@TugboatPhil Except at sundown. They attack each other all day, but come sundown, you'll find 4 on the same feeder.
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Peter Shrinks
2.7K posts
If you're a fan of hummingbirds, the most jealous, viscous, territorial bird in existence, it's never too early to prepare.
Get a cheap feeder that easy to clean with as few parts as possible. This one works great.
walmart.com/ip/First-Natur…
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If you always do
What you always did,
You'll always get
What you always got.
If you always vote
The way you always did,
You'll always get
What you always got.
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I used to think this stuff was kinda funny, somewhat silly. But it’s not a one-off. It’s every single project. The ineptitude has won. Get involved this year; vote differently, pay attention to your local races.
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️@christopherrufo
Here's Gavin Newsom at the groundbreaking ceremony for the "butterfly bridge," lying to the public about how much the project would cost and making fun of Caltrans for constantly disappointing voters. He knows his own government is incompetent—and he think it's funny.
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@evanwch @paulswaney3 Grok on Japanese government spending on healthcare:
While exact per-capita public figures aren't always broken out separately in headlines, the high public financing means the government effectively spends roughly $4,900–5,000 USD PPP per capita
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@paulswaney3 I would gladly pay more in taxes for a healthcare system like Japan’s in America
I don’t really want to pay anymore money to save people in faraway lands. I don’t care if that makes me a “bad person”
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From grok:
U.S. government (public/compulsory) spending on healthcare per capita is among the highest globally, even though the U.S. relies more on private insurance and out-of-pocket payments than the other countries, which have universal public systems.
United States: Approximately $12,402.
Germany: Around $8,080
France: Roughly $5,500–$6,000 range
Canada: Approximately $5,000–$5,500
United Kingdom: Around $4,000–$5,000
These figures come from OECD Health at a Glance reports (2025 edition for 2024 estimates), CMS NHE data, Statista compilations, and cross-referenced sources like World Bank/WHO indicators.
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@SwipeWright @mhp_guy Ours was built in 1929: terra cotta sewer line.
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@mhp_guy My home was built in 1962. Cast iron plumbing. Oh boy.
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So ya wanna be a homeowner?
Our home is <10 years old. The sewer line disconnected from the foundation & caused a 35 foot “belly.”
AKA the toilets won’t flush anymore, because gravity.
Insurance nor warranty will cover it.
Cheapest quote was $25k. Tons of digging.
Thankfully the builder is being a bro and covering half of it.
Still in favor of owning, but the costs add up!
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@jimgeraghty In the entire FY, they have been uncompensated for a single paycheck, which they will eventually receive.
After the previous shutdown, they were given full back-pay and there were bonuses for those who stayed on the job and took extra shifts. Bonuses topped out at $10k.
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DHS Employees Have Worked Unpaid for More Than Half the Current Fiscal Year nationalreview.com/corner/dhs-emp…
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Nice guys do not finish last. You can be nice, kind, and mellow and still get ahead in the world.
Patrick Bet-David@patrickbetdavid
What is the biggest lesson you learned from your father growing up? Share 👇🏽
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@grok @jimgeraghty @grok So, they are only uncompensated for this current shutdown. How many paychecks have they missed?
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Yes, after the 43-day October 2025 government shutdown ended in November, DHS/TSA employees received full retroactive back pay per the 2019 Government Employee Fair Treatment Act. Select TSA officers with exemplary service (e.g., perfect attendance, extra shifts) also got $10,000 bonuses, paid from FY2025 carryover funds, as announced by Secretary Noem.
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@CliffordDMay This is a notoriously high-price station on the border of L.A., West Hollywood, and Beverly Hills.
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@CliffordDMay And, it went over $6 today at an average station. I have one near me that's lower, but $6 is now most. For Californians: this is literally what you have voted for year after year.
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California is special -- thanks to your governor. They proper metric is how much has the price risen since the start of this conflict.
I think you know all that but some of those reading this may be fooled by your little trick.
Peter Shrinks@PShrinks
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A law meant to affect the Iowa Caucuses. Its sole purpose was to please Iowa.
Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡@shanaka86
A law written for energy independence is now the mechanism for food dependence. The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates that 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol be blended into American transportation fuel annually. That volume consumes approximately 43 percent of the US corn crop. The mandate was established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and expanded by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. It was designed for a world where corn was abundant and America wanted to reduce reliance on foreign oil. That world no longer exists. Corn acres are falling to 94 million from 98.8 million because urea at $610 makes the nitrogen economics impossible. The RFS takes its 15 billion gallons from a shrinking harvest. The percentage of remaining corn available for feed, food, and export compresses with every acre that switches to soybeans. The mandate does not flex. The biology does. Waiving the RFS requires the EPA Administrator to make a formal determination that implementation would cause severe economic or environmental harm. The process involves a public comment period, regulatory review, and potential legal challenges from the ethanol industry. The EPA proposed 2026 and 2027 RFS volume requirements in June 2025 and has been targeting Q1 2026 for the final rule. The rulemaking machinery was designed for normal agricultural cycles. It was not designed for a war that closed the world’s most important fertiliser transit route during planting season. Even if the EPA Administrator initiated a waiver today, the timeline from announcement to implementation stretches weeks to months. The corn planting window closes in three to four weeks. The legal process cannot outrun the biological calendar. By the time a waiver could take effect, the acreage decisions it was meant to influence would already be irreversible. The RFS is the transmission belt that converts a fertiliser crisis into a food crisis. Without the mandate, a shrinking corn crop would still produce less total output, but the available supply could be allocated flexibly between feed, food, and fuel based on market signals. With the mandate, 43 percent of whatever corn exists is legally spoken for before a single hen eats a kernel or a single tortilla is pressed. The flexibility that markets provide is overridden by the rigidity that law imposes. The cattle herd is at 86.2 million head, a 75-year low. Poultry operations rebuilt from the 2025 avian flu but face rising feed costs. Dairy herds are contracting. Every animal that eats corn competes with a fuel pump that has legal priority. The protein cascade, from corn to feed to meat to eggs to dairy to the grocery shelf, begins at the point where the RFS takes its cut. Corn Belt legislators who championed the RFS to support their farming constituents now face a perverse outcome: the law they wrote to help farmers is the law that prevents the market from adjusting to a crisis their farmers are living through. The ethanol industry will resist any waiver. The livestock industry will demand one. The consumer will pay the difference. And the EPA rulemaking process was designed for annual adjustments, not emergency response during a 21-day-old war. Fifteen billion gallons. Written into statute. Consuming 43 percent of a crop that just lost 4.8 million acres to a fertiliser price that originates in a strait the law never contemplated. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
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Peter Shrinks retweetledi
Saudi Foreign Minister @FaisalbinFarhan delivers a powerful statement:
“What has Iran truly contributed to the Islamic world prior to this war?
Supporting the Houthis in Yemen.
Supporting the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq, which have not only targeted neighbouring states, but Iraq itself.
Supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon, long a destructive arm carrying out destabilising activities across the region, including in Saudi Arabia.
Where was the support for the Islamic world in backing the crimes of the former Syrian regime?
Where was that support in the assassination of political figures in Lebanon?
Where was it in empowering militias in Iraq to the point of hijacking political decision-making and stalling development?
Where is the support for Islamic causes? I do not see it!”
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Peter Shrinks retweetledi
It's because the nuclear deal was never about blocking Iranian nuclear weapons, and advocates understand that intuitively and implicitly, even if they don't say it out loud.
The idea of the JCPOA was to make the Iranian regime immune from U.S. economic or military pressure by dismantling sanctions and gifting them nuclear weapons threshold status. That dynamic, in turn, was always the ticking time bomb at the center of the deal: eventually a future American president would have to respond to Iranian conventional aggression or terrorism with sanctions, at which point the Iranians would say we violated the deal, withdraw, and pocket the concessions.
It's why negotiations over the fix failed in Trump 45. The Europeans said that if we abolish the sunset clauses, which would otherwise enable Iran to achieve threshold status, it would reverse the fundamental premise of the deal. They were right.
And it's why negotiations failed again in Trump 47. But the reporters, diplomats, and policy experts who came of age in the mid-2010s are still operating in a JCPOA framework, so they end up sounding anachronistic.
David Albright@DAVIDHALBRIGHT1
Reading articles this morning about the failed US/Iran nuclear negotiations and disappointments among some in DC and UK about their end. But they lament not continuing with an Iranian effort to end up, after a long negotiation (enabling a build up of its threatening missile and proxy forces), with another, likely weaker JCPOA. They dismiss Trump’s goals of verified denuclearization, including a permanent end to enrichment, as “maximalist.” Yet, Iran is not enriching and its centrifuge program is essentially destroyed. Rather than building on making that permanent, they want to facilitate rebuilding Iran’s centrifuge program, while likely willing in the end to accept a nuclear deal that would not have sufficient verification to be an “effective bulwark against weaponization.” It is not surprising that the Trump administration did not want to continue down that path. From @ArmsControlNow: “The Iranian proposal, as presented on Feb. 26, did not meet the maximalist terms that the White House demanded, including no enrichment, dismantlement of Iran's nuclear facilities, and removal of enriched uranium gas from Iran. Nor did it appear to be sufficiently restrictive from a nonproliferation perspective to be an effective bulwark against weaponization.”
