What Michelangelo’s late-in-life works reveal about his genius – and his humanness aeon (Chuck L)
The odd couple Critic Magazine. Anthony L: “Waugh & Greene”
Yesterday’s Men: The death of the mythical method Harper’s (Anthony L)
Black hole 100,000x heavier than Sun wakes up, brightens galaxy Interesting Engineering (Chuck L)
The Enduring Mystery of How Water Freezes Quantam Magazine (Kevin W)
A brief history of Stephen Hawking’s greatest equation aeon (Chuck L)
#COVID-19
New Insights into Acute and Long Covid Eric Topol (Robin K)
Climate/Environment
Microplastics found in penises for first time, researchers say – raising questions over impact on sexual health Sky News (Kevin W)
Australia’s east faces immediate gas shortage amid cold snap, outage Reuters
UK Supreme Court Hands Climate Activists Landmark Win in Oil Drilling Case OilPrice
Ecuador struck by power outage leaving 18 million in the dark Guardian
China?
US reputation on the line at Second Thomas Shoal Asia Times (Kevin W)
Chinese are able to use high resolution satellite cameras and AI to track surface wakes created by US attack submarines travelling under water at greater than 20 knots (37 kph).
As a US nuclear submarine is huge displacing almost 7,000 tons of water when submerged and the… pic.twitter.com/M0o2DBx6X7
— Ignis Rex (@Ignis_Rex) June 22, 2024
DJI drone ban passes in U.S. House — ‘Countering CCP Drones Act’ would ban all DJI sales in U.S. if passed in Senate Tom’s Hardware. Chuck L also sent the tweet below:
Crazy, the US is passing a bill named "Countering CCP Drones Act" that would ban DJI drones in the US.https://t.co/2cj0wldKoA
I checked, DJI has 90% market share of the U.S. hobby market, 70% market share of the industrial market and over 80% market share of the first responder…
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) June 20, 2024
US wants Netherlands, Japan to further restrict chipmaking equipment to China Reuters (Kevin W). From Thursday, still germane.
Africa
Sudan: Darfur graveyards swell threefold as 25.6M suffer food shortage Al-Monitor
Niger revokes French operating licence at major uranium mine France24
European Disunion
French rally against far-right ends in clashes ahead of national elections France 24
Is Berlin ready for the apocalypse? Politicians debate bunkers plan The Berliner
Gaza
🚨Testimony: Dr. Muneer Al Bursh, #Gaza's Ministry of Health Director General, reveals shocking torture methods in Israeli army prisons post Dr. Iyad al-Rantisi's killing: electric shocks, suspension, stretching, and nail pulling during interrogations ‼️ pic.twitter.com/PSRcGB6UiF
— Nour Naim| نُور (@NourNaim88) June 19, 2024
Hizbullah Ready To Defeat Israel Moon of Alabama (Kevin W)
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warns Israel about the cost of a war in Lebanon NPR
The shipping industry is sounding the alarm as another vessel sinks in the Red Sea CNN
Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox block highway in protest against IDF enlistment Times of Israel (Kevin W)
New Not-So-Cold War
The price of war is never paid by those responsible…
A Ukrainian soldier awakens in the hospital, eyes and arms gone, the rest of his life decided for him. If there is a woman, she will leave, if there was a future, it is gone.
I pray this ends. #UkraineRussianWar #ukraine… pic.twitter.com/u54fdUGLpv— Noctis Draven (@DravenNoctis) June 19, 2024
EU approves 14th Russia sanctions package, includes first-ever LNG sector measures Euractiv
Putin warns South Korea against arming Ukraine BBC (Kevin W)
Putin reconsiders nuclear weapons doctrine after state visit to Vietnam Euronews
UKRAINIAN NEO-NAZI GROUP CENTURIA TERRORIZES EUROPEAN CITIZENS AND CREATES THE “FOURTH REICH” IN EUROPE Foundation to Battle Injustice (Micael T)
Yellen Says US Ties With Vietnam Don’t Require It to Sever Ties With Russia, China US News (Kevin W)
US gives Ukraine front-of-the-line privileges for air defense missiles Politico (Kevin W)
Does It Get Better Than This For Russia? Mark Wauck
THE HELIUM BALLOON GOES UP – RUSSIA’S HELIUM INDUSTRY GOES TO WAR AGAINST NATO John Helmer
Assange
Key evidence missing in Assange snooping case – media RT (Robin K)
Imperial Collapse Watch
As Chuck L said, “When you’ve lost Niall Ferguson…”
British historian Niall Ferguson warns that if the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is used as an analogy to the contemporary situation, it is not China that plays the role of the Soviet Union, but the United States.
In the late Soviet period, the bloated… pic.twitter.com/r82WLSvs3E
— DaiWW (@BeijingDai) June 19, 2024
Ruling Class Finally Awakens to the Reality of America’s Decline Simplicius
Americans don't realize just how disastrous this would be if that's indeed the case. And Manning, a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, is very well connected in DC so I think we should probably believe him.
A war is essentially won on 3 things:
1) Industrial capacity
2)… https://t.co/wdG5EfvvV4— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) June 20, 2024
US borrowing binge risks market strains, analysts warn Financial Times. Raises the question of why the Treasury did not issue as many long-maturity bonds when rates were super low.
Trump
Trump raised so much last month he erased Biden’s cash advantage Politico
Nevada Judge Dismisses Trump Fake Electors Case New York Times (Kevin W)
Trump gets the final word at CNN debate after coin flip CNN (Kevin W)
Gunz
Supreme Court upholds law banning domestic abusers from having guns CBS (Kevin W
Woke Watch
Pilot’s Union Suggests Changing ‘Cockpit’ to ‘Flight Deck’ for Inclusivity Breitbart (Dr. Kevin). Yes, I know Breitbart but that is ad hom thinking. This is a sourced item. IMHO women pilots are much more worried about pay/promotion/scheduling discrimination and being hit on that this sort of nonsense. But for the union to fight over things that have money or power relationship dynamics would be work.
The Specter of ‘Indoctrination’ The Chronicle (Anthony L)
Falling Apart, Boeing and Not Boeing Edition
Astronauts stranded in space due to multiple issues with Boeing’s Starliner — and the window for a return flight is closing LiveScience (Kevin W)
Can I even buy a car? What to know about the massive auto dealer outage CNN
AI
LLMs create more convincing misinformation than people do The Register (Dr. Kevin)
AI is exhausting the power grid. Tech firms are seeking a miracle solution. Washington Post (Kevin W)
Let Tim Cook Edward Zitron (Micael T)
Class Warfare
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“Pilot’s Union Suggests Changing ‘Cockpit’ to ‘Flight Deck’ for Inclusivity”
It’s a good thing that modern airliners are no longer equipped with “joysticks” anymore. But if that union had fought for higher wages or improved conditions as Yves suggests, then every pilot would have benefited whether male, female or LGBTQ+. Instead they went with sticks and stones.
The thing attached to the flight controls that the pilot uses to fly the commercial aircraft is called the “yoke.” I throw the flag on clear masculine domination naming (I was going to say “nomenclature “ but that has “men” in it.
Seductive idiot woke cognition.
Twenty or more years ago there was a huge outrage about an old Scandinavian-in-origin word that means “Grudging and petty in giving or spending. Meanly small; scanty or meager.” At the time of the supposed outrage the word had gone out of fashion for a while but was still in use. When I tell you the word you will know exactly why it was attacked, by whom, and why. The word had nothing to do with race. It was about financial miserliness. “Oh, well that’s different. Nevermind.” – Emily Letilla. / heh
Niggardly – adjective.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/niggardly
My husband has a bad habit of using that word appropriately whenever he can.
Good for him. The word Niggard, pronounced as Nigh-gard, is a perfectly fine word, imo.
i was temporarily suspended from faceborg for purposefully using that word in an argument with some of the killthemall liberals.
Because, you know, if it sounds similar to something else it must be the same as that something else. Right? Does no one use a dictionary any more? / sheesh
adding: I expect the families Nygard, Nighgard, Nighgarrd and Nighgard would quibble with the the political ideas ascribed to their family names. / heh
“nopersonclature”?
Back in the 70s, while hanging out with the staff of a local underground newspaper, I overheard a spectacular take-down of what is now called “Woke-ism”.
The person pointed out to everyone in the room that no one should use the word woman, because it has the term “man” in it, which is sexist.
Instead we should say “wo-person”.
He then followed up by pointing out that of course that word has the term “son” – a male offspring – in it; which is sexist.
So the only solution is to say “woperchild” and thus be completely anti-sexist (as we said then).
Except for Boeing most modern aircraft use side sticks, funny that a stick located to the side is called a side stick.
As for the union, funny that the website highlights negotiations for working conditions and wages instead of their real priorities.
https://www.alpa.org/
Kinda surprised that verbiage, like the cockpit by example, has not been tossed into the dustbin of history…reminds me of the futuristic setting to the film Demolition Man. Harsh words and cursing are outlawed & offending language is a cause to charge or rather fine the offender.
Safe space for our pilots no matter their gender or sexual preference…
… and every restaurant is called Taco Bell, lol! Fun movie, the only Stallone flick I like actually, and Bullock is hilarious.
