Is Beekeeping Wrong? The New Yorker
Unlikely animal falls from sky and knocks power out for thousands in New Jersey town FOX
Should We Expect Valuations to Mean-Revert Over Time? The Diff
Investing is the Study of Human Decision Making The Big Picture
Staring at the tsunami Nate Bear, ¡Do Not Panic! Citing to Neil Weinstein (1980): “One group of people did have the ability to over-ride innate optimism and accurately calculate risk — the clinically depressed.” So, highly adaptive?
The Booming Business of American Anxiety WSJ. A self-licking ice cream cone!
What Is Narcissism? Science Confronts a Widely Misunderstood Phenomenon Scientific American
Climate
Counter-offensive: Fossil fuel giants boost global production Climate & Capitalism
How Quebec won the world’s first ban on oil and gas extraction The Breach
* * * Our Food System Is the Bullseye for Solving the World’s Climate Challenges The Observatory
How the radical history of plant-based eating illuminates our future Vox
* * * Plant diversity in urban green spaces led to sevenfold increase in insect species, study finds The Guardian
Water
Colorado River Basin states stake out positions on the future of Mead, Powell reservoirs Colorado Sun
#COVID19
Epigenetic memory of coronavirus infection in innate immune cells and their progenitors Cell. From the Abstract: “Alterations in innate immune phenotypes and epigenetic programs of [hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC)] persisted for months to 1 year following severe COVID-19… Epigenetic reprogramming of HSPC may underlie altered immune function following infection and be broadly relevant, especially for millions of COVID-19 survivors.” I think that’s a “Yikes!” but readers may wish to comment.
Early Omicron infection is associated with increased reinfection risk in older adults in long-term care and retirement facilities The Lancet. From the Interpretation: “Counterintuitively, SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection was associated with increased risk of Omicron reinfection in residents of long-term care and retirement homes.” Life’s little ironies!
Multimodal Molecular Imaging Reveals Tissue-Based T Cell Activation and Viral RNA Persistence for Up to 2 Years Following COVID-19 (preprint) medRxiv. From the Abstract: “The etiologic mechanisms of post-acute medical morbidities and unexplained symptoms (Long COVID) following SARS-CoV-2 infection are incompletely understood. There is growing evidence that viral persistence and immune dysregulation may play a major role….. We observed that T cell activation in spinal cord and gut wall was associated with the presence of Long COVID symptoms.” Note the conflict statement; it seems that Long Covid might finally be seen as a business opportunity. Silver lining!
China?
Whither China? Isabel Crook and Harry Magdoff, Monthly Review. Originallly from 2002-3.
Why China is targeting the corruption tumour at the heart of its ailing health system South China Morning Post
‘Ecological saboteur’: China halts Japanese aquatic goods’ imports Anadolu Agency
US seeks to extend China science accord, but only briefly for now Channel News Asia
Asia’s poor grew by 68 million people after pandemic, report says Al Jazeera
Japan begins release of Fukushima water: TEPCO Channel News Asia
Myanmar
Several Resistance Attacks Reported Near Myanmar Regime’s Nerve Center The Irrawaddy
US expands sanctions on Myanmar jet fuel, cites junta airstrikes Channel News Asia
India
Chandrayaan-3: India is on the Moon as Vikram soft-lands, Pragyan to roll out in few hours Times of India
IB comes knocking at Ashoka University to speak to economist who authored controversial paper suggesting possible vote manipulation: The Wire The Telegraph Online. IB = Intelligence Bureau.
The Recipe for Disaster That Is Causing Destruction in Himalayan States The Wire
Africa
Algeria Closes Airspace to French Warplanes as Paris Considers Attack on African Neighbour Niger Military Watch
Niger Coup Takes Bonapartist Turn Consortium News
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine’s Forces and Firepower Are Misallocated, U.S. Officials Say NYT. The deck: “American strategists say Ukraine’s troops are too spread out and need to concentrate along the counteroffensive’s main front in the south.” Darkness visible, military intellligence, American strategists….
Ukraine’s offensive: is it failing? Lawrence Freedman, Comment is Freed
Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief shows Ukrainian flag raised in Robotyne Ukrainska. Any dragon’s teeth in the photos? No?
* * * Special Report: The Curtain Closes On Yevgeny Prigozhin Simplicius the Thinker(s). It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
* * * Sen. Elizabeth Warren visits Ukraine, meets with President Zelenskyy CBS. Hmm. Surely Warren’s not burnishing her foreign policy cred for a 2024 run?
Putin references Hitler and alludes to Wagner as he presents awards to Russian invaders Ukrainska Pravda
The west is suffering from a crisis of courage FT. All this psychologizing!
South of the Border
Reviving Correismo? New Left Review. Ecuador.
Biden Administration
House Freedom Caucus rolls out demands to avoid shutdown Politico
Spook Country
Changes to UK Surveillance Regime May Violate International Law JustSecurity
Tech
How Nvidia Built a Competitive Moat Around A.I. Chips NYT. A monopoly, in other words. And therefore–
Find someone who loves you like hedge funds love Nvidia FT.
Is the AI boom already over? Vox. That’s a damn shame, if true.
* * * A Data Breach at Christie’s Revealed Exact GPS Coordinates of Collectors’ Artworks ArtNet
Internet Archive’s legal woes mount as record labels sue for $400M Ars Technica
Boeing
Boeing and Spirit grapple with newly discovered 737 Max quality issue The Air Current. From the Department of Holy [family blog]:
Boeing has identified a potentially widespread manufacturing quality issue on the 737 Max stemming from structural assembly work on the jet’s aft pressure bulkhead conducted by supplier Spirit AeroSystems, according to two people familiar with the issue.
The issue, which was discovered by Boeing within the last month, has not been previously reported. The prospect of widespread misdrilled holes on a particularly sensitive part of the 737’s structure rekindles questions around Boeing and Spirit’s relationship and the pair’s ability to meet the coming production ramp up plans, especially after decades of doing the same work for thousands of aircraft.
Boeing has inspected multiple fuselages and found some aircraft with hundreds of misaligned and duplicated holes. These holes, called “snowmen” because of their elongated shape of two overlapping holes of differing size, were filled with fasteners and passed quality inspections at Spirit before being shipped by rail to Boeing.
The pencil-necked MBAs and bonus-bloated executives in Chicago have apparently concluded, again according to the excellent Air Currents, that spinning off Spirit AeroSystems was a “strategic mistake.” No kidding, but ka-ching!
Healthcare
Pseudo-neighbourhoods: Approximating the Social Characteristics of Saskatoon’s Locally-Defined Neighbourhoods using Statistics Canada’s Census Profiles (abstract) medRxiv. From the Abtract: “There is a growing desire to use social data to support local evidence-based health planning and decision-making. However, the geographic boundaries which social data are disseminated for do not usually align exactly with boundaries used by local health organizations. In this paper, we propose a method we call “pseudo-geography” to estimate counts for locally-defined geographic boundaries using data on smaller spatial units.” Yet another showing that ObamaCare’s goofball structuring by jurisdiction needs to go.
A visual–language foundation model for pathology image analysis using medical Twitter Nature. From the Abstract: “The lack of annotated publicly available medical images is a major barrier for computational research and education innovations. At the same time, many de-identified images and much knowledge are shared by clinicians on public forums such as medical Twitter…. Our approach demonstrates that publicly shared medical information is a tremendous resource that can be harnessed to develop medical artificial intelligence for enhancing diagnosis, knowledge sharing and education.” Twitter as a universal address space is an important public utility. If we had a functional left, instead of a performatively sqeamish liberals, they would be figuring out how to preserve and enhance that utility with legislation.
Imperial Collapse Watch
John Pilger: Silencing The Lambs (How Propaganda Works) John Pilger, Eurasia Review. A must-read. Back when we were fighting the landfills, one of my friends mentioned that in a milltown after the mill dies, the townspeople retain “a mill-shaped hole in their heads.” That is an example of the “submissive void” that Pilger, citing to Riefenstahl, highlights. I can’t understand why, given Pilger’s stellar analysis and clear style, that this article is being circulated by the “Eurasia Review” instead of, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post. ‘Tis a mystery!
