Number 4. The Hollywood Reporter. Dire wolves have been brought back from extinction.
The dire wolf, made something of an immortal icon by HBO’s Game of Thrones, prowls the earth once more. This time for real, not on a movie set.
Colossal Biosciences managed to extract DNA from a fossil. Combining this with edited genetic code of a modern gray wolf, they have whelped a new breed of 4-legged animal that closely resembles the wolf featured on Game of Thrones.
Oh, boy.
Using CRISPR technology, which allows the DNA of a living organism to be modified into a slightly different version of itself, the De-Extinction Company, as Colossal Bio is fondly known, has stashed Romulus and Remus, the two males, and Kahleesi, the female, on a remote 2,000 acre preserve. Somewhere. Location unknown.
Let the Geocaching games begin.
The wolf pups, when full grown, will be roughly twice the size and weight of a gray wolf. I have never seen a gray wolf in the wild. But whatever it looks like, eyes red, teeth bared and jowls drooling, I do NOT want to see one twice its size. Anywhere.
What could possibly go wrong?
Peter Jackson, of Lord of the Rings fame, together with Game of Thrones’ George R. R. Martin, have teamed up with Colossal Bio to fund what they have declared “the first-ever de-extinction of an animal.”
Can Samson the 6-fingered giant be far behind?
Interestingly, the La Brea Tar Pit at Los Angeles displays thousands of fossil remains of dire wolves from long ago. Apparently they went extinct when their food source — larger herbivore animals, died out. Perhaps from predation.
Since virtually everything in society is now political and highly polarized, I’m not sure what the correct woke interpretation of this should be… Predatory carnivores killing and eating peaceful vegetarians.
Maybe the vegetarians should have grown fangs and claws.
The plan for the new/old species of dire wolf is that they be set free to flourish and propagate in an ecologically secure preserve in North America on what they call “indigenous land.”
I wonder what the Cheyenne, or the Oglala Sioux, will think of sharing their reservations with Romulus and Remus and Khaleesi… and their soon-to-be numerous and hungry off-spring?
Number 3. CNBC. Dow slides again as Trump tariffs rattle stocks.
How could we do a legitimate roundup of the news this week without talking tariffs? I know most of you are sick of hearing of them… but this segment only lasts a couple of minutes. Suck it up.
That headline was from Monday. It’s hard to keep up with unfolding events.
I won’t go into gory detail of the gory losses in the stock market since Donald Trump introduced his “Liberation Day” tariffs. You can follow your portfolio as well as I can mine.
In my own research, I looked to see what a pre-eminent economist who is politically conservative says about tariffs.
Thomas Sowell is generally critical, so far, of Trump’s approach. He sees it as the beginning of a global trade war where everyone loses. He is also quick to point out that tariffs, which impose harsh financial penalties on the recipient, can be used effectively as a tool of strategic statecraft.
In other words, use the tariff to persuade the other country to change policies that bring harm to your own country; but do NOT use the tariff to enrich your own nation at the expense of others. That injunction is more practical than moral: If I force you to pay me more than you believe I am worth, you will find a way to resist, and I probably won’t like it. Both of us will come to harm.
Consider Trump’s initial announcement of the 25% tariff on Mexican imports. That was tied to the flow of fentanyl north across the border. After an obligatory period of outrage from the Mexican president, 10,000 federales were sent to the border (the next day) to stop the drug trade. The flow of fentanyl has been greatly reduced.
There is great angst among Republicans about the tariffs Trump recently announced, mostly because of the fall in the financial markets. On the Democrat side, there is rioting, because “Orange Man Bad.”
One thing we would do well to remember about Donald Trump the Deal-Maker-in-Chief: Everything he does, he does to gain negotiating leverage. I do not think he intends to plunge the world into economic ruin, and I do not think he misunderstands macro-economics.
Let’s see how this plays out.
Number 2. Axios. Des Moines scraps entire electric bus fleet.
To quote Oliver Hardy as he castigated Stanley Laurel: “Well here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten us into!”
Owing to unexpected maintenance, expiring warranties, safety concerns and customer complaints, the City of Des Moines has turned in its bus fleet. This would not have been possible without federal government assistance.
In 2020, Des Moines purchased 7 electric city buses for over $800,000 each. The bill came to $6 million, and a federal grant — thank you, citizens! (mostly not citizens of Iowa) — paid most of the cost. The City was expected to reimburse the feds over the next 10 years of bus operation.
