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Links 6/1/2022

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Lambert and I, and many readers, agree that Ukraine has prompted the worst informational environment ever. We hope readers will collaborate in mitigating the fog of war — both real fog and stage fog — in comments. None of us need more cheerleading and link-free repetition of memes; there are platforms for that. Low-value, link-free pom pom-wavers will be summarily whacked.

And for those who are new here, this is not a mere polite request. We have written site Policies and those who comment have accepted those terms. To prevent having to resort to the nuclear option of shutting comments down entirely until more sanity prevails, as we did during the 2015 Greek bailout negotiations and shortly after the 2020 election, we are going to be ruthless about moderating and blacklisting offenders.

–Yves

P.S. Also, before further stressing our already stressed moderators, read our site policies:

Please do not write us to ask why a comment has not appeared. We do not have the bandwidth to investigate and reply. Using the comments section to complain about moderation decisions/tripwires earns that commenter troll points. Please don’t do it. Those comments will also be removed if we encounter them.

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Watch: Monkey family exchanges love with human-like hugs, internet finds endearment ‘unconditional’ FirstPost (J-LS)

Australian scientists discover ‘biggest plant on Earth’ off WA coast Guardian (Kevin W)

Astronomers Unexpectedly Capture ‘Great Dimming’ of Supergiant Star Betelgeuse CNET

World’s first raspberry picking robot cracks the toughest nut: soft fruit Guardian (David L)

How to Make the Universe Think for Us Quanta (David L)

The Characteristics of the First Women to Become Army Rangers RealClearScience (Dr. Kevin)

Want to know whether that journal is scamming you? Introducing the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker Retraction Watch (Kevin W)

A Major Science Journal Publisher Adds A Weird Notice To Every Paper. What’s Behind This? Forbes (Dr. Kevin)

#COVID-19

Science/Medicine

Asia

Normal. With Chinese Characteristics Heisenberg Report (resilc)

Celebrations at midnight as Shanghai reopens after draconian two-month COVID-19 lockdown ABC Australia. Kevin W: “There Is An Alternative.”

US

Airlines’ mask mandates may soon be REINSTATED as DOJ appeals ruling by Trump-appointed judge that struck down face covering requirement on public transportation Daily Mail

During the Omicron Wave, Death Rates Soared for Older People New York Times. Resilc: “Plan for a solvent Social Security system.”

China?

US senator’s trip to Taiwan ‘very dangerous’; PLA sent warplanes Global Times

Beijing’s air and sea patrols near Taiwan a ‘necessary action against collusion’ with US, PLA says South China Morning Post

Brexit

Brexit Impact Tracker – 25 May 2022 – The Rise of ‘Egocracy’ and Northern Ireland Gerhard Schnyder (guurst)

Canada to temporarily decriminalize some drug possession to tackle abuse problem National Post (resilc)

New Not-So-Cold War

Ukraine. Military Summary And Analysis 31.05.2022 YouTube. May be too much detail for readers on a daily basis. But very good on the Kharkiv and Kershon “offensives,” as well as the Russian efforts to cut up the cauldrons in Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk versus the Ukraine retreats.

Turkey cancels NATO drills in Black Sea on basis of Montreux Convention, says top diplomat Tass

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Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with French TV channel TF1, Moscow, May 29, 2022 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (guurst)

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Shell, Orsted to lose Russian gas from June 1 over refusal to pay under new system Interfax

Germany Slashes Summer Train Fares More Than 90 Percent To Curb Driving, Save Fuel Yale

Polish inflation at 13.9% in May: flash estimate Radio Poland

EU partially bans Russian oil, Jaishankar bound for East Europe Hindustan Times. J-LS: “Interesting details re Jaishankar.”

Poland’s prime minister called for a ban on third countries buying oil from Russia Political Lore

UK and EU hit Russian oil cargoes with insurance ban Financial Times. This theoretically could have real teeth, but Greek shipping magnates (whose ships are never flagged as Greek for tax and other reasons) have gotten carveouts to past sanctions, so I’d watch for the fine print here.

The EU should forget about sanctions – they’re doing more harm than good Guardian (Kevin W)

Europe’s Far-Flung Energy Woes American Conservative (resilc)

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Ukrainian Official Behind Western Media Reports Of Russian Atrocities Fired By Ukrainian Parliament Caitlin Johnstone (KLG)

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Cracks Show in Western Front Against Russia’s War in Ukraine Wall Street Journal

Egypt signs €8 billion deal with Siemens for high-speed rail system DW. “Nice cars, rode them in Russia. Egypt will have high speed trains before USA USA.”

Syraqistan

The Afghanistan Collapse: Inspector General Finds US Spent 20 Years Building a Dependent Potemkin Nation AntiWar (resilc)

Will Someone Finally Say Israel Has Lost It? Haaretz (guurst)

Imperial Collapse Watch

Suicide takes more military lives than combat, especially among women Yahoo (Kevin)

Biden

Baby formula shortages reach more than 80 percent in some states amid US government inaction WSWS

Midterm elections 2022: The issues that matter to Americans Axois

Abortion

Anti-abortion activists are collecting the data they’ll need for prosecutions post-Roe MIT Technology Review (furzy)

Gunz

Taking Cues From Texas, California Proposes Its Own Bounty Law—Against Guns New Republic. Resilc: “We’ll have tv shows soon, how to rat on your neighbors for ca$h…..” He flags: Watching Neighbors: The Cuban Model of Social Control JSTOR

Biden on Second Amendment: When It Was Passed, ‘You Couldn’t Buy a Cannon’ Newsweek (furzy)

How New Zealand gun laws changed after the Christchurch massacre Grid (Dr. Kevin)

Trudy Busch Valentine’s Missouri Estate to Host NRA Fundraiser Intercept (resilc)

The Main Mental Health Issue in This Country Is in the Republican Party New Republic. Resilc: “I would say Fox News and MSNBC.”

Supply Chain/Inflation

Where Does the Supply Chain Crisis Stand Now? Morningstar (resilc)

Five takeaways from Biden’s inflation plan The Hill

The Physical Capacity Shortage View of Inflation Employ America (dk). From the executive summary:

Debates about the origin of inflation have so far focused on supply chain disruptions, excessive fiscal stimulus, and an unwillingness to work among the labor force at large. None of these accounts adequately capture the actual constraints fettering economic production and growth today, nor do they adequately explain where price inflation has most substantially materialized. Rather than inflation due to a shortage of labor, what we are seeing today is inflation mostly due to an acute shortage of physical capacity. US consumption and inflation are tightly linked to the constraints stemming from plant and equipment, which are often primarily located or manufactured overseas and subject to their own logistics constraints. If either of these become impaired, there is little ability to meet demand by redirecting production to domestic capacity.

Eurozone Inflation Hits Highest Level Since Creation of the Euro New York Times (Kevin W)

Supreme Court Gives Tech Industry Reprieve From Texas Social-Media Law Wall Street Journal

Facebook Copies TikTok App to Make Instagram Cool to Teens Bloomberg (resilc)

This Is Where Dirty Old Cars Go to Die Wired. Resilc: “My local Vermont shade tree mechanic was telling me about a town guy with a Chevy Bolt EV. Ranges goes down in heat and cold, now has range anxiety.”

Farmer Says Dealer Wouldn’t Repair His Tractor Until He Filed FTC Complaint Vice

An Electric Bus Caught Fire After Battery Explosion in Paris YouTube (Kevin W)

People saw stablecoins as a safe haven. They lost everything when Terra crashed Rest of World (resilc)

Class Warfare

Top-Paid LA Lifeguards Earned Up To $510,283 In 2021 Open the Books. Resilc: “Closed shop like crane operator at Long Beach.”

Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia? Nature

Antidote du jour (furzy):

And a bonus (dk):

And a second bonus (guurst):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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217 comments

  1. griffen

    Stablecoin investors lose everything when the market fell and the prices bottomed out. It’s quite disheartening, I’d suggest, to read these stories about overseas investors where high inflation is persisent and unfortunately a way of life. At least from the article, the few examples had very little in legitimate savings they could afford to lose.

    So it’s more broad and impacting than just a swathe of US-based millenials cutting their teeth in playing the markets.

    1. Craig H.

      There is a great episode in Cryptonomicon where the digital cash entrepreneurs are meeting with southeast asia pacific dictator (fake country, sort of Sultan of Brunei character) and there are other investors from China and Malaysia and Philippines and one of the California digital cash start-uppers says these other guys have never had stable money and they got rich anyway. They probably know a lot more about this business than we do.

      It’s fiction
      It’s of uneven quality
      The good parts of the book are very good

      It did not inspire me to quit my job and move to California and go into the digital money business.

    2. Wukchumni

      Greetings from the Gulag Hockeypelago where i’m under somewhat of a delightful house arrest @ the Banff Springs Hotel, saw oh so many bald eagles and a couple black bears from our perch on the choo-choo from Kamloops, celebrating our matriarch’s 97th year on this good orb.

      We passed by Lytton BC yesterday, hard to believe it could hit 121 there last summer, viewing the burnt out carcass from the cow catcher.

      Was talking to my 29 year old nephew about crypto, and he knows a couple people his age who made close to $4 million by being early buyers of Bitcoin, but related that he also knew of close to 50 contemporaries of his that lost hundreds of $ to as much as $10k on the crypto craze.

      As far as players from countries with not so stable currencies to begin with, anything probably looked better being bettors on the Seinfeld of currencies. (a show about nothing-can I interest you in KramerCoin?)

    3. NotTimothyGeithner

      I’m shocked libertarian Disney Dollars are going belly up. During the zombie apocalypse in El Salvador when commerce has collapsed, all you will have to do is go to your Bitcoin wallet to buy food and water.

      The promise the government wouldn’t be in your business was my favorite crypto promise despite the fine print of what block chain means.

  3. The Rev Kev

    “Poland’s prime minister called for a ban on third countries buying oil from Russia”

    Yeah, that’s probably not going to happen that. The economy of the EU is already taking major hits and I don’t think that it would be wise to alienate countries that you still trade with. By Christmas time it may be red-lining. Right now both China and India are filing up on Russian oil like there is no tomorrow and if India imported anymore, it would probably float off into the Bay of Bengal. So does Polish PM Morawiecki want the EU to sanction both India and China? Good luck with that one, matey. Let me knows how that works. Seriously, what is wrong with people like this? Then again, this is the same guy who thinks that it is a fine idea that his country has an Anscluss with Galicia. At this rate, by the end of the year it is likely that the Polish people will set up a GoFundMe to pay the Russians to take out Morawiecki with a Kinzhal missile.

    1. SocalJimObjects

      Well, according to this: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4557116, there’s “global support” for economic break with China if it invades Taiwan. Seasoned readers probably can tell “global” means Western countries, and they’ll be right because if you read the article, only 26 countries support such a move. The Taiwanese must be taking lessons from the department of propaganda in the US.

      1. hunkerdown

        It’s the old English style of imposed ethos which plays better in Westernized Asia, not the new Main Character pathos that individualists respond to.

      1. The Rev Kev

        Thank you, Colonel. When I was younger I spent a day at the Roman Forum where at one point I wondered what it would have been like being a Roman in the twilight years of the Empire and seeing how after a thousand years, it was all falling apart. Getting a pretty good idea about what it must have been like over the past few years.

        1. Colonel Smithers

          Thank you, Rev.

          A few days ago, BTL, some Grauniad commentators rejoiced that the global south was suffering as it refuses to sanction Russia. It’s always good to see the true colours of these types.

