I was in church the other day and was excited to see a friend who had recently moved back to Canada. You can’t miss this guy, because he’s a giant Ontario farm boy of Dutch heritage. The Dutch know hard work, but that didn’t stop him from getting laid off here in the U.S., forcing him to move back home.
Even he, a fairly worldly fellow, was surprised by the current sentiments towards the U.S. when he crossed the border. I don’t think most Americans quite grasp both the depths of Canadian consternation and how hard it is to make a Canadian get that mad. He invited me up to watch a NASCAR Pinty Series race, and I asked him if I’d take some heat for being American. He laughed. “No, of course not, we’re still Canadian,” was his answer.
American people are welcome, but American products are a tougher sell. He said that the local liquor store was telling people to buy the American spirits they like now, because they weren’t ordering any more. For now, most of the boycott seems to be localized to brown liquors. Are cars next? It’s not a crazy thought, given Canada’s announcement that it’s lowering the tariff on Chinese cars.
Put on your buckets, today’s Morning Dump is going to be a little controversial, and I just ask that we all respect one another as we work our way through some challenging times. While Canada and China are buddying up, German companies like Porsche are having to deal with slumping sales in that country. China remains the world’s biggest battery supplier, and Ford is having to squash a rumor that it was looking to buy batteries from BYD.
Tesla does huge business in China and tends to avoid a lot of static for it, but it’s still facing a NHTSA investigation here in the United States. The company asked for an extension because there were too many incidents to review.
Canada And The United States Suddenly In A… Heated Rivalry
The President recently told the world that Americans don’t need Canadian products, seemingly as a way to dismiss the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, or CUSMA as they call it up north). Per The Canadian Press:
U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement on trade is “irrelevant” to him and Americans don’t need Canadian products.
“It expires very shortly and we could have it or not,” Trump said while touring a Ford plant in Michigan. “It wouldn’t matter to me. I think they want it. I don’t really care about it.”
Clearly, President Trump isn’t up on all the Jacob Tierney-produced, Hockey-based television Americans are devouring. In addition to Heated Rivalry, a new season of Shoresy better be coming to Hulu in a few weeks. Also, who doesn’t appreciate some Alberta Beef and all-dressed chips?
The better question might be: What does America export to Canada? Besides booze, the answer is that America exports a lot of cars (and also builds a lot of cars there). For historical, geographical, and regulatory reasons, a lot of vehicles travel between the two countries.
Or, at least, that’s what used to happen. As Bloomberg reports, the number of exports from the United States is falling dramatically:
US factories’ share of the Canadian vehicle market has tumbled to a new low, as automobile tariffs upend an industry that for decades enjoyed tight cross-border integration.
Just 36% of passenger vehicles imported to Canada were manufactured in the US during the first 10 months of 2025. That compares with an average of 49% in the 10 years before that, according to Statistics Canada imports data.
Canada is the largest buyer of American-made new cars and trucks, by far. But the numbers help illustrate how the trade war started by President Donald Trump’s administration has changed the business. Mexican and South Korean-made vehicles are gaining a bigger share of sales at Canadian auto dealers.
In response to President Trump’s tariffs and the risk of losing out in a renegotiated USMCA, American car companies have shifted production away from Canada to the United States, which has royally upset Canadian leaders. Canadians also seem irked by the suggestion that Canada should become the 51st state and, recently, over similar, uh, ‘discussions’ about its neighbor, Greenland.
I don’t think the U.S. and Canada can exactly extricate themselves from one another so easily, and American brands could still produce cars in Canada for the local market if it came to that. The other alternative is that Canada could allow more Chinese cars into the country, which, yup, that’s what’s going to happen.
“It’s a partnership that reflects the world as it is today, with an engagement that is realistic, respectful and interest-based,” Carney told a news conference in Beijing.
Carney said Ottawa expects Beijing to drop canola seed duties to 15 per cent by March, and called that “enormous progress.”
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said in a social media post that the break on canola tariffs “demonstrates the importance of foreign trade missions and shows what can be achieved when the federal and provincial governments and our export industries work together to strengthen our trade relationships.”
Canadian canola meal, lobsters, crabs and peas will no longer be subject to Chinese “anti-discrimination” tariffs from March to at least the end of the year. There was no mention of canola oil.
In return, Canada will allow up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into the Canadian market each year, at a 6.1 per cent tariff.
That’s less than 5% of the total market, but presumably those will be almost entirely electric vehicles or PHEVs. As if to rub it in, Canadian Premier Carney said that working with China is now “more predictable,” which feels like a dig at the United States. More pointedly, he said: “We fundamentally stand up for human rights, for democracy, territorial integrity, rights to self-determination.” That’s a crazy argument to make when talking about signing a deal with China, a country that doesn’t regularly respect any of the above, but there’s definitely a way to read that as a dig at the United States as well.
Mexico has taken a somewhat different approach, having recently upped tariffs against Chinese EVs. Will it matter? Who knows, but Mexico already surpassed the United States in auto exports to Canada at least once last year.
I don’t know where this goes, but I assume it’s not good, other than Thomas getting to drive a bunch of interesting Chinese and South Korean cars we don’t get. If it goes tarps off between the USA and Canada, he’s threatening to cut his article word count by 15%.
China Helps Take Down Porsche, Also Germany
The United States was the one major market where Porsche had an ok year, but sales were still ten-ply. Everywhere else? Woof. Germany is down 16%, and China is down 26%.
Per Automotive News Europe, there are a lot of challenges facing the company’s new CEO:
Porsche has struggled with a range of challenges, including correcting an overly ambitious battery-electric vehicle rollout that upended model plans and weighed on margins. Tariffs in the U.S., which has surpassed China as Porsche’s most important market, have also weighed on profit.