Every restaurant is called Taco Bell because as they said in the movie, Taco Bell won the franchise wars if I remember correctly. But it is a great, fun film that.
The etymology seems actually be quite interesting, at least to me. Originally “kugg-sveinn” was Old Norse for boat servant – kugg (cog), small boat; sveinn, boy or servant – a person taking care of and steering the boat.
From this you get the later English term coxswain, the person in charge of the boat. There was a time during the development of sailing ship when an after castle (later quarterdeck) was constructed over the steering deck, and steering commands were communicated to this “pit” trough a hole on the deck.
A perfectly innocent term that contains a thousand years of Northern European maritime history.
Let’s take random terms and find reasons to be upset about them. “Flight deck” used to describe the upper deck of the aircraft carrier, and retains its strong military association. For those who advocate non-violence, using this term glorifies and normalizes militaristic language and culture in civilian contexts. I am offended.
“Flight Deck” was also the term used in past times to refer to the floor in the building at the Menlo Park VA that housed the unfortunate souls who’s mental condition was so bad they were put on so much Thorazine that they were “in flight”. They could be seen shuffling up and down the hallway of that floor at all hours. It always brought “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” to mind, which was written just a couple hundred feet away from that very building. It always sank me into a bit of a depression whenever I walked by that ward. That was many, many years ago, and I haven’t seen or heard of any current place like this, so I hope they figured out better medicine regimes or treatments so a place like that need not exist at all.
So that is where the word coxswain comes from. Must be lots of “fossil” words in the English language like this sitting in plain sight. What intrigues me is how the Normans took over the British Isles and imposed French on their new subjects but after it went out of use, you were left with an English and a French word for the same thing (such a ‘calf’ and ‘veal’) in the English language-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_with_dual_French_and_Old_English_variations
Did anyone else here have Miss Link for English at Classen High in Oklahoma City? I got (acquired) my liking (affinity) for words in her classes. She loved her subject and taught us about the overlay of Norman French onto Anglo-Saxon, with Saxon being used in the barnyard and French being used in the dining hall – hence, last will and testament, hereby devise and bequeath, etc., in legal affairs. George Orwell wrote that one should prefer Anglo-Saxon words to Latin ones.
Where does the poop deck fit in all of that?
On the top of it all, of course. By the time they started building those over the quarterdeck, the wheel had been relocated (on the quarterdeck), but the name was already well established.
Strange. I had always assumed the term ‘cockpit’ was drawn from the small, sunken pit used in cockfighting for many centuries, adopted to describe the not disimilar space for the pilot in the earliest aircraft from WW1 which not infrequently mirrored similar flurries of desperate activity, blood and death of their namesakes.
It’s also used for a “pit” or cage where one thrown in roosters for their fight, ergo cock pit.
Watch out. Countries are passing so-called “hate speech” laws. (“hate” being a political football.) / ;)
Carroll demonstrates the best part of “hate” and similar words for those who make the laws:
Heh. The union leaders went with the ephemeral of virtue signaling. In other words, they didn’t fight for anything that would upset management and stock holders. Fighting for you. right. / ;)
Not correct.
Go to the union website and read it.
https://www.alpa.org/
Thanks.
Air Canada board to CEO: we understand you need more compensation in this environment. It’s one of the costs of doing business.
Air Canada to fuel suppliers: we understand the price of fuel has increased. It’s one of the costs of doing business.
Air Canada to food vendors: we understand the price of food has increased. It’s one of the costs of doing business.
ALPA to Air Canada: the price of our labor has increased.
Air Canada: listen here you little $hits…
The airline I was working at in the late 1980s announced that Flight Deck was the term to be used as the labor force became less traditional. I’ll have to check when Boeing got onboard. Airbus never became aware of US sensitivities.
Does the left have anything on offer other than language policing anymore?
Fellow Chris, as discussed on this website quite often, the Left in the US and North America in general, has quite a lot to offer. Neoliberals on the other hand… they got nothing. Hashtag kings and queens and nepobabies? They have less than nothing. But the cost of appeasing them with nothing is cheap. So it is the only concession our concern trolling elite allows.
Today’s (Sunday) Peanuts cartoon. / ;)
https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2024/06/23
The NYT runs an article yesterday implying that the videos of Biden stumbling and bumbling like the confused old man he is are somehow doctored and modified to make him look that way. I was astounded at the readers comments, coming from a type that is severely affected by TDS. They will not be fooled. Biden and the Dems are in big trouble if he doesn’t abdicate. When you’ve lost the NYT reader…
Article is now hidden and comments closed.
How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/us/politics/biden-age-videos.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
Behold our most wonderful leader, best to do it since that iconic FDR was in office ! We’re gonna heap continual praise and worship the glory of the Biden presidency….\sarc
Vomit worthy. I am struggling with what I’m gonna do in November…hard to accept Trump with his warts and his underlings / acolytes plans afoot to deploy sweeping changes in 2025. Added…taxes go up by 2026 mark my words it might be ugly no matter who is winning in November…
Well, for those making less than $70,000 taxes have been going up since 2022 under Trump’s “tax cut” of 2017. That’s about 70% of the population. The money keeps flowing gently upward, ever upward….
A minor quibble to raise,taxes going up for 2023 into current? It appears to be implied from seeing this comment it would be inclusive so for tax year 2022 and then 2023. Personal anecdote but noticed that my “refund” for 2023 was a tad lighter, and on comparable levels of reported or net AGI to calculate my tax burden.
Yeah inflation leaving a mark, that’s my initial thought. I haven’t parsed any numbers on personal taxation much further, aside from getting mine filed a mere day before the April 2024 deadline. Others mileage may vary.
Speaking of inflation, Matt Stoller has a great post on the rising cost of FICO and credit scores here:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/inside-fico-and-the-credit-bureau
If Biden does get re-elected, he’s going to fulfill his FDR comparisons by dying of old age, in office.
Well, FDR for sure and Biden very probably had/have health issues that were/are being concealed from the public, although known to insiders. But FDR was only 63 when he died, hardly an advanced age even in 1945. Biden is really pushing the envelope even for today.
People want to believe that Biden is like the many people who are mentally sharp into their 80s and 90s instead of the many people who are not. The man was not that intelligent even at his best and he got a bad roll of the dice with his aging. No shame in it as half of aging well is genetic, but there is shame in ignoring it, especially if ego, vanity, or greed involved.
Which President’s next term would be more survivable?
Which President’s next term would be more irreversible?
If one candidate offers 4 more years of survivable bad which could be reversed once he is gone, and the other candidate offers 4 more years of borderline-survivable bad which cannot be reversed once he is gone, which candidate’s legacy would I stand a better chance surviving?
Dogs not eating the dog food. Dogs must be crazy.
Maybe Elon can send a mini sub.
Too high for a HALO jump then?
so Rev, you’re probably asleep but we batted this around before – i said they won’t come back in it and you mentioned that corporate may force the issue of them returning in the Starliner capsule…because, shareholders – i’ll write it again, the Starliner is a tin can without thrusters – if those astronauts get in it they may very well perish – they’re even lucky they got to the ISS and probably had to clean their tightey whiteys when the got inside the ISS –
That doesn’t leave them a lot of options. Maybe they can get Musk to send up one of his ships to retrieve them or, if they get really desperate, ask the Russians to send up a Soyuz capsule to bring them home. Boeing has a lot to answer for. I find it hard to believe that they had to pull out thousands of feet of cabling out of that ship recently because they remembered that it was flammable. I’m sure that Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee could have told them that that was a bad idea.
appropriate to use the new ‘hot’ word – enshitification – it’s like a plague – wonder if Vegas is giving odds that they return on the Starliner – i think it has become a permanent fixture on the ISS – gonna be pretty hard to spin this – Boeing is toast –
The incineration of the NASA crew must be common knowledge to anyone who studies the history of space flight. I would assume that the designers of Starliner would have studied all the space programs, American, Soviet/Russian, and Chinese to avoid disasters as well as not reinventing the wheel.
But having written what I just wrote, this is crazy talk as Boeing is now incapable of making good product. It is not profitable enough to do so.
And ventilators.
When I see articles on space failures in this age of techno fetishism, I am often reminded of a quote by a blogger Quinn Norton.
from this great piece on cyber security “Everything Is Broken”
https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1
my dad’s astronaut buddies(and other nasa people) were always on about slide rules.
one bear of a man…grumman guy, avid bow hunter…even showed me how to use one…first and only time ive ever seen and held such a device.
that was maybe 1977?
My Dad (Electrical Engineer out of SFX/Nova Scotia Tech in the late’50s) had one, but I never learned to use it. Calculators had pretty much rendered them obsolete by the time I was out of high school.
Confession. I went out and bought one online a while ago. Haven’t had the time to play around with it and learn to work it yet.
My Dad, TV repairman, taught me how to use one. Logarithms. Good knowledge. In the 70’s, TV repairman was a solid middle class job. Family vacations involved camping in several western states.
“… a solid middle class job…”
Now there’s a quaint idea.
I still have mine. Memorabilia I can’t part with. I was at the transition of slide rule to calculator. Still have my old 50 yo calculator too. Works a treat. Use it every week.
