Sunday’s election, which came months ahead of schedule after the country’s governing coalition crumbled late last year, produced a few surprises and a lot of suspense. Late in the evening in Berlin, it was unclear if the next government would be another wobbly three-party affair, like the one that fell apart last fall, or a return to the more durable two-party governments that had led Germany for most of this century. … Among German voters, 65 percent are worried that Germany is helpless against President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, according to a poll released on Sunday afternoon.
On Sunday night in a post-election debate between leaders, Friedrich Merz (the likely new chancellor), quickly brought up the threat that Germany and Europe face because of the new U.S. administration.
“It has become clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this government, is largely indifferent to the fate of Europe,” he said. “I am very curious to see how we approach the NATO summit at the end of June — whether we are still talking about NATO in its current state or whether we need to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly.”
-Christopher F. Schuetze and Jim Tankersley reporting from Berlin for the New York Times
Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union at party headquarters in Berlin on Sunday. [Picture by Angelika Warmuth/ Reuters]
It’s a rainy weekend here in the city, with about 0.3 inches recorded as of 7 pm tonight. We may reach an inch or so by Monday morning.
Cybertruck spotting— one wrapped in dark gray, parked on 15th Avenue East here on Capitol Hill on Friday. “Does Elon Musk Still Care About Selling Cars? Mr. Musk, one of President Trump’s main advisers, has not outlined a plan to reverse falling sales at the electric car company of which he is chief executive. Tesla’s car sales fell 1 percent last year even as the global market for electric vehicles grew 25 percent. .. Tesla sales fell 12 percent last year in California, which accounts for nearly one-third of the electric cars sold in the United States.” – Jack Ewing writing for the New York Times
Happy Friday.
These 1970s stamps arrived as part of a complimentary packet of world stamps from my supplier of stamp albums and pages.
I might still start a thematic collection and animals. It would have to be a specific animal— or kind of animal— to narrow it down to a few thousand stamps!
Mongolia – Small Fur Animals Issued Sept 5, 1973 Perf. 12×11¼ |Photogravure |No Wmk 802 20₮ Multi-colored | European badger (Meles meles) [Sources: Stampworld.com, Google Search Labs| AI Overview]Romania – Young Animals Issued Mar. 10, 1972 Perf. 13½ |Design: Design: Nicolae Săftoiu |Engraving: Fabrica de Timbre, Bucharest |No Wmk 2995 35b Multi-colored | Red fox cubs (Vulpes vulpes) The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is the largest of the true foxes and one of the most widely distributed members of the order Carnivora, being present across the entire Northern Hemisphere including most of North America, Europe and Asia, plus parts of North Africa. [Sources: Stampworld.com, Wikipedia]Rwanda – Apes and Monkeys Issued Mar. 20, 1978 Perf. 13½x13 |Design: Severin |No Wmk 921 20c Multi-colored | Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) The genus Pan consists of two extant species: the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Taxonomically, these two ape species are collectively termed panins. [Sources: Stampworld.com, Wikipedia]Madagascar – Lemurs Issued Oct. 9, 1973 Perf. 13 |Design: Jumelet |Engraved |No Wmk 747 5Fr Multi-colored | Greater dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus major) The greater dwarf lemur, or the Geoffroy’s dwarf lemur, is a lemur that is widely distributed over the primary and secondary forests near the eastern coast of Madagascar. [Sources: Stampworld.com, Wikipedia]North Korea – Frogs Issued Jul. 10, 1974 Perf. 11 |No Wmk 1320 5ch Multi-colored | Oriental fire-bellied toad (Bombina orientalis) The Oriental fire-bellied toad is a small semiaquatic frog species found in northeastern Asia, where they primarily dwell in slow-moving bodies of water and temperate forests. [Sources: Stampworld.com, Wikipedia]Viet Nam – Wild Animals Issued Mar. 20, 1976 Perf. 12 |Photogravure |No Wmk 808-815 A278 12xu Multi-colored | Masked palm civet (Paguma larvata) The masked palm civet, also called the gem-faced civet or Himalayan palm civet, is a viverrid species native to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. [Sources: Scott 2009 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Wikipedia]U.S.S.R. (now Russia and multiple independent states) – 50th Anniversary of Berezina River and Stolby Wildlife Reservations Issued Aug. 25, 1975 Perf. 12 x12 |Lithography |No Wmk 4363 A2068 6k Multi-colored | Siberian marten (Martes zibellina) The Siberian marten or sable (Martes zibellina) is a species of marten, a small omnivorous mammal primarily inhabiting the forest environments of Russia, from the Ural Mountains throughout Siberia, and northern Mongolia. [Sources: Scott 2009 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Wikipedia]Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)- African Animals in Dvůr Králové Zoo (now Safari Park Dvůr Králové) Issued Nov 3, 1976 Perf. 11¾ x 11¼ |Design: J. Baláž |Engraved and Photogravure |No Wmk 2343 20h Multi-colored | African elephant (Loxodonta africana) [Sources: