A New Study Uses Camera Footage To Track the Frequency of Bystander Intervention CityLab
A Feud Between Japan and South Korea Is Threatening Global Supplies of Memory Chips CNN
Carbon Nanotube Device Channels Heat Into Light PhysOrg
A Massive Hunk Of Ice Will Reshape The World’s Coastlines Sooner Than We Thought Forbes (David L)
Streaming Online Pornography Produces as Much CO2 as Belgium New Scientist
Explainer: What is post-quantum cryptography? PhysOrg
B vitamin content of rice declines with rising CO2 Harvard Magazine (furzy)
Billions of Air Pollution Particles Found in Hearts of City Dwellers Guardian
The trouble with fruit juice Mayo Clinic (Chuck L)
Blossom’s Fake Video Exposed by food scientist | How To Cook That Ann Reardon YouTube. UserFriendly:
Even if people haven’t seen the original video this is debunking it’s still worth the watch. Specifically it elucidates the problem with trying to define what is ‘natural’ rather well. But then towards the end it gets into a criticism of YouTube’s algorithm.
Savage tick-clone armies are sucking cows to death; experts fear for humans ars technica (Chuck L)
China?
Laid-Off Expat Bankers Struggle to Find Jobs in Hong Kong Bloomberg. UserFriendly: “Let me get my violin.”
Negative-Yielding Junk Bonds Have Arrived in Europe Wolf Street
‘Black vest’ protesters storm Panthéon in Paris BBC (furzy)
Glenn Greenwald becomes focus of Brazil press freedom debate Associated Press (Chuck L)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Revealed: This Is Palantir’s Top-Secret User Manual For Cops Vice
Top Assange Defense Account Deleted By Twitter Caitlin Johnstone
S Mayors Resolve Not To Pay Hackers Over Ransomware Attacks CNET
Syraqistan
House Votes to Prevent Trump From Entering Unauthorized War With Iran, Setting Up Showdown With Senate Washington Post
S-400 missile system: What is it and why does Turkey want it? DW
US greenlights missiles for al-Qaeda-linked, Turkish-backed Salafi-jihadists occupying Syria’s Idlib Grayzone (Chuck L)
Imperial Collapse Watch
Hypersonic Missiles’ Aren’t Starting an Arms Race—Washington Is FAIR. UserFriendly: “Gets a few things wrong (e.g. aircraft carriers are already obsolete) but still useful.”
Trump Transition
Mueller to give extended testimony after appearance postponed The Hill
Concord Management and the End of Russiagate? Consortiumnews (furzy)
Hamptons Problems: The MAGA Invasion Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg Vanity Fair
Border Patrol Chief Was Member of Secret Facebook Group Intercept (furzy)
Trump Gives Up on Census, Launches New Attack on Democracy Rolling Stone (furzy) Um, this looks to me to be Trump trying to save face. Plus the Census recommended this approach.
New footage shows severe overcrowding at Texas detainment facility NBC (furzy)
Democrats in Disarray
The Turn of the Pelosi Screw Sardonicky (UserFriendly
Pelosi, Please Stop Coddling Trump Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine (resilc)
U.S. House passes $733 billion defense policy bill after president threatens veto Reuters. Resilc: “Shit lite DNC rolls.”
2020
For NYT, Inconvenient Facts Equal ‘Russian-Style Disinformation’ FAIR (UserFriendly, furzy)
Joe Biden’s Senate Records Are Being Kept Secret: Why? Washington Post
The real issue here is jealousy. Bernie picked on Jamie Dimon before Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman can’t handle being number two. https://t.co/0DEnu5gYe8
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) July 12, 2019
L’affaire Epstein
US Labour Secretary Alex Acosta resigns over Epstein case BBC
SIX DEGREES FROM JEFFREY EPSTEIN: WASHINGTON GRAPPLES WITH A WEB OF EMBARRASSING ASSOCIATIONS Jonathan Turley (Chuck L)
Jeffrey Epstein paid $350K to ‘influence’ possible co-conspirators: prosecutors NBC
Our Famously Free Press
Why Does WaPo See Black as an ‘Identity’—but Not Multi-Millionaire? FAIR (UserFriendly)
What is ergodicity? Lars P. Syll (UserFriendly). A topic in ECONNED, see Chapter 2.
FTC approves $5bn settlement with Facebook Financial Times and Facebook $5 Billion Privacy Settlement Approved Bloomberg
Facebook Denies Being a Social Network in Lawsuit Response PC Mag
Bird, One of the World’s Largest Scooter Startups, Lost $100 Million in Three Months Business Insider
Charts Suggest the Dow Index Is Being Painted to Get “New Highs” in the Market Pam Martens and Russ Martens (UserFriendly). Um, they think this is news?
AT&T Breaks Another Merger Promise In Making ‘Friends’ Exclusive Tech Dirt (Chuck L)
Class Warfare
Some of Amazon’s highly-paid tech workers say warehouse worker conditions are ‘a source of shame’ Business Insider (David L). Not enough shame to lead them to earn a more honest living.
Another reason your wages are low: it’s cheaper to hire convicts MarketWatch
Booted From Queens, Amazon Is Now Driving Up Rents In Virginia Instead Gothamist (furzy)
Dem leaders float new tweak to soften minimum wage bill Politico. Resilc: “Fighting for you, da DNC.”
Antidote du jour. Lawrence R: “The back porch of Mount Washington Hotel”:
And a bonus. Overview from the Guardian:
Alexis has a life-threatening disease. She spends her time in the wooded expanse of northern Scotland, where she takes care of dozens of animals who are also sick, wounded or dying. Some have terminal cancer, some would otherwise be killed because of their disabilities, some were saved from slaughterhouses. Alexis provides palliative care for them.
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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“Savage tick-clone armies are sucking cows to death; experts fear for humans”
I’m just waking up but reading this I feel like I’m having a nightmare.
“The animal was besieged by hundreds of ticks, which scrambled up the legs of health investigators when they walked in to survey the situation.”
I’m never going outside again.
Well, the good news is we now know it won’t be the machines that wipe out humanity.
Well that’s cold comfort… machines might be more efficient! I can hardly think of a worse way to go than death by ticks.
I dunno. Do they itch? Death by loss of blood should be pretty easy. With the loss of oxygen to the brain you’d have anoxia, which is pretty much like falling asleep. Classic Roman Empire way of committing suicide, get in a hot bath and open a couple of veins. Be careful not to cut the tendons, though, in case you fail in your attempt.
As a result of warming winters, ticks have been implicated in the declining moose population in Minnesota for a few years now.
There are no ticks in the Sierra Nevada above a certain altitude (around 5-6k) thankfully, but a fair amount in the foothills. I get one stuck on me every couple of years and then go on antibiotics for a spell, just to be sure.
This technique of getting them off of you is brilliant, all you need is a Q-tip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMwU6CzUeZ0
might want to read the comments on that technique. Many claim this technique causes the tick to regurgitate it’s stomach contents into the host.
Don’t know about that, and y/t comments tend to be of just a bit more value than zerohedge comments, maybe more compelling evidence from a doctor would be of help.
Here’s my favorite tick story, about 8 of us were on a hike somewhere on the coast for about 10 miles and had dinner afterwards in a Mexican restaurant in Santa Monica, and we ordered beers and they showed up with lime wedges, and shortly thereafter, a tick fell off my t-shirt and onto the table, and a friend seated next to me picked up a lime wedge and squished it, and proclaimed “that’s one tick that died of lime disease”.