Guillotine Watch
Pharma Giant Threatens To Delay Drugs Over New Price Controls Lever News (KLG). KLG comments: “Big Pharma shows us who they are yet again.”
Class Warfare
Texas Workforce Commission years behind on recovering back wages for workers, report finds Dallas Morning News
Container lines paid out billions in boom-time profits via dividends Hellenic Shipping News. “This model of multi-cycle wealth creation has long been a mainstay of private tanker and dry bulk shipowning families.”
Want tech cred? Learn how to email like a pro The Register. News you can use!
Antidote du jour (Chet G):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
141 comments
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Boeing. Yeah I can’t wait to fly in a few weeks! Might be better off if I drove myself to South Dakota for a hiking excursion, late September. That whole personal risk vs reward sorta thing. I’m aware that is indeed perhaps a first world problem, naturally, and just maybe the trips are scheduled on a regional outfit (via American affiliate) that flies the Embraer 80 seat planes instead.
America 2023. Yeah for capitalism.
One more crash from a Boeing plane through engineering incompetence and because of financial white-anting could easily lead to the spreading of a new saying-
‘If it’s Boeing, then I’m not going.’
financial white-anting?
Sorry. That is an Aussie colloquial term that refers to ‘the internal erosion of a foundation’. White ants are a local term for termites here and when I said ‘financial white-anting’, that is the process where the bean-counters of a corporation take it over and in order to improve the financial bottom line, they cut back on standards, replace highly-qualified union workers with ex-MacDonalds workers, cut back on expensive testing, get the government to give them waivers on dodgy changes that they make to their designs, etc. You get the idea.
But c’mon man, increased profits, shareholder value, bonuses to management, stock options, on and on.
So what’s a few crashes and fines, a little dinger in the bottom line.
Sarcasm off now
s/ If someone told me to “…sarcasm off now…” there’d be a fight real quick.
Just saying. /s
Time to prepare for the upcoming “flash mob” assaults on those Gated Communities just outside of town. We can utilize the police strategy of, if we cannot get at the “Top Dogs” then we go after the small fry and work up from there. How “safe and effective” is an Oligarchical Clan when most of it’s support staff have been “neutralized?”
What would be a good American idiom for the same concept? Do we even have one? Should we try inventing one?
Dry rotting? Clothes mothing?
Holy not rightness?
‘Innovation’ very often means the same thing depending on the context.
How about “looting?”
These days one may wonder what is more dangerous, flying American or Russian. That said, European is not without its risk either. Thus far it seems that perhaps Brazilian is the safer choice.
I’m wondering what the physical dimensions of “small aircraft” are? Say, are larger commercial aircraft any ‘safer’ than ‘light airplanes?’ Asking for a friendly politico.
However, with all of the man portable anti-air missile systems flooding the Arms Bazaars, originating from diverted “gifts” to the Ukraine, the probability of “Blowback” coming to The Homeland is almost (1) now.
From what I understand most airplane crashes are the smaller planes.
Yes, it’s termed General Aviation. Commercial pilots are training/flying all the time. Commercial aircraft are maintained by certified mechanics. Ground support is substantial and most commercial flights use airports with Air Controllers. General aviation, not so much.
I live on the east coast. I have driven to South Dakota a half dozen times. Driving 500-600 miles per day it took three days and you get a good look at “fly-over country.” Well worth it
If you’re unaware, a used Cessna 172 is about as a costly as an F-150 or Accord, maybe less. Owning one means *you* decide when to leave versus depending on the scheduled airlines. Best of all, especially in times of COVID, this allows you to avoid the hoi polloi, altogether.
Wife’s idea (a Christmas card with a note saying, ‘we have the money for flying lessons’). However, when I investigated, I soon realized *for me* it was better to just buy an aircraft and hire an instructor. This, versus the traditional route of signing up a flight school and then either a) renting an aircraft from the FBO, or b) joining a flight club with aircraft you’d like to use (still renting).
In brief, the way the latter works is an owner buys an aircraft, forms a club and solicits members who for $100/month can book the aircraft for certain dates and times. The ownership and maintenance are handled like a business. Google is your friend if you’re curious. Me? I don’t share well and can afford to have the asset sans partners. Everybody is different. Thus, I didn’t go that route.
That said, a partnerships is another perfectly valid way to spread the cost of an aircraft amongst 2 or 3 others. And there are clubs with several aircraft of different types (several owners of different types come together, or one guy owns more than one aircraft). The benefit is then you may select to book what best suits your mission.
Why buy? For me again, it was a simple decision. It’s because there are *many* aircraft transacting for quite reasonable prices, and they’re a fungible asset (meaning recouping the money later is easy, just sell it for a price similar to that which you paid, and if you later change your mind you can buy another that’s once again virtually the same). In my experience, it’s true and thus, an aircraft is a near perfect definition of a fungible asset.
Forty flight hours later (the FAA required minimum) I was a newly minted private pilot. We owned that first aircraft four or five years, and subsequently sold it to the flight instructor (verbal *deal*- if you ever go to sell it, call me first). So after finding and buying another aircraft, which better suits our mission (and which we still own), I gave him a call and he and his son flew into KMCO, I picked them up and drove to KSFB, they hopped in and left (and yes, I extracted the same promise to sell back to me before letting it get out of the *family*).
Bottom line? This is America and you don’t need permission to move around the country no matter if it’s in a car or an airplane. The rest of the world? That’s more of a *mother may I?* situation.
May God Bless America and the wisdom of our founders. And those who pooh-pooh our country? They can take a flying leap!
It is indeed a great country to be in, if you’re wealthy.
Owning one means *you* decide when to leave versus depending on the scheduled airlines
Is this another ‘bonus’ of Reagan firing all the air traffic controllers? Now you can simply lift of and land whenever you wish with no ‘elf n safety’ red tape to bother about. Asking as a European.
There’s a thick stack of US federal regulations administered by the FAA that pretty narrowly constrain the “freedom of the skies.” Owning, licensing, maintaining (another set of regulations) and storing a “family airplane” is an expensive proposition. Weather poses its own set of constraints, and a momentary lapse in recalling the aphorism about old pilots not being bold pilots can kill you and your dear family pretty quick. Those “affordable” Cessna 172s, the SUV of private planes maybe, are old airframes and are subject to G forces and vibration that take a toll. There ain’t no free in “free lunch” or in the US myth of “liberty and freedom.”
From a pilots web site:
“I get this question a lot from people who are apprehensive about flying with a private pilot. I’m afraid I won’t be reducing these fears in any way. Let’s review some general statistics during 2008. Note – these stats aren’t specific to light or single engine aircraft:
NTSB reported there were 1.21 fatalities per 100,000 flight hours for private aircraft (Part 91 operators).
NHTSA reported there were 1.26 fatalities per 100 million miles travelled by automobile
We can equate that to about 2 million hours (estimating an average speed of 50mph). This gives us 0.063 fatalities per 100,000 driving hours.
Private aircraft have a fatality rate about 19 times greater than driving. It is also true that a majority of the accidents that occur are pilot error (71%) and could have been prevented.
There are risks involved when taking to the sky as a private pilot and understanding these risks is part of the continual learning process. The key to safety is performing careful planning, keeping current and proficient, knowing when to cancel flights or turn around and not to exceed your capabilities or the capabilities of your aircraft.“
To steal a line from Stephen Colbert, I can America and You Can Too!. Oh, and Jeff Bezos is just a happy camper running a successful online retailer. Whatevs…
That’s a bit of sarc mixed in there to be certain. This is America and corporations have stomped on my head a few occasions. Please be mindful with this hope and optimism angle, which sometimes comes across differently.
