It's tits-up for Micron

Li'l Napoleon keeps plumbing new depths in the history of French presidential polling. When you listen to him, he seems to believe massive street protests are proof he's on the right track! From the looks of things, more and more folks obviously believe he is! In fact, the French masses are so impressed by their li'l emperor's sagacity they have set multiple cities alight in celebration!

CBC's coverage has been careful to stress that the massive street protests are entirely the result of  disgruntled high school students, belatedly joined by a few yellow vest types. While manifestly false, there's a reason for that framing. Canadian students are far too polite  docile to ever push back against the governments who have systematically underfunded education for the past fifty years, and besides, we never had yellow vests.

The reason a million Frenchmen and women are in the streets is because Li'l Nap has made it abundantly clear, over and over again, that in the democracy he presides over, he calls the shots, and the voter's don't. Oddly enough, that's the exact message the German people are getting from Blackrock Schmertz and the Brits from the latest hapless dork who finds himself in 10 Downing. What these key NATO allies, the very like-minded democracies Mark Carney wants to hitch our wagon to, have in common is they've all announced massive social spending cuts in order to prepare their people for war with Russia by 2030. That's why France is in flames today, and unless there's  a change in course soon, the conflagration can only spread.

Which brings us to back to CBC. Canada has yet to impose the draconian social spending cuts seen among our European allies, but the writing is on the wall. Thus far Carney's orgy of military spending is only in the planning stage, and we can hope the government follows through with the time-honored Canadian tradition of giving ourselves a pat on the back for a job well done and leave it at that.

I'm not a fan of Brodie Fenlon's gang of wokies,  but they want to blame teenagers for the mayhem in France for a reason. Otherwise they might have to face the fact that voters don't call the shots in Canada either. Mark Carney at this moment has the highest numbers in the history of Canadian polling. He has announced a trillion dollars in military spending that no voters have been consulted on. If only half  those projects proceed we'll see those massive social spending cuts as surely as night follows day.

Another shady conman fools Canadian pols and CBC journalists

There's a happy happy story on view at CBC today about a brand-spankin'-new AI data centre coming to Cape Breton! Yessiree Bob, that's $10 billions of investment that'll put Cape Breton on the map, and not just any old map,  but the map of bustling high-tech hubs!

This turn-around in Nova Scotia's long history of economic decline is thanks to the visionary American-Australian venture capital veteran Trent Vichie. Vichie originally made headlines with a plan to become a major clean-hydrogen player, a venture that will pay off as soon as the next tranche of government funding arrives. Not to mention Viche's  not one, not  two, but FOUR wind farms snuggled tight between the clean hydrogen complex and the $10 B AI campus! None of this stuff  is anywhere near shovel-ready but all of it has been repeatedly announced to great fanfare.

Not a venture capitalist to rest on his laurels, the industry veteran's Everwind Fuels is behind this $10B project. Not only that, but he has revealed that one of the two biggest names in AI, Anthropic, will take a twenty year lease when the project is completed several years hence.

Virtually everything in the CBC story is uncritical paraphrasing, if not straight-up plagiarizing of various Vichie-related press releases. Anyone even peripherally acquainted with what's going on in AI today would put zero stock in any claim that Anthropic will be in any position to lease anything by then, if it survives at all. Check this out.

This is an all-too-common example of so-called journalists thinking their job is done once they've regurgitated a corporate press release. How does Taryn Grant get this story when she clearly knows nothing about her topic, and worse, apparently has no interest in knowing anything about it.

Like Eliot Pence, Trent Vichie is a visionary so far ahead of his time that it takes a steady stream of government grants to keep these bullshitters afloat. As with Eliot, legitimate biz press like Forbes and Bloomberg missed their spectacular achievements over the years. A simple google of Vichies name pulls up shit like this. Looks like his "chief of staff" at Everwind also washed his car and did the lawn. I ask you, should that not raise some questions among the politicians and CBC journalists fawning over this clown?

Return of Gerrie the Geriatric Ranter

I once had a Substack by that title; "The Geriatric Ranter." Had high hopes for it, but a few years in it was somewhat underperforming my expectations, and I pulled the plug. 

Meanwhile, the numbers on the original blog went nuts. Even today, when I've posted nothing yet, 6k+ views. And what's kinda screwy is at least half the stuff I'm writing sounds like it coulda come straight from Gerrie.

