PlanktonPunkt

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

PlanktonPunkt Designs puzzles available in CreateJigsawPuzzles

link to order print on demand PlanktonPunkt Designs jigsaw puzzles (printed in China)

PlanktonPunkt Designs POD products in Printify

link to order PlanktonPunkt Designs print on demand wares from the source

PlanktonPunkt Designs POD products in Etsy

A link to order from a selection of PlanktonPunkt Designs print on demand wares from Etsy

Tag: Commentary

  • Possible Bad News

    I fear that if the ceasefire between Israel and Iran fails, USA will be entering into two-front proxy war.

    Our current proxy war in Ukraine is not going well, and we are pulling our weapons help away (every other day, it seems, on the other days we are giving them more). European part of NATO is upset but considering the state of their economies and especially their armies (with a couple of exceptions), I doubt their help will be decisive in any manner. If it would be, this war would have been over years ago.

    I thought the news about us stopping to give missiles to Ukraine was about our economy and military-industrial complex, which in these days is more military than industrial (our industries having been long since outsourced), no longer sufficing for policing the world, but the latest rumor / development, namely China (PRC) strengthening its military support to Iran to counter our support to Israel, if true, means potential opening of a new proxy war. Against the biggest manufacturing powerhouse in the world that desperately needs a boost for its stalled economy. And needs the Iranian oil, the access to which has been complicated by the conflicts involving US backed Israel (although China has benefited hugely from US sanctions which have forced Iran to sell their oil on discount.)

    I have for some time thought about China and Iranian oil and China-Iran railway, and how Japanese got motivated to attack to Pearl Harbor by US blockade of Japanese oil imports. Just having an ominous feeling about this.

  • Rising Rice Crisis

    Japan has a rice shortage. Of staple rice.

    While there has been sporadic rice shortages around the world recent years, Japan is a first world country and a traditional rice producer. The problem is word traditional. According to First Post, the average age of Japanese rice farmer is 71 years, and government agricultural policies in general and rice policies in particular have hit the farmers whose numbers, citing Bloomberg, have shrunk by 25% between 2015 and 2020s.

    Probably not Japanese boiled rice

    The Japanese government rice policies are strictly nationalistic, ostensibly designed to protect Japanese rice farmers and self-sufficiency by preventing rice buying from abroad. Except the consumer prices also had to be regulated, squeezing rice farmer incomes and acreage despite Japanese soft monopoly on domestic rice.

    The some explanations to Japanese rice shortages is that Japanese 2023 rice harvest was bad (already reporting rice rationing in some shops on 2024), there was an earthquake and people are panic buying (also as a hedge for rice inflation, which probably increases the rice shortfall causing more rice inflation), people are eating more rice because the war in Ukraine has increased wheat prices, and that there are hordes of tourists eating rice. And the Japanese government started selling the stored rice from reserves last year. A bit like US sells oil every now and then from strategic reserves to smooth consumer sentiment. Except that Rice News Today blames the shortage on government policy to reduce rice production, which has thinned the buffer between production and consumption to such extent that even slightest consumption increase would cause shortages.

     Now Japan is running low on rice and some shops have implemented rationing. People are upset about the steep rise in rice prices. There has been some talk about buying rice from abroad, but this is against resistance from farming lobby and conservatives, though apparently there is now a trade deal to sell Calrose rice to Japan.

    The Japanese are having an election soon, July 20th. The price of rice and the rice shortages (estimated 1.8 months of annual supermarket sales worth of staple rice – either the consumers will consume something else or Japan will soon import lots of rice) may annoy the electorate enough to lead to political upset. According to Zerohedge, SocGen (a French bank) has predicted that there is about 50% chance of election results leading to governmental crisis in Japan, which may lead to problems in yen bond market. More importantly, the price of rice is part of Japan’s inflation metrics, and if rice prices explode, the rising inflation may trigger BOJ rate hikes.

    The global bond markets are highly interconnected and the financial omnibubble is floating around in search of a pin prick. Thus, the rising rice crisis just could be the trigger of global financial collapse. Though I personally doubt it. The markets are so rigged that full collapse by contagion is unlikely. But what I have seen over the years, is that small retail investors rarely fare well in turbulence. 

  • Happy July 4th, 2025

    Or Treason Day, if you happen to live in UK. In recent years, I have been watching the fascinating news from that side of Atlantic with increasing horror. Sure makes me glad I am a US citizen, not a subject to the whimsies of Prime Minister Starmer. For the past couple of visits to Europe, I even have specified to my travel agent: no stops in UK.