There is a saying about flying being hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Just my observation from some years of being married to a general aviation pilot rated for instruments and for twin engines and who built a plane (kitfox), but do not take up flying in middle age or beyond. Those moments require quick and automatic responses that take a lot of hours to acquire.
BOEING: bits of engines in numerous gardens.
This is old, very old. I already knew this pseudo-acronym some 35 years ago.
not a fan of Boeing, but you’re odds of dying are much bigger on a road….particularly a long-distance drive.
look up the on-the-job fatality rates of truckers v. commercial pilots. So many people die every day on the interstates—-it’s white noise in the news cycle.
Just saying.
Absolute risk vs. relative risk. Sure, in terms of absolute risk, you’re safer on a plane with faulty parts approved by a corrupt regulatory body, staffed by grifters more concerned with their career prospects than the safety of the flying public, vs. driving to the same destination.
But if my relative risk can be reduced by avoiding airlines like Southwest that fly the MAX, and staying with Delta (primarily Airbus), I’ll take the small reduction in relative risk.
There is also a philosophical point to be made – I would rather die on the road where I at least have some influence if not control over the outcome due to my own driving abilities, vs. die in the air due to pencil-necked MBAs putting profits over safety.
I’d say that influence is fading given the drivers I encounter these days.
And sorry but Louis is making the logical point. For all the pearl clutching about the Max those hundreds of planes are now flying again without crashing after the two that made such a big story. The modern airline safety story is the dog that didn’t bark compared to mid 20th when you’d have a plane crash every year. I’ll admit I’m more complacent than most about this because I almost never fly. And I certainly do agree that current Boeing management should be condemned.
But overstating the point doesn’t improve it.
You guys throwing Boeing management under the bus don’t know what you’re talking about. Nobody makes a defective part on purpose. Shit happens. I own an engineering company and we make widgets used in unmanned systems, meaning I at least have a clue what dealing with the FAA is like.
So someone at Spirit made the engineering decision to ship the parts. With or without the blessing of the FAA. Likely without based on the story. Wouldn’t want to be that guy. That said, it’s quite likely the bulkhead with snowmen holes is mechanically fine, and engineers can modify the part in CAD (to reflect reality) and run fatigue simulations and figure it out.
Dangerous? Rip it out and replace. OK to use? Leave the in place and monitor. No offense, but if you had a clue you’d know stop drilling is a time-honored procedure to stop a crack propagating. It’s then monitored for change. Aircraft continues in service, both privately owned and commercial for hire, types.
This is NOT end of the world kind of stuff. As for the MAX crashes, not really a fault with the aircraft, per se. They were overpowered. Lots of aircraft are. Training resolves this. Thing is training costs money. Beancounters step in. Decisions related to training are made that might be done differently in hindsight.
It’s said the FAA regulations are written in blood. Those Boeing 737 MAX that were grounded? They added another AOA sensor, changed the logic in the software for determining what was going on, and the airlines were forced off their wallets to give the pilots further training. Otherwise, they’re the same as before.
As for flying Boeing or Airbus (or Embraer), I can sleep fine on any of them. More concerned for airlines lobbying to reduce the flight hours of co-pilots. Mechanically, Boeing still depend on cables running to the flight controls (like they were on B-17s over Europe during WWII) whilst Airbus uses fly by wire. Me? I like the cables better because electrons can sometimes do funny things (Air France over the Atlantic where due to training problems akin to those of the 737 MAX meant, otherwise competent pilots, but poorly trained, crashed a perfectly functional aircraft). Sigh.
Airplanes for commercial flights by consumers of all stripes are expected, dare I write such a thing if it’s necessary to say so, are in use because of the ability to both depart and to land. Two crashes several years ago on one branded plane manufactured by an American manufacturer champion, well I am no engineer but that is a crappy result. This isn’t the Wright brothers for goodness sake.
Depart, stay aloft during the flight, land safely. Board at your own risk I suppose. We are purposely targeting management and the leading lights on the board and in the executive offices with highly valid reasons.
The point as I see it is someone lied. Aviation is built on trust. When someone lies you have nothing. If this wasn’t found the result would be a primary pressure bulkhead failing in flight and total loss of aircraft. Where I work mistakes happen, we learn and move on. If you lie your tossed out the door.
There’s an old saying in the aircraft business that’s been forgotten. “Never fix a hardware problem with software.” 737 MAX is such a situation and it will never be truly stable. It’s still an accident waiting to happen.
I worked quality on aircraft manufacturing for a while and saw more stupidity than I care to think about. Over-engineering, good pilots, and good mechanics are all that keep most aircraft in the air. Yes, you can plug bad holes and both engineering and history says they hold up well over time. But there are limits such as size, shape, and proximity to each other. And in high stress areas they need to be periodically inspected for stress fractures.
Statistically flying commercial may be safer than driving, if you like being a statistic. If you’re a statistically average or poor driver you’re better off flying, even on a Boeing aircraft. But if you practice defensive driving and maintain full awareness on the road you could well be safer driving.
There is no way snowman holes are okay on an aluminum pressure bulkhead. No way. Fatigue life is likely reduced by an order of magnitude at best.
It was incompetence with the Tech, the shop supervisor, and QA to drill the holes bad consistently, assume it is okay and then install fasteners and let that get out the door.
Aerospace manufacturing is not immune to the current difficulty of finding good workers, but just the same this needs to be rectified in a bad way.
And I certainly hope that when they remove these bulkheads and replace with a split version for installation they can actually do the modification per the engineering such as to avoid what happened in the worst air disaster of all time in Japan.
I’m with you. I’d have a hard time forgiving myself for flying in a Max for the 5 minutes of sheer terror that I’d experience while the plane and pilot fought, if things went south. MCAS was added to fix an unstable plane. A failed AOA sensor results in an unstable plane flying full of passengers.
As for today’s news, I’m scratching my head to figure out how big a problem “snowmen” could be structurally. Boeing says there’s no “immediate” threat to safety, but under cyclic loading of a pressure bulkhead, fatigue becomes an issue. Driving up the stresses around the holes will move forward the eventual failure of the bulkhead wall. The question is are we talking a few flights earlier, or a decade premature. I’m sure Boeing engineers are looking at this right now. It’s no big deal if there’s an easy fix. Could be expensive if there is a rework for the planes, or really expensive if there isn’t.
So what are your odds flying a Max versus, say, checking into an American hospital?
All or at least almost all of the criticism of Boeing is fully justified but there’s also the “streetlight effect” where we tend to concentrate on where the spotlights are pointing.
I recall back in Reagan times when the CNN talk show host had very little criticism to offer of the Reagan administration but then got very very exercised about the PATCO controller strikers being fired because, hey, reporters spend a lot of time on airplanes. Or at least that was my supposition.
One could argue our current media conversation is all streetlght effect. How many kliegs are aimed at Trump?
NHTSA breaks it down by month, day, hour:
https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Crashes/CrashesTime.aspx
thank you. pretty fascinating data.
(at the same time, surprised and not really, at the difference in deaths during the morning commute hours and evening commute hours). people tired after a day’s work really makes a difference on the roads.
And old folks’ wisdom rings true: nothing good happens after midnight, especially on the roads, especially during the weekends (drunk driving + higher speeds given less traffic).
Deaths per mile data are inappropriate to understand the risk. Sensible humans want a journey risk: if I get into this conveyance, what chance do I have of getting out alive. Aeroplanes score badly on this measure because nobody pops out for a pint of milk in an aeroplane. Aeroplanes score well by distance travelled for the inverse reason. We’d all be safer in trains….
I flew Boston to Denver on a MAX 800 last month and I was appalled how loud it was. Really horrible.
And it’s such a benefit to share the air that comes out of the mouths and noses and upper and lower respirator tracts of 150 or 300 other people. NC has noted a lot of articles showing that your chances of catching an airborne virus are “not minimal” for a lot of reasons.
Masks and sprays and gargles and prophylactic meds and supplements help, but not a cure for the way we humans are willing to take and impose risks or just motor on in dumb ignorance.
