Corporation's engineer's filed for a patent on the DynaTAC, the first hand-held cellular telephone.  It would be issued two years later and our long modern nightmare would accelerate.

The DynaTAC would not enter production until 1983.

The Mets took game four of the World Series against the A's.  I surely would have watched that on the television with my father.

Blog Mirror. Testing Without Intermission: Life is hard but it's not all traumatic

 

Testing Without Intermission

Life is hard but it's not all traumatic

Privacy on iPhone | The Waiting Room | Apple

Not as funny, and a little scary, but somewhat funny.

Newsprint finis. The Casper Star Tribune.

With a history dating to 1891 with the weekly Natrona Tribune, published by the Republican Publishing Co., but with a name, reflecting mergers and a somewhat complicated history, dating to 1961, the Casper Star Tribune has ceased printing a Sunday edition.

Volume VII of the Natrona Tribune, the first year of its publication.

Today's edition was the last print Sunday tribune.

The Trib has tried to put a happy face on it, but it's not a happy story.  Clearly the paper is in economic trouble and part of that is online competitors, of which Wyoming has at least three substantial ones at the present time.  It already quit issuing print papers on Mondays, and now it will only issue two print papers per week, and mail them to subscribers from Scotsbluff.

Mail?

Yeah.  That's useful.  Having said that, the two print copies we got per week didn't arrive super quickly.  I'd usually read the electronic edition before that.

A sad end to an era nonetheless.

I prefer the print edition.  Maybe that's just me, but I like to be able to thumb through the paper, and frankly I pick up more content reading it that way.

Well, no more.  I'm not going to continue having a print subscription for Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which is now the option, had get them a week later when the mail gets here for them.

A few technological observations

1. Once the wrong phone number gets in a record of any kind, it's permanent.

It doesn't matter how many times you tell the record keeper you gave them your wife's cell phone number by mistake. They aren't correcting it, ever.

And it doesn't matter that your old landline number that you never use is in the records, and you've tried to replace it with your cell phone number, they aren't going to.

2.  Once you give your cell phone number to somebody, even with a "use for official business this one time only", that's the number you are going to.  It doesn't matter if you have a receptionist employed full time to take calls, they'll bypass it.  Even if your cell phone voice message instructs the caller not to do this, they're going to do it anyway, leave a message there, and not call your office number.  Ever.

3.  Anyone you give a cell phone number to for work purposes will take up texting you at night and on weekends.

Manual Jobs that have disappeared. Railroad Crossing Watchman.

This is the Out Our Way cartoon from April 21, 1923, courtesy of Reddit's 100 Years Ago sub.

The thing that surprises me here is that it never occurred to me that there were human manned railroad crossings, but as this photo shows, they existed into the 1940s at least:

Railroad crossing, Beaumont, Texas, May 1943.

Indeed, in looking it up, it seems like the modern type of crossing with the lowering arms came about in the 1950s.  An earlier automatic type called a "wig wag" was patented in 1909, but it must not have had universal use.

By Richamos - I took the picture with my own camera, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6347827

This brings up a number of interesting things, including that signals just weren't what they now are.  This likely explains why railroad crossing accidents were seemingly so common, such as this one, which was discussed in the Casper Daily Tribune about an April 20, 1923 accident.

But another matter, while the world is seemingly getting safer, there's less of a role for humans in it.

We've discussed this before, but automation is eliminating jobs, and has been, for a century.  Crossing guard attendants probably filled that job for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons likely was that some of the occupants of that position simply were suited for a job with pretty much no skills whatsoever, and were fine with a long day to themselves.  Where are they now?  Some of them are unemployed and unemployable.

And with the arrival of AI, this will rapidly expand into the white collar and professional world. We're making a world we literally can't live in.