    Why? When Soviet Union was a thing, if you traveled there for cheap vodka (vodka tourism) and other cultural immersion, you would only be charged for drunken and disorderly, such as might happen. Obviously, potential troublemakers would have been screened during visa application, but even people caught inside Soviet Union for the heinous crime of smuggling Bibles were sentenced merely for what they were doing in Soviet Union. Or so I think. However, according to an Internet source, officials in Starmer’s UK have stated that folks traveling to UK are subject to prosecution for doubleplus ungood on-line speech even typed outside the UK borders, even if they are not UK citizens. I think such dictatorships are to be avoided, especially when they have gone clearly bonkers. I love and I am grateful for my First Amendment rights, and this is one of the reasons I am happy this Independence Day.

    I have bought a steak and cherries, to be eaten soon, some canned fish for future, and had an Asian/Pacific Islander style BBQ beef minimeal with teriyaki sauce for breakfast.

    Big white magnolias are in bloom, and I have tried to get a nice photo of them for days, but that has been difficult. Many of the trees are very big and the flowers tend to be in the upper branches, either too small for my cell phone zoom or obscured by leaves and branches. Or the flowers are not otherwise accessible to photography. When I see a magnolia bud at nice, near to eye level, getting back in time before it has bloomed and is wilting is tricky, apparently the blossoms open and are done at a quick rate.

    Here are a couple of magnolia flowers I photographed with my cell phone today.

    One of these days, I should make more jigsaw puzzles.

  • Alligator Alcatraz and Other Signs of Times

    Alligator Alcatraz

    Florida is constructing an ‘Alligator Alcatraz‘, a deportation facility in the m Everglades. An abandoned airport project will be (government) quickly converted into a 5000 bed facility with an idea that the surrounding swamp area with its alligators and pythons would be part of the security. Federal government will use FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program money for the center. Presumed Federal costs will be 450 million dollars annually. Assuming processing speed of two weeks per deportee and full occupancy, that housing alone will cost 3750$ per person though I doubt government will be that efficient. But Alligator Alcatraz is a catchy name, good marketing!

    The immigration industry seems to still provide good income for some – left loves to import immigrants with government paying the housing, whereas right loves to deport immigrants with government paying the housing.

    Nigerian Oil Production Woes

    Alleged 7.2 billion US dollar fraud in Nigeria has led to the arrest of two officials in Nigeria’s state owned oil corporation and three other officials are being investigated. Annual allocations of money meant for revamping and rehabilitation of old oil refineries had not been efficient, as Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt refineries “haven’t been producing fuel in recent years” as Oilprice.com reports. Nigeria is struggling to meet (as in has not met) its OPEC quota of oil production due to crime and “struggles to launch new projects”(ibid.)

    Sweden has illiteracy problem

    Regardless of the possible reasons for the Swedish education crisis described in this Zerohedge article (originally from Epoch Times but they require registration), about 800000 of 10 million inhabitants of Sweden are categorized as illiterate. While he definitions of literacy may have changed over the centuries, this is according to the author “the highest number since at least the mid-19th century, possibly since the early 18th century.”

    During 18th century Finland was part of the Sweden, and literacy was then enforced by strong state church that demanded that everybody had to pass confirmation (which was prerequisite for get married – premarital relationships were strongly disapproved those days) and to pass confirmation had to know how to read (the material promoted by the state church , other literacy was a bonus.) Perhaps, if literacy would again be a basis for full civil rights (e.g., one would need to be able to read a contract for their signature to be legally binding), the literacy rates would begin to climb again. Without motivation to learn, there will be a segment of population that will not make an effort.

    Also, what was alluded in the article but I think should be emphasized is that many of the modern students do not even speak Swedish, and before they learn the language they won’t be able to read or write it, either. Also the Finnish literacy levels which used to be among the highest in the world are declining, at least according to PISA statistics.

    A picture from Finland, February 2025, not directly related to Alligator Alcatraz, Nigerian oil production or Swedish literacy.

  • Chronocide

    is a very important topic.

    Atomized people without knowledge of the past are easier to govern badly. If there are no reference points how things were better (in addition to worse), people will not demand it.

