How birds got their wings PhysOrg (Anthony L)
Should New Zealand cats be kept indoors? BBC (furzy). Um, cats should be kept indoors. They live much longer. And don’t mass murder birds. You can leash train them, as I did, if you want them to go outside. Perhaps an electrical fence can confine them to your yard if you want a compromise.
Rare Jurassic-era bug found at Arkansas Walmart BBC (resilc). Good find, but gimmie celacanths all day.
How to Save Yellowstone’s Wolves Intercept (resilc)
Yellowstone System Alert Just Announced The Massive Dome Shaped Uplift Is Still Increasing In Size Future Unity, YouTube (furzy). We’ve mentioned the Yellowstone caldera as a tail risk recently without having seen this update.
Mexican president posts photo of what he claims is a Maya elf Guardian. Resilc: “Dropped from Chicom balloon.”
JavaScript library is EVERYWHERE. Its maintainer is broken The Stack (Micael T)
Jeff Koons Goes to the Moon GQ (Anthony L)
This Dental Device Was Sold to Fix Patients’ Jaws. Lawsuits Claim It Wrecked Their Teeth. KHN. Not “was sold”. Is still being sold.
The Profession Formerly Known As Medicine American Mind (Dr. Kevin)
#COVID-19
No One Really Knows How Much COVID Is Silently Spreading … Again Atlantic. Remember those home tests are lousy. If you test positive, yes you have it, but tons of false negatives. Catches only ~65% of infections if you swab as directed, which rises to >80% if you swab your throat.
Hospitals That Ditch Masks Risk Exposure Bill of Health (ma). As in legal exposure.
Viruses Hiding Out in Patients Hold Long Covid Answers Bloomberg (ma)
Weekly Rounds: COVID-19, Fighting a Disease With a Disease, Rise in RSV Infections, and More Infection Control Today (guurst)
USAF will rescind all penalties related to refusing the COVID vaccine if (and only if) they had requested a religious or medical waiver. Air Force Medicine (BC)
Climate/Environment
E-car sales plummet in Germany following subsidy cut Clean Energy Wire. Resilc: “Welfare for rich.”
The highly charged geopolitics of lithium Asia Times (Kevin W)
Stripy wind turbines could prevent fatal seabird collisions New Scientist (Dr. Kevin)
China?
Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, declares that China must now understand that "the United States is staying in this region, we're the leader in this region… We don't want conflict, but we're going to hold our own out here."
In other words: Follow the Leader. pic.twitter.com/ipG5PAe4AC
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 1, 2023
Huawei spends $24bn a year in R&D. Given lower PRC costs that's like $50 bn in the US. In one year Huawei alone spends as much in R&D as Biden's CHIPS Act will spend in 5 years.
— David P. Goldman (@davidpgoldman) February 28, 2023
BlackSky details building of China’s secret naval base in Cambodia Naval Technology (furzy)
US importers demand refund of Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods worth billions of dollars South China Morning Post (Kevin W)
Did the CIA Betray Nelson Mandela? Time (BC)
New Not-So-Cold War
To Save Time, Treasury Secretary Yellen Gives Zelensky Key To U.S. Treasury Babylon Bee (Li)
West presses UAE to clamp down on suspected Russia sanctions busting Financial Times. As a finance running buddy said, “The sanctions didn’t work. Deal.”
Former U.S. and World Bank Officials on Rebuilding Ukraine’s Economy C-SPAN. Larry Summers, Harvard endowment wrecker and deregulation tout, now as Ukraine looter….
* * * Russo-Ukrainian War: Schrodinger’s Offensive Big Serge. An excellent piece, particularly the detailed discussion of Kreminna and Ugledar. In my Ukraine post today, I do quibble with some of his high level views (and non-military Alexander Mercouris has been saying for a while Russian forces are too small to take Ugledar, so it’s now a costly pinning operation, although I am sure Big Serge is correct that Russia hope to score a big win initially by catching Ukraine forces flat-footed).
Faits divers, or, if you will, straws in the wind as WWIII blows in Gilbert Doctorow (Edward M)
🇩🇪🇮🇳 Foreign Minister @ABaerbock is actively recruiting the G20 for a coalition against Russia. So far not very successfully. The host of the forum, India, made it clear to the minister that they would not play in the “collective west.” pic.twitter.com/mbWcUJCbid
— 🅰pocalypsis 🅰pocalypseos 🇷🇺 🇨🇳 🅉 (@apocalypseos) March 2, 2023
👴🇺🇸"150 time…159 thoua…billions led…less" – the leader of the free world Biden pic.twitter.com/oFjpTfMgHL
— AZ 🛰🌏🌍🌎 (@AZgeopolitics) February 28, 2023
Biden Challenged by Softening Public Support for Arming Ukraine New York Times. Lead story.
Victoria Nuland, or How the Cookie Crumbled The Postil (ThirtyOne). This IMHO is a very good sign. One event could be an coincidence but three looks like a trend. We have this piece and Alex Christaforu, at almost the same time, starting to make fun of Nuland. Summarizing Christaforu does him a disservice, but the theme is (delivered in heartwarming movie trailer voice)..”But you have to remember. ‘Tory Nuland is just a small town girl with a dream, a big dream… [more riffing]…to destroy Russia.” I’ve come to enjoy these bits, even if I know the joke, like a kid hearing a favorite story retold. Anyway, we have two independent outbreaks of Nuland-lambasting, in combination with her suddenly being pressed into way way way more media appearances than usual to ‘splain how we are still going to win in Ukraine. Not a good look when the brains behind the scenes is suddenly made a major face person for a project going pear-shaped. Means denial and image-management are under stress.
* * * Oil Trade Is Moving Away From Europe OilPrice
Why this elite fund manager is analysing Germany to understand frontier markets City Markets
* * * NBC News journalist Keir Simmons recently went to Crimea and reported that the majority of the Crimeans are pro-Russia. Now the Ukrainians have put him on their hit list website for reporting this fact. https://t.co/sJrQREXF8i pic.twitter.com/G0q6dubCSz
— Hassan Mafi (@thatdayin1992) March 1, 2023
Mediaite SMEARS Jimmy Dore For Telling Truth About Ukraine N@zis YouTube
Syraqistan
Pentagon Developed Contingency Plan for War With Iran Intercept (resilc)
Destruction of the ‘Third Temple’: Israel on the brink of civil war The Cradle (guurst)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Face Recognition Software Led to His Arrest. It Was Dead Wrong Wired (resilc)
Imperial Collapse Watch
Air Force deploys Giant Military Cats to defeat Chinese balloons DuffelBlog (BC)
US intelligence: No evidence foreign adversaries behind ‘Havana Syndrome’ The Hill. The fact that this story went anywhere is a sign of imperial paranoia.
USS Zumwalt, Navy’s Stealth Destroyer, to Fire Hypersonic Missile Popular Mechanics (resilc). Note misleading headline v. this: “The Navy is outfitting an underwater test facility in Crane, Indiana to test this capability.”
