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Links 10/20/2021

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Bones or no bones: Noodle the pug predicts the internet’s mood NPR (David L)

Slideshow: The incredible images that won the 2021 Epson International Pano Awards DPReview (David L)

Big bomb cyclone is set to wallop the West Coast UPI (David L)

Physicists announce results that boost evidence for new fundamental physics PhysOrg

Traffic Camera Mistakes Woman for Car, Issues Ticket to Car Owner PetaPixel (Paul R)

Tuberculosis, Like Covid, Spreads by Breathing, Scientists Report New York Times (David L, resilc)

Lang Lang, again New Criterion (Anthony L). I must confess to not knowing this pianist. Have a listen: “Für Elise” Performed by Lang Lang

#COVID-19

Brazilian Leader’s Pandemic Handling Draws Explosive Allegation: Homicide New York Times (Kevin C)

Science/Medicine

Offshoot of Covid Delta variant on the rise in England Guardian (resilc)

GM: “From the ‘How could we have known?’ (other than by not blatantly ignoring what has been known for 40 years) department: Without Covid-19 jab, ‘reinfection may occur every 16 months’ Guardian. He highlighted:

Dr Nisreen Alwan, associate professor in public health, at the University of Southampton, said: “With rising levels of Sars-CoV-2 infections in the UK, many of us are personally aware of children and adults who got reinfected, sometimes after a relatively short period from their first infection.

Another reason not to get Covid:

Study: Evidence for Biological Age Acceleration and Telomere Shortening in COVID-19 Survivors MedRxIv. Preprint from June. I think we missed this then. Oops.

Politics is derailing a crucial debate over the immunity you get from recovering from Covid-19 STAT (Dr. Kevin)

Prior Covid Infection Is As Effective At Preventing The Virus As Vaccination, U.K. Study Suggests Forbes

Aspirin lowers risk of COVID: New findings support preliminary Israeli trial Jerusalem Post. Note the date.

Children could be dangerous carriers of virus Harvard Gazette. Um, we’ve been saying this since sometime mid 2020 when that was a finding in the large-scale periodic Imperial College studies (absent the scare word “dangerous”) but now this has become A Thing now because vaccines? Why want this A Thing earlier?

GM: “Take a look at this”:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FCD213hXsAYUjpV?format=png&name=4096×4096

The Netherlands was stable at 2K cases and ~5 deaths during most of the summer, and even during the huge spike once they reopened (and then promptly had to again shut down) the nightclubs, there weren’t many deaths. But this chart shows you why — it was restricted to the young. Now it is in the old again. This is around the time we expected the vaccines to start fading for those who got them first in Europe. But I don’t expect to see the well organized military-style booster campaign that stopped the summer wave in Israel. So fun times should lie ahead…

UK/Europe

Why Are UK Covid Infection Rates So High Compared To The Rest Of Western Europe? HuffPost (Kevin W)

Covid: Bring back rules amid rising cases, urge NHS chiefs BBC

US

Southwest Airlines CANCELS plan to fire unvaxxed workers awaiting exemptions after denying sickouts forced mass flight disruption RT (Kevin W). So the Southwest CEO committed securities fraud when he told CNBC the day before the internal memo went out that flight cancellations had nada to do with pilot vax mandate resistance.

China?

If US and EU were divided on China, Aukus ‘betrayal’ just dug the trenches deeper South China Morning Post (J-LS)

Learning to Manage the China Threat Project Syndicate (David L)

Piraeus port deal intensifies Greece’s unease over China links Financial Times

Myanmar

Myanmar military prepares an onslaught for the ages Asia Times (Kevin W)

Old Blighty

Austerity in England linked to more than 50,000 extra deaths in five years Defend Democracy

Haiti kidnapping: ‘400 Mawozo’ gang wants $17 million ransom for American and Canadian missionaries CNN (furzy)

New Cold War

Russia to host international talks with Taliban as Putin looks for gains in U.S. absence Washington Post (Kevin W)

Russia Signals Europe Won’t Get Extra Gas Without Nord Stream 2 Bloomberg (Kevin W). Anyone who hasn’t worked that out is pretty dense. The fact that Russia had to clear its throat is what is noteworthy.

Syraqistan

Poll: Iranians disillusioned with Biden, back turn toward East Responsible Statecraft (resilc)

Imperial Collapse Watch

Long-Term NAEP Scores for 13-Year-Olds Drop for First Time Since Testing Began in 1970s — ‘A Matter for National Concern,’ Experts Say 74 (resilc)

Navy probe finds major failures in fire that destroyed ship Associated Pres (K.O.)

1/6

January 6 committee approves Steve Bannon criminal contempt report, setting up key vote later this week CNN

Russiagate

Indicted Clinton lawyer hired CrowdStrike, firm behind dubious Russian hacking claim Aaron Maté (UserFriendly). Quelle surprise!

Biden

Democrats Agree to Drop Community College From Biden Plan Bloomberg. What is wrong with these people? Free community college reduces inequality and adds to groaf.

Democrats Try to Salvage IRS Bank-Account Reporting With Scaled-Back Plan Wall Street Journal

“The Bidens”: Is the First Family Corrupt, or Merely Crazy? Matt Taibbi. Labert included this in Water Cooler but holy moley.

Federal grand jury indicts Nebraska GOP lawmaker The Hill

The Supreme Court sides with police in 2 qualified immunity cases NPR. Resilc: “Never enough force unless they are coming to the capital.”

The last days inside Trailer 83 Washington Post (resilc). Camp Fire victims with no where to go.

Manslaughter conviction of 21-year-old Oklahoma woman who suffered miscarriage sparks outcry CBS (resilc)

Supply Chain

John Siman: “Is it Psaki’s main assignment to antagonize working-class Americans??”:

Shipping Containers That Spent Weeks Aboard Ships Stuck At Ports Now Being Dumped In Nearby Neighborhoods CBS Los Angeles

Don’t rant about short-staffed stores and supply chain woes Washington Post. John Siman: “Demographic entirely excludes non-PMC”

Health Care

Police say hospital discharged seriously ill man, left him on the street WSB-TV – Atlanta (resilc). Story worse than headline.

2018-2019 Drug Overdose Death Rate Increases Map CDC. Resilc: “It says Oct 2021 on my calendar, where is the 2020 data?”

A New, Cheaper Form of Meth Is Wreaking Havoc on America Atlantic

More non-prescription meds are coming to Md. vending machines WTOP (resilc)

Police State Watch

MUST WATCH: Avi Yemini steps in for woman violently arrested in Melbourne Rebel News (RR). Not the Australia I once knew. Police in Kings Cross (high crime area) were pretty even-handed with incidents.

Our Famously Free Press

YouTube Sued Over Animal Abuse Videos, Accused of Not Enforcing Ban New York Times (furzy). Google yet again acting as if it can do as it damned well pleases.

Woke Watch

Netflix Co-CEO Says He ‘Screwed Up’ When Defending Dave Chappelle Special Wall Street Journal

J&J spent $1.4bn on legal move to shield it from talc cancer claims Financial Times

Oil Prices Remain Elevated As The Energy Crunch Worsens OilPrice

The Bezzle

Facebook Moves to Stop Illegal Sale of Amazon Rainforest on Marketplace TreeHugger (resilc)

Class Warfare

John Deere, the Great Resignation, and the Revenge of the Essential Worker New Republic

Does the Gig Economy Mean We’re Going to Work Forever? Vice. Resilc: “Reverting to the historic norm.”

Empathy For The Bedeviled Heisenberg Report (resilc). Inflation and class blindness.

Antidote du jour. Bob H: “Tippy in Maine during hunting season”:

And a bonus (Chuck L):

See yesterday’s Antidote du Jour here.