A tick remover spoon is probably still the best method.
https://www.amazon.com/TickCheck-Tick-Remover-Spoon-Lightweight/dp/B07K4F66LH?psc=1&SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-ffnt-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B07K4F66LH
I like that. I’ve unscrewed many a tick after killing it with a red hot pin prick (back at the house, not while out on walks of course) but it’s not always successful. The Q-tip method looks quite effective (wonder if a pencil would work).
Is there any sort of dip that will make ticks drop off and then poison them? I have trouble thinking the afflicted animals are unaware of the ticks. Maybe dips for animals to use voluntarily once they became aware of the dips and knew how to use them. I suspect many animals are much more clever than we credit them. I’ve seen many deer in the area where I live at least appear to look both ways before stepping into the highway — though of course young bucks remain as crazy as ever during the rutting season.
I was impressed by the commenter a month or so ago who described dipping cotton balls into a plant derived tick poison that didn’t affect mammals and tossing the cotton balls into the fields around their house. Mice loved the cotton balls for lining their nests. This greatly reduced the local tick populations.
Yeah, for the poor afflicted critters some kind of whole-body (or maybe mainly the legs) anti-tick spray would be handy. As far as personal tick-removal goes, here is what the CDC advises.
The link you provide has good advice but when you are walking, you don’t usually carry a pair of tweezers nor a bottle of alcohol. Also, the sooner you get them off yourself, the better and if you do so before they have bitten you (dug their heads into your skin), they are relatively easy to remove with your fingers alone. It’s almost impossible to crush them with your fingers – they are remarkably “tough”- so on a walk, unless you are carrying a “tick jar,” just dropping them back on the road is a reasonable thing to do, especially if you are removing a lot of them.
When traveling by foot or close proximity to the ground or bushes in areas known to have ticks, you REALLY REALLY should check yourself thoroughly each night if not sooner (private parts as well).
As to embedded ticks, I don’t agree with the link regarding heat. I have heated up a pin so one end is red hot and then used it on the embedded tick to kill it. Once dead, I find removing it easier though it still has to be done gently (no jerks) so as not to leave the head burried – if possible. If not, just keep an eye on it for inflammation – particularly if you think it’s been there for 24 hrs or more (often but not always a round red circle after 48 hours or more – I forget how long it takes before you can deem yourself “safe” – but I believe it’s rather a long time). Not all tick bites are infectious.
Thanks for the link! It was very helpful.
The old tick baths I remember, were disagreeable smelly affairs that also looked dangerous. Sheep are usually run through the dip (if at all) in the Spring right after being sheared but it’s important to remember they don’t really register that they’ve been sheared and when a sheep goes “swimming” they soon become too heavy to swim because their wool gets soaked, so they are not enthusiastic swimmers by nature though they will go in if they perceive not doing so is even more dangerous and humans almost always look more dangerous to them than water so when herding sheep near water – take note and be careful (as in back off and give tthem time).
Back to tic baths, for this reason among others, they were a place an animal like a sheep would be unlikely to “learn” to go into without those frightening humans waiving their arms and driving them into it. Certainly not sheep who are probably “blessed” because they are innocent and innocent because they are not very smart (or at least don’t act like it).
Moreover, the tick baths of old were not very effective nor did the effect last for long. All that may have changed – but I doubt sheep have. It would still be difficult to make them learn to do it for their own good.
As to humans, the ticks being described here sound like the larger variety ( a little under an 8th of an inch or not quite a couple of millimeters). These are less dangerous than the deer tick (about the size of the head of a pin) in terms of being a vector for lyme disease (among others). The big ones hopping a ride en masse might be creepy enough to freak one out, but they are actually not too hard to remove by hand when they first climb aboard your legs and you can avoid most of them anyway by wearing pants tied tightly around your sock, not to mention sprays for the socks and legs that are very effective. I’ve heard repeatedly that if you rremove the tick within 24 hours of it’s arrival, the likelihood of getting Lyme goes down dramatically.
While freaking out isn’t helpful nor necessary (usually), tics do indeed carry very dangerous diseases -some people are more prone than others- and should be taken seriously.
I am thinking of the kind of dip which Dr. Temple Grandin might design if she were tasked to do so. I never worked with animals or dips. Watching ag-news reels that came on before the cartoons when I was a kid — I got the idea the old dips were nasty and about the last thing any of the animals wanted to step into. I like to believe wild moose, deer, probably wild sheep are more clever than our domesticated animals. I am thinking of the difference between wild turkeys and the turkeys we raise for food for example.
Maybe something like this? This fellow uses drier lint instead of cotton balls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZk-0mP4GAM
Many hikers swear by permethrin treated clothing to repel ticks.
Fipronil for ticks
Thats the chemical in Frontline for Dogs and Cats
Also used as dip for cattle, chickens.
Fipronil is the main active ingredient of Frontline TopSpot, Fiproguard, Flevox, and PetArmor (used along with S-methoprene in the ‘Plus’ versions of these products); these treatments are used in fighting tick and flea infestations in dogs and cats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fipronil
hazmat suits. now with breathable air for only 1499.00 (a month).
And Bitcoin consumes as much electricity as Switzerland.
I’m starting to see a pattern here — the map of a brave new world. With Europe at the center.
If humanity has to choose between either Belgium and Switzerland on the one hand or porn a bitcoin on the other, it could be a close run thing.
The pattern is called insensitivity and ignorance–in other words both the heart and the mind are becoming diseased in the West. Most people I know simply don’t care about the environment until this changes we will face destruction in a couple of decades if not sooner. In terms of porn and other forms of entertainment we are following the pattern Neil Postman saw which is that we intend to literally “entertain ourselves to death” as he termed it. As for bitcoin and so on I’m a little more sympathetic to that in terms of the intention to bypass the insanely corrupt financial sector but I don’t think we ought to go in that direction. We need to move to a non-money economy gradually–this is possible and it starts with ending the Federal reserve whose only interest is to keep the elites swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck. That has always been the goal.
I’ve lost a decade to suffering from tick borne disease (or the Lymerix vaccine, or both, I’ll never know for sure). I used to adore spending lots of time in nature, but now I agree with “I’m never going outside” as I sit on my outdoor furniture placed strategically on my asphalt driveway. I can see beauty but will never walk or hike in it again. I think this invasive species, which has also recently been found in my state, is a harbinger of much worse to come.
I sympathize. I live in upstate New York and have a big yard near a wooded area. Ideal for ticks. Although we’ve been here just 3 years, I’ve already suffered one bout of Lyme disease — which, fortunately, was diagnosed early and apparently cured over two weeks with massive doses of antibiotics.
I’ve always checked for ticks thoroughly every evening but got bitten and infected anyway. And it seems about half the people we know in this area have struggled with Lyme. It’s a common thing for kids to spend an afternoon outdoors and come back with several ticks on them.
Given the enduring degree of threat and the consequences, it’s odd that this problem merits so little attention while the return of measles, as serious as that is, gets the full-on klaxon in the media.
Welcome to WNY, I was born and raised here (Buffalo-Niagara)
One reason for the lack of attention is they are terrified the Lyme bacteria will develop an immunity to the treatments (if they havn’t already to some of them) so they try to avoid making noise (a very questionable practice intended to keep requests for treatment down via ignorance of the risks). You were lucky to get treatment as doctors will sometimes refuse and make excuses with nasty consequences.
A vaccine was developed but was discontinued for dubious reasons, https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/7/17314716/lyme-disease-vaccine-history-effectiveness
These nasty-animal introductions have increased in rate and severity since the introduction of Forcey-Free-Trade. The only way to reduce the ongoing onslaught of tree-killer beetles and cow-killer ticks would be to reduce the level of Forcey-Free-Trade itself.
