Finland, a gray day (108 piece jigsaw puzzle, click on photo to play)
Finland is a beautiful country rain or shine, there will be more photos, hopefully videos and designs, too, in weeks to come once I have arranged my folders. I have also recorded hours of bird song (assuming the traffic and other noises did not overpower the morning chorus), just in case I need some soundtrack on videos I may compile in future.
Finland, sunset (80 piece jigsaw puzzle, click on photo to play)
Pollening (I suspect the pine) is strong right now – spend a couple of hours outdoors and your devise touch screen will show the dust. I have added here a photo of front porch tiles with accumulated pollen.
Pollen(?) on porch (40 piece jigsaw puzzle, click on photo to play)
I am thinking about joining TikTok and Pinterest, but those can wait until I am back in USA with my contact information back to normal.
This is my main jigsaw puzzle sales site (products currently under review, the first three jigsaw puzzles, one 2-sided mini jigsaw, one 1-sided tube and one 2-sided postcard, will hopefully be accepted, and I am planning to design and upload more!) The products are on sale from China (tariffs to USA are now fluid, and GPSRs may be needed for EU sales – I’ll need to figure that out.)
This is a Printify pop-up shop. In there, I am designing multiple types print-on-demand items, maybe including jigsaw puzzles. This shop currently has the first two T-shirts available. I have other products in development (more T-shirts, laptop sleeves, coasters, postcards, tote bags, key rings, etc.). Printify sells in USA, UK and EU, including Finland.
A rusty Honda Civic had stalled on the road side. The engine did not work, the steering just allowed the car to be pushed onto the shoulder, even most of the lights were out of order – only the left blinker still worked. The driver was trying to stop someone to who might help him, and eventually a Maserati stops. The Maserati driver and the Honda driver conferred for a minute and they agreed that the Maserati would tow the Honda to the nearest gas station and if the Honda had some additional trouble, the Honda driver would turn the left blinker on.
The towing started well, but soon the Maserati turned to a highway and a Lamborghini started flashing its lights and honking and revving next the Maserati, challenging it to a race. The Maserati driver forgetting about the Honda accepted the challenge and the race was on. The unburdened Lamborghini led but Maserati followed right behind and the desperate Honda driver was blinking furiously.
A highway patrol sees the trio speeding well over 100 mph and radios back about his intention to chase. “There is a Lamborghini versus Maserati race going well over 100 mph, Lamborghini is leading, but then there is a rusty Honda Civic following the Maserati tightly and indicating that it wants to pass the Maserati, over.”
The idea of a rusty Honda Civic overtaking a Maserati was supposed to be the joke, but for anyone who has driven on East Bay highways, often the fastest car to pass you seems to be a Honda Civic or a Honda Accord. These little vehicles (not all of them but the fast ones) weave along the four or five lanes finding gaps large enough to fit their car and disappear a few minutes later behind horizon. Assuming the traffic is not standing still or crawling bumper to bumper at 20 – 30 mph. I sometimes think the speed limits in Bay Area highways, especially near Hayward are aspirational.
Also, here are a couple of unrelated jigsaw puzzles
A recent study could explain the spectral signature of another potential hycean world, TOI 270d, by an atmosphere over a magma ocean, an environment not conductive to our kind of oceanic of organic life. Bummer.
But a lava world with boiling atmosphere is interesting to me – those were the conditions of early Earth during Hadean Eon, just after forming. Once the lava cooled enough to form a crust and tolerate liquid water, we got our early ocean, either from meteors or from inside the mantle.
Earth was small enough to cool soon, now only the ferrous core is molten, maintaining the Earth’s magnetic field and volcanism, both essential for life. Magnetic field shields us from space radiation whereas volcanism recycles back to surface nutrients, gases and water that would otherwise have sedimented or seeped into ground.
So, while a hycean world is not proven, it is not impossible, either. I wonder if maybe, once a large lava world with lots of hydrogen and water vapor cools down enough to have an ocean, a hycean world arises.
I have been busy recently trying to get my jigsaw puzzle business going. First, browsing Print On Demand suppliers for dropshipping partners, I realized that I could sell my designs printed also in other items. Then, I realized that I might need a seller’s permit, especially if I also sell physical goods to local stores for resale.
I got a seller’s permit for State of California but in the office I had a brain freeze and had to use a placeholder name for my print-on-demand business. I needed to later change that to PlanktonPunkt Designs. I also learned that I should get a city business license. The permitting office was next open on Monday morning.
On Saturday, I took a long trip (for me) driving over 100 miles to each direction to a comic book garage sale to connect with comic book crowd and to ask advise in on-line sales. On my way back, I stopped into a comics & games shop to ask if they were interested in buying my jigsaw puzzles. In principle, yes, in practice, let’s wait until I get my business going.