        2. Bruno

          By then there were more Roman cows than Roman citizens in the Forum, the imperial capital was in Byzantium and the western capital was Ravenna.

          1. The Rev Kev

            More goats than cows. I meant a bit earlier but your point is valid as the center of power had shifted Byzantium making Rome just a backwater. I meant a time when the city was still a going concern but that the writing was on the walls for them.

        3. skk

          I often fall asleep to Professor Paul Freedman’s lectures on “The Early Middle Ages 284-1000” – https://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-210 and available on youtube. Last night I was falling asleep to the lectures 6,7 – the collapse of the Western Roman Empire ( eastern continued on for another 900 years), its causes and its replacement. Lectures 2-5 do describe how the writing was on the wall already and the various efforts, some successful at that, to postponing things.

          As I listened I idly contemplated how this aligned with the state of the USA / west today…put me to sleep alright.

          1. Joe Renter

            Cool skk.
            I am home sick and did a deep dive into the English Revolution on the Revolution’s podcast in the last two days. History is a favorite subject of mine. But I have started questioning the narrative as true thinkers (or want to be true thinkers) should. I will check to the Yale site.

            Say, side note… roommate came home from FL with covid (he is a masker 90% of the time). Let down his guard on the flight for eating. Anyway, I am sick but with 2 home tests coming up negative. I will assume I still have it. Locally (the CA beach town full of those with money) it’s running rampant. Be safe out there!

    3. hk

      And United States. Albeit indirectly, US is apparently importing more oil from Russia now than before

  4. Louis Fyne

    —Lyudmila Denisova.—

    we have have a bit of the “I’m Shocked! Shocked to Find There’s Gambling Going on in Here” effect here…

    Denisova is official leftover from the Viktor Yanukovych admin. Denisova is also an ethnic Russian who moved to Ukraine in her adulthood.

    IMO, there is a bigger story behind this…presumably some form of administrative purge and replacement with people who will be Zelensky loyalists.

    1. russell1200

      Maybe, certainly possible.

      But if they are trying to convict perpetrators, and they find that all they have is smoke and air, it puts them in the difficult position of looking like they are not taking any action.

      Most of what you see from actual on the ground reporting is soldiers shooting civilians because they are afraid their positions are being reported. I presume that the Russians can’t cut off cell service because (as has been reported) they use it themselves. All of which seems to follow the Russian assumption (based on 2014) of little resistance, and thus a lack of deep planning.

      What Ms. Denisova is reporting does seem more like the stuff of tabloids. Which is one of the complaints against her.

      1. Lex

        Sources for the “on the ground reporting” of shooting civilians? Who has reported that the Russian military is dependent on cell service?

        1. OnceWereVirologist

          That’s what the one Russian soldier whose war crimes trial and sentencing has already been completed in Kiev was convicted for – shooting a civilian while he was on a cell phone.

          1. Lex

            If one recorded incident is what qualifies as “most” on the ground reporting as russell1200 claims, I’m not sure we can draw significant conclusions.

          2. Yves Smith Post author

            Russian soldiers have their cell phone taken from them because using them identifies them to the enemy. Scott Ritter almost laughed at the idea that Russian soldiers were using cell phones, they set up secure comms everywhere they go. And any Russian soldier would almost certainly grab and destroy any cell phone he saw a fellow soldier use, it would put everyone at risk.

            Ritter also ridiculed the related claim that Russian soldiers were taking Ukraine cell phones and using them. Ukraine phones like those in advanced economies are password protected by default.

            So this captured soldier story really stinks.

            The Russians are leaving cell service up for the same reason they are leaving electricity and the Internet up, so as not to unduly harm and alienate civilians.

    2. Nikkikat

      Likely, that Denisova was fired because she was not able to produce these atrocities she was reporting on. This stuff was being eaten up by western media. Sooner or later someone comes looking to find these women and children she claimed had been raped. This was a way to save face. The entire Ukrainian govt. promoted this nonsense. Zelensky then had to save face by producing this woman and calling her a liar. He makes a big production of firing her. There will be more face saving to come.

      2. Susan the other

        That sounds right to me. Clearly, there has been a meeting of the minds and now we get the pious pretense that everyone was innocent and “I never said that” stuff.

      1. Colonel Smithers

        Thank you.

        Radek Sikorski, eh?

        He and his wife, the American hack Anne Applebaum, are well paid by the US MIC for war mongering. The extent of their earnings was revealed when he became a minister in Poland. The fees for Eton and Oxford, where their two sons attended, don’t pay for themselves.

        Sikorski fled to England as a teenager and had his Oxford education paid for by the long suffering UK taxpayer (the good old days when much of UK tertiary education was free). At Oxford, he pretended to be a Mitteleuropa / Ruritanian aristocrat and relative of the WW2 general (he isn’t) and befriended Johnson (the pair fell out over Brexit) and was admitted into the Bullingdon Club.

        The guy is a cynical fraud. His British accent helps.

        1. pjay

          That couple ranks up there near the top of my list of warmongering scumbags, just under the Kagan clan. Also an indicator of my assessment of the PBS News Hour these days.

      2. OIFVet

        What about our precious bodily fluids, did Radek mention them?

        “We are gonna conflict with both Russians and Germans, and we’re going to think that everything is great, because we gave the Americans a bj. Suckers. Total suckers.”
        -Radek Sikorski, ca. 2014

        Well, he is on his knees again, servicing Uncle Sam.

    4. The Rev Kev

      Anybody remember those demonstrations where girls, acting on these accusations, would drape themselves with Ukrainian flags, weird headgear, and have red hand-prints all over their bodies and red between their legs?

    5. hunkerdown

      It could be that phase 1 of the operation was focused on reshaping and motivating the global narrative and economy to uphold neoliberal values, and Denisova’s a convenient scapegoat on whom to load the intentional crimes of the Ukrainian state. ($15k death benefits × 500k MIA = $7.5 billion that could be spent on weapons, the election, literally anything but the individual human subject.)

      Now, phase 2 needs a different skill set and different personnel, so off to a modest split-level ranch in the Maryland exurbs with her.

    1. Ed Miller

      Eric Holder….

      Interesting to see this pop up again after so many years. Long ago someone posted a link here at NC to a video with John Titus by someone who has been deleted by UTube, and I don’t recall his name but he said that he lives in Japan. That’s all I recall of him.

      John Titus still has his account, so far, which is BestEvidence. He has been studying the Federal Reserve like nobody else even attempts. His videos show the interconnections between key people who have transformed the USA into what he calls a Mafiacracy. The “Mafia” being the global finance kingpins who really run the world. He ties Eric Holder and his law firm into this “Mafia” in great detail.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66vsKh7JsgM&list=UULvRDyn_rVvZ7RRwdcEiJGw

      He has done 26 videos about global finance and how they have captured the federal government. The video were done over several years (interrupted by recovery time from a massive heart attack). The videos attempt to explain the real situation in understandable language to inform citizens. If you go there, look at videos #21 and #20 for starters. It’s a real shame he doesn’t have millions of followers.

  6. Old Sarum

    Mask Mandate:

    Liking black comedies as I do, and being brought up in the UK, I find it very amusing* that seemingly a single judge can change the rules in the US at the drop of a hat.

    I wonder what would happen in the US if some very serious plague hit. Could a single judge’s ruling effectively kill forty percent of the population?

    Pip-pip!

    * I’ve got to laugh otherwise I’d be crying all the time.

    2. Susan the other

      That is/was my first reaction too. Why do we give judges that kind of power?

      1. LifelongLib

        Because when they use that power to make decisions we agree with, we’re fine with it.

  7. c_heale

    I’m not Tucker Carlson’s biggest fan, and only occasional watcher if his Youtube videos, and was really surprised when watching a video today (the first for a long time) to find him taking on Paul Singer, the “vulture” capitalist. I was really surprised.

    1. kriptid

      I feel like Tucker is figuring out how to ride the populist wave while the other news opinion “thought leaders” are all still toeing the neoliberal line on most major issues. He is speaking to non-partisan independents who lean both left and right in many of his segments lately.

      I’ve despised cable news since its inception and always found Fox far more distasteful than the other options. But I am uneasily in agreement with Tucker a lot lately, at least relative to the other creatures that resemble him.

      1. Susan the other

        I dunno. My opinion of Congress is that they are all squirrels. But then I think, what do you do if you are an elected representative in a country that still thinks it is democratic but has lost its mandate to govern because it is completely incompetent, its methods are archaic and its pride is way too overblown to admit it? We need an alternative on every ballot that says something like, “I don’t vote for this person and I would choose to have any decisions made by this office made by a computer programmed to do the right thing for society.” Just until all the people can be so reprogrammed.

    3. antidlc

      Not a Carlson fan, but he does raise the question of anti–depressants…

      https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/05/26/tucker_carlson_yelling_about_the_gun_lobby_is_not_a_solution_if_shooters_are_on_brain-changing_antidepressants.html


      Tucker Carlson: Yelling About The “Gun Lobby” Is Not A Solution If Shooters Are On Brain-Changing Antidepressants

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/aurora_shooting
      James Holmes, a young man with no record of violence, murdered 12 people watching Batman in a Colorado cinema in 2012.

      Did an SSRI antidepressant, prescribed by a doctor, play a part in the killings?

      1. Fredericka

        Bernie, Tulsi voter here. Carlson is along with Glenn Greenwald, is one of the more trustworthy and high quality reporters out there.

        His interview with RFKjr is brilliant. Carlson, not Biden, is doing more to unify Americans than anyone.

        This country has about one election cycle left to stop the globalist neocon bullshit, or we are doomed to where England was post war, or worse.

        1. kriptid

          I am also a Bernie/Tulsi person.

          How would you feel about a Trump/Tulsi ticket?

          Been thinking about this a lot lately. This would be the political move that actualizes some of the messaging from Tucker right now.

          1. drumlin woodchuckles

            I would be surprised if Tulsi would get on a ticket with Trump. She is intelligent enough to see how Trump uses, abuses, traduces and besmirches every single person who ever gets involved with Trump.

            I suspect Tulsi will decide that she has better sewage lagoons to swim in than Mar a Trumpco.

            So I predict that Tulsi will not show up on any ballot with Trump and will not serve in any way whatsoever in another Trump Administration, if there is one.

            If she does, then my predictive powers will lose some credibility and respect.

            Now . . . would she get on a ticket with Governor DeTrumpis or some other smooth young Republican operator? Maybe.

        2. Pamina

          Ah yes, Britain got the NHS after WWII. Is Tucker Carlson advocating for that? I can’t wait to hear his pronouncements in favor of universal health care.

      3. Copeland

        I see many mentions of Tucker Carlson on here, pointing out how he has the correct take on a certain issue, and I’m usually in agreement. I do not have TV, so when I visited my Fox News addicted mother I watched an entire episode of his show and it was 100% extreme right-wing propaganda from start to finish, and the adverts were even more scary, fringey, fear-mongering lies. It left me feeling so queasy and depressed that I doubt I’ll ever waste time on him again.

        So this leaves me wondering, how often does he actually support something that is good for regular working people and society in general, vs. the drivel I witnessed? Is it all just misdirection to gain maximum viewership?

        1. drumlin woodchuckles

          I think it is. He certainly maintains his gleeful investment in Global Warming Denialism, in line with his master Murdoch and big Fox Network investor Prince Al Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who is very invested in global warming denialism.

          And he would like to gain the maximum possible audience for his global warming denialism.
          So why not set out some bait in the form of unexpectedly reasonable interviews with non-crazy people?

