Scully is doing better today, not having to poop five times like the past couple of days. Although she did wake me up before 6am for the first one of the day. Her blood test results came back negative for anything nasty, which is good. And she seems to be responding to the antibiotics and probiotic paste.
The other thing I want to comment on today is the insanity of the global tariffs that Donald Trump announced today that the US will impose on almost all other countries. The highlights (or lowlights), for posterity:
- The weird magic numbers that they came up with on that chart for “Tariffs charged to the USA” are not actually tariffs in any sense of the word whatsoever. Many people have worked out where the numbers came from: They are the country’s trade deficit with the USA for 2024 divided by the value of US imports from that country.
- Countries with a trade surplus with the US (such as Australia, whose calculation as above came out to a whopping -107%) are still getting slapped with a 10% tariff. For no apparent reason, even given Trump’s bizarre (and incorrect) notion that a trade deficit is a “bad thing”.
- The list includes some sub-national entities, such as Norfolk Island, a part of Australia, which mysteriously got a contradictory 29% tariff despite Australia getting 10%.
- Another part of Australia, the territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, got listed separately, with a tariff of 10%, despite it being uninhabited and having no imports or exports.
- They also announced a tariff on the British Indian Ocean Territory, whose only population is a joint US/UK military base. So effectively the US has announced a tariff on its own military forces.
There’s only so much bewildered headshaking one can do in response to this madness. And not only is it uneducated and random, it’s going to actively destroy the US economy, as well as having negative effects on everyone else. As one of my friends put it in a group chat today:
It’s a bit like when a bunch of countries [implemented] sanctions to punish Russia so other countries can’t trade with them without penalties, except the US is doing it to itself.
I just have no more words I can add to that.