On Monday morning, I walked to a copy shop to print my applications for business license and fictional name registration, then to city permitting office, where I was told I would need to register my fictional business name before I could apply, but if I made it back before 2pm, I could submit my application in the same day.
I walked back near my rental place, where I had parked my car and drove to county registrar where I could register my fictional business name. Otherwise good, except the office was next to county court house and registrar of voters and there was a special election going April 15th, so it took some searching to find a parking spot. The registration itself went smoothly, relatively short waits and minimally complex bureaucracy, only cost me 40 dollars.
After finishing my business registration application while drinking Vietnamese coffee, I drove to city permitting offices again and this time, after some wait, I managed to submit my application (80 dollars) but was directed to zoning board. Nonplussed, I meandered upstairs and got to fill a zoning application. I think it was approved, but that took a 250 dollar fee, paid in the spot. After which my business application will travel through a few more desks (I don’t know how much those are going to cost and what more forms or other actions will be required.) Meanwhile, I will need to within next 45 days post four times at minimum 5 day intervals an announcement of PlanktonPunkt Designs (I’ll need to find details, exactly what) in some newspaper circulating in the county…
While I waited to become commercial, I edited some of my older posts, mainly replacing a couple of jigsaw puzzles and other images that are OK in non-commercial blog sites but not in commercial environments with more acceptable content.
About a week later, I went back to City Permitting Offices to ask about my business license. I was told it will still need to be seen by two more desks and it could take up to two weeks. I was horrified. I asked if it could be expedited. They promised nothing, since that is not a service the offices do. However, on Sunday when I unusually opened my email I discovered that my business license has been approved. Plot spoiler, I am still in process of testing my samples, not going to open a Print On Demand store by the Mother’s Day rush, though that was what I had originally aimed for.
Getting licenses and ordering samples was more expensive than I thought, so I had to put some samples on hold until I got some money from my other business. Today, as I finally could afford this, I bought an upgrade from WordPress and a business email contact@planktonpunkt.com from Titan Mail.
Now I’m busy doing designs and ordering samples (the supply chain is still undecided), but at least I have upgraded this blog site for monetization and got a domain name, planktonpunkt.com for development of actual ecommerce. I’ll keep you posted as I continue my business attempts.
Once I get my print-on -demand shop(s) open, I’ll link to those. Other medium to intermediate projects I have planned include making little videos and / or podcasts to Instagram, YouTube and / or TikTok to advertise PlanktonPunkt Designs.
This week Iberian Peninsula had a massive power outage that darkened large parts of Spain and Portugal, affected Andorra, France and according to some, Netherlands and Belgium. I have not yet seen the proximal cause for the outage published, though speculations have run from Russian hackers to atmospheric phenomena. What is increasingly clear is that the Western European power grid has become extremely vulnerable to disturbances and even the slightest wobble can collapse the interconnect.
European power grid is at 50 Hz and already 0.5 Hz out of sync causes massive troubles – the power grid can choose to shut down or experience massive damage when the system goes off even that slightly. In Spain, the power grid began to experience fluctuations blamed at some point on ‘induced atmospheric oscillations’ (a mistranslation?) or anomalous heating. However, the power grid had lost large fraction of its buffering capacity as the power production has moved from traditional big power stations with big turbines that maintain inertia against minor fluctuations to renewable energy which uses inverters. In other words, the power grid had become more fragile. Spain had just six days earlier boasted about having produced 100% of its daily energy by renewables. Spain is not alone with its fragile grid, the EU wide race to Net Zero has weakened grids over the Western continent. Individual countries have relied on power production of their neighbors to subsidize their climate programs, and when the neighboring countries transform from help to drain, whole Western Europe is in trouble,
Snake
Unrelated to European problems, Japanese Tokaido Shinkansen line had about an hour and half train stoppage due to a power outage caused by a snake that had slithered into power line. Or maybe the snake was a tool of a global conspiracy against power grids. The article did not know the fate of the snake.
I don’t usually work on Sundays (the day of rest and so on), but the recent news about heightening tensions between two nuclear powers have been alarming. No, not the war in Europe, or the slow boiling in Middle East. I am talking about India and Pakistan. Here is what I get from the non-mainstream news/commentary streams I follow.
