The Alligator News Roundup

Number 5. Fodors dot com. Traveler billed $143,000 for roaming charges.

Pre-planning is always the key to success, so when Floridian Rene Remund was ready to fly to Switzerland on vacation, he first made the trip to his local T-Mobile store to ensure the cellphone was up to the task.

Mr. Remund explained how long he would be gone and the fact he wanted to be able to talk, text and send vacation photos home.

“You’re covered!” was the polite, friendly response from the T-Mob rep.

Perhaps a little more detail was called for, but maybe Mr. Remund was unaware of the intricacies of international cellular roaming agreements. Like approximately 100% of the rest of the population, including a high percentage of those who work in the telecommunications industry.

The vacation was apparently a success: Lots of phone calls and texts home, plus 9 gigabytes of photos sent across the ocean.

The brief tour of the old country resulted in a roaming bill of over $143,000.

Reports indicate that Mr. Remund made a comment like, “At first, I thought it was $143.00, and I thought, that’s steep, but I guess I can see it. Then when I went to process the payment, I found the extra zeroes.”

The upbeat, happy-talk “You’re covered” comment from the store representative apparently meant, “Whoa, Mr. Customer, you might want to consider upgrading your old clunker phone to one that recognizes modern international agreements, like for example the Treaty of Versailles. Nevertheless, you tightwad, this relic will work, even though you may spend the rest of your life trying to avoid debtor’s prison.”

This is comparable to the news story several years ago where the police lieutenant had ordered the police sniper to “Take him down,” and then at the trial claimed he had not meant the perpetrator should be killed by the sniper. At the time, prosecutors questioned what else “Take him down” could possibly have meant under the circumstances.

T-Mobile, in a spasm of corporate responsibility, announced they had discovered a billing error, and forgave the charges.

In T-Mob’s defense, complex international roaming plans covering legacy cellphones are a web of indecipherable tea leaves.

Users are encouraged to upgrade phones and plans. Embrace the matrix!

Number 4. The Gateway Pundit. New York places “indefinite pause“ on “congestion pricing” plan.

I do feel some empathy for drivers in The Big Apple. Navigating the streets of New York City in rush hour has to be a serious challenge. When our family went there on vacation in about 1998 we made the long drive in a 3/4 ton conversion van. I refused to take that beast into the City, opting for public transportation instead.

On an earlier trip, pre-kids, my wife and I stayed on one of the upper floors of the Hilton property on 5th Avenue in the Times Square area. (Don’t worry, someone else was paying the bill for me.) Looking down on rush hour traffic we observed an ambulance running hot, red lights and siren. Traffic obediently moved out of his way in front of him, and about two dozen Yellow Cabs were stacked up on his tail for a fast, free trip across mid-town.

Gotta be a nightmare.

But if you have to go to work, and have your vehicle available during the day, you do what you gotta do.

Traffic congestion and localized air pollution prompted Governor Kathy Hochul in 2022 to implement a solution approved by the Biden Administration. Each car and truck would be charged a toll for entering certain heavily-traveled portions of the City. Prices ranged from $9 and up for passenger vehicles, and up to $82 for large trucks.

That was 2022, midway through a presidential election cycle. While Hochul herself now does not stand for another term until 2026, the current president needs the 5 boroughs on his side in just a few months.

By complete coincidence, the Governor of one of the largest Democratic strongholds in the country has decided that working people are severely penalized by the traffic congestion toll. She has now suspended the toll 5 months before the election.

This does leave the Metropolitan Transit Authority a little bit in the lurch, as they currently run a $1 billion annual deficit in their plan to spend $15 billion on public transportation modernization.

But that’s a problem for another day. Right now, we have an election to win — err, that is, we have working people to serve.

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson foresaw the moral problems that would follow as populations left farms and moved into cities: “I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man.”

It’s progress, Mr. President!

Number 3. The Telegraph. Green energy disaster off the northeastern US is getting worse.

