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Is nature a gigantic cat? Nikola Tesla, Letters of Note
Teen Gators Are Getting Into Golf Defector
The Evolution of Hummingbirds Kottke.org
The Generational Paradigm Shift Taking Over Markets WSJ. The deck: “For most of the 20th century, stocks and bond yields moved in opposite directions. They’re doing it again after a two-decade break.”
Carpe Clichés! This Time Really Was Different John Authers, Bloomberg
How Tiger Global, one of the biggest backers of startups over the past decade, fell to earth Fortune
Google goes to court Casey Newton, Platformer
Climate
The stability of present-day Antarctic grounding lines – Part 2: Onset of irreversible retreat of Amundsen Sea glaciers under current climate on centennial timescales cannot be excluded European Geosciences Union. The Abstract is more sanguine: “Importantly, an irreversible collapse in the Amundsen Sea Embayment sector is initiated at the earliest between 300 and 500 years in our simulations and is not inevitable yet – as also shown in our companion paper (Part 1, Hill et al., 2023). In other words, the region has not tipped yet.” So, awesome; another 500 years of rapacity ahead!
* * * Dust: how the pursuit of power and profit has turned the world to powder Nature. The lone and level sands stretch far away….
* * * EV Cars: Can We Electrify Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis? JSTOR Daily
Wildlife and the inescapable impact of road noise High Country News
Water
Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, world’s youngest river basin, might be first one gone VN Express. Commentary:
Seasonal flooding in the Mekong floodplain is only half of what it should be at this time, & the rate of flooding is slowing at a time it usually rises. Dam restrictions are part of the problem, & El Nino effects which reduce precipitation will take hold in coming months. 2/5 pic.twitter.com/ioXN58V3EZ
— Mekong Dam Monitor (@MekongMonitor) September 6, 2023
President Biden: Don’t Give Wall Street Control of Our Public Water Systems Common Dreams
#COVID19
Azvudine versus Paxlovid for oral treatment of COVID-19 in Chinese patients with pre-existing comorbidities (letter) Journal of Infection (DD). Retrospective cohort study; small sample. “In this retrospective cohort study, we found that Azvudine was associated with a significantly reduced risk of composite disease progression outcome compared with Paxlovid in the COVID-19 patients with pre-existing comorbidities. Notably, Azvudine showed substantial clinical benefit than Paxlovid among men, patients under the age of 65 years, those receiving the hospitalization beyond 5 days since onset, those with severe COVID-19 on admission and those received antibiotic treatment on admission. Paxlovid has been reported to significantly reduce the hospitalization and death rates in patients over 65 years of age but not those under 65 years of age, compared with matched controls.10 Our results support the use of Azvudine in those under 65 years of age.”
China?
As US struggles for China deals, California finds common ground with EV, pollution provincial climate pacts South China Morning Post
Commentary: Is China finally getting serious about hukou reform? Channel News Asia
Caffeinated Cup Noodles for Gamers in Japan Laughing Squid
Myanmar
Drone Strike Kills Two Myanmar Junta Officials in Kachin State: PDF The Irrawaddy
Zara Factory Workers Released from Detention in Myanmar The Irrawaddy
India
India should quit the Brics Business Standard
The Koreas
North Korea’s New Submarine Carries 10 Nuclear Missiles Naval News
Syraqistan
The Middle East Becomes the World’s ATM WSJ
Mobile app helps Palestinians reduce waiting time at Israeli checkpoints Anadolu Agency. Silver lining!
Syria’s ancient adobe houses threatened by war, displacement Al Jazeera
European Disunion
EU’s man in Austria Martin Selmayr in hot water over Russian ‘blood money’ comment Politico
Dear Old Blighty
London retains crown as leading global centre for maritime arbitration, handling 85% of global caseload Hellenic Shipping News
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine Situation Report: Breakthrough At Russia’s Second Defensive Line The War Zone. DIA, ISW. Not seeing dragon’s teeth…. Commentary:
Some additional interesting nuggets from the Hersh article include the claim by Hersh’s source (presumably from the CIA) that the US/UK media reporting on the progress of the war has been terribly inaccurate and is far too credulous of what Kiev says:
“”The goal of Russia’s first line of defense was not to stop the Ukrainian offense,”” the official told me, “”but to slow it down so if there was a Ukrainian advance, Russian commanders could bring in reserves to fortify the line. There is no evidence that Ukrainian forces have gotten past the first line. The American press is doing anything but honest reporting on the failure thus far of the offense.
How the Pentagon assesses Ukraine’s progress The Economist. DIA mans up!
Why blind optimism leads us astray on Ukraine Responsible Statecraft
Situation is difficult as Russians attack on several fronts – General Staff report Ukrainska Pravda
* * * Can Ukraine avoid a ‘forever war’ against Russia without talks? Christian Science Monitor
Russia’s Kornet Missile Has Now Cracked All Major Western Bloc Tanks: Challenger 2 Kill Follows Abrams, Leopard 2 and Merkava I Military Watch. Go long Volsk Mechanical Plant?
* * * Bombshell biography claim: Fearing nuclear war, Musk switched off Starlink to stymie Ukraine attack on Russia The Register. Commentary:
We’ve reached a point where individuals have become so wealthy and so powerful and so intertwined with the military industrial complex that they can just make unilateral decisions that change the course of wars. pic.twitter.com/DLBin8Saig
— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) September 8, 2023
Another reason for Blue MAGA to hate Musk…
2024
Europeans latest to provide evidence undercutting Joe Biden story about firing Ukrainian prosecutor Just the News. Evidence is a progress report on corruption (PDF) from the European Commission.
Spook Country
Trauma Takes a Toll in the U.S. Intelligence Community RAND. Idea: Stop torturing people. Also, don’t lie all the time.
Sports Desk
The little town that builds NFL footballs — all 480,000 of them Orlando Sentinel
The Supremes
Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh predicts ‘concrete steps soon’ to address ethics concerns AP
A president and a justice: The shaping of securities law at the Supreme Court SCOTUSBlog
Health
Air quality expert Richard L. Corsi discusses the complexity of cleaning indoor air Chemical and Engineering News (RS). From 2022, still germane.
Nationwide research looks to figure out how to stop spread of flu Scripps. Hilariously, the deck: “Researchers now say it’s possible that the flu is actually transmitted not just by large wet droplets, but by fine particles as well.” Obviously, we should “live with” the flu.
A Huge Threat to the U.S. Budget Has Receded. And No One Is Sure Why. NYT. I guess we’ve finally got our care denial systems properly calibrated?