Made before everything turned into shite
I commented in the early years of NC that CAD was a short cut to engineering, minds need tuning to it, maths/physics and slide rules are the way to do that. Not that in the late 90s I was talking to the head of the engineering dept at QUT here in Brisbane and he informed me physics had been watered down to push more grads through to supply the needs of the market[tm].
Same drama I have with coders thinking they are more rational than everyone else and have no clue about how that mind set works, especially as most of the data is rubbish in and out.
Old saw about lawyers at the bottom of the sea should be amended to coders and orthodox economists …
Hey, my chem prof gifted me one. Chemistry is a lot of logarithms. But I’ve lost it somewhere in the late 90s, my bad.
Keuffel & Esser was a prominent brand, and produced those handsome slide rules that got unholstered by so many engineering and other students, and alums.
In high school, it was fun to learn to use them and a tactile diversion from paper and pencil or chalkboard or whatever. Users liked the elegance and smooth operation that helped show how many new functions could be accessed, if you will excuse the more modern terminology, of a nice piece of kit.
An observation that has been made many times (by NC and others), but the US is no longer a serious nation.
If it’s a Boeing I ain’t going.
As somebody here recently quipped vis-a-vis the quest for a new ceo, Boeing, when one door closes, another door opens…
Something definitely to bear in mind in low Earth orbit.
They’ll attract their next CEO with a very gold laden parachute…
Attracting an opportunistic climber may be their last chance at any true change or redemption. If I were a retiree and held company stock I’d tremble at what or who may follow. It can get worse before it gets better, to quote the true original Roadhouse film.
Psst… maybe the Russians would like to help us out here… for old times sake…
I wouldn’t worry about windows, this isn’t a Dehaviland Comet.
Maybe they could call “Spaceman” with his Tesla to get them safely home. Maybe he is on Uber….
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/06/world/spacex-elon-musk-tesla-roadster-five-years-scn/index.html
Working link for “EU approves 14th Russia sanctions package, includes first-ever LNG sector measures” article at-
https://www.euractiv.com/section/eu-russia/news/eu-approves-14th-russia-sanctions-package-includes-first-ever-lng-sector-measures/
(Missing the ‘h’ in ‘https’) Of course it took a long time to come up with ideas for this sanctions package-
https://x.com/narrative_hole/status/1668929568386719750
Just another EU attempt to get a response from Tom Lehrer.
Re AI power power demand, building more powerful AI models is the modern Gold Rush. There is open talk of “trillion dollar investment” in AI. Look for the EV industry and its requisite recharging infrastructure to be subtly impeded by logistic and regulatory challenges. The electric grid can only serve so many masters at once. The moves will be subtle because many of the proponents and engineers of AI are also big proponents and consumers of EVs. My bet is on AI to win the battle of who eats power from the grid first. Also, expect fossil fuels to make a comeback to support more natural gas and coal for electricity production, and gasoline to offset the transportation sector demand for electricity. The political and economic power moves to make this happen will be framed so that they can be blamed on the usual suspects. Just watch.
This whole hulla baloo of the drain AI is and will have on the power grid is a PR strawman to deflect discussion of the negative effects of AI itself. Don’t want to talk about the real problems.
The almighty US Navy is also sounding the alarm, and sailing away like the brave Sir Robin.
‘Noctis Draven
@DravenNoctis
The price of war is never paid by those responsible…
A Ukrainian soldier awakens in the hospital, eyes and arms gone, the rest of his life decided for him. If there is a woman, she will leave, if there was a future, it is gone.
I pray this ends.’
If that reporter thought that that guy had it bad, she should have gone down to the burns ward. She’s find much worse there. Those injured or crippled by this war will be living with the aftermath for the rest of their lives though governments try to hide it from the public. When the British vets returned from the Falklands war for their parade, the UK government wanted to make sure that no injured or crippled soldiers took part as it would be a bad look.
my stepdad..Don…was in a wheelchair from 1968 on…shot through the spine at T-5, in a rice paddy outside of da nang..
in retrospect, he was likely the biggest influence on my stance regarding stupid wars…and the absolute moral requirement to take car of wounded vets.
About Mercedes:
Think out this. Large German companies, and I am sure Daimler is no exception, tend to have union presence on the board of directors. So you see that the labour-movement in Germany is not one iota concerned with solidarity with international workers. The German labour movement is a joke and in the pocket of German big business.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1804387578524647905
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
Quite a statement by the Chinese side in the current round of “track two” nuclear talks with the US, telling Americans that if war does occur over Taiwan they were “absolutely convinced” that they would prevail without using nuclear weapons.
Source: https://dawn.com/news/1841188 *
* https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GQp47vLakAIo5ny?format=jpg&name=medium
1:34 AM · Jun 22, 2024
Can I even buy a car? What to know about the massive auto dealer outage, Went to the local Subaru dealership yesterday to schedule a service appointment. They were using workarounds. Savor this quote from the CNN article if you, like I, appreciate stupid when it’s expressed with authority.
To protect customer privacy, customers’ details aren’t written out on a piece of paper that’s just sitting on a desk anymore. Instead, information about deals and customer appointments is kept in a server that’s now impossible for salespeople affected by the outage to access.
I highlighted this passage also. Deity forbid that the information be keot on a piece of paper then stuffed into a file cabinet for all eternity! How safe is that?
Seeing that sales dude scrawling away on a yellow pad, with emphatic circles and underlines of the questionable math, one more memory sent to recycling. /s
Not to worry because no one will be able to read what he (or she or they or them or it) wrote because of no practice with handwriting in school. Seriously, retired teacher here.
Ha! Like UK healthcare research. Literally a decade before UK major healthcare funding bodies went beyond “store data on password protected computer” as a condition for funding I was using encryption of patient data using a method that (it was alleged) GCHQ hated.
I subscribe to the “Cartman view of your data”: it’s public already so just get used to it. (I will refrain from saying what he said next about what picture is there for everyone to see to illustrate the point. If you know, you know.) Rev Kev amongst others will get the reference.
Hmmmm. No paperwork? The information kept only on a server? Think of AI tools using something like “surge pricing” adjustments to prices when the customer goes to pay the repair bill. ooohhh, the
fraud, er unexpected price adjustment possibilities are endless. / ;)See Walmart.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/electronic-price-tag-groceries/
Electronic tags are also useful for screwing customers. One store I used to shop at often neglected to put their sale prices into the computer, so that the regular non-sale price would be wrung up at the register. This happened far too often to be a mistake so I eventually complained to the WA atty general’s office. It still happens at some stores.
This happened to me once and I complained at the register and I got the product reduced in price…apparently here in Ontario there is a law about this practice
Canadian Tire switched to electronic tags not too long ago out west where I live. I have been leery of shopping there ever since the day I was in my local store and saw one of the new tags flicker and show jibberish before going blank. It fundamentally seems to be a way of pushing people to order online and then pick up orders at the store, very much oriented to people with cars rather than playing at price gouging per se so far (online prices are almost always lower)… but the trouble is the “so far” part.
Cryptocurrency once again proves its worth to society…
Remember any companies or corporations held hostage for large amounts of money before they done showed up?
In the early days of the internet, hackers would find a security hole and then go to the company (usually Banks) for a “finders” fee. If they didn’t pay up, the exploit got released to other hackers.
So the Supreme Court just affirmed that owning guns is a privilege and not a right; like having a driver’s license. I can live with that.
To the extent that any of the rights in the constitution are really privileges. Convicted criminals are denied the right to vote, or the right not to be submitted to slave labor, or the right to be protected from unwarranted search and seizure, and others. The power of the State to remove otherwise constitutional rights of criminals is very broad.
Broad, yes, but the rights have been slowly hollowed out for decades for everyone, which means that our arguments about them are more a distraction than anything of meaning; we are no longer a nation of laws, but of men, as your sheer power from wealth, status, connections, or anything else are what matters than any “rights” you are supposed to have.
To expand on this, the United States is the expression of American political philosophy including the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which is based on the Enlightenment, which does stress the primacy of the individual, but also of equality under law. The law is the practical framework, the skeleton, and if it becomes too weak then the whole thing collapses. Rather like a person with osteoporosis.
The transition from negative, to positive Liberty was nearly silent, like the passage from Spring to Summer.
Not exactly. More like voting rights.
I was shocked the Supremes voted 8-1, this was a cabal that previously never saw anything wrong with the proliferation of guns, what happened?
Alito and his wife looked out their living room windows?
I think that Clarence Thomas was the only holdout here.
“Ecuador struck by power outage leaving 18 million in the dark”
Ecuador wasn’t the only place to be hit with a power outage. On the other side of the world Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania and most of Croatia’s coast had a power outage as high demand in the heatwave there knocked systems offline-
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/power-blackout-hits-montenegro-bosnia-albania-croatias-adriatic-coast-2024-06-21/
As these heatwaves hit country after country, I would expect that power outages would become just another facet of life. But what should happen is that all those homes with solar panels should eventually be equipped with batteries as well so that they have something to fall back on when the power goes down.
Cheap window air conditioners. Billions of them.
Unless they bring back an idea from the graveyard of history and impose a Window Tax-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax
Banana countries are the same all over the World, except for the actual banana growing part.
Soviet power grid in Ukraine took hundreds of missiles, and is still not completly dead.
It is not possible to bomb the nuclear power plants. The transmission from them is a different story I guess.