So I'm sort of thinking maybe I should bring back the Ranter. On Substack. Because the algos gate-keeping at Google's Blogger insist I'm still violating their imaginary "standards." Therefore I could never monetize on Blogger, but could on Substack.

On the other hand, I like bragging up the fact I write not for filthy lucre, but because it's in me and it's gotta come out... oh Lord, let that boy boogie woogie!

Anyway, Gerrie woulda had some fun with the adventure I had today. I'd meant to stop for gas after me and Big-Lips Bruno the mastiff were done our laps at the dog park, and I'd actually meant to do it yesterday but wtf, I'm old, I forget shit. So I 100% knew it was 100% essential to fill up today.

And then I got a call from my dear sister inviting me for lunch in Wiarton! She is the most wonderful sibling I could ever wish for, deeply cares for me, is driving all the way up from the city, and of course I said yes, and since I'm at the stage of mental impairment when I can't actually keep two thoughts in my head at the same time, I totally forgot that fill-up.

We had a lovely lunch, and I was swimming in good vibes on my way home to Falling Downs. Or at least I was till the "low fuel" warning light came on... Oh shit! Wiarton doesn't have a gas station anymore... I'm 30 km from the nearest gas station and according to the flashing warning light I got 12 km range left in the tank. 

So I obviously go from happy vibes to  max stress in about half a second... and by the time I got to my driveway I had 4 km left, and for a guy still learning his limits around congestive heart failure and COPD, all I can say is thank-you Jesus for not calling me home today!

With 4km in the tank I obviously wasn't driving the 20km into town to pick up the Farm Manager from her day job. Luckily I was able to get through and give her the heads-up, although there was a moment of miscommunication when I had to clarify it was essential the jerry can I was asking her to bring home be full.

But all's well that ends well, and that's pretty much all I ask of life these days; happy endings!

Getting back to the Geriatric Ranter, maybe it's time for Gerrie to fire up a fresh Substack.

Beware of visionaries lobbying for taxpayer funding

There was a heart-warming story in the Globe & Mail this morning that hit all the right notes. A Canada-Ukraine joint venture has been formed to build autonomous vehicles, in Canada! The Ukraine partner has already delivered 5000 to the army, and would like to expand while moving production out of range of Putin's missiles.

The Canadian side, meanwhile, is a recently launched start-up, Dominion Dynamics, led by visionary leader Eliot Pence, an expert in AI, robotics, and the architect of Anduril Industries growth from obscure start-up to industry giant in the 2018-2022 period. We're obviously lucky to have Eliot on our team! Alas, the only thing missing for this joint venture to save democracy and crush evil, and make Canada a world leader (here we go again!) in autonomous vehicles with fully integrated AI, is a juicy government contract for oh, maybe a few hundred thousand units.

When something sounds too good to be true, we used to say it doesn't pass the smell test. My first stop was to read up on Pence's time at Anduril, because it's a story I'm somewhat acquainted with, and I'd never seen that name associated with it. Well, imagine my surprise when Google couldn't find a single reference to the dude in any American business news from 2018 to 2022. Maybe Google's AI missed something... or maybe he did all that great stuff under a pseudonym?

A true renaissance man, Eliot also runs a VC shop called Tofino Capital, which invests in small cap frontier start-ups in Nigeria and other over-looked markets. Check it out! Back to the sniff test... Lord, he stinketh! 

And how about the Ukrainian partner?  With 5000 of their machines already in service on the front lines, I couldn't find anything on YouTube showing them in combat. I did however find a story at Kyiv Post from yesterday almost identical to the Globe's - except it was about Tencore entering a contract with a German partner to build autonomous vehicles there, and unlike the dimwitted Carney who is dithering, Mertz wasted no time guaranteeing open-ended funding for as long as it takes! 

Hmm... I have a hunch the Kyiv Bentley dealership will be at the very top o' the heap at the European Bentley Dealers Association annual awards gala for the foreseeable future!

Bye the way, the Ottawa Business Journal today named Pence Ottawa's newsmaker of the year.

It's a small world...

Forgive me for not tooting my horn re the blog passing 6 million views,  but one fact I always found non-toot-worthy was that as views went ballistic, comments absolutely stalled. If you peruse the last few years of the Falling Downs archive, you will find comments from only two (2) readers.