Tech
Generative AI and intellectual property Benedict Evans. “[ChatGPT is] supposed to be inferring ‘intelligence’ (a placeholder word) from seeing as much as possible of how people talk, as a proxy for how they think.” No wonder AI falls for, amplifies, and generates bullshit. Why on earth, in the general case, would anybody assume that how people talk is a reasonable proxy for how they think? (Note to ChatGPT trainers: Throw out any document with more than one page of bullet points.) In addition, the real sequence of inference here is that writing is a proxy for talking, and talking is a proxy for thinking. Tell me that’s not lossy. It’s screamingly obvious that bullshit generation at scale (see here; here; here) will be “a foundational new technology for the next decade.” But can we at least not delude ourselves about it?
The Bezzle
Feral Hog Watch
Germany’s wild boars still too radioactive to eat largely due to Cold War nuke tests The Register
Can Facts Reverse the Backlash to Globalization? Amos Tuck School (Petal).
Imperial Collapse Watch
Eight Things You Need to Know About the Navy’s Failed Multibillion-Dollar Littoral Combat Ship Program Pro Publica
Michael Taylor on The Development of the M1 Garand and its Implications A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
Migration
‘We Love Immigrant NYC’ Campaign Kicks off Immigrant Heritage Week ABC7. That’s the left hand. Meanwhile, the right hand–
Eric Adams says New York City’s migrant crisis will DESTROY the Big Apple as he warns that 10,000 illegal asylum seekers arriving EVERY month will flood EACH of the five boroughs: ‘The city we knew, we’re about to lose’ Daily Mail. Amother left hand: Whinge about Venezuelan immigrants. And another right hand: The Blob has worked hard to destroy Venezuela’s economy. What did we expect?
Chicago mayor plans to relocate nearly 1,600 migrants from police station to tents before winter FOX
This Is the True Scale of New York’s Airbnb Apocalypse Wired
Class Warfare
Walmart cuts starting hourly pay for some workers in move it says will offer consistency in staffing Chicago Tribune
Workers at one Colorado opera company push to unionize as another is accused of union busting Colorado Sun
The sense of order distinguishes humans from other animals (press release) Stockholm University. Perhaps the “LISt Processing” crowd were on to something?
* * * Antidote du jour (via):
Bonus antidote (JC):
JC writes: “Here is a picture of a plant with a charismatic bug you might find useful.”
Double bonus antidote:
Omg…how cute…🌸🐱#cat #kitten #animal #cute #cherryblossom
pic.twitter.com/xAqQ7zZwvd— Our Cuties (@Our_Cuties) August 24, 2023
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
147 comments
Comments are closed.
> EV Cars: Can We Electrify Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis? JSTOR Daily
The basic problem is that cars in USA, and increasingly Europe as well, is as much a social signal as a tool.
Unless it happens to be a Mini, that for some reason managed to attract a level of coolness, compact, practical, cars are seen as comical and effeminate.
One likely have to rework the western social world all the way back to the 60s or something to get any of this sorted. And i wonder if we have run out of time to do so thanks to WoT derailing things for 20 years.
Indeed. To *really* make a car environmentally friendly you need to engage with a bunch of difficult issues concerning the battery….. Much of which comes from countries in Africa that are steeped in civil wars.
Good luck there.
We also need a clean source of baseload energy as the vast majority of it comes from coal in the US, “renewables” are not energy dense or reliable enough to fill the gap, and they often result in a roundabout way of burning natural gas in the form of small facilities that are turned on to follow peak demand.
Nuclear is and has been the answer for decades, just that it has been so vilified by the very environmental movements that claim to be serious about the welfare of Earth that it has set its deployment behind for decades and many fossil fuel industries are all to happy to greenwash their sectors and perpetuate this anti-nuclear animus for as long as they can.
From multiple sources I can gather that nuclear can’t provide the “baseload” with renewabled since it’s just way too cumbersome to “spin up” or down in respect of the weather.
So, when it some to future energy, the choice is nuclear or everything else. Nuclear is basically incompatible with any intermittent energy source, be it solar, wind or hydro.
That can only be an issue in a hypothetical future where renewables reach a majority share, no? By definition – ‘baseload’ is the load that’s always there – the lowest point in the variable load. If you let the nukes power that, use the gas fired peaker plants to handle the intermittent loads when the intermittent sources can’t, then where’s the ‘basically incompatible’ conflict?
That’s exactly the thing: if renewables are all over the place – from 20% to 120% of requirement, there really is no room ‘baseload’ provided by a very, very stable source.
Nuclear doesn’t follow other sources, being to slowest to react of any form of power generation. So, to couple with intermittent sources, you need the latest generation of gas burners that can spin up in seconds to cover the load when renewables can’t.
I’m not saying this is the absolute truth, I’m just saying it’s what I’ve read about the real-life incompatibility of nuclear and renewables.
Personally, I stopped opposing nuclear energy after following the Olkiluoto 3 fiasco for a decade. Nuclear power is it’s own worst enemy – it doesn’t need my help at all.
And your solution to spent fuel disposal?
I had to work with a guy at the US EPA who was “transferred” from the Corps of Engineers as a field investigator. On one inspection at a big steel and coke plant in Gary, the company was doing illegal filling and discharging pollutants into Lake Calumet. The guy was not an environmentalist try his best to minimize what we found (caught them in the act) — their VP had tried pretty hard to keep us from finding the violations. The “inspector” was chatting the VP up, and offered this bit of wisdom: “Seems to me the best way to deal with chemical and radioactive pollution is to mix it with solvent, load it into those planes they used in Vietnam to spread Agent Orange, and just give everyone a little dose of it.”
Of course in effect that’s what’s happening in our neoliberal world anyway, with a huge one of “mens rea” on the part of the PMC and the CEO and corrupt political class…
James Hansen lays out his solution in the middle of his book Storms Of My Granchildren. He wrote 2 and a half pages about a kind of approach to nuclear power which he thinks would consume most of the “waste” in current nuclear “waste” and leave behind little enough waste of low enough a level that it could be vitrified into glassy balls for storage.
I am not going to try reprising his two and a half pages in a comment. It is right there in the middle of his book Storms Of My Grandchildren. People can read it and consider it or reject it as they wish.
> Eight Things You Need to Know About the Navy’s Failed Multibillion-Dollar Littoral Combat Ship Program Pro Publica
Basically they were meant for WoT bush fire fighting, not WW3 against a peer opponent.
They could just as well have taken the smallest container carrying hull, and reworked weapon systems so they fit into existing container sizes.
Pro Publica also came out with a much, much longer version of this article which you can find here-
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-navy-spent-billions-littoral-combat-ship
They don’t come out and say it but if there was a war with China, half of those LCSs would break down in weeks and if any of the others were hit by a missile, the ship could not be saved and the crew would do best abandoning ship straight away.