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193 comments

  1. cnchal

    > Empathy For The Bedeviled Heisenberg Report (resilc). Inflation and class blindness.

    . . . “It’s a can of corn, how much could it possibly cost? $12?”

    Sure, why not. What else can one expect when Wall Street speculates in the foodstuffs of the nation.

    1. RabidGandhi

      The cost of universal basic needs–health care, education, housing–trebling over a decade, as felt most intensely by the bottom 90%, was not inflation, but when the cost of a can of corn goes up, by golly we need to Do Something drastic like cut wages or tax bank deposits of USD 600.

  2. Pavel

    If Psaki had any sense of honour she would offer her resignation after making that offensive, tone-deaf “treadmill” remark (the latest in many offensive, tone-deaf remarks).

    And if Joe Biden had any guts *or* political savvy he would fire her.

    Sadly neither is the case. I’ve been following US politics since the Nixon days (that ages me, I know) and Psaki is perhaps the worst of the press secretaries due to her obvious scorn of regular folks (as Barack would say) and the press. And after the likes of Ari Fleisher and Dana Peroxide that is saying a lot.

    GWB, Obama, Trump, now Biden… an alarming trend.

    1. nycTerrierist

      Psaki seems burnt-out, the constant lying has fried her brain

      the Olympic-caliber liars like Obama et al. make it look easy

      1. Questa Nota

        Aided and abetted by an asinine assembly of addled journalists.

        best said out loud to get full prosodic impact of machine gun fire.

      2. NotTimothyGeithner

        Memory was she was terrible at State,,but she hid behind the Hillary cultists. Unlike the White House press farce, State had actual foreign reporters who would ask real questions. She did the girl boss routine then, but in response to real questions, not the usual White House Press Corp fluff.

    2. petal

      Jen Psaki: backpfeifengesicht. It seems like every other day she’s smugly insulting working class, struggling people and enjoying it. When you’re having a hard time, what she’s been spouting is the last thing you want to hear-it’s one more kick in the teeth by the comfortable people screwing you over. Someone should make a commercial of her clips to run during campaign season. The Dems are doing everything they can to get epically destroyed at midterms.

      1. Acacia

        Oh yeah. Psaki is helping to re-elect the Donald, and the Dims will actually wonder how it all happened, again.

        1. Wukchumni

          Say what you will about Psaki, but she came in big on a triple word score in Scrabble the other day.

          That said, it seems real easy to find young women to lie for you in Humordor at the highest levels.

          1. Robert

            It doesn’t surprise me that Jen is a good Scrabble player. What was the word she played?
            Regarding her comment about the treadmill supply chain; how was that a “smug insult to the working class”? She was right to express sarcasm when the reporter named this useless item as one of our dire shortages. Jen did point out that the tragedy was in the “delay” of the treadmills. Perhaps instead of a week, one might have to wait two months for the equipment to arrive.

          2. Big River Bandido

            I was under the impression that proper names are disallowed in Scrabble.

            If they *are* allowed, it opens up a lot of potential for high-scoring words. Why, I shudder to think of what one could do with a name like Zbigniew Brzezinski on a triple-word score (or even a triple-letter score, if it’s a Z).

            1. Robert

              Oh, I get it.
              Wukchumni played the word “Psaki” in HIS Scrabble game.
              But Scrabble doesn’t allow the use of proper names as playable words. How about “psaki” which means dog in Greek? Or as the Urban Dictionary informs, it means “lying dog”. So now, we have a word used in the English language. Looks good to go for me!

              1. RabidGandhi

                Dog= σκύλος (skýlos). Not even a cognate.

                To better make your point, you might go with psakí (ψακί/ψακή), which translates as ‘a drop of poison’ and in some regions is slang for bad food/drink.

                I suspect, however, Psaki’s name comes from the Attic ψιάξ (psiáx), a vase painter, or a reference to the vases themselves.

                Curiously, in the Greek press they transcribe Psaki’s name with the accent on the ‘a’ instead of the ‘i’, so they may know something I don’t, or could just be repeating it the way they say it in the US.

      2. lance ringquist

        its why we have been way way to nice to these monsters. link the disastrous policies they have inflicted onto us, to their faces.

        otherwise we get the most progressive president we have had since FDR, nafta joe biden who was neck deep in helping create this mess.

        ignoring the names to the polices did not work to well in 2020.

    3. RabidGandhi

      Psaki’s job is to deflect criticism from the president. The president’s job is to deflect criticism from the donors. The donors’ job is to ensure policies are implemented that benefit them and decimate the poors. Good job, all.

      1. Helena

        You got that precisely–and why decimate the poors? Because how would they know they’d accomplished anything otherwise?

        1. LifelongLib

          Collateral damage. Most probably aren’t even aware of it. They’re just looking at their tax forms.

  3. zagonostra

    >Politics is derailing a crucial debate over the immunity you get from recovering from Covid-19 STAT (Dr. Kevin)

    This debate, however, is decidedly different from other political fights that have undermined the U.S. coronavirus response. Unlike the conspiracy-riddled arguments about hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, the concept of natural immunity has a rational basis and data to support it.

    Are they referring to CNN, MSM, and Ytube de-platforming any conversations on “conspiracy-riddled arguments” about ivermectin? Didn’t CNN doctor Gupta just admit his network lied on JRE. There are numerous instances of even a mention of the topic of ivermectin resulted in censorship. So which “conspiricay” are they referring to the one emanating from the “right” or the one coming from the “left”?.

    Laws can’t be perfect, and they certainly can’t be perfect early in a pandemic. You can’t expect the state policy to change with every preprint. That would just be madness.

    No Law’s can’t be perfect especially early in any crisis. Take the internment of Japanese at the beginning of WWII for instance. But I would counter that the “madness” is going full blown mandates and firing people from their livilihoods for their decision not to take an injection that they fear – for what ever reasons.

    Excellent reader comments in this STAT article, thanks for posting. I see that the CEO of STAT is John W. Henry who is affiliated with John W. Henry Family Foundation and worth $2.8 billion.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Henry

    1. Procopius

      Didn’t CNN doctor Gupta just admit his network lied on JRE.

      Actually, no, he didn’t go that far. He admitted, “They shouldn’t have said that,” and Joe was pressing him, “Wasn’t that a lie?” but he managed to evade admitting it was actually a lie. I understand why some people insist he admitted guilt, but that’s more than what he owned up to. But why should he be pummeled? He wasn’t the one who mischaractized the medicine Joe took, and he did admit it is actual, human medicine and that billions of people have taken it and it has done enormous good. I think that’s what should have been emphasized. Everyone knows that CNN is Fox Lite anyway, and it’s a shame a nice guy like Gupta works there.

      1. Helena

        If you love performers who are faithful to musical periods, Gould is ultimately satisfying. I love Martha Argerich also. Hearing Bach played in a Romantic style makes me want to scream, and I barely got through 5 seconds of Lang-Lang, but thanks for the link.

        1. Judith

          Martha Argerich is one of my favorite pianists. Somewhere I read an interview with her where she mentioned that a jazz musician told her that she made Bach “swing” (I am guessing her recording of the Partita No.2).

          Recently I have been listening to Vikingur Olafsson. His recording of Debussy and Rameau is fascinating. And I find his Bach has something of Gould’s precision without his detachment.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdKkRs6H8jE

          1. Helena

            Thanks, very nice, I always love to find fine artists I have not heard. Love the Tiny Desk series too.

      2. Questa Nota

        Some pianists are strongly associated with some composers. In addition to Gould and Bach, I’d add the pairing of Rubinstein and Chopin.

          1. Helena

            I am listening to this, and it’s astonishing. I was an orchestral player and I hear all those colors from Debussy’s orchestral works in his playing.