In the meantime, one sincerely hopes that nasty-animals from America are infesting the countries-of-origin of nasty animals from Free Tradestan. It’s only fair. Anything less would be uncivilized.
actually, according to all the panicked reading I did in 2016 when I discovered bed bugs in my bedroom a month and a half before I was due to move south/my tenants were due to move in ? the rise of these pests in cities across the country (and new legislation to combat it) is the gradual result of the ban on DDT.
after looking for a link I discovered that partly this is pushback from when Nixon created the EPA; banning DDT is not the sole cause, and part of the problem is that DDT-resistant strains had already developed.
nevertheless for several decades after the discovery of DDT there was blessed relief from the curse of bed bugs.
Streaming Online Pornography Produces as Much CO2 as Belgium
I knew regularly viewing porno is controversial–that it might personally have some negative effects (psychologically, socially, time lost etc.), but this is the first time I’ve read that porno accelerates climate change!
They reckon that two feet of future sea-level rise will be directly attributable to cat videos.
Yes. El Nino has been linked to Ron Jeremy.
I didn’t know Ron was bi!
Maybe it has something to do with that Pacific Oscillation business.
I’ll bet online video games emit more carbon than online pornography. Someone should compare the carbon output of PornHub to the carbon output of Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft, for example.
I’ll accept banning online porn if everyone else accepts banning online video games.
… and cat videos. :-/
I love the unstated assumption behind clickbait headlines like this, that if people weren’t consuming porn they’d be hiking or walking to church or something, rather than consuming the same amount of (or more) electricity in other forms of amusement.
Im a pretty big fan of porn- xvideos.com mainly- but going to the local BDSM/Sex Clubs is much safer for the environment :)
On Fetlife.com, my username is Lean_Left. Friend me up! I dont bite…much!
tmi, J-dog ;-)
Herd Dat!
Thanks for sharing, but… tmi… waaay tmi…
Now I will have this in my mind next time I see you… damn!
Haha my bad! One time my mom asked me what i was doing one particular Saturday night…Yeah she stopped askin after that!
When you see him, say hi to J M-lch-r for me.
Will Dieux ;-)
“Why Did Jeffrey Epstein Fly Back To The US?”
Hmmm. Good question that. Maybe it was sting operation by the NYPD where they anonymously mailed him a New York school yearbook showing photos of this year’s Freshman/9th Grade class. On a more serious note, I had to go digging into Google for info on what I remember hearing once in a TV show. The 1910 Mann Act “made it a felony to engage in interstate or foreign commerce transport of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose”. Does that not describe what Epstein did? I think that when this happens, it automatically become a matter for the FBI but they do not seem to be involved with this case, though I could be mistaken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act
“It’s a felony to engage in interstate…transport of any woman…for the purpose of…debauchery or for any other immoral purpose.”
So, does this mean that political candidates can only travel from state to state with male campaign workers?
You’d have to talk to Mayor Pete Buttigieg about that one.
HIYOOOOOO
A 1986 amendment covers males and all minors ; text change from “female”, “woman – girl” to “individual”.
Link to a three page document , Gender Neutral Amendment -page2 :
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-100/pdf/STATUTE-100-Pg3510.pdf
Funny that. The Mann Act, as far as I can figure, doesn’t criminalize the transport of young boys across state lines for “immoral purposes.”
The Mann Act was originated as a racialist enforcement act, aimed at foreigners and other ‘deplorables’ of the time. The famous black boxer, Jack Johnson, was an early ‘victim’ of the Act.
Chuck Berry was put in prison for violating the Mann act when he brought an underage girl to work as a hat check person in his St. Louis nightclub.
And that was not even a truly “immoral” purpose. I’ll bet Berry ran afoul of the old mob. They have always considered the “entertainment” venues to be their exclusive turf.
Seems he shoulda known risks were rising…
Maybe there’s something useful in the nyc mansion he wanted to pick up, that couldn’t be trusted to anybody else.
Wonder what instructions/ flight plan the jet had? Refuel, be back in a couple of hours? Then off to some place with no Extradition?
Seems trump in the clear… if so, he’ll push this, no easy deals unless he fingers much bigger fish.
Pass the popcorn.
Trump was probably a customer and refused pay the bill!
An even better question might be “Why didn’t he just fly to Israel?”
Is he safer in the US? Safer from whom?
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. argued in court eight years ago that Epstein should not be registered as a top level sex offender despite his dozens of victims, a leniency angrily rejected by the judge.
Cyrus Vance. Cyrus Vance. Where have I heard that name before?
Is there no end to these webs of corruption?
I think Vance is the son and namesake of Carter’s Sec. of State, a man I always thought highly of, and who, IIRC, resigned after repeated disagreements with Z Brezinski.
IIRC Cy Vance’s son CV jr has been racking up a number of failure to prosecutes, Harvey Weinstein, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr; campaign contributions were apparently in play.
Why did Epstein fly back to be arrested? Perhaps he is safer in custody than out in the world, given the powerful people he will likely give up and expose to trade for a lower sentence for his crimes.
-Acosta made a claim about being told the guy was “intelligence.”
-who told Acosta that? Lets ignore Mossad etc, because I think its more about using reputations of others to be protected.
-“intelligence work” is cool and incognito, so you can’t check it.
-My guess is Epstein has used this kind of bs from powerful people to be protected for years and he expected it to work again.
-all it takes is on prosecutor to demand the goods.
-if Epstein is a foreign intelligence asset, all it takes is one prosecutor not caring.
-my guess Is Epstein simply expected to throw out this “detail” and be thanked for protecting America or something.
My guess is a more general version: That he doesn’t see the US “justice” system as particularly dangerous for him (especially if he’s got tapes). Current US policy is to steal children from their parents and disappear them into an opaque supposed shelter/adoption system. The head of the department responsible for enforcing anti-trafficking laws was the guy who got him a deal; was appointed by child-snatcher-in-chief; and hadn’t been supporting trafficking victims (Link). Whatever degrees of separation Trump may or may not have had from trafficking, he and his family employ documented and undocumented migrants in the US and low-wage workers in other countries. Epstein was on his way to NYC (see Cy Vance comment above). Maybe Epstein just figured he’d be among friends and fellow abusers; and he’d slither to impunity as always (see “influence” payments in today’s links).
I doubt foreign intelligence with the possible exception of Israel. He could have been working for an American agency to get dirt on people. It’s been theorized that TPTB have little use for clean politicians, it’s the dirty ones that they can control.
We will not get this information I bet.
If the report “he belongs to intelligence” is a factual report,
who told him that?
which intelligence agency?
These are the only meaningful data and they are very very likely to remain secret.
I am sure it was a higher up at the DoJ. It would be a violation of the chain of command for an intel service to tell a district prosecutor who wasn’t even the head of his office what to do.
My guess is that what Acosta said was true (he was told Epstein was an intelligence asset) but someone more or less made that up as the easiest “no argument” way to tell Acosta to back off.
Breadcrumbs:
> “The Wexner Foundation’s long established partnerships with the Israeli Government and Harvard University, with the goal of strengthening Israel’s public service leadership”
> Victoria’s Secret parent company’s stock down as Jeffrey Epstein ties emerge
It’s a bad look for Israel.
I have a hard time believing that Acosta worked out that deal all on his own. Given Epstein’s connections, it stands to reason that the Justice Department was keeping a close eye on this case. Presumably, then, it wasn’t just Acosta that let Epstein skate. Who advised Acosta to take it easy on him? It would be interesting to see if scrutiny shifted to Acosta’s superiors at Justice.