While the Pro Publica is one long litany of valid reasons why the littoral combat ship is/was junk, amazingly enough it omits the biggest reason.
Which is: they’ve got aluminum hulls and would burn down to the waterline when the first missile hit, yet they were supposed to deploy within range of shores and of folks with MANPADS.
In a long catalog of MIC boondoggles, the littoral combat ship has been arguably the most likely to become a deathtrap for the poor proles assigned to sail them. Not that MIC executives and a number of admirals would care about that.
Mind you, if they got a lucky a missile might punch through one aluminium side and then punch through the other side before having a chance to explode. And to think that in WW2, the US Navy use to call destroyers “tin cans.” At least they were made of steel.
Actually the USS Cole had an aluminum hull and it didn’t burn down. Most hulls these days are some kind of aluminum alloy.
But on the other hand there was HMS Sheffield that got hit during the Falklands War back in ’82. Fires burned for two days and the ship sank several days later while being towed. The aluminium superstructure got a lot of blame for that fire.
No. The DDG-51 class was specifically designed as an all-steel ship due to various problems with aluminum superstructures (among them galvanic corrosion at the superstructure-hull interface). CG-47 class cruisers had kevlar applied to superstructure to provide ballistic protection to the combat system. Hull is constructed of HSLA-80 steel (updated replacement for HY-80 as found in prior designs).
“Burning” aluminum I don’t think is a thing. Loss of strength when heated is. That’s something we saw in evaluating the USS BELKNAP (CG-26) after the JOHN F KENNEDY collision. Also look at the superstructure damage in BONHOMME RICHARD due to fire.
The problem of LCS class is on Rumsfeld’s “innovation”. Everything we knew we threw out as it wasn’t innovative. So “GenSpecs” (General Specifications for Shipbuilding) which reflected lessons learned from WWII forward were abandoned in favor of “tailored” commercial ABS specs. Unfortunately we might see history repeat as “drones” and “AI” become the new silver bullets.
Aluminum dust can be highly flammable. It can be used to make thermite for example.
I’d argue they named two very critical failures tho.
That is, the ships were built for weapons systems that didn’t exist (and, as I get it, probably weren’t even being developed in any meaningful fashion).
===
[T]he Navy’s haste to deliver the ships took precedence over the vessels’ combat abilities. After spending hundreds of millions, the Navy abandoned its plan to outfit the ships to find and destroy submarines; the system to hunt undersea mines is still under development.
===
And this one is just damning. No training to maintain and no right to repair, even for the armed forces? I mean, how was it even supposed to work?
===
The Navy relied so heavily on contractors for maintenance and repair that sailors and officers were unable to fix their own ships. Sailors and officers were not allowed to touch certain pieces of equipment…
===
No training to maintain and no right to repair, even for the armed forces?
So there you twenty miles off the coast of China, no engine and the wind is blowing you onto a local beach. Not to worry the manufacturer will have a repair tech to you in a week.
The Chinese navy will help you as soon as they stop laughing hysterically.
This level of corruption is amazing.
> They could just as well have taken the smallest container carrying hull, and reworked weapon systems so they fit into existing container sizes.
In other words, they could’ve ordered something like this?
===
[T]he Skrunda class can perform a number of different missions by changing the mission module between the bows of the two hulls, which adheres to the dimensions of a 20-foot (6.1 m) ISO container and has a payload of 6 tons.
===
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skrunda-class_patrol_boat
Be reasonable, no pork-barreling or political donations . Besides, Not Invented Here.
As someone who is not from the USA I found the article impressive for its “Rah, Rah, we’re number one” attitude. As for its accuracy, I recommend reading the first twenty or so comments where some commentators question various of his assertions.
One I noticed myself was “Compare this to the 15 aimed shots that British soldiers were expected to pop off with a bolt-action Lee Enfield in a “mad minute” drill.” This may well have been the training standard. However the Lee-Enfield wiki claims that “The Lee bolt-action and 10-round magazine capacity enabled a well-trained rifleman to perform the “mad minute” firing 20 to 30 aimed rounds in 60 seconds, making the Lee–Enfield the fastest military bolt-action rifle of the day.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee%E2%80%93Enfield
But they dished out multi-billions of dollars, fueling a real estate boom all across the Beltway, probably some extra yachts for some recipients of the largesse, etc. So was it really a failure?
From what read about the debacle regarding the littoral combat ship as well as other US navy endevours lately, is that at some point US navy gave up hot bunking (ref a thread earlier at NC) which means the later designs have to accommodate for personal space with an en-suite for the sailors and have plenty of social pace, too. Which means that any WW2 ship had way better weapons to space ratio that the current designs.
It also worth noting that the same principle means smaller crews which – by definition – means smaller on-board repairing capacity. Which means – and you would never guess this – most of the repairing capacity being on-shore provided by the company that build the ship. So when your Windows For Warships fails to boot or thinks starboard is port, you have to return to the base to sort it out.
So back in the day the crews were trained to fix things at sea instead of relaying on “customer support” to eventually make it work according to the specifications.
I don’t think hot-racking was ever a big thing in the surface navy, but sure the days of single-sex 3 high racks made “habitability” a bit easier. But without a draft to entice enlistments we needed to do something better. Unfortunately plenty of Legions of Merit were handed out for power points that showed how “right-size” “optimal” manning reduces personnel costs. We got convinced any war would be over in three days so you don’t need a whole lot of repair capability and you save money by scrapping all the tenders. Problem started with the FFG-7 class where a big chunk of planned maintenance was supposed to be done by sailors on shore duty (tenders/SIMA).
Indeed, I was kinda exaggerating to make a point. But the truth is that to this day the naval warfare is still more of a slugging match than anything else.
And the modern warships have less punch and durability than the ships of yore had. While somehow having more tons than their predecessors for the same role had. Making them bigger targets.
Putting aside the fact that nowadays you don’t really have a designed role for a ship – they are multipurpose, and expensive, so one enemy missile can actually take away big part of your ASW, ASUW and AAW capability with one lucky hit.
> Bombshell biography claim: Fearing nuclear war, Musk switched off Starlink . . .
I call BS. Musk would say that to cover for the real reason, fear that his conveyors of digital crapola get knocked out of orbit.
Not sure if you have used Starlink, but it is easy to setup and nice to use, ie not crap. I agree with you on his fear.
doug, I interpret cnchal’s “crapola” to refer to internet content, not to the hardware.
Hardly a bombshell. The story says he only cut off satellites being used to operate Ukrainian sea drones–in other words as part of a weapons system. He actually gave free Starlink to Ukraine and that helped them in the war although I believe the Russians are reportedly now blocking the signals (??).
