We’ve reached the first weekend in May; it’s Friday, May 2, 2025 and National Truffle Day (the chocolate kind, not the fungus). Here are some chocolate truffles filled with peanut butter: the upscale version of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups:
It’s also International Space Day, International Tuba Day, International Sauvignon Blanc Day, No Pants Day, International Scurvy Awareness Day, and National Play Your Ukelele Day. In honor of the last holiday, here’s a great video (I’ve shown it before) of Paul McCartney and a number of other notable musicians playing George Harrison’s “Something” (from Abbey Road), played at a concert in his honor. McCartney begins by playing the ukelele, and I’m told that the instrument belonged to Harrison. How many musicians do you recognize (surely you’ll know Clapton).
You will want to listen to this:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive public-policy think tank, calls to our attention what looks like yet another illegal tactic the administration is using deal with illegal immigrants (h/t Patricia).
President Donald Trump has turned a 60-foot-wide strip of federal land that spans three states on the southern border into a “military installation” to “address the emergency” he previously declared over unlawful immigration and drug trafficking. Trump’s memo authorizing this action seems designed to sidestep the Posse Comitatus Act, which normally bars federal armed forces from conducting domestic law enforcement. The apparent plan is to let the military act as a de facto border police force, with soldiers apprehending, searching, and detaining people who cross the border unlawfully.
This move could have alarming implications for democratic freedoms. Moreover, it continues a pattern of the president stretching his emergency powers past their limits to usurp the role of Congress and bypass legal rights. He has misused a law meant to address economic emergencies to set tariffs on every country in the world. He declared a fake “energy emergency” to promote fossil fuel production. And he dusted off a centuries-old wartime authority to deport Venezuelan immigrants, without due process, to a Salvadoran prison notorious for human rights violations.
. . .Last week, the military announced that soldiers deployed on the New Mexico–Mexico border will have “enhanced authorities” because they are on land that has now been designated part of Fort Huachuca, Arizona — a military installation located more than 100 miles away. The new authorities include the power to “temporarily detain trespassers” on the “military installation” and “conduct cursory searches of trespassers . . . to ensure the safety of U.S. service members and Department of Defense (DoD) property.”
Searching and apprehending migrants would ordinarily run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits federal armed forces from directly participating in civilian law enforcement activities unless doing so is expressly authorized by Congress or the Constitution. The law stems from an Anglo-American tradition, centuries older than the Constitution, of restraining military interference in civilian affairs. It serves as a critical check on presidential power and a vital safeguard for both personal liberty and democracy.
Nonetheless, several exceptions exist. The most significant is the Insurrection Act — a law that Trump floated using to address unlawful migration (although for now, his secretaries of defense and homeland security are reportedly recommending against such a move). In authorizing soldiers to conduct apprehensions and detentions on lands that have been newly designated as a “military installation,” the president is relying on a lesser-known loophole in the Posse Comitatus Act known as the “military purpose doctrine.”
The doctrine, conceived by the executive branch and endorsed by the courts, holds that an action taken primarily to further a military purpose does not violate the Posse Comitatus Act even if it provides an incidental benefit to civilian law enforcement.
. . . Having turned much of the southern border into a “military installation,” the administration now takes the position that anyone crossing the border without authorization in those areas is not just violating immigration law but also trespassing on a military installation. Federal troops thus have a legitimate military reason, the argument goes, to apprehend, search, and detain migrants without violating the Posse Comitatus Act and without the president needing to invoke the Insurrection Act at all.
The article notes that the military can be used for logistical support, but NOT “core law enforcement duties.” Soldiers are not trained to be policeman, and Ceiling Cat help us all of Trump starts using them that way. Can you imagine what would be down the road?
*Speaking of Trump (not that I like this!), note that he’s just given the boot to Michael Walz, his national security advisor. The reason: Walz was in charge of the group chat in which national security information was overhead by the editor of The Atlantic:
President Trump is ousting his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and another senior member of the White House’s foreign policy team, the first significant personnel overhaul of top aides in his second term, according to people familiar with the situation.