“Algeria Closes Airspace to French Warplanes as Paris Considers Attack on African Neighbour Niger”
Algeria may have refused permission for French aircraft to overfly their country to attack Niger but the Moroccans have given the nod instead. Algeria borders Libya and well recalls the chaos after that country collapsed and does not need a repeat performance on their southern borders. If Macron thinks that he can have French aircraft attack Niger without there being any blowback to the French in North Africa I have news for him and its all bad. If Niger collapses under an attack, not only could it cause all sorts of chaos throughout the countries of North Africa but it would open up all sorts of opportunities for Jihadists like happened after the collapse of Iraq. Therefore I expect Macron to attack Niger.
https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/niger-lalgeria-respinge-la-richiesta-francese-sulluso-dello-spazio-aereo-per-un-intervento-militare/
This is the Algerians playing silly buggers again, trying to distract the media from their own internal, problems.
The problem is not Niger as such, which is divided between the majority of the Army which supports the President, and the putschists who are in a small minority but have the President in custody. There have been calls from some in the Nigerien political class and the military for French help, probably with logistics and special forces to free the President, but he himself has ruled this out. There is no earthly reason to use air power: the rebels are not very numerous and their only real advantage is their custody of the President. They have been able to whip up anti-western feeling, which is always good PR, and in those parts of the world is cheap to organise.
The big losers here are the politicians who for twenty years now have been trying to build what’s called the African Peace and Security Architecture, and notably the African Standby Force, one of whose roles was precisely to intervene to restore democratically elected heads of state and governments. Each African sub-region was intended to have a Brigade-sized force ready for action, and ECOWAS was the sub-region that was conventionally supposed to be readiest, because of the relatively sophisticated capability of the Nigerians. For African leaders this was the way out of the humiliation of having to ask the UN, or even individual western states, to come and sort their problems out. For the West it was a way out of costly and open ended UN operations. At the time, and for reasons too complex to go into here, I was very critical of this concept, and, indeed it hasn’t worked. You wouldn’t need a very large force to free the President, but at the moment there’s no way of getting it there. The most that ECOWAS could scrape together is about 2000 troops and, since they don’t control the airport it’s hard to see how they could insert them. So it’s a stinging defeat for a generation of politicians who tried to live down West Africa’s reputation for coups and military governments: failure of governments to protect their populations against Islamic terrorism, mixed with corruption and mismanagement (though Niger was one of the most hopeful examples) look like delivering the region back into the hands of the military again.
You have to admit though that the whole thing feels…off. How many coups have there been in Africa in the past decade or so. About a dozen? So why is the reaction to this particular coup so extreme? Almost hysterical. How many of those other coups had Nuland jump on a plane in an attempt to give that regime their marching orders? Why is ECOWAS jumping on their high-horse and threatening military invasion?
As for that African Standby Force that was developed, that could be a two-edged sword that. Yes, it could be a force for stability in this part of Africa. On the other hand, it could also be a mechanism that could be hijacked by western powers to keep the locals in order. It all depends on how the people in this region see it. I’m sure that you would be familiar with how the colonial powers like France and Britain in the 19th century would raise Regiments from the locals to keep the rest of the people in line. This could be the same but once-removed via local patsies.
Never let the facts get ahead of the theory, Rev.
Not pretty – The thought of Nuland jumping on a plane.
I now picture a flattened fuselage with the bulky Nuland triumphantly sitting on top of it.
Rev Kev: So why is the reaction to this particular coup so extreme? Almost hysterical.
Are you playing, Rev, or do you really not know?
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/04/how-dependent-is-france-on-niger-s-uranium_6080772_8.html
Niger, one of France’s top three uranium suppliers
To operate the fifty-six nuclear reactors in France’s eighteen power plants, operator EDF requires an average of around 8,000 tons of natural uranium every year. Following the cessation of mining on French soil in the early 2000s, France turned to several countries simultaneously for its supplies … Over the last ten years, the 88,200 tonnes of natural uranium imported into France came mainly from three countries: Kazakhstan (27%), Niger (20%), and Uzbekistan (19%).
LE MONDE is maybe lowballing the dependency, because France purchases uranium from Niger at very preferable rates via the African franc. Furthermore, Niger accounts overall for a fifth of total EU uranium imports.
https://multinationales.org/en/news/vive-la-francafrique-who-benefits-from-niger-s-uranium
Vive la Françafrique! Who Benefits from Niger’s Uranium? France needs Niger’s uranium, while Niger needs French assistance. But the relationship is and always has been unequal.
Some things are so obvious that they do not need to be spoken out aloud. :)
Winter is coming in France and their nuclear power plant fleet needs that uranium. It’s just that they do not want to pay a fair market price for it.
So does a French company own the Uranium mine/processing facility, and if so, is the Nigerian government allowed to tax it?
If most of the troops were loyal, they would have put down the rebels. That’s what loyal troops are for; that’s what they do.
The only way the majority of the army personnel could have favoured the ousted leader would be if they were mostly non-combatants of the rear echelon. Then, I suppose, you could have a situation in which a small number of combat personnel in favour of a coup could intimidate a larger number of other people wearing uniforms who were opposed to it.
As for the “stability force,” if someone needs foreign troops to hold power against domestic unrest, then their government doesn’t really hold power, and their country’s not really sovereign. They’re just a client, and the true sovereignty lies with whoever disposes of that so-called “stability force.”
Or the French will simply ignore Algeria’s refusal and dare them to do anything about it. Sort of like the US killing of Bin Laden.
The Algerian armed forces do have a whole range of Russian anti-aircraft equipment — including Buk, S-300, S-400, Tor… On the other hand, Algeria is a vast territory, too vast to cover entirely with anti-aircraft defense.
Looking at a map, Niger seems to be over 1500 km from either Mediteranean Sea or the Atlantic and the range of a Mirage is 1550 km, when a back and forth puts you at 3000 km.
re. How Quebec won the world’s first ban on oil and gas extraction
Note that Hydro Quebec has absolutely massive dams and impoundments which generate carbon-free electricity. It is so cheap, people have used electric resistance heating for homes. But filling the reservoirs and subsequent decomposition of organic matter out gasses methane for decades. Hydro Quebec is also politically very powerful with a huge consistency. So banning fracking through legislation is feasible in ways it would be impossible to accomplish elsewhere. While Montreal has decent public transportation, it isn’t world class and Quebec is very much automobile dependent. France also doesn’t allow fracking, which is more recognition of EDF’s political power with its generation nuclear fleet.
I live in New York State and the Marcellus shale pokes out in this area. Below it sits the Utica shale. Into Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia both formations are highly productive and would also yield huge amounts of methane and natural gas liquids is exploited in NYS. But Andrew Cuomo (yes, that guy) banned fracking in NYS using regulations, claiming it was based on “science”. This was really recognition that the NY constitution provide local governments with strong powers over land use, unlike PA, OH & WV that have very favorable laws for extraction. Banning fracking here was simply recognition of reality.
Needless to say plenty of fossil fuels are burned in Quebec, New York and France. The lower per capita CO2 emissions are artifacts of large urban centers and hydroelectric or nuclear and have little to do with intentional reductions of fossil fuel consumption.
Another bit of mostly unmentioned science re: fracking in NY’s Southern Tier- a large number of poorly documented and improperly “abandoned” (a term of art in the oilpatch) gas wells. If you frack a freshly drilled (and costly) hole your precious (and proprietary) fluid will come to the surface any number of which ways. The few test wells I saw (in suburbia no less!) pulled up and disappeared in pretty short order…..
“Investing is the Study of Human Decision Making” The Big Picture
“Future” demands optimism. Pessimists have been on the losing side of the trade for all of human history. Even setbacks like the dotcom implosion, the GFC and the pandemic were temporary. Pessimism is a bet against human ingenuity, and that has been a losing wager…”
Or just realize that asset bubbles are all they got. Skim off the bubbles inflating, then bursting, then repeat.