    4. marym

      Mental health care needs to be addressed regardless of whether lack of treatment or inappropriate treatment contributes to some individuals perpetrating gun violence.

      I’m fine with politicians and media elites of whom I’m “not a fan” discussing the role of mental health and drug treatments in gun violence, if they’re also promoting investigation and transparency of the drug industry, alternative mental health treatments, healthcare for all, policies and programs that alleviate economic pressures on families that contribute to mental health problems, and mental health, red-flag, and age restrictions on gun purchase; and politicians who support these measures.

      If they’re opposed to these measure, they’re using mental health issues as an excuse not to address the proliferation of deadly weapons to people who may be too ill, to young, or too violent to use them responsibly.

      1. JBird4049

        Since one side insists on banning everything excepting the police and private guards, and the other side insists on arming everyone with everything excepting the non beige people, and both will not pay for any healthcare for all or investigate anything that makes them money…we have to kick them all out for any of this to happen. I’m gamed. Anyone else?

      2. antidlc

        Of course he’s using mental health issues as an excuse not to address the other issues.

        If he can draw attention to the fact that our kids are over-medicated, I’ll take it.

        Over-medication of our kids needs to be discussed. (See IM Doc’s post from the other day.)

        1. marym

          Sure, just take it with a grain of salt unless he’s clear on what policies he’ll promote and which politicians he’ll support to address the problem. Otherwise, he’s no different from any other public figure who says we need to do something to solve X but doesn’t do anything about it, or undermines efforts to do anything, or promotes even worse policies.

  8. Lexx

    ‘Australian Scientists Discover ‘biggest plant on Earth’ off WA Coast’

    Any chance that could read ‘Western Australia’ instead? Clicked to read about the biggest plant growing off the coast of, say, Westport, WA or maybe Long Beach, wondering how it had missed being discovered for so long.

    1. LifelongLib

      I had the same reaction (grew up near Seattle) but I guess WA is used for Washington state only in the U.S. (postal abbreviation).

  9. The Rev Kev

    “Airlines’ mask mandates may soon be REINSTATED as DOJ appeals ruling by Trump-appointed judge that struck down face covering requirement on public transportation”

    Here is a thought experiment. So through US Congressional action, inflight smoking started to get banned way back in 1987. And this was before there was recognition that breathing secondary smoke was dangerous to other people. So you could say that right now inflight smoking is still banned because it endangers the health of the other people on the plane that don’t smoke but have no choice in the matter. So could it not be argued that it is the same here? That infected people should not have the right to infect uninfected people on that plane as they have no real choice in the matter?

    1. GramSci

      In a quick search I couldn’t find that Congress passed any such law; the smoking ban appears to be an agency regulation. On those grounds, expect the current Supreme Court to overturn the ban.

  10. LawnDart

    How to solve the Ukrainian crisis? Make Ukraine go away (divide the spoils, who gets stuck with Chernobyl and Lend/Lease debt… …and which is worse?).

    What was speculation here in NC comments back in February doesn’t seem so far-fetched now.

    Poland offers Ukraine to return to the borders of 1772

    Poland openly demonstrates its intention to annex Ukraine – if not all of it, then at least its western part. And it’s not just about declarations. Warsaw is taking real steps aimed at the incorporation of Ukrainian lands into the Polish state…

    At this stage, the implementation of the Polish-Ukrainian integration project is hindered by the issue of debts. Kiev has accumulated a huge debt. And everyone understands perfectly well that Ukraine as part of two regions will never repay it. Therefore, Western creditors are trying to convince Warsaw to take responsibility for paying off Ukrainian debt obligations. What the Poles are struggling to resist.

    But that’s not even the biggest problem. The annexation of Western Ukraine will inevitably provoke territorial disputes between Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. And this conflict will make any NATO intervention in Ukrainian affairs impossible.

    Via news[dash]front[dot]info on 6/1

    1. Tom Stone

      Geez,unintended consequences?
      Hoocoodanode?
      Ukraine is a continuing demonstration that Human stupidity is infinite.

        1. JBird4049

          We might need some popcorn if the Poles continue.

          If Poland can take back the agreed on pre-1945 boarders, why not Germany? IIRC, the current border between Poland and Germany is on the Oder River. It was partially about compensating Poland for Stalin taking eastern Poland and giving it to western Ukraine, which was a partially reason for the ethnic Germans expulsions. There were millions of people living there before.

          I mean if anyone is crazy enough to start changing boarders, that means anything is possible. Admittedly, the Germans are probably not planning on putting any claims what with their own atrocities like the Holocaust, but there must people still alive who were living on the old east German lands before the expulsions, which due to the massive amounts of deaths (mass murders really) of the old men, women, and children that happened, should be labeled one of the greater crimes against humanity in all the Twentieth Century. I am harping on the ethnic Germans because they were not citizens of the prewar state of Germany, AFAIK. Unless anyone wants to bring in concepts like corruption of the blood, inherent evil, racial impurity as was done to the Jews by others including the Poles, it is hard to be guilty of something you had no control over.

          So, there is the ethnic German expulsions from the rest of Eastern Europe; the Polish participation in the Holocaust and the persecution of non Poles, the Ukrainians mass murders of non Ukrainians, and I believe the Czechs and the Slovaks also murdered/expelled some non-Germans as well; I do not know about any expulsions from Hungary or Romania, but I would not be shocked.

          So, if Poland wants to get back some of its lost lands, it will probably bring up the history of unpleasant acts done by almost everyone, their lost lands, and with survivors’ memories still alive from those times, if barely. Nobody’s hands are clean and everyone has had great evil done to them within a lifetime.

          Maybe they and everyone else should be happy with what they have?

          1. Robert Gray

            > So, there is the [post-1945] ethnic German expulsions from the rest of Eastern Europe …

            For a very impressive treatment of this, see R. M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War (Yale, 2012).

            1. JBird4049

              Thank you for the recommendation. I have put it on my to buy list, but I am having a hard time just finishing the book Black Earth. Aside from some of what the Japanese Army did in China and the Kenpeitai (army police) did everywhere else including in Japan, the areas of eastern Prussia, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, maybe Belarus, were all worse, hell on earth. They were worse than just about anywhere else in WW II, which is saying something. It stopped just short of ending the society and the central governments of Poland-Ukraine. The war could have easily lasted another year if a very few battles had gone differently and that would have ended Poland and probably Ukraine.

              In my windy way, I am just saying that it might be quite sometime before I read it, but thank you.

    2. hunkerdown

      Just intermarry ’em in an Intermarium. Please forward my Nobel Peace Prize to the address on the Tip Jar page as a thanks to NC.

    4. hk

      We are almost back to 1921 borders…. I wish I could see Bandera’s face at that prospect, if his ghost can be seanced.

  11. Tom Stone

    I wish Biden were less of a fool and liar.
    You most certainly could buy a cannon as a private citizen during the late 18th and throughout the 19th Century here in the USA.
    Several were used by formations of the Continental Army.
    During the American Civil War several wealthy men raised their own Regiments and fully armed them with the most up to date weapons available.
    Up until 1920 you could walk into the Vicker’s showroom in London and walk out with a belt fedMachine Gun if you had the cash, and until NFA 1934 you could walk into a gun store in NYC, plop down your cash and walk out with a BAR or a Thompson Submachine Gun.

    1. Carolinian

      Turley says Biden has been pushing this line for years and that among other examples privateers had cannon on their commerce raiders.

      To paraphrase a long ago TV commercial, Biden’s mind is a terrible thing to waste (for us). Why oh why did the Dems turn to him?

      1. FlyoverBoy

        “Why oh why did the Dems turn to him?”

        Because he had the one qualification they craved above all others: He was Not Bernie.

    2. Michaelmas

      Up until 1920 you could walk into the Vicker’s showroom in London and walk out with a belt fedMachine Gun if you had the cash, and until NFA 1934 you could walk into a gun store in NYC, plop down your cash and walk out with a BAR or a Thompson Submachine Gun.

      The Social History of the Machine Gun by John Ellis (first published in 1975)
      https://archive.org/details/socialhistoryoft00elli_0

      One of the best accounts of history I’ve read. If somebody wanted to understand the general course of Western history from 1850 to, say, 1945, this might be the first book I’d recommend, given its concision and clarity of insight (i.e. absence of humbug).

      1. Michaelmas

        Or consider the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, for one instance —

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Omdurman

        8,200 British,17,600 Sudanese and Egyptian soldiers, or 25,800 total troops vs. 52,000 Mahdist warriors

        Casualties
        British-Egyptian — 47 dead, 382 wounded
        Mahdists — 12,000 dead (approx), 13,000 wounded, 5,000 captured

        Winston Churchill’s second book, The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), has an account, because he was present as a young officer. It’s worth a read.
        http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/07/80.pdf#page=118

        Forex —

        ‘The infantry fired steadily and stolidly, without hurry or excitement, for the enemy were far away and the officers careful. Besides, the soldiers were interested in the work and took great pains. But presently the mere physical act became tedious. The tiny figures seen over the slide of the backsight seemed a little larger, but also fewer at each successive volley. The rifles grew hot –so hot that they had to be changed for those of the reserve companies. The Maxim guns exhausted all the water in their jackets, and several had to be refreshed from the water−bottles of the Cameron Highlanders before they could go on with their deadly work. The empty cartridge−cases, tinkling to the ground, formed a small but growing heap beside each man. And all the time out on the plain on the other side bullets were shearing through flesh, smashing and splintering bone; blood spouted from terrible wounds; valiant men were struggling on through a hell of whistling metal, exploding shells, and spurting dust–suffering, despairing, dying. Such was the first phase of the battle of Omdurman.’

        Soon enough these weapons were brought from the imperial peripheries for use at home: first, on the battlefields of WWI in Europe, then to the streets of Chicago. It will be the same with the drones and the RPGs, and the rest of the current kit.

          1. Carolinian

            Hey I was going to use that quote.

            I’ve been re-reading The Guns of August as timely material. It’s a great book for the wealth of detail that she brings. The war to end all wars was totally about the Maxim gun and artillery. When even up to date “forts” got in the German way they brought in giant artillery pieces and smashed them.

            According to those in the know it’s still all about artillery for the Russians while Americans love their expensive and dubiously effective F-35s.

            1. The Rev Kev

              That’s a great book “The Guns of August” and Tuchman really did a good job writing it. As for your point about Russian artillery and American F-35s, I have never read of how sometimes the Russian artillery refuses to boot up :)

    3. Wukchumni

      and until NFA 1934 you could walk into a gun store in NYC, plop down your cash and walk out with a BAR or a Thompson Submachine Gun.

      Tommy guns were outlawed for public purchase on account of Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly et al, because of the menace to the public these name brand assassins had become, so why not outlaw assault rifles under the same auspices with our current name brand assassins?

      1. Carolinian

        I don’t think there’s a legal barrier. Unfortunately the AR-15 is the most popular long gun in America. That’s your barrier.

        But the kid in Texas could just as easily have shot all those people with a pistol–or two pistols to allow for re-loading.

      2. hk

        I think actual “machine guns” are still banned. Most of the “assault” weapons in question are technically not “machine guns” for some reason or other. This, as I understand it, is why gun regulation has been so tortuous.

    4. Raymond Sim

      Biden’s a distraction, which is his job.

      Does anyone doubt that the 2nd A. empowered states to regulate cannon ownership?

      What would a strict constructionist take on regulation of weapons which took technological improvements into account look like?