Mr. Waltz had been on thin ice since he organized a group chat on the commercial messaging app Signal to discuss a sensitive military operation in Yemen and accidentally included a journalist in the conversation.
But most of Mr. Trump’s advisers had already viewed him as too hawkish to work for a president who campaigned as a skeptic of American intervention and eager to reach a nuclear deal with Iran and normalize relations with Russia.
Mr. Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong, who worked on North Korea issues in Mr. Trump’s first term and who is considered a moderate Republican with substantial national security experience, is also being removed, according to a senior administration official with knowledge of the situation. The official and others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal discussions.
There was no immediate announcement of a replacement for Mr. Waltz. But the selection of the next national security adviser may prove a critical one, at a moment Mr. Trump is encountering difficultly defining what “America First” means in his second term, and when his top national security and foreign policy aides have differed sharply on how to handle three of America’s most potent adversaries: China, Russia and Iran.
Well, I’m not keen on reaching a “deal” with Iran over nukes, as I don’t think they’d adhere to it, but there’s no doubt that Trump’s appointments, and the foreign policy that’s flowed from them, is what Bill Maher called a “shitshow” in the Free Press.
*Elon Musk is, thankfully, reducing his role in DOGE, but now it looks as if he may lose (or give up) his position as CEO of Tesla, what we think of as his “Big Job”:
About a month ago, with Tesla’s TSLA 0.93%increase; green up pointing triangle stock sinking and some investors irritated about Elon Musk’s White House focus, Tesla’s board got serious about looking for Musk’s successor.
Board members reached out to several executive search firms to work on a formal process for finding Tesla’s next chief executive, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Tensions had been mounting at the company. Sales and profits were deteriorating rapidly. Musk was spending much of his time in Washington.
Around that time, Tesla’s board met with Musk for an update. Board members told him he needed to spend more time on Tesla, according to people familiar with the meeting. And he needed to say so publicly.
Musk didn’t push back.
Tesla has been on a losing streak in the months since Musk, its visionary chief executive, began spending much of his time helping President Trump slash federal spending. Last week, after the company said its first-quarter profit had plunged 71%, Musk told investors he would soon pivot back to his job at Tesla.
“Starting next month,” he said on a conference call about earnings, “I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla.”
The board narrowed its focus to a major search firm, according to the people familiar with the discussions. The current status of the succession planning couldn’t be determined. It is also unclear if Musk, himself a Tesla board member, was aware of the effort, or if his pledge to spend more time at Tesla has affected succession planning. Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Tesla didn’t provide a statement before publication. Hours after this article was published, Tesla issued a denial on X. Musk also criticized the article in a post on X.
“The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the Board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead,” Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm said in the statement posted on X.
So, we don’t know what’s going on. But now that Tesla purchases as well as its stock price are down, I wouldn’t be surprised if Musk, who didn’t start the company, would be too bored to run it. He’s also got SpaceX, which he did found, and that could well occupy him. But once you’ve had Big Power, as he had with DOGE, perhaps everything else is a comedown. Whatever he does not, it won’t be playing golf, even if he is the richest man in the world.
*Trump, Trump, Trump: it looks like 60% of today’s Nooz will be about the odious man. But we’ve never had such a dangerous and erratic President before. The NYT has a very long editorial by its Editorial Board telling us what to do: “There is a way forward: How to defeat Trump’s power grab” (archived here under a different title). After detailing some of his legal violations (“due process”, “equal justice”), they offer a solution, partly one I have recommended: admit when he says something right, but fight him like hell in the courts when he does something illegal.
The leaders of Harvard University have offered a model of principled opposition that maximizes the chances of success. When Mr. Trump began threatening the university with canceled funds this spring, many Harvard professors and students urged administrators to head straight to the ramparts and denounce him. Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, took a wiser approach. He acknowledged that some of Mr. Trump’s criticisms had merit. Harvard, like much of elite higher education, has, in fact, been blasé about antisemitism, and it has too often prioritized progressive ideology over an independent search for truth.