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Peter Shrinks retweetledi
US and Israeli Air Campaign: The combined force struck multiple Iranian internal security targets on March 18, including Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Basij, and Law Enforcement Command (LEC) facilities in Tehran, Alborz, and Lorestan Provinces.
The combined force has widely targeted elements of Iran’s internal security apparatus that contribute to the repression of the Iranian population, as ISW-CTP has extensively documented. The Iranian regime is continuing mass arrests and information control measures as part of its securitization efforts.
The combined force continued to target Iranian naval capabilities on March 17 and 18. A maritime intelligence organization, @TankerTrackers, reported on March 18 that the combined forces’ strikes targeting Bandar Abbas Port damaged an additional three Iranian vessels.
The combined force continued targeting air defense systems across Iran. Geolocated satellite imagery shows several destroyed buildings at Fath Air Base, a military base operated by the IRGC Aerospace Force, in Tehran.
The combined force continued to target Iran’s defense industrial base to degrade its ability to rebuild its missile, drone, and air defense programs. Geolocated satellite imagery confirms damage to several unidentified buildings in Pasargad Industrial Town in Tehran. The Saba Battery Factory, a subsidiary of the Defense Industries Organization, is located within this complex.
Institute for the Study of War@TheStudyofWar
NEW: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck critical Iranian energy infrastructure on March 18, including facilities linked to the South Pars natural gas field and the Asaluyeh processing hub in Bushehr Province. These facilities are central to Iran’s domestic natural gas supply and broader energy system, which supports a significant portion of Iran’s economic activity and regime revenue. Iran exports a small share of its natural gas, primarily to Iraq and Turkey, meaning disruptions will also affect regional energy consumption. The IDF killed Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib in an airstrike on March 18. Khatib was responsible for coordinating the regime’s repression of the Iranian population in his role within the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, including overseeing the regime‘s crackdowns on the Winter 2025-2026 protests and the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests. The combined force’s decapitation campaign and targeting of security services is reportedly causing paranoia among Iranian regime officials and members of Iranian security services. Israeli strikes targeting internal security services are reportedly hurting “rank-and-file morale” and are driving security forces to sleep in vehicles, mosques, or sports facilities in order to avoid targeting. Hezbollah claimed 57 attacks targeting Israeli forces and positions in northern Israel and southern Lebanon since CTP-ISW’s last data cut off. The IDF has continued to conduct airstrikes targeting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, including strikes targeting Hezbollah’s social and financial service network in Lebanon.
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@KeenanPeachy @shanaka86 The green revolution allowed a heavily populated world to feed itself.
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JUST IN: The most irreversible consequence of this war is not happening in Tehran. It is happening in a barn in Iowa.
A farmer is standing over a kitchen table looking at two seed catalogues. One is corn. One is soybeans. Corn needs 180 pounds of nitrogen per acre. Nitrogen costs $610 per ton on the CBOT March futures settlement as of yesterday, up 35 percent in a month. Soybeans fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere through root bacteria called rhizobia. They need nothing from the Strait of Hormuz.
The farmer is choosing soybeans. Millions of acres are choosing soybeans. And once the planter rolls into the field, the choice cannot be reversed until next year.
USDA projected corn at roughly 94 million acres for 2026, down from 98.8 million. Soybeans at 85 million, up from 81.2 million. Those projections were published February 19, before urea surged past $683 at New Orleans. The actual shift will be larger. USDA Prospective Plantings reports March 31. By then the seeds will be in the ground.
This is the transmission channel the world is not watching.
A 21-mile strait enforced by provincial commanders with sealed radio orders just rewrote the planting economics of 90 million acres of the most productive farmland on Earth. Not through sanctions. Not through diplomacy. Through the price of a single molecule that corn cannot grow without and soybeans do not need.
Now follow the cascade.
The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually. That consumes roughly 43 percent of the entire US corn crop. The mandate is set by the EPA. It does not flex when corn acres shrink. It is inelastic demand consuming a fixed share of a declining supply. When supply tightens against a fixed mandate, the remaining corn reprices upward. Corn above $5 per bushel compresses every margin downstream.
The US cattle herd stands at 86.2 million head, a 75-year low per USDA NASS. Poultry and pork operations face compression from higher corn prices. Feed is the single largest cost in livestock production. When feed reprices, protein reprices. When protein reprices, every grocery shelf in America absorbs the increase.
