There is one more cold morning in store for us— 25°F/ −4°C expected here in the city.
There might be rain and snow on Thursday afternoon.
Sunset is now at 5.30 pm.
Wednesday/ clear and cold ☀️
Sunset is now at 5.30 pm.
Sunset is now at 5.30 pm.
Tuesday/ the Gulf of Mexico 🌊
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]
Monday/ rooibos tea 🍵
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
Superbowl Sunday 🏈
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.
Saturday/ any conflict of interest? 🤨
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
(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”.
Friday/ a collection of succulents 🌵
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).
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]
Thursday/ snow report ❄️
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!
Wednesday/ more snow 🌨
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.
Tuesday/ all those Teslas in Seattle ⚡
Tesla is famously owned by billionaire Elon Musk, who was once admired by liberals for helping to popularize the electric vehicle. But in the last few years — in particular since he purchased the social media platform Twitter (now X) in October 2022 — Musk has become something of a villain among the left. He’s often expressed conservative views and backed Donald Trump’s successful presidential bid last year.
And that’s put some Tesla owners in the Seattle area, where most people tend to vote Democrat, in an awkward position, especially since the car is so closely associated with Musk himself.
Even so, it doesn’t seem to have hurt Tesla ownership rates here — or if it has, it’s too soon to be reflected in the data. And there’s been a significant increase in Tesla households in the Seattle market over the past few years. For example, in Nielsen surveys conducted from December 2020 to April 2022, only around 22,400 Seattle-area households owned a Tesla.
(My note: by the end of 2024 that number had increased threefold, to 66,700).
– Seattle Times columnist Gene Balk
‘You can tell South Africa they can have Elon Musk back‘, quipped my neighbor, after I had told him of my recent trip to South Africa.’
Yeah, I know. Some days I think he can have my car back’, said I.
(.. but thinking afterwards: I really did not buy my Tesla because I was an Elon Musk fan. It’s an electric vehicle— with zero emissions, as a reminder— and a lot of fun to drive. So why should I not drive it?)
From the report in the Seattle Times:
In the Seattle market area, a projected 311,000 households had at least one Subaru. That pencils out to 16.8% of the 1.86 million households that had at least one vehicle. The nationwide Subaru ownership rate was just 7.8% of households.
A projected 66,700 Seattle-area households had at least one Tesla, which represented 3.6% of local households. The national average was only 1.6%.
Monday/ perfins 📌
A perfin is a stamp that has a name or initials perforated into it.
The word “perfin” is short for “perforated initials” or “perforated insignia”.
Perfins are used to prevent theft and control how the stamp is used for mail.
How are perfins created?
Individuals, organizations, or government agencies add perfins to stamps after the production process.
The holes are punched into the stamp’s design to create a pattern.
Source: Google Search Labs/ AI Overview
The U.S. stamp bottom left is also pre-cancelled. Pre-cancelled stamps were used for mass-mailings, making it unnecessary for the post office to cancel them, and expediting their processing.
1961 First Definitive Issue (New Design), South Africa
Issued Jan. 20, 1969
Perf. 13½x14 |Phosphor frame |Wmk. RSA tête-bêche
SACC282 |1c |Rose-red & sepia |Coral Tree Flowers (Erythina lysistemon)
Perfin initials “D.C.”
1982 Fourth Definitive Issue (Architecture), South Africa
Issued Jul. 15, 1982
Perf. 14 |Design: A.H. Barrett |Engraving: Arthur Howard Barrett |Litho. |Phosphorized paper |No Wmk
SACC524 |10c |Carmine brown |Pietermaritzburg Town Hall
Perfin insignia “C C C” (or possibly “V V V”)
1923 United States of America (U.S. Presidents and prominent Americans)
Issued Jan. 15, 1923
Perf. 11×10½ |No Wmk
Scott 562 A165|10c |Orange |James Monroe (5th U.S. President)
Perfin insignia “WFH”
Pre-cancelled “Chicago IL”
[Sources: stampworld, South African Colour Catalogue 2023-25, Scott 2003 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue Vol. 1]
Snowy Sunday ❄️
We had just under an inch of snow on the ground here in Capitol Hill today. There might be more snow tomorrow.
Saturday/ freezing rain 🧊
There was a little bit of thunder at noon today, followed by a spell of freezing rain.
An hour or two later, there was blue sky. Today’s high was 40°F (4°C).
There might be a dusting of snow on the ground tomorrow here in the city, say the meteorologists.