            1. urblintz

              amazing control of dynamics, colors, pedaling… consumate artist sans histrionics.

              Lang Lang is a huge talent and he’s secured his place on any list of greats.

              Michelangeli is not a demonstrative pianist but reminds us that one need not watch to hear well the music. The physical calmness through which he produces those amazing fortissimos, etc and the simplicity of his hands in even the most complex scaler passages is beyond compare…

              and watchable in its own right.

              1. Helena

                There was one comment below the video that made me laugh.
                “Is he actually touching the keys, or using “the Force?”

          2. Basil Pesto

            Michelangeli’s Debussy is stupendous.

            I am partial to Kocsis’ interpretation of the preludes, probably not coincidentally because his are on The Debussy Edition. I think there’s probably something to the idea that we’re always most attached to the performer whose recording we first hear where the composer’s work really starts to sink in – as in, you might have heard a piece before, but one interpretation helps you really appreciate it and enjoy it, and you enjoy most subsequent interpretations, but you always have a special fondness for that first one that left a strong impression. Anyway, going to listen to the preludes now.

            1. Basil Pesto

              my mistake! Krystian Zimerman for the preludes, Kocsis for the brilliant ‘Pour le piano’ suite

            2. urblintz

              Points well made and, indeed, Michelangeli’s is the first performance I heard of the Images and so I will never be able to imagine a better one, not even Debussy’s.

            3. urblintz

              and thanks for that link… I hadn’t seen it. The close camera on his hands is a masterclass to behold!

      3. Kevin

        I was home sick back in 2001, up late, and stumbled upon the Van Cliburn Piano Competition. There was a tie for first place, one of whom was a woman named Olga Kern. Listening to her play, I actually had tears coming down my face – first and last time that has ever happened – it was otherworldly the way she played

        1. Helena

          I just looked and found that performance–truly made my day, thank you. The orchestra was fantastic too.

    3. John

      I always enjoy Lang Lang because the orchestra joins him in a love fest for the musical piece. I live in one of his home towns and his concerts here pull in a younger audience, who hear and feel the music and its possibilities differently.

    4. Carolinian

      Lang Lang is perhaps classical music’s best known pianist at this point and as a child prodigy has been famous since he was a boy. My piano playing brother is a huge fan. I’d say his later stuff is a bit mannered but then Gould was often accused of being mannered (and how) but that was more eccentricity. Personally my fave is the great pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim.

  5. The Rev Kev

    “Aspirin lowers risk of COVID: New findings support preliminary Israeli trial”

    CNN Newsflash – ‘An unsubstantiated and unreliable Israeli study recommends people take medicine given to dogs to cure Covid. Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have criticized this unproven approach and have stated that this is a dangerous practice made worse by the fact that typically people ingested this animal product with dihydrogen monoxide when taking it.’

    1. Helena

      Am I being overly paranoid to wonder why it is suddenly dangerous for people to take low-dose aspirin? After it was found to help with COVID?
      I take aspirin daily, it’s the only remedy I can tolerate for my spasticity and arthritis, and works very well. I have been doing this for years. without any problems. It seems like a bonus to find out it has COVID benefits. We are living in dubious times, IMO.

      1. Yves Smith Post author

        IM Doc and his colleagues were super duper pissed about these stories. Hoisted from e-mail:

        This is very confusing – and really inappropriate to be putting this in a national newspaper.

        There are so many heart patients out there and their daily ASA is what is keeping their arteries open.

        There are indeed patients who should not be taking ASA – mainly those who have very malignant hypertension. In that setting it can precipitate brain bleeding. But their internist should be paying close attention to these details. ASA is no more likely to cause GI bleeding than any other NSAID – and has a much lower incidence of renal disease.

        I was informed today that our cardiologist office has been bombed with phone calls about this article – and the accompanying piece on CNN.

        This is yet another example of very very dangerous behavior on the part of the news media. They should not be breathlessly reporting these kinds of singleton research findings and they never ever discuss anything in context.

        1. Helena

          Thanks for that. I trust it will be largely ignored by doctors and their patients and just be an annoying blip. I thought is was atrociously wrong when I saw it.

      1. CanCyn

        It seems as though they really do want the downtrodden to die doesn’t it? My in-laws had a friend who was a pathologist and he claimed that low dose aspirin for blood thinning was the miracle drug intervention of the 20th century, second only to antibiotics. He thought everyone over 60 should take it. My former GP encouraged its use but recently a doc at a walk in clinic complained that too many people are self-medicating and no one should be taking low dose aspirin without their doctor’s advice. Honestly, every time I have almost convinced myself that TPTB aren’t truly evil, they prove me wrong. It helps me sleep at night to think that most are caught up in the system and not intentionally acting the way they do. Do not doubt that on some level I do know that I am fooling myself.
        Recently on NC, someone (apologies for lack of hat tip, can’t remember who) commented that the average North American knows little if anything and cares less about someone like Assad, implying their attention is on their day to day struggle to live and work. I would add that they are struggling to survive in a system that demonstrably hates them – lookin’ at you Jen Psaki. It seems to me that all the details of COVID research and treatment fall into the same category. People don’t have the time or energy to focus on this level of ‘news’ nor do they trust the sources when something does come to their attention. IDK how we get out of this mess.

  7. Basil Pesto

    Also from down under:

    Deaths among the double vaccinated: what is behind the Australian statistics?

    Somebody here once brought up the ‘Lebenunwertes Leben’ concept in relation to the line about ‘yeah but only the olds die of Covid’, which seems to be the editorial line, intended or otherwise, of grauniad aus in the above piece.

    There are countless credible Australian scientists who are and have been sounding the alarm about vaccine overreliance as Australian Covid policy for months now – most tending liberal/progressive, I think. They’re fairly ubiquitous on twitter. I live in hope that they’ll be approached for comment by actual journalists one day.

    1. The Rev Kev

      The Guardian is still spruiking the legend of ‘underlying health conditions’ in that article. If you were killed by Coronavirus but were young, it was because of ‘underlying health conditions’. If you were double vaccinated but still died, it was because of ‘underlying health conditions.’ Over the past few months this phrase has been used to stop people thinking further about unexpected events so many times. It got so that I expected to hear a news story of how somebody got a vaccine, but then their arms dropped off and they spontaneously caught fire but not to worry as they had underlying health conditions.

  8. pck

    RE new, cheaper meth – where is the capital coming from to build and outfit those industrial scale labs? Is it all from the cartels? With the rampant speculation in the “legitimate” economy it makes me wonder how much of that capital might come from supposedly legit investors.

    1. Old Sarum

      I suppose it depends on your definition of capital. If you include the catalytic impulse of proscription as capital, you have the answer.

      Pip-pip!

      1. Procopius

        I have read that the prices of both heroin and cocaine have gone down significantly since the War On Drugs was initiated. Seems like the government can increase the supply and availability of anything by declaring a War on it. They should declare a War On Voting.

  9. griffen

    Big bomb cyclone article portrays a level of impending and widespread doom on the West Coast. Rainfall in buckets! For a region that is devoid of consistent rainfall, seems like the problem will turn from “No Rain”* to where does it all go and will the streets flash flood when it does not go ?

    *a firm nod to Blind Melon and the wonderful video

    1. Wukchumni

      Would’ve been nice to have it touch down 5 weeks ago just when the KNP Fire got going, but you go with the big bomb you have-not the one you want.

      As it were we are going to get about as much rain as had fallen in total since the beginning of the year, so that’ll put paid to the conflagration almost all perpetuated on steep slopes.

      Walking through deep ash afterwards is otherworldly, each step through the crusty grey mantle plunges 8 inches until you hit terra firma, and you feel a bit of what it must be like to have been a moon walker.