GOP Clown Car
Trump Calls DeSantis ‘Wheelchair Over the Cliff Kind of Guy’ New York Magazine (resilc)
Woke Watch
The cultural left has peaked Financial Times (Kevin W)
NYC Mayor Dismisses Idea of Separating Church and State New York Times (resilc)
“When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools.”
— NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) speaking at the New York Public Library interfaith breakfast pic.twitter.com/2GkxKCB5bX
— The Recount (@therecount) February 28, 2023
We Need to Move the Needle on Black Reproductive Health. Like, Yesterday. Those Nerdy Girls (Kevin W)
Norfolk Southern Chemical Bomb
In a closed-door #EastPalestineOH meeting w/ OH Senator Sherrod Brown, EP Mayor, & business owners, EP resident Jamie Cozza says the focus was on need for great "comeback story" and getting "people back in here for our businesses"…not widespread residents' health symptoms pic.twitter.com/O2gjz4Bnad
— Status Coup News (@StatusCoup) March 1, 2023
East Palestine Isn’t Suffering From One Disaster. It’s Suffering From Many. New Republic
The Betrayal of Adam Smith New Republic (Anthony L). As we’ve said!
Are We Headed For A Recession Or Not? FiveThirtyEight
Share of home deals done in cash rises to nine-year high Daily Mail (BC)
Visualizing the Global Share of U.S. Stock Markets Visual Capitalist (furzy)
The Bezzle
Binance Can’t Keep Its Story Straight on Misplaced $1.8B USDC CoinDesk
Silvergate’s Worsening Crypto Losses Feed Watchdogs’ Worst Fears Bloomberg
Guillotine Watch
A $150,000 ‘executive protection dog’? Rich L.A. homeowners are snapping them up. Los Angeles Times. Resilc: “USA USA = rich ‘hoods of El Salvador.” Moi: A dog is a dog and can be shot or poisoned. But this will establish a residential market for those horrible robot dogs.
Class Warfare
Starbucks Engaged In ‘Egregious’ Violations Of Federal Law In Anti-Union Push, Judge Finds HuffPost (Carla R)
True enough.
But, in fact, the false trust-fund analytical frame makes it EASIER for the right to sell SS privatization by rope-a-doping prominent “experts” on the left into unproductive, bipartisan, pay-for debates over which private sector gimmick is best to ensure “solvency.” https://t.co/Ij0iWVNn35
— Bill Goggin (@wgoggin) March 1, 2023
The Supreme Court justices deciding whether to axe Biden’s student loan relief program paid an average of $42,539 to go to college. Today, they’d have to pay around $320,531. Business Insider (Kevin W)
Antidote du jour (CV):
And a bonus:
Goose parade in The Netherlands.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/VU7OqUEXfi
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) February 25, 2023
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Not so cold war
Defense Politics Asia reports of unconfirmed rumors of Ukraine forces in mutiny at Bakhmut front, of the local reserve non professional troops:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPGDqVnF1pk
—A $150,000 ‘executive protection dog’? Rich L.A. homeowners are snapping them up. —
have a family member in executive security industry. Spending is booming.
Executive-tier people do not want to be alone in their local downtown—which just 5-20 years ago was as safe as Disneyland.
Just the messenger.
Resilc’s comment is spot on….the country is past the event horizon on its way to Latin America-tier inequality.
Like scenes from the fictional film series “the Purge”…from the original the Ethan Hawke character makes serious bank for lead salesman of the best home protection gadgetry. Next thing we know in 20 years we might have a New Founding Fathers just like in those movies.
Since the wealthy and affluent can afford these attack / protection dogs, they can also front some expensive umbrella policies in the unlikely event something goes awry.
So we’re going to be seeing lots of movies about “hacked” robot dogs in the near future?
Whatever those dogs are programmed to do to intruders, they can be reprogrammed to do to their masters.
In our wonderful version of the Jetsons future (for some), trust in Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics is the cyber version of snake handling.
Couple robot dogs with the squirrely face recognition software in another story today and…
Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be an Uber Eats, etc. delivery person in those neighborhoods.
This got me wondering as to ways to disable one. I think a good, sticky paint splattered all over it’s cameras would slow it down considerably. They are working on ones that use touch sensitivity but that seems it could be gamed as well. LADAR could be disabled by gunking up the lasers. I wonder if some kind of metal laden paint, say lead, could screw up RADAR.
Just build your own emp. There are plenty of instructions online
How do you protect your own electronics?
Faraday cage would work but good luck finding one big enough for your car and smart appliances.
It is still as safe as Disneyland. Crime rates are still way below the rates seen in the 1990’s/Early 2000’s nationwide. To think that the entire city is now unsafe after an increase from historical bottoms shows a lack of judgement and paranoia. Or just the affects of increasing propaganda.
IIRC, for the entire United States, the crime rate for everything including murder, was greater from the 1970s and until immediately before the pandemic. That is fifty years of being more dangerous.
However, if it bleeds it leads and by manipulating statistics (see the saying “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics”) one can have contrived OMG headlines. What should worry people is the decades’ long decline in clearance rates, where the police are able to determine the likely suspect, not their conviction rate. That makes the police look bad and they don’t want to do that. It also makes pushing for more militarized and powerful police, if they can’t do their most basic job well.
Proofreading is my friend.
“It also makes pushing for more militarized and powerful police harder to do, if they can’t do their most basic job well.”
Near doppelgangers for my Ralph a large 55 kg straight back long coat German Shepard [seen on NC] and Rue a 20 kg Belgian Malinois/Kelpie cross runt. Rue was bought as a family dog after a small dog passed away and Ralph as a family dog/companion for Rue.
These sorts of breeds need training and work or will show in their behavior negatively. Not to mention you don’t want a 55 kg uncontrolled big strong dog, needs command training. You will notice in all the photos of the dogs that they have command collars on, a must for strong dogs IMO. With mine its a simple collar for Rue, see is just that good, and Ralph a control collar, he’s just that big and strong, not to mention conditioned to understand when it goes on he needs to pull his head in.
Both are highly intelligent both mentally and emotionally and make excellent companion dogs for those that enjoy constant interaction e.g. not backyard dogs. Whilst Ralph is the big please don’t eat me looking sort its actually Rue that will notify you that you are not allowed on the property unless a family member is present. She bailed up a next door neighbor for coming through the gate and made it a few meters before she informed him he needed to move 4 meters outside the gate and then sat down at the gate like nothing happened. She kept a few meters between him and her and just displayed, otherwise when I’m around she is nice as pie to him and happy too see him, very playful.
Anywho both dogs were bought at a fraction of the prices these dogs in the article are asking and getting … so yeah is just a trend in the PMC faction just like the Labradoodle’s were. My big question is if these owners will up keep on the training, must need, or just send back to trainers like a car when it has problems – ????
Didja ever consider the pound?
“Didja ever consider the pound?”
Not really Alex.
You see it was originally my ex-wife with youngest daughter, that was doing Vet Tech study at the time, they sourced the dogs after many hours of looking at breeds and actual dogs. Rue was bought for a modest sum from a small breeder that had been doing it for 20 years on the side, hence the cross breed. She is a treat and I grew up with 2 German Shepard’s, smarter than them put together. Some of her training was close to our family holiday spot of Noosa Queensland. So both her and Ralph could drive up with us and then be close for visits, 2 week holiday times+.