By admitting as much, Mr. Garber strengthened Harvard’s political position. He said what many Americans believed. But when the administration issued a list of ludicrous demands, Harvard fought back hard. It filed a lawsuit, with help from a legal team that included conservative litigators, and became a national symbol of resistance to his lawlessness. Mr. Garber made Harvard look reasonable and Mr. Trump unreasonable.
Many federal judges, including most Supreme Court justices, have also responded sensibly. They have not picked fights with him or overreached. They have issued narrow, firm rulings directing him to obey the law. Only after he has ignored those rulings have they escalated. The one-paragraph emergency order that seven Supreme Court justices (all but Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas) issued in the middle of the night two weeks ago was particularly important. It blocked the Trump administration from deporting a group of detained men under the Alien Enemies Act. The order’s speed and breadth were signs that Chief Justice John Roberts and most of his colleagues seem to recognize the threat that Mr. Trump’s bad faith poses.
The order put Mr. Trump in a bind. It left him without any evident ways to violate the ruling’s spirit while adhering to its text. If he is going to defy the judiciary now, he will need to do so in an obvious way that will probably further damage his standing with the American public. Every attempt to defend American democracy should be similarly thoughtful.
The past 100 days have wounded this country, and there is no guarantee that we will fully recover. But nobody should give up. American democracy retreated before, during the post-Reconstruction era, Jim Crow, the Red Scare, Watergate and other times. It recovered from those periods not because its survival was inevitable but because Americans — including many who disagreed with one another on other subjects — fought bravely and smartly for this country’s ideals. That is our duty today.
It is the Supreme Court that can ultimately stop him. Granted, they are conservative and may do bad stuff (e.g., make us pay to fund religious charter schools), but I do trust in Roberts to not let Trump get away with palpably illegal stuff that violates the Constitution. We shall see.
*The AP’s reliable oddities section has an article misleadingly called, “Scientists once thought that only humans could bob to music. Ronan the sea lion helped prove them wrong.” Now wait a tic. We’ve long known that Snowball the cockatoo can not only bob, but stomp his feet (they do admit that in the article). In fact, I’ve seen Snowball doing this in person. But now we find that a sea lion can keep a beat, too. As the article notes, the ability may be far more phylogenetically widespread than we know; it’s just hard to test:
Ronan the sea lion can still keep a beat after all these years.
She can groove to rock and electronica. But the 15-year-old California sea lion’s talent shines most in bobbing to disco hits like “Boogie Wonderland.”
“She just nails that one,” swaying her head in time to the tempo changes, said Peter Cook, a behavioral neuroscientist at New College of Florida who has spent a decade studying Ronan’s rhythmic abilities.
Not many animals show a clear ability to identify and move to a beat aside from humans, parrots and some primates. But then there’s Ronan, a bright-eyed sea lion that has scientists rethinking the meaning of music.
A former rescue sea lion, she burst to fame around a decade ago after scientists reported her musical skills. From age 3, she has been a resident at the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Laboratory, where researchers including Cook have tested and honed her ability to recognize rhythms.
What is particularly notable about Ronan is that she can learn to dance to a beat without learning to sing or talk musically.
“Scientists once believed that only animals who were vocal learners — like humans and parrots — could learn to find a beat,” said Hugo Merchant, a researcher at Mexico’s Institute of Neurobiology, who was not involved in the Ronan research.
But in the years since since Ronan came into the spotlight, questions emerged about whether she still had it. Was her past dancing a fluke? Was Ronan better than people at keeping a beat?
To answer the challenge, Cook and colleagues devised a new study, published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
. . . . This time the researchers focused not on studio music but on percussion beats in a laboratory. They filmed Ronan bobbing her head as the drummer played three different tempos — 112, 120, and 128 beats per minute. Two of those beats Ronan had never been exposed to, allowing scientists to test her flexibility in recognizing new rhythms.