      We had an October atmospheric river come through about a decade ago that similar to this version, was nothing but rain below 8k and it too was a wham-bam and scram system, supposed to be sunny the day after the quite determined deluge.

      After the 7+ inches fell in the space of 24 hours back then, we took a foray along the banks of the middle fork of the Kaweah River a few days later and i’ve never seen so much driftwood piled up everywhere, it was a firewood salesperson’s worst nightmare, there being enough wood around to satisfy hundreds if not a 1,001 nights of campfires, all for the taking.

      Some of it had made its way down from on high, as we spied Sequoia bark among the flotsam and jetsam set.

      There’s precious little that’s flat in Sequoia NP, everything now resembling a tilted lunar landscape where the fire didn’t miss a thing in turning a century’s worth of work in accumulating burnables into a fine gray powder, soon to be part of a local extinction event of fish & amphibians as an all encompassing slurry gums up the water works.

    2. lordkoos

      Here in eastern WA we certainly need the rain, but more than that we need a good snow pack to supply irrigation, hopefully the snow that is forecast for the Cascades will stay. I say that because it’s been an unusually warm October, at the moment it is sunshine and 60 degrees — it’s been like this for most of the month. We got a little precipitation last night, but in the old days at this time of year it would have been snow rather than rain.

  10. Tom Stone

    Rain last night, a bit more than an inch.
    Which is welcome, to say the least.
    Code enforcement came out Monday afternoon, I’ll know whether or not my place has been redtagged ( Condemned) by tomorrow.

  11. The Rev Kev

    “Traffic Camera Mistakes Woman for Car, Issues Ticket to Car Owner”

    This story actually gives me a lot of hope this. When Skynet finally makes its move to take over the world and unleashes its army of robot dog terminators equipped with assault weapons to hunt us down, they will probably be equipped with the same level of AI that those traffic cameras use. Those robot dogs will be so busy shooting up shop mannequins and posters of models, that members of the Resistance will be able to come from behind and yank their batteries out.

    1. Helena

      They look fairly easy to trip and tangle up in a rope, too. I can see them on their backs, legs waving in the air helplessly…

        1. Eustachedesaintpierre

          A bag of marbles would I think be effective judging by the reported horrible effect that they had when used against police horses during riots whether political of soccer related, back in 60’s & 70’s England.

          1. synoia

            Yes, I saw Marbles used as a good counter for mounted police on hard roads.

            I suspect they could be a good counter for police lines in sufficient quantities.

            Especially when coupled with a slingshot.

    2. fresno dan

      The Rev Kev
      October 20, 2021 at 8:27 am
      FROM the ARTICLE: It turns out the traffic camera had mistaken the woman for a car due to her shirt, which had the word KNITTER across the front. Knight’s car has the license plate KN19TER, and it seems the woman’s bag strap caused the camera to see “KN19TER” as the “car’s” license plate.
      =================================
      I would have thought the reason was headlights…

      4. Procopius

        It amazes me that OCR (Optical Character Recognition) isn’t better than it is. If you ever tried to convert a book from .PDF to .EPUB you know you have to become a journeyman at constructing Regular Expressions to correct the mistakes. I’ll grant that it’s better than it was in 1997, but not by that much.

            1. jr

              I don’t see how anyone with a smidgen of awareness about the state of the world could impose life on another. I don’t see how anyone planning on having kids wouldn’t educate themselves about the state of the world they are bringing them into. It’s grotesque.

              Frankly, I think bringing a child into this world is the ultimate act of selfishness. Who wants to see their children inhabiting Arrakis ruled by the Harkonnens? Who wants to explain to their children why all the animals and trees and fish and insects alive one generation ago are dead? That the (remaining) books on the shelves are filled with ghosts?

              1. newcatty

                Understand your comment. It is over the top. First, what about the existing children? There has been the related discussion here on NC, about the condescending and intrusive reaction that many people have experienced due to their personal choice not to have kids. I know many people of my older cohort, and younger, who chose that and I always respected it. I now have a great grandchild. Even though she was born in what many petty snobs and a******s would say was a bad situation, she is beautiful and loved and cared for by her mother and family. I do lament the current and future state of her world. Let’s not throw out the babies, who are here and may come, into the cold waters of this reality.

                1. Helena

                  I did strongly consider adopting a child already on the planet. But then I considered that having a stable long-term relationship and keeping a job and not throwing the child into day care and sending them to college. My family was nuts, I barely survived them. I couldn’t feel I was doing a child a favor. I became a cat/dog/goat rescuer. That’s about my speed.

                  1. newcatty

                    Awesome. That’s full speed ahead for you and society. Understand, and relate about your family. I as able to make my own and it included children with good father.

                2. jr

                  It was over the top, forgive my harshness. I still think having a kid is a bad idea. I share a rough childhood with Helena and I’ve known about a trillion people who have had kids for all the wrongs reasons. Some because their parents leaned on them, some because they thought it would magically turn them into adults overnight, some because they unreflectively thought it was “time” for no real reason other than it was “time”. I have a gaggle of nieces, nieces in law, family friend nieces, and one nephew. I enjoy my time with them and smile at their antics. But inside I’m ice cold at the thought of what’s coming.

                  Part of me sees it as simply another step in the evolution of the Cosmos and part of me is knee-deep in the moment. I don’t have the luxury of ignorance that so many enjoy but then that’s my job, to be in between:

                  I am the In-between Man
                  I’m doing the best that I can
                  What exactly that means
                  Changes, it seems
                  Which makes it quite hard to plan.

                  I am the In-between Guy
                  I burrow down deep in the Sky
                  I twist and I turn
                  A melodious worm
                  Unfurling his wings to fly.

                  I am the In-between Fool
                  Who breaks all the rules, as a rule
                  I’m hard to pin down
                  A wandering Clown
                  Who’s happy to take you to school!                   ;)

    4. Dr. John Carpenter

      “Traffic Camera Mistakes Woman for Car”

      This seems like the punch line of a “Yo momma” joke.

  12. Eric

    Watching the articles and comments regarding Covid, vaccines, variants, etc, one question keeps coming to mind: what are we going to DO?!? What I mean by that is: we cannot shut the world down forever, but at the same time, there seems to be this schizophrenic tone that waffles rom “shots aren’t sufficiently protective” to “get your shots” to “mask, mask, mask” to “stay out of indoor places” to “everyone is going to get it anyway”. All of which leads the casual observer to ask themselves – what, exactly, is the endgame here? People need to be together, do things, buy stuff, go places – we are a social species. Add to that the fact that our economy relies on people buying and selling things and the notion that we can all just stop eating out, going on trips, seeing shows, etc. but things will just work out is lunacy – that approach is already starting to cause cracks, and it will ultimately destroy the United States economy. So, absent a cure or effective treatment, and in light of questionable vaccine efficacy – what is the endgame?

    1. .human

      Life by any means as we ricochet on advice from “experts” and authorities while we don’t believe our own lieing eyes.

      1. LawnDart

        “I agree that within a year I think that we will be able to get back to a normal life.”

        Try being positive! All this doom-and-gloom is just silly and making you sad. Look forward for a change and do something smart like book that cruse or overseas vacation now while they’re still cheap– next year this virus-stuff will be over-and-done with. For proof, just see what the experts, the adults-in-the-room, are saying:

        https://www.ibtimes.com/normal-life-possible-2022-despite-new-covid-19-variants-pfizer-ceo-says-3304522

        [LD ducks outta here…]

      2. zagonostra

        Some of the “we” are shouting out “Let’s go Brandon,” believing our own eyes/ears. A critical, historical, skepticism has to be applied as an antidote, else at some point we will be labeled “useless eaters.”