I wonder if any of those countries had vassalized stooge governments that diverted their own power to the sinking ship known as Ukraine. Their citizens might get a little testy if they found that out.
According to Dima there was another really big missile and drone attack last night so more of those neighbors may be asked to sweat out a long, hot summer without AC for the Z-man.
RE: Heatwave
Going on day 6 of 95+ heat here in mid-west US of A. How’s your electric bill since the A/C has been running almost 24/7? I read my meter everyday just to see where I am. The AEP data is a few days behind and I like to stay current. As of yesterday, with 4 days left in the billing cycle, I have used 73% more electric than last month. By the time the billing cycle is over, I will have used as much electric in the last 9 days as I did all last month.
Even buying from a cheaper energy supplier, my electric usage is only 27% of my bill. 2 1/2 years ago it was 45%. In total, my cost per kWh has risen 35% since Jan 22.
What’s my point? I am not alone I’m sure, and my bill will be considerably higher this month, along with many others. These costs are weather dependent but they are costs – costs many cannot afford. Inflation is already hurting so many people, and now this. An extended hot streak could really impact the economy in ways we didn’t expect. People are pinched now, and an electric bill that’s much higher will certainly not help.
Stay safe all.
My larger concern from a population level view is: At what point do A/C units fail when they’re all pumping excess heat out into a world of ever increasing heat during a huge heat wave? What’s the max operating temperature? And if that’s exceeded, do most people just die in an hour or two? Is this like the hero character in a movie, in the dark with a match lit and some unknown danger lurking, to pounce when the match goes out?
I’m surprised we haven’t heard about any blackouts, power failures, etc.
I’m in Ohio and it’s been brutal – calling for 98 today and right now around 1 pm the dew point is only 66. Yesterday, 96 with the dew point in the mid 70s. It starts to feel comfortable around 10 pm.
It’s also been over a week with no rain, so everything is dry as a bone. It wouldn’t take much to start a fire. Breeze is better today but that just helps dry things out even more.
Everything is ripe for some bad things to happen.
Meanwhile, here in Oz-
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-23/australias-coldest-town-revealed-following-week-long-cold-snap/104006148
Think of an AC more like a heat pump that works in only one direction. And think of heat like the water level you’re trying to reduce using the pump. You’d like the water level to be zero and have all the water pumped outside. But if the rate of water seeping in or the volume of water you need to pump out is too great, you overwhelm the pump. And if the water level is too high, doesn’t matter if the pump takes it down a bit if the end result is still over your head.
There’s a lot about maintenance to consider. There’s a lot about insulation to consider. There’s a lot about humidity or latent load to consider. But, bluntly speaking, your AC alone is most likely going to have a hard time maintaining temps lower than 20 degrees F below ambient. So if the outside temp is 110 Degrees F, you may find yourself with a high electric bill and a 90 F house. That’s why for a lot of people investing in insulation pays dividends because it prevent the house from getting as hot and makes the AC more efficient to use for purpose. And depending on your insulation, it helps keep the conditioned air inside too.
when nitetime temps are 70 or below in summer, i open the windows and turn on fans before bed.
easier to keep a house cool than to cool it…and i’ll take whatever ambient help i can get.
but i also built my house to be a heat engine…it draws like a woodstove, if i open the big transom windows(really actual salvaged doors on their sides)so even without fans, i have airflow…the more, the hotter it gets…which, of course has diminishing returns.
current high today was around 85,here in the northwest texas hill country.
i left the air off til 1pm…as i was cooking and screwin around at the wilderness bar all day anyways.
(dutch oven lasagne, with homemade lamb italian sausage and a bunch of veg and herbs from right here)
cowboy pool and the 3 box fans out here are adequate…but i also like the dry heat(no weather pain, etc)
big lizard on a rock.
There’s a ‘standard lapse rate’ for a decrease in temperature of approximately 3.5 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit for every 1,000ft above sea-level.
So head for the hills, young man.
In India the British had whole towns in the mountains to escape to when the Indian summer rolled around. They were called Hill Stations-
https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/designing-for-typologies/a3012-hill-stations-established-by-the-british-raj-in-india/
Likewise in the Philippines, the US colonizers established Baguio in the Luzon highlands as an escape from the heat.
Floridians are known to decamp to their summer homes in the western mountains of North Carolina, generally speaking. Thinking more of the high value secluded resort regions near Highlands or Cashiers, for example. Definitely not Pigeon Forge or Sevierville in TN, which is more of the tourism scene.
The decrease only works in the summer months, and it will be say 100 on the turn on Hwy 198 @ 1,000 feet, and by the time we get to our cabin in Mineral King @ 7,000 feet, its more like 76 degrees.
“There’s a lot about maintenance to consider. There’s a lot about insulation to consider. There’s a lot about humidity or latent load to consider”
There’s also a lot about driving ICE cars and tax dollars going to oil companies in the form of incentives and other supports.
Funny how we spend so much time considering the symptoms as opposed to the disease.
“Get simple and minimal” right now it’s a choice, soon it will be imposed.
The Simplicius piece is a sledgehammer.
For those of you wondering whether the Deep State can use feedback, here’s the first intimation that they’re summoning the courage to dip a toe into the pool …
We’ll see how much feedback they can actually acquire, effectively process and then act upon.
Using feedback = learning = adapting = surviving.
Do we dare hope for transcendent behavior? If they actually do, let’s not all faint at once, OK?
DLG begs to differ.
:)
I’m going to acknowledge _all_ the many good reasons to expect more stupid, set out so eloquently below.
(Yves, was it DJG you were referring to, and if not, who is DLG? tks.)
And then I’m going to, just for fun, argue the opposing side: that reality swings a bigger bat than self-delusion. Do I need to recount the instances – of late – to support that thesis?
“Nature bats last” comes to mind.
=== So, into the fray:
The Deep State is in Deep $____. The global political momentum has dramatically swung against them, the not-West is rapidly organizing economically, politically and militarily against the West, or more specifically against the Deep State, the NeoCons, the People Behind the Curtain, use what euphemism you wish.
What are the Deep State’s remaining moves?
Is EU going to be politically willing and economically capable of carrying on the Drain Russia via Ukraine program?
Is the U.S. going to be able to fight China head-on?
How’s that balance of power and capability game of Israel, UK and U.S. going to play out in the mid-East? What’s your assessment of relative capacity to fight big?
How are S. Korea, Japan and Taiwan feeling these days? All good?
For me the question isn’t “will they wake up and change course”. Even a militantly stupid and stubborn person will ultimately respond to 2×4 whacks to the head, and stop doing the behavior that induces the whacks.
The question is “what will they do after they stop digging”?.
It’s one thing to slavishly follow orders, to navigate in the direction the Money-Power people want you to go. That’s actually fairly easy: that’s the Washington DC economy in a nutshell.
What’s vastly more difficult is to get outside yourself and your group-dogma, and generate altogether new strategies.
Saying “oops, it isn’t working out” – that’s what’s being trial-balooned right now in the piece Simplicius wrote – is only a tiny little step. And in the spirit of “budging the sled out of the ice” – it’s an important step.
Just to save you all the trouble, let me add that it’s another order of magnitude more difficult to actually implement those new strategies.
If I actually got any enjoyment out of this spectacle – and I don’t – it’d be interesting to plot the origin-point, the early-propagators, and the gaming strategy of all the WDC players as they decide where to jump as the tree falls.
All right, here we go again with unrecognizable acronyms.
What is DLG? The most results that my favourite search engine returns is “Dark Latin Groove”. “DLG politics USA” does not return anything enlightening.
And what is DJG? “DJG” returns loads of music DJ, law services, engineering firms and the like. “DJG politics USA” is even less helpful.
Vao: DJG is the Reality Czar, and (s)he is the author of the next post in the thread, the one that, um, seriously contradicted mine above, and to which I felt the need to respond.
I had some time to kill between rolling-out Ruff Puff Pastry cycles (20 mins in freezer between rollings-out). Ruff Puff Pastry is a recipe I have tried (at this late point of life) for the first time today.
I am in pursuit of blueberry hand-pies; I picked blueberries yesterday from the Patch, and today, finally, the reward beckons.
the ben rhodes bit that simplicius riffs off of is worth a read, as well.
for somebody like him, in a publication like that(blob speaking to itself), to say such things is, i think, a really big honkin deal.
The public portion of the piece posted by Simplicius is interesting. I didn’t read further, because I don’t want to subscribe.
The U.S. ruling class finally awakens to American decline?
Well, Simplicius may get into other sources later in the piece, and having read some of Simplicius’s much longer (Simplicius likes details) pieces, I’ll grant that there may be a different resolution.
Nevertheless, one swallow doesn’t make a spring. Ben Rhodes in the Council of Foreign Relations magazine is hardly the famous Kennan Telegram. And even the Kennan Telegram didn’t foresee and stop the many U.S. mistakes in “containing” communism like Guatemala, Vietnam, Cambodia, and, at home, HUAC.
Ben Rhodes may be expressing misgivings, but he is sending a message to such deep thinkers as Hillary Clinton, Jake Sullivan, and Antony Blinken. Sullivan and Blinken are thoroughly creatures of the Clintobamabiden swamp. Blinken has supported every Clinto-disastrous foreign-policy mess since the early 1990s. According to his Wiki entry, Blinken is dumb enough to support the U.S. involvement in Syria.