Nvidia’s advantage is in the better software tools they provide for programming their GPUs, and so it was easier to program for their hardware. Competitors’ chips required different tools and languages. This incompatibility grew into a monopoly because writing your software to work on different hardware is time consuming and expensive. Things are changing, more quickly than before, so Nvidia is facing more competition. Ironically, it’s in AI (actually, machine learning models, ML) that Nvida lost their software advantage first because it is Tensorflow, along with PyTorch, both using the Python programming language, that have become the standard for ML programming. And AMD has worked on making Tensorflow and PyTorch work well on their GPUs. AMD has very good hardware, their CPUs are preferred over giant Intel for general high performance computing, and their GPUs are now increasingly popular since they improved their programming tools for ML. For anyone in high end computing, from HPC to CGI, AMD is the technical leader, which makes the NYT article incomplete to the point of misleading because it only mentions AMD at the end, and very superficially.
That said, in our experience with both engineering workstation (running Solidworks plus Mastercam) using Nvidia RTX 6000 (with 48GB of RAM) and our video workstation (running Resolve) and equipped with a pair of Nvidia 4090 (each with 24GB of RAM) are supported. Neither AMD or Intel GPU boards are in the running.
That’s right, Nvidia still holds sway in many areas. It’s the same with Ansys or Hyperworks, and many others, Nvidia is effectively the only option.
CUDA gave Nvidia a monopoly advantage for 15 years now.
Apart from the ML frameworks using Python where the programmer is insulated from the underlying parallel code which has to be specific to the hardware, the improvements in OpenMP have made programming less dependent on the low level programming that GPUs need. And that CUDA does well.
One can expect the commercial engineering codes to be slow to move over, but open source codes with active communities are updating to the new OpenMP features or using AMD’s ROCm library for HPC.
This is good news, because Nvidia’s monopoly meant that they could charge what they wanted — no wonder they became the darling of fund managers.
Nvidia also exploited their monopoly in restricting the market. For instance, enterprise users could not use cheaper consumer (gaming) Nvidia GPUs in their clusters because Nvidia pressured OEMs to not support those in their servers. When your system needs a thousand GPUs, having to buy A100s instead of RTX 6000s adds up fast. And now there are complaints of shortages of the A100 as Nvidia pushes their new, and more expensive, H100.
Only know as a hobbyist getting PyTorch up and running on CUDA with consumer gaming-level card is fairly straightforward, though I now see the need for massive RAM on the card.
“Unlikely animal falls from sky and knocks power out for thousands in New Jersey town”
This article could be very misleading to read. For example, it may have been a flying fish as the cause of this outage and not a bird. And I have to ask why the fish in that crime scene foto was not fried. Very suspicious that. But I know for a fact that it is not Det. John Silver who handles all of their fish cases but Detective Sergeant Grayling instead.
I may be falling for your joke, but, that “crime scene” seems to be artfully contrived with the yellow police tape for a laugh. Like the crime suspect drawing.
Some local fish fry place should take all this and run with it with a special item on the menu.
Found a good size carp on the pool deck a few years back – maybe a 3lb-er. We have both osprey and bald eagles fishing in the nearby lake. And eagles nesting about 1/4 mile north between us and the airport, who are my best guess for the likely culprit.
Osprey we only see at the bridge over the nearby lake, but rarely near our home (about 600 feet as the crow flies from water’s edge). The eagle pair, however, can be seen going off to work around dawn daily – flying overhead at maybe 75 of altitude, e.g. relatively low flying. And again, coming home from work around dusk, call it 7PM. And these I’ve seen more than once with fish or snake tightly clutched as they fly home with dinner.
Anyway, because the pool deck is enclosed by a solid wall, they gave it up but I’d wager had it been dropped in the field, then they’d have retrieved it.
“The west is suffering from a crisis of courage” FT
What kind of garbage did I just read?
Largely an indictment about Trump not debating candidates, something about the British PM, and totally ignoring brain-dead Biden and the Dem establishment who are poster children for discouraging debate with challengers.
—“The west is suffering from a crisis of courage” FT—
Said by an Establishment newspaper that is happy to send other people’s kids/grandkids to war—-but never their own (unless you are King Charles).
would be funny in a dark humour sort of way—–if it wasn’t so disgusting
It seems my complaining about heroic societies has hit a nerve in the highest, pinkest papers. *smug, tight-lipped smile*
Gardening forests–
Good article, but hardly news to NC readers. Wuk has been teaching us about this stuff for years.
Its good to reinforce the idea, and I look at our overpopulated forests as if a mad gardener sowed their farm with an awesome amount of carrot seeds and never bothered to thin them.
You end up with a unruly ‘forest’ of sorts up top and spindly little nothing carrots on the thin side.
Sequoia NP has a number of prescribed burns scheduled to go off if the conditions are just right, one of them in my neck of the woods. I like the timing, the lower border not too far away was largely burnt out in the 2021 KNP Fire, and i’d imagine they’d want to push it towards it.
The superintendent went through with a 750 acre prescribed burn in the Giant Forest last year, just a few weeks after the NM prescribed burn got way out of hand. The super wasn’t swayed by the news, as similar to the upcoming prescribed fire in Mineral King, it had burn zones from the KNP that made perfect borders for the Rx fire.
https://www.nps.gov/seki/learn/news/sequoia-and-kings-canyon-national-parks-plan-2023-prescribed-burns-and-fuels-reduction-projects.htm
“American strategists say Ukraine’s troops are too spread out and need to concentrate along the counteroffensive’s main front in the south.”
Why are these American strategists giving these instructions to the New York Times? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give them to Ukraine’s strategists?
They did. A coupla months ago. And the result was over 40,000 dead Ukrainians and an area that will be forever known as Bradley Square because of the huge quantities of destroyed western equipment there. Now these same geniuses are saying that they should do it all over again with less trained troops, less military equipment and still no air cover to protect their advance because this time it will work for sure.
The Lawrence Freedman piece raised my blood pressure. Not very familiar with the man, but wiki tells me that he was instrumental in the creation of the Blair doctrine, so, there you go. He tells us that the threat of nuclear war isn’t really all that bad, stop with the whining, and then in a very cowardly way seems to support the idea that Ukraine is just too damn risk adverse, as is Biden, by not supplying F16s. Good lord, those F16s. They are like an emotional crutch now for all the blood thirsty non military cheerleaders of this war. If only they had F16s! And that will be the refrain for years among the psychopaths, just like many feel that we should have nuked North Korea and Hanoi. We were wimps!
Are there any here familiar with the history of these think tanks and non military, non elected institutions that form the basis for all this idiotic decision making? Did they exist in WW2 or earlier? Some of what I read is insane, and yet, something tells me these people live a much more comfortable life than most of us, win or lose. Colonel Macgregor mentioned the other day that we now have about 41 four star generals, with all of their staff bloat and budgets and power plays, and in WW2 we only had four, who managed 16 million American soldiers, and, of course, Eisenhower was commander of even more in the combined forces. And then there’s NATO, which seems to be the country club retirement for officers who want more than the pension. It’s nuts. One giant, super expensive blood thirsty Blob that is never right.
The Nulands, Blinkens, Blairs, Boltons and their cheerleaders would destroy 99% of life on earth without hesitation, as long as they were promised unfettered dominion over whatever radioactive ash was left.
“Don’t Look Up!” might as well have been a documentary, in that it describes observable reality more accurately than do many films which purport to be documentaries.
With that in mind, we are ruled by persons whose behavior is indistinguishable from that of sociopaths. So what is anyone going to do about it? Pointing out that a Kagan or a Freedman or a Biden is amoral and soulless is like reminding an armed robber that the Bible forbids stealing.
They don’t care. Force is what they care about. Moral arguments just make them laugh, gloating at your impotence, unless you have a gun to their head and it is clear that you are prepared to pull the trigger. Then they will morph into great moralists and jailhouse lawyers, spouting Scripture or the Vedas or The Anarchists Cookbook or the criminal statutes or whatever else they think will get you put the gun down.
