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'Biggest' UK tulip grower stockpiles bulbs over Brexit

The UK's biggest outdoor commercial tulip grower has said it has been stockpiling bulbs as uncertainty over Brexit continues.

Belmont Nurseries, near King's Lynn, said the future of the UK's relationship with the European Union (EU) was a cause of major concern.

"We're very much UK based, but we do also sell to Europe," nursery director Mark Eves said.

Tulip futures.

Over in lizardloop's journal I made mention of a snafu at my work place, regarding arc flash protection. https://soylentnews.org/~lizardloop/journal/4161

Allow me to emphasize first, that I am NOT an electrician. I don't have the in depth training, nor do I have decades of experience in the field. However, I do a lot of electrical work inside the plant. For those who wonder how that can be - in theory, I work under the supervision of a qualified electrician. However, I've never met this mysterious electrician. Long story short, there are loopholes in the law, which my (and most other companies) take advantage of.

So, what is arc flash? In the most simple terms, when an electrical circuit is shorted out, you can expect electrical energy to be converted into thermal energy, and it usually happens explosively. There are formulas to determine how much energy you might expect to be converted. The results are given as calories per square cm. For the most part, 110V probably won't do more than cause a sunburn-like burn within about a foot, 220V likewise, and most of our 480 is equivalent to a bad sunburn within 18 inches. That is, most of our electrical work involves circuitry whose energy can be protected against by wearing rubber gloves, leather gloves, and long sleeve fire resistant shirt, and a faceshield and safety glasses. We all wear jeans, and electrical hazard rated boots. So, we have always been protected from arc flash, at the levels at which we most commonly work, or at least I have been.

In recent years, the industry has been working out new procedures, regulations, and standards for arc flash safety. Those who care to, can read the standards online:
https://www.ishn.com/articles/107825-nfpa-70e-2018-standard-for-electrical-safety-requirements
  https://arcflashamerica.com/nfpa-70e-2018-arc-flash-regulations

You will probably notice immediately the "2018" portion of the site addresses, as well as on the page in your browser. These standards went into effect just last year.

The company demands that we comply with the standards - BUT - we have a supposed safety officer who doesn't seem to understand diddly squat.

I need to stipulate that they hired an outside contractor to come into the plant, examine, and calculate the calorie rating of every single box, cabinet, receptacle in the plant. Few are rated higher than 8 calories. The protective clothing I have already described meets safety requirements for these low energy situations. Initially, the only thing we learned was that SOME of our boxes were higher energy than we thought, so we had to wear the coverall costume that the company supplies when we work on them.

Then, another edict - everyone MUST be dressed in 100% cotton. Blends of cotton were no longer permitted. No problem for me, because the Navy trained me for fire fighting, and I do not buy synthetic or synthetic blend clothing. The elastic in my underwear is the only synthetic in my clothing. Some of the other guys had to make changes, especially those who made use of the uniform service. Those uniforms are mostly nylon and rayon.

Next edict? Well, now we MUST wear arc flash rated clothing, while working on ANYTHING, or put the heavy-ass, hot costume on. Makes sense, don't it?

Go online, and start looking for AF rated clothing. Carhartts are my preference. I can buy a shirt and pants for about $70 bucks, and have been doing so for years. But, they aren't AF rated. Go to Carhartt site, and look for FR and AR rated clothing, you'll find shirts for $110, and jeans with an "AF rated button and closure" for $70. If you look, you will find two styles for a little less, but both are being phased out, with common sizes already out of stock. So - $180 for a shirt and pants.

https://www.carhartt.com/products/carhartt-men-big-tall-pants/Flame-Resistant-Relaxed-Fit-Utility-Jean-FRB004
https://www.carhartt.com/products/carhartt-flame-resistant-men-shirts/Flame-Resistant-Work-DryLightweight-Twill-Shirt-FRS003

(I've just clicked my own links again, and prices have dropped in the past couple of weeks - so I'll still complain about pricing, but it's not quite so bad. Maybe prices will continue to drop as production ramps up?)