Stampworld.com, Google Search Labs| AI Overview]North Viet Nam (now Viet Nam)- Native Birds Issued Oct. 12, 1972 Perf. 12 |Photogravure |No Wmk 701 12xu Multi-colored | Red-wattled lapwing (Lobivanellus indicus) The red-wattled lapwing (Vanellus indicus) is an Asian lapwing or large plover, a wader in the family Charadriidae. [Sources: Stampworld.com, Wikipedia]Chad – Insects and Spiders Issued May 6, 1972 Perf. 13 |Design: P. Lambert |Photogravure |No Wmk 526 4Fr Multi-colored | Spider: Argiope sector Argiope sector is a species of orb weaver spider that is found in North Africa, the Middle East, Senegal, and Cape Verde. [Sources: Stampworld.com, Google Search Labs| AI Overview]Hungary – Butterflies Issued Nov. 11, 1974 Perf. 12½ |Designer: Eva Zombory |Photogravure |No Wmk 3019 80f Multi-colored | Butterfly: Parnassius apollo [Sources: Stampworld.com, 2018 Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Google Search Labs| AI Overview]
Reporting from observer.com Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned the three states of matter that we know on Earth (solid, liquid, and gas) while talking about the quantum chip Majorana 1. There is a fourth one that is ubiquitous in the universe: plasma.
For a field that many have long considered decades away, quantum computing sure is getting a lot of buzz in Silicon Valley. Yesterday (Feb. 19), Microsoft (MSFT) unveiled a quantum chip known as Majorana 1, created with an entirely new state of matter that’s beyond solid, liquid and gas. “Most of us grew up learning there are three main types of matter that matter: solid, liquid, and gas. Today, that changed,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a post on X yesterday. “We believe this breakthrough will allow us to create a truly meaningful quantum computer not in decades, as some have predicted, but in years.”
… Microsoft isn’t the only Big Tech company attempting to crack the quantum computing. Decades of research from companies like IBM, Intel and Google (GOOGL) has seemingly begun to pay off. Most recently, Google sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley when it unveiled a new quantum chip called Willow. In less than five minutes, the computer was able to perform a standard benchmark computation that would take today’s supercomputers 10 septillion years—a number that surpasses the age of the universe—to complete.
But not everyone is convinced that true breakthroughs are just around the corner. Tech leaders like Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang have raised red flags about the technology’s timeline. In January, Huang sent quantum stocks tumbling after declaring that “very useful quantum computers are still a few decades away.” Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg echoed these concerns a few days later while speaking on Joe Rogan’s podcast. “My understanding is that’s still quite a ways off from being a very useful paradigm,” Zuckerberg said.
-Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly writing on observer.com
Plasma is considered the fourth state of matter, following solid, liquid, and gas. It is an ionized gas where electrons are separated from the nuclei of atoms, creating a soup of positively and negatively charged particles.
Plasma is considered the most common state of matter in the universe, making up nearly all visible matter.
The Sun’s corona, solar wind, magnetospheres of planets, comet tails, and interstellar gas clouds are all composed of plasma.
[Source: Search Labs | AI Overview]
Scientists from Caltech have developed ‘a new type of matter,’ which they are calling polycatenated architected materials, or PAMs. This new matter doesn’t occur naturally, and uses chainmail-like design with entangled rings in place of fixed particles typically found in a crystalline structure.
[Source: Popular Mechanics, Feb. 4, 2025]
There are many other states of matter, some of which are listed below. – Superconductive material
Superconductivity is when matter is in a state with no electrical resistance – that is, its electrical conductivity is greatly increased. A superconducting material has a critical temperature below which this change happens; this point is usually close to absolute zero. – Bose-Einstein condensate
Bosons are a type of particle that include photons, gluons and the Higgs boson. When bosons are cooled to incredibly low temperatures at low density, they start to show quantum mechanical effects at large scales. – Time crystals
An ordinary crystalline solid has its molecules arranged in repeating patterns in space. The molecules of a time crystal, however, follow a repeating pattern in time. The particles are in constant motion, following the same repetitive movements without losing any energy.
[Source: sciencefocus.com, Feb. 4, 2022]
When you cook an egg, the heat that solidifies its whites and yolks kills pathogens like salmonella and bird flu. That’s why food safety officials recommend cooking eggs until both parts are firm.
… Recent data on salmonella-infected eggs is hard to find. One widely cited study from 2000 suggested that one in every 20,000 eggs carries the bacteria. This might not sound like a lot, but given how many eggs Americans eat — about 250 per person on average in 2023 — that risk can add up.
– Caroline Hopkins Legaspi writing for the New York Times
I cannot find Certified Humane* eggs anywhere anymore, and I settled for these ones below from Whole Foods.