      I’m pretty sure the crew of one of those bronze 12-pdrs would be much deadlier if rearmed even with lowly SKS’s.

      1. JBird4049

        >>>I’m pretty sure the crew of one of those bronze 12-pdrs would be much deadlier if rearmed even with lowly SKS’s.

        True, but it does depend on the range. It is also misleading. In some instances a modern handgun would be more deadly. The smoothbores were most often used as gigantic shotguns, which shot at times hundreds of bullets, or dozens of larger heavy balls, or if using solid or explosive shot could easily out range the average rifle. Everything from a wall to a few hundred men could be destroyed in a single shot.

        Then there is the fact that one should consider the weapons being used at the time. A large knife might be more dangerous than a handgun, if you can get to the person, as a large, broad blade is often more damaging than a single bullet or two. Heck, a good sword can take of a limb or a head in one go. Any of the long guns of the Civil War was quite capable of killing someone hundreds of yards away or of shattering limbs so badly that would need to be amputated today. But they had rates of fire from 3-15 times per minute. However, most people would still one a modern handgun or rifle.

        I am sure that the Uvade Police department, along with others, might have wanted a .45 Thompson sub-machine with the large drum magazine, but would they have been more effective at their jobs?

        2. Raymond Sim

          …It is also misleading. …

          Speaking of misleading, if you’re not going to address the question of constitutional interpretation, why are you prosing on about Tommy guns and the Uvade Police Dept.?

          And a tip on rhetoric: Mansplaining cannons to somebody who brought them up in the first place doesn’t enhance your presentation.

          1. JBird4049

            My apologies. I really meant no disrespect. One of my peeves is how people insist on facilely comparing today’s situation with the past and I tend to just react.

            Suppose I said that because we only had the old single page at time, manual printing press and the mail was delivered by horse and wagon, the First Amendment only applied to those things; telephones, radio, television, LPs, DVDs, Mp3, emails, and the internet were not covered. Most people, whatever their ideology, would think me crazily dogmatic, if not just a bit crazy.

            Things change and our laws need to change with them or at least our interpretations do. There is also the problem that the courts tend to bend, twist, spindle, mutilate, and ignore the law, and create from the air interpretations that somehow always matches whatever liberal or
            conservative decision that they want. This does not mean that little Johnny should get his first Uzi at five or that the local state military should have the A-Bomb, but it does mean some honest reasoning and understanding of the what and why in the Constitution and all the laws that have supposedly come out of it.

            The security agencies can basically ignore the Fifth Amendment, the police can steal everything you own after saying that they think it part of your drug dealing and never charge you with a crime, the right to a speedy trial doesn’t exist because reasons, and qualified immunity is almost a complete shield from legal prosecutions or lawsuits for the cops. It is all legal just like “separate but equal was.” Only, all the carve outs in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights just about always favors the government, the law, and corporations with the exception of the First Amendment and even that has some weakening. Oh, there is the Third Amendment, but it hardly ever gets to the courts.

            Many Americans have decided to ignore the history and the reasoning behind the Constitution and the system of government created from it. They and the courts also seem to
            insist on ignoring the Bill of Rights, which a reaction to, and a protest on, the abuses by the British government before the War of Independence. The rights were responses to specific abuses. The abuses actually triggered the war because it made the colonists angry enough to shoot back and reduced the central government’s support even from the Loyalists.

            However, nobody is talking about that.

            1. Raymond Sim

              “However, nobody is talking about that.”

              Joe Biden did! That’s my whole point. Right, wrong, clueless, conscious, sentient – who cares? This is a rare opportunity for anyone who’s honestly interested in fleshing out the meaning of ‘well-regulated militia’ to talk about substance.

              1. JBird4049

                >>>Right, wrong, clueless, conscious, sentient – who cares?

                I do.

                What we need is something akin to the New Deal, and with honest respect to the President, and we can’t even get the money to rebuild our collapsing infrastructure. Speaking about more than gun confiscation (or if a Republican more guns) for our society is great, but I just don’t see any true value beyond the affirmation of the problem is more than just gunz. But it’s just words for now.

                If I am wrong (and I have stopped actively listening to Biden because heartburn and headaches he gives me) can the President of the United States please get his facts correct, propose the massive program of reforms beyond gun control needed to repair our country, and then actually follow up with pushing through the program.

  12. Cocomaan

    Biden on Second Amendment: When It Was Passed, ‘You Couldn’t Buy a Cannon’ Newsweek (furzy)

    This is simply not true. Not only can you still buy a cannon but merchant ships were heavily armed around the time of the bill of rights because of crazy amounts of piracy.

    Biden is an idiot but I guess that’s not a surprise. At least bring actual facts to bear as you try to take away rights.

  13. Wombat

    The Characteristics of the First Women to Become Army Rangers

    By the rules and media semantics applied quite rigorously to Tom Cotton, the exemplary women who graduated from Ranger School but are not in the Ranger Regiment are not “Army Rangers”; rather they are “Ranger School Qualified”.

    1. Tom Stone

      Since there is ( Or was) a 75th Ranger Regiment the distinction between those who are qualified to join (Have the merit badge) and members of the unit designated “Ranger” seems appropriate.

    2. Robert Gray

      I only got as far as the third paragraph:

      > The Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, RECON Marines, and other special operations forces
      > of the U.S. Military are the greatest soldiers in the world …

      USA! USA! Who needs anything more — or, indeed, anything else — when you’ve got USA!

  14. SocalJimObjects

    “Egypt signs €8 billion deal with Siemens for high-speed rail system.”

    “We are probably going to starve later this year, but at least we’ll do it while riding our brand new high speed trains!!! Wheeee”

    #LetThemRideTrains will be trending later this year, I predict.

    1. upstater

      Maybe Russia will sell their Siemens Sapsan trainsets bc Siemens is leaving Russia. After Russia gets new high speed trains from China.

    2. topcat

      Siemens won’t be able to build the trains due to lack of steel, semiconductors, gas/oil/electricity, glass….

  15. fresno dan

    https://humbledollar.com/2022/06/my-233-surgery/

    I’m always interested in detailed descriptions of people’s run ins with medical billing. One cost saving method not raised by the author is that in a medicare advantage plan, perhaps a good many of the procedures the author underwent would not even have been done. Of course, how much stuff gets done by a doctor (or lawyer for that matter) that not only doesn’t need to be done, but shouldn’t be done…

    1. Vandemonian

      Medical billing Oz style:

      I’ve just spent my first night at home following a six day stay in a public hospital. Two episodes of passing out due to low blood pressure led to an emergency admission. Brain MRI, heart CT, pacemaker insertion, discharge with a weeks worth of antibiotics. Total cost to me: AU$40.00 for the antibiotics (and only because I chose to activate my private health insurance to put some extra money into the hospital).

      It’s technically possible for you people in the US to implement a similar system, but you won’t, because reasons.

      1. Maritimer

        “Total cost to me: AU$40.00”
        *********
        This is one of the great myths of Public Healthcare: somehow, out of thin economic air, it is FREE! (And people will complain about MMT!) In addition, because of the usual monopoly status of Public Healthcare, there is no alternative to their diagnosis/treatment—take it or leave it! (Read Industrial Captured Medicine.)

        1. Copeland

          Whatever other costs incurred by Vandemonium to pay for his/her non-free health care was apparently so pain-free that it wasn’t even worth mentioning.

          Several times less money is collected to fund public health because that’s all it costs. Hand it all over to private providers and it costs Several time’s more, because profit, CEOs, paying the salaries of buildings full of people working hard on denying “insurance” claims, etc.

        2. Vandemonian

          Maritimer, I was very careful to say “total cost TO ME”. Since the introduction of Australia’s Medicare system I have contributed to its funding through my State and federal taxes, knowing that it would always be there for me when I needed it. I also knew (and didn’t mind) that as a well remunerated professional I contributed more to Medicare over the years than those who were less well off. If the cardiac problem had been in a pensioner with no resources, their access and treatment would have been exactly the same as mine, although with no private insurance, their discharge medication would have been at no cost to them.

          Our public healthcare system is not “FREE out of thin economic air“ as you put it. Rather, it is jointly and severally funded by all taxpayers, according to their capacity to contribute, to ensure that equitable medical treatment is available to all Australians when they need it.

          And in Australia, there is a vibrant private healthcare sector alongside public hospitals, rather than a public healthcare monopoly. I live in a small town, and pacemaker insertion is beyond the capacity of the two small private hospitals.

          You have a lot to learn, my son. Lift your head up and look about you.

          1. Basil Pesto

            Our public healthcare system is not “FREE out of thin economic air“ as you put it. Rather, it is jointly and severally funded by all taxpayers, according to their capacity to contribute, to ensure that equitable medical treatment is available to all Australians when they need it.

            This is also wrong to be fair, eg

      2. The Rev Kev

        Tomorrow I am going into hospital to have my ankle pinned and plated after breaking it several days ago. All costs are covered my our medicare system but before I went under to have my ankle put in a cast the other day, I was wondering how much an American hospital would have charged. At a minimum, I am guessing ten of thousands of dollars. And that is the point. There Is An Alternative. The American system is vicious, rapacious, deadly, unjust and destructive of the patients as well as the medical people. And every post that NC has on the health care system in the US always features some other ugly feature of this non-system. At this point I can only see as a partial solution burning it mostly down to the local hospital system and making it a utility to be administered by each and every State with a Federal system of mandated standards that each State will be required to fulfill.

        1. fresno dan

          RK
          but before I went under to have my ankle put in a cast the other day, I was wondering how much an American hospital would have charged.
          an arm, leg, and your first born…

      3. fresno dan

        Vandemonian
        Well….40 bucks will get you 2 glasses of wine in a nice restaurant in America…
        Seriously, my 4 days in hospital for emergency admittance and an ablation was about 150K, and thank the heavens I have good health insurance. Out of pocket was about 5K.

        1. Vandemonian

          Dan, the benefits ripple through all sectors of society. Employers, for example, rarely offer health insurance as part of an employee’s benefits package – there’s no need. Each state has a workers compensation scheme to cover the cost of treating injuries in the workplace. In most cases injured workers are treated in public hospitals, and the costs recovered later from the insurer.

          The renter-riddled systems of gouging in the US healthcare system must impose so many hidden costs in places you’d never think to look.

  16. Solarjay

    EV.
    If he’s got a first Gen, 2016 then he doesn’t get the battery swap, that’s 2017-2019. Yes range anxiety is a real deal. I have a 2017 leaf that has about 80% range left. It works for my area, but making low cost new/used batteries available would allow older EV’s many more years of life. But it’s cheaper in $ to sell it and buy another used one. Which is just stupid but merica.

    As to the wired article, there is a line that we need to make EV more affordable to developing countries. And about that electric infrastructure to charge them? Here in the US there is the same problem which really isn’t talked about. We are told heat pumps, electric stoves, water heaters, cars all without mentioning that the grid is really maxed out already. Yeah not everywhere but lots of places.
    Non carbon electrical production isn’t coming on line fast enough to cover all that. Add to that the Biden administration is looking like it’s going to add 25-250% tariffs onto the majority of imported solar panels. And it will be back charged to 2020 or 2021 I can’t remember. This has caused a huge drop in imports, and coupled with the cost unknowns 50%+ of large solar installations are canceled or on hold. Even me buying at pallet quantities is having a hard time sourcing and the prices are going up.

    Even if the USA USA were to go non carbon fuels, it’s just 15% of the global pollution. Yeah it’s something but if climate change is your issue, then no where near enough.

