By The Numbers - part the ninety ninth

Farmers have been getting the Cadillac treatment pretty much forever. Even though non-urban population is down to 20% in this here The United States of Alabama. One of the ways is money and data support from Uncle Sugar. The Farm Bill has been mentioned here at least a few times. This recent report describes, mostly, farmers reliance on USDA data collection and reporting to run their farms. Quite a boon. But, according to the report, the last corn crop total acreage report was off by, it is believed, 5%.

Of course, the Batshit J. Moron and his merry band of acolytes don't assess that the miss report is due to the draconian slashing of employment at USDA; of course not

The Agriculture Department lost 23,000 employees in 2025, as Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency slashed jobs across the federal government. The National Agricultural Statistics Service, which produces crop reports, was one of the hardest-hit divisions; it lost 34 percent of its staff, going to about 500 employees from around 800.

The guy in charge puts the blame on lowering survey response rates

For years, the department has struggled with fewer farmers returning its surveys, one of the key data sources for crop production reports. The response rate for recent surveys was around 40 percent, according to the department, down from around 60 percent a decade ago.

What's funny about such an excuse? When you watch (or read) your fave news source, you'll get survey results on Batshit J. Moron's approval rate for various actions or his overall approval/disapprovel and the like or Americans view of abortion or immigration and the like. If you look at the fine print at the end of the report you'll see two numbers (approx. values) the sample size, generally around 2,500 (sometimes smaller), and the margin of error of the percent(s), generally around 3.4%. For 349,000,000 Americans. Now, the number of voters is about 174,000,000 in 2024.

Now, the whole point of the crop reports is to support gaming the market by commodities traders and farmers. One wants the lowest price, the other the highest. But

Farmers have a deep and direct relationship with the federal government, which sustains much of their business. Farmers participate in crop insurance and conservation programs, apply for grants and receive disaster assistance and ad hoc payments. The Agriculture Department projects that government payments will account for 29 percent of farm income this year.

Welfare kings. The tail is wagging the dog.

Feets Don't Fail Me Now - part the third

Yet another series is established. There've been occasional reports about the foreigners' reaction to Emporer Nero The Donald's Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte jingoist vetting of them come visa time. As one might expect, more and more are saying, "thanks, but no thanks". And, even less surprising, Batshit J. Moron and his merry band of idiots has set its sights on the science minded. Fresh off the presses is what's happening in the healthcare side of life. Paywalled, per usual, but the lede is open.

New and intrusive burdens for renewing a component of her visa — which required her to make public her social media profiles for U.S. review while she was back in India — caused her to be away from the lab for two months during the crunch time of wrapping up her degree.

We can't have yet more aliens invading, especially ones that refuse to suck Batshit J. Moron's tiny dick.

An open report says the same, with more detail than the STAT lede

The Trump administration's deep cuts to federal funding of scientific research, crackdown on universities, and proposals aimed at deterring international talent have unleashed a loss of scientific talent - a brain drain - away from the United States to other countries.

This is what happens when Emporer Nero The Donald Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte, who wasn't bright enough to get into the Ivy League without some post-sophomore (which means, "wise fool" btw) help. And the program he ran was nothing but EasyA courses in Real Estate Economics (no longer an Econ curriculum, of course). Of course. If you want The United States of Alabama to be just like the antebellum version? "First thing we do is kill all the smart people".

Side Eye For The White Guy

In the news today:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is poised to file a civil rights lawsuit against The New York Times, centered on the allegations of a white male employee who did not get a sought-after promotion and argued it was because of his race and gender, two people familiar with the matter said.

Come on man!! Ever body knows that pencil neck rednecks are smarter than the smartest split bottom or negro!! They tell us that at ever Klan meeting. We gotta get back to the Real United States of Alabama, like before the War of Northern Aggression. White Pride World Wide. And, no, I didn't make that up in a fit of sarcasm.

Power To The People

So, here's some numbers wrt The Musk Ox's Pipe Dream.

The largest solar array in space serves the International Space Station. It generates ~215 kilowatts.

Here's the power needed for a contemporary data center:

A single AI server rack requires 50-150 kilowatts compared to 10-15 kilowatts for conventional computing, driven primarily by dense GPU clusters that operate continuously at maximum capacity.

And, remember: that's per rack!! Cookie monster. One rack eats most (more recent estimates bump that power demand higher) of the largest orbiting array power in existence.