The automaker stopped selling combustion engine versions of the Macan and the 718 Boxster and Cayman in Europe because their older digital architectures did not meet new EU cybersecurity regulations.
Given where emissions standards are in the United States, my advice is for the company to produce a new V8-powered 928 built in Tennessee.
Ford Is, Or Isn’t, Thinking About Using BYD Batteries Abroad
BYD makes a good battery, historically, and plenty of automakers have used them in their own cars (including Tesla). Would Ford consider it? A report from Keith Naughton, via The Detroit News, suggests there’s at least been a discussion about it and some pushback.
The potential pact with BYD drew immediate political blowback, with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro and Michigan member of Congress questioning the deal.
House China Panel Chair John Moolenaar, R-Caledonia, said Ford “should work with our allies, not our adversaries.”
“If reports that Ford is in discussions to potentially partner with a second Chinese battery company were to come true, it would diminish Ford’s status as an iconic American company,” Moolenaar said in an emailed statement.
Ford already uses Chinese batteries in some of its EVs sold in China, but this reportedly would be for the company’s hybrids. Tesla does a ton of business with BYD, so it’s odd that Tesla doesn’t seem to get any negative attention for it.
Tesla Asks For Extension To Review FSD Issues
A probe from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into incidents involving Tesla’s ADAS systems isn’t going to be resolved soon, as Tesla has asked for (and been granted) an extension to review all the issues.
According to Bloomberg, NHTSA is looking into incidents where FSD-equipped vehicles violate safety laws, as well as the car’s ability to sense objects during fog or other reduced visibility situations:
In the extension request Tesla sent to NHTSA this week, the carmaker complained it was dealing with a pileup of queries from the regulator. On top of the agency’s questions about FSD and traffic violations, the company simultaneously has been preparing responses to NHTSA’s probes into delayed crash reports and inoperative door handles.
Having to reply to three large information requests in short order “is unduly burdensome and affects the quality of responses,” Tesla said.
You know what’s also burdensome? Having your public roads used as a beta test for a technology, so Tesla should expect public scrutiny.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
This morning, I nearly fell out of bed when I discovered that Mitski posted something to her Instagram account, which is like only the 4th time that’s ever happened. She’s got a new song! This is a big deal in my world. Please enjoy “Where’s My Phone?” and its Rapunzel-as-shot-by-third-year-UMASS Amherst Film Studies video.
The Big Question
What’s your favorite Canadian car, product, tv show, actor?
Top photo: BYD, Toyota, Audi
One key point: Mark Carney is our Prime Minister. Provincial leaders = Premiers, national leader = Prime Minister.
Fave Canadian car? Hmm….I’ll take those made by my buddy who.works at the Oakville Ford Plant.
Favourite Canadian product? Godin makes some excellent electric and acoustic guitars, Levy’s makes great guitar straps, and there are a lot of wonderful food products, but I loves me some Hawkins Cheezies.
Favourite Canadian TV show? Wow, too many to choose from. I could go classic and say The Beachcombers or Mr. Dress-up, or go semi-modern and say Corner Gas (the hardest I have ever laughed at one TV joke was from that show), but…Hockey Night in Canada. I grew up on it (that’s what having one TV station will do). I rarely get to watch it anymore, but it’s an institution.
Fave Canadian Actor? It changes regularly. Overall, probably Eugene Levy or Dan Aykroyd. Or Keanu Reeves. Whoa.
Cheezies are the bomb.
The US doesn’t have Cheezies? No wonder you’re all so grumpy these days. We took someone else’s idea, but half-baked, and slathered on extra layers of what the original was already covered in, much like the Mecury Meteor. Tasty!
Nope, the best that’s available south of the border are crunchy Cheetos and they’re a sad echo.
When I flew home from visiting Ottawa over Christmas, there were a dozen Kettleman’s bagels and several big bags of Cheezies in my carry-on.
Many a late night was spent in the Bank St. Kettleman’s, waiting for a sandwich and watching the rhythmic making of bagels for morning. Whilst I just tried to hang on to reality after the bar.
I’m surprised to see someone mention Godin. I’ve had nothing but amazing experiences with their guitars, especially their classical ones. Very well made and well priced. They are definitely an underdog in the guitar market.
As an American descendant of Canadians, I feel like this whole situation is another great example of distraction techniques to make us fight with each other instead of working together to solve REAL issues. Why?…Because solving real issues would be inconvenient for those invested in NOT solving those problems. I hope Chinese cars do VERY well in Canada. I hope Canada builds a great EV charging infrastructure, and I hope they power it by NOT building AI data centers. Good luck cousins!
Unfortunately age, relative poverty and Type 1 diabetes (well controlled, but still) make it unlikely I’d be granted permanent residency in Canada or most other democracies with a reasonably compassionate healthcare system. Despite that and the fact that I live only a few miles from a likely first-strike target, the rest of the world just needs to let their nukes fly this way. I don’t agree with all the criticism leveled our way by other countries and I even accept that American hegemony did some good (Europe didn’t settle down until it managed to destroy itself twice in thirty years and live under soft (US) or hard {USSR).occupation for another forty as a preventative, with France still treating much of Africa like we treat Latin America and some Brits still whining that we didn’t help them retain their stolen global territories, so they really can’t say but so much historically), but our presence in the world hasn’t lived up to the standards we’ve claimed to adhere to and it’s getting worse, and the intellectual framework behind a lot of this bullshit (“illiberal democracy,” white nationalism, a reversion to the power dynamics of 19th-century conquest) will outlast Trump.