Alberto Gonzales was AG in 2007 through Sept 17 but under siege most of the yesr. Got to wonder if that whole controversy wasn’t in some way related to conflicts over handling of this case. On the other hand, much of the portentous atmospherics over this case is due to the association with former President Clinton. It maybe nothing more than that Epstein is a social climber and wanted Clinton as a “friend” and could provide something Clinton wanted.
Moon offers up a theory of how Epstein made his money.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/07/a-plausible-theory-about-what-jeffrey-epstein-was-doing.html
For those who don’t want to click–the suggestion is that he was blackmailing rich people into investing in his low yield fund while he took the standard hedge fund manager’s fee–all perfectly legal except for the procuring and blackmailing.
Of course the problem of with blackmail speculation is that while these prominent people might be afraid of talking to the law they presumably do talk to each other. Would word of even one blackmail attempt “get around”? Perhaps it was less about blackmail and more “pay for play.” If so it really is getting into Eyes Wide Shut territory.
Deparvity of America’s Financial Elite
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/07/13/epst-j13.html
excellent article, thanks
isn’t the NYT a corporation? if so, given its personhood under current law, it oughtta be clapped in the stocks and pelted with rotten produce
Regarding spread of ticks, disappearing ice/global warming/rising seas and what that says of our future species’ life on earth….
The word apocalypse comes to mind and think about the above a lot as do others no doubt, and yet the news and thrust of America policy is to start more wars and conflicts and send our fossil fuel guzzling air craft carries and jets swooping in other nations faces to gin up a hot confrontation…because corporate profits. As if our approaching demise from the above realities does not exist in any form.
If you talk about ending wars in any context at work all you get are blank stares. It’s verboten to mention such widely held conventional thinking there…and yet it’s a healthcare company (Johnson&Johnson)! And the party of peace, Dems, their leaders never mention stopping wars as if their tongues wold burn it they did like holy water being poured over Dracula.
Part of the solution needs to be population reduction.
I strategically planted 3 oak trees and half several Japanese maples in mostly tree-less yard I acquired 3 years ago mostly for shade and global warming but that’s not even a drop in a bucket. I live in a bubble – the northeast where I live is getting above average rain fall and the new ticks are not here – yet. What happens when my city’s water sources disappears from declining rain fall? My commute to work is un-congested and in fact a beautiful pleasant drive thru county side-ish/semi suburban areas, south of Boston as opposed the the more heavily congested north of Boston. It’s a bubble but everything I read says bad things are on the horizon.
Population reduction is a massive canard unless you are talking about, first, Americans who regularly keep their vehicles going so the air-conditioning stays on (I live in the South). Most people in the USA simpy DON’T CARE about the environment other than keeping their lawns neat. We live in a largely toxic society in terms of actions and values. And it’s too bad because on an individual basis (unlike some other countries I won’t mention) Americans are some of the nicest people you could meet people (among the non-rich)–the problem is the culture and the norms.
There is technology/techniques to radically reduce carbon emissions but the media won’t cover that subject. We need more aware, more creative, and strong people not less people.
Less people would surely help though, I don’t see how it could be otherwise. With climate change projected to seriously affect world food production, there soon won’t be enough to go around.
The problem is usually when people talk about ‘population reduction’, they’re talking about people in third world countries, even though people in first world countries consume orders of magnitude more energy per person than in third world countries. Usually complaints about population reduction end up sort of like “Those damn Africans and Indians have too many damn kids!”
So let’s bring them here so they can support our markets, keep rents high, wages low and use lots more carbon.
misdirect much?
they are keeping wages low? Rents high?
watch your third person, i’d say
Ever hear of supply and demand?
Cesar Chavez, the founder of the United Farm Workers Union on illegals and the ability to demand fair wages for his workers:
“For so many years we have been involved in agricultural strikes; organizing almost 30 years as a worker, as an organizer, and as president of the union–and for all these almost 30 years it is apparent that when the farm workers strike and their strike is successful, the employers go to Mexico and have unlimited, unrestricted use of illegal alien strikebreakers to break the strike,” Chavez told senators.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/03/cesar-chavez-illegal-immigration-foe/
Apply that to retail, building trades and service industries.
Tens of millions of foreigners, living 4 to a room, compete with our seniors and our own poor for inexpensive living units nationwide.
Please don’t pretend you are that ignorant, no matter how you want to push your agenda.
Look at the Chavez quote again. “The employers go to Mexico…”
subject verb: employers go
I stand by what I said: I think your anger is misdirected
You’ve implied I have an agenda without mentioning what you think it is
which leaves the door open for about anything which I might have to defend. That is truly dishonest argumentation. I’m just some person working through ideas the same as you, so please cut the crap like we’re all fronting for a movement.
But just to clear the air, here is what I think I have worked out so far:
1) however much borders may seem just like a line on a map, and however much i may feel a solidarity with workers and humans everywhere, national borders are an absolute neccessity at this stage of history, they describe where we would and will have the legal power to create a social democracy. They are inescapable. I do not support open borders.
2) When a capitalist uses the differences on the two sides of the border to her advantage, to make workers compete with one another for jobs and housing and food and f&^%ing everything, I pay attention to the goddamn verb, who has acted and who has set this thing into motion.
Those are the 2 things I’ve worked out so far. That’s my agenda. What’s yours?
Lower population in the U.S., less carbon and pollution, fewer illegals, and immigrants legal or otherwise, thus more housing units available at a lower price, higher wages for labor that can strike or demand them, more services for veterans and our homeless without having to care for foreigners here.
so how are you gonna control the US industries which exploit cheap labor, is the question.
the private sector here donates big $$ to politicians to look the other way so they can continue to flout the law and evade regulations. the government serves its donors, not those it purportedly represents.
your solution in a corrupt society?
They are almost certainly not talking about that, because what are the odds someone saying have no or fewer kids is communicating with someone in Africa or India. I bet most of the people reading this comment are in 1st world countries.
How do reduce or even stabalize global population equitably is an interesting conversation, but not one we EVER get to have, because any suggestion of such is met with assumptions like that. And most people in the first world will keep having kids too. Ugh.
Help what and who? Help the people spreading viruses, war? Is that the kind of world you want to live in? Food production is a minor problem once you get the corporate elites to step aside–there are dozens of good new techniques to grow enough food today but they are not available because the mainstream doesn’t allow coverage. Do you remember the book Dune? There human ingenuity allowed many to live in a far more inhospitable situation than we face. Family planning is not a bad thing but genocide doesn’t pass muster with me because that’s what is likely to happen while the oligarchs are safe in their NZ hideaways and underground bunkers. If you want to join them then fine–you and others have to live with themselves. The more people, the better if we can empower them solve problems rather than be serfs on the Big Plantation which is precisely where the world is headed.
When civilization collapses i vote Cosmos for Sietch Leader!
Stilgar who???
I don’t see how we can have an Earth as we know it…or used to know it with Elephants, Lions, Wales, etc…with out reducing human population.
Human are growing like a bacteria culture in a petri dish. We are consuming all resources and smothering and killing off other life.
Soon we will smother ourselves if we don’t find solutions.
Well . . . we have to reduce consumption as well. Starting in the highest-consumption-per-capita countries.
there will always be a Wales.
Arent Corporations ‘People?’
I suggest we start with them first.
and we could turn off the military murder machine that as a f*&%ing byproduct of its warm, humanist agenda pumps out more CO2 than anything else we do.