After 5 years, however, operating the buses has proven virtually impossible. They have only been able to serve a little over half-time, and the slack apparently had to be taken up by old-fashioned diesel rigs. The manufacturer of the electric vehicles, featured once before here at the ANR, was Proterra, a California company. They filed for bankruptcy in 2023 and abandoned the warranty obligations.
Now, the U.S. government has decided to waive the requirement for Des Moines to pay back the $2.85 million they still owe on the original purchase. At this point, probably money well written off.
I would love to see some real investigative journalism on Proterra, their principals, their financial data, how much federal money was seeded to Proterra in 2020… lots of things we will probably never find out.
As for the bus fleet, who exactly will purchase that set of white elephants? Maybe we could dig very large holes in the ground and bury them, where the lithium batteries can’t do much damage?
Maybe alongside all those 60-foot-long wind turbine blades that can’t be recycled.
Hey, it’s only $6 million. But whose idea was this, anyway?
Number 1. Big Think. America is going through its every-80-year reinvention.
This is a theory I have heard before, and the more I read of it the more comfortable I am with it.
Basically, the notion is that American history, as we know it today, has moved in 80-year cycles. Like other great movements of history, dates are hard to pin down. But the benefit of hindsight allows us to peg certain inflection points where we can say, “Before this date, things were THIS way; afterward, they were THAT way.”
Here is the big idea:
In 1776 the fledgling United States was in serious crisis. The Declaration launched war against an unthinkably strong adversary, there was a lot of conflict and a lot of powder and shot, and the new country emerged victorious. What followed in the US was peace, prosperity and unparalleled growth.
Turn the calendar forward 80 years and you come to (approximately) 1860. For the previous 25 years there had been nothing but turmoil in political and social upheaval: states rights, slavery and westward expansion. There was a lot of conflict and a lot of powder and shot, and a newly united country emerged. What followed in the US was peace, prosperity and unparalleled growth.
In another 80 years you come to 1940. The world was on the brink of war; America had been economically devastated by the Great Depression. There was a lot of conflict and a lot of powder and shot expended, and in the aftermath a newly emergent USA dominated the world stage. What followed in the US was peace, prosperity and unparalleled growth.
In another 80 years we arrive at 2020. The thesis of this article is that America is now at the front edge of the fourth cycle.
It is hard to escape a comparison with Moses’ assertion that “the days of a man’s life are 3 score years and 10, or, if by reason of strength, perhaps 4 score.” See the statement in the 90th Psalm.
The theory is not without controversy and lots of niggling details. While it is an American-centric view, the years following each turning had their own share of turmoil:
In the years following the Revolution, a third of Americans relocated, most to Canada.
After the Civil War, the South in particular suffered devastating poverty, political oppression and racial injustice.
After World War 2 most of the world outside the US was in poverty, and the Cold War suddenly reared up.
Bill Whittle has pointed out in his Right Angle podcast that in World War 2, the war in the Pacific was basically won in a few minutes at the Battle of Midway, June 1942, but the dying had not even started yet. It took another 3 years to complete, with the exercise of enormous kinetic energy that drew much blood, ending only with nuclear bombs.
In 1977, William Strauss and Neil Howe published The Fourth Turning, the signal work on this theory. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my nightstand awaiting my attention. Neil Howe updated the original work in 2023 with The Fourth Turning is Here.
I haven’t read that one either. So much to do, so little time.
We may be living through one of the significant inflection points in US history. If that is true, it is probably also a turning point in world history. In every previous case, there was a starting point (which could only be identified later), followed by lots of gunfire and plenty of dying.
Are there spiritual forces at work of which we see little and know nothing? Is it possible that God, even today, executes His Own agenda in His Own timing?
In reviewing these current and past events, it is also hard to ignore the perspective that Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, verbalized sometime prior to 500 B.C. Speaking of the One he came to recognize as the God of Heaven, Nebuchadnezzar expressed his new-found conviction:
All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou? (Daniel 4:35)
Most men in the Bible, whom God clearly used to carry out His agenda, were far from perfect characters. With the exception of Daniel himself, every other example of those who executed God’s plans were deeply flawed individuals: Moses, Pharoah, David, Solomon, Jonah, Nebuchadnezzar… the list goes on.
We shall see what we shall see. But I think it pays to be aware of tumultuous events in the world around us, and consider how the God of Heaven may be at work, even with human instruments who fall short of perfection.
And thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, April 11, 2025. Despite what I’ve just said, take a break from the news cycle and plan your next vacation. Try Yellowstone or Yosemite, maybe sometime before the dire wolf is introduced there and protected by a new federal endangered extinct species act.
Have a good weekend!
Share this post