The fact that someone like him even got nominated to run for the presidency, let alone elected twice, in a country with significant problems and profound inequality but nowhere near the material and social difficulties that characterized interwar Germany is an indictment against what we’ve allowed our country to become. All of us. Yes, everyone who voted for him this last time has both metaphorical and literal blood on their hands and shouldn’t even be allowed out of the house without supervision, let alone into a voting booth, but to let this country – still the world’s most powerful and overall richest – get into the situation where any of this was possible was the fault of us all. I recommend an international effort to evacuate all the animals and samples of plant life, then incendiary carpet bombing from sea to shining sea, with armed UN peacekeepers to mop up lingering human survivors, after which the current US becomes an international nature reserve.
So you want the human population US entirely wiped out? Because of the current political climate? Da fuq?
No you see they’re sad, so we all get to die. It’s fine.
If I am going to die I am taking you all with me. *Presses the implode the earth button*
A democracy is only as noble as its citizens. I agree 100% we cannot blame this on one person. In a healthy society a clown like that would have never made it past the first primary. And yeah, all the ppl who voted for him are gonna be around long after he’s gone.
Yes. Even moreso in a democratic republic, which the US is.
The two-party system has been failing the US population for decades, and the candidates the force down our throats are choking us all. We need (at least) 5 equally-strong political parties to choose from (needs to be an off number), and for voters to be able to actually participate in submitting and/or voting on candidates.
I don’t want this site to turn into political infighting. I travel throughout this Nation for my job regularly. My observed experience is, we all have more in common than differences. I could likely sit in your dining room, or you mine, over a couple of beers and agree on many of the issues facing us. We may disagree on degree of severity, or the best solution, but we see the same things. I know rural America has different needs/wants than urban America. Unfortunately, our political class has seen fit to try to divide us. The world is not black and white, it is full of shades of grey. It seems moderation and compromise are now four letter words. Avoid the inflamatory speech.
Dilly dilly. I don’t share all the same political views as lots of peeps on here but it doesn’t mean I want the US glassed over like the Covenant from Halo did to Reach.
I blame the political class. You are in Camp A or Camp B. No moderation of views, no crossover. Toe the Party line or be left to hang. The real world is messy, we move the football by inches – not 20 yards at a time. This country is BIG, and with many different perspectives. It is not one size fits all.
Hear hear.
I’m proudly unaffiliated with any party. Seeing the vitriol spewed from the perceived extremes on “both sides” (quotations because I believe political affiliation is a complex spectrum, not “left” or “right” is frustrating and saddening, and I concur that I think we have more in common than the powers that be want us to acknowledge and recognize.
I used to feel that way, but not when people are actively supporting actual Gestapo tactics. People who actively mock habeas corpus and human rights are not people I am comfortable having a beer with.
Things are getting grim in places. History may not repeat, but it often rhymes… I contrast today with the optimism of the ’90s.
I used to know an Italian guy (a waiter) who was explicitly a Mussolini supporter. But in 2002, while it obviously made him a fool and an ****, it didn’t seem particularly serious and we certainly shared the occasional bottle of wine.
Talk one on one, avoiding inflamatory or politcally charged phrasing. There are plenty of things I do not have the answer to.
I also know every other first world country has better (FREE) medical care and social protections. Having been there on multiple occasions, Europe is far from a socialist hellscape. In Greece, the price of a bottle of water on the street is capped a 12 cents. No taking advantage of the disadvantaged. Meanwhile here in the States a can of beer at an event is the same as a bottle of water. Both dramatically inflated for Profit!
Reddit is two doors down to the left.
“I live only a few miles from a likely first-strike target”
One of my first jobs was in the 1980s at an IBM R&D facility literally in the crosshairs of a Soviet warhead. We even knew where the missile targeting us was based. And thanks to an unfortunate event several years before involving an under trained fire department responding to a fire in a bin full of aluminum hard drive shavings we even had a picture of an actual massive mushroom cloud rising above the facility.
Today judging by its appearance that facility seems to have been abandoned long ago so now it’s in its post-apocalypse phase.
At first I was telling my son this will only be a short term setback for the US. Now I’m pretty worried it’ll cause some very long term damage to the US and our allies. It could really set the US a couple of decades at least. Not to mention what it does to our allies. Who knows, the US could be kicked out of NATO?
The damage done in the last 11 months will take more than a decade to “fix”, that’s for sure. And that’s only if we start consistently electing adults again.
Trump has ceded all of our soft power around the globe because he can’t stand spending money on poors (especially those with different skin color). He is retreating from alliances and allies, he is cozying up to murderous dictators, he is withdrawing from agreements and treaties, and he is abusing his power to both threaten and take direct military action against sovereign nations without congressional permission. (And that’s just what he’s doing OUTSIDE of our borders… not to mention how he’s making a mockery of our constitution within them)
And all of this is happening essentially a SECOND time. The US elected a (much too old) adult after 45, but before the healing could complete, we re-elected him. As so many have pointed out, the US is no longer trustworthy. Who in their right mind would go back to a close relationship with us if a rational D is elected in 2028? For all they know, we’ll have another lunatic in charge in 2032.
So I totally get Canada talking to China. They have their own myriad of problems, but those are internal and do not affect trade. For all of those problems, the Chinese government is stable and predictable. That is how you get (and keep) trade partners.
What? We still have allies?
When all this is over, I hope our next president can reset the tone.
But goodness. That’s like three years from now. I hope we make it to then.
You really expect an election in 3 yrs?
I do. And I expect a mid-term in November. And if he starts messing with that, he’s going to have a nasty situation on his orange, bandaged hands. I already know people who voted for him three times who are thoroughly and completely aghast. Heck, two R Senators are flying to Denmark to reassure their government that the Greenland takeover is not going to happen.
I would have thought it was absurd a year ago. But since then he’s started tearing down parts of the White House, renaming national institutions after himself, and talking about the benefits of colonizing various countries/territories around the world. We’re only in year 1 of 3. So I guess I’m saying I think the honest answer is none of us can predict what’s coming next–I know I could have never imagined this is where we’d be today. Remember when we were all terrified about him messing with civil servant employment protections? Seems kind of quaint that was our big fear last year. (and to be clear, that’s still a huge deal, it’s just there have been so much huge-er ones since)
Year 1 of 4. And agreed. I barely recognize the country I was born in and have lived 68 years. I cannot understate how much I detest that guy.