*Laying hens must be uncaged and have access to perches, nest boxes and dust-bathing areas.
These eggs from Whole Foods were $6.49 for the dozen (of which one was in the frying pan already). As of January 2025, eggs are significantly more expensive than last year, with the average price of a dozen eggs being around 53% higher compared to the previous year, reaching a price of $4.95 per dozen; this is largely due to ongoing bird flu outbreaks impacting egg production. {Source: Google Search Labs | AI Overview]
Here’s a quick example of how to use an AI app such as Chat GPT make easy pickings of grunt work.
I wanted to know what the total cost of a long list of items for sale on a scrollable web page, would add up to.
This web store sells stamps, and I have everything I am considering to buy in my Watchlist. Well, what does everything in my Watchlist add up to? I wondered. The web page does not provide a total number. (To illustrate, I just selected the first 6 items of the 40 on my Watchlist.) Step 1: Highlight everything on the web page and paste it into a text editor. I used Notepad on Windows. Step 2: Ask ChatGPT to look at the text, pick out the prices, and add them all up. My instruction to ChatGPT at the top says: “Find all the numbers in this block of text that have two decimal places and that are immediately preceded by the letter R*, and then add them up: ‘[and then I pasted the text from Notepad in here] *The currency, it stands for South African RandStep 3: Do a quick check if the instruction was good enough for ChatGPT, and voila! There is the result.
Here is a cartoon for Presidents’ Day*, from the Tuesday issue of South African newspaper Die Burger (“The Citizen”).
*Officially Washington’s Birthday at the federal governmental level, celebrated on the third Monday of February in the United States.
Peace negotiations are at an advanced stage .. and we are almost ready for Ukraine’s participation. Side comment from the hippo: ‘The situation is on a needlepoint!’.
It’s very hit-and-miss to find my favorite beer (Beck’s non-alcoholic) at the grocery store, and so I ran out to Total Wine off 15th Ave West to pick up some.
As usual, I snapped pictures of some of the intriguing labels on the other beverages that were for sale.
I celebrated the end of the deep-freeze weather here in the city by walking down to the Melrose Avenue overlook of Interstate 5 late this afternoon.
The high today was 44°F (7 °C).
On Melrose Avenue, with Interstate 5 below. On the left is South Lake Union with Seattle’s downtown behind it; look for the Space Needle in the middle; and then Queen Anne hill with its broadcast antennas on the right.
Check them out— the lineup of proteas that adorned the third definitive issue of postage stamps in the Republic of South Africa.
The 6-pocket blank pages from Leuchtturm stamp album series allow me to select, arrange and annotate the stamps in almost any way.
Some philatelists prefer to use completely blank pages, and create individual slide-in pockets (mounts) for the stamps on the page, but for now, I think that is too much work for me.
Happy Friday and Happy belated Valentine’s Day (the day is done).
Here is what I am working on: a complete set of the 1977 Third Definitive Issue of South Africa. All the stamps in the series depict proteas*, and there will be a second and a third page as well.
*Protea is a genus of South African flowering plants, also called sugarbushes (Afrikaans: suikerbos). It is the type genus of the Proteaceae family.
About 92% of the species occur only in the Cape Floristic Region, a narrow belt of mountainous coastal land from Clanwilliam to Grahamstown, South Africa. [Wikipedia]
In 1977, the standard postage rate was all of 5c, and that is why there are four versions of the 5c stamp. The have different perforations, and were printed on different types of paper. I will explain all of it when I post the completed set!
I’m catching up on yesterday’s US inflation report. The pundits say it’s now 50-50 that we get one interest rate cut by mid-2025.
(As of today, the federal funds rate is 4.33%. This is within the target range of 4.25% to 4.50% set by the Federal Reserve).
Reporters Alan Rappeport and Colby Smith write for the New York Times: Inflation figures released on Wednesday showed that consumer prices ticked up unexpectedly, rising at an annual rate of 3.0 percent in January. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, jumped 3.3 percent on a yearly basis. Prices also rose 0.5 percent on a monthly basis. … As of January, a dozen eggs averaged $4.95, up from less than $3 several months ago. Egg prices are up nearly 53 percent over the last year. And that’s likely to worsen amid an outbreak of avian flu, which has led to an egg shortage as farmers cull their flocks to prevent the disease from spreading.
Employees at the federal Board on Geographic Names have formally changed the name to the Gulf of America per one of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders. The change doesn’t affect what other countries call it, and Mexico’s president has promised to ignore the order and asked others to do the same.
-Trevor Hughes writing for USA Today, Feb. 11
Call it whatever the hell you want.
It’s still the Gulf of Mexico.
And if you can ‘change’ the name that easily, it going to be ‘changed’ right back to Gulf of Mexico in 2028.
