12.3

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The Duchy of Lancaster is “a portfolio of lands, properties, and assets held in trust for the sovereign.” The Duchy dates back to 1265 but in 1461 Edward IV made it a distinct and private inheritance of the reigning monarch. As such the reigning monarch is not allowed to sell the Duchy but is due any returns. To be clear, this is all different from the Crown Estate which are a bunch of land and property nominally owned by the monarch and dedicated to funding the monarchy but yet not owned by the monarch privately. Having fun yet

The whole thing was a set-up. The point was to dump a bunch of opposition research on us and give us no time to respond, and then use my wild youth to sink Brett. My book was my final word in that trauma, but out of morbid curiosity I dove into Marcus’ account. This was shortly after I learned that Christine Blasey Ford is coming out with her ownbook next year. Grifters gonna grift.

Commercial. Where to start? After years of beating up their supplier base (another gift from Jim McNerney that keeps on giving), building jets is a problem for some reason. The production ramp has been a series of disappointments. Worse, Calhoun continues to deny that they need a new jet anytime this decade, which means every airline on the planet has no choice but to get in line for an A321neo (5,530 sold, or about the same as all MAX variants together). As a result, they’re heading from a 50-50 market share with Airbus to 65-35. The absence of a new jetliner also means they’re at risk of losing their engineering core; they haven’t launched a clean-sheet design since 2004.

Tesla’s refusal to sign a collective agreement in Sweden risks undermining the long-term future of the Swedish model that has underpinned decades of economic success in the Scandinavian country, according to the union leader taking on Elon Musk’s carmaker. Marie Nilsson, the head of the IF Metall union behind the strike against Tesla, told the Financial Times that the famed Swedish model — developed in the 1930s — was at the heart of the country’s prosperity, with employers and unions taking joint decisions on the labour market. “If you look at this in a long-term perspective, it could be a threat to the Swedish model. It’s really important for us,” she added.

And that’s why almost no one who works for large media corporations or the media corporations themselves has the courage to say this. They’re shocked. They think it’s a sign that he’s unhinged when in reality, it’s just a sign of how cowardly and craven they are.”

EVs. Dealers have questions about the way Ford is chasing after EVs and widespread electric adoption, especially given lackluster consumer demand. Dealers have expressed frustration that EV price cuts were required to keep pace with Tesla—even after dealers had to invest heavily in the requirements to sell EVs on their lots. Still: As of October, Ford had lost$3.1 billion on its EV spending this year.

That wouldn’t be a problem if they were self-aware of their lack of understanding, but it is just the opposite. There is a kind of aggressive weaponized ignorance that reminds me of the Norwegian Army Major who was very insistent that he understood race relations in the American South because, “I know your country. I spent a year at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.”

“Europe is in shock,” write Ayaan Hirsi Aliand Evelyn Markus in our lead story today. The cause of that shock is the triumph of Geert Wilders in last week’s Dutch elections. That the anti-immigration populist now leads the largest party in the Dutch parliament is indeed a stunning outcome given his status as an outcast from the mainstream of Dutch politics.

Kissinger’s modus operandi has also come under increasing scrutiny. An inherent contradiction is that he craved publicity but preferred to conduct most of his diplomacy in secret — and not just diplomacy with other countries but the formulation of policy inside the US government. He ordered the home phones of 17 people to be tapped illegally (that is, without a judicial warrant). They include not only journalists but also members of his own National Security Council staff. Kissinger had a true cynic’s view about the use and abuse of power, once joking: “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.” A later interview he gave to Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, in which he described himself proudly as a “cowboy”, infuriated Nixon, who reportedly did not speak to him for weeks.

Yet, in the end, Holt pulled off his gamble. He benefited from good timing (perhaps a mix of luck and foresight): the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 give steamships a tremendous leg up in trade between Europe to the Indian and Pacific Oceans. But in designing ships dainty enough in their coal consumption to pay their way to the Pacific, he also benefited from the late convergence of two complementary developments that had each begun in the early 1800s but did not intersect until the 1850s. First was a series of incremental, empirical improvements to steam engine design: After the massive leap forward from Newcomen to Watt, further increases in steam engine efficiency would be less dramatic. Simultaneously, a theory of heat gradually developed that could explain what made engines more or less efficient, and thus point engineers in the most fruitful direction.

Minnie Chan, the South China Morning Post reporter, became unreachable after visiting Beijing to cover Xiangshan Forum, a three-day international security forum that ended Oct. 31, said the people, mainly her friends, expressing their worries that Chan may be under investigation by mainland authorities.