    3. Lee

      “…our economy relies on people buying and selling things…”

      Whose economy depends on which people buying and selling what things? According to an article from the Economic Policy Institute, only 55 million U.S. workers are involved in materially essential labor. One might quibble at the margins about this number, but assuming it’s approximately correct, then only about 1/3 of the workforce is required to produce the necessaries.

      https://www.epi.org/blog/who-are-essential-workers-a-comprehensive-look-at-their-wages-demographics-and-unionization-rates/

      1. Eric

        I wouldn’t argue with this at all – but people need to be employed doing something (even if it’s a BS job), or else you get a revolution.

        1. Lee

          Being deprived of engaging in productive labor can be a shock to the system. I’ve seen it in myself, the unemployed, and retirees. However, assuming one has adequate income, adjustment to leisure pursuits: arts, crafts, sport, social criticism, etc. is certainly possible. Life, if provided basic material support, finds a way

          1. saywhat?

            Not to mention that given adequate land, one CAN engage in productive labor including farming (or at least gardening), a home workshop, etc., not to mention raising strong, resilient children.

            Please, conflating working for wages with “productive labor” is not only often factually wrong (ie. Graber’s BS jobs) but is insulting to the very concept of “work” which certainly does NOT (normally) require a boss.

    4. Return of the Bride of Joe Biden

      I’ve been living a life like you describe for over a decade. I’ve done it since the beginning puposefully to destroy the system you describe.

      Resistance may indeed be futile, but the Borg can **** ***.

    5. albrt

      The endgame is most people will die sooner than they would have if they had gotten old pre-COVID. The bright side is it will be easier to make Social Security solvent without taxing the rich if most people die right around retirement age going forward.

      The thing that’s creeping me out is that COVID seems more and more like an episode of the Twilight Zone or the original Star Trek.

      “Mysterious disease is like a cold but it causes people to lose an unknown number of years off their lives each time they catch it.”

    7. Jeremy Grimm

      Imagine there’s no problem … to rapidly test all Corona infection. It’s easy if you try. Imagine there’s a test … to identify who’s infected and who might their contagion spread … and estimate what viral loads they spread. Imagine there’s paid sick leave, and the sick stay home in bed. You may say I’m a dreamer …

    8. Maritimer

      My opinion:

      It is not about Covid; it is about installing Total Resource Control. Any resource of value (Humans included) will be digitally monitored and tracked. First step is Vaccine Passport, then Passport on mandated cellphone, don’t leave home without it. Onwards to installed Body Chip……Think 19th-20th Century, Company Town, Company Store….except now Company is Earth, owned and operated by the Elite. Watch COP26 Dog ‘n Rich Pony Show for further movement of the Project.

      So, act accordingly. One of the first moves to consider is how to live between the above as there will be holes in the system. One might be to move out of any area that will go 5G, 6G…..

  13. fresno dan

    https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-10-19/trumps-response-to-powells-death-lays-bare-the-politics-of-mourning

    There was nothing from the immediate past president, Donald Trump – not even a brief, rote statement of condolence. And on Tuesday morning, Trump unloaded on the recently deceased man, dead at 84 from COVID-19 complications, who had crossed party lines to endorse Trump’s Democratic opponents in 2016 and 2020.

    “Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media,” Trump said in a statement. “Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO [Republican in Name Only], if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!”
    ================================================
    On the one hand, the statement about the very important mistakes (due to sheer idiocy or purposeful fabrications) made by Powell are true. Unfortunately, the Trump bombast will obscure the truth of the Trump observation and provide an excuse to discuss everything BUT the factual accuracy of Powell’s presentation about WMD’s. Because America can’t handle the truth – the entire political establishment of the US got us into Iraq for venal and imbecilic reasons. And that this is a foundational aspect of the US political system.

    1. ex-PFC Chuck

      Krystal Ball discussed Powell’s Iraq caper extensively on the Breaking Points show this past Monday. Unfortunately it’s not obvious where a link to the show might be on there website but it must be there somewhere.

    2. RabidGandhi

      I’m old enough to remember when Sam Stein abhorred all things Republican.

      Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.

    4. Jeremy Grimm

      I am no fan of GEN Powell. His bigger hammer strategy has been glorified beyond the famous GEN Grant strategy based on the observation that the Union could lose eight men for every Confederate soldier killed and win. Those kinds of strategy are not what I would want taught at West Point.

      I remain mystified why the Iraqi Army did not go to ground long before the u.s. Army showed up. Saddam could have equipped his Army with weapons and munitions hidden in secret caches all around the country. The Iraqi Army could have deliberately disbanded with clear assignments of chains of command and an overall strategy for harassing the u.s. Army following the u.s. Army occupation of Iraq. The Iraqi Army could have emerged after the u.s. troops were situated and created havoc.

      Given the time Powell’s build-up allowed to Saddam, I am surprised he did not take his money and find a safe haven, somewhere — Argentina was friendly enough to former Nazis. There must be someplace remote, to become lost from u.s. extradition. Worst case for the u.s. — given all of Powell’s clear warnings and telegraphing of u.s. military intent — Saddam or one of his more ambitious generals could have implemented a tactic like that retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General, Paul K. Van Riper [no relation to Air Force GEN Riper in “Doctor Strangelove”], used to terrible effect in the Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) war-gaming exercise.

  14. Carla

    Re: article about NAEP scores. My interest was piqued by the name of the web site: T74, with an address of http://www.the74million.org. Turns out, it stands for 74 million American schoolchildren. As usual, I wanted to know “about” this source. An editorial staff consisting of entirely white faces except for one intern made me suspicious. Then I looked at the “Partners” who fund T74: they include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation. I fear that the74million.org could be just another front in the long war to privatize and corporatize public education. These players have been spinning the facts and lying about educational results and charter schools for years — why would they stop now?

    https://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/lets-review

    I will watch for further analysis and reporting about the NAEP scores.

    2. Yves Smith Post author

      This is ad hominem. NAEP is a long-standing survey. This is a noteworthy (bad) outcome. Only the top 10% of students didn’t do worse.

  15. The Rev Kev

    “Bones or no bones: Noodle the pug predicts the internet’s mood”

    Would it make a difference if Noodle was given a cup of coffee first before deciding? It works for me. I mean, a day without coffee is like….come to think of it, I have no idea what that would be like.

    1. Raymond Sim

      I used to see that effect quite often in Pennsylvania, Centre County in particular, but also when looking down onto the floodplains of the Brandywine and its tributaries after ice storms. It really is pretty cool isn’t it?

      Something similar can happen when lots of very fine snow is suspended in the wind on a very cold, very clear day.

  17. SE

    “But I don’t expect to see the well organized military-style booster campaign that stopped the summer wave in Israel. So fun times should lie ahead…”

    Is this irony? Israel’s summer wave was out of control despite forced boosters.

    1. Raymond Sim

      Is this irony? Israel’s summer wave was out of control despite forced boosters.

      Israel as compared to?

  18. Mr. Magoo

    Re: “Democrats Agree to Drop Community College From Biden Plan”

    Somehow, rolling over to the what amounts to the best parts of the plan takes a special type of stupid for Democrats. The goal of free college (university) has many detractors, and raises many questions wrt costs vs benefits. Free community college just makes a lot of sense and is the perfect baby step to get there. Not only that, community colleges are the perfect place to re-institute vocational and technical training necessary for re-industrialization. We wouldn’t want that would we?

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      It’s particularly amusing as young people are the key to democratic party electoral success, but Team Blue keeps kicking.