And the researchers asked 10 college students to do the same, waving their forearm to changing beats.
Ronan was the top diva.
“No human was better than Ronan at all the different ways we test quality of beat-keeping,” said Cook, adding that “she’s much better than when she was a kid,” indicating lifetime learning.
They are going to test more sea lions to see if Ronan is a one-off. Now of course you want to see her keeping time, so here’s a video:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili looks for RESPONSIBILITY. (Isn’t this a nice photo of her?)
Hili: Who is responsible for all these disasters?Andrzej: The Big Bang; before it there was peace and quiet.
Hili: Kto jest odpowiedzialny za te wszystkie nieszczęścia?Ja: Wielki Wybuch, wcześniej był święty spokój.
And a photo of the loving Szaron:
*******************
From Stacey. That guy wasn’t worth going out with!
From Reese:
From Wholesome Memes:
Masih is quiet today so we get some commentary from JKR. You can read the article she mentions here.
‘Sweetie was a spoiled, badly trained pooch… Every outburst was met with a treat and a coo, because Sweetie had learnt early on that if he made enough noise, the world would bend to his will.’
On trans activism and obnoxious poodles, by @jo_bartosch.https://t.co/aYMeth3MEh— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 30, 2025
From Malcolm, a beautiful shark cake:
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973c) April 21, 2025
From Simon:
— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) 2025-04-30T22:41:04.257Z
A commie tweet from Barry:
Happy #MayDay from Fidel Catstro and Frida Katlo! They won’t come if you call their names, but they’ll always come running when they hear The Internationale.
From my feed:
When my wife asks me why I need night vision goggles I send her this video: pic.twitter.com/RVXSY0RRcZ
— Giga Based Dad (@GigaBasedDad) April 30, 2025
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:
A Jewish girl from Yugoslavia was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was three.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-05-02T10:16:49.280Z
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, kitteh rescues during WWII:
“Miss Iris Davis… spends a great deal of time recovering cats with the aid of a 'lassoo' from the debris of bombed house. So far she has rescued six hundred of these feline strays, 8 November 1940.“ http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/…
— Cats of Yore (@catsofyore.bsky.social) 2025-05-01T17:22:35.288Z
And an excellent pun:
What liquid does the baker pour around the first cakes that doesn’t dissolve the frosting?
It looks like she sprayed the surface of the frosting prior to adding the liquid. Perhaps that protects the frosting? Perhaps it is a light coating of whatever was poured after?
No matter, the combination of creativity and construction ability is truly remarkable. My dad had that ability. Back in the 50s and 60s he constructed these large outdoor electro mechanical Christmas displays, using parts from pinball machines. He designed and decorated the dioramas. Animations included the nativity scene or Santa and Rudolph at the North Pole. People in our small town lined up down the street to see them. Great memories.
It must have been magical growing up in one of those houses.
Perhaps the finished cake is inedible and the clear liquid is a type of polymer…
Waltz has been nominated to be Ambassador to the U.N.
Definitely a Signal moment in his career.
No job security, the UN being on the Don’s hit-list.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Man can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet he’s potentially more vicious than any other. He is the only one who can be persuaded to hate millions of his own kind whom he has never seen and to kill as many as he can lay his hands on in the name of his tribe or his God. -Benjamin Spock, pediatrician and author (2 May 1903-1998)
A big +1 to Andrzej this morning. Before the Big Bang there was peace and quiet. Something to hold onto.
Yes I loved that too, mainly because it’s a reason not to aspire to peace & quiet. Who wants the universe to end in a big crunch? Instead we can embrace the tumult & noise. Like Camus’ idea that we should embrace the absurdity of life, find what meaning we can in friendship and camaraderie, and keep rolling that stone up the hill.
+1. That got my attention, too!
How does he know? I would call the high compression of the universe anything but peaceful.
For sure, but that happened after after the Big Bang singularity, not before¹. And IMO nonexistence is overrated, rather like “Rest In Peace”.
