Bunchflower

 From my tallgrass prairie restoration. Click on the image for a larger view.

 

Bunchflower

 

Thinking about battery cell balancing

The following is my attempt to reason about cell balancing in a battery. I do not know whether that reasoning is correct. It seemingly violates common recommendations and conventional wisdom.

Consider a lithium iron phosphate battery (LiFePO4, or LFP), which is a collection of cells wired in series. Suppose that when the battery is fully charged, each cell is also fully charged. That is, each cell is at 100 percent state-of-charge (SOC), and has the exact same voltage as the other cells in the battery.

Now place that fully charged battery in service to power loads. As the battery is discharged, the current out of each cell is exactly the same as the current out of the entire battery. Because the cells are wired in series, it cannot be otherwise. Thus the Ah out of each cell is also the same.

Due to constraints in manufacturing, it's possible and maybe likely that the individual cells will have slightly different capacities, despite the manufacturer's best efforts to ensure they're identical. For a particular discharge current, a lower capacity cell will experience a greater voltage decrease than a higher capacity cell. Thus under discharge, the voltages and states of charge of the battery's cells can diverge somewhat. The cells become unbalanced.

But isn't that situation entirely reversed during recharge? During charging, the current into each cell is exactly the same as the current into the entire battery. As with discharging, it cannot be otherwise.

It's often said that at the beginning of a recharge, cells with higher starting voltages will experience a voltage spike compared to cells with a lower starting voltage. But is that so? Cells with a higher starting voltage have that higher voltage precisely because they have a larger capacity than cells with a lower starting voltage.

But as the charge proceeds, all cells receive current that exactly replaces the current they generated under discharge. Just as current out of each cell was identical during discharge, current into each cell is identical during recharge. Their higher starting voltage, where "starting" means at the beginning of the recharge, is because they retained higher SOC during discharge. They did so because their overall capacity is greater than cells with a lower starting voltage.

Suppose for the sake of this thought experiment that the charge efficiency of a LiFePO4 battery is 100 percent. (It's actually very close to that in the real world.) With 100 percent charge efficiency, if a cell was discharged n Ah, then an n Ah recharge would restore it to 100 percent SOC. Because n is the same for every cell in the battery, both during discharge and recharge, then restoring n Ah to any one cell restores n Ah to every cell, and bringing any one cell back to 100 percent SOC means that all the cells are brought to 100 percent SOC. If that is so, then at the end of the recharge, every cell is at the same SOC and hence the same voltage.

And yet, battery management systems (BMSs), supposedly seek to "balance" the cells. Typically this is done at the higher voltages that occur toward the end of the charge process. Balancing might involve bleeding off charge in higher voltage cells to allow lower voltage cells to catch up, or some such. Such balancing would result in each cell having the exact same final voltage when fully charged.

But is this even necessary? Assuming the cells were balanced to begin with, doesn't "n Ah out, n Ah back in" keep the cells balanced during normal discharge and recharge?

And if the cells become slightly unbalanced while in use, does that even matter either? Suppose in normal use one keeps his batteries between 50 percent and 70 percent SOC over long intervals, as a strategy to maximize the battery's lifetime. If there's a small amount of SOC variation between cells with a battery in this interval, does it matter at all?

Thus I question the value of cell balancing in many or most circumstances. I suppose my logic depends on the all cells being at the same SOC and voltage when the battery is fully charged, at least once. But after that, if they diverge, so what?

P.S. Balancing during discharge seems particularly perverse. That's because it will cause smaller capacity cells to become over-charged during recharge. 

 

Extravert or Extrovert?

I typically use the spelling "extravert" when others use the more common "extrovert". Both spellings are correct. "Extravert" is more commonly used in professional psychological literature, so that's what I use.

Catch & Release

Timber rattler in the trap. Oops.
Sometimes you catch things you weren't fishin' for.

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Caught

 

Free

 

Modeled current and projected deaths from USAID destruction

 

I asked three AI-based "search engines" the following question: "What are the latest authoritative estimates of deaths that have occurred, and are projected, as a consequence of the destruction of USAID?" Below are the responses.

