Mega data centers are coming to Minnesota. Their power needs are staggering.

If Trump tariffs Denmark over Greenland, your cheese, yogurt and sour cream will get more expensive

You see, Denmark produces and exports large amounts of frozen dairy cultures, the living bacteria that dairy companies (like the one I work for) use to turn milk into yogurt, cheese and sour cream. Chr Hansen, for example, is a culture producing giant in the dairy industry, and a major supplier for our facility in the upper Midwest.

I just pointed this out today to my boss, the QA Lab Manager, after reading about Trump's latest verbal diarrhea in the newspaper in our break room. I chuckled a bit inside, as I know he's conservative and most likely voted for Trump. To his credit though, he's a genuinely good boss and isn't batshit crazy MAGA at least.

Tomorrow they're going to be discussing this with our R&D team and our supply procurement manager. Different products are tailored to very specific culture blends, so you can't just substitute other manufacturers willy-nilly. On occasions where operators accidentally used the wrong pouches, the product never turned out right and had to be junked. And, you need to order in advance to get what you need, sometimes with lead times of several months.

Good scenario, we can get a different supplier. Bad scenario, we need to pay a lot more for cultures and pass on the cost to Americans. Worst case scenario, we have to shut down certain product lines because we can't even get the necessary cultures.

Bloomberg: Green Hydrogen Prices Will Remain Stubbornly High for Decades

Just a Reminder That RFK Jr. Thinks Poppers Cause AIDS

Planning my 2025 garden with tariffs and deportations in mind?

I was just freezing the last of my sweet peppers, and started to think how Trump's tariffs and immigration deportations would affect what's on store shelves next year. If he does everything he promised to do, a lot of fresh produce will be hard to find or expensive a year from now. I'm in Minnesota, so if I want vegetables for half the year, they're either imported, canned or frozen.

So, I'm going through my typical crops with that in mind. I already grow 1000 sq ft of garden, but I can easily double or triple that. I can can a lot more produce. I can grow a lot more peppers and freeze them. I have a dehydrator I rarely use, but I might fire that up a lot more. Squash vines can be planted between my apples, pears, peaches and plums, freeing up garden space. Hell, winter squash can be planted everywhere in my yard, and what we can't eat, the chickens will devour all winter.

The state land near me is filled with wild grapes I can make jelly out of just like Grandma did. It also has huge patches of puffball mushrooms that are edible when young. It's too crowded to hunt there during shotgun deer season, but archery season is long and less pressure. Crossbows are legal, aren't expensive anymore, and easier to shoot than bows. And Minnesota allows both spring and fall turkey season. I haven't shot anything bigger than rabbits in the past 5 yr, but might take it up again.

Anyone else making similar plans, or is my doomsday prepper mentality spiralling out of control again? What vegetables are you prioritizing?

Incoming Trump admin is eyeing new immigrant detention centers near major U.S. cities

Source: NBC

The incoming Trump administration is considering locations and talking to private prison companies about drastically expanding immigrant detention centers that would hold immigrants before they are deported as part of President-elect Donald Trump's promised mass deportation plan, two sources familiar with the planning told NBC News.

The goal is to double the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds — 41,000 are now allocated by Congress — to hold vast numbers of migrants for short periods of time while they await deportation after their arrests inside the U.S., the sources said.

The plan would also include restarting the policy of detaining parents with their children, known as family detention, which immigration advocates have criticized and the Biden administration stopped in 2021, the sources said.

So far, people working on the plans with the Trump transition team are assessing which of the facilities the Biden administration closed could be reopened, taking account of available space in county jails and assessing which areas might need temporary facilities to detain migrants as part of the deportation effort.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna179843

Its Birthrate Falling, Russia Targets Child-Free Lifestyles

Source: New York Times

Russian lawmakers on Tuesday voted to ban the advocacy of child-free lifestyles, in a move that is part of a broader effort by the Kremlin to reverse a falling birthrate and promote the country as a bastion of traditional values that is battling a decadent West.

The State Duma, or lower house of Parliament, unanimously approved a bill that would ban any form of “propaganda” promoting the “refusal to have children.” That would include material on the internet, in media outlets, in movies and in advertising that portrays child-free lifestyles as attractive.

Violators would be subjected to fines of up to about $4,000 for individuals and $50,000 for legal entities.

The bill has been broadly endorsed by the Kremlin and is expected to receive approval from the Federation Council, the upper chamber of Parliament, and then be signed into law by President Vladimir V. Putin.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/world/europe/russia-child-free-lifestyles.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwY2xjawGgxJ5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHS5dbHHLkiRkGiclKj28FYxuKgfWmuv2id57N8nvlEJdu4qFKdCiigT2pA_aem_dQaoqD64XyOw27zd2R1Nzw

MAGA believes there are tens of millions of work-capable Americans on welfare to justify tariffs and deportations

I've seen this over and over again: when confronted with the fact that we are currently in a labor shortage with historically low levels of unemployment, they simply claim that Trump will cut welfare payments to force all the "lazy people on welfare" to re-enter the workforce. They truly believe that there's a huge pool of young, healthy, capable Americans just spending all day lying on the couch, playing video games, and getting thousands a month in handouts. These imaginary people are the ones they believe will work in the factories, fields, construction and meatpacking plants.

They ignore the fact that record-high daycare costs keeps millions at home because it's not cost-effective to have a two-income household, and Trump has no plan to tackle this.

They ignore the fact that COVID left millions with long-term damage that limits their ability to work, up to and including being forced onto full disability.

They ignore the fact that Baby Boomers are retiring by the millions, but refuse to volunteer to work past retirement age themselves.

When I point out that my factory has trouble hiring new employees despite starting at almost $30/hr with Teamster's Union benefits like great health insurance and a pension, and requiring nothing more than a high school diploma, they laugh it off.

They're fucking morons.

Edit: Oh, and I 100% believe that when they talk about lazy Americans on welfare, they're definitely visualizing people of color and not white people. It's a racist dog whistle if there ever was one.

Exported gas produces far worse emissions than coal, major study finds

It's Minnesota's warmest, driest September on record and it's not even close