I mean, just another idea before we start talking about “surplus population”
Agreed.
I think i heard that Abrams Tanks got 400 gallons for 1 mile…
Methinks there is room for improvement!
The reason there is that they use a turbine engine that burns a jet fuel which is why it is so thirsty. The Abrams is the only mass-produced tank in the world built so.The Russians tried it with one of their tanks years ago, gave up, and went back to diesel fuel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams#Mobility
Fellow denizen of parts south of Boston here, timbers. The interesting thing about southeastern Massachusetts — which I define as the Old Plymouth Colony (Plymouth, Bristol, and Barnstable Counties) plus the Islands — is that it is a piece of rural New England (mostly) that is cut off by the megalopolis-I-95 belt from the rest of rural New England. My friends from Metro Boston often remark that it feels like New Hampshire or Maine down here.
Indeed, commenters as far back as the 17th century remark on the much less densely settled nature of Plymouth vs. Massachusetts Bay. The huge numbers of swamps, marshes, dunes, and pine barrens certainly had an influence there (as did the less expansionist, comparatively, Separatists vs. Boston Puritans).
That said, Brockton is currently drinking Silver Lake in Kingston/Pembroke/Halifax dry each summer, despite having other sources of water; so we, too, have our problems locally.
But to your larger point: yes, bad things are on the horizon. I’ve been planting corn and potatoes and onions the last few years. Weirdly enough I think our climate down here is becoming even more maritime as a result of climate change. And don’t get me started on the truly strange species shifts happening in local waters.
UPDATE: The idling to use AC also exists up here, and it’s infuriating.
Brockton did build (through a public-private partnership) a desalination plant about ten years ago, which hasn’t exactly worked out financially, with the city paying over $6 million annually for water, which is barely used. It turns out the conservation and the decline of industry eliminated the need for the water.
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2013/05/28/brockton-desalination-plant/
https://www.enterprisenews.com/news/20170411/brockton-water-commission-approves-of-78-million-aquaria-purchase
“Part of the solution needs to be population reduction.”
+10000
AFAIK, only one environmental organization, the Center for Biological Diversity, mentions demographic growth as a threat to biodiversity (and a cause of global climate change). This typically gets derided on social media, where replies contend that economic inequality is a leading cause of climate change, not out of control demographic growth. Does that mean climate change will be halted if everyone gains entry to the “middle class”?
In California, 150 million trees were killed during our last 2012-2015 drought, due to the combination of higher temperatures and no water.
There are academics whose careers rest on publishing articles claiming attempts to address demographic growth are a form of white versus brown aggression.
Separately, fossil fuels are “freedom gas” as the US insanely ships LNG to the EU to try to lure the EU from Nordstream2
Family Planning + Educating Girls is the number one solution to reverse global warming per Drawdown. Separately they are number 6 and 7 on their list.
https://www.drawdown.org/solutions
Educating Girls
https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/women-and-girls/educating-girls
Family Planning
https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/women-and-girls/family-planning
Opossums Are a Ticks Greatest Enemy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emgOYL-aR7E
There was an article a few years ago about how attracting certain hawks — using the kind of perches the like mounted on poles — brought down the tick population by making the mice and chipmunks more wary of leaving their burrows.
If you think the Dems are the “party of peace,” you do not remember the Vietnam War. Started by Dems, ended by a Republican – under duress, but still.
I will say Byrd scooters have a problem. A co-worker said there is a guy who gets Byrd scooters, takes them apart, removes SIM cards, puts them back together, then sells them. Scooters work fine and no longer have to pay byrd. Selling them for next to nothing, seems to be selling a lot of them. Everything is free for him except his time. If some dude in Memphis is doing that, then it is happening everywhere.
I like the value-neutral “gets” the scooters.
Now I don’t know anything about them, but it seems unbelievable that they don’t have a GPS. So, realizing that he actually steals them, he must disable the GPS (aka disconnect the battery) as quickly as possible. In his van I would assume.
But it’s still surprising that the authorities aren’t collating “last known locations” with video cameras and looking for said van. It isn’t like he’s stealing your or my property, this is a Corporation (genuflects) that he is attacking.
Also the whole “it’s just an anonymous scooter now” thing is weird. I believe the public bikes in, I think Holland, are specially made so you can’t part them out. And you certainly can’t sell one. It seems like some special parts, identifiable from 30 feet, would make sense on these scooters and it’s hard to believe they just blend in.
Shorter me: I think this story is BS or our Silicone Valley titans are even stupider than we know.
Those rental scooters are just chipped and branded standard Chinese scooters that anyone can buy. There are instructional videos for how to “free” them.
haha well I did cage it with “even stupider than we know”.
I mean, seriously. WTF I guess if you have other people’s money to burn well why actually think about anything.
Plus, is it really stealing if people keep leaving them on the sidewalk right outside my house? :)
Coupla guys here in San Diego have a business “retrieving” scooters left on private property.
Lime and Bird are suing them. They’ve threatened to countersue. Film at 11.
https://fox5sandiego.com/2019/04/11/lime-bird-sue-towing-company-claiming-its-holding-scooters-for-ransom/
Abandoned property. Supreme Court has said that cops can go through garbage at the curb without violating Constitutional rights, therefore abandoned scooters at the curb are free for any purpose.
If you’re being “fair”, maybe leave them alone for 72 hours, which is what the California Vehicle Code says is how long a car or truck, or scooter? can remain parked without violating the law.
That time limit is for registered vehicles. Unregistered cars and trucks cannot be on the street at all. Bird scooters were unleashed, unpermitted on my tourist town about a year ago. The local police “stole” everyone of them (100+) in less than 48 hours.
It seems to me the leave-anywhere scooter creates more problems than it solves.
No one cares if Byrd scooters get clipped here. Poverty rate is 27% and public transit stinks. Cops are up to their eyebrows with murder, rapes, assaults, and regular old fashion theft to care about Byrd scooters. Plus, cops hate the scooters. I have seen kids riding a Byrd scooter with another scooter sitting perpendicular. When the first runs out, switches scooters. When you need to travel 6 or 7 miles one way, that’s how you do it.
Silicon valley titans can’t imagine other places aren’t like San Francisco. Also, just because people are poor doesn’t make them stupid. Screw your gig economy and thanks for all scooters.
Plus if you wanted to be careful, you’d have a Faraday rug to throw over the scooter where it was abandoned so as not to establish a new location for it and turn your workshop into a Faraday cage. But don’t powerful magnets fry electronics? It might be possible to disable the GPS that way.
FB $5b fine with no other restrictions in its operations saw FB’s stock zoom higher at close. Here’s a Politico article from May that’s useful in context, imo.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/18/democrats-facebook-stoller-226930
I feel like there is a kind metaphor with today’s antidote, with the location being at bretton woods.
Perhaps the bear has come to eat the international monetary system?!?!!
Sorry, couldn’t help it. :)
Dog chases a bear out of the yard.
https://youtu.be/6D9jBzfVJfE
latest from Jackson Park Watch (after judge dismissed lawsuit)
POP FILES FOR APPEAL WITH NEW LEGAL COUNSEL
Protect Our Parks has announced that noted legal scholar Richard Epstein will lead its appeal of the June 11 decision by Judge John R. Blakey to dismiss POP’s lawsuit contesting the siting of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park. Epstein, an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago who also holds appointments at New York University and the Hoover Institution, had earlier submitted an amicus brief in support of the POP lawsuit. Chicago lawyer Michael Rachlis, known for his work on land use questions, will serve as co-counsel.
