Farmer Diaries

Did you hear that a largely unknown member of the Royal family "knows" that Harry will soon divorce! So is the state of news, of course, Harry and Megan just sold the movie rights to "The Spare" for a large figure so they must be in real turmoil, and of course, the Daily Mail continues to state that Harry and Megan are soon to return to the UK...clearly the sunny weather of California is too much for the ex-Royals. I suggest that not a morning goes by when Harry and Megan don't contemplate how good their lives are now that they are out of the Royal family.  Granted, at some level their fame is largely caused by their "royal" status, but again it's not like Harry chose that life, it was thrust upon him by birth.  Harry and Megan are set for life money-wise and are enjoying the next stage of their lives as confirmed outsiders to the Royal Family.   Leste we forget, that both Harry and Megan have toxic families.  Megan has been on the outs with her en...

First, the problem with Bud Light transcends the "war" the right has waged and seems won against bud light.  In a purely created game of "wack-a-mole" by the GOP, let's be clear until the GOP made a huge fuss about a small commercial about a Transgender person that liked Bud Light (which is the real problem), the whole thing was a non-issue. Of course, these types of social wars always degenerate.  Look at the "woke" movement to remove statues of long-dead men about things that are now seen as "politically incorrect", judging the world of the 19th century with the rose-tinted glasses of poorly understood modern history.  The attempted killing of Bud Light gave some imbeciles some ideas that it should continue its war with America since for them anything that detracts from its abortion stance or its support for Donald Trump is a good thing.  In a sense, the outrage movement of the left has been adopted by the right.  In a sad, but predictable ...

Big article in the National Post (a Canadian national newspaper...yeah they still exist), where it was disclosed who was and who was not invited to Queen Elizabeth's September 2022 funerals.  Obviously, Trudeau and his wife made the cut, but he also invited four ex-prime ministers and a bevy of others (there was only room for 10 "official" Canadians at the ceremony).  The big woop is that Sandra Oh was invited (she of Gray's Anatomy, and recipient of the Order of Canada ).  The article pointed out that the Prime Minister used his visit to the UK, where so many heads of state were present, to have informal conversations...only natural considering that the events would last only 2 hours and they were there for a few days.   What was fascinating were the commentaries at the end of the article.  First, was the comment that Trudeau " fucked-it all up again " not entirely sure how he did that but at one point you have to realize that just hearing or reading abou...

2024 Ford EV vehicles will soon have Tesla ports installed instead of the current standard they use.  This is a major coup for Ford, because of the extent, reliability, and convenience of the Tesla charging stations.  For Tesla, it means that the US's two largest EV manufacturers will be using a common standard, which will probably force the other to adopt Tesla's port standard (in addition, Tesla has the highest number of high voltage charging stations -- by a magnitude). Ford, gets access to what is the most reliable charging network, Tesla gets extra cash from the US government and basically "imposes its charge port standard" on other EV charging networks.  There are currently about 30,000 charge station, of which 6,000 are Tesla.

A few days ago, the Chinese government announced that for 2022 total birth per 1,000 women was 6.7.  The population replacement level of birth should be around 21 per 1,000.  It was long thought that the birth rate in the main Chinese cities collapsed during Covid, but this is the first time that it is announced by state media that the birth rate across the entire country has fallen by such a large percentage (in 2019 the World Bank reported 12 birth per 1,000 women).   China may have many faults but they are well aware of the problem.  There is no easy fix, the Chinese government has taken a page out of the Swedish model and now provides benefits and incentives for women to have children (instead of penalizing them), but it may all be too late.  Demographic tensions are such that by 2048 there will be one worker for every citizen over the age of 65.  By far the largest population segment by 2030 will be those over the age of 85.  To give a sense ...

Everyone knows that for his entire life, Trump has been litigious it's part of his DNA. At dinner last night I asked a lawyer friend what it took to breach the Attorney/client privilege bond.  He said it took a lot, in fact, it took several proof that a criminal conspiracy was orchestrated by the client and the lawyer.  As my friend said, not only proof of conspiracy but serval confirmation.   The breach of Trump attorney/client privilege a few weeks ago indicates that the DOJ has undeniable proof, that it presented in front of a judge.  Sooo that means that the DOJ had strong and multiple testimonies that Trump was up to no good, and it's even possible that Trump spoke to his lawyers in front of witnesses that have now spilled the beans on Trump.   It gets worse for Trump, it now emerged that Trump had his staff move documents the day prior to the DOJ raiding his home in Florida...there is apparently even a video of the action. Therefore, in addition ...