Now, what's the average data center count of racks? According to Google, it depends

1 MW About 1,000 - 2,000 rack servers
10 MW About 10,000 - 20,000 rack servers
50+ MW Up to 100,000+ rack servers

Back of the envelope? 1 MW is 4 times what the ISS has, and that's not continuous power, since Mother Earth gets in the way for a significant slice of the orbit. So, LEO or geosync? The latter allows for continuous contact with Mr Sun, likely never to be feasible not to mention cost effective. LEO can be gotten to, but building such big structures there? Not my kettle of fish.

Doesn't sound all that practical. By no means obvious. Well... if you want to depreciate, at Uncle Sugar's expense, all those 'reusable' rockets it might be!!!

Just found this piece on the feasibility of space-based solar power. Now, the author's point of view is harvesting wee little electrons from space-based solar panels and sending, sort of, them back to ground stations to be enjected into the grid. So, some of his math relates to transmission losses and the like. For such electric generation to be used for The Musk Ox's Pipe Dream, those costs don't matter. Otherwise, setting up the facility would cost the same. In the end, it's a wash. It certainly costs more to put panels in geosync orbit than in the Arizona desert. And, not for nuthin, The Musk Ox hasn't made the case for why space-based AI data centers are better than earth-bound ones. If nothing else, at ~22,000 miles up, all of the nasties from Out There don't get filtered by our atmosphere and not so much of the magnetosphere; you won't lose all of it, as it goes out to ~40,000 miles.

As to the sun coverage, the paper doesn't get to 100% 24/7, but sorta close:

In sum, we can expect shading about 0.7% of the time. Not too bad.

The Real Question

Those who pay attention likely noticed that Batshit J. Moron and his henchmen are pushing a faux Christianity down our collective throats. MMM!!! Tastes so good!!!

Today's news brings yet another example.

In the first place, of course, is the Christ was the junior partner in the trio. Hardly a King. Moreover: since God is said to be omnipotent, how is it that only one (or may be a couple) religion to Them "knows" about all the folderol that the Judeo-Christian tradtion imbibes??? Why would They permit 10,000 religions to persist, with different, even antithetical, belief systems? Why appoint only the Judeo-Christians to the ultimate throne?? Seems kind of fascist; the Christ Is King bunch don't want the Jews, of course. The whole Rapture thingee is all about getting all the Jews in one place to blow them up, and the Christians go to Heaven. Not very Godly. Ya think?

God, of course, didn't do it. Humans did. Each clan made the God, or Gods, that served the purpose.

By my estimate 99.44% of the worst wars in all of human history (at least since we've been literate and have had something like countries, anyway), have been driven by religious zealots. Can we have a Crusade? How about one with kids. Batshit J. Moron (and Bibi) have taken us into one today. And he's not very Godly, to say the least.

Truth be told, and I'm going to, humans since ancient times, especially far enough back when one clan knew nothing about the other clans on the other side of the planet (Hell's bells, even a few hundred miles away) invented a religion which suited each and every tribe; in isolation. Hell's bells, they didn't even know Mother Earth was a planet!! In other words, the truth is humans, of every distinct type, invented their God(s) in their image. Not the other way round. The Trio is not different from the pantheons of Greece and Rome. The Judeo-Christian God served the purpose of the Powers That Be at the time of Her invention by The Powers That Be. Happens like that every time and every place throughout history.

Pandora

If anyone thinks that this report is telling the truth, I'll sell you a bridge. Damn Gummints will never, ever leverage the power of Mythos (nor any other weapons grade software), for the Good of The People. They will use it to subjugate the people, just as they always have with any such weapon or law.

Among U.S. rivals, the response has been more muted. Despite Anthropic's recent clash with the Trump administration, Mr. Amodei has made clear that A.I. should be used to defend the United States and other democracies and defeat autocratic adversaries.

If you believe that Hate filled, Petty, Paranoid, Demented, Dictator Don will NOT use such a weapon against his "enemies", which amount to anyone not MAGAnaut, your an idiot.

What might we expect? For one thing, and likely the first: all code going forward will be closed, and likely by law. We know that the 'data centers' have hoovered up most everything on the innterTubes, which includes open source code.

Smile, your on Candid Computer!! We are watching you.

Le Grande Conspiracy

The NSA has been mentioned a few times in the course of these missives, esp. since the 2016 stolen election. Here's a missive. Now, NSA has reared its head again. But not quite in the way I'd like.

Now, we have the Grand Conspiracy to endure. The fact remains: NSA hoovers up every signal on the planet 24/7, and has the receipts on The Trump/Putin Affair. We need another Snowden.

Can you say Putin, Jr.?