Sullivan’s Wiki entry reads like a young princeling just smart enough to do damage. Rhodes scholar? Sheesh.
What Simplicius fails to recognize is that these followers of Madeleine “Kali, Goddess of Death” Albright are advocates of war on three fronts: Ukraine, Palestine, and China. What country has ever fought a war on three fronts and survived? Yet they are such bureaucrats of evil that they can’t understand basic strategy.
Multipolarity never even crosses their minds.
They are like Dick Cheney but without the charm.
Even as late as the HW Bush years, DC and Northern VA were charmingly quiet and a ghost town after 5:01p (by today’s standards). In the intervening 30 years, lots of money and people have moved into the DC area tobe next to the DC gravy train. (eg, see Boeing’s move to VA from Chicago, Bezos, etc).
Panem Capitol District is not going to gently into the night if it means loss of power or $$$, so long as other people are the ones dying or footing the bill
And especially $$$? These are now some of America’s richest zip codes.
But the Simplicious is just an excerpt and may have better evidence.
The DC housing market seemed to be immune to the 08 housing and financial crash, which tells you a lot.
They are like Dick Cheney but without the charm. heh heh, everybody needs a hunting pal……
Anyone holding their breath waiting for some common sense to ooze out of the blob should take a selfie. I hear Sherwin Williams is looking for a new shade of blue.
I think the outcome in west Asia will be instructive. The US elite can write off Ukraine (best investment we ever made) as it did with Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan but can they accept defeat on the eastern edge of the Med?
re: “… Hillary Clinton, Jake Sullivan, and Antony Blinken. Sullivan and Blinken are thoroughly creatures of the Clintobamabiden swamp…..”
Also known as the Neocons. / ;)
Also known as the Neocons
Many of them the same lizard people that Team Blue loved to hate during the Shrub years. Some of them (Elliot Abrams) going back to the OG Bush.
Abrams goes back even further, to the Reagan administration, where he was up to his nostrils in the sewage of the Iran-Contra and related scandals. His wife, the daughter of neo-con avatars Norman Podhoretz and his wife, Midge Decter, was a particularly nasty piece of work, with many revealing things (about herself) to say about Palestinians.
You are right, it was the Reagan administration. But Iran-Contra belonged to Poppy Bush and his CIA, unless you believe that Bush really spent all his time in the washroom. The one policy that was indisputably Reagan’s, in my opinion, was his push for strategic arms limitations after seeing “The Day After” on TV.
I’d like to add that the US is fighting a war on a fourth front, and that is the 90% of the population failing to benefit from the vicious uniparty programs of the federal government. These people have been taken for a ride for generations, and as long as they remain strapped in their seats, they’ll continue to suffer in the nightmare world that the economic-political state has placed them in. Will they ever loosen their straps? remains the unanswered question.
aye!
some of us are endeavoring to chew through those restraints…which is, after all, a very american thing to do,lol.
there was a greider book, decades ago…something about “who will tell the people?”.
thats what comes to mind reading your comment.
when the jig is very obviously up to some as yet unknown critical mass of americans, the old friekorps will be as nothing.
the betrayal is so utterly vast…and obvious for a long while to some of us…that it will rip this country to shreds.
“balkinisation” doesnt even approach whats coming when the curtain burns to ash(literal meaning of apokalypse).
Yes. What really disturbs me is how completely *oblivious* to these new realities this current crew seems to be. They lack more than Cheney’s charm. As I’ve said before, as evil as Cheney was (and still is I assume), he struck me as completely cynical. He would do whatever the hell he thought he could get away with. But I don’t think he ever believed his own bulls**t justifications for his actions. And I’m not sure he would be dumb enough to actually start WWIII. That seems to distinguish the hard-core, mainly Republican neocons from their Democrat brethren. The former – the Cheneys, Boltons, Abrams, etc. and their precursors – were just pure Will to Power advocates (some see this as the key attribute of actual fascism). But those on the Democrat side seem to actually believe some of their ideological tripe, which they use to manipulate their own constituency – i.e. the readers of The Atlantic, the New Yorker, the NY Times, etc. I guess Rhodes is appealing to this group, but the True Believers are still in charge.
Something else struck me in reading the Simplicius piece. He makes this statement:
“But lodged in the creases of his [i.e. Rhodes’] appeal are the keys to the game: why is the Order dead? He answers: because countries previously vassalized by strict obedience to the Hegemon are now, for once, acting independently and making—quelle surprise!—sovereign decisions.”
Maybe, if he is referring to, say, Saudi Arabia. But the other thing that really disturbs me these days is the degree to which our *European* “vassals”, or at least their leadership, have become ever more “vassalized” in ways that appear increasingly dangerous. The “realists” are powerless, and the crazies in charge, on both sides of the Atlantic. That someone in the blob is making some sense in the primary blob newsletter is not enough for me to hang my hat on.
I’m responsive to the idea the reps wouldn’t start ww3. Along with trump’s claim he didn’t start any wars. I wonder if some of the never-trump dems might be so discouraged they stay home, the comments to the nyt article on Biden might indicate that. Course, not that many are in the swings, but just a few might make a difference.
I think that following 911 the Euro elite realized that the US would stop pussyfootin’ around with the world and go all out of full-scale “full-spectrum dominance” thereby fulfilling the emotional and philosophical need of Euro-elites to revive the Roman Empire as a global project. They did this along with help from a newly integrated intel-community throughout the West that use a variety of carrots and sticks both legal and illegal.
Phillip K Dick’s Black Iron Prison.
the Roman Empire never ended…its just metasticised.
Pjay, I will grant you that D Cheney, sociopath that he is, is likely too intelligent to drink his own kool-aid. However, I would argue that Bolton is a different matter. That man (in my opinion) is one of the most terrifying, unhinged, barking apocalypse-mongers we have had running US foreign policy. And until he is buried with an ashtree stake at a crossroads, I wouldn’t be sure he will not crawl back to afflict this world again.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1803287758435393888
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
This is an interesting piece by @brhodes, Obama’s Former Deputy National Security Advisor
https://foreignaffairs.com/united-states/biden-foreign-policy-world-rhodes *
In an immense departure from US policy to date, he advocates that the US “abandons the mindset of American primacy” and “pivots away from the political considerations, maximalism, and Western-centric view that have caused the Biden administration to make some of the same mistakes as its predecessors”.
He writes, and I find this a very powerful sentence, that “meeting the moment requires building a bridge to the future—not the past.” As in not seek to regain a lost hegemony, but adapt to the “world as it is” which he calls “the world of post-American primacy”.
To be sure, the piece still has strong relents of the liberal instincts to remake the world in America’s image – a leopard cannot change its spots – but at least he acknowledges the reality that the world has changed and that the US should view itself as a power coexisting with others, not THE power that needs to dominate the rest of the world. Which is a first step…
Also, significantly, he points out the insanity of “framing the battle between democracy and autocracy as a confrontation with a handful of geopolitical adversaries” when the West’s own democracies are in such sorry states today that they can hardly be called “democracies” anymore… He writes that instead of trying to constantly interfere in changing other countries’ systems, “ultimately, the most important thing that America can do in the world is detoxify its own democracy”.
Which I completely agree with: impossible to change other countries via coercion which is almost always counterproductive, but if you have your shit together yourself, you may be able to sometimes serve as an inspiration. America is a VERY long way from this today – in so many dimensions it’s closer to a counterexample of what not to do – and that’s obviously what it should focus its efforts on, because that’s ultimately what its job is.
* A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is
12:44 AM · Jun 19, 2024
> New Insights into Acute and Long Covid Eric Topol (Robin K)
>> When an adenovirus vaccine was given before infection, the memory deficits and loss of hippocampal neurogenesis, and interleukin-1β production were limited.
Interesting choice. Hard to find around here
Sanofi had one here in France and took it off the market due to lack of demand. We live in times where people choose their vaccines according to marketing. Shoot me now.
Trip report – the absolute worst thing in the US is the nearly constant background noise about frustration with some aspect of health care. And the pharmaceutical commercials omg how can that even be legal.
Shot: Two weeks there is the max I can take now.
Chaser: How is it possible for food and drinks in Wisconsin to be more expensive than Paris? $17 grilled cheese in the mall.
“And the pharmaceutical commercials omg how can that even be legal.”
We recently saw one that has a disclaimer about the potential for getting perineum rot and death, but the good news is that one should not take it if you have parasites.
I agree, their advertising is less than appealing.
The pharma drug ads are seemingly without end, yes, a cure for this, that and also the other. I do appreciate how each large pharmaceutical manufacturer has a “plan” to help those in need of a supplemental or special affordability for the medication on offer.
The side effects, whether these are just likely or may be possible, always seem a bit worse as general outcomes. This may cure your affliction when taken as directed, but it may wrench your digestive system or cause irreparable harm to your key organ functions. Sign me up.
Added, cost of a grilled cheese. We have plenty of economist writers who can provide reasons why you, dear consumer, may be deluded by that actual price and the dining experience at that particular mall location.
So “Ask your drugs if doctors are right for you”
Reading various missives about Gaza and environs makes me wonder:
Which countries did not sign the Geneva Convention?