A focus of the appeal will be the failure of the City and Park District to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities as trustees of a public asset in agreeing to give the Obama Foundation, a private entity, effective control of the Jackson Park site for a period of 99 years and a payment of $10 in a transaction that raises serious questions of insider favoritism and conflicts of interest. By making that decision without full evaluation of the Jackson Park site or of the costs to Chicago taxpayers and without due consideration of alternatives, the City and Park District did not meet the applicable standards for diligence that is required in such a transaction. Epstein more fully outlined his argument in an interview with the Hyde Park Herald [link below]
The appeal, submitted to the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, will be heard by a panel of three judges. The schedule for the review has not been set. We will keep you apprised as information is available.
https://hpherald.com/2019/07/03/famed-legal-scholar-richard-epstein-to-lead-protect-our-parks-appeal/
and more; looks like with the new sheriff in town (bye, Rahm!), the OPC at least has to do a community benefits agreement
COMMUNITY BENEFITS ORDINANCE MOVES AHEAD
JPW was one of numerous organizations in the 5th and 20th wards invited to a July 10 meeting with Aldermen Leslie Hairston (5th) and Jeanette Taylor (20th) to discuss the proposed Community Benefits Ordinance, officially titled the ”Obama CBA Residential Area Affordable Housing Pilot Ordinance.” Hairston and Taylor plan to introduce the CBA Ordinance at the July 24 City Council meeting. The draft ordinance focuses specifically on the issue of affordable housing and proposes measures to prevent the displacement of current, long-term residents – homeowners and renters alike – as a result of the impact of the construction of the Obama Presidential Center on the real estate market in an area within a two-mile radius of the OPC. Most attendees were strongly supportive of the ordinance. Some suggested ways to strengthen it and others, including the University of Chicago, raised concerns. While recognizing that they are on a very tight schedule, Aldermen Hairston and Taylor indicated that more such meetings are likely in the near future.
OPC needs to located in Guantanomo to show forever the broken Obam promise to close it.
Or they could search for a location on the Chicago brownfields listings. Obama could trade his soft shoes for steel toed boots and work a real job.
https://brownfieldlistings.com/
Re the Sardonicky post: I like (well, maybe “like” isn’t the word as it makes me sick, actually) to draw the educational line between Hillary Clinton and Kris Kobach. They both are Ivy league to the bone.
Another, different connecting line – look at Pelosi and Trump now, and compare to 15 years ago. Age has really, really taken it’s toll on their mental facilities, I believe. I also believe as your brain becomes less, well lets call it flexible, the easier=to-grasp “conservative” ideas are the ones it gravitates to.
Thus Trump is no longer a Democrat. And thus I easily shrug off all the “She was the Left before AOC was even born!” crap about Pelosi. So what. Michael Jordan probably wouldn’t do so well on the LA asphalt pick-up games today. And today is what counts.
Pelosi needs to go. And I don’t know if it’s wishful thinking, but I think she will be deposed before we know it. If Trump wins a second term, for sure. But maybe even before fall 2020…
PS: it happens at different times, Sanders doesn’t seem to show any age-related brain impairment at all. But it could happen to him any day, too. So if you, unlike me, don’t like him I will acknowledge you have that as a point.
PPS: Maybe somebody should save this post and read it back to me in the hopefully distant future when I suddenly start posting right-wing-nutjob screeds. :)
I disagree about age. Pelosi was awful 15 years ago too. There are a few issues:
-keep the powder dry has happened
-this is a cycle of broken promises
-the msm was terrible, but platforms such as twitter make it easier to see what frauds these people are. I can’t remember who it was, but a wise person (it was probably Atrios) said the worst thing to happen to the DC and msm types is the ability to interact with people on Twitter because they can’t help but double down on their idiocy (to this effect anyway). Pelosi doesn’t think twitter matters. Hearing criticism is eating at her. She’s actually saying sticks and stones.
-Pelosi isn’t simply abetting Trump. She’s already abetted Shrub.
-Team Blue elites already had time and opportunity.
Its not age. This is about an intellectually and morally bankrupt class being exposed for what they are.
Imagine the kind of people who would go to work for Team Blue elites at this point. They aren’t that talented.
I would put it in simpler terms–Pelosi, the House and Senate leadership are corrupt and force the system to stay in place so that nothing ever changes for the better.
As for age, things change as you age but though the mind may lose some raw power it is more than overcome by wisdom if we keep our senses and mind open and don’t fall for the more common vices.
I would agree, but the perception of Pelosi and friends is made more stark because it happened already. This isn’t Pelosi breaking through finally. This is the fraudulent Democratic leadership back in power when during their first stint they forced Roger Clemens to testify about steroid usage in baseball. Its easy to say this is age, but Pelosi wasn’t being challenged then either and she enjoyed the promise of Obama and then hid behind Obama and then Hillary for a long time.
Has anyone told Pelosi about the high home run total this season? If she finds out, I expect all kinds of baseball players to be raked over the coals.
Pelosi is being challenged for the first time, not just for her current actions, but the legacy of both a token Speaker and legitimately powerful Speaker. Pelosi is reacting the way a self styled patrician would when confronted by being challenged by someone who is coming at from a place of intelligence and upright moral standing.
I almost expect Pelosi to demand AOC debate Ben Shapiro at the rate Pelosi is going.
Manfreds juicin the Balls lol
Projection is 6600 homeruns this year, 500 more than the record of ~6100.
Hat tip to Woody Paige from Around The Horn
The average age of an MLB fan is somebody sliding into codgerhood, tagged out. Although some lucky duckys can afford to use some of their social security stipend to acquire ducats
Will lotsa dingers make young adults into fans?
Baseball is the slowest sport aside from bowling, and edge to the latter in that you can order a beer from the cocktail bar and have it delivered to your lane, while in action.
Golf is also tedious, but I refuse to call it a sport.
Nooooooope lol
Personally id rather watch Bowling!
And golf…Dont even get me started!
Certainly not the case in Philadelphia. And a casual glance at other ballparks indicates not anywhere else either. I’ve been to see the Philles, Nat’s Orioles and Mets at their yards this year, and the stands were hardly filled with the aging and inform.
Didnt Philly land Baseballs hottest prospect this year? Im blanking on his name, but he got like a 3 yr/350$mil contract?
Where i live its all Chicago Cubs fans.
Its not age. This is about an intellectually and morally bankrupt class being exposed for what they are.
Standing and applauding.
I think age matters in terms of PR. Pelosi really does come across as an addled old woman. The substance of her awfulness may not have changed, but she’s degraded in her ability to sell it.
Stood near Feinstein in an elevator. Like a zombie. The odor of rotten teeth or death about her. It’s a wig for sure. So glad to see these crones representing the interests of America’s young workers.
Kamala smells like Salem cigarettes.
Kamala’s idea of a green new deal?
https://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/o-PILES-OF-AMERICAN-MONEY-facebook.jpg
I dunno, with her 80’s style nosejob, I bet you could put on Thriller and have her to do a moonwalk. The dance video would go viral, like AOC’s.
Do a search for “democrats cave” to see just how many times the house has done the wrong thing on Pelosi’s watch.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=democrats+cave&t=ffab&ia=web
well…that’s depressing…lol
on the upside, proof at last that i haven’t been imagining all that perfidy and betrayal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMRmuyy9f_w
The relevant part starts at 0:30 seconds. This episode aired in 1995.
“We can’t govern.”
