Wednesday Potpourri

First, two days ago Spain and Portugal experienced complete and total blackouts. It was not just the lights that went out; the electrical grid went down.

Was it because they had both instituted climate friendly net zero policies? Or was it just serendipity that the moment they declared the electric grid totally climate friendly, it broke down.

Michael Shellenberger described the scene:

Six days ago, the media celebrated a significant milestone: Spain’s national grid operated entirely on renewable energy for the first time during a weekday.

At 12:35 pm today local time, the lights went out across Spain and Portugal, and parts of France. Although power was quickly restored in France, it could take a week to fully restore power in Spain and Portugal.

In an instant, the electric hum of modern life — trains, hospitals, airports, phones, traffic lights, cash registers — fell silent. Tens of millions of people instantly plunged into chaos, confusion, and darkness. People got stuck in elevators. Subways stopped between stations.

Gas stations couldn’t pump fuel. Grocery stores couldn’t process payments. Air traffic controllers scrambled as systems failed and planes were diverted. In hospitals, backup generators sputtered on, but in many cases could not meet full demand. Cell towers collapsed under surges and outages.

Second, on the DEI front we have just seen the final report about the collision between a black hawk helicopter and a passenger jet a few months ago over Washington, D. C.

Alex Berenson has the salient detail:

The @nytimes story on the January DC plane crash hides its takeaway until the last sentences: the lady helicopter pilot ignored multiple warnings from her right seat about altitude (and his directly telling her to turn away) and flew straight into a passenger jet.

Third, Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, was a favorite of the teachers union. So he led the march toward giving teachers more money.

How did that one work out? Glad you asked:

DEI: Chicago’s teachers insisted that higher pay would unlock student success. The city obliged, hiking per-student spending by 70 percent and boosting average teacher salaries to $100,000.

The result? Failure on a grander scale. Today, just 11 percent of black students in Chicago are proficient in reading — a tragic monument to the bankrupt promises of a broken system.

Fourth, a few years back the grandees at Citigroup decided to grant their employees better work/life balance. You would imagine that serious business executives would be immune to such drivel, but, alas, they are not.

So, they opened a branch in Malaga, on the Costa del Sol, where they limited the time that staff would need to spend in the office.

Now, Tyler Durden reports on Zero Hedge, the three year experiment has run its course and the bank is closing the Malaga branch:

The good news is that without the work, former employees are going to have plenty of time to spend on their lives. The bad news is that they're not going to have much more money to spend.

Citigroup is shutting down its Málaga office less than three years after opening the hub, cutting a few jobs and relocating others to London and Paris, according to FT.

Opened in 2022 during a fierce post-pandemic talent war, the Costa del Sol office offered junior bankers eight-hour days and work-free weekends, a sharp contrast to the grueling hours typical in New York and London

Fifth, what happens when a city adopts more progressive policies? Apparently crime and taxes both increase. Such is the case with London, England. The result is, more and more millionaires are picking up and leaving town.

Over the past ten years, London has lost some 30,000 wealthy residents. You can kiss the tax base good-bye.

The Epoch Times has the story:

Devin Narang, an Indian entrepreneur, said in a meeting attended by David Lammy, then shadow foreign secretary, that fear of crime in London was one of India’s elite’s biggest concerns about the city.

“People are being mugged in the heart of London–in Mayfair,” Narang, a member of the executive committee of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said at a meeting in New Delhi in February 2024, the Financial Times reported.

“All CEOs in India have had an experience of physical mugging and the police [in London] not responding.”

Manchester United owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe also said that he had stopped wearing luxury watches in the capital.

Sixth, speaking of crime, Europe has a serious Muslim migrant problem. It should not be news.

Now, we learn that said Muslim migrants have gotten into the habit of burning down churches. Apparently, seeking sanctuary is not very high on their to-do list. Nor is respecting the religion of other people.

Pamela Geller reports:

A church in Wales was set on fire by two Muslim migrants. Bethany English Calvinistic Methodist Chapel in Wales has stood since the 19th century. Over 1000 churches have been burned or vandalized in Europe.

British churches are vandalised an average of eight times a day, according to new data by the Countryside Alliance.

A freedom of information request reveals there were 9,148 records of theft, burglary, criminal damage, vandalism and assault between January 2022 and December 2024.

Over three years, there were 3,237 cases of criminal damage to churches – including arson.

Seventh, meanwhile, up north, the people of Canada were so offended by President Trump that they went out and elected a fool as their new prime minister.

Famed market strategist David Rosenberg, a Canadian, offers this commentary:

Only in Canada does the party that governed over a decade of unprecedented economic ineptitude get rewarded for a fourth term in office. Less a case of there being a fresh face with Mark Carney, who previously served on the sidelines as Justin Trudeau’s external economic advisor, and more a case of ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’. Talk about getting fooled again.

Eighth, as the poet said, fear no more the heat of the sun. Apparently, the British Labour Party did not get the message. It is going ahead with a crackpot plan to block the sun, thereby pretending to solve the problem of global warming.

Benjamin Bartee reports for PJ Media:

“Experiments to dim sunlight to fight global warming will be given the green light by the Government within weeks,” British outlet The Telegraph reports. “Outdoor field trials which could include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, or brightening clouds to reflect sunshine, are being considered by scientists as a way to prevent runaway climate change.”

Don’t worry about the potential devastating and irreversible effects of blocking out the literal singular object that provides the basis for all life on Earth; the agency launching the project — the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) — assures the public its project will be “rigorously assessed.”

Ninth, just when you thought that Gen Z was growing up, or some such, we read this, in The New York Post. Apparently, Gen Z women are all addicted:

Gen Z women are abusing stimulants and binge drinking more than their male counterparts — and any other age group, new studies have found.

Nearly 37% of women ages 18 to 25 reported excessively popping uppers such as Adderall and Ritalin in the past year, more than double that reported by women older than them, according to a study published last month in JAMA Psychiatry.

Only 25% of women ages 26 to 34 reported improper use, according to the study. Women 35 to 64, who researchers said have seen largest rise in stimulant prescriptions, are abusing them the least — 13.7%.

Keep in mind, this cohort has been supersaturated with feminist thinking. And it has largely rejected the notion of marrying and having families.

Do these have any connection or is it just correlation?

But, that’s not all folks!

The alarming findings follow reports that young women are also out-drinking men for the first time.

A study published last week in JAMA of 267,843 men and women 18 and older found that 31.6% of women ages 18 to 25 reported binge drinking — consuming four or more drinks on one occasion — more than any other group.

The study compared men’s and women’s habits over two time periods, 2017 to 2019 and 2021 to 2023. It found that men’s binge-drinking levels plummeted nearly 8 percentage points, from 37.7% to 29.9%. But women didn’t see such a drop, falling only 4.8 percent from the prior years.

You’ve come a long way, baby!

Finally, I now have several open consulting hours in my life coaching practice. If you are interested, please contact me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com