Of those that did, how could anyone tell?
Of those that didn’t, what recourse is there besides a strongly-worded letter?
Well, here’s your list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Geneva_Conventions
Effectively everybody has signed the 1949 Conventions, but a number of states have declined to sign the Additional Protocols. AP1 (1977) covers wars of declonialisation and resistance to occupation, and Israel (and a number of other countries with internal security problems) has so far not signed it. (The US has signed but not ratified it.)
The GCs are essentially about the behaviour of individuals, not states, although states are supposed to make sure that the principles are taught and respected, and punish violations. There’s no-one to write a letter, strongly worded or not.
maybe the first thing on my list, were i made king of the world for a day.
make all that shit binding…starting with the un charter, and especially the human rights part.
war criminals should be fed to pigs.
full stop.
‘Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
Crazy, the US is passing a bill named “Countering CCP Drones Act” that would ban DJI drones in the US.
https://tomshardware.com/tech-industry/dji-drone-ban-passes-in-us-house-countering-ccp-drones-act-would-ban-all-dji-sales-in-us-if-passed-in-senate
I checked, DJI has 90% market share of the U.S. hobby market, 70% market share of the industrial market and over 80% market share of the first responder market. And their main competitor is Autel Robotics which… is also a Chinese company 😅’
This seems to be part of a campaign to ban anything from competitor nations to be allowed in the US, no matter what chaos is caused. No rhyme or rhythm or advanced planning – just ban it all. I just read today that Biden has given Americans 100 days to uninstall Kaspersky security and find a new anti-virus as it is being banned for sale in the US. So does that mean that Americans will have to rely on Microsoft for their internet security now?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/21/us-kaspersky-antivirus-software-ban-russia-ties
I bought my partner a DJI drone for Xmas a few years ago. Are Biden and Congress going to brick it?
It’s puzzling how China got to be our “adversary” since their main crime seems to have been selling us quality goods at a low price. And the Republicans–the business party–are fully onboard with this. Don’t Walmart and Amazon have any lobbyists?
It’s like the entire swamp is senile and not just Biden.
But at least we’ll have Europe on our side along with Japan and a few others. And we have to stay buds with Australiia since it supplies Hollywood with all those good looking actors and actresses (something in the water?).
It’s puzzling how China got to be our “adversary” since their main crime seems to have been selling us quality goods at a low price…
[ This is indeed an important question, an answer to which could help to explain what seems to be a repeatedly dysfunctional foreign policy. ]
The answer is Thucydides Trap.
In addition, maybe even more consequential to the Ruling Class, China was way cool (fabulous investment destination) until they:
a. Didn’t pay license fees for IP * sourced from the U.S. and
b. Didn’t lumber their citizens down with a lot of U.S.-sourced oligarchic debt and
c. Required most mfg’g partnerships (U.S. – China) to have a big Chinese component with eyes-on access to IP, which was almost immediately transferred (by staff leaving to start their own companies) to mostly-Chinese companies, and
d. China didn’t allow Western media- and communications-companies to dominate their culture
The main idea is that China didn’t allow their economy to become another Western rent-seeker’s paradise. That was the crime.
If the Western Oligarchs could have gotten control of the Chinese society the way they did the U.S. and E.U. societies, I believe they’d have been fine with Chinese economic and even political and military ascendancy.
* IP = intellectual property. How to do important mfg’g stuff that takes decades to learn to do
I believe it was once said that every copy of Microsoft Windows being used in China was pirated. But hey, from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs. Plus for Windows zero may have been the right price.
However I thought they had pushed back a bit on the rampant movie piracy. And there was a time when H’wood sought Chinese financial support and every other film would have a Chinese company co-investment credit. Zhang Yimou even made a film starring Matt Damon.
I don’t see those opening credits any more and Damon is back to working with his cheesy childhood friend Affleck.
Zhang Yimou however is still one of the greats even if The Great Wall was a bit of a turkey.
“I believe it was once said that every copy of Microsoft Windows being used in China was pirated…”
Please document this when possible. Thank you.
I looked this up because I was curious, and Steve Ballmer apparently said 9 out of 10 copies were pirated, in 2011:
https://www.neowin.net/news/ballmer-9-out-of-10-copies-of-windows-in-china-is-pirated/
The original link at NetworkWorld is 404 now.
If US could colonize China, as planned, there would be no Chinese economic/political/military ascendancy. Same with Russia.
When Russia was down, H’wood used Serbs as the bad guys instead of Russians.
“China was way cool (fabulous investment destination) until they:
a. Didn’t pay license fees for IP * sourced from the U.S.
* IP = intellectual property. How to do important mfg’g stuff that takes decades to learn to do”
Please document this when possible. Reference is necessary. Thank you so much.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/books/review/everything-under-the-heavens-howard-french-destined-for-war-graham-allison.html
June 16, 2017
America’s Collision Course With China
By JUDITH SHAPIRO
EVERYTHING UNDER THE HEAVENS
How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power
By Howard W. French
DESTINED FOR WAR
Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
By Graham Allison
The Chinese superpower has arrived. Could America’s failure to grasp this reality pull the United States and China into war? Here are two books that warn of that serious possibility. Howard W. French’s “Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power” does so through a deep historical and cultural study of the meaning of China’s rise from the point of view of the Chinese themselves. Graham Allison’s “Destined for War: Can American and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” makes his arguments through historical case studies that illuminate the pressure toward military confrontation when a rising power challenges a dominant one. Both books urge us to be ready for a radically different world order, one in which China presides over Asia, even as Chinese politicians tell a public story about “peaceful rise.” The books argue persuasively that adjusting to this global power shift will require great skill on both sides if conflagration is to be avoided…
yeah…anna torv…(amfortas swoons)
China’s main crime was not remaining a peasant state…and instead, growing a healthy middle class(damn that Deng!)
thats the whole issue, in a nutshell(didja know that china has a sort of fetish for native american pecans?…they dont like burketts or papershells and whatnot..they like the ordinary riverbottom kind that grows wild…made major upset with the pecan growers i know)
As well they should. I love to leave some out for the squirrels and watch them lose their furry little minds over them.
I don’t doubt this is true, but with drones, I think there is more to it as well.
I looked into buying a drone a few years ago. Funny, I settled on a DJI drone as it seemed to give me what I was looking for with the best bang for my buck. I thought it would be fun, but an opportunity to make some money as well. To make money, you need a commercial license, so you had to take a test and all that. No problem.
Then the rules started changing and now this. I think, and I can’t prove this, there are two other reasons to crack down on drones of this type 1) to keep the little guy from making the money and 2) the powers that be don’t want the pubic to have the means to see more than the authorities can with their own drones.
We don’t want those pesky serfs seeing more than we want them to see. Maybe I’m too cynical, but I’m old, so there’s that.
I use a great system that I am told is produced in Romania – Avast. Have been nothing but pleased with it.
I use Avast too, but in the news recently:
“Does It Get Better Than This For Russia?”
Not much more. It’s not just North Korea and Vietnam but Russia is renewing ties with other countries that were allies during the First Cold War such as Cuba. They already have solid ties with Iran and are helping them integrate themselves into BRICS so could it be that one day we will see Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam also in BRICS? Stranger things have happened. I think that Putin said that a requirement of joining BRICS is that you are not partaking in unilateral sanctions on other countries so that may mean that one day we will see North Korea in BRICS but South Korea disallowed. Changes are really stepping up right now but when the Ukrainian war ends, I would expect the pace to pick up rapidly as Russia would be able to start concentrating on other regions.
When the Russian fleet was leaving Cuba and did some exercise drills off the east coast of FL I wondered why they didn’t do a loop tour of the Gulf of Mexico with a stop off CENTCOM to show there stuff? That might have “woken” up the MIC.
there was a tropical storm in the western gulf of mexico at the time…rough seas all the way to the florida keys.
FWIW, as of earlier this month, China now has flights from Beijing to Cuba and offers discounts for nationals who want to vacation there. Hope this will be a nice boost for the Cuban economy.
I hope I live to see Cuba in BRICS.
Maybe Texas will join BRICS?
The catastrophe in Sudan is colossal, and heart wrenching, but barely reported. The world and I cannot even come to grips with the one in Gaza, where aid is still only a trickle yet the bombs are ever in abundance.
A literary Links today what with Waugh/Greene and Harper’s on myth. Re the latter you knew this was coming
So, from Freud to T.S. Eliot to updated Buck Rogers–profound or profoundly fashonable? I go with the latter.
havent had time to read that, but the first starwars, when i was like 8 or 10, and the resulting lifelong ramble through Campbells magnum opus(Masks of God, in 4 volumes…provided my whole life’s reading list,lol)…has been a giant influence on who i am.
i generally dislike pretty much everybody i know about(kingsnorth is the exception) who is promoting things like chivalry and fortitude and such…but i reckon that is sorely needed, these days.
honor doesnt have to mean gunfights because somebody dissed you,lol
some moral compass…arete…etc
From the Due Dissidence guys. utube, ~6+ minutes. Kabuki or schadenfreude?