Listening to AOC’s long interview on New Yorker Radio Hour, she makes the point that age is being misused as a proxy for capacity.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-breaking-homeland-security
She continues to impress. But then I’m biased. My mother was a waitress for much of her working life, a bright progressive, and just as AOC is now 29, my mom was that age for quite a few years.
…is your mother some sort of time-warping entity?
Alas, no. She, unlike Pelosi, was indeed a member of the “greatest generation” and a tough working class cookie.
AOC does continue to impress, but the more she slides away from working class and toward idpol*, the sooner she will find her place in the existing Democrat hierarchy, and that IMNSHO would be bad.
She is so smart, and so perceptive, and so creative, but she’s also working in an insanely corrosive and corrupt environment.
NOTE * She says, “I don’t think we should be afraid of being the party of FDR. I don’t think we should be afraid of being the party of working people.” But it’s the next quote, the “hemming and hawing” quote, that made the headlines. And the “party of working people” got erased. So to some extent the press distorts my own perceptions, too, and that drives my concerns; one reason they cover idpol is that it creates the kind of conflicts of which they approve.
NOTE Also, the interviewer, David Remnick, is a horrible human being who debauched the New Yorker when he turned into an Obot.
You think Pelosi will soon be deposed? Why do you think so?
Catfood Pelosi is a perfect expression of everything the Catfood Democrat Party stands for.
The entire Catfood Democrat Party needs extermination from existence and enwipement from off the face of the earth.
Then maybe the Cortez Squadocrats can pick up any pieces which might be worth picking up and begin assembling a legitimate political party from which every trace of Catfood Clintonite Obamazoid filth is rigidly excluded. This would require the Deep and Extreme vetting of every single Democrat to make sure no Undercover Catfood was slithering and oozing into the new emerging Cortez Squadocrat Party.
+1
Just thinking about where we are as a polity. It seems it is dawning, very slowly, on the plebes in the U.S. that *everything* is corrupted. From baseball to business, media, finance, medical, research. Certainly every layer of government: city, state, federal.
Contrast to a country like Italy, where every last paesan knows in his bones that the life of the country is corrupted to the core. And has been since people were wearing togas.
But shiny and naive Americans are undergoing a drawn-out Kubler-Ross about it all. Each new revelation from each new facet of life chisels the hole of corruption despair ever deeper. When does it hit bottom? Surely there are even deeper depths than bi-partisan underage rape parties in the Caribbean?
<Why do you think so?
Because when turmoil erupts, the center cannot hold. As that poem below goes. I'm using "center" as the Pelosi position in the Dem party, I don't think of course as her being any farther left than mid-century Republicans. Don't have specifics on how or why, and did make it clear I'm far from sure, but I would be really, really far from surprised.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
PS: thanks for all the teaching remarks above…. I really thought Pelosi was leftish at least in my less-informed days . Not surprised I was wrong.
Pelosi will not be deposed in this session of Congress, and even if she were it wouldn’t make a pitcher of warm spit’s worth of difference.
Pelosi is not the sculptor of the Democrat caucus but a creature of it. In terms of her position, attitude, record, financial interests, and politics, she is in the position she’s in because she is the perfect representative of all but “like five people” in that caucus. Seth Moulton’s so-called “challenge” to Pelosi in January piddled out pathetically; once the challenge was smoked out, Moulton’s supposed “supporters” scattered like cockroaches in the light. The only Democrat faction in Congress capable of mounting a successful challenge would be the DCCC establishment tools who are already getting everything they want with Pelosi anyway.
Were she to be replaced, the new boss wouldn’t change a thing.
Sardonicky writes:
I think playing the race card was a mistake by AOC et al., especially when the simpler, more brutal, and undenibly true “I can do my work because I don’t have to spend four hours a day servicing donors” attack is ready to hand. Playing the race card enabled MoDo to play the neutral arbiter and defend Pelosi, as she did in her follow-up column.
Thank you for posting the Guardian video Crannog. A very beautiful story.
“Facebook Denies Being a Social Network in Lawsuit Response”
Why those mischievous little rapscallions. Only recently Zuckerberg was telling both houses of Congress that Facebook respected the privacy of all their users but not long before his lawyers were arguing in a court of law that using Facebook means that privacy does not exist for their users-
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/14/facebook-privacy-policy-court/
“We would like to bring to the attention of the court that we are no longer a social network by virtue of yesterday’s acquisition, from Chinese TCL Corporation, of the IP of defunct PDA maker Palm Inc.. By way of incorporating the new brand identity while paying homage to our previous incarnation of “former social media company known as Facebook” we are changing the company name to “Facepalm”.
Hello Naked Capitalism commentariat! I was trying to find an article posted in Links some time ago, where it involved a family living in the Midwest. It featured a younger man with his family and the premise was that he was doing everything right, but that Dems had left him behind. I think the narrative was written as if he didn’t want to vote R, but found himself agreeing with what Candidate Trump was saying at the time.
I could’ve swore that I posted it to Facebook, but I cannot for the life of me remember what year I posted it in. Any help (while probably unlikely), would be greatly appreciated!
If you can give some keywords to search on, that would be helpful. Did the family have a name? Where in the midwest? Can you remember any colorful phrasing?
I recall one, a very likable young man, standing outside a Waffle house, in a coal mining area? He was fully concious of his vote, but — what was he to do –neither he nor anyone he knew had jobs. I think he worked at the Waffle House.
” . . . neither he nor anyone he knew had jobs. I think he worked at the Waffle House. ”
Is working at the Waffle House not considered a job ? I’m curious.
The hopeless irony was the point. The Waffle House was a popular gathering place in town too, but you can’t support a family; no health insurance etc. If I remember right, he was one of the lucky ones. He made a rational case for Trump and how the Democrats had screwed them
Ah, Hamptons problems. Though I find linking Charlie Rose to Trump quite funny I can’t imagine him in a MAGA hat.
I know quite a few people who prefer the company of critters to that of their fellow humans. They are in good company.
Walt Whitman
Here is a link to the Explainer: What is post-quantum cryptography?
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613946/explainer-what-is-post-quantum-cryptography/
The article in PhysOrg that links to”Strange warping geometry helps to push scientific boundaries” is quite interesting for those of a mathematical bent.
also PhysOrg above. Carbon nanotube device channels heat into light. Sounded good. Like some sort of laser heat-recycling device. The interesting thing being that so much heat is wasted into the atmosphere when electricity is produced in solar panels. So this device refocuses it and recycles it back into light and the solar panel can reuse the light. Right?
I am just an amateur science buff. But I think it is more that “heat” rays and “light” rays are both rays. ( More technically correctly photons of electro-magnetic energy radiation).
And these nanotube can force infra-red rays-waves which are moving in all different directions into all moving in the same direction. maybe even force the energy into a narrower band of infra-red wavelengths.
And then find photo-receptor materials sensitive to these nano-tube guided infra-red rays and use them to excite electrons into moving.
like this, sort of:https://www.tngun.com/water-bottle-skylight/
i made one with a 6 foot length of clear rubber tubing to bring sunlight into the dark scary part of my shop where the nails and screws and such live.
poor man’s fiber optic.
at least that’s what this made me think of.
Thanks for the link to the Martens’ article. So where’s the money coming from to paint the market indexes ever higher in the face of weakening economic data?… the Powell Fed has a policy of “Quantitative Tightening” and has succeeded in marginally shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet after its huge expansion under Bernanke, although the Fed continues to maintain very low interest rates as a matter of policy.
Bottom line: The funds being used to drive this market higher do NOT appear to be coming from the Fed.