This is the protein cascade. Corn to feed to meat to eggs to dairy to the checkout counter. Each link tightens because the link before it tightened. The originating cause is a urea molecule that cannot transit a strait because a provincial commander’s sealed orders say it cannot.
The farmer did not start this war. The farmer cannot end it. The farmer responds to the price on the screen and the biology of the two crops in front of him. Corn needs the molecule. Soybeans do not. At $610 the arithmetic is settled. The planter rolls. The season is locked.
Israel just authorised the assassination of every Iranian official on sight. The US has spent $16.5 billion. South Pars is burning. The Fed is holding rates because oil inflation will not break. Gold touched $5,000. Bitcoin is bleeding. China is running exercises near Taiwan. Sri Lanka shut down on Wednesdays.
And underneath all of it, a man in a barn is making the decision that determines whether four billion people pay more for food this year. He has never heard of the Mosaic Doctrine. He does not know what a sealed contingency packet is. He knows what nitrogen costs. And he is planting soybeans.
Full analysis - open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡@shanaka86
Right now, in barns and equipment sheds across the American Midwest, farmers are making the most consequential decision of this war. Not generals. Not senators. Farmers. At $683 per ton urea, corn economics have collapsed. Nitrogen is the single largest input cost for corn production. At pre-war prices a farmer could justify 180 pounds per acre and expect a margin. At $683 the math breaks. Soybeans fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere through root bacteria. They do not need the molecule trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz. The seed decision is being made this week across roughly 90 million acres of American cropland. Once the planter rolls into the field, the choice is irreversible. Corn seed in the ground stays corn. Soy seed stays soy. The acreage allocation locks in. USDA Prospective Plantings reports March 31. That report will tell the world how American agriculture responded to the Hormuz blockade. But the decisions it captures are being made now, in conversations between farmers and agronomists and seed dealers who are looking at nitrogen prices and making the rational economic choice: plant the crop that does not need the input you cannot afford. Every acre that shifts from corn to soybeans tightens the corn balance sheet for the rest of the year. Corn feeds livestock. Corn feeds ethanol. The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually, consuming roughly 43 percent of the US corn crop regardless of price. That demand is inelastic. If acres shift and production falls while the mandate holds, corn prices spike. Feed costs spike. The protein cascade reverses. The US cattle herd sits at 86.2 million head, a 75-year low. Poultry and pork margins that were benefiting from cheap feed compress when corn crosses $5 per bushel. This is how a naval blockade 7,000 miles from Iowa reaches the American grocery shelf. Not through oil. Not through shipping. Through nitrogen. The farmer cannot afford the molecule. The molecule cannot transit the strait. The farmer plants soy instead. The corn supply tightens. The ethanol mandate consumes its fixed share. The remaining corn reprices. The feed reprices. The meat reprices. The grocery bill reprices. The decision is not political. It is arithmetic performed on a kitchen table by a person who needs to plant in three weeks and cannot wait for a ceasefire, an escort convoy, or an insurance normalisation that the Red Sea precedent says takes years. The deepest penetrator in the American arsenal cannot reach a sealed Iranian doctrinal packet. But the fertiliser price it failed to resolve is reaching every planting decision on 90 million acres of the most productive farmland on Earth. The war’s most irreversible consequence is not happening in a bunker. It is happening in a barn. And by the time USDA publishes the data on March 31, the seeds will already be in the ground. Full analysis in the link. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
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Peter Shrinks retweetledi
If the war keeps taking out murderous Iranian political and security leadership I am concerned that there will no longer be suitable candidates to lead the UN Human Rights Council.
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@0Beanie05923291 There was a study which showed on long standardized tests, the section given at the end showed poorer scores, even when the sections were randomized. Stamina matters.
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Peter Shrinks retweetledi
You can’t teach children how to read without phonics instruction. You can’t improve their ability to comprehend what they read without vocabulary instruction. You can’t build stamina for reading without using whole books as part of your ELA instruction. You just can’t.
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@michelletandler @BenMFreeman As a gentile, I'm ashamed how few allies have stepped up.
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@BenMFreeman I'm a Harvard alum, and I would not encourage any of my Jewish friends or their children to attend Harvard right now.
I have stopped donations.
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Harvard hasn’t brought back Jewish quotas. It’s done something more insidious.
Create a campus where Jewish students feel unsafe, unwelcome, and pressured to hide who they are, and you don’t need formal limits. Fewer Jews will come. Fewer will stay.
Same outcome. Different method.
ynetnews.com/article/hkpkja…
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