I remember when people, including some of my colleagues (and some, but not all, of whom actually were Canadian) were wearing Canadian maple leaf patches on their back-packs early in the second Bush 43 term (which I also couldn’t believe he got to serve). I flew down to Colombia for work and a brown-skinned woman, I’m assuming she was Colombian because she was on the same flight to Bogota, that was wearing a badge that said “Bush es en pundejo.”
I can’t imagine what would happen to her how.
Coming back from a different project in Brazil a few months later, the guy in front of me was hectoring me to do something about the political climate then. I tried to explain that we only have elections every four years.
Travelling internationally as a US citizen has only got to be worse now.
I dunno, most of the frogs in government and in agencies seem to happy about being slowly boiled and happy to let things keep getting worse.
I think we are screwed and it for the reasons different the ones posted here. I think the data centers getting built everywhere are going to screw us. Where I work they have already drained a ton of water out of the well lines (when they said it would have no affect) and the electric companies have been jacking up everyone’s bills due to all the cost that need to go into support said data centers. Have not seen my bill for this month yet but my December bill from last year to this year for gas+electric was up something like 20% with near sale exact usage. That is not sustainable.
So I don’t think a new administration will change anything this is trillions of dollars we are talking about and money talks.
Also don’t get me started on PC part prices haha. We will own nothing and like it. (Sorry for the doom and gloom haha)
Yeah it’s gonna be a legacy problem kind of like airlines still using 1980s software cuz it’s the basis of every other system. Once you’ve invested billions in your fleet of data centers, you’re not going to decommission them for a variety of reasons. It’s not looking good.
It is not and people keep saying the bubble will burst but they are just thinking these things are all for AI but they are not fully all AI they are also for hoarding all data imaginable so they can sell us even more crap. I don’t like the crappy blade runner mixed Idiocracy future we are heading towards.
And well I guess at least there is money to be made on tech stocks currently if you have money to throw at them haha.
True. But also it’s why my thermostat knows to kick on when it detects I’m on my way home. Not that that’s important, but a thousand dumb things like that mean our lives are increasingly dependent on all of this and we don’t even realize it.
These data centers are also the motivation for the renewed interest in nuclear power. Which I see as a good thing.
Living now in the PNW, I was neighbors with an Alaska Airlines pilot on one side and a Boeing IT guy on the other. We had some interesting dinner parties! Anyway, the Boeing guy told me they had all these different computing platforms that didn’t actually “talk” to each other and what a mess it was. The pilot was former Navy and had better stories to tell. I was in IT and also have a pilot’s license so I could relate to both.
I’m retired. They’re retired. I’ve moved. They both moved. So, I’m not in touch with either one anymore.
Which part of the country is that happening in? I’m not challenging you. I’m just curious. I did a project in a data center in Kings Mountain, NC about 12 years ago and they did a lot of work to try to make it economical to keep relatively cool.
I did read an article not long after that that Google compared hard drive failure rates in their server farms and found that there was very little difference in failure rates between very warm ones and very cool ones.
But these servers were using spinning discs. I don’t know if it’s different now with SDD storage.
I am in the Midwest (outside Chicago in Indiana) but it is all around Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. The Amazon data center getting built next to my job is like 13 billion dollars and Amazon accounted like another 15 billion going onto data centers on Indiana alone. Microsoft also at one point announced like 2 billion dollars for 2 data centers roughly in the same area. My uncle works for an HVAC design company and he is working on one for Microsoft up in Wisconsin think that one is a total of 7 billion spent. So yeah it is just ridiculous the money going into these. Oh and when the one next to my work is fully operational it is said to require as much power as roughly half of the residential usage of Indiana ridiculous.
As you point out the area could play affect into it especially for the AI data centers as you would want ample cooling for the processors for these data centers so the weather is right and also there is enough water. Though instead of getting it from lake Michigan they grabbed it out of the well line. A local town has been try to get residents together to sue Amazon over it as they were told it would not affect their wells and people I know that live around here had to get new wells dug. Thing is once they are up in running the cooling systems are supposed to be a closed system so why they took water from the well line instead of the lake I am assuming was just because of cost.
Last thing was told that the data centers would not affect our home electric bills well they increased our rate from like 16 cents an kw/hr to like 20 cents last summer and they also have those bs delivery/service fees that they keep increasing since they have given breaks to companies like Amazon when building these giant data centers. So they have to make that money back some how yay.
Interesting. And disturbing. And more disturbing, Orange man fights against carbon neutral sources of energy to power these places. My son and his wife (and a few months out, daughter) live in Milwaukee. I hope your aquifers recover and that renewable energy can make up for all of this. The wind farms across the country, where they make sense, are actually kind of mesmerizing and beautiful in their own way. I live in WA but travelled extensively and seeing large wind farms in CA and TX made me smile, rather than rage. Other than perhaps being beholden to oil companies, I don’t understand his hard-on against them.
I think the best carbon neutral these places can be is with nuclear (Like SMR’s that Microsoft wants to have for their data centers). The foot print of things like wind farms (as in the land needed) is astronomical for what you get back on top of that big oil is still a major part of building those for all the parts included and all the cement that is needed to be brought out for them.
Flying west out of IAH, over the Permian Basin and seeing the almost checkerboard patchwork of drilling pads and pumping equipment, I’d suggest they put solar panels over those bare patches of land. They could generate some power and protect the equipment from the brutal beatdown of the sun in that part of the country.
I don’t live there anymore and no longer get to talk to people in the industry. But when I did, they’d comment on how hard the elements were on their equipment.