And who said it was peaceful even prior to the BB? The Review Committee² process for YHWH’s proposal was surely contentions: “You want to make what? Out of nothing? In how much time¹?
¹ of which there wasn’t any.
² Elohim is plural. “Let us make….”
99.999999% of the universe is vacuum, so I’d say essentially, the universe after the Big Bang is essentially peace and quiet.
Too late to edit, but I essentially like the word essentially…
Here is an editorial from today’s Harvard Crimson pointing out some thoughtful moderate action by the University leadership in a background of polarized extrema. Please see url https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/5/2/editorial-harvard-dei-rebrand/
From the NYT editorial: “The past 100 days have wounded this country, and there is no guarantee that we will fully recover.”
I laughed so hard that I almost choked on my breakfast. What an astounding lack of perspective–if they believe it themselves.
Which missing perspective? That of course things will recover in the longer term? Or that not only is there no guarantee, there is only slim possibility?
In the article on which JKR commented I found the following: “Lui Asquith, the solicitor representing Amnesty, identifies as both trans and non-binary.”
This was new to me. Can anyone explain this? Doesn’t “trans” mean transitioning from one sex to the other? Or is there such a thing as transitioning from one sex to none?
OK, did a bit of googling, and apparently to some “trans” means something like becoming a gender different than the one you were assigned at birth. So, right. Got it.
Since I was assigned the boy gender at birth and now firmly identify as the man gender, am I trans?
Or does it just highlight the issue that gender is so subjective, that puberty should count as transition?
Declaring that strip of land on the border would allow the military stationed there to arrest anyone crossing that land as they would be trespassing on a military installation.
So far the administration’s actions on illegals has been to stop new crossings and deport criminals. The claim by the administration is that 100,000 have been sent back (this is somewhat disputed but it is at least 60k regardless). There have been a couple of questionable ones; the “Maryland man” that media have been glomming onto is not the innocent victim that he’s been portrayed to be (his abused wife looks to be more of a victim). Overall, this seems to be a pretty well-executed and focused process. The basis for the action does seem questionable, so that should be adjudicated properly.
Personally, I’d prefer more due process for people coming into the US, including a hearing to understand why they want to come and a thorough background check (at least as thorough as TSA investigated me for Pre-Check) BEFORE they’re allowed to cross the border, rather than allowing them in and telling them that they will have a court date later.
Maybe applying the same process that was used for those coming in during Biden’s term can be reversed for the deportees – deport them now, but tell them to schedule a court date in the future at which time they can make the case to come back.
The portion of Abrego’s story that remains fuzzy to me is what happened to him after he was denied asylum in 2019. He had his “due process” at that time. They turned down his request for asylum but granted that he specifically not be deported to El Salvador. So, they bought his story to the extent that it was determined that sending him to El Salvador would lead to his demise. Does anyone know why he was allowed to stay in spite of the denial of asylum? And wasn’t he just milling about the US without requesting any hearings until he was first arrested here? What I’ve read is that the gang he’d been a member of was a rival to another gang in El Salvador called “Barrio-18”. I get people’s outrage over him being sent to the notorious prison without warning. I’m interested in this man’s actual history between 2019 and 2025. As with all current events one can find a different version of the same story in whichever news outlet tells them what they want to hear. I’m interested in the facts. Whatever those facts may be his being snatched up and sent to CECOT was a cruel mistake.
On Trump’s 60-foot “border installation:” One of the problems is the number of laws on the books. I suppose that this is not surprising for a country that is 250 years old. The President has a veritable smorgasbord of laws he can pick through until he finds one that might work. He can then call on that law to do what he wants at least until someone brings a lawsuit. At that point, the administration can choose a different law. Eventually, the entire court system will be clogged up, but by that point the administration’s aims will have been achieved. Is this really how a country should be run? (Rhetorical question, obviously.)