      It’s like the governors race here in Virginia. Terry Mac did one decent thing as governor, mostly because Kaine caused such a crisis with felony voting resotration even Terry Mac saw a problem. Other than that, he set up some deals with Chinese companies that never panned out. He doesn’t run positive ads, and shockingly, the non outwardly religious nut is tied. The Republican is promising the “largest education budget ever” (always a dumb promise because of inflation), to raise teachers pay, and to cut the grocery tax (sounds good but without an income tax hike would blow a budget hole; Virginia has a part time legislature, so changes like this lead to disaster), and cutting the recently increased gas tax.

      Terry Mac is…once knew Bill Clinton and err…he was the governor after Taliban Bob. Now, he’s sending out emails griping about how his grassroots spporters are letting him down.

      1. The Rev Kev

        ‘It’s particularly amusing as young people are the key to democratic party electoral success, but Team Blue keeps kicking.’

        Not surprising here. Remember when Biden told Millennials ‘The younger generation now tells me how tough things are. Give me a break. No, no, I have no empathy for it. Give me a break.’

        The younger generation are being financially cannibalized here and they themselves describe their futures as bleak. Yet this is the generational who will be expected to ‘Build Back Better.’ Seriously? Somebody should tell President Brandon that you can’t build back something with nothing.

        https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbpxx8/biden-trashes-millennials-in-his-quest-to-become-even-less-likable

        1. NotTimothyGeithner

          It’s not different than the two tier deals offered to labor unions over the decades. Promise things will get better and argue the young are letting down the olds, but now John Deere amid the Right to Repair movement has suits killing themselves on the factory floor.

        2. Dr. John Carpenter

          Yep. I don’t understand how anyone is surprised one bit. Biden made his contempt clear before the election. He also said “nothing will fundamentally change” which is about as straightforward as it gets. Maybe because he also said “$2000 checks” and we were to know he meant $1400 checks people assume he meant something than “I have no empathy” despite saying that?

        3. Lee

          Biden, member of the luckiest generation: no experience of the Great Depression, too young to fight in WW2, comes of age during post-war boom times, avoided serving in Vietnam because he got 5 student deferments and had asthma as a kid. Nice for some.

    2. dougie

      We wouldn’t want that would we?

      Let me share a story about my favorite subject, ME! lol…….In 1977, I received free community college, in the form of the Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA), which paid me minimum wage for class time, bought my books, etc. It totaled about $100 a week, for 1 year.

      Before that “hand-up”, I received unemployment insurance, food stamps whenever I could manage them, and held as many as 8 jobs in a calendar year. In the ensuing 4+ decades, I never sought any unemployment or other benefits. I held exactly 2 jobs in 24 years, before starting my own business 18 years ago.

      Currently, I am downshifted, no longer active in daily business operations, and free to spend my time serving our growing staff of (currently) 12 . They all receive well above industry average compensation, full benefits, and a rewarding career. I take great pride in having helped build a very diverse staff of LGBTQ and minority types, and we even have a couple of non-judgmental God botherers in the mix, because “culture” is king.

      To answer your question? Apparently, they wouldn’t and DON”T want that. My business model isn’t set up to provide the world with gig economy human fodder.

  19. Regulus regulus

    Aaron Mate has cracked the case again and will continue to crack the case ad infinitum. The FBI was reckless by over-reaching their authority, then, but now the FBI is too meek by taking a campaign attorney’s claim at face-value without investigation. (Just being The Federal Bureau of idk… stuff.) The DOJ was unable to police itself, then, but is now rolling up a network of liberal FBI agents who framed the Trump campaign. This will go on so long as the moola in keeps rolling for Mate.

    And hell yeah, the FBI lies, usually to mitigate exposure of their own tush, not the tushes of political flunkies, especially the ones out of power.

    1. pjay

      This is a rather puzzling comment. For one thing, this is not about some single entity called “FBI” or “DOJ” that is politically homogeneous across time and space. It is about factions and networks working within (and outside) these institutions for partisan political ends. But most puzzling of all is this sentence: “This will go on so long as the moola in keeps rolling for Mate.” Could you elaborate?

  20. Old Sarum

    My Bitcoin question:

    As it becomes institutionalized, will the courts order restitution in Bitcoin, or US dollars? And if the former, how?

    Pip-pip.

  21. The Rev Kev

    “Navy probe finds major failures in fire that destroyed ship”

    ‘the more than 400-page report…lists three dozen officers and sailors whose failings either directly led to the ship’s loss or contributed to it.’

    Can’t help but feel that the whole story has yet to be told. That ship was overseas for several years before returning to the US for major maintenance. The crew was faulted for many things but was this essentially the same crew that served with the ship while overseas? How many transfers were there. Previously that ship was assigned with the Pacific Fleet. But as has been revealed, this fleet is notorious for short-changing ships on training, maintenance, crew numbers and all sorts of malign neglect. So I would be interested to know if it was because of all this that led to this crew being unprepared for a major fire in port. I don’t think that this story is finished yet.

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      I wonder about the post 9/11 changes at the old NIS and potential effects on the 7th Fleet. Is it being watched the way it’s supposed to? The NIS was established to investigate purchasing by admirals abroad. Are they still doing this?

    2. Helena

      Jeez, just look what they did to Capt. Brett Crozier for being an excellent captain. How many others like him, and good crew, we didn’t hear about?

    3. Jeremy Grimm

      Ships in the u.s. Navy are commonly constructed from welded steel — which might leave one to wonder how a ship could burn. But if you have ever been aboard a steel ship you should have noticed how thickly they are painted with hideously ugly gray enamel paint. Making that observation, give a moment to explore your gut feelings about the dangers of fire on ships-of-the-line. As an able seaman, what might you think — and if you did not think of the horrors — I blame the chiefs around you for their laxity. I believe most[I would hope ALL!] u.s. Navy chiefs are aware of and more than terrified of the dangers of a fire shipboard. How could they NOT know about and know how to use the main firefighting foam system and all other fire related systems — trained or not?

      Maintenance of the foam system was mentioned. To me, that clearly reflects a command decision made above their rank. And did the foam system function … at all … had it been activated? The link was not clear to me on this point. Shit may flow downhill, but as far as this fire goes, I believe the blame and ample punishments for this disaster should be pumped uphill.

      Unless very heavily restrained from instincts of self-preservation, I also wonder how any able seaman would not have taken measures, even to a point nearing insubordination, when faced with the apparent laxity toward fire danger, which seems to have afflicted this ship’s officers. [I can only wonder how many of those officers came through the ranks.] I also wonder how many able seamen populate the u.s. ships-of-the-line — as opposed to volunteers who joined hoping for money to pay for college.

  23. Bandit

    Aspirin lowers risk of COVID: New findings support preliminary Israeli trial Jerusalem Post

    “Low-dose aspirin is a common treatment for anyone suffering from blood clotting issues or in danger of stroke, including most people who had a heart attack or a myocardial infarction. Although affecting the respiratory system, the coronavirus has been associated with small blood vessel clotting, causing tiny blockages in the pulmonary blood system, leading to ARDS – acute respiratory distress syndrome.”

    This article completely ignores the now accepted knowledge that the mRNA vaccines can actually cause blood clots and are directly responsible for numerous cases of myocardial infarction especially among teenagers and young adults who had no predisposition. So, whereas aspirin has been shown to help people with corona virus infections, it should be mentioned that it is also needed for people who may suffer from mRNA vaccine adverse reactions such as myocardial infarction and blood clots. I am surprised it is not prescribed to all mRNA vaccine recipients, since it could prevent such serious complications.

    1. Helena

      Maybe people taking low-dose aspirin is interfering with this study ‘in the wild’ they are conducting on us.

    2. Eustachedesaintpierre

      John Campbell has been raging for sometime about the fact that not aspirating before the actual injection, means that there is no way of knowing whether an inadvertent intravenous jab has taken place which can cause myocardial infarction. Jimmy Dore actually featured the Doc & the subject & soon after John discovered a peer reviewed study that supports his position, which is also supported by a leading German Cardiologist.