Trainer was ex RAF dog guy and just loved Rue, so quick to learn and eager for more, not to mention looks like some sort of show dog lol – until … but its always measured and will not leave the property even if gate is left open.
Ralph was another story all together. So the ex-wife in OCD mode decided she wanted a BIG dog. Well at that time a couple of breeders were bringing in the straight back long coat German Shepard’s into Australia and are quite popular as family dogs in Germany. Just big lovable dogs that want affection and love too play. Problem being is he is so big and muscular, not just in looks but movement, that whilst everyone stares at him, they also are fearful of him, including their dogs. The people thing is easy once they have a pat and feel his soft plush coat and affectionate responses, but some dogs are just put off and go all defensive posture. Oh by the way as a pure breed he was quite cheap due to lack of demand at the time, but strict rules of ownership. Had to pass inspection with breeders to own him, no breeding him, any reports of negligence and they would reposes.
So no this was not a go too the pound and just grab a dog thingy – pot luck. It was all well thought out with intent to achieve specific things. Now on the other side of the story my ex had a stroke in her mid 40s three years ago and with that came personality changes and a long road to recovery. She was unable to care for her dogs so here I am now with them and I can’t complain because they are so incredible and helped me deal with the fall out of her event.
I’ve met so many people with them out and about and everyone enjoys it. Met the old head of the Queensland dog club association walking them a few blocks from my old house. Dead set stopped lawn care when he saw Ralph and said hay boy too Ralph and rubbed him all over. Then talked about Rue and was impressed with her response to commands and looks.
Snort …. I can’t even let them off leash at some big sport or public park because the two of them playing and frolicking sends everyone else into some sort of panic. Ralph covers ground like a lion and Rue can stick with him – 45 klm hr. Then how they tussle seems aggressive, yet Rue gets the better or Ralph more times than not. Yet if I say the word they are back at my side and in position.
They look after me and I them.
JFYI, I met a self-defense trainer who coached execs on how to avoid kidnap. He was in therapy because he knew he was helping evil people defend themselves.
Meanwhile, today’s attack on MMT from Heritage: Thwarting the push to make inflation permanent. Appeared in the McClatchy (now Hedgie-owned) news today.
That MMT attack really validates Bradolini’s law (“It takes orders of magnitude more energy to debunk the B.S. than to create it in the first place.”). I’m thinking of nominating Brandolini for a Physics Nobel.
Re: broke JavaScript maintainer. This strikes close to home. Oss developers get no respect. Netizens are extremely entitled and will go to great lengths to pirate even commercial software. They also express great outrage. even companies who are extremely profitable and use a project don’t think to help support an author they depend on. I’m considering embedding a non-disclosed timeout in all my stuff so that it just stops working in 1year and people are forced to come back for fresh downloads with possibly new license schemes in the future.
Anarchism, and FOSS, cannot survive when it is practiced in a capitalist environment.
I guess civic mindedness is just dead. Probably a casualty of seeing endless scams and so many leeches attached that people are anemic to begin with. Spengler would probably have done insights on the fraying of social threads in this late stage
I really don’t understand this. This article said his code ‘is on hundreds of millions of websites and over 50% of the world’s most visited websites (from Paypal to Pronhub).’ You could go to each corporation that depends on this code and ask them for a contribution. When asked for how much, you could tell them ‘Less than you would spend on your restaurant lunch today.’ Maybe just an annual grant from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers would do. But as all these organizations are basically getting this for free, they really don’t care.
Some browsers allow you to turn off Javascript but doing so will often break functionality–for example our ability to make these comments.
The JavaScript ecosystem is a thankless world, not just a little because of the pace of useless “innovation” driven by fashion-obsessed product managers. core-js’s purpose is to fill in for the defects and deficiencies and bad QA in web browsers, which are designed to a “living standard” and released into a “competitive” market by a handful of well-funded organizations plus a few hobbyists. Dude is fixing a problem: that shouldn’t exist, whose solution could be pieced together out of other components, and that in any case ought to have been fixed or prevented by browser makers. All of which contributes to dude not seeing the love he should, in addition to cancellation because Russian.
I agree there really should be a public grant and standards program for FOSS computing infrastructure, defined broadly, but that would contradict both the neoliberal and conservative moments of the capitalist religion, which are each in their own way about the creation of new kinds of things and new ways to appropriate them.
Absolutely, we should have an entire public trust entity that simply funds software engineering, good software engineering, for our public spaces. Whether it’s a Twitter that anyone can run, or a unemployment insurance system that actually works, all ought to be Open Source for use by governments and individuals. None of these opaque software supply chains, rolled up by PE firms that lay everyone off and get hacked.
As to the ecosystem, ha. It is all a true and completely mess. Just take the backbone of any large enterprise web application: npmjs, a huge repository of code libraries, each with different licenses, each of different size, mostly probably maintained by one or a few people, possibly with contributors. Where to even begin? And software versioning is hard. And software maintenance is hard. And apply fixes to earlier versions of your own library and maintaining those is hard.
Now try to incorporate these dozens of libraries into a JavaScript (or now TypeScript!!) based web application, and not have one of these dependencies perhaps break another, or you can’t install one version that fixes a software vulnerability, because some other best effort library you’re using doesn’t work with it. And this doesn’t even get into JavaScript ecosystem having multiple module types now! Some people use CommonJS modules, some people use ESM modules, they sort of interoperate, but not exactly.
And you have to use a bundler tool to gather up all this stuff plus your own application code so it can all be delivered to a web browser!
And this is like 3% of the nuttiness of JavaScript land. There’s so much more. And there’s the new hot framework every month. Because today’s developer “discover” some new approach or paradigm that’s straight out of the 1970s or whatever, and apply it today. So like “functional” programming is the hotness! Or no, we should use classes instead, but JavaScript doesn’t even support classes, it’s prototypal inheritance, but the language had “class” grafted onto it, because Java developers!
Or let’s have a strong data type system! So we get TypeScript, from Microsoft, which many enterprise projects use now, but many of us got away from strongly typed languages in the first place because meh, and typing isn’t so magic sauce that makes bugs go away. But now strong typing is the new hotness!! With all the overhead of learning that entails for murky gains. And you have to transpile everything! Which means source maps, longer builds, more annoying debugging sessions, blah.
And blah. And blah. And blah.
And this stuff runs all your modern Internet on the frontend, and sometimes as well on the backend as services, although that’s often Java, or Golang these days. But whatever.
An accurate and colorful slice of life as a full stack dev. I can only add that the WWW is a phishing hole from front to back, and thousands of tiny birds such as Mr. Pushkarev perform “ecosystem services” around the pond for, basically, “exposure”. They would only be missed in aggregate, but their dearth or absence might inspire healthier ways of producing the Web ecosystem that isn’t mostly PMC theater.