P.S. The name “Gulf of Mexico” (Spanish: golfo de México; French: golphe du Mexique, later golfe du Mexique) first appeared on a world map in 1550 and a historical account in 1552. [Wikipedia]
I stocked up on a fresh pack of Freshpak rooibos tea* to keep me warm at night. I steep it for 5 minutes to get it really strong, and then I add milk and a little honey.
P.S. The cold weather has been relentless here. The temperature outside will drop down to 22 °F (-5°C) tonight, which is record-low territory for February here in the city.
*Not a true tea, but rather an herbal tea. It’s made from the leaves of the Aspalathus linearis plant, which is native to South Africa.
– from Google Search Labs | AI Overview
Congrats to the Philadelphia Eagles with their victory over two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs.
I thought it was a dullish, one-sided game, though.
As for the half-time show that featured rapper Kendrick Lamar: it was mystifying— the way pretty much all rap music songs are to me.
I don’t understand the words, the references or the message, of most rap songs. Oh well.
Cartoon from today’s edition of South African newspaper Die Burger (“The Citizen”).
Yes, there is such a thing as a ‘special government employee’ (18 U.S.C. § 202) ..
but is it OK to be a special government employee and CEO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla and CEO of X (formerly Twitter)*— all at the same time?
*Over the past 16 years, Elon Musk’s business deals with the government total nearly $20 billion, according to federal contracting data.
– Rachel Barber reporting for USA Today on Nov. 15, 2024
“Boys, I am trying to hijack a democracy. Any tips?” (On speakerphone: Ajay, Atul, and Rajesh “Tony” Gupta, brothers famous for their vast corruption of South Africa’s government and theft of billions of South African rand from the state coffers and state-owned companies. The portrait on the wall behind them is of disgraced South African president Jacob Zuma that was in office 2009-2018 and played a central role in enabling the crimes of the Guptas— now widely known as ‘state capture’.) Side comment from the angry hippopotamus: “Seems to me tariffs do not apply to state capture as export product”.
Happy Friday.
Welcome to today’s South African stamp project.
I culled the set of stamps on this page from a thousand or so that I had removed from envelope paper clippings.
(A lot of work, done earlier this week: dunk them in water, carefully separate the stamp from the paper, dry on paper towel, and press under a stack of books).
My Scott stamp catalogue confirmed that these stamps are all worth hardly-anything.
One exception: there is a Standardised Mail stamp (the first one on the page), with the fine black text double-printed, that is listed for US$136. (I found no such stamp in the ones I had).
Postmarks and shades of South Africa’s fifth definitive issue. These are all multicolored, and my catalog does not list any shaded varieties, even though it seems to me it could: say— 7c bright colors and 7c dull colors; 21c olive-green and 21c blue-green; 35c blue-gray and 35c gray; R1 brownish-green and R1 green.
1988-1993 Fifth Definitive Issue (Succulents), South Africa Issued Sept. 1, 1988 Perf. 14×14¼ |Design: Hein Botha |Phosphorized paper| Lithography |No Watermark 903 Standardised Mail (45c) (’93) Multicolored Stapelia grandiflora 782 1c Multicolored Huernia zebrina 783 2c Multicolored Euphorbia symmetrica 784 5c Multicolored Lithops dorotheae 785 7c Multicolored Gibbaeum nebrownii 786 10c Multicolored Didymaotus lapidiformis 787 16c Multicolored Vanheerdea divergens 809 18c (’89) Multicolored Faucaria tigrine 788 20c Multicolored Conophytum mundum 833 21c (’90) Multicolored Gasteria armstrongii 789 25c Multicolored Cheiridopsis peculiaris 790 30c Multicolored Tavaresia barklyi 791 35c Multicolored Dinteranthus wilmotianus 792 40c Multicolored Frithia pulchra 793 50c Multicolored Lapidaria margaretae 794 90c Multicolored Dioscorea elephantipes 795 R1 Multicolored Trichocaulon cactiforme 796 R2 Multicolored Crassula columnaris 832 R5 (’90) Multicolored Anacampseros albissima Note: this set includes a 1c, 2c, 5c and 10c coil stamp, which is not listed above. Interestingly, of all the hundreds of mail pieces I had, none had a coil stamp on. (Coil stamps are sold in a long strip that is rolled into a coil). [Source: Stampworld.com]
There were 2 more inches of snow this morning (most of yesterday’s had melted by last night).
I know it’s not a lot of snow compared to the Midwest or the Northeast, but even so, I went out and took a few pictures. Snow on the ground is not something I ever had while living in South Africa!
There were 2 inches of snow on the ground by 8:30 a.m. here on Capitol Hill this morning—just enough to prompt the city to send out an alert that my garbage pickup has been rescheduled for tomorrow.
Looking at these projections, this week’s garbage pickup may have to be postponed to next week.