Each part of an aircraft, like structure, systems, electronics, or cabin items, follows its own learning curve. The classical cost evolution curve for structural components and assemblies is the 85% curve. It says that for each doubling of the production volume, the part has a cost down of 15%.

From January, no EVs made in the US that include battery components made in China, made by a company with significant ties to the Chinese government or produced with a licensing agreement with a China-based or Beijing-controlled operator will be eligible for full subsidies offered in the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate law passed by Congress last year. John Podesta, President Joe Biden’s senior clean energy adviser, said the rule would help the US break the stranglehold over cleantech manufacturing enjoyed by China, the world’s dominant EV and battery producer, which also processes more than half the world’s lithium, cobalt and graphite, crucial materials for batteries. “China still dominates the supply chains for key technologies?.?.?.?they completely outpace the US and our allies on the production of batteries and their components,” Podesta said. “With this guidance and the clarity that it will provide, we’re ensuring that the US electric vehicle future will be made in America.”

As I became yet another Marina [Bay area in San Francisco] surveillant [by recording some video of a homeless man], I thought of what one regular chronicler of the homeless in the neighborhood had told me—that he doubted all the careful surveillance had added up to much other than “On my phone I have a bunch of stupid photos now.” San Francisco’s police chief has called the city’s bonanza of surveillance footage a “golden” tool for solving crimes, but it can just as easily set people free: The public defender’s office is one of the main requesters of footage from the Tenderloin’s camera network. One defense attorney in the city, Elizabeth Hilton, told me that in many of her cases the trove of San Francisco video evidence ends up helping the accused, contradicting victims’ and witnesses’ accounts of what went down.

Alexandria lawmakers voted unanimously early Wednesday to eliminate single-family-only zoning in this Northern Virginia city, a functionally limited but symbolic and controversial move that opens the door for the construction of buildings with as many as four units in any residential neighborhood. The vote, which extends a hotly debated trend in urban planning to another corner of the D.C. region, was one of several zoning changes approved as part of the city’s ongoing “Zoning for Housing” initiative.

A judge rejected John Deere’s motion to dismiss a landmark class action lawsuit over the agricultural giant’s repair monopolies, paving the way for a trial that will determine whether the company’s repair practices are illegal. The case will specifically examine whether Deere has engaged in a “conspiracy” in which Deere and its dealerships have driven up the cost of repair while preventing independent and self-repair of tractors that farmers own.

On Friday, Anduril announced the existence of the person-size drone called “Roadrunner.” In his own Twitter thread, Luckey said Roadrunner has been “operationally validated with an existing U.S. government customer,” but did not name the agency. Multiple publications which appeared to have the news under embargo, including Bloomberg and Defense One, added that the company is not allowed to say which customer bought the technology. It took 404 Media around 25 seconds to find the customer is likely USSOCOM. 404 Media reviewed a procurement record that says USSOCOM signed for a piece of technology described as “Roadrunner,” and also found a reference to the technology in a Department of Defense budget estimation document for 2024.

Emilie Raguso, a former Berkeleyside reporter who now runs The Berkeley Scanner, a daily news site that focuses on Berkeley public safety and the DA’s office and averages 200,000 monthly pageviews, was turned away by District Attorney Pamela Price’s staff, who cited unspecified “safety issues” despite letting other members of local media attend, Raguso said.

Figuring out whether Kissinger was a diplomatic wunderkind or a sociopathic amoralist is a fool’s errand. It is possible to be both. Many of the actions that earned him notoriety were also moves on the geostrategic chessboard. By any standard, not just Washington’s, he was also very funny. The list of Kissinger witticisms competes with that of Mark Twain or Groucho Marx. “The illegal we do immediately,” he said. “The unconstitutional takes a little longer.” Kissinger’s knack for self-deprecation was also in a class of its own. “I have not faced such a distinguished audience since dining alone in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles,” he told a group of dignitaries when he was secretary of state. He worked hard on such one-liners. “Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes,” he once said. “There is too much fraternising with the enemy.” Most famously Kissinger observed that power is a great aphrodisiac.

** When I say “it wants”, I’m not saying that Biden or even anyone in Treasury fully understands this. Biden ain’t Stalin, he’s barely even speakin’! But think of Blue America as an ant colony, as a metaorganism that has an evolved logic to it. Even if any one ant in the colony doesn’t really understand what it’s doing, even if each NPC is mostly just mimicking their neighbors, the colony as a whole can organically coordinate.