UKRAINE SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2022

UKRAINE SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2022

I'm reading about the end of the world and the author mentions that the US Congress has appropriated $13.6 billion to assist Ukraine against the Russian invasion. $13.6 billion is a chunk of money, it's one percent of a trillion dollars, and you know that old saw, a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money. So I checked and I found this which kind of sounds like it might be true.

I'm reading through it and like all government bureaucratese, it contains a bunch of facts, but they are all piled together higgledy-piggledy. It's a little tough to make sense of when billion dollar allocations are given the same billing as million dollar allocations, so I put the numbers in a spreadsheet and graphed the result. May you enjoy the picture I have painted.

You might notice that the total of the amounts listed is $16.6 billion, not the $13.6 billion in the title. That's because I included this item:

Increased Authorities – The legislation includes $3 billion in authority to drawdown defense articles and services and increased flexibility to transfer excess defense equipment for Ukraine and other regional allies.

I don't know exactly what that means, but it sure sounds like another $3 billion for Ukraine. 

P.S. I'm always looking for ways to automatically format data the way I want it. Today I figured out that it you change  millions to *10^6,  billions to *10^9 and $ to =, you can change dollar amounts like $13.6 billion to pure numbers.

Kearney & Trecker Milling Machines

Why Did They Stop Making This Machine?
Fireball Tool

The video: This guy gives us a brief history of the Kearney & Trecker Company, then he gives us brief overview of his new-to-him Kearney & Trecker milling machine, and lastly he gives us a tour of a Shizuoka milling machine.

I am surprised that I never heard of Kearney & Trecker before. I thought I was familiar with all the big machine tool brands> I'd heard of companies like Bridgeport and Cincinnati Milacron, but I had never heard of K & T before.

The First Kearney & Trecker Shop

Vintage Machinery has an old article from American Machinist Magazine about the company.

Fireball Tool has their own website.

Rat Rod of the Day

Terror Gator

The Terror Gator was built to compete in tractor pulls, an event where guys driving tractors compete to see how far they can drag a big, heavy weight.

This one is #4 on Hot Cars 25 Rat Rods That Make No Sense. They are ridiculous, but they are also glorious. 

Via Dad's Deadpool blog

Evil, Evil Bitcoin, Notgeld

Mining rigs at a Bitcoin farm in Russia - Andrey Rudakov

Hyper-Bitcoinization is Now Baked-In by Mark E. Jeftovic talks about how Bitcoin might become the world's reserve currency.

Along the way I learn about Notgeld:

In the past I viewed Bitcoin as an evolving global “Notgeld”, a German term for “emergency money” that emerged during the Weimer Hyperinflation. As I’d written previously, every hyperinflationary event has its notgeld, whether it’s prepaid phone and gas cards in Zimbabwe, cities printing their own scrip, Venezuelans wrapping gold flakes in worthless Trillion Bolivar banknotes, there’s no end to the ingenuity (and desperation) employed.

My theory was that in an oncoming era where all global currencies were going to hyperinflate simultaneously, Bitcoin would emerge as the global notgeld. And then, I thought, afterwards some kind of global monetary reset would occur. That would probably be some kind of SDR against a basket of hard assets, including gold, but I never imagined that Bitcoin would be a component of that basket.

Note: SDR - Special Drawing Rights - is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) in 1969 to supplement its member countries' official reserves. [Hey! 1969, that's the year I graduated from high school.

Anyway, he stirred up my anti-Bitcoin attitude, so I had to comment, and since it's such a glorious comment, I am sharing it here so you may bask in its gloriousness..

I don't like Bitcoin. It might be a good reserve currency. What I don't like is the amount of energy and resources being devoted to its development. Zillions of dollars and zillions of kilowatts are being used to competitively compute a checksum that could be done by an original IBM PC. I intend to spend some time (one of these days) figuring out just exactly people are getting paid for mining. And we won't talk about how many terabytes the block chain has now got to and how much digital storage is being consumed worldwide just to hold the umpteen zillions 'distributed' copies. I haven't invested the time because it is basically a thankless task, kind of like ancient archeology. It might alleviate your curiosity but is unlikely to provide any material benefit, other than to confirm my already deeply held suspicions.

 

Economic Sanctions

Southern harbour scene with merchants - Abraham Storck ca. 1700

'Economic Sanctions' have been in the news lately, so I thought I'd look to see if any one had any words of wisdom on the subject. I didn't find much, but I did find this line on the Wikipedia page:

The efficacy of sanctions is debatable—there are many failures—and sanctions can have unintended consequences.

Anyway, I noticed the above picture on that page and thought it was cool.

Girls with Guns

Dania Vizzi from the United States competes in the Women's Skeet Final of the Shooting competition during the Lima 2019 Pan-American Games, at Las Palmas shooting range in Lima, Peru, on Aug. 2, 2019. (Luka Gonzales/AFP via Getty Images)

Granny's got her gun

Using what you have

2019 Pan American Games Shooting Competition

Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport

Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport

Kind of a cool looking building. They have shuttered the two international terminals. Imagine that. Meanwhile Putin has nationalized all of aircraft that were being leased from companies in the west. Who'd a thunk it? You shut off travel and any kind of financial transactions, what do you expect Russia to do? They can't return the aircraft nor can they pay for them, so nationalization is just paperwork that allows the airlines to keep operating them domestically. The owners of the planes are going to be put out, but Biden is tough, he can handle their complaints.

Sheremetyevo International Airport

This big cover over the entrance reminds me of the one at the Portland airport.

Via FlightAware