Of course to Blue Maga everything about Musk is a bombshell. Unclear why Isaacson feels the need to climb aboard this gravy train since there have already been Musk biographies and I’ve read one of them. Guess it all needs a political spin.
Why now? Building scapegoats for when the press can no longer hide the disaster that is Ukraine.
Meanwhile they are calling Musk a Russian asset over at the Daily Kos with the title ‘Elon Musk Talked With Putin as well according to Pentagon. Can we call a duck a duck already?’
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/7/2192028/-Elon-Musk-Talked-With-Putin-as-well-according-to-Pentagon-Can-we-call-a-duck-
“Can we call a duck a duck already?”! Really? Someone’s asking to be owned with a Monty Python meme. (Tellingly, the “author” goes by the moniker “bluedogsd”.)
The stuff in their Ukraine section is super special. Ukraine is winning Bigly every day. Markos chooses to do a lot of these pieces himself.
And even that is inaccurate. The satellites were already “off” as Starlink is not active in any territory controlled by Russia. Ukraine wanted them turned “on” to enable the attack, Elon said no. Russia has already warned SpaceX that use of their satellites for military purposes make them legitimate military targets.
Further incorrect: that they even need Starlink for this. After the earlier warning, SpaceX sought and was granted a contract to develop military-only communication satellites that are under their control. Starshield is active, and now there is no need to involve Starlink.
Your version is what Musk now says is the truth. Those satellites were never active and were requested to be made active for purposes of the attack. Or perhaps the Ukrainians just assumed they were on and found out mid attack.
As for Walter Isaacson–meh.
To paraphrase Lambert:
“If your Offensive relies on a Platform, then you don’t have an Offensive.”
Ha Ha Ha
If this is true, even if only in a technical and restricted sense, then this is a good thing Musk did, if it indeed prevented a Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at anchor. If so, Musk should be celebrated and thanked in this particular instance.
Musk would be doing the Ukrainians a favor if he shut down coverage for them. Providing coverage is killing them.
It’s partially BS. When he was briefly put on the Myrotvorets kill list for daring to suggest negotiation instead of war I think he had every reason to switch it off, would have been very justified in doing so, but I think it likely some US three letter agency “persuaded” him not to, and I think we won’t know the true story for some time.
China? – China’s top chipmaker may be in hot water as US lawmakers call for further sanctions after Huawei ‘breakthrough’ CNN
China is learning in real time that if it had any hopes it could thread the needle with the US in the sense of the current trajectory of US China policy not going Full Ukraine Like, those hopes don’t look promising.
Maybe it’s time for a Wake Up Call, an shot across the bow, that will upend the current myopic construct bubble of the folks in Washington:
“China, Russia, and India canvas for more members to join new United Nations Committee entitled “The United Nations Global Conference on How to Disarm The United States of it’s Military and occupations of Nations”
The first committee meeting could be help in North Korea the same day it’s gets it new ICBM’s.
Any comment, Mitch “Mr Freeze” McConnell, or Lindsey Graham, Blinken, Biden, Nuland?
Off topic but too funny not to share:
https://babylonbee.com/news/bud-light-honors-new-investor-bill-gates-with-limited-edition-jeffrey-epstein-cans?fbclid=IwAR3qnwCawyKtlIG2flmXfQ_2Y6PaP0H1F0xuB1p0dSpCDW1tRLEGr_xrO1o
Saw that too elsewhere. There is already talk of “Bud Lighting” Bill Gates and 100 million beer-drinking Americans are saying “Challenge accepted!” So can one of the most disliked billionaires around get Americans to once again drink Bud Light? We shall see. Better go grab some popcorn.
I can believe Slicky Bill Clinton befriended Epstein for the underage girls. But I have trouble believing that of Bill Gates. I could be wrong but I suspect Gates was attracted by something else.
Dude. Just put in the search term ‘bill gates sexual harassment’ into Google and see what comes back. As the British police use to say, ‘he has form.’ Here is just one example-
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12111335/Bill-Gates-checkered-love-life-Russian-bridge-player-Microsoft-affair.html
Re AirB&B collapse. Not that AirB&B doesn’t need collapsing but a subsequent real estate crash, or at the very least, the availability of decently priced rental apartments (or condos to purchase) are what I need to see before I believe that the scourge of short term rentals has been conquered in NYC. So ‘registered’ hosts can only let for 30 days. The lawlessness that AirB&B has engendered means that there is no reason that somebody won’t lease for 30 days or more and then sublet for shorter stays. Yes, it is illegal and against AirB&B rules, but I have no doubt that it will happen. Among my friends, I am the only one who has never stayed in Air B&B. Now I am not really a traveller, so that is probably not really saying much. But everyone I know takes it for granted that they’ll look for an AirB&B rather than a hotel or a traditional B&B as much in the same way they use Uber. IE making a low price the most important criteria for what they’re consuming.
That someone will have to do the subleasing outside AirBnb though, and that won’t be easy. I think an easier workaround would be to work out a deal in advance with the owner, something like “I’ll lease it for 30 days and then a day after ask for a cancellation of a certain number of days”. I actually don’t know if AirBnb will allow something like that, but I am guessing they do, after all people cancel all the time for all sorts of reasons.
But yeah, with this move by New York City plus the Fed continuing to increase interest rates, the carrying cost for owning a large number of properties purely for short term rental in the city has gone up considerably.
I have used airbnb due to covid – hotels often don’t let you open the windows and I don’t trust their filtration.
No argument about the evils of AirBnb and its ilk (remember The Sharing Economy? Ah, such “idealistic” times!), but on vacation I want to be able to cook, and don’t enjoy the forced breakfast socializing at B&Bs. I’ll always try to find traditional “efficiency cottages” or apartments, but that’s not always possible.
Agree. With kids, there is a lot to consider. Hotel rooms are not set up for gear for active families. Surf boards, skis, ski clothes, tennis bags, wetsuits, wet clothes, dogs, sand and snow – you need a washer and a dryer. Not to mention everyone is exhausted at the end of the day so it is more convenient and less expensive to make breakfast and dinner at the VRBO.
The VRBO’s we have used are in less touristy parts of town. Never stayed at an Airbnb. From my friends, they seem shady.
So what did people do in that situation (kids, gear, etc.) before the days of Air B&B? When I was a kid my parents rented a cottage from a licensed operator. I have stayed in hotels that have suites and kitchenettes. They do exist.
Let me know what the difference is between this and a VRBO.
Where are the licensed operators located?
I have never used air b and b.
As an owner of short term holiday properties, I can tell you that AirBnB *is* sketchy and I would never list my properties on it. The demographic is young and careless people wanting a place to crash for weekend hedonism. VRBO’s demographic is squarely families and retired people wanting a proper house, possibly nicer than their own, to live in for a week.