Have you seen the Tim Bernard-Lee’s Solid project? From his company, Inrupt. It’s an “own and control your own data” platform for building secure applications and keeping your data secure, sharing it selectively. The alt-Twitter app Mastodon is the only one I know of built on Solid. I believe it was originally a P2P web-chat app ported to Solid. There was a rush to it when Musk jumped into Twitter but it seems to be getting pounded bc pedophiles are using it for privacy, altogether a straw-man proposition leading me to suspect that Twitter is doing the pounding. Mastodon lets you have your own Twitter hosted on somebody else’s server or your own if you are up to it. Make your own rules.
I’m a retired SE and Information Architect, mostly in finance. I had to retire because of the utter dishonesty and corruption of the corporate environment where my skills were valuable, but I may pick up Solid to see where it can go.
>You could go to each corporation that
>depends on this code and ask them for
> a contribution
Problem is the trajectory of open source code. It’s fun and easy when you start with little invested so who cares if someone uses it. Gains popularity cool you add some more. Before you know it you have a full years labor into it with people who use it making money and you have a full time job building it to now meet requests and thinly veiled demands. Anyone can use any previous copy of it for free. Usually you put out a donation page but as the article said almost no one donates ever. How to change models at this point? You can’t. And you can’t add enough features at this point to make old versions less desirable enough to encourage switchover. And users will be literally incensed at the thought of a license change. I stopped writing open source software. also people won’t follow licenses or respect authors anyway and enforcement is fully out of reach for individuals. Especially authors who give everything away to begin with.
“tragedy of the commons”. It was literally the 1st lesson in my high school economics class.
guy gives away his work for years, then complains that no one is paying? of course no one is paying, you’re giving away your work for free.
what he should have been doing is: set up a javascript foundation, get some grant writers, professional staff, marketers, famous people for figurehead board members etc.
1. Guy’s in Russia, and
2. Probably dodging those seeking grist for the war mill, AKA cannon fodder, and
3. Thus, likely doing all he can just to survive.
Except a) this isn’t a “tragedy of the commons” and b) the tragedy of the commons is a bad faith capitalist parable and not a real thing
Did you know the guy who coined the “tragedy of the commons” faked his research?
https://boingboing.net/2019/03/07/scientific-fraud.html
Thanks for that link on the Tragedy of the Commons. Very useful to know that it is a lie.
Did you know Frederick Winslow Taylor faked his research? He’s one of the founders of the “scientific” management that inspired business schools (in his case, Wharton). A similar faker was the impetus for Harvard’s MBA program.
By his own admission, Taylor “adjusted” the results of his experiments 20 – 200%. See Matthew Stewart’s The Management Myth for the footnotes
The nice thing about FOSS is that individuals are completely replaceable. Despite the wokeification of the space, code is still the stuff of it. The world can do without your broken psychology or your broken code, and you are welcome to kindly keep both private to yourself.
Ask Brandon Nozaki Miller, perpetrator of the node-ipc supply chain attack, how his FOSS stock is working out.
I’m considering embedding a non-disclosed timeout in all my stuff so that it just stops working in 1year and people are forced to come back for fresh downloads…
Don’t. Do. It.
And if you do, definately disclose the fact that functionality is enabled for one-year from date of activation.
A company that I worked for created “maintainence shutdowns” in the PLC programming that were triggered at X, Y, and Z hours: if the customer did not enter the proper code, their machine would brick at whatever point these hours were reached.
Needless to say, it pissed a lot of people off when production ended without warning, especially when the technician(s) could not be readily located or were not immediately available to provide the code to clear the shutdown.
Leave the slow-pays and no-pays to the lawyers and bill-collectors–you don’t want to create ill-will or any liabilities for yourself.
Indeed… I used to spend my free time helping develop the Linux kernel. Needless to say, I’ve learned my lesson ever since the corporations started plundering it. Microsoft/Github was the last straw: they feel entitled to take my code and train my replacement with the work I did to provide others with an alternative to their monopoly. The irony is off the charts. I prefer to hike these days.
@RevKev: Your web browser understands some variant of Javascript. The website speaks some other variant. This fellow’s code makes it possible for the website speaking some other variant to be understood by your browser. Because websites want to be understood by as many browsers as possible, they include his code. Without it, most websites would require people to update to the latest browser, which would require everyone to throw away their their computer every couple of years. So this fellow is literally reducing environmental harm. It’s unsurprising that capitalists who just want to make us consume more would be in two minds about him. On the one hand Microsoft, Apple, Google et al would like everyone to be forced to upgrade, on the other hand they don’t want to lose their customers to a company using his tool which might happen if they stopped using it themselves.
Paying a lawyer to enforce copyright is beyond any open source dev’s means. Capital wins over creativity and competence in our society, so there will be less and less of the latter.
I’d suggest lots of software is a natural monopoly. Maybe public ownership (and subsidy) is the answer. Remember the flaws in log4j?
The lingering effects of the first SARS virus:
Multiomic characterisation of the long-term sequelae of SARS survivors: a clinical observational study
Findings
Fatigue was the most common symptom in SARS survivors 18 years after discharge, with osteoporosis and necrosis of the femoral head being the main sequelae. The respiratory function and hip function scores of the SARS survivors were significantly lower than those of the controls. Physical and social functioning at 18 years was improved compared to that after 12 years but still worse than the controls. Emotional and mental health were fully recovered. Lung lesions on CT scans remained consistent at 18 years, especially in the right upper lobe and left lower lobe lesions. Plasma multiomics analysis indicated an abnormal metabolism of amino acids and lipids, promoted host defense immune responses to bacteria and external stimuli, B-cell activation, and enhanced cytotoxicity of CD8+ T cells but impaired antigen presentation capacity of CD4+ T cells.
Interpretation
Although health outcomes continued to improve, our study suggested that SARS survivors still suffered from physical fatigue, osteoporosis, and necrosis of the femoral head 18 years after discharge, possibly related to plasma metabolic disorders and immunological alterations.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589537023000615
Lymphocyte integrins mediate entry and dysregulation of T cells by SARS-CoV-2
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-023-01348-0
‘@ABaerbock
is actively recruiting the G20 for a coalition against Russia. So far not very successfully. The host of the forum, India, made it clear to the minister that they would not play in the “collective west.”’
I heard that the “collective west” countries are going to try too hijack the G-20 meeting by refusing to endorse the final statement of it unless it includes a condemnation of Russia in it. I’m going to guess that those seven countries will want to only talk about the Ukraine at those meetings whereas the rest of those countries will want to talk about more vital problems like food insecurity, development funding, etc. India will be of course seriously p****** as it will turn their hosting of the G-20 into something of a fiasco. Russia and China, meanwhile, will reflect that they are lucky in the choice of their enemies.
I heard a rumor that the GDP (as bad as a measure it is of anything) of BRICS currently surpasses that of the G-7. Maybe the “collective west” will soon find that it is no longer invited to discuss the important issues the globe is facing?
You know, until the “collective west” finds a way of not confusing dialogue with dictating.
Note that Lavrov has taken the step of publicly apologizing to India for the behavior of the G7 representatives. The whole west is playing this so incredibly wrong that one might conclude they’re playing it wrong intentionally.
If only. Nah, they are behaving like a high school clique. And their leader is your classic spoiled airhead that do not know anything about the world beyond the beltway.