    Atomized people lack social cohesion required for mass movements or revolutions. Every man forges his own fortune. Every woman is equal to man. The weak will get trampled in an increasingly predatory environment that used to be a society. As even family units are eliminated in gender wars and intergenerational conflict, it is no wonder that birthrates fall when atomized people concentrate on their own day to day survival.

    I suspect that the loss of culture and traditions are a result of loss of intergenerational connection. When I was a child, we celebrated Christmas. The tree, the feast, the carols, the gifts (brought by some version of Santa or an elf, this was not all Westernized Coca Cola festival for us), the reading of Bible. Christmas was fun for children. Even in Soviet Union, where Christianity was suppressed, the powers that be had to bring back Father Winter and an associated winter festival, set to be the New Year’s Eve.

    The world’s biggest shopping day is now the newly invented Singles’ Day from China, which began as a student response against Valentine’s Day but quickly ballooned into a massive hit, not only domestically but expanding globally, even having arrived into Finland. If you are lonely, why not have a day and buy something for yourself since the couples are having a day too? The popularity of the Singles’ Day is probably a troubling portent for future demographics and survival of the traditions, and by extension, history.

    By the way, despite the lack of material manifestations of the culture and the breaking of social structures, there still remains an option for inner life – learn things and live your ideals. Become the culture you want to be.

    P.S. Soon it will be Midsummer Festival / St. John’s Day / Summer Solstice time. I will not have a bonfire, nor will I go to a lakeside cabin to drown in a drunken boat accident. As cultural traditions go, I am neutral about bonfires, but against drunken boat accidents. Not all traditions need to be maintained.

  • Signs of economic times

    Apartment close to public transportation

    A former deputy director of Caltrain had had a secret apartment built inside Burlingame train station, discovered by Caltrain 2022. Based on photos, it looks comfy, but about 40000 dollars of public funds were used and the historic building is not his property. Another apartment was found 2019 in Millbrae train station (8000 dollars were used on that), with another defendant was mentioned in connection to that case. Imagine, apartments for under 50k in San Francisco Bay Area! And close to commute!

    While housing prices are crashing and you can find a condominium for under 300k in Bay Area if you are not picky about the commute, and right now Zillow advertises plenty of up to $1300 rentals in Bay Area. How many of these are actual apartments instead of shared housing is unclear, but right now it seems that the main constraint to housing is not the availability of units but of cash to rent or buy.

    Pretend-to-Work companies

    I thought WeWork which officially rented office space with amenities to startups and individual who wanted a workspace not at home was close to this, at least for some people who lacked self-discipline to work without bosses, but in China (the People’s Republic), there are now actual pretend-to-work companies, where people can for a small pay pretend to be office workers the whole day.

    China is presumed to have high unemployment rate (official statistics are unreliable or missing) and there are social pressures for people to work. By paying for pretend-to-work day, people can LARP working in corporation, pretend to others that they are working, or just have an airconditioned space with computer terminal in which to spend time, like an internet cafe.

  • Civil War by Proxy?

    California and Federal government are increasingly hostile in open. California has years of experience in ignoring Federal laws, some notable example issues being cannabis, immigration, and gender identity.

    On the other hand, California has used its soft power as a major economy to enforce environmental and consumer standards on the rest of the states and even abroad.

    During Biden(?) administration, Californian values seemed to become the US standard regardless of other states’ opinions, and California became more assertive also in foreign and trade policy, most notable event being the summit with president Xi and Biden in San Francisco (preceded by a climate lobbying visit of governor Newsom to Beijing.) Various California politicians were also courting China, although also opposite happened. Does anyone still remember 2022 when the then Speaker of the House, California representative Pelosi flew to Taiwan and caused jitters over potential armed conflict between USA and PRC? (Whether this was part of a policy by a bigger faction within the administration and if so, which one of them is murky to me.)

    Now, the issues between quite untethered California and the Federal government have finally come to boil. The trigger to me seems to be the transgender athletes competing against girls, where the Federal government sees California Title IX application to this issue as violation and the regular people just unfair. California continued this practice, despite warnings from Washington DC, and the current administration threatened to withhold Federal funds for California sports. Thereafter, Newsom threatened to withhold the Federal share of California state taxes, a move somewhat reminiscent to the Nullification Crisis prior to the Civil War in 1800s.

    Meanwhile, a group of Antifa or similar group(s) coordinated an attack on ICE that had done a raid in Los Angeles.

    This attack is curious because of its organization and its timing coinciding with the spat over ideologies and money. Reminiscent of the coordinated wave of violent riots in summer 2020, there were clashes between pro-immigration protesters in New York on the opposite side of the continent.