 

Google AI 

 

AI Overview

Authoritative epidemiological models estimate that the abrupt dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has caused over 700,000 deaths since early 2025, with projections warning that up to 14 million to 22.6 million preventable deaths could occur globally by 2030. [1, 2]

Current Death Toll Estimates (Occurred)

Immediate Mortality: Independent tracking models and public health researchers (such as epidemiologist Brooke Nichols' impact tracking models) estimate that at least 700,000 excess deaths have occurred since the initial 2025 funding freezes and termination of programs. [1, 2]
Demographic Impact: Estimates indicate that over half a million of these early fatalities are children under the age of five, driven heavily by collapsing access to HIV/AIDS treatment (such as PEPFAR interruptions), severe acute malnutrition treatment, and malaria prevention. [1, 2, 3]
Geographic Focus: The majority of the mortality toll has manifested in low- and middle-income countries, predominantly across sub-Saharan Africa and parts of West and Central Asia. [1, 2, 3]

Projected Mortality (By 2030)

Standard Projections: Landmark studies published in The Lancet project that if current defunding trends and the permanent collapse of former USAID programs persist, 14.1 million avoidable deaths will occur by 2030. This includes roughly 4.5 million children under five (about 700,000 extra child deaths per year). [1, 2]
Severe Scenarios: Broader global health analyses in The Lancet Global Health estimate that under a severe or total global aid reduction scenario, excess mortality could climb as high as 22.6 million deaths worldwide by the end of the decade. [1]

Administration Stance

U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and administration-affiliated figures like Elon Musk, have contested these models, asserting publicly that "zero" or no fatalities have resulted directly from the suspension of the agency, maintaining that alternative or bilateral frameworks would cover essential humanitarian needs. [1]

 

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Perplexity 

The most authoritative published estimates I found are: about 600,000 deaths already occurred from the dismantling of USAID, and more than 14 million additional deaths could occur by 2030 if the cuts continue. Those figures come from a Boston University model cited by Harvard and from a peer-reviewed Lancet analysis summarized by UCLA.[1][2]

What has already happened

Harvard reports that Atul Gawande cited Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols’s model as estimating that USAID’s dismantling “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children.” Harvard also says the toll will keep rising over time as deaths from interrupted treatment and malnutrition appear with delay. [1]

What is projected

The UCLA summary of the Lancet study says USAID-funded programs helped prevent 91 million deaths between 2001 and 2021, and that the 2025 funding cuts could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including over 4.5 million children under five. The Boston University tracker cited in March 2025 gave a much smaller near-term estimate, saying more than 176,000 additional deaths from HIV and at least 62,000 from tuberculosis could occur by the end of 2025 if funding were not restored.[1][2]

How to read the estimates

These numbers are not contradictory so much as they measure different things: an early, disease-specific, near-term tracker versus a broader, multi-country projection through 2030. The 600,000 figure is presented as an estimate of deaths already attributable to the shutdown, while the 14 million figure is a forecast if the cuts persist.[1][2][3]

 

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ChatGPT

The most authoritative estimate currently available comes from a peer-reviewed study in The Lancet (published in 2025) that modeled the mortality consequences of a complete or near-complete loss of USAID funding. It is important to distinguish modeled excess deaths attributable to the loss of aid programs from a literal count of deaths already verified as having occurred; many future deaths cannot be directly observed or attributed in real time.[1]

Best current estimate: ~14 million additional deaths by 2030

The study, “Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030”, analyzed data from 133 low- and middle-income countries and compared projected mortality under continued USAID-supported programs with a scenario of defunding. It estimated: [1]

• 14.05 million additional deaths from 2025–2030 if the funding cuts persist
  • Uncertainty range: 8.48 million to 19.66 million deaths
• 4.54 million additional deaths among children under age 5
  • Uncertainty range: 3.12 million to 5.91 million children
    

The projected annual excess deaths in the model are roughly:

Year	Estimated additional deaths
2025	~1.78 million
2026	~2.50 million
2027	~2.48 million
2028	~2.45 million
2029	~2.43 million
2030	~2.41 million

Deaths that may already have occurred

There is no universally accepted, independently verified “death toll so far” from USAID dismantlement, because mortality attribution takes time and requires country-level surveillance. Some rapid-response models and analyses have estimated hundreds of thousands of excess deaths already occurring, but these are model outputs rather than confirmed counts. For example, one mortality-tracking effort cited estimates above 700,000 deaths after roughly the first year, but such estimates remain less established than the peer-reviewed Lancet projection.[1]

What causes the projected deaths?

The Lancet analysis linked USAID-supported programs to reductions in deaths from major causes including: [1]

• HIV/AIDS (the study estimated USAID support was associated with preventing about 25.5 million HIV/AIDS deaths over the prior two decades)
• Malaria (about 8 million deaths prevented)
• Neglected tropical diseases (about 8.9 million deaths prevented)
• Tuberculosis
• Childhood pneumonia and diarrhea
• Malnutrition
• Maternal and newborn conditions
• [1] 

How much confidence should be placed in the number?