And regrettably, my then wife talked me into buying a commercial car wash and keeping high-pressure pumps, hoses and related equipment in that climate, is a LOT.
In Europe, they put solar panels in over land where they have sheep and goats graze. They can co-exist. The animals keep vegetation from overtaking the equipment. And the equipment provides shelter from the worst of the elements.
“Orange man fights against carbon neutral sources of energy to power these places.”
Not quite:
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/18/trump-nuclear-three-mile-island-crane-loan-constellation-ceg.html
There are few power sources as carbon neutral as an idled nuclear power plant.
My first FIL (John) was a nuclear sub-Mariner and then worked for many years as a safety nuclear engineer for PG&E and their Diablo Canyon plant with a Master’s from Stanford in Nuclear Engineering.
While married to his daughter, we had interesting (not confrontational, just curious) conversations about what the industry’s plans were for spent fuel rods. That wasn’t what his job responsibility. He was just charged with making sure the plant ran safely (from what he learned in the Navy) and didn’t present an immediate threat to the surrounding area.
And neither he nor I figured out what to do with those rods back then. (Early 90s)
AFAIK, the industry or governmental agencies in the US hasn’t figured it out. It they have, I’d love to hear about it and dream of having that conversation with him.
He was a smart and interesting guy. He had a ’68 Mercedes 280 SE 3.5 and a Type 2 VW Microbus. I got to drive both. And fly his Rockwell 114 airplane.
Before I married his daughter, I learned to fly and got a pilot’s license at a former crop-dusting strip/flight school near where we bought our first house, that had a 2,600 foot runway that was about 16 feet wide. He’d come visit us and we would meet him and then fly somewhere for dinner. (RIP Natomas. It’s been torn up and the land used to accommodate urban sprawl in Natomas, just NW of downtown Sacramento.)
I got to fly the Rockwell once we got off the ground and until we got close to the ground. Much like when I got to fly LiveCopter 3 outside of Sacramento, thanks to Dann Shively, who was/hopefully is still a great guy. (He also had a really cool-looking MGA. I think he bought it after my time at that TV station.) He’s put the second cyclic stick and collective in when I was assigned to fly with him, knowing that I had a PL.
Anyway, being familiar with that airstrip, but in a Cessna 150, John’s approach speed and angle of attack/rate of descent was very alarming to me. The Rockwell was more than twice the size and weight of what I was familiar with. He’d come in what seemed like steep and hot, compared to what I did.
The Rockwell had some pretty serious landing gear compared to the Cessna and just soaked up a landing that would have sprung the Cessna back up into the air.
RIP John. He died a couple of years ago from neither a nuclear accident nor a plane crash. It wasn’t convenient to stay in touch with him, but I wish I could’ve.
John Potter Obituary (1936 – 2024) – Benicia, CA – San Francisco Chronicle
“And neither he nor I figured out what to do with those rods back then. (Early 90s)”
“AFAIK, the industry or governmental agencies in the US hasn’t figured it out. It they have, I’d love to hear about it and dream of having that conversation with him.”
IMHO that “problem” has not one but many solutions. Buckle up and hang on, this is a long one:
1) Sub seabed disposal (miles under water, tens of feet in the seabed) if you never EVER want to see those wastes again and want to pretend they never existed. Just finding something unmarked and buried in the muck under miles of ocean, hundreds of miles from the nearest shore would require the resources of a nation state, much less recovering it. So this is a two edged sword; on the one hand its as secure as anything with no need for on site security. On the other recovering it for reprocessing is economically impossible. It’s gone and will stay there undisturbed for many, many millions of years baring a catastrophic asteroid strike but if that happens the world will have bigger problems.
2) Deep sea bed disposal (thousands of feet, no muck) if you think you probably never want to see them again but maybe? Recovery is a lot more feasible but still expensive.
3) Shallow sea bed (hundreds of feet, no muck) disposal if you want to keep your options open. Recovery is relatively easy for those with deep pockets.
4) Land based repository such as Yucca mountain or its like
5) On site storage like what we’ve been doing for decades
6) Reprocessing
Case 1) The Soviets had no qualms whatsoever about chucking anything and everything nuclear into the ocean like they were spent car batteries. Fuel rods, reactor cores, liquid wastes, whatever right off the side of the ship with no thought to containment at all. Their motto was dilution is the solution. Or fuck it, they don’t pay me enough for this shit. That went on from the 1950s all the way to the fall of the Soviet Union (and I wouldn’t be surprised beyond). Those wastes were dumped into the shallow Kara (White) sea and the Sea of Japan. Greenpeace protested, the Soviets did not care.
So after decades of that what have the consequences been?
Absolutely nothing. Despite decades of monitoring absolutely no creditable evidence has shown harm from radiation. AFAIK no terrorist groups have bothered to try to get it either even though its at a relatively shallow depth. Of course to get it they’d have to find it. Without a damn good map, well good luck with that. If anything maybe we should encourage them to try, let them blow their whole budget on a stupid wild goose chase. Even Greenpeace seems to have forgotten about it or maybe they’re just keeping quiet because it proves they’re full of shit.
Case 2) Both sides have lost nuclear powered and nuclear armed vessels over those same decades. Those ships imploded on their way down, in some cases exposing the cores, maybe even warheads directly to the ocean. Again despite headline grabbing huge radiation counts next to portions of those wrecks those counts drop to background just a couple of meters away. Another nothing burger.
Case 3) We (and the French) nuked the absolute shit out of the south Pacific. The waters there seem to have recovered fully.
These are three absolute worst case scenarios of oceanic nuclear disposal yet despite decades of monitoring no long term harm as been shown (in the waters anyway, on land is another matter) Quite the opposite, fish harvested have normal background levels of radiation. The corals are growing back. Dilution worked brilliantly. The Russians have been making noise about cleaning up their messes but if I get the impression it’s a cash grab.