Funny thing is, those AR rated items are 88% cotton and 12% nylon. "high tenacity" nylon? * It's nylon - it will melt before the cotton decides to burn.

What lizardloop was complaining about specifically in his journal entry, was idiot management people ticking off boxes, to cover their asses. And, this is what I'm seeing here. A new standard has been created, less for safety purposes, than to make sure everyone in the industry can cover their asses. The standard is lower than my own personal standard - but my standard won't meet the new industry standard unless it is certified. My standard is certified by no one, other than myself.

At my own corporate level - the safety people don't understand a DAMNED THING, other than they have to comply with a standard that they never heard of until this year. They are scrambling, to find clothing to meet the standard. And, they are coming up high dollar. Those who might be interested can do their own searches, and find work clothes that meet the standard, and cost two, three, even five times as much as these Carhartts.

(Paranthetically, my wife has found for me a few that are slightly less expensive than Carhartts, but I long ago rejected them for quality reasons. One top selling point for my Carhartts are seven belt loops, as opposed to five on most work jeans. I positively HATE to see men with their asses hanging out of their jeans, so I want those extra belt loops that actually keep my pants up over my ass, no matter what position I am working in. Dickies are out.)

So, I'm pretty pissed, both at the industry, and at my own employers. I wear out clothing pretty regularly, and between them, they have roughly doubled the cost of that clothing. And, this clothing will make me no safer than I have always been.

Bean counters and box tickers make life miserable for all of us.

* A couple searches reveals that "high tenacity" has nothing to do with the melting point of the nylon yarn, but the strength of that yarn. Nylon becomes "sticky" at temperatures as low as 200 degrees F, while cotton will not combust until it reaches 500 F. So, a cotton/nylon blend, subjected to an arc flash, is going to have some nylon trying to melt, then sticking to the cotton fibers surrounding it. That will leave behind a patch of fabrid that is stiff, and will crackle when flexed. One can only hope that none of the nylon threads will stick to the flesh beneath it. Note that this is a "flash" situation. A sustained heat source WILL melt the nylon, and that nylon WILL stick to the flesh beneath it.

P30 Pro Teardown Proves Huawei's Flash Catch-up

Content from page 2 (pages 3-9 are images):

Periscope camera
Of all the units inside the P30 Pro, however, the biggest news is the periscope. Huawei placed a CMOS image sensor vertically and put a mirror angled at 45 degrees at the back to increase the optical path. This is the first time a 10x zoom – without any loss in quality -- has gone inside an actual smartphone, according to Elisabeth. He noted that at Mobile World Congress in 2018, Oppo showed a prototype 5X zoom, but never launched an actual product.

Asked who put together a module for the periscope camera, Elisabeth said that System Plus believes Sunny Optical Technology in China did it by using IP from Corephotonics in Israel.

Changes in RF partners?
One additional System Plus discovery was that Skyworks no longer seems to be Huawei’s main RF supplier. P30 Pro uses Qorvo’s mid/high-band front-end module (QM77031). Skyworks now supplies only a low-band front-end module (SKY78191). Previously Skyworks provided three separate front-end modules to meet the needs of three different bands.

In the following pages, we will share the teardown done by System Plus, revealing who got design wins for which slots.

I am a Firefox user. Firefox has Pocket, which will suggest articles to read when you open a new tab.

Today, one of the articles was: Can We Touch?

I love being touched. One of my favourite things in the world, probably more than sex, is my wife rubbing my back. She uses the tips of her fingers to gently run her fingers up and down and side to side. When she comes across an imperfection like a little bump or tiny scab or whatever they are, she will use her nails and pick it/scrape it off. Sometimes she will look for tiny blackheads and squeeze them, which is quite painful, but I love it. It's gross, but strangely intimate. My girlfriend from High School would do the same thing, so it can't be that uncommon.

It's almost like some sort of primal ritual. You see monkeys grooming each other in a similar way. Searching each other and removing bugs or parasites or whatever else they find.