This jives with my knowledge of Air B&B. Cottagers and people with all year homes on the lakes around here are having their summers ruined by nearby rentals, people trespassing on their property, music at all hours, garbage, etc. Yes there are by-laws but police often don’t come for by-law problems and the by-law officers aren’t available 24/7. In Toronto, people rent out apartments in condo buildings where the activity is prohibited by the condo rules – you get sketchy key pick-ups ‘nearby’. I’ve read about a guy whose condo was damaged by water flooding from an Air B&B on the floor above him – insurance won’t pay because short term rentals are not allowed in the building. These kinds of things are what I mean by lawlessness.
If VRBO is different, that’s great.
I guess I’ve never had a problem with original ‘rent a room of your house’ intent of Air B&B but the people making a living buying up condos and cottages (and this does happen, hosts often own multiple properties) and renting them out and driving the cost of real estate up really bother me. We really went wrong when our homes became investments.
Stayed in many motels in Nicaragua and Costa Rica bringing my boards. The problem with today’s traveler are not the luggage but all the electronic gizmos that are along for the ride.
Some hotels do have windows that operate – when I visit friends in the GTA, I always stay in the same hotel and the windows in every room open. And many hotels have separate ventilation systems for their rooms. Admittedly tough to find.
Toronto instituted a registration system for short term rentals a few years ago. No appreciable improvements to housing affordability so far. Not that regulation of short term rentals isn’t necessary, I’d support out right banning it, but by itself, not enough.
There you go, the registration clearly isn’t enough. I didn’t even know that TO had a registration! The area I live in is part farm, part cottage country, eastern Ontario. Cottages are being bought up everywhere and turned into short term rentals. They become overcrowded party places. And have definitely added to the rising cost of real estate in the area.
Perhaps your comment is specific to NYC, where I don’t live. That said, I think associating Airbnb with “lawlessness” is quite a stretch. Most of Airbnb’s business depends on short-term apartment rentals in big cities inside Borrell’s Garden (aka the Collective West). Airbnb’s success in this market category is largely due to the greed and stupidity of the hotel industry, which charges too much money for too little product. The youngsters who created Airbnb back in 2008 surely had no idea that they would create a huge market disruption (it was actually a bit of a lark, the ‘air’ referred to an air mattress that they put down in their apartment, to rent out to clients who wanted a cheap place to sleep). By accident (like many innovations in business and in science), they stumbled upon the fact that there exists a huge market segment of travelers who do not need traditional hotels (with 24 hour receptionists, breakfast lounge, bar, restaurant, room service, business center, conference lounges, health spa, fitness center, on-site valet parking, etc.) but simply want a bed and a bathroom. Airbnb provides both, at drastically lower cost than most traditional big-city hotels, and with a two-way rating system which keeps quality levels up to snuff.
NYC and others (Barcelona?) can try to stomp out this market segment, but it is here to stay. The hotel industry needs to adapt, rather than lobbying local governments to crush an upstart competitor.
Agree re motives. i’ve used AB&Bs on every continent except Antarctica (don’t want krill breakfast) and never had issue anywhere. About half were hosted and universally friendly and seemed safe (although in South Africa & Peru, the places was behind barb-wired tall walls) . I never stay above the second floor and always check egress.
The two way rating of AirBnB (and now VRBO) is one of the vile aspects. I don’t mind people rating my property but I refuse to rate them as humans! Everybody has bad days and does not need a Chinese style social score to deny them shelter.
If they are trouble, I keep their deposit. If they leave a bad review for that or another ill-founded reason, I set out my side in the reply. If they had a bad experience that is my fault or just had luck, I fess up and comp them a discount. Other owners can read both sides and make up their own minds.
AirBnB people are more often cheapskates compared with VRBO with shorter stays and lower standards.
I too always feel uneasy with the two-way rating system, but the mere threat of it (even if no ratings are actually published) does seem to encourage humans to behave better. Much like the presence of video cameras or (at the international level of states interacting) nuclear missiles.
What of the conversion of single-family housing, into hotel rentals? This further perverts the housing “market”, turning neighborhoods into commercial property while driving out the people who need to live in them, who now have to compete with ‘venture’ capital in hopeless bidding wars. A home is no longer a place you live, but residual income… ?
Kavanaugh predicts SCOTUS to take concrete steps to address ethical issues. Considering the source, not reassuring.
Re: Generative AI
“[ChatGPT is] supposed to be inferring ‘intelligence’ (a placeholder word) from seeing as much as possible of how people talk, as a proxy for how they think.”
People have ever done this. I’m reminded of Peirce’s indignation at William James’ corruption of “pragmatism”. It even claims a basis in Science: since Science never knows ground Truth and only advances “theories”, plausibility is as good as truth. If people buy it, it’s as good as true.
MAGA, both red and blue, white lies. Death by salesmanship.
You could argue that we teach babies and children the same way, by talking to them and interacting with them, since we can’t go into their brains and learn or influence what’s going on there directly.
It’s not just the software though – it’s the hardware. Babies come with a built-in neural architecture that doesn’t exist in CDN based learning models. One example is the reflex tests performed on newborns right after birth, before they can speak or have even had a chance to interact with another human. Children also have long term memory, something that’s lacking in AI models at present, and can understand abstractions and use them to reason and make choices. Preschoolers understand what lying and telling the truth are, and know which one they are doing at any given time.
It’s becoming somewhat tiresome explaining to laypeople how far away from genuine AI we still are, now that there are models that are good at faking and money to be made from convincing people to believe.
One example I can think of where this has happened is in the study of “formal thought disorder” as a symptom of various psychotic disorders. Different types of aberrant speech/speech patterns (such as clang associations, neologisms, tangentiality, pressured speech) are considered “disorganized speech” and used to infer “disorganized thought” and rated for degrees of current severity of psychosis. Iirc it has some of its roots in the practice of administering ink blot tests to people diagnosed with psychotic disorders, which was something of a fad for awhile.
“Trauma Takes a Toll in the U.S. Intelligence Community” RAND
It’s stressful keeping high level gangstas out of jail.
“Nationwide research looks to figure out how to stop spread of flu” Scripps. Hilariously, the deck: “Researchers now say it’s possible that the flu is actually transmitted not just by large wet droplets, but by fine particles as well.”
More pathetic than hilarious. Dimwits would have to ignore all previous science to come up with the notion they are discovering something “new.” It’s like they are incapable of learning anything, and something compels them to relearn the same lessons as a mechanism of sabotage.
Eh, if that gets effective NPIs into the bio-social world, I might not care whether they’re labeled #FluSafe or #CovidSafe. Heroic societies love lies. drama, waste, and futility. That’s not “corruption”; that’s their essential nature.