White House CANCELS Israel Meeting After Netanyahu SLAMS Biden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cCBiNjtEBU
Wait! Is he allowed to do that? Seriously, Biden must know that he is losing hundreds of thousands of votes on a weekly basis and risking his Presidency because of his total support for Israel and here is Netanyahu just trashing him for all his troubles. I can just imagine old Joe in one of his rages right now when he cancelled that meeting. Maybe Biden’s AIPAC handler was not available to intervene.
Chutzpah. / ;)
adding: this is latest from Due Dissidence. It’s about a Haaretz article that is pretty surprising. utube, ~11+ minutes.
ADL Deemed UNRELIABLE SOURCE by Wikipedia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGpGZMaM5ZM
Someone (Johnson) forgot to cancel Bibi too. Instead of boycotting the House speech, disagreers should attend and constantly interrupt him so he can’t propagandize.
Maybe he will try to get back into Biden’s good graces by emulating the president’s articulations aloud of the metadata on the teleprompter:”Pause – Clap.”
So we’ve set the stage and now moved to act two of the drama – the conflict! I can hardly wait for the resolution in act 3 and then the denouement, perhaps Bibi and Biden sporting Star of David swim trunks, dipping their toes in the sea on a Gazan beach together in front of a new Israeli resort. Sun sets. Roll credits. “This ethnic cleansing brought to you by the IDF and its USian stooges in the military industrial complex. Clap hard or you’re next!”
‘Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
Americans don’t realize just how disastrous this would be if that’s indeed the case. And Manning, a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, is very well connected in DC so I think we should probably believe him.
A war is essentially won on 3 things:
1) Industrial capacity
2) Morale
3) International support’
Come to think of it, you could see how this would apply to Israel thinking about attacking Hezbollah. If it happened, their industrial capacity would quickly go away, their moral would collapse because of the high casualties and that country is already becoming an international pariah. So I expect the hardliners to do it anyway. Bombing Palestinians in zones that you have deliberately called “safe zones” gets boring after a while so the IDF needs a new challenge and Hezbollah is up for it.
“Come to think of it, you could see how this would apply to Israel…”
A perfect and critically important analogy.
There’s another factor operative, which has recently stormed into the dialog I’m seeing at various non-MSM outlets: Self-delusion.
Chosen people, The Rules Based Order, Ancient Dogma … all conspire to interfere with building and maintaining an accurate situational awareness.
Consider:
Russia’s a gas station with nukes.
Israel is invincible.
U.S. is the Shining City on the Hill.
China desperately needs access to the U.S. consumer market.
The U.S. military is overwhelmingly superior on all dimensions to any other power.
The world can’t function without the Dollar.
When you’re lumbered down with those sorts of myths, making accurate decisions is pretty tough.
Self-delusion has played a major role in getting the U.S. into this mess.
that delusional mythos is apparent right down to the bottom of the social scale…which says a thing or two about the power of narrative.
Talking about international support, Taliban made an announcement that they can provide Hezbollah with thousands of fighters, in case Israel invades.
It may be a little more subtle than we think. Maybe it’s all a Deep State plot dreamed up by the SIS and the CIA to get rid of the uber-expensive and politically insane/damaging problems of the genocidal settler-colony called Israel along with the remnants of the Ukrainian coup once and for all so that the idiots governing on behalf of the Western oligarchs are either replaced or forced to recognise that West need to change the path it is on as identified by Obama’s old mate, Ben Rhodes.
I am wondering how the tourism industry in Israel is doing. I’ll bet it’s a large part of their economy. If so, how is a tourist going to find a hotel if 90,000 displaced (poor, scared) Israeli’s are taking up all of the rooms?
I read this book review (but not the book) earlier this week. I found the analysis very interesting, especially the blame on “mobile capital.” But one thing that I think is lacking is that the belief in mobile capital is part of a shift of mentality among the owners of capital and managers that do have any sense of support for their local, state, or national community. There are a number of interesting ideas in the article, and I might read the book if I can find an affordable version.
https://commonwealthbeacon.org/book-review/questioning-competitiveness/
Ask your library for the book, which is excellent:
January, 2024
Manufacturing Catastrophe: Massachusetts and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1813 to the Present
By Shaun S. Nichols
The question being why New England did not regain manufacturing enterprise after textile manufacturers and the like began to move south.
“Ruling Class Finally Awakens to the Reality of America’s Decline”
Some may have but a critical number still think that the America of today is the same one of the 90s. Of this I can offer evidence. For the past two years or more the US has been using the Ukraine to fight Russia and with the aid of the other forty odd countries of the Collective West as well. In spite of this combined effort and running the armouries empty, Russia has prevailed and this war is slowly starting to wind down now. A serious elite would do an autopsy and find out how they got things so wrong and what they need to do and what to change about how they run the country. Instead, they are now gearing up to fight the 800 pound gorilla of China when they do not have the wherewithal to do any such thing. So no, they ruling class have not woken up to themselves at all.
What is important to understand is that the American economic sanctions strategy is driving countries to BRICS. BRICS which has already significantly expanded this year is about to expand considerably more, with Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, just the countries about China asking for BRICS partnership.
As for economic growth since 1985, the countries that have grown fastest in per capita GDP are, of course, China and, likely surprisingly, Vietnam. Both countries are socialist with domestic characteristics.
The Ike has moved into the eastern Mediterranean. Just in time for Israel going to full war with Hezbollah around the 27th which will conveniently require postponing of the presidential debate?
I like Ike, but feel it will be Repulse’d.
How would we deal with loss, should it come to pass?
I wonder too. I am sure some surprise missiles have been prepared for just this confrontation. I can’t imagine the freakout, if it was actually sunk. Hopefully, it is just damaged, and is forced to retreat. Would that humbling force a rethink about the situation?
Obviously, the era of the carrier is over. The Red Sea debacle makes that clear. Does not seem to have sunk in yet.
The admiral probably has a clue, and might vote to be out of Hezbollah range.
Since the Hezbollah has indicated that it can hit airbases on Cyprus, the Ike might have to ‘repair’ to the seas adjacent to Sicily. So, the airbases on Cyprus and Sicily would be just as useful as the carrier. Probably more useful. They cannot be sunk.
Sicily is too close to Libya which is a real wild card.
If true that it will be stationed in the Eastern Med, won’t Ike be parked way out beyond missile range and the carrier pilots doing one-way missions then landing in Israel-Jordon to refuel and re-arm with our already stockpiled munitions before making another run into Lebanon then heading back to Ike?
Seems like that would be the smart thing to do if possible. Then it is only a question about what the response would be to the downing of planes. I don’t know how hard that is, therefore how likely.
I wonder how many American soldiers are aware they are aiding a genocide and care. There are rumors of grumblings.
That’s assuming that the Israeli and Jordanian airbases are still operational. The Iranian missile ‘demonstration’ a few weeks ago was against an air base in the south of Israel.
US air assets landing in Egypt? If so, will they be allowed to take off again, or impounded as violators of “neutral” airspace?
Two kinds of ships – submarines and targets. If the Houthis get subs, boy oh boy!
Iran has supercavitating torpedoes. “Hoot” is their name, which is Farsi for “Whale”.
If the Houthis use them, Americans may have to give a hoot for the damage they are causing.
If a carrier were to be sunk, I would hope it would be the Reagan, Bush, or Truman.
I winder if the directive to ‘send all new Patriots to Ukraine‘ was Biden’s cowardly message to Israel about that idiotic plan?
Could easily be misinformation though, and Israel is still getting its share of missiles… not that it will help them much.
Israel considers Patriot missile system to have a tendency for friendly fire (though rumour is Israel doesn’t trust US back doors) and as such removing them..
I read that it’s headed back to Norfolk, apparently … going to be relieved by another carrier currently in San Diego.
(Taken from Telegram, so maybe more of a rumor than fact.)
There is no threat out there that’s scarier
Than sinking our Yankee carrier
The Middle East bristles
With Mach 7 missiles
If one sails in to fight they will bury her
will they call the resulting reef/fish habitat “ike”?
hopefully theyll remove as best they can all the hazardous crap thats on board.
like throwing a toxic xmas tree into a pond.
Good news from the Supremes about keeping abusers as “Prohibited Persons” when it comes to Guns, although I do wonder about how evenly it will be enforced…Ross Mirkirimi (Spelling?) comes to mind.
It also opens up a big can of worms as to the future legal definition of “abuser.” (See anti-semite for reference to ‘legal definition.’)
From AI is exhausting the power grid. Tech firms are seeking a miracle solution.
You gotta be high as a kite to believe that. I want what they’re smoking. This is the stupidest timeline.
In the… desert. Because that’s a genius idea! You still need to cool all that equipment, and data centers are massive water consumers. So, build a data center. In a desert. In a rapidly warming climate.
Because AI. Or something.
This has gotta be more damaging than the tulip bubble.
The most valued tulips in the Dutch bubble were pretty much all named some variation of an Admiral or General, and in their defense looked awful pretty.
There is no there-there, with AI.
It really would make more sense if they were snorting a stack of crystal meth, cocaine, and Drano.
At least we’d have a medical explanation for these delusions of grandeur from our techlords.
“This is your brain.” Picture of pink mass of squamous ridges of flesh.
“This is your brain on Silicon.” Picture of tech-bros in space suits. (Photograph the usual suspects.)