 Yu got to give it to Elon Musk, he really got his car strategy Just Right! First , he created a roadster that was not particularly cheap or long ranged but it was his first attempt at manufacturing vehicles.  This kind of vehicle was a testbed for what would come later, but it allowed Musk and his team to start understanding the car-building process...and it's complicated. Second came the Tesla S, an expensive very fast, and long-range vehicle that still had many faults but early adopters didn't care, they were geeks and finish was not a high priority.  This car was as fast as a supercar, had a range of more than 400 miles on a single recharge, and looked very very cool.  The car still had a lot of flaws that were generally disregarded by the buying public.  The funny thing, of course, is that its speed compared to remarkably uncomfortable supercars, but its comfort and finish were that of a mid-range automobile.   Third can the Tesla X the dream SUV...

We are in May, and by all accounts, the Ukraine war should be warming up now that the ground is solid again, this made me think, over the past few days about the end game here.  Ukraine has/had a population of about 60 million to Russia's 130 million.  I was looking at my bookshelf and there are a number of history books and one book discussed the 100-year war -- which was not a 100-year war, but 100 years "of wars" between France and England.   The relevance here is sustainability and objectives;   For Russia, or at least Putin this is not about Ukraine but about lies beyond Ukraine; Poland, and Hungary to the West and Romania to the South.  So, the Polish and spending a lot of money on their military and are very generous towards the Ukrainians with substantial military support.  This war for Russia/Putin is about Russia reaching the natural protective boundaries.  Ukraine is not and has never been a target it's on the way to the target.  A...

In economic terms, Brexit was always going to be a short and medium-term failure.   How could it not, the UK depends for nearly 40% of its export markets on Europe while for Europe, the UK accounts for about 5% of exports.  For Europe losing the UK was a small problem for the UK losing Europe was a massive one! This was a given, and I assumed that Britons would understand that aspect.  If 40% of your exports are now going to foreign countries there will be problems -- that's essentially why the European Union was created, but for most of the British population there was always a sense that the European experiment was about a take-over of the country by the Europeans and other rif-raff.   Politics had a lot to do with the lack of preparedness.  Acquaintances involved in the perishable vegetable trade in Europe simply cut off the UK, too much trouble, too much paperwork, and too much time where their goods were at risk of damage and rejection by the UK buyers...

Update:  got a lot of pushback on this note, it seems that everyone thinks I'm a racist, maybe I do!  I don't know -- the real test would be if my daughter dated and married a black man...I will never know I don't have a daughter -- but it remains that your attitude towards race can only be judged by things that affect you directly.  The reason I went after South Africa, has more to do with the news over the pasts few weeks, where massive rolling blackouts across the country because it failed to invest in its infrastructure, and I compared South Africa to India in the 1990s. I "knew" Rebecca Mark of Enron when she was their #1 in dealing with India -- we all stayed at the same hotel and all commiserated about how crazy it was to deal with India.  I remember Mark saying that she never worked in such a corrupted place -- and she included Aregentina in that!  In the late  1990s India had huge power problems because of procurement theft. The ex-CEO Escom, even...

Harry's schedule 11:23:  Landed at Heathrow Terminal 3 (American airline flight 136) 12:00:  Out of the airport in the car to Frogmore Cottage  12:35:  Arrive at Cottage,  13:00   Have lunch with army friends -- know they will be quiet, and they're old mates 14:30  Talk to wife and kids 15:00   Try to call father for a brief "in town will be there tomorrow, certain everything will be great and congrats" -- leave a message 1515   Go for a quiet walk  17:30  Finish the boxes of stuff he needs to ship to California 18:00   Dinner alone early to bed 6:00  Go for a run just to get the blood pumping 9:00 Leave Frogmore cottage -- probably for the last time (leave a note for Uncle) 10:05 Arrive at Westminster Cathedral for the big day,  10:16 Walks into the Cathedral, and notes that no one is making eye contact.  Still enjoying the day, after all, he's just a VIP spectator here, so it doesn't concern...