    Finally here is an article showing the new snd probably perminant natural gas increases vs coal. Looks to me like coal is going to come back big time.
    And what I can’t find is how many of the NG power plants are CCGT vs steam generators, because the efficiencies are about 1/2 for them making NG even more expensive than coal.

    https://rbnenergy.com/talkin-bout-my-generation-part2-natural-gas-vs-coal-fuel-costs-for-power-generation

    1. Carolinian

      They are building a new courthouse here and the just built six story parking garage next door has two, count ’em, two charging stations. And while some large private businesses may have chargers the ones in our municipal garages are the only ones I know about in my area. Perhaps this why I’ve only seen two Teslas so far.

      1. Anthony G Stegman

        The fact that a 6 story parking garage is going up ought to tell you something. The car addiction goes along unabated. Those who think that electric vehicles are a solution for anything are quite delusional.

    3. Grumpy Engineer

      @Solarjay: You asked, “And what I can’t find is how many of the NG power plants are CCGT vs steam generators.”

      I know of 4 ways to generate power using natural gas:

      [1] Fire boilers like is done in a coal-fired station. Efficiencies are around 35%. Nobody builds these anymore, but there may be old units still in service. It would be a small fraction.
      [2] Run it through a “simple cycle” gas turbine, which is basically an oversized jet engine with a turbine that is optimized for maximizal output torque. These are cheap and can be ramped up FAST. Efficiencies are around 45%. These are used for peaker duty and are only run occasionally.
      [3] Combined-cycle “single-shaft” gas turbines, where hot gasses from the jet engine portion are used to generate steam for a second steam turbine that’s located on the same shaft. These are more costly and have slower ramp rates, but have thermal efficiencies near 60%.
      [4] Combined-cycle “multi-shaft” gas turbines, where hot gasses from the jet engine portion are used to generate steam for a second steam turbine that’s located on a different shaft. This is the most expensive of all, but it can be ramped up faster and still has thermal efficiencies near 60%.

      Ramp rates are important. When solar production collapses at the end of the day, gas turbines must be ramped up quickly to take over. It’s a real problem in California.

      1. Solarjay

        Thanks GE, that’s helpful.
        I know where I used to live they used Diesel engines modified to run on NG.

        As to the end of day solar issues, as these are well known down to the minute they can ramp up NG production and have it ready.
        Another name for this is the Duck curve, again when it’s a known event it’s easy to plan.
        I had an utility engineer in a class once who explained all about the duck surge and why it’s not an issue because it happens at a planed time. Vs random power plant failures of any type, and is why we need some amount of backup ready at a truly moments notice.

        1. Grumpy Engineer

          Ah, yes. My list should have included a fifth:
          [5] Reciprocating engines. Thermal efficiency 35% to 40%.

          I’m not entirely in agreement with the utility engineer who says that the duck curve isn’t a problem. If the negative ramp rate associated with solar array at sunset is greater in magnitude than the positive ramp rate available from equipment on standby, then you’ve got a problem. But the situation is indeed well-known and highly predictable, so with enough equipment, you can make it work. [And that’s what they do today.] The downside, though, is that as California deploys more solar, they have to deploy more standby equipment to go with it.

          And ramping duty is hard on the equipment. California has already prematurely retired some gas turbines because of excessive thermal fatigue cycles. Newer gas turbines are being designed to handle ramping duty better, but that often entails trade-offs that increase cost and/or reduce efficiency. None of this adds up to cheaper electricity for consumers.

        2. Lex

          In my professional experience of tearing down coal plants, the replacement gas plants are the reciprocating engine type. Basically a ship engine bolted to a slab designed to run on NG but capable of running on fuel oil as an emergency fuel. But the decision on what type of NG plant to build is generally not so much about efficiency or environmental differences as it is about build and operating costs. I would imagine that a gas turbine plant would be more expensive than a reciprocating plant but can’t speak to the employee load requirement. There would likely need to be a pretty big efficiency difference between different types to influence a power generation company’s decision.

          The cheaper to build and operate is the real reason for the boom of natural gas plants. Other than CO2, most of the coal plants I’ve been to had significant emissions upgrades already. I’ve torn down two that had toxicon units installed no more than a few years before decommissioning. Putting out the same MW with a few dozen employees instead of a few hundred is what turns heads in the capital projects groups and board rooms.

          1. Solarjay

            Hi Lex
            Are you saying that the NG plants take a few hundred people to operate vs coal at a few dozen? Not doubt you, I just want to be clear I understand.

        1. Grumpy Engineer

          Four hours at 3,330 MW isn’t as much as it seems, as California’s peak electrical demand can exceed 45,000 MW. Such batteries would definitely permit CAISO operators to transition over to gas turbines more gradually at sunset (which has real benefit in terms of lessening thermal fatigue cycles), but they would not get California through the night.

          And to provide calibration on the size of this effort, I’ll note that the Bath County pumped storage station (located in my neck of the woods in Appalachia) can provide 3,000 MW for eight hours. Nearly twice as much energy storage capability as California has planned. The Elk Grove station is tiny in comparison.

          1. heresy101

            Sorry, those 3,330 MW aren’t to serve load at night. They are for CAISO’s critical resource times, to cover short outages, and sometimes peak load serving (5-9pm) needs . Night loads are covered by geothermal, wind, large hydro, Diablo Canyon and some gas (coal can’t be used in CA).

            Pumped storage is another animal and provides load serving needs at the duck curve peak or at night.

            The CPUC and CAISO estimate that they need:
            “A CPUC analysis found that a range of 2,000 to 3,000 megawatts (MW) of new supply- and demand-side resources will help address grid reliability in the most extreme circumstances in 2022 and 2023. For context, the peak demand managed by California’s grid operator in 2020 was 47,121 MW, while 43,982 MW in September 2021 was the peak thus far this year.”
            https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/news-and-updates/all-news/cpuc-ensures-electricity-reliability-during-extreme-weather-for-summers-2022-and-2023
            As part of this program they are going to pay $2/kWh for each kWh reduction.
            “Participants are compensated after-the-fact at a prefixed compensation rate of $2/kilowatt-hour for every kilowatt-hour of electricity consumption the customer reduces voluntarily during an ELRP event.” Time to put in a battery that can be keyed to CAISO’s 3% hours of critical resource needs.

            If you check the daily CAISO event for when it was 102 degrees in the central valley, you can see the load and resource balance under Today’s Outlook (you have to reset the date to 5/25/22 to see the hot day info).
            http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx#section-7day-ra-capacity-trend

  18. fresno dan

    https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2022/06/01/more-on-the-uvalde-door-that-didnt-lock-n473184

    A quote from the article: An exterior door at Robb Elementary School did not lock when it was closed by a teacher shortly before a gunman used it to get inside and kill 19 students and two teachers, leaving investigators searching to determine why, state police said Tuesday.
    State police initially said a teacher had propped the door open shortly before Salvador Ramos, 18, entered the school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24.
    They have now determined that the teacher, who has not been identified, propped the door open with a rock, but then removed the rock and closed the door when she realized there was a shooter on campus, said Travis Considine, chief communications officer for the Texas Department of Public Safety. But, Considine said, the door that was designed to lock when shut did not lock.
    —————————–
    From the article:
    Does there need to be accountability? Obviously. But that should only be a sideshow in this ongoing mess. We need to keep our focus on finding out what parts of the system failed and then get the word out to every school in the country. If the Department of Education really wants to make itself useful, it could ensure the accurate promulgation of this data and any other useful information and ensure that federal funding is available to support schools in making required changes.
    ===============================================
    Was the school a fortress? The schools I went to had many windows, and somebody intent on getting in would not have been stopped by a pane of glass. But my main point is this: if police procedure is to immediately engage a shooter, what happens to the police that failed to follow such a policy? If the police are not convicted, prosecuted, fired, or demoted, it is a policy that doesn’t actually mean anything.

    1. Keith in Modesto

      I saw this revelation that the teacher did in fact close that door while on Twitter. Here’s another link from a local newspaper that someone there shared about it.
      And here is the same article in an archive because the first is behind a paywall you may hit if you’ve read from there more than ‘x’ times this month.
      ——–
      I sure hope that police official, Steven McCraw (Texas Dept. of Public Safety Director), who gave that press conference where he publicly blamed that teacher for letting the gunman into the building, will now issue a public apology to her on behalf of the police. There’s a good chance she was getting death threats.

        1. CuriosityConcern

          Mr. Beech, to my surprise over the time I’ve been reading posts here, I’ve agreed with your points on occasion. Other times I might not have agreed but I trained myself not to have a knee jerk reaction and consider the point.
          Respectfully, here, I think we may be arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin when we are focusing on who closed a door when and if it locked or not. I haven’t been partaking of the narrative anywhere else than at NC and so I don’t know if the news are the ones responsible for the this focus, but my own opinion is that it just won’t help.
          Reading that they were trying to blame a teacher for the acts of someone who presumably should not have had access to firearms just made me feel physically ill.
          As someone who has two children in school and who knows the odds are good (at least for now) that this won’t happen to them, I still beseech (pun sort of intended) you to consider the access to firearms aspect of this and other horrific events.

      2. Oh

        Such sweet children! So short a life for them. And exceptional teachers. Most of the childeren were around 10 years old. So sad.

  19. Lexx

    ‘UK farmers have long grappled with a shortage of seasonal fruit pickers that was exacerbated by Brexit, but other countries are also struggling to recruit enough workers for the back-breaking work. ‘

    Not back-breaking work, except strawberries. That’s stoop work. Will they all be grown vertically too? The work is just slow, tedious, and it pays poorly.

    ‘Andres said: “Some people are afraid we steal jobs, but [farmers] can’t find enough workers at the moment.” Fieldwork’s declared aim is to make autonomous robots that can operate alongside human workers and ensure any gaps are filled, rather than replacing humans. Its charges for the robot harvesting service are similar to what seasonal workers are paid, Andres said.’

    Oh, pull the other one… at 2 million a pop?!

    ‘Fieldwork is also trialing its robots to harvest tomatoes and cauliflowers, and spray crops. They can be adapted for different kinds of produce by changing the software algorithms and tools at the end of the harvesting arms.’

    This should worry us. I’m learning how to best address cercosporia on my spinach and beets organically, and commercial farmers get to bypass the issue of poisoning the soil and consumers by taking human pickers out of the equation altogether, and the possibility of lawsuits. Sure, installing robots will come at great expense initially but the price per unit will inevitably come down with scale.

    Here’s what I wanted to know, that of course the article didn’t answer. How do you program a robot for ‘squishy’? Overripe is one thing; outright quishy is another. Squishy and possibly moldy berries get discarded lest they spoil the bunch. This is a human judgment call per berry that pickers make. No matter how carefully they manage plants, the fruit will not stay perfect and ripen uniformly. There will be flaws in the fruit. The microbial world will have its share and insects too; there’s also what the hot afternoon sun does to soft fruit. A human picker has to lighten the amount of pressure they use to pull the fruit from the plant to keep from damaging it. Will the robots be working at night? How do robots deal with spoilage?

    1. Joe Renter

      There are more crops that one need to stoop than strawberries. I live near the Steinbeck country and much of the produce harvested is back breaking. Such hard work. As I say to my compadres, “Mucho trabajo poco dinero”.

      1. Polar Socialist

        Where I live polytunnels are now the hottest thing. No more stooping for the mostly Ukrainian (not this latest batch, though) migrant workers.

    1. Art_DogCT

      Bold to assume he’s read any. Possibly he’s read Golden Classics or Cliff Notes versions, but even that hypothesis strains my credulity.