My Love Language is Physical Touch. I just love being touched. There is a guy at work who is Persian or something and he is really touchy. When you pass him in the hall he might greet you and touch your shoulder. He super friendly, and I find his touch comforting, even if it's a little weird.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but the article was about how being touched in the right circumstances can bring health benefits. However, modern society (probably in large part because of the Me Too movement) is moving away from casual touching. I get it. I don't initiate touch hardly ever because it's just too risky. Even on a date when touch is pretty much expected, it can be scary to break the touch barrier. In normal day-to-day life, being touched is a very rare occurrence.

Maybe I'm just feeling a little down/lonely because Annie dumped me earlier this week, but I would love a nice hug right now :)

She showed her age, but that didn't stop me lusting after her. I walked around and around her, admiring her front end, admiring her rear end, and everything in between.

Old dude walks up, and asks, "You like what you see?" I ask, "What year is she?" "'77." That surprised me - she actually looked to be older than my '68 was.

So, 1977 Malibu Classic station wagon, 350 with a 750 carb, and a 350 Turbo 4 speed behind it. Something I've never seen before, were the fin windows in the BACK of the car. I've looked for images on the internet to link to here, and haven't found any back seat fin windows yet. OH! https://www.imcdb.org/i575959.jpg I'm pretty sure those are fin windows, at the rear of the back seat windows. Nice. What's missing in that image, is the chrome air scoop, that directs air from the roof of the car, down over the back window. It helped to keep dust from collecting on it. '68 Caprice image shows the air scoop nicely - http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/z/8OQAAOSwdvpWDdQx/$_1.JPG?set_id=880000500F

All the while the old dude was telling me the specs on his '77, I was comparing it to my '68. I had a 327, with the (in)famous "3 speed slip slide" transmission, and a highway rearend. Nice pic here - http://smclassiccars.com/chevrolet/242061-1968-impala-station-wagon-6-passenger-chevy-chevrolet-patina-hot-rod.html

Most people look at these wagons, and think they are just ugly family cars. I looked at them, and saw beautiful working cars, adventure cars, and yes, even sport cars. Wagons usually had the same, or very similar, power trains as the sedan models they were built with. And, wagons usually only weighed a little more than the sedans. You could find some that were underpowered, but for the most part, they were more than adequately powered. In the case of the '68 Impala with the 327, it could run with the motorhead's hotrods. Couldn't beat them in the quarter, but given a longer run, it would pull alongside them. Somewhere around 1 mile, the Impala would smoke them all, because they all topped out starting around 70 mph, up to maybe 95 mph.

I said "adventure" cars? Two, three, four guys could easily toss camping, fishing, hunting gear in the back, and head out to the far horizons. Or, one guy could throw most of his possessions in there, and leave to never return.

Sedans are always cool, but wagons are even cooler. Does anyone here know how many GIRLS you can pack into a station wagon? A boatload, literally!

How many of you have fond memories of those old station wagons? Yesterday's equivalent of the SUV.

Dell’s New Precision 7000 Workstations: Dual Xeon, Triple RTX, 3 TB DDR4, 16 TB NVMe

Launching in May, the new Precision 7820 and Precision 7920 machines will be based on one or two Intel Xeon Scalable ‘Cascade Lake-SP’ CPUs thus offering up to 56 physical cores supporting AVX512_VNNI instructions advantageous for workloads that use neural networks, which is why Dell emphasizes AI (and VR) in its announcement. On the graphics and GPGPU side of things, the new Precision 7900-series machines will feature up to three NVIDIA Quadro RTX graphics cards (no word on GV100-based GPUs, but it is highly likely that they will be offered as an option too).

The most hardcore Precision 7920 configurations will be able to carry up to 3 TB of DDR4 DRAM, up to 16 TB of PCI/NVMe solid-state storage (i.e., several M.2 and/or U.2. drives, depending on the configuration), and up to 120/96 TB of storage space enabled by ten 3.5-inch hard drives (i.e., Dell has certified 12 TB HDDs with the new system). Obviously, the workstations will support all kinds of connectivity along with 5.25-inch FlexBays (enabling ODD(s) and/or additional I/O modules for special purposes).