Like Chrystia Freeland puting together the Lima Group to get rid of the Venezuelan government…
Mean girls club through and through…
Meanwhile: Against a background of no deaths and no new critical cases for thirteen days, a group of prominent Cuban scientists have discussed the epidemiology of COVID-19 and the treatments that are proving effective in Cuba. Their comments indicate the importance of early testing and the pharma products that Cuba has found to work in treating carriers of the virus. (From here…from NC links?)
>Mediaite SMEARS Jimmy Dore For Telling Truth About Ukraine N@zis YouTube
According to JD, the “smear” piece turned out to be framed favorable by the author, repeating in full, Jimmy’s key points.
Also, a recent tweet from Nick Brana of the “People’s Party,” says that Jimmy Dore is running for President…this could be very interesting.
So in 2024 we get to vote on which comedy act we want to run the country for the next 4 years?
Ever thus with tyrants. “Seriousness” is a tragi-comity show all its own.
..you think voting determines the outcome…?
cute, adorable, fuzzy….
Amazing drive from Las Vegas to LA with oh so much snowy eye candy along the way and some of the fiercest winds to add to the frosty milieu @ 75 mph. Flakes are a Dime a dozen normally in the City of Angels, but more like a Dime a million now.
The Tongan volcano blowing up real good last year might have been our saving grace in the long playing drought, another year or 2 of it and there would’ve been a mass exodus-we were that close to the edge. Pinatubo in 1991 played a similar role in ending another lengthy drought in Cali.
Other volcanoes are rumbling and there is mucho precedence for them being game changers, the Seven Ill Years in Scotland in the 1690’s were quite the catalyst for upending their history, in that it caused them to embark on a crazy financial stratagem in the Darien Scheme-which caused such losses, that Scotland united with the United Kingdom in 1707.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_ill_years#:~:text=The%20Seven%20Ill%20Years%2C%20also,in%20the%20Book%20of%20Genesis.
I was thinking about your comment and the sort of history that we all grew up with. It looks like that we have to completely rewrite those history books so that it will include the effects of the climate on our history. So for example, when you wrote of how volcanic eruptions helped lead Scotland to join with England in a political union is something that you won’t really find in our history books. The Darien Scheme yes, but not the context for it.
In a fashion, if it hadn’t been for satellites that saw it happen, if we didn’t have that resource, similar to back in the 1690’s, nobody would’ve known nothing about about a volcano blowing up throwing water into space, and gone to the usual suspects, in that God was angry @ the populace for not loving him enough.
More importantly to us, growing seasons have been upended around the world, and if we get a pineapple express train rumbling through, there’s no way-no how will our reservoirs be able to handle the deluge, there being oh so much on deposit in the First National Snowbank of the Sierra.
Humm,,,
Is our planet a large scale system that over geographic time (long time) that reverts to the norm?.
Or is it just a random walk of punctuated equilibrium?
For centuries China’s Yellow River (Huanghe) flowed as it pleased, often in spite of attempts by various imperial governments to contain it. Whole cities would be depopulated and hundreds of thousands of mu (about 1/6 of an acre) would be washed away during the river’s worst rampages. In the 1880s, in what was considered one of the three worst natural disasters in human history, between one and two million people died and millions more were displaced. That disaster hastened the fall of the the already declining Qing Dynasty. Substitute “God was angry @ the populace for not loving him enough” with “withdrawal of the Mandate of Heaven.”
Antidote du jour today is one very pretty cat. Hope it escapes the dreaded cone soon. I love the the eyes and copper colored nose highlights the tiles.
Stumbled on a video earlier today of a cat that was wearing one of those. But it had learned that it could use it to flick whole scoop fulls of kitty litter onto the floor while it was sitting on the tray. Cats are not forgiving creatures.
When my cat showed up on the wood pile the first cold night of the year in 2014, we tried to keep him inside. He would knock you over if you opened the back door as he ran to escape. Finally I built him a cat door. He comes and goes as he pleases and I’ve gotten really good at throwing a towel over the bird and escorting it safely outside. It’s the lizards and salamanders that get the worst of it. I couldn’t imagine what he would do to me on a daily basis if he was forced to be inside. Certainly he would never, ever forgive me.
I have a fenced yard with 8′ height and I fitted a netting plus hinged arms kit that stops cats climbing out, not that my rescue pair show any interest in escape. But they are so, so happy to have the run of the garden. No birds caught yet.
We took in a very mellow rescue cat whom we kept inside per socialization norms for several days. He managed to bolt, and disappeared. Five days later, at 3 in the morning, he hurtled through our bedroom window, onto my head. We promised to never lock him in again, and he stayed for life. (He became extremely lazy, bird lovers; we once watched a banana slug mosey over and start climbing over him.)
Agree with that and disagree with cats inside.
Keeping a cat inside is like keeping a songbird in a small cage or a cetacean in a small pool. Cats belong outside. if people don’t like what they do then don’t keep cats.
The article about New zealand is a special case – flightless birds are in a different risk category. but? but the article blames other imported animals. Can’t blame it all on the cats. some of the solutions are pretty sane for NZ situation. its the feral cats spreading that will be unmanageable. not necessarily the domestic
Our two cats? one catches numerous rodents and one bird in the last 5 years, the other is too lazy and fat to catch anything. I think the hunter is too confused by the size of the huge pigeons, and too slow to catch them.
Prefer those inflatable donuts on dogs to the cones of shame… but would that work as well on cats given their flexibility?
…don’t be cruller
I also like the look on his face. He manages to look annoyed and pleading at the same time.
Yes, I also noted his expression. One of mine has a very expressive face. When he wins the give me a treat war, he flashes me an I’m very pleased look. Makes me laugh.
Would you believe that-
‘There was an idea at one moment that we may have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain.”
Former Health Minister Lord Bethell discusses the early government response to the Covid pandemic.’
https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1630989115423424527
No mention of dogs however but if they had tried that, the heads of government would become heads on pikes.
Share of home deals done in cash rises to nine-year high Daily Mail (BC)
In my area, low end real estate is closing fast, and in cash, because after going under agreement they show up as “sold” within weeks – much quicker than the months that it takes with financing.
And there is one standout anomaly, as if someone bought in a market they don’t know and don’t care that they don’t know: A one bedroom 599 sq ft condo sold in a complex at almost the same price that 950 sq ft 2 bedrooms sell for. Not a good buy in this case. It’s like someone spent money with little constraint.
I remember pre 2008, colluding scammers with RE licenses would just bid up and sell these dumps to each other, raising the comps, before offloading on a mark or refinancing and sending the bank some jingle mail.
A realtor from Port Townsend WA recently told me that 60% of the deals she makes are cash. The upshot is that cash offers aren’t as competitive as they were at one time. In many parts of western WA that means people bidding up houses and waiving inspections. Not a great time to buy a home… and prices are crazy high due to low inventory.
Regarding Liu’s book about Adam Smith, it’s the cartoon depiction of the man wielded by the Chicago School and its fellow travellers that is the problem — a kind of framing issue. Smith is first and foremost a moral philosopher and only secondarily a political economist.