  21. The Rev Kev

    “Turkey cancels NATO drills in Black Sea on basis of Montreux Convention, says top diplomat”

    Turkey is playing it very smart here. They are sticking to the requirements of the Montreux Convention and putting the lid on those NATO exercises and with good reason. There would be a temptation among NATO leaders to use those exercises to park those warships off Odessa and do something stupid like deliver heavy missiles or try to deter Russian operations or use their radar coverage to help the Ukrainians. And one way or another, Turkey would have found themselves sucked into this. But by refusing they maintain their neutral stance, benefit from Russian trade in oil and wheat while getting diplomatic bonus points by trying to negotiate the final peace for this war. Say what you want about Erdogan, he knows how to play the game.

    2. RobertC

      Erdogan’s rules-based-order is good news.

      Perhaps I’m being optimistic but it seems Biden is turning attention away from Ukraine and towards America’s domestic interests and China China China. Leaving the Europeans to resolve the conflict on their border.

  22. flora

    Two things:

    All but one of the WHO’s pandemic treaty proposed changes were voted down by 40+ African countries fearful of losing their sovereignty. Good news. The one proposal that passed was about holding another meeting in November, 2022.

    OK, yes, from Tucker, and on Rumble, because you know utube won’t. Interesting Sussman and FBI working relationship.
    Democrat Party’s Law Firm Has A Personal FBI Workspace
    https://rumble.com/v16we1i-breaking-democrat-partys-law-firm-has-a-personal-fbi-workspace.html

    I’ll be interested in what Glenn Greenwald has to say, if anything.

    1. Basil Pesto

      What treaty? What loss of sovereignty? We discussed this. Is there any evidence at all, preferably primary sources (not YouTube videos or excessively hyperlinked OpEds) or analysis from someone with relevant international legal experience and no axe to grind that this cause célèbre was anything but a nothingburger, mere nonsense perpetuated by know-nothing fear-mongerers to scare people about having their freedoms taken away (while, in the real world, our broad, long established and frankly very pleasant freedom from living with preventable and dangerous disease has been steadily eroded in the past two years (except in China lol) to disastrous effect, with nary a peep from these soi-disant freedom-crusaders), to drive ‘content engagement’?

      Also, does this recent development do anything to change your opinion about the ongoing human monkeypox outbreak being a contrived Gatesian power-grab designed to coincide with the recent vote?

        1. David

          As Basil said, we’ve discussed this before, and a number of us have explained that (a) the document circulated was a series of proposals for changes to the current health regulation from the US, one of a number of countries that submitted proposals and (b) the changes are questions of detailed implementation of the existing treaty. There’s a separate debate about the need for a new treaty, and, if there is one, what should go in it. If the author really thinks that “the WHO is proposing a global pandemic agreement that would give it undemocratic rights over every participating nation and its citizens,” she needs to go and read the documents. In any case, international treaties aren’t made like that.

          1. marym

            It appears from these links that the regulations proposed by the US weren’t voted on or even formally discussed.

            05/20/2022
            Preview of agenda
            …many of the most pressing topics, such as reforms of the rules around disease outbreaks, will be postponed for later or discussed only in the corridors.
            https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/what-is-off-agenda-who-assembly-2022-05-20/

            05/27/2022 Countries have agreed to an initial U.S.-led push to reform of the rules around disease outbreaks, known as the International Health Regulations, after early opposition from Africa and others was overcome this week, sources told Reuters on Friday.

            “A compromise was reached in the corridors last night,” said one of the sources who was not authorised to speak about the negotiations publicly.
            https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/first-steps-reforming-global-health-emergency-rules-agreed-who-meeting-sources-2022-05-27/

            GENEVA, May 30 (Reuters) – The World Health Organization’s governing board agreed on Monday to form a new committee to help speed up its response to health emergencies like COVID-19.
            …
            The resolution, passed unanimously at the 34-member Executive Board’s annual meeting, will form a new ‘Standing Committee on Health Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response’ to help address some of the perceived shortcomings.
            https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/new-who-panel-speed-up-pandemic-response-address-shortcomings-2022-05-30/

            1. Basil Pesto

              Given the givens of the last three years, it would be somewhat alarming if there weren’t ‘discussions’ about reforming the IHR. I’m just doubtful that WHO are the organisation to implement meaningful and effective reform, given their sclerotic and inept nature. I get some Sepp Blatter’s FIFA vibes with what comes out of them (albeit more incompetent than corrupt).

        1. Basil Pesto

          No it isn’t – I am quite convinced the ‘pandemic treaty’ story is, to date, a nonsense, and I established that belief in my first paragraph, so it’s not a further contribution to that argument. It’s a change of subject.

          Rephrased in a hopefully more polite way: does the ultimate nothingburger nature of the story (May having now passed, there being no sign of a ~Pandemic Treaty~ that gives the WHO the right to commandeer the healthcare infrastructure of every country that ratifies such a treaty which – setting aside the fact that WHO in 2022 couldn’t organise a shag in a brothel – is ludicrous on its face) give you grounds to reassess the epistemic foundation of the conclusions that you have aired about the ongoing Monkeypox outbreak story in comments in recent weeks which have been, as I recall: that it is a false flag operation (apparently telegraphed in advance by an obscure .pdf modelling a global human monkeypox outbreak, even though the threat of re-emerging human Monkeypox has been understood and foreseen for many, many years now) to push through aforesaid pandemic treaty? (It’s probably worth pointing out that WHO’s actual communication about the global Monkeypox outbreak to date has been alarmingly incompetent bordering on disinterested.)

          Do you think it is perhaps time to consider re-evaluating the trustworthiness and competence of some of your sources of information?

          I understand that I am coming across as an arsehole here, but too often I read crap like this go unchallenged in the comments and I worry that people credulously fall for it, perhaps simply because they – justifiably – don’t trust WHO, and will thoughtlessly regurgitate the information as though it is truth (we can all be guilty of this from time to time!). Bullshit of this sort (and it really does smell overwhelmingly like bullshit) should be called out.

  23. fresno dan

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/26/uvalde-shooting-official-accounts/
    Quite a bunch of errors and inconsistencies. And yes, it was undoubtedly chaotic. But it all seems to try and rationalize police actions inactions. And you know what it reminds me of? All of those mistakes and errors in the investigation of Trump by the FBI – none of the mistakes were pro Trump – which makes it seem they were not merely random or real errors. Seems to me none of the errors reported at Uvalde were detrimental to the police….hmmmm.

    1. Boomheist

      I think one of the major reasons for the hesitation for all that time was that had they rushed the shooter and broken in the door to “take him out” it’s highly likely they’d have killed several kids, too, or maybe the shooter would have shot the kids as the police blasted in. Imagine the headlines – seven children killed as police storm classroom. Imagine the howls, and blaming, and finger pointing. So, in reaction to the near certainty they would earn a ton of horrible press if any kids were killed while taking out the shooter, they ended up standing around while the shooter killed many kids. Now they face another sh**storm, but I am thinking a big reason for the delay was a desire to avoid the sh**storm they would have faced if it was the police weapons that had killed kids….

  24. The Rev Kev

    “Midterm elections 2022: The issues that matter to Americans”

    Well by then it sure as hell won’t be the Ukraine. Memories of that will be stored in the same boneyard that memories of Afghanistan are stored. And I don’t believe in Axios’s range of issues here and it sounds like a DC consultant drew them up. If I had to take a few guess, I would say that in the coming months that it will be these issues-

    -High food prices
    -Sky high fuel prices, particularly in country regions
    -Inflation eating into wages
    -Unemployment rising
    -DC’s inability to deal with any of these problems – or even want to

    Your mileage may vary.

    1. Screwball

      I think you are correct.

      Example; Small town Northwest Ohio here, population 15k, maybe 30k in county. Local gas prices hit $4.79 today for 87 octane regular. I’m going by my old worn out brain, but back in 2008 (July, I think it was) when crude hit $147/bbl our gas prices breached the 4 dollar a gallon level, but I don’t think it ever got close to $4.79. I think $4.29 was the high. As I type this crude is at $116.5.

      The longer this goes on, and it seems it very well might go on for a while, the more troubling it will become.

      1. Mildred Montana

        Your old worn-out brain is correct, maybe fuzzy by a year or two. I remember when crude hit $147/barrel and gas here in Canada was $1.47 a liter. Today gas in Canada is a whopping $2.20 a liter even though crude is much less than it was about ten years ago.

        There seems to be very little connection between the price of oil and that of gasoline, and fuel taxes don’t explain it all. What’s up?

        1. Screwball

          What’s up? I can’t answer that.

          I feel sorry for the people at the gas stations. I was just at our nearest one ($4.79) and I asked the nice lady behind the counter how many people were coming in complaining about the price of gas?

          A: All of them.

          I get the same answer from the nice ladies at the grocery store too.

          1. Mildred Montana

            Good news, Screwball! Your brain is fine. ;)

            Just for the hell of it I checked out an historical price chart for crude oil. It (WTI) did indeed peak in June/July of 2008. It’s never been higher since.

        2. Louis Fyne

          The bottleneck is the lack of refineries. In the US, refineries are running at ~95% capacity which is pretty much the safe, sustainable max. During Covid, some refiners decided that their old refineries weren’t worth maintaining/renovating.

          And with the Biden administration anti-hydrocarbon stance (not being pejorative), the constant talk of EV mandates, and green/ESG mandates from Wall Street, refiners have decided that it is not worth building extra refining capacity.

          Then add the literal millions of new Chinese drivers who didn’t have cars in 2007-8. then add the ban on imports of Russian gasoline and other petroleum products.

          perfect storm.
          It is what it is, I’m just the messenger.

      2. Joe Renter

        Here in the northern/central CA coast on a busy intersection (close to highway) regular was $6.29. Costco last week was $5.69.
        Sucks for so many of the lower end wage earners that have to commute from the slightly more affordable city to the exclusive one where I live. As the founder of Net flicks was dining in the establishment I worked at and where an 850 sq ft one story house 2 years ago was bought for 2.5 million and torn down to put up a 2-story residence. Last house to a nice beach access. It’s obscene.

    3. jr

      The provided list of issues seems to be a real mish-mash. It’s more about what the hacks at Axios perceive, and want to perceive, as being important and less about the voter. Russia isn’t an issue, it’s a nation, whatever one’s personal feelings about it may be and to frame it thusly is ignorant and blinkering. As if we could do something about Russia. Fix it, somehow.

      Sure, Harris and Biden are “issues”, in a sense, God knows, but I’m personally a hell of a lot more concerned about food and fuel costs than the political personalities on offer. Axios needs you to think the eternal parade of political ‘toon characters really makes a difference, otherwise the category of “democracy” wouldn’t make much sense. I am personally done with the swamp of idiocy that is “identity politics” and related mires, I would bet a lot of Americans never cared that much in the first place. Foul smelling smoke and fun-house mirrors…

      The framing is all wrong, really wrong. As you point out with your list, a serious project of this kind would deal first with material problems, you know, the ones that will decide if you can eat or not. If your children will get the medications they need. But then we are talking about the deep thinkers of Axios, who live in a nebula of their own pious effluvium.