So why are things the way they are? Why is safe disposal of nuclear waste a “problem”?
Deep sea disposal is a safe technical solution but a political problem. Too many people think the oceans are clean and pure. They are not. There are plenty of natural radioisotopes in there already and always have been. From what I understand TPTB abandoned this solution for land based solutions like Yucca mountain. Which they in turn abandoned for political, not technical reasons.
Why?
Because reprocessing is also a safe technical solution but a political problem. The difference is once that political problem is solved the fuel is right there under guard (which is already needed to guard the nuclear facility), not under miles of water and muck which would exponentially increase the cost.
TL:DR As far as the concerns regarding nuclear power go IMHO safe waste disposal is at the very bottom of the list.
“RIP John. ”
He sounds very much like someone I’d have enjoyed meeting. I imagine you, he, myself and my father who was a nuclear engineer would have had quite a time.
I just remember all the (mostly) political stuff about Yucca Mountain. And it seems like the site has some geological issues. Fractures in the tuff that extend all the way down to an underlying aquifer, for example. The Wikipedia article about the repository is an interesting read. You know, if you’re a nerd and interest in geology.
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository – Wikipedia
You have clearly thought this through more than I have. I’m not particularly opposed to options 2 or 3.
I used to work with a person who lead one of the teams for that project. So I am piggybacking my opinion on theirs. Which was the objections were overblown., the site was safe enough. Besides those wastes are currently being stored at places like Diablo canyon, right on a fault line. I don’t think that’s better.
I’d say reprocessing the stuff is the best path to disposal but the real objection to that isn’t political, it’s economic. Reprocessing is expensive, at least compared to new fuel. You know what IS even cheaper than that though? Old Soviet warheads! Like the 20,008 we burned in our reactors for twenty years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program
Those warheads did exactly what they were intended for, lighting up US cities, just not quite in the way the Soviets originally had in mind. Turning a threat into an asset! Score one for capitalism!
Unfortunately they hooked us on that cheap uranium so they used capitalism against us after all, just like they did with Europe and cheap gas.
I wonder if they still have any plutonium warheads left. Good stuff that plutonium.
I have really enjoyed this thread. It’s nice to find a platform that provides interesting things to read and (usually) polite, intelligent people to interact with. And learn stuff from. Even if it’s virtually.
I don’t know what part of the country you live in or if I will visit there. If you ever end up in the PNW, let me know in advance and I’d love to meet up with you over a beer, a meal or even just a cup of coffee.
Another member, JJ, now lives in the town I grew up in. Davis, CA. He and I went down a bit of a rabbit hole about stuff around there. Which was quite fun.
Agreed. I’m in the SFBA so KIT.
I do not believe that the chips installed 12 years ago required liquid cooling. The power density of the chips is so much higher now that they require a liquid cooling loop.
Thanks. 12 years is a long time at the “current” rate of progress. And now that I’m retired, and I’m doing my best to be a Luddite.
It seems like once the liquid is in the system, there are ways to cool it and recirculate it. I would think it would have to be pretty pure or chemically treated to not be corrosive, and a closed loop system would be more economical. But what do I know.
“I would think it would have to be pretty pure or chemically treated to not be corrosive, and a closed loop system would be more economical.
You mean like deionized water, maybe with antifreeze?
Where would one even find such things?!
You mean, like in my car’s engine?
And given how much heat these things give off, I think the antifreeze would be unnecessary.
But now, a single server goes down for maintenance and the significant portion of internet, or some cellular network goes down.
Back when I was doing software upgrades, TV News was a 24/7 thing. Imagine upgrading CNN. Our biggest customer globally. (I did, and a bunch of other big players) There are no windows. So, you build a parallel server structure and mess with DNS and tell everyone to log out, give us a few minutes to update the database and log back in.
It was just what I did. Looking back, I didn’t realize how tight-wire stressful those projects were.
The greenfield sites/startups were so easy in comparison.
And I am sure that there are subscribers here (because there some people who talk stuff over my head) that have done hairier stuff than I have. God love you all!
I am so happy to be retired now.
“You mean, like in my car’s engine?”
Or any Walmart.
“And given how much heat these things give off, I think the antifreeze would be unnecessary”
Depends on how efficiently that heat can be removed. Convection, conduction, radiation and Edison. Liquid cooling gives you more of those options. Unless you mean to prevent boiling or freezing. In that case glycol may not be necessary but it won’t hurt and might help prevent corrosion.
(personally I prefer RV antifreeze, propylene glycol to ethylene glycol. Just as effective but a LOT less toxic to pets)
Yeah. The ethylene glycol/pets stories are always awful to hear about. I currently don’t have any pets and my car doesn’t leak any fluids.
I could see them making it a Directive to change the name over to States United Canada Mexico Agreement. “SUCMA D” probably sums up their feelings towards us pretty well right now.
BRA.VO.
Americans really don’t realize how pissed off the average Canadian is. They are actively trying to buy Canadian if possible and anything-but-American otherwise. They don’t want to travel to the US partly because of the political anger and also because they’re afraid of the capricious CBP goons. My mother lives in Ontario and I’ll be lucky if she ever comes to visit me in Colorado again.
The fellow in the story is lucky to even have access to American booze, as most of the importation is done at the provincial level and those entities shut off US imports and pulled stuff off the shelf a year ago.
We didn’t take our two vacations (four weeks total) this year to Long Island breaking a 20 yr old tradition. We are going to the UK in May, Italy in Sept and Calgary for Xmas.
We consciously avoid purchasing US products. The last US product we bought was a bag of onions. I cancelled Prime and Netflix last March.
I’m down to my last bottle of Woodford Reserve Double Cask… will have to switch to Talisker and Laphroaig.