That's part of a long-term trend to quiet criticism. Go to the View from Falling Downs home page and you'll notice there are no join or follow options.

One is Ken. Ken is from Port Moody BC,  and he originally made contact to tell me what a fucking retard I was for promoting Donald Trump. Anyway, we got over that and Ken has been there forever, and I'm convinced the only reason I still get messages from Ken is because he's been there since before the algos were unleashed and blocked messages.

The other notable exception is Timmie. Unlike Ken, I've actually met  him. Tim seems to post stuff in spite of a ban on my blog by the folks who own the platform. The only connect between me and Tim is we're both acquainted with the local farm boy who became a Nobel laureate. That's what got us together for a face-to-face over a pint or two.

As it happens, Tim's day job consists of liaising with NATO military contractors around the world, and I strongly suspect his internet may be a little more robust than what the rest of us have access to. That's why he can post comments on my blog and you can't.

Be that as it may, the other discovery we made over a burger and a beer is that his sister-in-law was once besties with one of my ex-wives. He hates her guts and I'm still kinda fond of her! Be that as it may, I'd love to have more of Tim's NATO contacts reading this blog!

An open letter to Steve Liebig

 Dear Steve,

It was brought to my attention, by persons who will remain un-named, that I willfully mocked your political career in a recent post.

Steve, nothing could be further from the truth. I apologize unreservedly if that "Lie Big" post caused you discomfort.  Anyone remotely acquainted with my work is well aware I traffic heavily in political satire, and it is in that context my comments should be considered. 

And in that context, "ya couldna sucked too bad" is a ringing endorsement!

Go Steve!

Vote "LIE BIG" on October 26

They're having local elections shortly, and the roadsides around Eden Mills were festooned with "Vote for me" signs from the many candidates hoping to grab the bottom rung of the democracy ladder. I'm negotiating a twisty roadway en route to our b&b, and while I'm not able to admire the signage, I couldn't help notice  the "Lie Big" message.

Eden Mills is best known today for the annual Eden Mills Writers Festival, but 150 years ago it was a thriving mill town on the banks of the Eramosa River. By the time the Ontario Agricultural College in nearby Guelph became a university, the water-power era was long over, and Eden Mills was just another struggling hamlet down on its luck.

One thing the struggling hamlet enjoyed in abundance was stone cottages. As you can imagine, when the local cow college was made a uni, building an English department was a top priority. After all, without that claim to Shakespearean sophistication, the U of G was just a cow college! 

By the 1970s you had a thriving English department 15 minutes away, peopled by folks who imagined those stone cottages were just like the stone cottages their literary heroes in Victorian England lived in, and that struggling hamlet has gradually morphed into a chi-chi destination for yuppies with substantial renovation budgets.

It was the U of G crowd who started up the Eden Mills Writers Festival. Due to flukes of circumstance, I ended up on first-name terms with quite a few of them. In hindsight I suppose I might label them "cultural entrepreneurs." It was pretty much the same crew that launched the Guelph Jazz Festival.

In some ways socializing with English profs was an eye-opener. I was accustomed to boozing it up with welders and truck-drivers, but I gotta say nothing prepped me for the level of alcohol abuse among the English department crowd.  To this day I recall a wobble home as the sun was coming up. I'd been at a bash in the apartment of a grad student who was dating a married prof fifty years older. For the last two hours Bowie's Rock & Roll Suicide had been on repeat at max volume. It was ringing in my ears for the entire wobble home, six blocks away. I had more nights to lacerate my brain with that bunch than I ever had with welders and truckers.

Our b&b is a departure from what Eden Mills has become. The woman who runs it has roots in the town that go back six generations. The home she rents out is the home she's lived in her entire life, the home she raised two children in. When she rents her home out she relocates herself to a cabin a little further back on her 16 acres. She's a fascinating character in her own right. She just got home after touring her one-woman play, "She won't come in from the fields," across Canada.

She's like everybody else, getting on in years, and both her children are now living in BC. Six generations rooted on the banks of the Eramosa River are drawing to an end. But in the meanwhile, life goes on. There's municipal elections coming up in a couple of weeks. Once the car stopped and I had a chance to scan a Lie Big sign standing still, I found out Steve Liebig is running for re-election in ward 3. Re-election! He's already on the bottom rung and is just hoping to stay there. Good luck Steve! If you were already elected once, and can still raise funds to have signs printed, you couldna sucked too bad!