Incidentally, Harvard released its final report on antisemitism a couple of days ago. It’s a 311 page tome (it’s written by academics, after all) that I’m working through in its entirety. The Executive Summary itself is 15 pages long, and each of the chapters has its own summary. That’s a lot of summarizing. There are also appendices. As I said I’m working through it. There are about 70 pages of historical perspective near the beginning of the report. I’m in the middle of that. It’s interesting.
https://www.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/FINAL-Harvard-ASAIB-Report-4.29.25.pdf
The companion report on anti-Muslim bias is mercifully shorter, coming in at a svelte 222 pages: https://www.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/FINAL-Harvard-AMAAAPB-Report-4.29.25.pdf
I’m not sure what that machine is either, (although the “receiver radio UHF” on the nameplate surely is a clue.)
But I recognize embossed stick-on plastic Dymo labels when I see ‘em. I loved that gadget! When that machine arrived new in the control tower, my joy would have been for the warrant officer in charge to tell me, “Right then, Corporal, now whip up some labels for ‘er.” (Silent fist pump.)
As you noted: the data plate identifying the device as a UHF radio receiver should have been a dead giveaway, although written in a typical military backwards fashion. One does not have to be a former airline pilot like me to figure it out. My question is: Is it supposed to be an example of British museum humor?
RE Tesla: Not sure how familiar readers are here with Tesla’s EV market dominance in the US. Tesla is by far the largest seller of EVs, with about 48% of the total EV volume in 2024. Model Y sold over 370k units last year and was the 5th best selling vehicle in the US, behind only the Ford F-series and Chevy Silverado pickups, and the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V. In addition, Tesla Superchargers account for 67% of the DC current fast chargers in the country, and have an uptime of 99.97% vs between 70%-90% for non-Tesla chargers. Tesla set up their Supercharger network to allow for long-distance travel across the US rather than a haphazard approach, and made their system easy to use. This is why most other automakers are adding Tesla’s unique charging port to their vehicles instead of or in addition to the standard SAE J1772 port.
Lastly, their FSD (full self driving) mode is amazing in operation, and way ahead of other automakers (with the exception of Waymo maybe, which operates driverless autonomous taxis in some markets).
I know people are giddy with the thought of Tesla’s supposed woes, but they offer a great product that people like, and their charging infrastructure is simply the best. Musk didn’t start the company, but he’s been responsible for its success in both engineering and marketing terms; I’m not discounting the efforts of those working there, but he’s had the vision and the drive to lead the company. That this company went from being a startup not long ago in a market with huge barriers to entry to being the 8th largest OEM in the US, with only EVs to sell, is quite an achievement.
Tesla’s patents open source, meaning any other company can use their technology in good faith. I know of no other automaker that has gone this far (Toyota and Ford do to a lesser extent).
Just a little perspective for those not familiar with the market. As a supplier of some minor components to Tesla and other automakers, I can say that Tesla treats us fairly on price, and partners with us to make improvements and are overall good to work with, unlike some others. I’m not a fanboy, but an objective observer. Should he be replaced as CEO? If he’s not devoting sufficient effort to Tesla, then yes, as would be the case with any other CEO in any other company. But the replacement would likely not have the drive that Musk has had.
Just on the “Musk didn’t start Tesla” point, the company was 6 months old with three employees and no investors at the point when Musk joined, becoming chairman of the board and being the first big investor.
Good for Tesla, but China and its companies are far more advanced than Tesla in infrastructure, EV production, efficiency, pricing and R&D. Of course, Tesla operates in China as well, but their output is miniscule. China also makes 80% of the batteries. Tesla has received billion$ from US state and federal governments, but it is no where near the amount of money the Chinese government spends on this technology. I doubt America will ever outcompete China in this market now, even if Musk didn’t tank his own company by hitching his wagon to Trump. And think of the 25,000 miles of high-speed rail China enjoys. America has about 50 miles. I’m sure the tariffs will turn it all around for us! /s
Passenger rail (including high-speed) is a collectivist mindset: you go where the train wants to go, by a route of its choosing, when it wants to go, and you carry with you what it permits you to take. (Bicycles? Mostly too bad so sad.) You do it’s bidding. Rail systems require state subsidies or compulsion (by constraining air and road alternatives) to get people to use them. Passenger trains lost money for the railways even in the days of the Model A and gravel roads.