The 14 million figure is not a measured death count; it is a counterfactual estimate: how many more people are expected to die if programs previously supported by USAID disappear and are not replaced. The uncertainty interval is wide because outcomes depend on whether other donors, governments, NGOs, and international agencies fill the gap. [1]

So the concise answer is:

• Already occurred: no authoritative final tally exists; some models suggest the toll may already be in the hundreds of thousands. [1]
• Projected through 2030: the leading peer-reviewed estimate is about 14 million excess deaths (range ~8.5–19.7 million), including about 4.5 million children under five, if the dismantlement-level funding reductions continue. [1]

 

 

 

A leech and a parasite

"I inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country. And now we have almost no inflation," lied Donald Trump in an NBC New interview on February 4.

Inflation hit 9.1 percent in the summer of 2022 as a consequence of Covid-era supply chain disruptions, but that was not nearly the "worst inflation in the history of our country" and Trump wasn't in office to bring it down. By January of 2025, when Trump was sworn in, inflation had fallen all the way to 3 percent. That was the inflation Trump "inherited." A year later inflation is 2.4 percent, all thanks to the Federal Reserve, at which Trump has continually sniped and griped for its inflation fighting efforts.

Not only did Trump not inherit high inflation, but he also didn't do anything to bring down the modestly elevated inflation he did inherit. Trump, however, is always eager to take credit for the accomplishments of others.

Like with this disparagement of Joe Biden at a rally on Thursday, in which he said Biden "was sleeping while you were trying to get a job. You weren’t working, and now we have the most people working in history."

Now, huh? I wonder why there are so many people working right now. Maybe it's because Biden created an astonishing 15.4 million jobs during his four years as president. It's an all time record; no other president has come anywhere close to that many jobs created in a single term. So what Trump actually did inherit, thanks to Biden, is a country with lots of people working.

What, you might wonder, was Trump's contribution to our "now [having] the most people working in history"? This: Trump added a paltry 359,000 jobs total in his first full 12 months in office, for a dismal average of just 30,000 per month. The "sleeping" Joe Biden averaged 321,000 per month over a full four years. Now that's impressive. (You can get authoritative job creation numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

Trump would like you to think he heroically brought down inflation when he actually had nothing to do with it. There wasn't much remaining by the time he arrived on the scene. And he certainly didn't bring down prices, as he promised he would. (Prices and inflation aren't the same thing.) He'd like you to think the country's record number of people working is his doing too, but his actual performance has been underwhelming, and that's being charitable. He actually had the gall to slander Biden, who really did create unprecedented numbers of jobs. Truly, Trump is a leech and a parasite, always trying glorify himself by taking credit for the accomplishments of others. It's a defining story of his life.

And he thinks you're stupid. He thinks you will swallow whatever he's peddling. I do have to admit, the abject stupidity of his supporters, or at least their stupendous ignorance, is one of the only explanations I can come up with for how Trump gets away with continually spewing outrageous lies, and creating an alternative reality, where he's always the star, that bears no resemblance to the actual one. Such flagrant lying by a president is as unimaginably noxious as it is unprecedented.

I will leave you with the graph below showing total nonfarm employment. It comes from the St. Louis Fed, the Federal Reserve branch responsible for the Fed's economic data. I added my own annotations marking the intervals that Trump has held office. As you can see, in his first term employment continued up at about the same rate as the long term trend Trump had inherited from Obama. So in this and several other respects, Trump can take credit for not screwing up Obama's economy. Which is hardly the economic "miracle" Trump claimed he accomplished. The recovery after the Great Recession of 2008--a catastrophe Obama really did inherit--was one of the longest economic expansions in U.S. history. Trump got in at the end, and promptly took credit for all of it. That's our Donald. Then Covid hit in the final year of his first term, and jobs were decimated. Counting the Covid bloodletting, Trump actually lost millions of jobs over his first term. But fair persons that we are, we won't blame him for those. Suffice to say that Obama created tens of thousands more jobs per month over his final three years as Trump did in his first three.

Now, over a year into his second term, we can see Trump's recent contribution to the employment picture: that pathetic little flat squiggle at the right edge of the graph. That's his contribution to our "now [having] the most people working in history" for which he wants to take credit.

He really is a piece of work, isn't he?

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Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved 

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Trump employment

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