Let us hope that the people looking to stop spread of flu don’t realize that stopping the spread of flu would also stop the spread of covid. Because if they ( or their secret commanders) were to realize that stopping flu might stop covid, they would decide ( or be quietly ordered) to let flu rip in order to keep letting covid rip.
So lets hope it doesn’t occur to them. And lets hope none of them and nobody who knows any of them are reading this comment.
“Europeans latest to provide evidence undercutting Joe Biden story about firing Ukrainian prosecutor”
The European Union are saying this? Seriously? Because it sure sounds like gas lighting to me. So who are you going to believe? The European Union or your own lying ears?
https://twitter.com/DoctorFishbones/status/1504527812958507017 (1:11 mins)
This is a benchmark report from the Commission , which is fiercely independent and pretty competent in this kind of business. It doesn’t so much “undercut” Biden as suggest that, at the time, the Commission felt that the Ukrainians were moving forward on corruption as part of a package of things that needed to be done before visa liberalisation could proceed. The problem is that the report (and this is typical of Brussels) was a box-ticking exercise, essentially evaluating whether administrative and legal changes had been made or not as the EU had requested. But politically, yes, it does suggest that the EU though Shokin was doing enough, even if I wouldn’t call the report “evidence.”
The issue here is Biden said he made Ukraine fire the prosecutor because the prosecutor was corrupt. The Europeans are saying that Shokin was not corrupt, and had been doing a good job fighting corruption.
Pretty clear at this point, if it wasn’t years ago, that Biden fired Shokin to protect his own corrupt family dealings.
– ‘Can Facts Reverse the Backlash to Globalization?’ – Amos Tuck School (Petal).
Here’s a quick summary: it’s “the Republican Brain” – Republicans are incapable of thinking rationally about free trade and globalization due to their preexisting biases. Democrats are more rational, but “professors of globalization” are the best. It’s Science!
I now place the phrase “evidence-based information” alongside “rules-based economic order” as an Orwellian signal that propaganda is forthcoming, just as “conspiracy theory” marks an argument to which I should pay close attention.
Pjay — yes, this piece from Prof. Chor at Tuck is a remarkable exercise in missing the point, and in excluding information that contradicts his premises. Note that I haven’t read the paper itself, just the press release linked.
Perhaps Prof. Chor would find himself able to persuade people more readily that some benefits exist to a “free” international trade regime (“free” for whom?) if he were intellectually honest enough to acknowledge that _real costs are incurred_ as well, and typically by populations not represented very well at the Tuck School of Business.
Indeed, if Prof. Chor were so inclined, he could go to places like Berlin, New Hampshire, or Manchester, New Hampshire, or Brockton, Mass., that under a protectionist trade regime grew to industrial power houses, and under the free trade regime saw much of their prosperity and economic infrastructure destroyed.
That’s, of course, making a presumption of my own which may not be warranted: namely, that a free trade economist at the Tuck School of Business is actually interested in persuading people who have been harmed by globalization and examining and comprehending their just and legitimate grievances, rather than simply talking his paymasters’ book and providing post facto justification for their and his preferred policies.
Missing the point? Or dodging and hiding the point on purpose?
(By the way, I notice that the article uses the words free trade and free trade agreements without quotes and without irony. A little while ago, a commenter was admonished here that no more comments talking about free trade would be posted because all trade is managed and there is no such thing as free trade. But how are we to discuss things like this article and the interests it serves if we are not supposed to use the word it uses to describe what it advocates for? Perhaps we could say ” so-called” every time we say free trade, or we could put free trade in quotes, or do both . . . like this . . .
so-called “free trade”. )
“North Korea’s New Submarine Carries 10 Nuclear Missiles”
It would be more of a pain if North Korea had ten of these newer submarines but only one of them with a nuclear missile in a form of the shell game. That is after all what the AUKUS subs are all about. They actually have 20 Romeo-class submarines which could be possibly modified to do so and they may just do it. It would be a nightmare trying to track them throughout the Pacific and the Pentagon would be wondering if any are near Guam or Japan or just near South Korea. Yes, North Korea could be attacked and invaded. But would the US be willing to swap Guam or perhaps even Diego Garcia to do so?
I’m assuming it’s diesel-electric, but I wonder if it’s their own design or a NK version of a Russian/Chinese/Iranian type. Takes a while to build a sub, so they must have been working on it for a few years, started it before the war, when Russia was still trying to play by the Rules Based Order.
Those Romeos are so loud you can find em by holding a sea shell up to your ear.
> I’m assuming it’s diesel-electric, but I wonder if it’s their own design or a NK version of a Russian/Chinese/Iranian type.
The guys here identify it as a heavily modified prj. 633 (Romeo / Type 033).
Probably getting ahead of Lambert’s Water Cooler reports, but…
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-09-07/summer-covid-wave-worsens/
COVID outbreaks hit workplaces, schools across California as summer illnesses worsen
Some anecdotes:
“…Santa Paula High School in Ventura County canceled a varsity football game scheduled for Friday against La Cañada High School after 15 team members tested positive for the coronavirus and additional students reported symptoms, according to its principal, David Keys. Another three students had tested positive on the cheer team, said Julissa Carrillo, a spokesperson for the school district…”
“…Among the work sites in L.A. County where there are active COVID-19 outbreak investigations are the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, CBS Studio Center Stage 18, the L.A. City Department of Public Works’ Bureau of Street Services, the Westchester-Loyola Village Branch Library, the eighth floor of the L.A. County Department of Public Works headquarters, the Sierra Madre Playhouse and United Talent Agency in Beverly Hills.
Officials noted that L.A. County is not seeing the kind of exponential growth in COVID-19 reported in prior waves. Hospitalizations, while rising, remain at lower levels than at this time last year. So far in L.A. County, there hasn’t been a significant increase in daily COVID-19 deaths…”
I expect quite a few school districts will (Finally!) install Corsi-Rosenthal boxes in their classrooms once they learn how much they help in keeping funding units in their seats.
Is it just me or is Cloudflare having a fit since the fundraiser kicked off?
Had it happen a coupla times in the past hour or two. Refresh the page once or twice and it comes good again.
A wee fit, yesterday and this morning. Seems to sort quickly.
> The sense of order distinguishes humans from other animals (press release) Stockholm University. Perhaps the “LISt Processing” crowd were on to something?
Feels like i just read a Peter Watts novel.
Katie and Matt on Useful Idiots.
Matt Taibbi on GOP Debates, Censorship, and Trump on Shrooms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2_95lyH-0Y
Guillotine watch. “‘Disgusting’ photo of John Travolta’s home sparks outrage online: ‘It’s absolutely ridiculous’”, Yahoo News
I’m sure the home itself has plenty of closet space.