    4. Susan the other

      Yes, I do get the sense that this Biden offensive is pre-emptive inflation talk floated to control and set certain basic expenses and to sort of pre-disaster the coming price disasters which are unavoidable for a consumer based economy. There must be a word for that ;-) – but who really wants to admit such a thing exists? So without any setup to re-manufacture all the consumer goods we purchase we are only insured for food, certain public services, etc. Maybe medical bills will now comply as reality sets in. But, clearly, the thing that is left hanging in the wind is “consumer goods”. And that’s less of an inflation disaster than one might think because who wanted all that crap in the first place? In terms of an inflated economy, price inflation, it’s gotta be easier to adjust the volume of money necessary for essential goods, maybe more government checks and credit cards to pre-empt the pitchforks, but there will definitely be delays for some of the more ridiculous stuff.

    5. Noone from Nowheresville

      My mileage says only once the carnage has been wrought can the catfood zombie commission be resurrected.

  25. Wukchumni

    Top-Paid LA Lifeguards Earned Up To $510,283 In 2021 Open the Books.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    TV show pitch: ‘Paywatch’

    Lifeguards earn as much or more than actors & actresses in this sitcom on the beach, in the City of Angles.

  26. Brian (another one they call)

    The Physical Capacity Shortage View of Inflation, with a long explanation using words but no symbols for money. None, yet it is all about money.
    Inflation is caused by printing more money and allowing it to circulate. It is then worth less daily, because once they start they have to continue it until collapse of the currency, when it is worthless.
    We have increased money in circulation with abandon since 1971. Always increasing it and looking to see if it is causing harm amongst the citizenry. Not doing something about the printing, just watching it destroy. Our government use it to gaslight the entire nation into poverty. They hoped we wouldn’t notice.
    Currency collapse is next. We will notice.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      No, this is absolutely false. The monetarist clap trap you are trying to sell was conclusively disproven in monetarist experiments in the US and UK (Reagan-Thatcher era) where changes in money supply (both narrow and broad measures) correlated with NO macroeconomic variable. None. It’s also disproven by Japan, which has engaged in absolutely massive money supply creation yet has barely gotten out of deflation.

  27. Tom Stone

    I popped over to “The Intercept”and learned that the bullets fired from the AR15 were designed the EXPLODE BODIES!!!.
    I suspect the author slept through their HS physics class…

    1. Wukchumni

      While an exit wound from an AR-15 the size of a navel orange doesn’t exactly explode a body, it comes pretty close to almost being able to see through to one’s navel.

      1. TimH

        One of the reasons that LEO orgs have dropped back to 9mm from .40 is that modern bullet design has got so that a 9mm expanding bullet into a torso will stop someone.

        Back in the 1920s, a cop would shoot a perp in the leg using a revolver with a slow, accurate .32 long cartridge… but back then the idea was that the perp survived.

    2. Skip Intro

      I suppose they were referring to the tendency of the .223 round to tumble on impact, rather than popping straight through.

  28. none

    Re “The Main Mental Health Issue in This Country Is in the Republican Party”: Fox News’s new narrative is that mass shootings are connected with pot smoking. So they get to blame the Democrats for legalizing pot, among other things. Reminds me of Nixon criminalizing pot because he couldn’t criminalize being black or having long hair.

    1. flora

      And none of the MSM, not even Krystal and Saagar talk about psych meds as a possible contributing factor. If drugs are involved it must be pot. smh. (Those big pharma advertising dollars can’t possibly affect the narrative.) / ;)

    2. hunkerdown

      We’ll see how many stoner gentry tell the Puritan shills over at Fox News to get familyblogged. Though, to be honest, Fox is just putting out there what the entire establishment thinks about the little people having freedom they didn’t buy from them.

      1. Tom Collins' Moscow Mule

        Hassan I Sahba: “It is written in the soul of the desert, It is written in the signs in the stars, It is written in the sands of the hour-glass, It is written in the eye of the falcon, It is written in the shade of the scorpion, It is written in the wealth of the sun, It is written that man’s truth is a mirage, It is written that death is an oasis”

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBipA7Yksdk

  29. FlyoverBoy

    Don’t know who else to ask, so I’ll put out the question to the Naked Cap cognoscenti:

    Is there a CO2 meter portable enough that one could bring it along in pocket or purse to know if they’re safe breathing the air in a public place? Kindly readers, thanks for any guidance you can offer.

    1. Turtle

      I saw a twitter thread a while back where someone was posting pictures of their in-flight measurements of CO2 using this device: https://aranet.com/products/aranet4/

      Looking at photos in Amazon customer reviews, it appears to be around the size of the palm of a hand.

      Personally, I just go with the idea that except for home, I need to wear a high-quality mask in any indoor location with other people present. I think it’s a simpler, cheaper, and probably more guaranteed way to stay safe.

      1. FlyoverBoy

        Thanks, Turtle. Absolutely agree about the absolute need to N95 up in any public place.

        My concern is a different one: With reports that an unmasked person can infect even someone with a fitted N95 indoors in just 2-1/2 hours, I want to know when my N95/cloth combo may be not enough and it’s time to bail out of the venue entirely. I think the Japanese have exactly the right idea in posting a CO2 monitor at the door of every public place, so you can make an educated “personal risk assessment” in a way you can’t here. If they won’t do it for me, I want to be able to do it for myself.

        1. Turtle

          You’re welcome, FlyoverBoy.

          Very good points! I was not aware of either the 2-1/2 hour infection reports with N95 masks, or of the Japanese posting CO2 monitors at the doors of public spaces. It all makes sense. I may end up getting one for myself for the same reasons, particular for my work, which insists on us working in the office half the time, despite us being able to do 100% of our work from home.

          There are probably other CO2 monitor options out there, and perhaps even cheaper ones. Those are just the ones that I had previously seen people tweet about.

    2. Art_DogCT

      The Aranet meters do seem to the the top choice, but as others have mentioned they are more expensive than many can or care to afford. I have a no-brand generic meter I use when I go to any enclosed space for any length of time. About 8-9 months ago when I went out with the device for the first time it was also the first time I’d spent a long time indoors for any purpose since March, ’20. I did stay masked when not actively consuming food & drink, but still. The venue was not overcrowded, but most tables were occupied while I was there. I was unfamiliar with the meter, and though I’d turned it on and set it on the table in front of us, I was distracted by food, beer, conversation and most much especially very good doggage, and didn’t pay attention to the meter, which would occasionally chirp away.

      That night or in the next day or two, I realized I had been hearing the device alert me to elevated CO2, north of 1780 ppm, repeatedly over those couple of hours. And, in the fullness of time, in a few more days I developed flu symptoms. Fortunately it was really just flu and fairly mild at that. My takeaway lesson is when my little buddy is chirping, I need to make my excuses and leave.

      As many others have said over the last two+ years, I am grateful for NC, the COVID brain trust, and the many contributions of the commentariat, for the information and understanding to make what I believe to be my best choices. I have the CO2 monitor because of what I’ve read on NC, like I have a mask badger. The non-pharmaceutical protections I use are informed by my reading here. The Naked Capitalism community is genuinely a lighthouse amid surrounding darkness. I thank you all.

      1. Anthony G Stegman

        I will guess that the CO2 monitors are not meant to be carried around here and there in that they are not sufficiently rugged. People have complained online about the flimsy Araranet meters. My advice is to wear a high quality well-fitted mask and assume the air in public spaces is polluted with a variety of pathogens.

    3. Lex

      CO2 monitors aren’t cheap. In addition to the popular model linked in Turtle’s reply, there are somewhat smaller, industrial versions like this: https://sps.honeywell.com/us/en/products/safety/gas-and-flame-detection/portables/toxirae-pro-co2

      But I think you’re looking at about 3x the price of the aranet. The difference is going to be in sensor quality and sensitivity. The rule of thumb is that ambient exterior air will be about 450 ppm and “good” ventilation for odor and comfort is anything below 1150 ppm (700 ppm above exterior). For infectious disease mitigation, you probably want to dial that guideline down to a few hundred ppm above exterior.

      1. Vandemonian

        There are some portable CO2 meters on eBay around the $20 mark. Don’t know how accurate or reliable they are.

    6. Basil Pesto

      This may be a viable alternative to the more expensive, slightly less convenient Aranet4

      I’ve seen it recommended on twitter by people I trust, with readings close to (within 50ppm) the Aranet4

      I carry an Aranet4 and it’s pretty convenient though not as much as the one above looks to be (though I have lost the battery door on my Aranet!), where if you can attach it to a bag you don’t have to worry about forgetting to bring it with you. I have used it for the same purpose as you before once or twice: to bail out of a space entirely (nominally outdoors but covered, I wanted to drink, ppm was ~1200, unacceptably high so I left)

  31. The Rev Kev

    “This Is Where Dirty Old Cars Go to Die”

    That’s dirty old cars. But just yesterday my wife showed me an image of a huge yard full of cars. And these were relatively new EV cars but as their batteries had run flat, it was not economical to replace them which made the cars worthless. I don’t know how widespread a problem this is but it may be something to think about. Come to think of it, I hoped that they had removed all those batteries in that yard of EV cars. Can you imagine a fire getting loose?

    1. hunkerdown

      “Not economical” Is that how we say the manufacturer does better by building the limited flow of new cells into new vehicles with massively inflated sticker prices? That’s “easily” solved by enforcing a lifetime (20 years?) guarantee of parts availability, as even the USA has done with “emission control components” and life safety components. The trouble lies in getting them accepted, as they say.

  32. The Rev Kev

    “Europe’s Far-Flung Energy Woes”

    The author makes an interesting case but ends with the recommendation that ‘by some estimates, Germany’s 2.3 trillion cubic meters of shale gas could meet the country’s domestic needs for a century, if not longer.’

    I’m going to have to say no here. What about the inevitable earthquakes that will arise? Germany is a highly populated country and somebody is going to have to pay for all those damaged buildings. And certainly the Germans would react badly if they tried to set up fracking operations in a forest somewhere thus wrecking it. But more to the point, I cannot see them wanting their water supplies polluted by chemicals of unknown provenance that can never be removed.

    1. drumlin woodchuckles

      And of course all the carbon skyflooding from burning all that gas . . .

    2. Foy

      Yep Rev. Extraction of gas from the big Groningen gas field in the Netherlands is now close to being shut down even though it is not depleted by any means. Because… earthquakes.

      “We have somewhat of a shameful history with this field. Its depletion has been causing (minor) earthquakes, damaging houses and causing considerable stress for the people living there. For a decade, our government and our gas industry ignored or even denied this.”

      But then he concludes “Even taking that into account, even a partial ramp-up of Groningen could put a big dent in at least the Dutch need for Russian gas, at the cost of potential earthquakes in The Netherlands.”

      https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/about-that-russian-gas/ (previously posted by RobertSC)

      Putin Derangement Syndrome at work yet again. The earthquakes are just a price that has to be paid apparently….

  33. Wukchumni

    Gun law reform remains the best-known of New Zealand’s responses to the shooting, but another strategy — perhaps just as significant — has drawn less attention abroad: one of attempting to erase the Christchurch terrorist from the country’s history.

    “He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety,” Ardern told lawmakers four days after the attack. “That is why you will never hear me mention his name.”
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    We give these wanton assassins by hand cannon the pleasure of being known far and wide thanks to mentioning their names and giving them what they really craved-attention. The idea that we go over their sorry lives looking for a reason as to why they murdered so many people, only adds to the horrible picture painted by the press.

    The amount of virtual ink spilled in performing this duty for killers has left its mark on society, lets stop doing that.

    1. Anthony G Stegman

      I think erasing is a mistake. Pretending something didn’t happen doesn’t undo what happened. Many serial killers have become famous. It is important to understand why they did what they did, and to do so we must understand how they think. Erasing them forecloses on that. The Uvalde killer’s name ought never be forgotten, just as Adolf Hitler and John Wayne Gacy ought never be forgotten. The New Zealand PM means well, but she is misguided.