I recently saw a Watson Institute (Brown University) talk by Jacob Soll which included a very different attack on Adam Smith — that he was an apologist for the Duke of Buccleuch — which inspired me to pick up his new book, Free Market: The History of an Idea
This Dental Device Was Sold to Fix Patients’ Jaws. Lawsuits Claim It Wrecked Their Teeth
So people found a dental device on FACEBOOK and are now surprised it was a scam??
…are now surprised it was a scam??
The dental device or Facebook?
Yes.
“Visualizing the Global Share of U.S. Stock Markets”
Have to say that over time a I am less impressed with such charts as they may not reflect reality. So it mentions that the US makes up about 4% of the global population which you can accept as a fact. But the next one is the GDP. And it is becoming obvious that this is not really a good measure of a country. As an example, Russia was supposed to have the GDP of a small country like Italy. Well as we have found out, it is more equivalent to pre-2022 Germany. As for market capitalization, what does that even mean? If you are talking about a country that has the commodities it produces to back itself up with, then fair enough. But if it is a country whose wealth is mostly a matter of financial asset shuffling, can market capitalization be an accurate measurement of a country anymore?
“Can market capitalization be an accurate measurement of a country anymore?”
It’s more of a measurement of individual egos. The capitalization is concentrated in few hands.
“But if it is a country whose wealth is mostly a matter of financial asset shuffling, can market capitalization be an accurate measurement of a country anymore?”
This reminds me of a quote from the Emmanuel Todd interview in LeFigaro about the GDP of the US and just how fake it is, a quote which I know only because Alexander Mercouris mentioned it in his discussion of the Todd interview. I wish I could find an English translation of that interview and that quote. By the way I searched NC for the Arnaud Bertrand twitter thread that contained a portion of the Todd interview. It was in Links 1/14. The thread has been deleted. That’s seems to happen quite often when I look up old tweets.
“When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure”
Russo-Ukrainian War: Schrodinger’s Offensive Big Serge.
Because Ukraine relies on foreign assistance to continue its war, it must constantly be in a performative mode and under pressure to deliver visible successes. This is why it is anticipated that Ukraine will use the vehicles currently being delivered to launch a counteroffensive against the land bridge to Crimea. It really has no choice in the matter……
The vain world that we inhabit in the west is being exposed to the realities of true power. After yet another impotent condemnatory vote in the United Nations and a visit to Kiev by America’s favorite gerontocrat, the western clerisy’s interest in the Ukraine War shows little signs of waning, but perhaps gradually they are becoming aware that this is a plane of existence that they can little comprehend, let alone influence. They can only watch.
=============================================
Is Russia the USA and Ukraine the Taliban or Vietcong? A vastly technologically superior country (Russia) waging war against a small under equipped force. I think not. This is not a home grown uprising against Russia. This is the West, and really what military success has the West had? Grenada? Panama? The Falklands?? AND Iraq II – was that actually a win? How many police actions does the US have to fail at before, whatever the reason, it is understood that the most vaunted (undoubtedly, number 1 by orders of magnitude at self praise) military in the world seems unable to prevail against vastly outnumbered and under supplied opponents? Maybe the empire’s military as well as economy has no clothes…
I’m not sure how the US would fight Russia. The US military is designed to use overmatch where they dominate with air power and can destroy an enemy force at a distance before moving in the clear up the remains. Fighting Russia, they would have to do so right near Russia’s borders whereas the US would have supply lines a coupla thousand miles long. And they would only have the ammo for a month or two of fighting. And the air above them may not be full of their own aircraft which has not really happened since WW2. It is not that those troops won’t fight. It is that ‘force design’ is actually a thing so all that experience chasing villagers in the sandbox is not the same as playing in the bigs. And those Russian soldiers now have all that experienced and have been shaking the water out of their organizations and tailored their military gear for what is needed.
David @ Aurelian has a good post exploring the futility of US options for engagement.
That’s why the crazies would go to nukes.
Except Russians outnuke us, too.
‘Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, declares that China must now understand that “the United States is staying in this region, we’re the leader in this region… We don’t want conflict, but we’re going to hold our own out here.”
I sometimes wonder where the State Department gets their Ambassadors from. He is not like some Ambassadors that got to be picked because they were a producer on the Bold and the Beautiful or were a successful bundler. He is actually a long-term veteran of the State Department – and yet he is going out of his way to stir up trouble with China. So in some ways he is like Trump’s Ambassador to Germany or the present US Ambassador to Mexico. Maybe they get off with having a macho attitude but these days that is wearing very thin with more than a few countries. He will not have an easy time as Ambassador to China-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Nicholas_Burns
This sort of thing makes Tillerson look less crazy when he attempted to engage in mass firings at State. Tillerson was a Trump appointee and came out of the oil biz…which is more relevant than you think. The majors conduct their own foreign policy.
Not that Tillerson had a great temperament but with the benefit of hindsight, his idea of a radical house cleaning as a frontal attack on the Blob was bold if he could have executed it well. Problem would be if he could have weeded out the real nutters in an efficient manner. I didn’t follow that episode closely but the allegation was he was getting a lot of wheat with the chaff. Of course they would say that…..
There really is a ton of intellectual rot and prep school poseurs there. Problem is you need replacements, even if fewer than the waste-of-space blowhards. The minimum would seem to be some level of language and negotiating skills…..and the US is very weak at both, save at best easy Romance languages.
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3211975/deadly-balancing-act-region-us-hell-bent-china-war
Dangling ukrainian nato membership in front of Russia. Arming and training taiwaese military “forces.” Both of these are explicit “red lines” of the respective countries.
This goes way beyond lack of “diplomatic skills” and prep school posing as far as I’m concerned. It has the distinct odor of inmates taking over the asylum, and realizing that the demented old coot running the place won’t be around for much longer so they’d better start as many of their long-desired fires as they can while they have the chance.
Despite all the happy talk, I don’t think anyone seriously believes that biden will get a second term. At least not legitimately. Best to make hay while the “sun shines.”
Surely nobody seriously believes that the US is going to go to war with China? Short of a world ending nuclear holocaust, how on earth could they be beaten?
It seems to me that it’s the more of the usual US bullyboy intimidation tactics, and that they don’t think they will get called on it.
How do you go to war with a country that makes all your stuff? Don’t think it will be popular with American consumers when they are unable to buy thier iphones, flat screen TVs etc.
US Navy seems to be one of those nobodies.
Of course, it’s the only war they actually have a role in. And a big one, too.
The US is a maritime/aerospace power rather than a land power. If the US gets into a fight and the US and Chinese Navy mauls each other, what happens afterwards? China has the economy to regenerate a new navy. The US Navy might – after a few decades. But without such a powerful Navy in place, how will they be able to maintain US power around the world? The majority would have to be kept in the Pacific then which means they will be short for the rest of the world.