Not like he is trying to hide it, as searching for John Travolta on Google maps brought up Villa John Travolta.
Seems it is part of Jumboliar Aviation Estates, with the road at the bottom of the image connecting to the runway itself to the left.
And the image may be an older one, as supposedly the 707 was donated to an Australian preservation society back in 2017.
I am now imagining a high-end real estate development in which all structures are retired airplane fuselages. I mean, they don’t burn, they’re easy to lift off the ground to handle flooding (like Hawaiian houses) and you can dress up the staff in 60s flight attendant uniforms.
I swear i have seen images of something like that, but it was not exactly high end.
I think one variant had reused a wing as the roof of a bungalow.
If be more interested to see some breakout of the ecological/climate impact of wars and the war industry – bombs, jets, blowing up infrastructure (ns2!), contaminated farmland, etc. Celebrities are a distraction.
Harshly critical of Mandy Cohen, the CDC, and the Biden administration.
A pretty good read, imo.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2023/09/07/where-have-all-the-masks-gone/?sh=475c3df6c947
Where Have All The Masks Gone?
I went out yesterday to the barbershop and the grocery store yesterday, and I was the only person during a two block walk to the barbers as well in both of the businesses to be masked. This is not going to be a good fall and winter.
In our neck-of-the-woods there is a shortage of hair cutters and one needs to get on a wait list as no walk-ins are allowed. Needless to say my hair is getting pretty long.
Neat and hopeful that such an article would show up at Forbes.
Re JSTOR and EVs
Carbon free? That would mean all the power to make and run transit including mass transit comes from wind and solar and nuclear including the making of the wind and solar and nuclear sources themselves. The article like so many is little more than rhetoric.
Locally my town and a nearby city are expanding, not exactly rapidly expanding, trail systems but these are considered more recreation and real estate and health initiatives–often sponsored by hospitals–rather than practical transportation. I can now ride my bike to the grocery store a bit more safely and scenically but the pedaling effort is the same. Meanwhile when it comes to a personal fitness that would encourage fewer vehicles Americans seem to be going in the opposite direction. Biking or playing with smartphone–which to choose?
Looking objectively at that photo, I think that I might have to disagree with that sentiment. The house is angled at 45 degree angle to take advantage of that deep block and since the guy lives for flying and is a qualified pilot, of course it would be logical to have his planes unload at the house itself. There is even a symmetry in design of the house and the driveway is a mixture of functional and 18th century style in that you drive parallel to the house to take it in before driving up to the front under cover. Looks too that cars can drive on to an extended garage. Now if you want a disgusting house, I have just the candidate-
https://twitter.com/goddeketal/status/1655658051855065090
My initial reaction to the photo was a confirmation of my priors regarding excessive living, the 1% and climate change.
Edit. BTW, I very much enjoyed your guest post this morning. Thanks!
How does one fit 200 guests into a 300 square foot reception room? 216 square inches per person doesn’t leave much room for the servers.
“Michael Taylor on The Development of the M1 Garand and its Implications”
An interesting articles and it does mention “Garand thumb” as well as the “Garand Ping.” For those curious, here is a video clip with the distinctive Garand ping at the end-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoBWUs8poYU (22 secs)
Unfortunately the author goes into hoo-ra territory at the end and says-
‘But despite being a generation late developing the assault rifle, the United States out-innovated the Soviet Union in almost every other aspect of military and domestic technology, to the point that I am writing this in the United States of America and the Soviet Union no longer exists.’
That sentiment may have been common a year or two ago but it has not aged well in light of the NATO-Russia war going on at present. A fun fact here though. He makes mention of the first American assault rifle, the M16, after talking about the AK-47. Would you believe that in 1990 Mikhail Kalashnikov – inventor of the AK-47 – met Eugene Stoner – the original designer of the AR15/M16?
‘On May 16, 1990, Stoner and Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47 and its derivatives, would meet for the first time. They would spend the next few days talking, sharing stories, shopping, going out to dinner and touring Washington D.C. They visited the Smithsonian Institution, the NRA’s National Firearms Museum, and a hunting lodge owned by the gun club at Star Tannery, where they went shooting. They would also visit the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, where they watched new weapons being tested. During this short visit, both men, intimately familiar with the other’s work, shared a common bond and became friends, “not needing an interpreter to get their thoughts across.”‘
And Stoner admitted to Kalashnikov that his AK-47 was superior to his own design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Stoner#Meeting_with_Kalashnikov
interesting…”…Stoner admitted to Kalashnikov that his AK-47 was superior to his own design” – definitely not as informed as most of y’all on the minutae of firearms but at my last job the CAD guy was an ex-Marine who always talked about Beirut, and the CTO was a Brit in the dustup in former Yugoslavia – they would go on about rifles they had used – when i mentioned my experience with the AK in the Pakistani desert and shooting gallon milk containers at what seemed like a couple hundred yards it seemed quite accurate and minimal recoil – they both sneered and said that although the AK could be dropped in sand and not get fouled it was an inferior weapon and didn’t believe the accuracy – guess Stoner would take an objection to their comment –
Even if this sounds bragging (and it certainly is) during my days in the army I did manage to hit them pop-up targets at ~160 yards with my AK-47 derivative – with a loose front sight – well enough to earn me a 24 hour leave.
What we were taught at the time was that both 5.56 and 5.45 would be mostly useless in the woodlands we were located at. What we were shooting would go trough a tree, while 5.56 could deflect from any branch. And the people saying this claimed to have tested it.
I think i have heard or read something similar regarding the Vietnam war, and that this muted the supposed benefit the M16 had with the closer fights of the dense jungle.
Interestingly though NATO has since replaced their 7.62 firing G3 variants for 5.56 firing KH416 or similar, except for the odd 7.62 firing HK417 serving as a marksman rifle.
I have one book written by a Vietnam vet who spoke of having to use a combination of shotguns and M-16s when advancing in one place they were at. The shotgun would blast a hole in the jungle allowing for a stream of fire from the M-16s to follow through. Helluva way to fight a war.
I remember reading somewhere a Southern saying . . . ” Its only bragging if you can’t actually do it.”
Jim Sullivan is the Man who perfected the M16 and you can find a long interview discussing its development on Youtube.
I would agree that the AK47 was a better Military weapon than the M16 was in its earlier iterations, but not in its later forms.
The AR15/M16 has been in service with the US Military fro more than half a Century and it is a very different weapon now than it was in 1965.