      It was once general practice to aspirate in order to check that there was no blood in the syringe, but for some reason it was abandoned – I guess that aspirin wouldn’t hurt either way.

      The vid is titled ” John gets fact checked.

      Intravenous Injection of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) mRNA Vaccine Can Induce Acute Myopericarditis in Mouse Model

      https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab707/6353927

      1. Anonymous 2

        One of the reasons aspiration seems to have been abandoned by many medics seems to be the influence of paediatricians arguing that it causes increased pain. I can see that for children but surely adults can be asked to sit still?

        1. jr

          I’d happily take a bit more of a pinch to avoid an enflamed heart. Since when were necessary medical procedures required to be cushy?

    3. megrim

      I was explicitly told by the nurse who gave me my first dose of Moderna (back in April) not to take anything but Tylenol–no NSAIDS! sheesh

      1. lordkoos

        After all the hoopla about Ivermectin overdoses this summer, the most commonly seen overdose by ERs is Tylenol.

    4. Maritimer

      “I am surprised it is not prescribed to all mRNA vaccine recipients, since it could prevent such serious complications.”
      *******
      This is one of the problems for the Kovid Kartel: they cannot admit that there are ANY problems because that would lead to Exceptions, Exemptions. With those, One-Size-Fits-All is out the window. Folks will be looking at their own personal health profile and analysing injection risk based on that. Also blows up the whole Mandate Strategy.

      In my own case, I already know of three factors cited by Experts as indicating increased risk from a Covid injection. Look through the research and determine your own risk analysis not the general one they throw out there.

    5. Basil Pesto

      This article completely ignores the now accepted knowledge that the mRNA vaccines can actually cause blood clots and are directly responsible for numerous cases of myocardial infarction especially among teenagers and young adults who had no predisposition.

      Source please. Myocarditis (heart inflammation) is not the same thing as myocardial infarction (heart attack).

  24. The Rev Kev

    “If the US and EU were divided on China, Aukus ‘betrayal’ just dug the trenches deeper”

    Next year in Madrid there will be a NATO Summit. Washington will demand that the NATO countries contribute forces to take on China and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has already demanded this too – after a trip to the US, that is. After AUKUS, that will be a hard sell. If Russia is supposed to be a great threat, why would they send their warships to the other side of the planet then? And to whose gain? Certainly not Europe. They may be convinced to send token forces like there are now but they will hardly trash their economic relations with China just because Biden says so. That would be an epic example of self-harm that.

    2. Vandemonian

      To be fair, if Russia decides to invade the NATO countries, their warships aren’t going to provide much in the way of defence. The Danube, the Oder, the Dniester and the Vistula are a bit too shallow for big ships.

      1. Anonymous 2

        Yes, but why would Russia want to invade NATO? It would be starting a war it would be bound to lose? Putin may be a deeply unpleasant man but I don’t believe him to be mad. Or do people think he is entering his dotage?

  25. CanCyn

    Apologies if someone has started a thread about the police dog already, my internet connection is sluggish today and NC has been slow to update … It is hard to express the absolute joy I felt watching that dog completely and utterly disobey his handler. I have no doubt that poor training is probably the real reason for his lack of desire to engage with the ‘perps, but I am going to stick with the idea that he knows who the real bad guys are ?

    1. Helena

      That lovely soul does not have ‘the right stuff’ it seems. I really pray he/she was not punished for that. I’ll bet the adoption offers are pouring in to rescue that dog. I’d do it.

      1. Kevin

        Had the same feeling. I do know police dogs can become “too aroused”, their handlers need to keep them alert, but not over-aroused. – I think the passivity of the “offenders” confused the dog also?

        1. Helena

          It looked to me like the cop was pointing at the people and giving some kind of attack command and the dog was like, nope. Making a personal decision. I’m really hoping it finds a nice job in somebody’s house, going on walks and playing with somebody’s kids.

          1. Jeremy Grimm

            I guess that police attack dogs may be more moral than u.s. Police Officers. Somehow, that does not greatly surprise me.

      2. Foy

        This reminds of a great Australian racehorse Chautauqua, who won lots of races, but one day woke up and decided that his work was done and he wasn’t gonna race anymore, and no way was he jumping out of the barrier chasing those other guys. “I’m done”. The horse is even more of legend now, he left on his own terms!

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gW8u16RQFs

  26. t

    That’s hardly the first time dogs trained to stop dangerous actors have turned on handlers who were whomping on people who weren’t fighting or even resisting.

    When pack behaviors is your core, you shut down inappropriate and risky behavior. We call the dogs who break up dog fights splitters.

    1. newcatty

      The dog , as you seemed to be experienced with trained dogs, may have been stopping those inappropriate and risky behaviors demanded by his or her handlers due to core pack behaviors, that dog revealed his or her core integrity.

  27. Wukchumni

    A New, Cheaper Form of Meth Is Wreaking Havoc on America Atlantic

    Less than a year later, the P2P crystal meth from Mexico started showing up. Mahoney was inundated with meth patients who came in ranting, conversing with phantoms. “I can’t even compare it to what I was seeing at UCLA,” he told me. “Now we’re seeing it instantaneously, within hours, in people who just used: psychotic symptoms, hallucinations, delusions.”

    Mitchell told me that the most visible homelessness—people sleeping on sidewalks, or in the tents that now crowd many of the neighborhoods in L.A.—was clearly due to the new meth.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Old school meth took down a couple peeps in a disorderly fashion and in the process effected everybody they knew in a not good way in my circle of friends, latter-day Jekyl & Hyde sagas.

    This new meth and the output from down under expanding mightily is par for the course in these not so united states only loosely aligned in terms of drug usage.

    The symptoms of the new meth are similar to what somebody using Datura would go through, I wonder if that is being utilized somehow?

    1. Jeremy Grimm

      As a lifelong sufferer from sinus allergies, I hope some new meth precursors might make it easier for me to obtain pseudoephedrine.

  28. Raymond Sim

    Lol, that Forbes headline.

    “Previous mauling by bears as effective as bear safety training in reducing maulings by bears.”

      1. Raymond Sim

        That would be fun. I suspect it’s a paraphrase of something someone else said, but if so I’ve forgotten who.

  29. jr

    Time Tax:

    It’s time to get $crewed by Navient, so I started at around 10 AM trying to send in my paperwork on my computer. Due to the process and a small error on my part, I have now spent 2 hours only to find out I will have to go to a print shop to fax them. I called but the woman said she cannot correct the mistakes, the paperwork must be fixed and resent. This will cost me an additional 15 minutes to do.

    Time lost: 2:15 hours

  30. Tom Collins' Moscow Mule

    ‘Politics is derailing a crucial debate over the immunity you get from recovering from Covid-19’—-STAT

    “Like the other debates, though, it has devolved into partisan bickering, highlighting how the state of American politics has ruined the country’s scientific process and made nuanced debates all but impossible.”

    Aside from the tremendous burden placed upon health care systems and the scientific class, it is all just more noise, because the prime directive of a society based upon speculation specifically and zero sum casino capitalism more generally, is simply the maintenance of an increasing wealth accumulation, forever; where, “the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino.”

    Global central bank policy has clearly demonstrated that factual reality. It is the only thing that really matters, for a certain subset of the population. And that status quo social order will be maintained at any cost, as has already been clearly demonstrated.