Negligible Chance of Mushroom Clouds
Apparently, there was a terrorist attack in Kashmir where 26 Indian tourists were killed. This region has been contested by Pakistan and India for decades and occasionally, a war has flared up. India blames the attack on Pakistan, which claims innocence. Regardless of truth, the relationship between the countries tensed up, as in India giving 48 hours for all Pakistanis to get out of the country, whereas Pakistan closed Indian borders and Pakistani airspace from Indian airlines, while revoking visas from Indians and telling the Indian government to reduce their embassy size to 30 people, no military attaches allowed. India informed that they will no longer recognize the Indus River Treaty, which allocates the rights over this common river between the two countries. This is very important, because Indus river waters about 80% of Pakistani farmland, and if India were to block the water, it would create a famine that would collapse Pakistan. Pakistan has informed that if India messes with Indus river, it will be an act of war. Presumably, India has already been accused of flooding some Pakistani villages along Indus tributary. The same podcast claimed that there has been clashes along the border, not just small arms fire but actual artillery shelling. This is before the formal declaration of war. The Indus river question is an existential threat to Pakistan, which is estimated to have at least 170 nuclear warheads and has a first strike policy. India is estimated to have over 160 nuclear warheads and if things escalate, we could see mushroom clouds, though this is still a very small possibility.
A Podcast that YouTube recommended to me says that the magnetic field of the Sun is weakening. Apparently, this may be somehow connected with the likelihood of big earthquakes. Sun’s magnetic field weakens and strengthens by 11-12 year sunspot cycles but the peak magnetic field has been weakening over the latest solar cycles (data starts in 1970s, so we don’t know how things were earlier). This presentation fits the hypothesis that solar weather including sunspot activity triggers earth quakes that has been making rounds around interwebs for some time, except that in this presentation it is the weakening solar magnetic field that creates sunspots and correlates with the frequency of big earthquakes.
The earthquake – sunspot connection has been explained by the effects of space weather on telluric currents, i.e., the electric currents going through Earth, telluric currents being stronger along fault lines. Living within a walking distance from Hayward fault, I have been interested in earthquakes, waiting for the Big One.
I am talking about their Russian speaking stateless minority that is about 17% of their population (when Russian speaking citizens are included, the percentage climbs to 27.4%). I think that when Soviet Union collapsed and Estonia regained its independence, the native Estonians wanted to kick out the Russians and other Soviet nationals that had been imported or migrated into their country since the WWII, refusing to give citizenship to anyone who did not assimilate enough to pass the Estonian language test, but I thought that the sentiment had faded during the over three decades since, or at least something had been done to resolve the issue of large fraction of population being stateless. If I correctly remember, the newly re-emerged Russia had not wanted to take the Russians and other Russian speakers from Estonia, and I suspect many of the Russian speakers had been born in the country. Without Russian or Estonian passport, these people became stateless. To me, having about 17% of your population as a stateless minority, especially when preparing for war against their supposed native country seems very dangerous.
An opinion poll comparing Estonian speaking, Russian speaking and bilingual households shows a clear rift in the opinions and attitudes of the ethnic groups. As far as I have seen, the Western media, of course, only publishes the Estonian speakers predominant opinion. The Russian speakers, anyways tend to follow their own media landscape. The pollsters comfort the readers (or themselves) telling that the Russian speakers are not a monolithic group and there is a diversity of opinions among them. This is true, but aside from the commonly differing prevalences of opinions between the linguistic groupings, the other two messages I got from reading this poll were 1) the difference in opinion about Ukrainian war between the region containing Tallinn (more pro-NATO and hawkish) and the rest of the country, and 2) the clear agreement between all groups that ethnic conflict within Estonia is possible, with Estonian speaking majority believing in it more .
While waiting to become commercial, I have edited some of my older posts, mainly removing a couple of jigsaw puzzles and other images that are OK in non-commercial blog sites but not in commercial environments with more acceptable content.
Now it is said that he has resigned as a consequence of a whistle-blower that had implicated Klaus Schwab and his wife in fiscal (and possibly other types) of improprieties, with the WEF board having a sudden emergency meeting. Somehow I doubt this reason – whistle-blowers do not just conveniently appear after 55 years of people not noticing chairman’s practices. I suspect this has more to do with the disastrous effects of the current forced changeson economy and the cultural blowback against the zealous insistence on the Veblen ideologies of the elites enforced with a surveillance state. Since I have not detected WEF to show interest in actual well-being of the masses, rather than the insistence that masses must adapt to their betters’ vision of the Greater Good, I think Klaus Schwab’s ouster has more to do with the smarter members realizing that sawing the branch they are sitting on, i.e., destroying the countries they live in, is not a viable long-term strategy. Even bugout countries, like New Zealand, would sooner or later be destroyed by technocratic practices.
In a WEF’s Davos meeting about a year ago, Blackrock’s Larry Fink who also sits in WEF’s Board of Trustees, surprised by praising xenophobic countries which had instead of immigration invested in AI and robotics. At that point I took it as a bad omen – what are they planning to do with the people replaced by AI and robotics? In retrospect, I think that was an outward sign that there will be changes within WEF.
In summary, I think Klaus Schwab was forced out after his vision of New World Order had proven to be a failure.
PlanktonPunkt 