Any more, bar the ICBM-toting submarines, does maritime/aerospace ‘power” count for a wet fart in the current and likely world? Even “cyber” power seems subject to being trumped by some innovation by corporate (like Israeli cybercrime tool makes) or “state” or even skinny-geek “actors.” And pretty much anyone can put CRSP-R and related tools to use, so it’s not so hard to imagine a scenario like a thriller novel I can’t remember the name of, where a small group of elites wants to spread a viral pathogen through the cooling-mist sprays at a Souith American summer Olympics venue, hoping to kill off almost everyone except their perfect selves who are immunized, so they can enjoy the “green planet” untrammeled by billions of other humans. Tell me Gates and Schwab and the like don’t find such a prospect “intriguing and attractive.”
Old habits of thought do die hard. Too many year of playing “The Game of Risk,” maybe?
Caitlin Johnstone weighs in on this article-
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/us-ambassador-to-china-were-the-leader-of-the-indo-pacific-6fcc5b8e3842
Read the dead tree LA Times @ my mom’s assisted living place this a.m. all 30 pages of it, sporting the odd cover price of $3.66-that is while they plead with me online to buy 6 months worth for a buck.
What ever convinced the doctor who owns the LAT and the equally useless San Diego Union Tribune to pay half a billion for what are now essentially the reading equivalent of concentration camp victims who were systematically starved over years and look the part?
“…the odd cover price of $3.66…”
Los Angeles County sales tax is 9.5% so that cover price brings the total sales amount to an even $4. Maybe that’s why? (Just a guess.)
The Profession Formerly Known As Medicine
‘Most modern doctors are not Osler’s healers of people but normalizers of data.’
‘With the advent of EHRs, weekly meetings of the clinical staff where I once worked no longer included discussions of actual patients. Instead we war-gamed how to enter EHR data so as to satisfy insurers, the government, and our corporate overseers.’
Went to see an occupational therapist for the first time last week. We had an hour appointment together and she spent at least half of that typing. She didn’t have her own assistant. Clearly her specialty is too intensely one-on-one (unprofitable) to warrant a helper.
If you do a search on those words – ‘normalization of data’ – what you’ll read puts a positive spin on them. Could some of the commentariat respond with their view of that word choice and their experience of them? I think I like the phrase but want to broaden my view before employing them in the future. I need a fuller understanding.
Hospitals got so much C-19 money assistance. Where did all that money go? Into admin salaries and PE owners’ pockets? / hmphf
From Ed Dowd:
I am being told that the hospital systems in just one state by the end of 2023 will have staggering losses.
Feel free to add your anecdotal or inside info in comments below for your state regarding hospital systems and money.
https://twitter.com/DowdEdward/status/1630721965035229184
—
My question: has “medicine” basically become another money fight among the big players – hospitals, insurance companies, pharma, and the new PE owners? (not much room for patient care in that sort of fight.) / my 2 cents
At least we don’t have death panels!
are you sure? They’re really a Public Private partnership with the for profit hospital/medical care evolution and then the fed agencies.
State dept, Ag Dept, War er Defense Dept, FEMA, ya know? /partly in jest/partly not.
Normalize: to fit to a schema. Patients’ conditions are merely “data” to be fit to the schema, as if patients were portfolios of conditions, to be managed (insurer thinking). rather than people experiencing disease due to their unique manifestation of a condition, to be treated (medicine thinking). I don’t like the term because it’s lossy.
“normalizers of data”… is there a word choice that you think better encompasses their roles?
On second thought it’s about as good as there is, but I hate it because it’s true. :)
Data normalisation is a time honoured and perfectly respectable procedure—for a database designer. Presumably what is meant here is that the database is not well designed and doctors are having to get creative to have their data accepted by it.
In keeping with yesterday’s guest post “Losing Out in Critical Technologies: Cisco Systems and Financialization” today on Reuters:
China leads US in global competition for key emerging technology, study says
Is The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) the same outfit that “warned” us about Huawei and ZTE spyware?
Not that we didn’t know already, but the quantification is interesting. Game over?
One of the worse things that Oz ever imported – American style think tanks.
The core-js JavaScript library story is a reminder of how glad i am to be retired, and not concerned with the latest webdev fads, or the tiresome “evangelist” types that push them to try and stay relevant.
Can’t wait for a future “codeGPT” to puncture that industry’s bubble!
For me the most important item today is the Trump video in Doctorow’s piece. If I, who hate Trump with an abiding passion, see him as the only way to stop the war machine and avert WW3, the only anti-war option, then I suspect he may win 2024.
Also, I think it may be the only way politically for the US to save face wrt the Ukraine and China holes they’ve dug themselves into.
You have to admit there’s so many strategic angles he can exploit – and this time, for a change, truth would be on his side. Whodathunkit.
Also, Trump going all Eisenhower, taking on the MIC….wow.
Someone wrote a great speech for him. As a lonely long time antiwar person, I welcome such dangerous talk.
Note Bene: I like to view Las Vegas oddsmakers’ numbers every week or so on their various sites.
After his “fire all the warmongers” tweet, D. Trump has doubled his chances of getting elected.
Ditto on the antiwar stuff.
I welcome such talk too, but history demonstrates that it is a way to get yourself assassinated.
Assassinated by the Ukrainians with CIA/NATO assistance, planning and intel, and an extra-judicial nod from Biden. Perhaps followed by a carefully managed Hersh reveal a few months later.
Whodathunkit.
Enough deplorables to make him president in 2016, and 7 million MORE than that in 2020.
This whole “truth is on his side,” “only anti-war option,” “Trump taking on the MIC” BUT “I hate Trump with an abiding passion” schtick has never made one iota of sense to me. Why not just say, “Thank god, there appears to be an actual choice, and credit must be given where credit is due.”
Well, because words are cheap, and Trump will literally say *anything* if he thinks it will serve him at the moment. Is there a reason to believe that the guy who appointed the likes of Bolton, Abrams, and Pompeo to key positions, kissed Israel’s ass, played macho-man with Iran and Syria, accelerated the arms build-up in Ukraine, intensified the crucifixion of Assange, etc., etc., will be better *this* time?
Don’t get me wrong. I applaud Trump’s *words*, just as I do those of Tucker Carlson when they are correct. Even words can affect public opinion if the voice is loud enough. I also despise the neoliberal/neocon CIA Democrats and I defended Trump against their Russiagate lies and rolling coup attempt. But until Trump actually *does* something – and that requires that Trump actually has both the *will* and the *capacity* to do so (not the same thing) – I will be pessimistic that there is an actual choice. Still, he does seem to be asking for my vote, especially compared to *anyone* else.
Words may be cheap, but someone who speaks the truth is better than a proven deranged warmonger.
PS.
When everyone “official” is pretending that problems don’t exist and are insistent on non-personing whoever that openly points to problems, someone who talks about the problems publicly and forces the public discourse in that direction–even if they are insincere in their speech or incapable of actually doing anything about it, help pave the way for someone who might actually be able to do something about it, at least IMHO.
So you have one words are cheap candidates versus another words are cheap candidate.
AFAIK the only choices the public has are to not vote at all, vote third party or indicate what they want by picking based on the cheap words.
Small consolation but at least Trump is asking for your vote rather than Biden spitting on you and thinking you have to vote for him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrF5x1OSJuQ
Joe Biden got more votes than BO
Rofl 2020 was a joke, until we have accoutable voting system like France we are getting (S)elections.