    Returning to the MSM sideshow that is the metaphorical wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, there is a wholesale preparation of the public mind for “An acceptable level of deaths?”, following a pattern of “denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.” The public managerial class, who are also social scientists, are already fully aware of that reality and the tools needed to manage the public mind and its perception of a carefully constructed social reality. See for example,

    https://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/blog/an-acceptable-level-of-deaths

    https://theconversation.com/learning-to-live-with-covid-the-tough-choices-ahead-158992

    1. newcatty

      Doesn’t this position by the public managerial class ( PMC, not private) reflect the same rationalization of the acceptable levels of death of children by amoral actors in wars, “conflicts “, apartheid regimes and destruction of poor countries ‘ elected governments? Of course, not just children, all civilians are seen as “unfortunate collateral deaths “. The PMC are most likely not The social scientists, especially psychologists and sociologists, who have sold their souls for money and position in the PMC. They are the advisors and, often, architects of the constructed “reality”.

  31. Eureka Springs

    Chappelle’s final netflix special was very good. The woke crowd sure know how to shoot themselves in the foot. It may be time to come up with a new word easier to say which means – inverted totalitarian wokeism. Chappelle demonstrates in the show he’s clearly spent much time (years) thinking about it all. Whether one agrees with his process and verbiage or not it’s beyond foolish, imo, not to give much more acceptance to someone different than you who is honestly trying to understand.

    1. Soredemos

      Yves touched on this in the anger post yesterday, about how it’s normal now to be expected to be responsible for other people’s feelings. ‘Snowflake generation’ is a reactionary right-wing sneer, but there is some truth to it. We desperately need stoicism to make a big comeback. You can’t control most of what happens to you, but you can try to control how you react to it.

      Oh, I’m sorry, Chappelle ‘triggered you’ by not being fully on board with your trans cult thinking? Toughen up. How are these perpetually offended people going to deal with events if and when civilization begins to break down in earnest?

      1. drumlin woodchuckles

        They won’t. Let Darwin take them. We won’t have to cater to their feelings any more or avoid triggering their safe spaces.

    2. lyman alpha blob

      I watched it (twice) and I agree. And I never would have noticed there was a new special were it not for all the protest from the woke crowd, so if their intent was for less people to notice the special, clearly all the attempts to cancel it had the opposite effect.

      I feel like with this special, as with a lot of cultural markers (the right getting up in arms about [probably dating myself here] The Last Temptation of Christ for example), those complaining the loudest didn’t actually watch it to see what he was trying to say. I don’t think it was Chappelle’s best stuff comedy-wise, but clearly he was hurt by the reaction he’d received in the past and felt misunderstood. The message I took from it – men and women are different, trans men and women are also different biologically from those born as male or female, and all of that is also great and those differences should be celebrated because it takes all types. Pretty much the same thing he’s been saying in other contexts for a couple decades now.

      I thought the best part of the special that made me more sympathetic to the trans community was when Chappelle related the conversation with his trans friend where he told her he didn’t understand what she was trying to do or why, and her reply was something along the lines of “I don’t need you to understand, I just need you to know that I’m a person going through a human experience.”

      I would hope that everyone could relate to that.

  32. Cocomaan

    So the Southwest CEO committed securities fraud when he told CNBC the day before the internal memo went out that flight cancellations had nada to do with pilot vax mandate resistance

    Yes, but we have multiple fed governors engaging in mis or malfeasance with their investments while on the governors board. Nobody cares anymore.

  33. MonkeyBusiness

    Southwest CEO has nothing on Elon Musk.

    We have the Fed chairman, his minions and Congresscritters trading stock with inside knowledge. In the land of the blind, a truly blind man is nothing.

  34. CanChemist

    Great article from the Atlantic about the change in meth synthesis. In the chemistry community the assumption has been that ‘dirty’ meth and random contaminants have been the issue in terms of toxicity. It would be interesting if the US govt made more of an effort to really analytically profile seized drugs to try to identify which compound(s) are causing the bulk of the issue. This article does an amazing job of laying out in detail how profound the consequences are.

    It’s also worth mentioning that a lot of the chemical precursors for many drugs including meth are actually originating from the USA:

    Heroin’s Hidden Ingredient Is a Chemical Made by U.S. Companies
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-03-16/heroin-s-hidden-ingredient-courtesy-of-a-u-s-company-video

    Chemical Maker Probed by U.S.-Mexico Over Alleged Precursors Use
    https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/chemical-maker-probed-by-u-s-mexico-over-alleged-precursors-use-1.1665487

      1. newcatty

        Here at the USPER, we don’t know how lucky we are. Here, here in the USPER the sick are dumped on the streets. It’s ok, come on man, cause the homeless ill are already there. Its ok, come on man, becuse the poor, sick and losers will always be among us. It’s natural and necessary to make the world go around. Promise: Nothing will fundamentally change. For who?

  36. NotTimothyGeithner

    Ole Manchin is threatening to become an independent. I would say let him. He did vote to convict Trump twice while representing a state Trump carried by a 2 to 1 margin.

    1. griffen

      He could steal a page from Michael Scott when he does so. But in the series, Michael is actually planning to declare bankruptcy.

      “I Declare Independent”

  37. lyman alpha blob

    RE: Piraeus port deal intensifies Greece’s unease over China links

    “Looking back it would have been better for the Piraeus port not to be sold,” said Werner Hoyer, president of the European Investment Bank, during a visit to Athens in June.

    You think so? Funny how you say that today now that Germany has been made whole after trashing the economy of an entire country- pretty convenient that, Werner.

  38. lyman alpha blob

    Great article from Aaron Mate today. There is more detail in that one article about who did what, when and for whom than in any of the breathless “Russia did it for reals, just trust the unnamed sources” articles from the last five years. You know, actual evidence.

  39. Raymond Sim

    If I’m not mistaken, it’s been known for some time that tuberculosis is spread via aersosols. In fact I don’t think any other mode of transmission of the respiratory form has ever been documented.

    It seems to me there’s a recent trend of mainstream outlets rather suddenly acknowledging various of the darker facts at hand – things long known of, neuroinvasion, the superantigen and so on. Could it be the beginnings of whatever the next pr strategy will be?

  40. JBird4049

    >>>Shipping Containers That Spent Weeks Aboard Ships Stuck At Ports Now Being Dumped In Nearby Neighborhoods

    Those shipping containers being dumped are the standard 40 foot long ones? During the Forever Wars a lot of them would go missing; large, very strong steel boxes made to withstand the open sea for seven or more years were valuable. They were used for buildings and for scrap mental.

    When the military sent one person to Iraq or Afghanistan, the equivalent of one whole forty foot container of supplies would have to be shipped to support them for a year. When ever they sent over more people, the bigger my bonuses would be (well with the rest of the shipping company of course!). Send a few hundred thousand people and you send a few hundred thousand containers at least. Made me conflicted it did. The more war, the more profit, and the fatter the paycheck. Even being a very, very small cog in the Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex can be profitable. Heck, just having many of them get destroyed or go missing was profitable as they were insured and I am positive that they negotiated some nice contracts with Uncle Sam.

    Maybe like in the war zones, Americans can make houses of them. They already do that with worn out containers that are sold. A big-rig with the right trailer, some construction crews, some wielders, and some of the plans floating around in the internet… Like the rest of California, there is a big, fat homeless population in and around Los Angeles.

    Just saying…

  41. Anonymous in Michigan

    Lang Lang, again
    But Für Elise, Bagatelle No.25 in A?
    Eye roll emoji at least twice.
    A la Cheech and Chong: “How cliché”

    I don’t know why serious artists even perform the piece, it’s not a good example of Beethoven’s style and displays no compositional mastery at all. In short, it’s a terrible piece.

    Try this instead:
    Sonata #23 in f minor, op. 57 “Appassionata” 3rd movement on Spotify
    This work displays Beethoven at his best, he was after, the world’s most skilled pianist at the time he wrote this.

    I would like to offer my services as editor of the classical music section of the links.
    Thanks in advance.

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