      1. Tom Bradford

        Pretending something didn’t happen doesn’t undo what happened.

        No-one’s pretending it didn’t happen. And the sources/’thinking’ that warped the shooter’s mind are under attack – via censorship and ‘think about what you’re being sold’ advice. What Ardern meant and is practising is denying the shooter as an individual with a name and identity exactly the kind of fame you refer to.

  34. David

    Just to clarify the tweet about De Gaulle’s statement, what the great man was talking about was not the Resistance as we normally think of it (Army of the Shadows and so on) but what he called Free France, ie those French people who followed him to London and worked with him in exile. It’s true there were very few of them (one top civil servant, the famous Jean Moulin, one junior officer, Major de Hautecloque, later known as Leclerc). But it’s also true that actually getting out of France and to England was complicated, to say the least, and those who did leave had to count on reprisals being taken against their families. The sociology of the actual Resistance in Occupied France has been studied quite a bit, and it seems to have included people from across the political spectrum and from all levels of society. But it is true that the units that carried out intelligence-gathering and sabotage operations often came from the margins of society, often the urban working-class and the rural peasantry. The Communist Party was well represented, even before 1941, and the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP) were the largest and most powerful individual group. Interestingly, Communists were also very well represented in the underground press and publishing : the great poet and novelist Louis Aragon was one such. Relevance to current class war discussions is, well, indirect, let’s say.

      1. JBird4049

        IIRC, where ever there were Germans, there was a resistance, and where ever there was a resistance, the Germans frequently and quickly wiped them out. However, it was like the Americans killing all the fighters and their families in Afghanistan and Iraq. For everyone they killed, at least one person would replace them because they were so angry at the death. The resistance movements just could not be wiped out completely.

        1. David

          In western Europe, there was very little armed resistance until 1944, partly because there were very few weapons, but mainly because after every attack, the Germans would execute large numbers of hostages. In France, the FTP actually argued that this was a good thing, and that eventually public anger would boil over into some kind of popular revolt. This was never remotely feasible, and was strongly opposed by the other Resistance groups, notably the Gaullist-inclined Armée Secrète the group featured in Melville’s film. The real value of the Resistance was twofold: collecting intelligence, rescuing downed aircrew carrying out sabotage and preparing armed and trained units to support the Landings was one. But the second, and for the French more important, reason, was to avoid being a passive victim of the Germans, and to be an active participant in the country’s liberation. After D-day, the Resistance became the Internal French Forces (FFI) and did a lot of the fighting. The FFI more-or-less liberated Paris in August 1944 before Leclerc’s troops arrived. The situation was slightly different in countries like Italy (where the Resistance fought the Fascist state) and in the unoccupied area of France.

    1. Anthony G Stegman

      Lake Powell should be emptied and Glen Canyon restored. Lake Powell was originally designed to take overflow from Lake Mead. Since it is apparent now that there will not be a need to store Lake Mead overflow there is little justification for maintaining Lake Powell as a viable reservoir and source for hydroelectric power. Glen Canyon was one of the most beautiful places on the planet before it was flooded. It can and should be restored. A man can dream!!

  36. Gilbert

    Biden’s sanctions not only help energy and commodity sellers raid America’s pockets, but most importantly, obligate Latin America to more depend on the U.S. suppliers.

    Also, our potential economic competitor, Europe has been convinced to cripple itself.

    Joe Biden’s handlers are really smart.

  37. Wukchumni

    I’m readying the all cats & no cattle ranch for aquagees from the SoCalist movement, they’ll be camping out-but don’t know it yet.

    Friends who lived many hundreds of miles from their water source will soon be hundreds of feet from it, when push>meets<shove and Cali runs out of H20.

    Could it be really the start of the housing bubble crash?

    What's the value of a bitchin' pad by the beach when you turn on the water and nothing comes out…

  38. Tom Collins' Moscow Mule

    Is the greatest of all time Imperial Power going to sanction itself, or is the current folly that is merely one of a historical litany of Washington double down, wager it all on one roll retributive ‘justice’ style follies just one more “uh, oh” Imperial Rain Man moment? [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3dRH9RMZDY ]

    “The US banned imports of Russian energy, including oil and certain petroleum products, in March, soon after Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine. And on Tuesday, the European Union agreed to ban most Russian oil as well as insurance for Russian cargoes. . . . “It is impossible to completely extricate Russian energy from the global market,” Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at Kpler, told Insider. “If India is taking Russian crude and blending it with other crudes and then refining it into gasoline or diesel, there’s no way to separate what is made from Russian crude and what isn’t. On this basis, any clean products refined in India and sent to the US could have originated from Russian crude, it is just impossible to tell.”

    “Russian oil products are likely ending up in the US after being refined in India, report says”

    https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/russian-oil-products-us-sanctions-refined-india-trade-ukraine-war-2022-6

    There was never any need to worry, because pecuniary self interest triumphs once again and the world that everyone knows and loves is still open for business as usual, the current geostrategic game(s) notwithstanding.

  40. RobertC

    China?

    China was unsuccessful obtaining the desired adoption for its two documents – the China-Pacific Islands Countries Common Development Vision and the China-Pacific Island Countries Five Year Plan on Common Development at the May 30 joint meeting. After the meeting, FM Wang Yi said further discussions were needed to shape more consensus.

    Australia and the US intend to respond with initiatives of their own but the policy framework and the financial means have not been identified.

    Cdr Salamander assesses the strategic stakes Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part XCIV. Once again he makes my point on China’s “dual-use” of its fishing fleets. As with Naked Capitalism, worth reading the Comments.

    1. drumlin woodchuckles

      Before I have a chance and time to read this link and all the comments, I will just venture a guess that part of the ChinaGov goal is to strip mine all the fishes out of the sea surrounding all these island nations . . . just as soon as the ChinaGov can get their permission for its fleet to fish there.

      And if they get that permission, they will strip mine the fish until every fishery collapses the way the fish miners of the world collapsed the cod fishery off Newfoundland. When China achieves that endpoint, China will leave. Its parting words will be . . . . ” So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

      A United States of Autarkamerica sealed off from the world as much as possible would have to retain enough military capacity to destroy every Chinese fishing strip miner which invaded Autarkamerican waters to strip mine all of Autarkamerica’s fish.

  41. drumlin woodchuckles

    Kids shouldn’t die of school shootings. And kids shouldn’t die of covid.

    But I predict the deliberate typhoid Mary covid-spreading establishment will be satisfied with thousands of kid deaths every year from the covid they work deliberately on purpose to spread everywhere on purpose.

    Deliberately.

    On purpose.

  42. drumlin woodchuckles

    @Resilc,

    The Catfood Conspirators will continue de-solventizing Social Security by every hook and crook that they know. They will also keep lying about it every which way they can think of.

    I would plan for continuing attacks against Social Security from every angle. The Energizer Bunny Clintonites will never ever give up. Never ever.

      1. drumlin woodchuckles

        It lives on in spirit. Thousands of Clintonites cherish its memory and hope to bring a successor back to life.

  43. jr

    Good news: they have a “plan”.

    “Exclusive: Ukraine Troops Retreating in Donbas Have a Plan, Luhansk Governor Says”

    The plan seems to consist of reforming the line on higher ground and not losing this time. Sounds solid. Next some conflicting claims ‘twixt the governor and reality:

    “This task is a priority for them, because this is not a particularly large territory and could become low-hanging fruit for the Russian high command that wants to show some victories.”

    However Newsweek provides that:

    “Victory in Severodonetsk would hand Russia almost full control of the Luhansk Oblast; one of Ukraine’s two most easternmost provinces and a key war goal for the Kremlin.”

    Apparently Severodonetsk is the regional hub. Perhaps it’s “low hanging fruit” but it’s seems it’s sweet to the taste. But then:

    “The neighboring city, Lysychansk, where we could and might need to retreat if push comes to shove, is not far and is on higher ground than Severodonetsk], so it is strategically much more important. But for Russia, Severodonetsk is a key target because it is a regional center.”

    Sounds like the pushes are shoving. I would suspect capturing the regional hub would crimp the logistics. Undoubtably major roads run from it and there would be supply depots and related resources there, no? Lysychansk being “not far” means it’s, well, not far for the Russians either. On to:

    “The fighting will continue, our military will not be surrounded, the supply of ammunition will continue, and they will be able to hold their positions and attack the Russian forces from above.“

    So what just happened, more or less, isn’t going to happen now. Ok. Got it.

    https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-troops-retreating-donbas-plan-luhansk-governor-serhiy-haidai-1711986?amp=1

  44. Lexx

    ‘Suicide takes more military lives than combat, especially among women’

    Why was 1938 a particularly high year for suicides among what were mostly males in the military? It’s still the Depression; WW2 doesn’t officially begin until September 1, 1939; the unemployment rate is around 20% but those in the military have jobs, at least three hots and a cot. What am I missing? Or was that enough to drive large numbers of soldiers to take their own lives?

    1. LifelongLib

      After a very short search I didn’t find any info.

      Based on reading and anecdotes from people who were alive at the time, up until WW2 enlisted service in the military was considered somewhat disreputable, and tended to be a refuge for ne’er-do-wells and a dumping ground for juvenile delinquents. So a lot of people with problems ended up there. Not much to go on…

  45. drumlin woodchuckles

    About the great resignation from Academe . . . I thought of a way that the great resigners might be able to torture Academe into becoming a more academic-worker-friendly environment. It’s just an idea that I have.

    What if all the social groups now existing of great happy resigners were all to get together and decide to target one single institution either chosen at random or some other way . . . . and focus all the effort of all their thousands of members on encouraging and facilitating the resignation of so many people from the targeted college or university that the targeted college or university became so starved of people that it was forced to go into irreversible liquidation? And once the targeted institution was liquidated through mass stealth resignation, target and liquidate another institution. And then another one. And then another one.

    Eventually the industry would be terrorised into improving its employee experience and situation because every single member of the Academe industry would be in terror of being the next member singled out for total worldwide resignation-encouragement attention and liquidation through lethal staff attrition.

  46. LifelongLib

    After a very short search I didn’t find any info.

    Based on reading and anecdotes from people who were alive at the time, up until WW2 enlisted service in the military was considered somewhat disreputable, and tended to be a refuge for ne’er-do-wells and a dumping ground for juvenile delinquents. So a lot of people with problems ended up there. Not much to go on but a possible explanation.

  47. drumlin woodchuckles

    Several posts ago there was a post about ” where is all this polarisation really coming from”?

    Here is a 4 minute video by a former Facebook executive describing Facebook’s technological contribution to the degradation of decent behavior all over the everywhere-Facebook-reaches parts of the Earth. I suppose he includes the other Dopamine Feedback Loop Farming social media as well.

    Anyway, here is the link.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/v2mfq3/former_facebook_exec_i_think_we_have_created/

    In the end he offers nothing useful at the social level, however. He just counsels individual persons to “make the right behavioral decisions”.

  48. Llewelyn Moss

    I just read “The Danger of Underestimating Russia” (naked capitalism 5/26) sent via newsletter. The lead-in says “[The West] blinded itself with its anti-Russia propaganda.” Is there a recent NC post (link) that explains this view and why Russia was justified in invading Ukraine in the first place? I’ve been getting all my Ukraine war news from Ukraine and US news sources so that’s the bias I’ve been reading. Thanks.

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