“They don’t care.” While true, it does not express the true vacuousness of their mind and soul. Between the loathing and wishing them to long prison terms, I sort of feel sorry for them. So much in opportunity was given to them and it is mostly waste that they have created from that.
This is something Russia understands well. The SMO goals: de-natzification (Nuland, et al), de-militarization (destroy NATO), and then leave the West crumbling.
May be the strategy is to finish the “cheap” war ASAP. USians are usually in a hurry for some end.
Seems like thinning the ranks along an eight hundred mile line of contact would do that nicely. While you gather up most of your forces in one place, they can then roll up the rest and leave your troops in a mined cauldron that they can fire missiles into at will.
What has become clear in Ukraine is that concentrating forces cannot be done without ISR discovery. Drones have made troop concentration a turkey shoot.
Hmmm.American military strategists.Tell how well have they performed over the past 50 odd years?
Do it all over again with less trained troops, less military equipment and still no air cover to ..
Isn’t that the definition of Insanity?
Or is that the advice of Well Trained graduate from a large Military Academy named Lord Cardigan?
The American “strategy” is to get the New York Times to write the story “American strategists” want.
Who cares what happens in Ukraine: Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya didn’t mater, why should Ukraine?
Don’t look over there, follow the narrative, vote for creepy Joe, he’s the best we can do.
Maybe it was Lexus and Vovan, the two Russian spoofers, who called the NYT with battlefield advice.
Given the effective intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) displayed by both sides and the Russian predilection toward massed fires…..
Concentration, the WW II paradigm may be outdated
This is something I’ve been wondering. If the prerequisite for penetrating enemy lines is local superiority, and local superiority requires massing forces, and massed forces are vulnerable to prompt attack … where does that leave the attacker? Do our military experts have an answer?
Right. Seems that the assumption is that the attacking force will have smooth sailing to the goal, and not be swallowed up by the flanks and then closed off into a cauldron, which is probably what the Russian army is hoping for.
“simplicious” has been discussing this (the impact upon warfare of cheap “panopticon-like” platforms) on his blog….
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/all-seeing-eye-can-russia-break-through
To concentrate indicates protecting the concentration.
That implies deep strike on defenders artillery, airfield/aircraft and ground to ground missiles.
Defensive air cover, and SAM to defeat air and missile attack.
Deny ISR. Defeat ISR aircraft and satellites.
Protecting the attacking concentration adds mission resources, in addition to attrition defender front position.
More challenges to “prepare” the battlefield….
More resources!
Aurelien: If the prerequisite for penetrating enemy lines is local superiority, and local superiority requires massing forces, and massed forces are vulnerable to prompt attack … where does that leave the attacker?
Well, as every child knows, Admiral Dönitz liked to invite his new u-boat captains to his office during WW2 and ask them, ‘Do you want to know the future of naval warfare?’ Then he would point to the picture of the empty sea surface on his office wall and say, “That is the future of naval warfare.”
In the same spirit, I suggest that the future of attack and maneuver warfare is probably this —
ZALA AERO’s New ‘Product 53, a Swarm Version of the deadly Lancet-3 Drones, Ready for Network-Centric Warfare:The “Lancet” munition has already been employed in fully autonomous mode during active combat, without any involvement from a human operator.
https://frontierindia.com/zala-aeros-new-product-53-a-swarm-version-of-the-deadly-lancet-3-drones-ready-for-network-centric-warfare/
In the end you still need to concentrate more troops at the break trough point than the enemy has. That’s been the simple truth since the Greek phalanxes. The “classical” 3-to-1 ratio means that you lose one times the enemy number to create a breach, you need one times the enemy number to hold the breach and you need one times the enemy number to exploit the breach.
It’s worthwhile to remember that the word strategos was born at the time when commanders could actually see the whole battlefield and react to developments with the speed it takes for a runner to run a mile or so. Nothing new under the sun, really.
What you do need, in order to lose only one-to-one during the break trough, is the means to suppress the enemy firepower – you need to create at least a temporary superiority in artillery, rockets, missiles and/or air force. Then use a really aggressive speed when striking the enemy positions, going in hand-to-hand and keeping the situation so fluent it’s impossible for the enemy to use his firepower timely.
World War 1 analogy is better suited….see Germany collapsing in 1918 even though locally it was still putting up a ferocious fight in France.
basically intra-first-world war has become long-form, attrition-based tug-of-war until one side collapses versus 1991 USA v. Iraq.
“Why are these American strategists giving these instructions to the New York Times? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give them to Ukraine’s strategists?”
Because this war is being fought in the NYT and WAPO and CNN and PBS and BBC as much as in the trenches and fields of Ukraine.
Benny Profane: Because this war is being fought in the NYT and WAPO and CNN and PBS and BBC as much as in the trenches and fields of Ukraine
No. The fools only think it is and that it matters in the end.
If you think the “real” war is only happening in the theater, and that the simultaneous concomitant combat in the institutions is but the sideshow, you should probably give John Robb a read and in the meantime refrain from such innocent action-movie prattle.
[1] In the end Russia will not lose, even if they have to escalate to WWIII. The propaganda war matters only in as much as it determines how long it keeps the support coming from the US and the West, and thus the consequent scale of the damage.
Nevertheless, in the end Russia will not lose. All the rest is a sideshow.
[2] John Robb is not a serious thinker and I’ve never heard an original thought from him. When he’s right — which, sure, he often is — he’s only repeating simplified, pop versions of ideas that were obvious twenty years ago to other, deeper thinkers around, forex, Andy Marshall’s Office of Net Assessment, and their opposite numbers in China and Russia.
[3] As for ‘concomitant combat in the institutions’, they’re American institutions, aren’t they? Sorry: I still have a green card, own a place there, and go there on business, but I moved myself out two years ago because there was no reason to live in a collapsing kleptocracy. So what happens to ‘American institutions’ is from my POV, thankfully, a sideshow.
American strategists think that Russia will attack only where Ukrainian troops are positioned?
Elizabeth Warren?
Gag me.
Let’s go, Lizzie.
The cynic in me can envision AOC handing out safe, Euro suntan lotion to the troops soon.
Yea, what is she up to? Many moons ago I thought she was the real deal. Now I wish she would just go away. Of course I think that about most, if not all of them. Hard to fathom why people are so tribal over a bunch of puke worthy chameleons.
If she had stayed in her lane she could have been effective and accomplished a great deal. Unfortunately a few strategists realized she could break off some support for Sanders because of the success she had had. They told her she WAS the real Democratic answer to the dissatisfaction that fueled Sanders support and not only could be President but should be. And she was egotistical enough to believe them and still does. Even after being dropped like a hot potato by the people running the DNC when she served her purpose.
She still hasn’t figured out that not only was she used, but she destroyed her brand by proving she would lie to get ahead. Too many Democratic voters looked at her actions in the primaries and now believe the nickname Pocahontas isn’t as undeserved as she has made out for her to be a real contender even among the unwashed and deplorables.
Do you think she will call the 21st century’s Churchill a misogynist in a few months when the US tries to dispose Zelensky?
Liz posted a Tweet not long ago today. It reads;
The comments were not pretty. Good.
Lizzie Warren took a Cherokee act
And gave her alma mater an admittance hack
When she saw what she had done
She ran a DNA test and is 1/1024th one
> Our Food System Is the Bullseye for Solving the World’s Climate Challenges The Observatory
>> Rao’s paper found that “animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change, responsible for at least 87 percent of greenhouse gas emissions annually.”
Let’s be kind and say that Rao’s paper [2019] is outdated:
> Atmospheric Methane: Comparison Between Methane’s Record in 2006–2022 and During Glacial Terminations [2023]
>> Feng et al. (2022) used satellite observations to infer that over 80% of the observed growth in the global methane burden between 2010 and 2019 came from tropical emissions. Separately, Feng et al. (2023) estimated that 66% of methane’s global increase in 2020 was due to increased emissions, particularly from the tropics.