Primitive seasons, modern technology

 An item linked in from one of the blogs we follow:

ARROWRIFLES DURING ARCHERY SEASON IN OK

I'm not a bow hunter.  A lot of the hunters I know are, including ones my age and a little older. Some quite a bit older.  I note that as it's not merely a matter of having grown up before there were bow seasons.  At least, I think I did.  I know it wasn't popular in the state until I was in my early 20s, and it followed the Game & Fish allowing some large caliber handguns to be used for hunting. I recall that coming first.

I'm an avid hunter, but I'm a modern firearms' hunter.  If bows were my only option, I'd use them, but they are not, I don't. They seem retrograde in a way that isn't appealing, as firearms are more deadly, and we owe the animal that.  I'm not going to get preachy about it, however, and the few hunters I know really well that bow hunt are very proficient, and no doubt highly deadly with a bow.

Anyhow, I'm okay with their being bow seasons, but the way that people use early seasons as simply a vehicle to get out first, and then evade the spirit of the original thought I don't care for. The spirit of bow hunting was to hunt with something that humans used that required skill and reflected our hunting nature in earlier times.  Basically, if Ötzi would have recognized it, well then it was good to go.  I'm not demanding a bow that Welsh archers or Sioux warriors would have used, but a real bow.

Catalan depiction of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1086.

Well, soon enough, some people wondered if they might use crossbows.

I should know more about the history of the crossbow than I do, but I think of it as a weapon of war.  It was sort of the magnum strength projectile launcher of its day, launching a heavy bolt through armor or mail.  I didn't realizes they were legal for hunting anywhere until a colleague asked me about it, as he wanted to buy one, thinking that he didn't have the physical strength to use a bow.

Hmmm.

Mind you, I don't mind archery at all.  I think it's really cool, and I've thought about doing it in the backyard just for fun.  And I wouldn't mind pinking with a crossbow.  I'm just not going to hunt with either, and I don't think that using a crossbow meets with the spirit of the original concept.

The same evolution, I'd note, occurred with "primitive rifles".

Following the movie Jeremiah Johnson, there was a blackpowder rifle craze that developed and it never really stopped.  I like blackpowder rifles and I wouldn't mind at all hunting with one of them.  I guess they cross the threshold of lethality enough for me that and they appeal to my interest in history.

What doesn't appeal to my interest in history is modern "muzzle loading" rifles that are expressly designed to evade the rules and be as close to modern hunting rifles as possible while still being "muzzle loading".  They don't have a big following in Wyoming as Wyoming doesn't have primitive rifle seasons, but they do have one where they're allowed.

Now, as the item above notes, there are "arrow rifles". This is really a bridge too far, and is a technological development solely to get a person out before rifle season, with something that's really a rifle.

This really ought not to be allowed, and frankly, it's a good reason to go back to the original concept.  Seeing that technology will always find a way to evade the spirit of something, and somebody will always avail themselves of it, there are places to restrict it, and this is one.

This add was entitled something like "The Future Of Work Sucks".

And while it is just an ad, it's pretty much right on the mark.

 

Get a Vision. Get Off Your Cellphone. Get to Work. - Minding The Campus

Get a Vision. Get Off Your Cellphone. Get to Work. - Minding The Campus: “I think that you appreciate that there are extraordinary men and women and extraordinary moments when history leaps forward on the backs of these individuals, that what can be imagined can be achieved, that you must dare to dream, but that there’s no substitute for perseverance and hard work …” – FBI Special Agent Dana […]

Mid Week at Work: WHEN TECHNOLOGY CHANGES THEN SO DOES EVERYTHING ELSE

 WHEN TECHNOLOGY CHANGES THEN SO DOES EVERYTHING ELSE

Friday Farming. The Farm, Comrades.

A news announcement from Governor Gordon:

Wyoming Lands World’s Largest Vertical Farming Research Facility

 

CHEYENNE, Wyo. –  Governor Mark Gordon has announced a historic economic development investment, as the State Loan and Investment Board (SLIB) approved a grant to support development of the world’s largest and most advanced vertical farming research center in Laramie. The project will support the retention and creation of nearly 200 high-paying jobs in the community.