We ‘may’ return once the leadership changes, but there are plenty of alternatives. We sat out the last Trump escapade and went to Europe for our vacations.
We are not afraid of crossing the border, we just don’t want to go right now.
I like me a CRV and Civic, Tragically Hip, Sarah McLachlan, Loreena McKennitt, Rush, Red Green Show, Letterkenny, The Expanse, Alberta beef, Dan Aykroyd, Brendan Fraser, Matthew Perry, Rachel McAdams, Katheryn Winnick, Evangeline Lilly.
Carny and his team have signed more trade deals with everyone else but the US valued at more than the losses due to tariffs. Canada has been the largest importer of US cars and trucks at 49% for decades. Last year that number dropped to 39%. I’d suggest that’s not winning.
We have many friends and family in the US and it pains us to not be able to visit them, but we believe we must stand on our principles and our principles preclude us supporting the US and its current administration.
This might not be a popular post, but it reflects the way I feel and everyone is entitled to their wrong opinion.
“Americans really don’t realize how pissed off the average Canadian is.”
Oh I think many Americans know and I think they LIKE it. At least the ones who fantasize that Canada is now a liberal paradise forever ruined and shat on like Pelosi’s desk:
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/29/nx-s1-5169978/poop-desk-statue-tiki-torch-national-mall
(Were not all like that as this sculpture tried to show)
Oh, I’m sure there’s a subset of MAGAheads who are cheering at owning an entire country full of libs. I’m talking about those who don’t mainline Fox News, normal people. My friends at the rink and work are always surprised when they find out just how large the divide between the countries is now.
Just to throw out someone different on the acting front, and with the return of Scrubs, I’ll nominate Sarah Chalke for my favorite.
Favorite car: Bricklin
Good taste! When the company declared bankruptcy, my local garage bought five of them. Having their lot beside my bus stop caused me to be late for school more than once. The orange one still drives around Ottawa.
There’s a white one as well. A guy I know bought one. Actually, it’s been a few years but I think he may own the orange one as well. Him and his dad LOVE Bricklins.
Speaking of rare cars, my buddy owns the blue XR4Ti that haunts Ottawa streets during the summer months.
I’m here occasionally. I worked with the guy (Dave… these are the Dave’s i know, these are the Dave’s i know) who had the white Bricklin.
I grew up in Milton, On, and there was a shop just on the eastern outskirts that had three Brickin in the yard. They basically didn’t move for at least two decades.
Fave TV show was the final Tragically Hip concert that most of the country stopped to watch.
We pre-empted the Olympics to show that on the CBC.
The Olympics pre-empted everything else that CBC showed.
Unbelievable how huge that show was.
I was about 30 kms from Bobcaygeon and listening to it on the radio. They basically shut down the town for a giant watch party. I was getting my cottage ready for sale and was simply too exhausted to risk the drive, but hearing their last performance of “Bobcaygeon” IN Bobcaygeon would have been epic.
“He invited me up to watch a NASCAR Pinty Series race, and I asked him if I’d take some heat for being American. He laughed. “No, of course not, we’re still Canadian,” was his answer.”
Any American will be perfectly fine visiting Canada… just as long as you don’t do something stupid like having Trump-Vance election stickers on your car, fly a confederate flag, wear a MAGA hat or start idiotically talking about how great Crooked Trump is.
I’ve only encountered one motherfucking jackass like that. He was an old guy from Pennsylvania (going by the license plate) and driving his car with a Trump-Vance bumper sticker.
I pulled up to him, looked right at him and gave him the big middle finger.
He wisely ignored me.
“U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement on trade is “irrelevant” to him and Americans don’t need Canadian products.”
And thus, my own avoidance of US products and services will continue. And when I can’t find something locally, I can always get it from Alibaba. No need for Amazon.
And yes, these days I’d rather send my money to China than to the USA.
“American car companies have shifted production away from Canada to the United States, which has royally upset Canadian leaders.”
And the majority of Canadians in general.
“What’s your favorite Canadian car, product, tv show, actor?”
Car: Honda Civic Hybrid
Products: Crave.ca, Daddy O Doughnuts,
TV Show: Son of a Critch (at the moment)
Actors: Jim Carey Neve Campbell.
Of course my favorite Canadian car is the Volvo 240s that were assembled at a plant in Halifax, NS in the early 1980s. Every bit as good as the Sweden-assembled version.
Halifax mentioned! Time for a PSA about Halifax
That video lives rent free in my head. ‘Splodey for life.
YOUSTEPONEFOOTINTHISFUCKINGCIT…
I respect Halifax. Their favorite A-Team character is VAN.
I suddenly have a craving for PowerThirst.
Best Canadian tv show? Corner Gas.
The Beachcombers was pretty good too.
House China Panel Chair John Moolenaar, R-Caledonia, said Ford “should work with our allies, not our adversaries.”
So who are the big allies? Tariffing everyone, including neighbors? Ha.
Maybe we’ll try Russia next?
At this point I think it’s down to Saudi Arabia, and trying to court Turkey.
John Candy actor.TV show Kids in the Hall.
Mercury M-100 might be the best Canadian car we didn’t get.
With the political upheaval going on world wide, its hard to imagine stability for any deals made between disparate countries right now. Multiple countries are potentially going to see heavy swings in their general leanings, and those are going to rewrite global trade. I don’t think anyone is in a position to reasonably predict the next 3 years of gov’t trade.
Please bring the BYD Seagull (the bright yellow/green car in the picture at the top of the article) to North America! Finally, a small, light, chuckable EV.
I’ve been waiting for this article since I heard people talking about that Canada-China story this morning!
I have mixed feelings about it. I’m all for free trade, and I’m excited about the possibility of buying minimally tariffed Chinese cars, but at the same time, I’m not happy to see Canada moving more into the Chinese orbit. I like America far better, and our cultural and geographical similarities make them far more natural partners. It’s really sad for me to see that relationship being strained
This is not unprecedented.