(Cross-post this comment with > Investing is the Study of Human Decision Making The Big Picture. As Mikel says: Skim off the bubbles inflating, then bursting, then repeat.)
News you can use:
> WetBulb Globe Temperature
As a mere person with nothing to go by but living a life among people, I do not think someone who is clinically depressed is good at estimating outcomes. Getting out of bed and feeding your dog, for instance, will have benefits and prevent a major crisis of fuilt and shame later rhat afternoon – regardless of how someone with your diagnosis might assess things in a hypothetical situation. I’ve been in a tight spot or two with a depressed person and it was not great. (Persons all much better now what with age, experience, meds, talk therapy, etc.)
And the discussion of vulnerability in narcissistic types? When I’ve run into that it plays out like rage and frustration. The completely self-involved person undone when, inexplicably, the world and everyone who’s not the narcissistic exist in a world that doesn’t revolve around whatever the N has decided the world should be. (And also I suspect there ate some crossed wires and misuse of the instincts that are supposed to go with empathy and social behaviors.)
I’m not sure it is that they cannot estimate outcomes, they can see the problem of inaction but they cannot summon the energy to do what even they know needs to be done.
#COVID19
> I think that’s a “Yikes!” but readers may wish to comment.
I wish I could with authority … sometimes I remember that meeting a Post-Keynesian economist in a bar led to me getting a Masters in Econ, and I wonder if reading all these cell.com articles and benefitting from this family blog will end up with me getting a Masters in Immunology … LOL
Thanks for the cell.com articles. They’re great, even if I have to open up half a dozen more tabs to suss out “all the words”.
My understanding (as a person of science/engineering background) is that this is further detail on the immune system dysregulation that’s been so well highlighted on these pages. If I had to explain it like I was five (via reddit), I’d say that various foundational micro-things that contribute to our bodies’ defenses get rewired by COVID-19 to do something other than what they’re supposed to do for proper functioning.
The one thing I notice called out is that the study was on severe COVID-19 sequelae. Thin silver lining that this is not as likely for those who had “mild COVID” infections.
#BonapartistNigerTurn
Interesting. So really, if I’m reading this correctly (and as was asserted in another article shared here recently), the US effectively displacing France once and for all here as the primary agent of Western influence … in the long run(?). I do hope there is no military intervention … by anyone.
A problem with mild Covid is that it is no guarantee that next time around it will be mild. My sister had Covid once, did not have real problems, got it a second time and now has Long Covid, pretty much a complete invalid for almost a year now.
Best thing is not to get it at all, if you can manage that.
HICPAC meeting:
https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/nnu-delivers-petition-urging-the-cdc-to-strengthen-proposed-infection-control-guidance
NNU delivers petition urging CDC to strengthen proposed infection control guidance; CDC cuts off public comments at advisory committee meeting
I listened to the HICPAC meeting. I watched during the public comments section, focusing on the panel squirming in discomfort with (all 14) comment after comment eviscerating the CDC for disregarding scientific evidence and lack of transparency. It’s no wonder the comments were capped at 14. Here is the published agenda.
Here is the CDC’s mission statement:
It can be found here.
So BRICS is pretty much screwed. It will be very difficult to get a euphonious acronym now that they added Argentina, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iran, and soon, Ethiopia. Even if we just take S from Saudi and U from UAE, we are still in need of a consonant or 2 to escape things like: BRICEESUASI
While we’re on acronyms, and will Germany join the PIGS soon on the ghetto side of the EU? PIGGS we can handle.
If you cannot have one that is entirely accurate you could at least have one that is memorable.
BRICASAURUS, anyone?
For whom does the BRICASAURUS roar? He roars for thee, as John Donne did not quite say.
Is “Acronym Consultant” a thing? Asking for a friend…
Judging by the way they name bills in Congress it must be.
“Acrostic consultant”, please. It’s a much higher pay grade.
“Find someone who loves you like hedge funds love Nvidia” FT.
It’s also a bit of a joker is wild in the deck, similar to the role Tesla played.
“Investing is the Study of Human Decision Making”
More likely a study in human idiocy. I have claimed for a long time that the stock market is a grown up version of high school popularity contests – and is just as accurate. So as an example, suppose a major corporation announces that they are cutting costs. And the way that they are going to do this is to shut down their research and development division, get rid of older experienced workers and replace them with much cheaper young hires and then outsource skilled production to a foreign country so that in a few years time they do not know how to manufacture what you are supposed to be producing. Logic dictates that you dump that stock as that corporation has proven that it does not have a clue what they are doing. And yet, on Wall Street they will upvote that corporation and cause its shares to raise higher. And this happens time and again. So the logical conclusion is that Wall Street does not have a clue what they are doing either.
All that leads to a short-term boost to earnings at the expense of long-term potential.
Most valuation models are heavy on those short-term profits, so stock price is just reflecting that. There’s also more than a little bit of Keynes’ comparison of market behavior and choosing the winner in a beauty competition.
John Pilger article today was originally posted at Consortium News on September 7, 2022. I am surprised that today’s article gave no reference to the original. Link to the original article:
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/09/07/john-pilger-silencing-the-lambs-how-propaganda-works/
And a version on John Pilger’s own site was linked to a few days later by a commenter in the Links on this site, so NC readers may not have been unaware of it.
I for one managed to miss it both times and glad Lambert linked again! Thank you. I think I will send it to some people.
Can’t get this notion of Biden and his recent speech to the Maui wildfire surviving families. Many of whom lost their homes, likely their immediate chances of returning to their livelihood or chosen professions as well. Probably lack in basic, daily essentials as well.
Joe’s Fiery Corvette…borrowing from a master artist “Little Red Corvette”
I guess I should’ve known
By how the lightning hit the house sideways
That my garage wouldn’t last
See you’re also making it out alive
Drop and roll, run fast
I guess I ain’t dumb
We’re cutting you a check soon
Just don’t spend it all at once
Unless you’re in Ukraine
Gotta wait on the FEMA slow train
My fiery Corvette
Baby it still goes fast
My fiery Corvette
Wait shall I say my dead son’s name
Needs some work…admittedly.
The headline writer was having way too much fun:
Lois Lane’s daughter rescues Yellowknife pets in vodka-assisted flight
Meanwhile in Kansas…. I see Forbes has an article out titled “Will The Judge Who Let Police Raid A Small Kansas Newspaper Be Held Accountable?”. Here you will find a short but tidy history of “judicial immunity”, or why Betteridge’s law will apply. link
One other note here for today. I’ve now seen multiple reports that Joan Meyer’s coroner’s report “lists anger and anxiety experienced as a contributing cause of her death”. I have not been able to confirm this, but big if true.
I wonder whether readers fully appreciate how rare this type of small-town journalism is. Moreover, how even more valuable the kind of backbone demonstrated by Joan and Eric Meyer would be at a national scale. Eric should be urgently hired as both publisher and editor of the NYT or, failing that, the Washington Post. Maybe Bezos, if he truly gives a flip, will take notice. Take note that this brand of journalism is popular: The Marion County Record has a circulation of 4,000 in a town of about 1,900.
Anger and anxiety as a contributing cause of death? I beg to differ. Anger and anxiety are a major contributing cause of my longevity.
Over the decades, the courts have expanded concepts like “qualified immunity” to shield the entire legal system. Judges, prosecutors, police, even defense lawyers. It seems that it does not really matter who appoints the judges, the judges insist on expanding protections to, and covering for, the misdeeds, even outright crime, of those working for the system. Add that the people in the individual offices and positions cover for everyone one else as well. It can be rather like omertà.
In fairness, it does vary from place to place with the less corruption areas being less prone to all this.
“John Pilger: Silencing The Lambs (How Propaganda Works)” John Pilger, Eurasia Review.
Indeed. The USA hasn’t only captured the world’s global monetary policy, it’s captured the world’s imagination.