Jessica Wildfire at OK Doomer comes around to the lab leak theory.
https://www.okdoomer.io/covid-probably-started-in-a-lab-yes-that-matters/?ref=ok-doomer-newsletter
“Many of us pride ourselves on the ability to admit we were wrong. We believe we’re capable of changing our opinions based on available evidence. Well, this would be a good time to model that. It’s not a good look to say you trust science, then dig your heels in and continue to insist something sounds like a conspiracy theory when new evidence surfaces.”
Insistent rejection of the lab leak hypothesis and naive forecasts about resource scarcity (e.g there isn’t enough lithium for electric cars) are the two dogmas no empirical evidence can overcome in this neighbourhood.
Raw milk dairy in Fresno County sees spike in sales, despite warnings from U.S. agencies (Fresno Bee)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If I lived in Fresno, I’d probably drink raw milk in the midst of H5N1, if only to end the suffering.
Drinking raw milk that’s laced with bird flu
Is a thing that nobody should do
But them folks out in Fresno
They stands up and says no
‘It’s a cleaner death than seppuku’
Isn’t the term for death by drinking toxic liquids “sippuku?”
well, “sipapu” is Hopi for naval of the world, from whence the current batch of sentients emerged from the lower levels.
its currently located right over there in my firepit, and is where i cooked dinner.
mirrored by the cowboypool, of course…in both reality and mythopoesis.
I read this article before it was linked here and it was interesting. Quanta (not “Quantam”) always has fascinating, well-written pieces.
And, related (well, somewhat), this video from Dr Ben Miles: “We FINALLY Proved Why Ice Is Slippery” [13:43]. (Unless you’re one of the researchers who found out the answer, it’s probably not what you’re thinking.)
Could the saber rattling against China be a cover for us already having sold our souls to CCP?
yes.
Oh goodness me. Don’t tell me the cause is not surface tension issues, but a deep seated structural neurosis.
Re Topol studies:” When an adenovirus vaccine was given before infection,”
Why not an mRNA vaccine?
For those who might be considering a bug out place I’d like to tell you a little bit about Montevideo, Uruguay.
The architecture and food tend towards European. The population is mostly composed of immigrants from Italy, Spain, and France (85% European descent). There is affordable ballet, symphony, opera, live music, etc etc etc
The language is Spanish, and English is not widely spoken. However, there are social groups that speak English, such as expats, couch-surfers, language exchange groups.
You can shop in your own neighborhood, but you can’t depend on Amazon.
You will meet your neighbors.
Convenient public transportation and walkable.
As a foreigner you can easily:
*own property,
*get temporary or permanent residency
*get citizenship after 5 years
The main words to describe Uruguay are: STABILITY: economic, political, cultural. TRANQUILO: many locals drink tea while watching the sunset on a regular basis. I can’t over emphasize the level of peace available in this country.
ISOLATED but FUNCTIONAL: In South America, world events feel like they happen in world seperate. With 3.5 million people we are small enough to have a functional democracy. Agricultural exporter. Really far south. Covid-smarter than most places.
COSTS. Brand-new small two-bedroom apartment $140,000. Monthly living expenses excluding rent $2-4,000. Monthly rent for a conveniently located small older two-bedroom apartment $600 – 800.
The likelihood of finding a local job is small. You should have a pension or an internationally paying job. Local jobs such as teacher or whatever only pay less than what seems to be the cost of living. And yet somehow people here seem to live well.
Thank you! I have a friend nearby.
I didn’t know that mumps still existed (but google does say 621 cases in the U.S. in 2020). This doctor says it is the first case he’s seen in 29 years of medicine. Immune deficiency as a result of covid infection (and maybe the vax; who knows) is as good as time travel!!!!
From twitter/X:
John Hess MD
@DrJohnHhess
·
Jun 21
UPDATE. Mumps IGM significantly POSITIVE (IGG too). Thus, reinfection & first case I’ve ever seen in 29 years of medicine. Unclear if FluA was incidental although did have light cough and myalgias for 5 days prior to gland swelling. Health Department now involved.
John Hess MD
@DrJohnHhess
·
Jun 14
Med Twitter question. Elderly patient with symmetrical sialadenitis. Reported same symptoms as when they had Mumps as a kid. Tested positive for flu A, mumps testing pending. Have others seen this with flu and are others seeing Flu A? My 2nd Flu A patient in past 10 days. Weird.
Not the vaccine, but got the actual disease as a child? (IIRC, getting the disease gives better immunity than a shot). That is disturbing.
There are a fair number of “childhood” diseases that we generally do not have in the United States anymore because of the vaccines for them.
But I thought vaccines only work if the person has a functioning immune system.
Plus note the doctor’s Influenza A cases, out of season.
Walked with the park archaeologist last weekend, and she’s in superb shape, and a few days later she’s sick as a dog with a 105 degree fever and is admitted to the hospital and they take x-rays and see masses in her lungs, which turns out to be pneumonia. She took a couple Covid tests-both negative.
Yikes. That is scary. 105 degrees, and pneumonia in June in a healthy person. Yikes.
Short video clip of the head of the Ukrainian power grid saying all is fine until he loses connection to to loss of power-
https://www.bitchute.com/video/0ntfLSGTbdqL/ (19 secs)
I feel the US team will medal in the synchronized swimming in debt event in the Paris Olympics, we’re a virtual lock.
Unless somebody pulls the plug on that debt pool, that is.
I wonder if Ben Rhodes’ piece in Foreign Affairs reflects the current thinking of his former boss, Obama. Given Obama’s influence within the Dem Party and with Dem voters it would be significant if he broke with the foreign policy orthodoxy publicly.
It’s good to see someone from the Dem camp (Rhodes) saying some of these things. It would be even better to see Dem elected officials or candidates saying them.
As much as I loathe Obama, I think it’s fair to say he provided a few indications – Iran nuclear deal, refusing to arm the Nazis he’d installed in Ukraine with missiles – that he might have had an inkling of the limits of US power that Uncle Joe & Co. are oblivious to.
If Obama did have some inkling, then it is all the more loathsome that he nevertheless installed HRC as Secretary of State and Biden as the 2020 Democratic nominee, purely for political gain. He owns a huge chunk of this mess.
I hope the dead children of Libya, Ukraine, and Gaza haunt his dreams every night.
Wasn’t installing HRC as something important in his Administration the price Obama had to pay for getting some ( hopefully just enough) support from some Clintonites to win his election with?
Obama and Clyburn conspired to put Biden in for 2020 in order to keep Sanders out for 2020.
They were prepared to see Trump win in order to see that Sanders was in no position even run.
Quite right. And as soon as Obama was elected, he announced his cabinet of bankers’ minions and renounced his campaign promises of reproductive rights legislation, an option for single payer healthcare, expanded SSA funded by raising the FICA cap, etc, etc. All of those things were “too divisive” and we needed to “look forward, not back”. So the Too Big To Fail banks got bailed out and Occupy got squelched, and it turned out that he was quite talented at compiling the weekly kill list.
He also promised not to interfere in the 2020 nomination process “unless it looks like Bernie’s running away with it” but when Super Tuesday loomed and no one in the establishment clown car could get any traction, the Wizard waved his magic wand and we got Biden.
But he has his Peace Prize and his mansion in DC and his mansion on the Vinyard and his mansion in Hawaii and his library by the lake, so no doubt he thinks “it was worth it”, as Madeleine Albright famously said.
One could argue that Shrub was too dim to realize the consequences of his policies, but Obama does not have that excuse. He is just evil.
/rant off
. . Let Tim Cook . . I read the article but have too little understand of digital technology to be able to understand in granular detail all the elements of the explanation of why Apple’s deal with OpenAI is so bad for OpenAI, in terms of losing money as well as respect for OpenAI.
But I found myself wondering . . . if this is as true as the article very convincingly indicates, then what if a few hundred million Apple Device Users around the world decided to act like a few hundred million individual Global Guerillas in the spirit of John Robb? What if they decided how to use the relevant new Apple Features to ask the OpenAI just enough questions to cost it the maximum loss of money and energy per individual Apple Device-wielding Global Guerilla? Would a few hundred million highly motivated Apple Device owners be able to cost OpenAI so much money as to drive it bankrupt and then drive it extinct? If they got motivated enough to do that?
The losing money part is pretty straightforward. OpenAI models like ChatGPT are hosted in servers inside a number of Microsoft data centers. The bigger the userbase, the more servers OpenAI will have to “rent” from Microsoft which would not be a problem if there are paying customers helping to defray the costs of running those machines.
Perhaps a more concrete example would help. Say Open AI is currently renting 20,000 server machines from Microsoft for a total cost of 40 million USD (I don’t actually know what the actual numbers are), and let’s also say the Apple deal will require OpenAI to double the number of servers to 40,000. We now have a situation where OpenAI’s operating costs have gone up by an additional 40 million USD with no increase in revenue whatsoever.
In actuality, I am not sure if the situation is as dire as depicted in the article because Microsoft’s “investment” in OpenAI has come mostly in the form of Azure (data center) credits as in Microsoft giving out servers for free to OpenAI, albeit for a limited time period. If Sam Altman can convince Microsoft that the traffic coming from Apple devices have some monetary value, then the later might just dole out additional credits to OpenAI.
Think I’ve seen less than 10 people masked up @ Denver Airport, and its quite busy with passengers going to & fro.