Freely speculating, it occurs to me that coupled with use of futures and other derivatives, the primary sources of capital driving this market up are:
Corporate stock buybacks funded through Wall Street issuance of junk bonds and leveraged loans,
A large net drawdown in the U.S. Treasury General Account since Dec 2018,
Wall Street Banks funding the purchases of equities for themselves and selected high frequency trading firms, hedge funds and large private equity firms.
Foreign central banks and governments,
Foreign nationals who have negative real interest rates in their own nations due to the policies of central banks like the ECB, Bank of Japan, Swiss National Bank, etc.
If the aftermath of bubbles weren’t so damaging, it would be somewhat amusing that financial entertainment talking heads regularly portray the now over 10-year run-up in the markets to the current frothy highs as being attributable to “bullish” Mom & Pop.
They also stated that 970 of the last 1000 point increase in the Dow 30, starting from Jan 2018, have come from 3 stocks: Visa, McDonalds and Microsoft.
Mayor Pete makes it clear to TPTB that his fundraising haul has had its desired effect. “I am bought and will stay bought. Think of me as a younger, gayer Joe Biden!”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/13/politics/pete-buttigieg-medicare-for-all-free-college-cnntv/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_allpolitics+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Politics%29
“Gosh guys, haven’t you heard? I read Ulysses and would like to live in the White House. Is that so hard to understand? Should I try it Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of men?”
What I image Pete Buttigieg’s closing message will be.
Could you imagine if he won and became President of the United States? And at the Presidential inauguration ceremony when he gave his oath of office, that he went ahead and gave it in Spanish? I wouldn’t put it past him.
“Border Patrol Chief Was Member of Secret Facebook Group ”
The new dictionary definition of an oxymoron!
By secret they basically mean invite-only. But yes, still amusing to some extent that they think just restricting who is invited in really matters in the long run.
> Laid-Off Expat Bankers Struggle to Find Jobs in Hong Kong Bloomberg
Deutsche Bank didn’t comment on the size of its layoffs in Hong Kong.
Never heard that one before. The tradition is companies brag about how many they laid off and their owners / the investment bankers / the security analysts all clap loudly.
The peak of abusive bossage is to transfer a person 10 000 miles from their home and lay them off. The first time my fellow employees passed such a report it was with frozen voice tone. It was one of those things you don’t forget ever like news of Elvis dying.
How often can abusive bosses do this before word-of-getting-transferred is accepted code for word-of-getting-layoffed-or-fired? And what happens when geographically transferrable employees begin refusing transfers?
Its Russian Roulette. Many of the moves are actually good for the career. However, the layoffs are developed in secret and so a “normal” transfer occurs but then the position/division is terminated and the lay off occurs.
If you are interested in some real world gaming of how an actual Iraq-US military conflict might play out
I’d like to highly recommend this War Nerd podcast.
I’ll go ahead and spoil the ending for you: things don’t look good for an invading force. At all.
Anyway, an extremely informative and fascinating hour can and should be spent with these chaps. Then spread the word.
Iran, rather than Iraq?
They probably reference it, but there was a Navy wargame some years ago, US Vs. Iran, that turned out unexpectedly because the admiral playing Iran got creative. Ducks in a barrel, with the Persian Gulf playing the barrel.
The Navy canceled the exercise and pretended it never happened.
iran has had a long time to prepare.
It was a Marine general whose asymmetric warfare approach wiped out much of the US fleet in the Gulf, in this gaming exercise, prompting the Pentagon to halt the exercise, and rewrite the rules of the game so the “good guys” could win. The “bad guys” were supposedly Iran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
The US should be really thankful that people in the Middle East don’t think asymmetrically but rely on large conventional forces instead. Otherwise, it could have gone really badly in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria instead of being glorious victories.
yikes, i mean Iran
yes, they talk a lot about that that 2002 wargame, and some other particularities to the situation: the narrow geography and simple cheap missle tech that will combine to render the us fleet into a collection of expensive, delicate targets. Also the fragility of the gulf states and saudi arabia that would quickly turn any invasion of iran into a massive project of propping up and supporting these kingdoms with no fresh water supply (desalinization plants are easy to hit) and no popular support.
they also look through a 2012 paper (don’t remember who, some usual mic suspect) that recommends working “from afar” : color revolutions and social media infiltration.
I’m still waiting for the paper where they moot whether we have any right to attack these people in the first place.
I’m assuming my comments are being long delayed or lost in space due to technical difficulties. I’m not complaining, just providing what I hope is useful information.
We are short handed on the moderator front now. One is pretty much off for the summer with a move and then a major construction project, and the other is on a break through Monday.
I figured it might be one or another kind of resource constraint. Thanks for all you do on a tight budget.
If Pelosi, or anyone in dem leadership had two brain cells to rub together and actually cared about the min wage it should be easy as hell for her to pick off republicans in states that have already increased the min wage. That should be the easiest sell ever. Don’t they want a more level playing field with other states? Aren’t they just exporting jobs out of their district?
The latest “compromise” with Blue Dogs. Instead of phasing in the $15 wage over five years, it will get phased in over six!
It’s not a question of whether Democrat “leadership” has brains. The question is whose side they are on, and the answer is pretty clearly “not ours”.
Book Tip:
The World Rushed In-The California Gold Rush Experience by J.S. Holliday.
It largely consists of diarist William Swain’s entries, and letters back & forth from his wife and brother in Youngstown, NY.
Swain was an eloquent writer and a keen observer, chronicling a land rush that lasted 6 months. Cholera was prevalent for much of the way, in his company of 67 men, 5 die of it en route.
They go through so many travails in getting to California, and the writing from the diggins’ is almost anticlimatic, compared to what things were like on the trail.
Makes for a good arm-chair wrote trip, I really enjoyed the voyage.
one of my ancestors went to california, leaving behind his family in texas, and disappeared. family mystery what happened.
“S-400 missile system: What is it and why does Turkey want it?”
Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps because it is better than the Patriot system and is much cheaper. Here is an article talking about a comparison of the S400 vs the Patriot system vs the THAAD system. Come to think of it, I am not sure whether Turkey was ever offered any of the last two systems. I know for example that Egypt wanted modern US fighters for years but was denied them so they went ahead and decided to get modern Russian jets. That is when Washington threatened them if they did. Damned if you do…
https://www.defenseworld.net/feature/20/Battle_of_the_Air_Defense_Systems__S_400_Vs_Patriot_and_THAAD
I guess that Erdogan has not yet forgotten that time US intelligence organized a coup and tried to have him murdered. Erdogan does not strike me as a forgive and forget type. Perhaps that is why Turkey released a card showing potential targets and they were of US aircraft. Perhaps a message to the US – and Israel too which buys US aircraft-
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/07/turkey-announces-the-targets-of-its-new-air-defense-system.html
Kicking Turkey out of NATO is not as easy as it sounds either as I believe that after the US, Turkey is the next largest troop contributor to that organization. And it controls the Dardanelles which is the bottleneck of the Black Sea. No good options for Trump and squeezing that country with sanctions may make it do something reckless.
but…but… the tax cuts were supposed to cut the budget deficit: https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/12/politics/mnuchin-congress-letter-debt-crisis/index.html
Looks like Yves was able to escape the 3rd world NYC just in time: https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2019/07/14/new-york-city-power-outages-nr-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/top-news-videos/
Haha, thank you! It did not hit my former ‘hood, but I have to think anyone using the subway or busses around then would have felt knock-on effects.
From Concord Management and the End of Russiagate?:
So what will Mueller be able to talk about in his “extended testimony”?