The company, Plenty Unlimited Inc., is dedicated to advancing the emerging technology field of indoor agriculture. The new research center in Laramie expects to utilize an internship-to-employment pipeline to hire local workers, as well as hire recent University of Wyoming graduates. The investment by the Wyoming Business Council supports the new direction of the Council, by adding value to Wyoming’s core industries and activating new economic sectors. 

“Wyoming is proud to invest in the continued success of a business that was first innovated here in Wyoming by one of our own and demonstrated at the 2015 World Expo,” said Governor Mark Gordon. “The level at which Plenty will be operating in this new facility will truly advance Wyoming’s preeminence as a global center of indoor agricultural research. This center gives us a tremendous opportunity to promote a state-of-the-art R&D cluster and further diversify our state’s economy.” 

The $20 million Business Ready Community Business Committed grant from the Wyoming Business Council to the City of Laramie will be applied to construction and infrastructure costs for the 60,000-square-foot facility, which will be built on 16 acres at the Cirrus Sky Technology Park in Laramie. Additional funding, land and support for the project is being provided by the City of Laramie and the Laramie Chamber Business Alliance (LCBA).

Plenty has its origins in Laramie. Chief Science Officer Dr. Nate Storey co-founded Bright Agrotech as a University of Wyoming graduate student in 2010 and established an innovation center in Laramie.This eventually led Storey and a group of entrepreneurs to found the startup Plenty Unlimited in 2014, which later bought Bright Agrotech. Today, Plenty has more than 400 employees nationwide and the company’s R&D work over the past two years drove more than 100 new patent filings for innovations as diverse as new crop growing systems, a way to detect plant stress and new tomato plant varieties.

“As a Wyoming native, I have devoted my career to advancing plant science in my home state and am proud to be a part of helping the State play a leading role in advancing a new field,” said Storey. "This state-of-the-art facility will not only accelerate our R&D pipeline but will also create an incredible opportunity to attract and employ a talented workforce to further innovation and diversification for Wyoming."

With the SLIB’s approval, the project will be shifting into the design phase, with plans to begin construction later this year and open the facility in early 2025. Plenty’s team and research work will transfer to the new facility from its current Laramie location once it is completed.

-END-

M'eh.

Vertical farming is a real thing, but the expectation that it's going to produce all of our food in the future is frankly unlikely, and a freaking nightmare.  It's industrial agriculture at its scariest, often accompanied by a vision of the future in which this has become necessary due to vast overpopulation of the planet.

Careful demographers, even if they provide overpopulation warnings, are now at the point where they tend to give them with a footnote, as it's now well known that we're darned near at the point of peak population right now. That is, while population continues to go up in some places, it's not really going to for that much longer, and it's declining, or even crashing, in much of the world  It would be declining in the United States but for the fact that up until recently: 1) the GOP saw all immigrants as their lawn care workers, working cheap; 2) the Democrats saw all immigrants as future Democratic voters, and the entire nation still thinks the "nation of immigrants" thing means that the US has to take in immigrants at an absurd level forever.  The falsity of those nations is now beginning to sink in, in no small part as the American people basically fill the country is full up and things need to back off.  If they were allowed to, like every other European country, and like Japan, and like China, our population would be declining.  At some point in this current century, the entire globe's population will be declining.  By next century, it'll be crashing.

And that won't be a crisis.

Part of the reason it won't be a crisis is that it'll allow people everywhere to live more natural lives. But in the meantime we keep getting suggestions like this.

It's interesting how Communist collective agriculture and Corporate industrialized agriculture tends to arrive at the same point.  Agriculture that's industrialized and of scale.

People don't really like it.

Moreover, people need a connection with nature, and agriculture is part of that. 

Well, if some have their way, there'd be less of that.  Rather, we'd be free from the burden of our serfdom comrade and liberated to work in the cubicles.

Nifty.

Meet The Press: Social Media.

The January 1, 2023, episode of Meet The Press was a special on the social media companies.

It was truly frightening, and it featured politicians in Congress from the left and right who were in agreement on that.

Well worth listening to.