To add onto that thought, I submit the following phrases or statements just during my brief time. Some have not weathered the passage of time very well. I will probably give that article a second reading later in the day.
A shining city on a hill.
A thousand points of light.
Hope and change.
Yes we can.
Link to send an editable form letter to your representatives regarding the HICPAC meeting. I just sent one, and added links to Lamberts two articles going through the morass of FACA and scientific issues.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-cdc-and-hicpac-require-airborne-precautions-in-healthcare-settings?source=direct_link&
Deep within the article Ukraine’s Offensive: Is It Failing?, I see the following sentence. . .
” The situation with Russia is not at all comparable to 1945. It is not facing an existential challenge – just a fiasco with a supposedly limited operation that went badly wrong.”
Does the RussiaGov feel the situation is not comparable to 1945 and is not an existential challenge? If the RussiaGov secretly feels that way, then it may eventually give in to ongoing Ukrainian non-surrender and accept a compromise peace in order to end this fiasco-of-choice.
But if the RussiaGov does feel the situation is comparable to 1945 and the challenge is existential, then the RussiaGov will keep fighting attritionally in order to get Ukraine to fight and bleed itself down to zero fighting capacity left.
So it really matters what the RussiaGov itself thinks and feels here. Does the author of this article know, or even care to know, what the RussiaGov thinks and feels about this situation?
My tip would be that he knows as well as someone in his position is able to know that the RussiaGov thinks and feels and knows that the threat is existential, partly because he knows how dead serious the AmeriGov IS about the complete destruction of Russia and the decimation of their people and culture, etc, being an eager, knowing participant in that effort who never argues in good faith at all, but who of course nonetheless does NOT care what anyone on the russian side thinks, except to the degree it relates to their chances of success and how what the RussiaGov and the RussiaPeop think or feel could affect those chances.
Since AmeriElites and PMC are collectively pathological sadists the ultimate ideal for them probably would be to have the RussiaGov and the RussiaPeop in a situation where they can only helplessly wait for their inevitable end, fully aware that it is coming but too broken and without hope to even try to do anything, with the AmeriGov and the PMC mocking and taunting their dying victim to their face, kicking them incessantly while they are already down and describing to them how they are going to rape and enrich themselves on their corpses while sullying their name for eternity.
That’s about the image that the AmeriElites are wanking over at night, but of course that does not make it real or even likely an outcome.
In the meantime they’d surely like to manipulate either the RussiaGov or the RussiaPeop or both into believing that the threat is not existentiell, to easier achieve the eventual destruction of both, if they could trck them into conflict with each other by getting one side to fall for their deceptions but not the other would be nice as well.
The questions are their tricks working (the evidence so far suggests not, there’s probably very little people in Russia left believing and indeed consuming western media), do AmeriGov, -Elites and PMC believe they are working (many sure expect them to, plenty are surely aware that little suggests they do but will continue to lie about it with a perfectly clean conscience) and if they care about their lies ever being actually believed (not much, probably, either because they get their money anyway or because they are so convinced of their omnipotence and unstoppability that they “know” that it is only a question of when, not IF they are eventually going to “get” Russia, grind it into dust and cancel it out of history, that it simply doesn’t matter If any particular dirty trick works, even if 30 years from now Russia still stubornly refuses to collapse while the US has massively deteriorated, they’ll still and forever KNOW it is only a question of time and that time will always be on their side).
Epigenetic memory of coronavirus infection in innate immune cells and their progenitors Cell. From the Abstract: “Alterations in innate immune phenotypes and epigenetic programs of [hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC)] persisted for months to 1 year following severe COVID-19… Epigenetic reprogramming of HSPC may underlie altered immune function following infection and be broadly relevant, especially for millions of COVID-19 survivors.” I think that’s a “Yikes!” but readers may wish to comment.
My latest colleagues in Science worked all on epigenetics with plant models. As they used to say joking, women and men, “la cromatina me la empina” (do not try to translate! I give mine: “chromatine is exciting”.) Epigenetics changes are a constant, frequently in response to various environmental stimuli. That COVID is causing epigenetic changes doesn’t come as a surprise given how they interfer with several celular mechanisms of surveillance, particularly after severe and or prolongued infections. A kind of inprinting It is. As a matter of fact this should be studied in the context of other kinds of infections. Does AIDS cause epigenetic changes? Almost certainly. Do other persistent virus have these kinds of effects? Quite probably.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41581-022-00633-5
suggesting it is a mechanism of immune training
Late but –
Notable because (a) no soldiers visible in photo, just flag attached to a wrecked building; (b) photo taken by drone, not from the ground; (c) the AFU lost a Bradley getting to that spot.
Expensive photo op. That area of Rabotyne/Rabotino is now getting hit with gliding bombs on the regular so presumably there are some AFU troops somewhere around.
The lawsuit against The Internet Archive is absurd. Aside from collectors, most people could care less about the music released on 78 RPM records. If the record companies think it is so valuable they why don’t they do comprehensive reissues of that material? It is usually small labels run by enthusiasts who genuinely love the music of the first half of the 20th century who release these compilations, the big labels could care less. There are exceptions of course, but generally this is the case.
Is RCA going to reissue this kind of stuff ? Doubtful.
https://ia601007.us.archive.org/1/items/78_away-out-on-the-mountain_jimmie-rodgers-k-harrell_gbia0044283b/Away%20out%20on%20the%20Mountain%20-%20Jimmie%20Rodgers.flac
hey y’all don’t know if any may be in need of bone graft materials but this company was responsible for tainted tissue used in a spinal operation at the UM hospital and the patient just died – The CDC said thirty-six patients across the nation received contaminated bone tissue product from Maryland-based Aziyo Biologics during procedures, and two have died one being the UM patient – the same company was involved in the outbreak of TB in 2021 in which eight people died and at least eighty-seven developed a TB infection – and they still are in business – disgrace –
https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/07/not-again-bone-grafts-linked-to-another-deadly-bizarre-tb-outbreak/
In deadly Maui fires, many had no warning and no way out. Those who dodged a barricade survived
“A private ambulance company calls the U.S. Coast Guard at about 5:45 p.m., asking for help transporting 10 injured people from Lahaina to Maalaea because a fire is blocking road access to Lahaina. It is the Coast Guard’s first notification of the fire.”
https://apnews.com/article/hawaii-fires-timeline-maui-lahaina-road-block-c8522222f6de587bd14b2da0020c40e9
The Breach (breachmedia.ca) – the newspaper with the story about the grassroots movement to stop oil and gas extraction in Quebec – is not loading properly. Odd. I wanted more info on how they accomplished that.
re: The Curtain Closes on Prigozhin
Simplicius doesn’t appear to consider possibilities other than explosion. As soon as he mentioned the wings and tail were found separated and intact, no marks from explosion, my first thought was the airframe was stressed and came apart by G-forces. Kinda like what would happen if everyone had jumped out of the plane and let the plane fall to earth, ya?
If I were Prighozin on my way back to Moscow to account for my betrayal, I’d fake my death too.
There was a report that an attendant texted someone about a long time before takeoff with stuff being done to the plane, If they were accessible, taking a dozen key bolts out could to the job.
re: Internet Archive’s legal woes mount as record labels sue for $400M
The record labels probably spent the months prior to the lawsuit filling Spotify with 78 RPM recordings which were previously not available on Spotify, just so they could file this lawsuit. Also, don’t they have to prove financial loss? How many people have even heard of Fireman’s Lament by the Firehouse Five? Or Chop Suey Mambo? Or Sugarfoot Stomp? If anything, Internet Archives is probably driving sales TO Spotify, not the other way around.
Noticed no one commented on the ethnic factor in Niger.
Mohamed Bazoum the ousted President is a Tuareg/Arab.
Tchiani the coup leader is a Hausa, the largest tribe in Niger
Some stats on the Hausa
Niger: 13,070,000 53% (out of 25.25 million)
Nigeria 57,711,000 30% (out of 230,842,743
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausa_people