A few weeks ago Apple announced that production of the iPhone would be shifting out of China in a roundabout way -- in essence Apple announce that 10% of iPhone production was now assembled in India, doubling the Indian output. A few days ago, one of Apple's main China partners (Taiwanese-based) Wistron shut down its largest assembly Chinese-based assembly plant.  As of May 15, there are only two employees left on site and all the assembly equipment has already been removed.  The plant was shut down permanently on April 26.  Many Chinese lost their well-paying jobs and this will impact the city as a whole.  BTW the Taiwanese's contract had been up since the beginning of 2023, and there were issues that Wistron and Apple seemed to be unable to resolve -- in addition, the Biden's administration recent ruling made the sale of certain equipment to China impossible -- it is unclear if these new rules played a role in the non-renewal of the contract with Wistron In additio...

It now emerges why Piers Morgan hates Harry so much, a court case initiated by Harry against the Mirror Group (where Morgan was editor-in-chief for nearly a decade until 2005) seems to expose that Morgan was a liar and that he was instrumental in spying on Harry and others for years.  the lawsuit that the Royal Family tried to stop is in full swing in London, needless to say that the gutter press will not look good.  This is something that the entire establishment has been trying to sweep under the carpet, unsuccessfully.   As for Harry, more lies from the Daily Mail that Harry spent 30/40 minutes at Buckingham Palace.  Considering that Harry left Westminster at 1:15 pm (theur are time stamped photos) and arrived at Heathrow at 2:00 pm (again there are photos) it's not entirely clear how Harry could have spent 30 minutes at Buckingham Palace ---unseen by anyone.  Because even with a police escort, 40 minutes to make it from Westminster to Heathrow is amazin...

I live in Quebec, a French-speaking province in a sea of Anglos.  Our culture is largely American, with a French twist -- foreign movies are all dubbed -- which makes some movies rather strange, especially comedies. The question is why have politics and the opposition become so f-ing boring?    Still, here in Quebec, we are 85% North American and 15% French Canadian (with a bit of French culture too -- although we often don't know what they are talking about...).  In the 1960 Quebec was an important part of the "French" culture.  Nowadays not so much. So like France's Macron, a "newish" party was called the CAQ gained powerr; his was a nationalist/ sovereignist/corporatist, its leader was a successful business leader and when he won the election (about 8 years ago now).  To add insult to injury he and his team have been remarkably effective in most aspects of governing.  The CAQ's popularity during the Covid shutdown, despite the inconvenience, rose....

So Bryan Slaton a state senator in Texas, who ran on an extreme family value platform,  anti-LGBT position, and anti-abortion positions, was booted from the Texas legislature in a 147 - 0 vote.  This now ex-Senator decided to have sex with a 19-year-old intern after plying her with a massive amount of booze.  Oh, and he thinks that this is all normal...really that's the GOP in Texas.  It tells you everything you need to know.   So many things are wrong with this guy... it's a sad cliche it's always the rabid that are the guiltiest.  Remember Bill Clinton's main accuser of having an affair (not to whitewash Clinton), but the guy who went after him was Newt Gingrich...he would speak about family values etc etc,  Newt was on his second marriage (due to his infidelity) and was actually cheating on his second wife (with the women who would eventually become #3), and had been his mistress for a number of years. Lets be clear a party that supports a New...

Who is the customer: What killed the Blackberry was that it was too good for its clients.  Its clients misused the device and Blackberry failed to adapt to a changing paradigm.  First, let's be clear the users were not the clients, the corporations were the clients and they deployed the devices throughout their workforce.  Once Blackberry dominated the corporate world it failed to understand that new customers (i.e. not corporations) would have different needs.  The forward-thinking of Blackberry: In 1995 on my way to Singapore I spent a few months in New York City working for CIBC, getting to know the team, we all had pagers then.  A few months later returning to the city I see everyone playing with their two-way pagers ( made by Blackberry ), it was a game changer and a great time waster!  But in Asia mobile phones were already ubiquitous and I never looked back.  They used superior technology than what was in the US because of the US mobile phone c...

America's right continues to do battle about covid, less now since they are not getting much traction, and there is still a real effort to blame Biden because "Teflon Trump" was clearly not involved in the covid crisis.  Seriously, the one thing that Trump did right, to push for a vaccine approval was made into a non-issue.  But you have to stick to the right's narrative.   Part of the narrative is that Covid was developed in a Lab, which is actually doing research about SARS infections.  The lab was there because over the years the region has seen many versions of SARS emerge (COVID is a form of SARS for those who don't know).  The ultimate narrative is that if it was created in a lab and that it was done for military purposes...pushing the idea that we are "at war with China" a narrative the Neocons love. Today, there is still a 50/50 chance that the virus emerged from the lab, no one knows (maybe the Chinese communist party), one thing we know for sur...