We already imported something like 44,000 Chinese EVs (Shanghai Teslas) before we imposed the 100% tariff to help support Biden’s North American EV push under the Inflation Reduction Act. Those Tesla models switched to German and American production. Costs increased for consumers, and sales of those cars fell by 50%.
We are basically just reverting to our historic relationship with China before the IRA, the Huawei CEO and 2 Micheals incident. This also means we can sell them our canola and seafood again.
China isn’t perfect, but we have the Pacific Ocean between us. It is unluckily they will ever threaten to invade Canada. Tall fences make good neighbour’s…
What’s your favorite Canadian car, product, tv show, actor?
There are so many good choices. I notice you left off musical acts, so I will pick things that fit your categories. (Tough call in each category, though–there are so many good people and products from Canada)
Car: I’ve only owned one Canadian-built vehicle, but I did like that Silverado and kind of regret selling it. I’m going with that particular Silverado.
Product: Poutine
TV Show: Probably Schitt’s Creek. Though there are a lot of good ones. Definitely enjoyed Letterkenny, Trailer Park Boys, and various sci-fi shows they’ve given us. This was perhaps the most difficult category.
Actor, deceased: John Candy
Actor, living: Nathan Fillion
Actress, living: Tatiana Maslany
Actress, deceased: Margot Kidder
Orphan Black made me feel all sorts of things about Tatiana Maslany. Mostly that she’s such a good actress that I genuinely forgot she was playing half the characters in the show.
Absolutely. You start to like one actress better than another, then remember that she is both of them.
Her work on that show was so impressive. It was especially good when she played one clone impersonating a different clone and the impersonation wasn’t quite right. I don’t know why she hasn’t seemed to have gotten anything good since or at least not that I’ve heard of.
Important add to the Canada-Chinese EV import game:
The majority, if not all of those, will be priced BELOW $35k CAD.
I, for one, welcome shitbox EVs with open arms. There’s a few $6k models I’d love to have.
Fav Canadian car: Campagna T-Rex
Fav Canadian Product: Our entire Dairy industry
Fav Canadian TV show: Video & Arcade Top 10
Fav Canadian Actor: Too many to choose
From what I’ve read these aren’t shit boxes. They’re as good or better than anything we’re making.
No, no. I want the shitbox ones. Like THIS LITTLE NUGGET
RWD, ZERO TCS/ABS/stability control, RWD, basic HVAC, and a mechanical handbrake that you can grip it & rip it.
Holy moly that review is wild. Sorry to say though he said ABS is standard. At some point it feels like political malpractice for the US to block these imports when most Americans require a car to survive and the average new one now costs 40-50K which leads to crippling debt for ppl with lower income. I know there are other factors involved and I’m sure there’s a lot of very unseemly labor policies that help make the price that low. Dang though.
I dunno, that’s gently used Spark EV money.
Which ends up with half the range
True. But also more than 3x the power. The reviews of the time were quite positive.
Why do I need that much power? Especially going to the wrong wheels?
You don’t need that much power. You WANT all that power! “Wrong” wheels or no.
Or maybe, just maybe I’m wrong. If so how about a RWD Mitsubishi i-MiEV shitbox with 47 HP instead? Or is that still too much power?
Most of those have about 40km of range left in them these days, so once again useless
Probably.
Former ally and trading partner Canada, by making a deal with the Chinese auto market, is slowly divesting itself of the need to be connected to the US. Hopefully all workers and industries associated with the poor policies that lead to these actions will put their foot down. Enough is enough. Time for the whole administration to go.
Don’t forget Cowboy Junkies!
They’re touring!
New England would make a great economic addition as a Canadian province.
As a New Englander, I wouldn’t complain at all.
Yeah, please do. It’d be nice to be have a head of state who acts like a frickin’ adult.
Also, poutine rules.
Last year, as a joke, Denmark offered to buy California when Trump talked about buying Greenland. They even got a website going:
https://denmarkification.com/
Yes, just a joke, but rather tempting in many ways.
I mean, I love a good Danish. I’m down.
Makes sense. We already have “The Danish Capital of America”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvang%2C_California
Maybe y’all can see if you can go back to just being England again?
I’ve been calling myself a New Englander living under occupation for years (sometimes I include “hostile”). I don’t like how the percentage of intended humor in what began as a half-joke seemingly decreases by the day.
I used to have a t-shirt which read “US out of NY” and I feel the same way you do.
Don’t forget about Michigan and our sweet, sweet freshwater.
Do we HAVE to take Detroit, too?
Don’t you mean North Windsor?
Can Upstate NY be involved? Please?
Honestly we’d just like to be involved in you know… something at this point.
While it’s not today, I read somewhere that NY was originally considered part of New England, so I say, “yes,” but it doesn’t matter what I say.
Thanks for the support anyway! Lol.
NY is weird. North of the ADKs is genuinely Canada.
When I lived in Erie we got enough Canadian change when shopping that PA should qualify too (at least the western half – not sure I want to bring along the “soda” people out east).
Screw it, let’s flip the Northeast US to “Southeast Canada”. The trump party doesn’t like us, anyway, and they haven’t let shooting off their noses to spite their faces be a hurdle in the past.
Trump also mentioned allowing Chinese automakers into the U.S. as he was touring a Ford plant in Detroit recently (and gave the middle finger to a frustrated worker who yelled some…words at him). I’m sure that made Jim Farley, Mary Barra, and all the others feel really good.
My favorite Canadian car is my daughter’s godfather’s 1965 Acadian Beaumont convertible. It’s a rebadged Chevelle/Malibu, but the fact that none of the boomers that see it can ever quite figure out what it is makes it a lot more fun on the rare occasions when he takes it out.