Americans, even Canadians, are individualistic. (We think of ourselves as collectivist-communitarian but that’s just propaganda.) We will never give up our cars, which allow us to go anywhere we want, whenever we want, and we will vote out any government that tries to make us. Electric or combustion, Chinese or American, who cares? But not rail.
The 50 (unfinished) miles of HSR in the U.S. and the zero km in Canada should be celebrated, not scolded.
Yes Leslie. If you’re not set up for rail by the time you’re a rich country – you can’t really start it.
In very densely populated Japan they went the rail path. Successfully. 15% of Tokyoites (formerly me) have a car (I didn’t).
And there are lots of things – including owning parking space which you must prove to city hall before you can register a car – preventing car ownership. Less outside Tokyo, they have cars there.
Their system is set up for good public transport and fewer cars but they did this since the war before getting rich.
Like in Australia there’s little use for trains in the US and Canada I think.
D.A.
NYC
It’s not a zero-sum game. America/Canada could have their cars and HSR. Many opportunities all around the country. And I don’t understand David’s caveat that rich countries just can’t do it once they’re rich? Huh? Rich countries can do whatever they want. I expect the real reason is fossil fuel lobbies own our political process and our politicians, so it’s a no-go.
And not having HSR in the US/Canada should be celebrated? That to me is ridiculous and shows a complete lack of imagination or ambition. You really think it comes down to an individualistic vs. collectivist mindset? That’s Gobbledygook psycho babble to me.
Anyway, much more of a complicated issue than a few paragraphs can distill. China is poised to rule the economic future of the world, and Trump is helping them right along.
I wasn’t going to respond but the gobbledygook comment was hurtful. Yes, passenger trains are collectivist. The individualism of affordable private car ownership slaughtered the North American passenger train after the Second World War. The car remade the cities with suburbs connected by freeways and made the centralized train- and transit- friendly city forever impossible. I don’t mean to be snarky to you but I thought that was common knowledge and certainly not gobbledegook. It’s why Utopian urbanists hate the private automobile, and why the people love them, even though the traffic is terrible. (Deep down we don’t mind because we all know that we all just are are the traffic.)
You’re admitting that you can’t build passenger rail without a large helping of ambition and imagination, Mark, and I agree. OK, why doesn’t the private sector step up and build it, then, with investors’ money? Amazon, Apple, Tesla, and my son’s agri data-science startup all required lots of both, seeking profit. If there was profit in fast intercity passenger rail here, it would already exist, just as the freight railways do. High-speed rail is very expensive with a large, hostile footprint if you have to lay it down over an existing developed rich-country road network where every crossing road from freeway to farm lane either needs an overpass or has to be permanently closed, and you need to string ugly overhead wire, too. The only French TGV line that makes an operating profit is the first one built, Paris-Lyon.
If you are pushing loss-making passenger rail, you are also admitting that not enough people will use it, at the ticket prices the market will bear, for it to beat the opportunity cost of capital. So the taxpayers will have to be compelled to fund it for some externality worth having, a public good like a lighthouse. What is that externality that makes passenger rail so passionately attractive to everyone except fare-paying passengers? I ask this as a sympathetic rail fan who really does like trains as culture and as machines.
Passenger trains are an example of a good that everyone thinks more people should be induced to use as a civic duty, to create a positive externality but don’t want to use themselves. If an HSR is under-used and therefore loses too much money, or doesn’t generate a large-enough externality that the state was hoping to achieve, a state-owned system will be tempted to use its coercive power to push more people out of their cars and onto the train. This isn’t paranoia. It’s what activists specifically call for the state to do.
Leslie, I apologize if the gobbledygook comment was hurtful. It wasn’t supposed to be a personal insult. I was simply mystified that having/not having HCR came down to cultural psychology. And I can’t say with true conviction that you’re wrong about that.