As we told you in these pages in the April 5, 2024 ANR, Dominion Energy’s wind project off Virginia Beach received approval from the Biden Administration to move forward, despite the threat to the limited North Atlantic Right Whale population.

Now, it seems another ugly problem has cropped up. Residents were told the windmills would not be visible from the shore. It now appears that they are not only visible, but their construction is noisy also. The 24/7 construction cycle awakens residents at night, and the vibration of machine tools building the offshore rigs has put cracks in the walls of homes on the beach.

This not only creates headaches for the construction projects, but economic factors also contribute to what The Telegraph article describes as a slow motion collapse in the offshore wind energy sector.

Orsted, Shell, Equinor and BP have all cancelled seaborne wind projects this year. Goals for replacing petroleum-fueled electricity generation will certainly be missed.

The Right Whale may be the beneficiary, but those Virginia Beachers who are installing soundproofing in their bedroom walls are still dealing with gigantic wind farms in their ocean view.

World War I-era British Dreadnoughts (battleships) had fighting tops tall enough to spot dye-colored shell splashes in the water 18 miles away. When you construct a windmill 600 feet tall, it probably can be seen farther than that.

Just speculating, I wonder what the service life of those off-shore towers might be, and how they will eventually be taken down, and how much that will cost, and how much disruption that will create for the Right Whales. Just speculating.

Number 2. Research dot Georgia Tech dot EDU. Unravelling the physics of knitting.

Here is one I didn’t expect. For centuries, women have used various grades of yarn to produce practical stretchy garments out of non-stretchy materials. The secret is in how the stitches are constructed.

As researchers move toward wearable intelligent devices (for example, a vest that is actually a laptop computer) humble knitting projects have suddenly gotten attention.

Long the domain of low-paid, low-skilled “womens’ work,” a pair of researchers are now untangling the knots of knitting practices. So to speak. Intuitively, expert knitters have long used techniques of overstitch and understitch loops and hooks to make sweaters, socks, shirts, mittens and hats elastic, whereas the raw material was anything but elastic.

It’s such a mystery, I am sure I have embarrassed myself in the previous paragraph with incorrect terms for the actions used. Feel free to upbraid me in the comments below.

Georgia Tech’s professor Elisabetta Matsumoto and graduate student Krishma Singal are producing a mathematical theory of the knitting stitch. They hope to see it applied to new, wearable garment technology.

What’s old is new.

Number 1. NBC Washington dot com. Giant parachuting spiders spreading rapidly in the US.

Well, that’s a headline sure to make you stop reading!

Because we Americans are a welcoming people and a nation of immigrants, say hello to the newest immigrant population dropping in on you soon!

Trichonephila clavata is a native East Asian dressed in bright colors — at least the females are — and about as big as your hand when the legs are stretched out. It is believed this colorful arachnid arrived in the United States via somebody’s shipping container. Since there are about 20,000 cargo ships on the high seas every day (2021 data), that is plenty of opportunity for these new arrivals to find their way here.

Better known by the more cuddly name “the Joro spider,” these fellows have become prevalent in the American southeast. Joro moves by sailing on gentle wind currents carrying their huge webs wherever the wind blows.

Perhaps best of all, their native climate is duplicated almost exactly by the US eastern seaboard, so when they land, they are probably here to stay!

Joro is not poisonous, so the only real danger is not in being bitten, but rather in the sudden heart failure resulting from an enormous, brightly colored spider as big as your hand landing on you and enveloping you with a sticky web the size of an umbrella.

Enjoy the great outdoors this summer! Let’s sit outside for the barbeque!

I love global commerce! It brings all sorts of unexpected things to North America!

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Thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, June 14, 2024. June is the month for family reunions! If that’s you, be nice, and try not to offend anyone. You won’t have to see them again for a couple of years, so just put up with them cordially! That’s what family is all about!

Don’t forget to Like and Share! Everyone should hear about Joro, your new skydiving friend!