Archive for the ‘economy’ Category

Watch China rig elections in Greenland in 2024

Posted: May 22, 2021 by ng36b in economy
Tags: , , , , , ,
Lujavrite, GreenlandLujavrite, a dark agpaitic nepheline syenite.

Greenland, the really big island near the US and semi-autonomous region of the Kingdom of Denmark, stunned a lot of people when the Inuit Ataqatigiit political party overtook the Siumut party for a majority of the government seats. This is important because the Inuit Ataqatigiit party essentially campaigned on shutting down a Chinese and Australian backed rare earth mine in the Kvanefjeld region of southern Greenland. I’m calling it right now: watch the Chinese begin to manipulate the Greenland government in advance of the 2024 election.

Greenland’s government is particularly important due to mining for rare earth metals. Greenland sits on a large sheet of underground minerals known as the Ilimaussaq intrusive complex. This sheet has a number of rare earth metals and enough uranium to make it the 6th largest uranium mine in the world if it was mined. Exploring of the Ilimaussag complex has been done at the Kvanefjeld site, located in southern Greenland. The government formed by the Siumut party was happy to allow this exploration, as the mining would bring in job and revenue and potentially help Greenland become financially independent.

The local communities near Kvanjfeld weren’t so happy. Among the items mined for was Lujavrite, which contains uranium. The company performing the exploration, Greenland Minerals, wanted to process the uranium as well as the other rare earth metals. Locals were concerned about the environmental impacts, even more so when Greenland Minerals gained considerable Chinese funding due to a Chinese company purchasing stock worth at least 11% of the company in 2016.

Since the new government formed, stock prices of Greenland Mines plummeted over 40%. The new government is working with Bluejay Mining, which mines titanium at a different mine, and apparently had a pleasant meeting, likely a way to dissuade mining companies from moving investments elsewhere. Kvanjfeld was divisive because the company paid only lip service to environmental concerns and seemed to move ahead with uranium mining without working with locals in the area.

Greenland doesn’t have a lot of people, and the last election only registered about 26,000 total votes. To swing an election would take only changing a few thousand votes. If the Chinese lock up the minerals in Greenland, it’ll be a huge blow to Western countries access to rare earth metals. Combine that with China’s own rare earth mines and increasing investment in Africa, and you’ve got a rare earth monopoly in one country that has shown willingness to flex that muscle in the past.

Yes, that’s one of a few reasons Donald Trump offered to buy Greenland. It actually made, and still makes, a lot of sense. Maybe they can become a state along with Washington DC?

The Inuit Ataqatigiit party is unlikely to change their stance on uranium mining. Watch as China slowly invests more money and likely engages in cyber intrusion to penetrate and manipulate the Greenland government to its will over the next four years. Greenland is literally a neighbor to the United States, and we should be really concerned about the increasing Chinese investment there. By 2024, I don’t expect the Inuit Ataqatigiit to have anything resembling a majority government if China has their way about it.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Stockpiling gasoline

Posted: May 15, 2021 by ng36b in business, economy
Tags: , , , ,
The gas cans in my garage, well before the Colonial Pipeline hack

When I first heard about the ransomware hack of the Colonial Pipeline, it popped up in my cyber news feed. After a bit of research, in which I realized quickly that my area of the world would run out of gasoline, my wife and I each filled up our vehicles and minimized travel during the week. We watched on the GasBuddy app as station after station ran out of gasoline, with the typical hoarders filling up gas cans like you see above. Luckily, the shortage is essentially over now and life is returning to normal.

My cans were full long before the gas shortage. I have a tractor, wood splitter and wood chipper, all of which required gasoline to run. They will run on regular gasoline, however, I have found that the ethanol in regular gasoline breaks down and damages small engines, particularly the carburetors, so I switched to using ethanol-free fuel. Since the only place that sells ethanol-free fuel near me is out in farm country, I fill up a lot of cans to make the trip worth it.

Probably the largest benefit to ethanol-free fuel is storage. I can easily store fuel for a year without it breaking down. At best with ethanol fuel, you’re looking at 30 days at most. When I saw the gas hoarders filling up, my hope is they realize that gas won’t be good by the end of the month. It’ll sort of still work in your car, but unless you add a stabilizer, it’s going to have water in it.

Which brings up a really good point: why on earth are we still using ethanol? Ethanol has some cleaning benefits for gasoline, in that is dissolves things that gasoline cannot, but with most gasolines having detergents in them anyways, the benefit is pretty minimal. Worse still, ethanol increases deposits on injectors and other components. It gives you plenty of problems, but hasn’t done much to reduce emissions nor wean us off Middle East Oil (only Trump policies do the latter).