One day when you have a billion plus people you may think otherwise. Getting from A to B you won’t care as long as it gets you there.
I just wanted to add, this is some future time when first the population is that large and two AI has taken over the inefficiencies in a population giving more leisure time to enjoy the ride.
About 1 out of 7 (14%) of NEVs sold in China are Teslas https://cnevpost.com/2025/04/10/automakers-share-of-china-nev-market-mar-2025/ . Not miniscule.
Teslas batteries for US vehicles are primarily made in the US, which is not the case for many other EVs sold here.
Tesla also made quite a bit of money as a result of selling EV credits to other automakers who were not able to achieve government emissions standards. For example, if California or the feds required all automakers to sell a certain amount of zero emission vehicles, and they fell short, they could buy credits from other companies that sold in excess of what the mandate was. Since Tesla is 100% EV, they run a surplus and thus sell to other companies. Thus GM, Ford, and Ram can focus on selling pickups at a high profit margin and not have to spend R&D on lower profit EVs. It’s a scam of course, but I don’t blame Tesla/Musk for taking advantage of it; I blame the government for putting such an arrangement in place.
Besides McCartney & Clapton we have Jeff Lynne, Jim Keltner on drums, Billy Preston on organ and of course Ringo. I feel like I should also know the guitarist wearing an ivy cap but alas I don’t.
That’s Albert Lee, with the great shock of white hair, behind Paul. I confuse him with Alvin Lee of Ten Years After fame all the bloody time!
Isn’t Albert Lee the one with the gray hair playing an acoustic guitar? I was referring to the guitarist next to him wearing a cap and playing an electric guitar.
Marc Mann, he has done work with ELO,
Jeff Lynn’s lot, movies. Nice job on on this rendition of “Something”.
Re soldiers not trained to be police(wo)men, what about specialist MPs, Shore Patrol, etc.? If the military wants to do a non-half-assed job for iDJiT’s latest pie-throw they could increase capacity in that area. Clearly, machine-gunning civilians would be a bad look, and senior officers are surely aware of the blowback that resulted from four dead in O-hi-o.
Not that much blowback. A Neil Young song speaking to the converted doesn’t count for anything. Lots of protests but yawn. Nobody got convicted of anything and none of the civil suits launched against the Guard and the State of Ohio succeeded. The people of Kent were pretty fed up with the “mostly peaceful protests” that had attracted outside bad actors like motorcycle gangs and trashed part of the downtown and burned a building on campus. (That’s why the Mayor asked for the Guard to be deployed to help the local cops.) They weren’t that busted up about the kids shot with .30-06 rifles. FA&FO they would say today.
Living just across the Lake as impressionable highschool students we thought it seemed tragic and incomprehensible as as the avenues of justice and redress one by one winked out and that was that. I understand it better now.
Re courts putting iDJiT in a bind, leaving him without any evident ways to violate the ruling’s spirit while adhering to its text; so what? Seriously, IMO we have not even come close to peak pie-throwing. He has plenty of extreme ways to neuter the courts if it comes to that; consider what he’s already using his military for. He wouldn’t dare?? As if he cares; you cannot shame the shameless.
It would take some rational planning to produce a plausible justification for such extreme “emergency” actions, but he has the Project 2025 Sturmabteilung for that. Maybe they’re workshopping it right now….
Re Ronan the Piscatarian, maybe Colostomal Pseudosciences could feature it in promotional material, bopping to The Resurrectionist (by the Pet Shop Boys, rather appropriately).
Reese peanut butter cups: such a disappointment. In Europe the covering has to be labelled “chocolate flavoured”. The peanut butter was just as bad.
Did anyone hear the United States ambassador to the UK on the BBC Today programme? It seems odd to send someone in that post who does not know the meaning of “diplomatic”. She certainly seemed to have no respect for the country to which she was posted. I fear the same logic is in action in appointing the ambassador to the UN