I was in a heater conversation a few days ago where the guy I was talking to insisted that you didn't need to be a US bank to clear the US dollar -- he said that because he read it in the Economist.  What utter BS. Money is a funny thing, and it is an old concept but the idea that states control the money supply is a very 20th-century thing.  I lived in Asia in the late 1990s and the money was issued by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC to most people), it was not the Hong Kong government, it was money issued by a private entity. Less you think it was unusual, it was the same in the US and Canada until the 1930s... The issue was trading, and somehow the Economist got it into its mind that it was possible to trade dollars outside the US banking system.  While it is true at the margin, in the greater scheme of things it is not.  There is a vast difference between accepting a few US dollars and trading goods with US dollars, its not at all the same thing. Now, what ...

In the end, it didn't matter what Harry did.  He flew in for a 24-hour visit to the UK to see his father becoming the king of the United Kingdom.  His gesture was one of conciliation in a family that basically hates his guts, and that of his wife. I did read his book, it was interesting in a kind of weird way.  What was amazing is how he and his brother were treated differently. On the bright side, Harry was able to become a real soldier, unlike the rest of his family, for a short period of time he had a real job. Harry arrived Friday morning and Saturday afternoon around 4 pm he was gone.,  Yet the anti-harry bunch was going after the guy.  He arrived Friday, went to bed, and went to a coronation.  That's it, he spoke to only a few cousins and said very little, but the press does love drama, and made shit up.  He was right to go home ASAP. The thing about this; is the best the press could do was to get a lip reader...he made zero press comments he arr...

Breaking news:   " In February 2023, Canada created 35,000 new jobs, about 9,000 more than the expert predicted ". So, usually, when interest rates rise as quickly as they have in the past two years, a recession is the guaranteed outcome,  Why is it taking so long, for the recession to happen? In my work, I talk to many finance directors and CFO, and their overall view of their financing cost is that it's a minor irritant and actually represents a smaller percentage of their costs than in the past since all other costs have risen by more.   A friend in the construction industry told me that the cost of "wet rental", driver, fuel, and truck has nearly tripled in price, from around 65$/$85 to nearly $175/$200 per hour.  his total financing interest rate has risen from 8% to 12% but as a percentage of total expenses it has fallen by 25% -- so much that he included an explanation for the reduction in his annual report.  So much for the push by the Bank of Canad...

In the Daily Mail (a publication that makes the New York Post sound like a left-leaning rag), it was reported that Harry arrived on a private jet, there was even a picture of a gray G-V which would have cost Harry something like $200,000 (about $10,000 per fight hour for 20 hours of flying).  Today is coronation day (didn't watch, but saw pictures), but Harry was there, in the third row -- which I thought was about right, next to some very friendly cousins (one had rented his cottage for a year or two during the Pandemic -- she now live in Spain). The funny bit is that Harry actually flew on a commercial flight (American Airlines actually).  This was not reported in the Daily Mail, but it was in the Times because people obviously recognized him (they even had the flight number).   So let's be clear, the Daily Mail "made up" the story that Harry flew private and used fake images (probably stock images anyway) since he was flying commercial, and he was seen in terminal...

 Note that so far the Americans have done nothing about the one that was seized last week. Is Iran after a confrontation with « someone ». Maybe someone should find out.  I don’t think the US wants a piece of that pie.   Europe has also been rather silent about the whole thing, and the silence out of China has been deafening…no one wants to replace the Americans.   What a bunch! P.S.  Its may 9th now, guess what the Americans have done vis-a-vis the tankers, bubkis, that's what.  

 Now that the leaked « Pentagon » papers have made it onto the public a few things are clear.  The assessment that the war in Ukrainian is not going all in Ukraine’s way is understood and obvious.  This war is for Russia to lose(they seem to do everything in that direction). Ukrainians are not the best soldiers (ok but compared to the Russians or the Americans?). More important is the fact that this third leak in a decade is gain from a low level analyst.  Why did this guy have access to secret documents. Finally, why is so much stuff secret?  I know for a fac that an article by the Guardian newspaper was classified as secret in a file that I saw years ago.  I made the comment that to make this secret was ridiculous since it was available on the web site of the Gardian newspaper.  The reply I got made some sense— it is simple to classify documents so that overall means of analysis are not understood.  Still too many documents are secret for no goo...