Friday/ rain ☔
There was rain last night and today, a welcome break in the dry weather of the last few weeks.
The snowpacks across Washington State are lagging from their normal levels, but there is still time to make up the deficit. The snowpacks on the mountains peak at around April 1.
Snowpacks (that melt during spring and summer) are a significant source of water for reservoirs around the state, for agriculture, and for hydroelectric power generation.
Thurday/ a snake on a stamp ✉️
There was mail today, with a new Year Of The Snake forever stamp on, issued by the US Postal Service.
Issued Jan. 14, 2025
Perf. 11 Serpentine Die-cut | Self-adhesive | Design: Camille Chew | Engraving: Banknote Corporation of America | Issued in sheets of 20
6376 FOREVER (73c) Multicolored | Lunar New Year – Year Of The Snake
[Sources: stampworld.com, USPS]
Wednesday/ Happy Lunar New Year 🐍
Happy Lunar New Year— the Year of the Snake.
It sounds a little ominous, but I guess every year cannot be the Year of the Dragon.
Tuesday/ lost in translation 😮
TROEF = to trump
VREET = to eat (used for animals), or to eat like an animal
How strange, I thought this morning, after completing my Afrikaans Wordle, that there really is no English word for VREET.
In Afrikaans, humans ‘eet’ (eat) and animals ‘vreet’ (eat).
Example:
Ek eet die appel. (I eat the apple).
Die vark vreet die appel. (The pig eats the apple).
If someone eats voraciously or sloppily, you might use the ‘animal’ word for eat to ask the person:
‘Wat vreet jy?’ (What are you pigging out on?),
meaning the person eats like an animal/ a pig.
Monday/ a rough day for Nvidia 📉
Advances in artificial intelligence by Chinese upstarts rattled U.S. markets on Monday, with the threat of greater competition prompting a slide in shares of the biggest technology companies.
The Chinese A.I. company DeepSeek has said it can match the abilities of cutting-edge chatbots while using a fraction of the specialized computer chips that leading A.I. companies rely on. That’s prompted investors to rethink the heady valuations of companies like Nvidia, whose equipment powers the most advanced A.I. systems, as well as the enormous investments that companies like Alphabet, Meta and OpenAI are making to build their businesses.
On Monday, the S&P 500 index fell 1.5 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 3.1 percent. Nvidia was hit hard, plunging 16.9 percent and losing roughly $600 billion in market value. Falling tech stocks also dented market indexes in Europe and Japan.
-Jason Karaian and Joe Rennison writing for the New York Times
Nvidia (NVDA) stock dropped nearly 17% Monday, leading a sell-off across chip stocks and the broader market after a new AI model from China’s DeepSeek raised questions about AI investment and the rise of more cost-efficient artificial intelligence agents. Nvidia’s decline shaved $589 billion off the AI chipmaker’s market cap, the largest single-day loss in stock market history.
My comments: It is an eye-popping decline in market cap for the day, but this stock has rocketed up twentyfold (that would be 2,000 %) over the last five years— and then some.
It was at $6 in Jan. 2020 and at $149.43 (let’s say $150) Jan 6, 2025.
Sunday/ postmarks from S.W.A. ✉️
I sifted through a shoebox of envelope clippings to put together this set of postmarks from South West Africa*.
Windhoek is the capital, and the postmarks also show Keetmanshoop, Outjo, Koes, Maltahöhe, Okahandja, Oranjemund, Walvis Bay, Okaukuejo, Tsumeb, Kalkrand, Mariental, Swakopmund, Grootfontein, Karibib, Leonardville, Lüderitz, Omaruru, Otjiwarongo, Usakos, Aus and Stampriet.
*South West Africa became Namibia after its independence from South Africa in March 1990.
Saturday/ underwatermelon 🍉
Uh-oh.
I started playing one of the games that Neflix offers: Underwatermelon.
I like it. (It reminds me a little bit of Tetris from wayy-back when I first started working).
I hope I don’t get too addicted to it .. but what if I do?
The levels of the game are indicated by Gate numbers. This is Gate 4 and I still have to earn 35 points (by combining fruit), before the gate will open up, and the fruit float up to a new gate. The nice thing about going to a new gate (a new level), is that the biggest fruit floats to the top quickly, collide and combine into one bigger fruit, and leave a little more space to work withe in the new gate.
Friday/ a dry January 🏜️
Happy Friday.
We will have our first 5 pm sunset for the year here in Seattle tomorrow.
It’s been frosty in the mornings and cold by day every day since I’ve been back. And no rain.