Annie dumped me last night. She did it very kindly, which I appreciate.

We had a date last night. We went to the library to play a board game, but ended up talking for most of it. We always had great conversation. After that, we went to a local pub and had a drink and a snack. I took her home and she said we need to talk. She basically gave me the 'no spark' excuse.

I don't disagree with her. We had a great time together, but the relationship seemed to be having problems transitioning into a physical one. I feel that a large part of that was because it was impossible to have any time alone together. We were always out in public on our dates (My wife an daughter were home, so I couldn't go there, and she has roommates and never invited me to her place). Kinda sucks, but that's life.

Dating two women simultaneously in addition to my home life was quite a bit. It will be nice to have a tiny more time to myself. I missed having time for myself.

... In other news... I received my Soylent News mousepad yesterday. I ordered it from the online store in the sidebar a week or so ago. Shipping was pretty quick to reach me in the Great White North. The mousepad itself is quite nice. The printing quality is pretty good, and the soft top feels nice. One thing that is different than normal mouse pads is that it is thicker. It is twice as thick as my other mousepads which gives a feeling of comfort and security.

The mouse tracking is perfect, and now that I have it installed at my work desk, my job satisfaction has improved ~15%.

All in all, I am happy with my mousepad and would recommend it to anyone who loves this site.

A US citizen wants to overthrow a US-backed government in Libya. Here's why

At the heart of this is Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, now leading the current move by forces from the east of the country towards the capital Tripoli. Haftar is, to be polite, the ultimate pragmatist. He supported Moammar Gadhafi in his 1969 coup, then found himself in Langley, Virginia in the 90s where he gained US citizenship, before returning to overthrow Gadhafi in the 2011 conflict. Since then, he has been one of many strongmen claiming pre-eminence in the nation's descent into disarray, based in the city of Benghazi and exerting most of his control in eastern Libya.

US pulls troops from Libya amid a surge in violence

The United States military pulled a contingent of its troops from Libya on Sunday amid a surge in violence in the capital city of Tripoli, America's top commander for Africa said.

"The security realities on the ground in Libya are growing increasingly complex and unpredictable," Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, head of US Africa Command, said Sunday in a statement. "Even with an adjustment of the force, we will continue to remain agile in support of existing US strategy."

The American forces, who provide military support for diplomatic missions, counterterrorism activities and improving regional security, have been relocated temporarily in response to "increased unrest."

Interesting article on Air Force Times: https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-military/2019/04/05/heres-how-f-35-technology-would-be-compromised-if-turkey-also-had-the-s-400-anti-aircraft-system/

US officials have been upset about Turkey's plans to buy the Russian S-400 air defense system. As a consequence, the US might refuse to sell F-35s to Turkey.

Before reading the above article, I was trying to make sense of this situation. Is the US mad just because Russia is getting the business? Does it undermine their portrayal of Russia as NATO's boogieman? Wouldn't having the adversary's system under the control of your own ally be a great opportunity to reverse engineer it and gain some intel? Or is reverse engineering simply not profitable enough?

The AFT article doesn't address the money aspect. It also never mentions the idea of the US gaining info on the S-400, despite expressing great concern about info on the F-35 being leaked to Russia.

The U.S. Air Force was able to bomb Libya with impunity after knocking out its relic of an Integrated Air Defense System, but what if the country had actually maintained a competent IADS network?

If Turkey acquired the S-400 alongside the F-35, the technology that makes that aircraft lethal could potentially be compromised.

Working around Turkey to carry out missions in the Middle East isn’t impossible, just difficult. In order to continue projecting power, the U.S. may be forced to rely more on Jordan or Arab states like Qatar.

There's no pretense here about NATO being a defensive apparatus. It's about having bases from which the US can fly out and bomb people, any place it wants to. If Turkey bolstering its defense comes with the potential side effect that other countries' defense may also be improved, and the US may not be able to bomb with impunity, that is apparantly unacceptable to the US.