    More importantly, both the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and governor Newsom publicly refused to help to quell the rioters, even opposing the Federal efforts. The rioters were attacking Federal law enforcement with stones and were painting graffiti putting things in fire. In fact, a roster of California political people have come in defense of David Huerta who got arrested for participating in the riot, but their support to anti-Federal action.

    President Trump has authorized the use of 2000 National Guard (update: now 4000 plus 700 marines), and the Department of Homeland Security is bringing in reinforcements.

    I am writing this in Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, waiting for a flight that would take me back to California Bay Area via Frankfurt am Main and Los Angeles Airports. By the time I have landed, well before the time I can post this (I need to add links to sources), we will see if the California or Federal authorities have caved in. If the California stops protecting the violent mobs, removes transgender athletes from girls competitions and possibly even ponies up some tax tithes to Federal government, the incipient civil war will be averted. If the Federal government fails to enforce its rules also in California, I fear that this was the opening shot of the active phase of the disintegration of the United States. Worst case scenario, neither gives in, we may have active civil insurgency in multiple blue states by the end of the summer. The most likely outcome will be a frozen conflict, that is: both sides will pretend nothing significant happened but neither will acknowledge that the other side might have won.

    I also predict there will be lots of pundits dissecting irrelevant minutiae from the utterances of either side, and thanks to the strong left bias of the main stream media, the reporting will mostly support California and its allies, meaning tailwinds for civil war or mostly peaceful disintegration of USA and headwinds for peace and prosperity. The biggest losers will be the regular people trapped in the middle, looting and violence disrupting supply chains, especially for groceries and fuel, and then collapsing the teetering economy in general.

    Update: Much has happened since Sunday. California did not capitulate and the National Guard activated in Los Angeles is up to 4000 and 700 marines are in readiness. When I arrived on Sunday evening to Bay Area, I took the BART from airport to hometown. The train did not take or drop passengers at Embarcadero station due to political activism nearby, but let out a handful of burly police officers and while the train waited a couple of minutes next to the platform, I could observe the officers running and so did a couple of the people already there. There was still a crowd waiting for the next train or something, though the trains had started skipping that station for the duration. Sorry, no video footage of that.

    More ominously, a Walmart heiress is funding (in a small part) a nationwide call for unrest June 14th, another weak indicator supporting my hypothesis that the riots that started last weekend are part of elites’ civil war, raging over  who gets to loot the treasury.

    In social media there are reports of incidents in Denver, Charlotte (NC), Boston (MA), Chicago, New York City and Atlanta, things are escalating fast. This indicates that this is not a question of secession (California from USA) but of civil war by proxy between the progressive left and the conservatives over the control of Federal government. The presidency and the Congress are currently held by Republicans, but vast swathes of the administrative state are governed by the Deep State currently (mostly) promoting leftist ideologies (reasons for that are too long to expostulate in a single post and in any case speculative to the tinfoil hattery territory.) Individual states and their administrative apparati are a hodgepodge of ideologies, but the Left Coast in general and California in particular is the current vanguard and bastion of progressive establishment, so troubles beginning here makes sense.

    Meanwhile, governor Newsom and Federal officials are still discussing about who pays what.

    On a side note, a major food distributor supplying thousands of supermarkets got hacked last week and food distribution is off kilter. When I yesterday visited a grocery, they had a sign on meat counter apologizing for ‘warehouse issues’. I did not ask the cause then because I had not then seen this piece of samizdata news yet. I wonder if the food shortages and riots at the same time are a coincidence?

    Finally, whether true or not, the possibility of a fleet of robotaxis fleeing LA riots in order not to get burned by Mexican flag waiving ‘mostly peaceful’ protesters shows what kind of timeline we are living in. In any case, Waymo services have been suspended in downtown LA are for the time being.

    Looks like I need to pick some canned meat while it is still available.

  • Hondas on Highways

    To paraphrase an old joke:

    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

    Pink roses (108 pieces)

    Little tree branches (108 pieces)

  • Update on K2-18b

    There might not be hycean worlds, that is worlds with hydrogen rich atmosphere over liquid ocean.

    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.

    The reason we have oceans in the surface is volcanism, which pushes water towards the surface. Yet, lithosphere contains water, maybe multiple times the amount in world’s oceans.

    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.

  • Some News

    Nobody expects the Spanish interruption

    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.