Looks like the party system in France is as skilled at elevating “establishment” candidates as the one in the US. Lots of disillusion going round. Looks maybe like the “esprit” of the Yellow Vests might have maybe metastasized into the urban areas, at least in the view through my personal little keyhole.
A question in my mind is whether any moves toward disestablishment of the megastructures of translations and national systems of corruption have already been stillborn or co-opted by the evil mindlessness of growth and greed. To me an important question, since what I read is that there’s a pretty small size limit to human politico-economic units that don’t descend into mortal Sorosian corruption.
Well, mention god but make a deal with the devil.
You should do some coverage on DeSantis & New College – very interesting developments there.
He appointed Chris Rufio, the man who astroturfed the outrage of CRT, as head of the board and they are quickly pivoting the liberal arts college right ward.
Chris even said the quiet part out loud during his first visit – he states that they are pushing the envelope here to see what they can get away with as a testbed for DeSantis run for president.
Here’s a discussion of the DeSantis crusade at the New College of Florida. It’s from the Bulwark which I think is editorially in the general area of anti-Trump establishment conservatives, so not a pro-woke perspective.
Here’s a NYT discussion of the recently proposed FL House Bill 999 for FL’s public colleges. If you can get past some of the comparison’s to Orban, and other polemics, it has info about the contents of the proposal.
(The NYT url format has a lot of stuff after the ? which I usually delete. In this case I think it’s needed to access the paywalled post on the NYT website “Shared with you by a Times subscriber.”
https://www.thebulwark.com/ron-desantis-chris-rufo-and-the-college-anti-woke-makeover-florida/
What yahoo DeSantis doesn’t get is the full national exposure he will get if he goes out on a POTUS campaign. He will be outside the FL bubble. Good cos he will be extinguished, and the sooner the better.
I don’t mean to scold you but your first sentence is an assignment and therefore a violation of our written site Policies.
We are a finance and economics site and very thinly resourced. Frankly we are already spending more time on politics ex as it related to economics that we should. CRT is not something we cover.
The cultural left has peaked – Financial Times
Janan Ganesh sits at the American affairs desk for the Financial Times. He wrote a short piece for the opinion page.
The FT is pay-walled. I know that the FT is protective of its content. The FT went after Ilargi at The Automatic Earth a few years ago for including its articles in his daily Debt Rattle. Google gave me the article somewhere else.
Ganesh’s argument is that the moral issues raised by the woke left seem less relevant in a world facing bigger issues. The moral issues raised by the woke left now look silly, and even liberals are starting to make fun of the woke left.
archive.ph is your friend.
I would liked to have been a “fly on the wall” for some of the G-20 closed meetings, but probably not this one:
Blinken, Lavrov meet for first time since Ukraine invasion
https://www.reuters.com/world/india-pm-modi-calls-common-ground-global-issues-g20-meeting-2023-03-02/
To be honest, no “joint statement” from the G-20 is a big tell. It means a lot of the G-20 told the collective West to go [family blog] itself. Bummer that.
Interesting article. By the sounds of it, Russia suspending the START treaty seems to have rattled them a lot going by how that was what they wanted to talk to Russia about.
George Soros’ Last Speech: Wars of the “Open Society,” and Climate as a Combatant
https://www.thepostil.com/george-soros-last-speech-wars-of-the-open-society-and-climate-as-a-combatant/
Hat tip to Les H over at Silicon Investor – same source where I found the latest Gilbert Doctorow in today’s links.
Dugin > If Soros thinks global warming is a threat, then global warming is our ally, just as “General Winter” once was. We should enlist global warming—this unidentified hyper-object—in the Wagner PMC, and give it a medal.
And there it is.
I had seen some oblique references from Russia, and did the cui bono/malo math, and came away with pipelineistan being the rope the West hangs itself with. The ‘unidentified hyper-object’ has particular stress points in the material world if some party came to the conclusion that accelerating warming is in their interest. Why nuke DC when you can hit the Thwaites?
JIMMY (quiet): It’s not an adventure story – is it, Mr. Hayes.
Current official status of Yellowstone Volcano from USGS:
https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/status.html
They say it’s been subsiding since 2015.
I guess this is how the politics of collapsing states operates: like a schoolyard.
Nuland is to tarred and feathered while the news editors and the rest of the neocons quietly slip out the back? I’d indict the whole lot of them instead.
– “NBC News journalist Keir Simmons recently went to Crimea and reported that the majority of the Crimeans are pro-Russia. Now the Ukrainians have put him on their hit list website for reporting this fact.”
This is pretty funny – though perhaps not to Keir Simmons. We watch NBC News almost every night for the same reason Soviet citizens used to read Pravda – to find out what the government wants us to think today. I don’t know how many Ukraine propaganda pieces I’ve seen Keir deliver over the last year, with that British accent and dramatic delivery making them sound that much more urgent to American ears. When this story began I said to my wife, “I wonder how they are going to spin this; is he going to dig up some anti-Russians in Crimea?” I was quite surprised that the story was reported straight. I guess the Ukrainians were, too.
Another sign of cracks in the consensus?
Yves, thank you again for posting so much good stuff. Today is especially outstanding.
If you don’t mind sharing, how is your domicile search going?
Thanks for asking. I think I have a choice but I’m going on less due diligence than I’d like due to estate pressures.
Today the engine locked on the car I use!!! Long boring upset story but it looks like local oil change/minor repair place was either utterly incompetent or low grade sabotaging the car (there was a cut hose that would not get that was in course of normal use or any normal repairs/inspection. Also charged us for braked that they apparently replaced with used brakes). Stuff like this is making it hard to get anything done, particularly re the exit.
Krstal and Saagar. Breaking Points. utube
Corporate Media CAUGHT Running Railroad Propaganda | Breaking Points
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etqjcSaEHkQ
Can’t say I’m surprised by Politico’s … fund raising. / ;)
In regard to, “Viruses Hiding Out in Patients”:
Dr Carlo Brogna discovered that SARS2 acts as a Bacteriophage:
https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/24/4/3929
A Bacteriophage is a virus that uses bacteria as a host. In particular, the study found that SARS 2 can replicate in certain bacteria that are often found in the human gut.
This would explain how SARS2 can survive in humans long after the immune system has eliminated the virus from the rest of the body. It also may explain lingering affects of a covid infection.
Good lawd. Even the Guardian sees what looks like the obvious.
Here’s the real reason the EPA doesn’t want to test for toxins in East Palestine
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/02/epa-toxins-test-east-palestine-ohio-train-derailment-dioxins
Something for the end of the day. Somehow, this restores my faith in humanity-
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/11fixra/brave_valedictorian_calling_out_the_educational/ (1:30 min video)
but but tariffs are always passed along to the consumer, just like taxes, if this is true(AND ITS NOT!), then the end user should get the refunds!!!!
YEEHAW, another crank myth has just been exposed.
“US importers demand refund of Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods worth billions of dollars
Over 6,000 plaintiffs want reimbursement for billions they have paid in duties, saying the US government didn’t follow proper procedure in instituting them.”
TARIFFS are a tax on the rich, they just admited to it.