Before someone chimes in with “Just use electric!”, let’s point out some flaws. Nobody makes a battery powered wood splitter or wood chipper. While we’re going back to electric garden tractors, they are still pretty pricey. The power in battery tools, while impressive, is not quite there yet. I have an electric and gas chainsaw, and if I’m cutting something over a foot in diameter, the gas chainsaw wins hands down. I have switched over to an electric weed whipper and pole saw, and they are both great. I bet in 5 years that electric outdoor tools will become the norm, but for now, if you need something powerful, you still need a gasoline engine.

If everyone had a 5 gallon gas can with ethanol-free gas, short term disruptions at the pump would cause less hysteria. You can’t do that with E10 gas unless you religiously use that fuel up and refill every month. By continuing to use ethanol, we continue to damage our engines and make us more susceptible to disruptions for little to no environmental gain. Perhaps as we recover from this gasoline shortage, someone will start asking the hard questions about why we’re handicapping ourselves.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

DaTechGuy off DaRadio Livestream Spontaneous Podcast the Civil War you don’t want and Cui Bono

Posted: April 28, 2021 by datechguy in blogs, business, crime, culture, DaTechGuy's Quick Thoughts, economy, News/opinion, podcast, trade
Tags: , , ,

Today I have some free time so it’s time for another spontaneous livestream

You can watch here

Topics will include

  1. The Civil war that you don’t want (or why people don’t understand why this is a bad thing.
  2. The Cold Civil war and what it means
  3. Cui Bono from the Biden Administration
  4. Stalling stalling stalling
  5. Reaping meeting sowing on police protection for Democrat cities

It will all start around 9:40 AM EST hope to see you here

A Few Photos and Videos from the Tender Bar Shoot in my neighborhood earlier this month with Ben Affleck and George Clooney

Posted: April 24, 2021 by datechguy in culture, entertainment, local, oddities, special events, trade
Tags: , ,
There are the people in my neighborhood

One of the interesting things about having part of a movie shot in your neighborhood is the number of people who turn up, both your neighbors who you end up talking to and people from around the area. While I went outside a couple of times my wife spent most of the day outside getting up very early and taking photos and videos with the camera I usually use for interviews (which have been few and far between due to work and COVID although I had a pair of Catholic ones this week, more on that tomorrow). She pretty much shot a bunch of one minute clips and a fair amount of photos till she came home tired around 2 and crashed. The biggest take away I got from them was that despite the better pay a lot of acting, at least in movies which aren’t on the same deadline as a weekly TV show, is that like any other job there is a fair amount of tedious repetition.

Because she took so many shots I’m only uploading a few plus three videos. Be aware that the date on the Camera was set wrong. While the shoot had been scheduled for the 7th it was actually done on the 8th.

There are plenty more but I think this gives the gist of what is going on with the police controlling the crowd and traffic and the guys in charge letting people know when to be quiet etc.

I figured the Diner would have done pretty well with these folks but alas for Ed because there were three different days when the shooting might have taken place his regulars stayed away those days and he only got a quick burst of business when they called lunch the day of the shooting which didn’t make up for it.

Anyways here are the three videos here is one with a shot of their car pulling out

My wife shot a lot of those, didn’t upload the others since they were pretty much the same. DaWife says they did it about five times. Each time they pull out, when Clooney calls cut Affleck backs up and they get ready to do it again.

Here is another shot of Clooney joking with the kid and Affleck before another shot. This would be just visible from my front yard.

And finally here is a 3rd shot of him directing the kid before another shot and then the shot itself. The antique cars were parked in the neighborhood for about a week before the shoot but then again I’m old enough that to me they don’t seem like antiques they’re just the cars I remember from the 70’s. In fact my 1st two cars were a 67 Barracuda and a 75 Buick LeSabre both convertables.

My chief interest in all of these is how the work is actually done as I’m not experienced in it. Granted it’s not work in the sense that my dad worked or that I or my sons or my wife do but it’s work and it takes them away from their homes for long periods of time. Granted it would have been cool to get Clooney to sign the season 1 of ER that I bought my wife 20+ years ago and my son had hoped to get a Batman comic signed by both as they each (Clooney meh, Affleck actually very good) played the role but there was none of that.

And frankly in an age of cancel culture where people are looking to bring down folks for saying or doing the wrong thing the last thing you really want to do is mix with a bunch of strangers with cameras any one of whom might hold a grudge and be looking to get their 15 min of fame by giving you grief. That realization precludes Jimmy Stewart’s old advice to Raquel Welch about fans and autographs these days and must be a pain in the neck, particularly if someone happens to be affable by nature who previously enjoyed meeting the fans.

At least the pay is good.

As I said there are a lot more pictures and a lot more video but they seem too repetitive to upload to youtube and given how close to the vest things have been around here I can’t justify the extra bandwidth charges to put them all up. Feel free to hit DaTipJar to offset those costs.

Older Entries
Newer Entries