Given a choice between a Canadian C7 and ANY variation of the AK, I would take the C7 hands down.
guess they were correct in their evaluation – when my Dad passed i got his Inland M1, said it was the same as the one he was issued in WWII – nice weapon –
A month or two after I arrived at Rock Island Arsenal in the spring of 1964 to serve out the remainder of my two years of draftee service, the two star commanding general of the Army Weapons Command, the headquarters of which was also located on the island, retired under a cloud. The Springfield Armory and the Watervliet Arsenal in New York were also part of the AWC in addition to RIA . Rumor had it the was involved in a kickback scheme that had to do with the propellant in the M-16’s ammunition. The story I heard at the time was that the AR-15 had been developed by Colt on its own nickel and was greeted by the Army Ordinance Corps as a not-invented-here threat. As the need for a weapon such as the AR-15 became urgent in Vietnam Its design was adopted as the base of the M16 but with a change in the ammunition’s propellant. That change was said to have adversely affected the weapons performance in comparison with that of the original AR15, and the general was believed to have personally profited from that change. To the best of my knowledge he was never formally charged with anything.
was working with an ex-sheriff deputy 20-some years ago who offered me the AR he had from when he was a deputy – said ok and he showed up with the AR and an ammo can with green-red-black tipped ammo and 2 barrels rifled for 223 & 5.56 – bought and flipped – the ammo made me nervous –
I’m no expert, but it think that ammo was armor piercing with tracer if i’m reading things right.
I have seen a similar claim, but that simply involved the army ammo not being as clean burning as was originally intended. Thus resulting in the rifle requiring more cleaning than planned. To get the young men serving in the jungle interested, the army issued a field manual in the form of a comic where a scanty clad lady instructor demonstrating the procedure.
The story I heard was that the AR-15 was originally meant for the South Vietnamese as they found the American rifles in use too long and heavy for use but then it was adopted for use with the US Army itslef. The late Col. David Hackworth relates how he was given one to test personally and he later went back to his superior and said that it had one outstanding characteristic – its jamming when exposed to mud, dust, etc. But his superior told him the Army was going to adopt it anyway – and to invest in Colt industry shares.
“….its jamming when exposed to mud, dust, etc….” my understanding is that’s the strength of the AK, don’t jam under those type’s of conditions –
In Col. David Hackworth’s book, he talked about how they found the body of a VC and his AK-47 which had been buried for about a year. So he went down and grabbed that rifle, cleaned it out, put a clip in it and let off a coupla rounds telling his men that how this was a real infantry rifle.
Re the U.S. Army staying with .30 caliber even though a smaller caliber was more lethal, a story I read is that the head of army ordnance believed his career would be finished if the new caliber was adopted, and told MacArthur that. They had been at West Point together so MacArthur kept the .30 caliber standard to save his friend’s career.
India Leave BRICS? Insane.
Sure with the new countries BRICS was desperately in need of new consonants for their acronym, but dropping a vowel like India is particularly misguided, as they are now stepping up and changing to a consonant: Bharat.
At this point I do not think it matters. After the recent expansion of BRICS, there was brief talk about adding more letters to BRICS but it was quickly dropped as it was realized that the name BRICS had such great brand recognition.
Hello! C is for China, which, current troubles notwithstanding, is the largest economy in the world by PPP…
True, they had no choice really. The BRICS+ branding works well, and the ‘+’ stands for extra petroleum goodness. It is easy to get carried away with fantasies of dedollarization and 10-country acronyms.
Consider the source on this article: The Peterson Institute for International Economics. A quick look at their Board of Directors tells all.
https://www.piie.com/about/board-directors
Why is anybody still listening to Larry Summers. Bad advise but interesting placement, hopeful Standard readers will take this with a lot of salt.
Yes indeed, the Peterson’s fingerprints on this one was a tell. Here’s another (quite different) view on the recent performance of G7 vs BRICS:
https://asiatimes.com/2023/09/economic-growth-in-g7-versus-brics-a-reality-check/
I very much doubt India/Bharat will quit the BRICS.
“I very much doubt India/Bharat will quit the BRICS.”
The BRICS officials pretty much have to come up with some organization to protect their wealthy patrons from sanctions…if nothing else.
No sweat. Now that the cover of the planned color revolution in Indonesia has been blown it’s “I” will be an adequate replacement in BRICS if India goes through with changing its name to Bharat.
Aw Common Dreams is showing how deep in denial it is. If Joe Biden tries to put brakes on Wall Street controlling the water supply it will only be because he and his cronies haven’t figured out how to make it a back room auction with a guaranteed ten percent cut for “the Big Guy”.
What a galactically stupid, pointless “article” this is.
What part of
and
does “common dreams” not understand???
This is what a deliberate policy choice looks like. To the extent he knows anything at all, biden knows exactly what he’s doing. It’s the same thing he’s been doing for 50 years, and it’s what people voted for when they were gaslit into thinking that Donald Trump was the “fascist.”
Perhaps Donald Trump was the cultural and racial fascist and people didn’t consider how much Biden was a business fascist. Now that Biden is making it plain, larger numbers of people may consider West.
One wonders if West will make an issue of this and things like it.
“…writing is a proxy for talking, and talking is a proxy for thinking. Tell me that’s not lossy.”
Whether that’s lossy or not (and I’m not so sure it is—writing often clarifies thinking, I think—it’s not like writing is somehow less aligned with reality than thinking is), that’s not why these chatbots “hallucinate.” They’re not assessing reality—and can’t. They’re not designed to do that—they’re stringing together words based on statistical probability. They’d be as prone to hallucination even if writing wasn’t lossy (if, in fact, it is).
I guess writing is lossy vs face to face conversation, as writing do not convey body language. Something that has been acknowledged by internet users pretty much from day one, leading to various workarounds to indicate mood and such.
That’s true but I doubt that a lot of what these chatbots have been trained on is transcripts of spoken conversation. In any case, that still wouldn’t account for the presence of hallucinations in chatbots. (I realize you’re making a different point, about lossiness in communication, not about chatbots.)
Here be an interesting read on regular punching bag NFTs. “NFT collapse and monster egos feature in new Murakami exhibition”, , Magazine by CoinTelegraph.
“Despite his negative experiences with making and selling NFTs, Murakami isn’t pessimistic. He believes the crypto collapse, far from bursting an already oversized bubble, will go down in financial history as little more than a temporary setback.
““Both economically and conceptually,” he tells Magazine, “the current decline of virtual currencies simply marks a shaky transitional period. Therefore, I am not worried at all, and am still running several NFT projects. I will continue to bridge the metaverse and the real world in the art scene.” He thinks that “in the near future, with the rise of young critics and creators who understand the concept, NFT art will become common all at once.””
A few days ago from Maui. I like one of the cops first questions is “Are you with a company?” utube. ~8 minutes. Emergency proclamation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9205GPrC8k
“Emergency proclamation.” Hard to get more feudal-sounding than that.
All that’s missing are the trumpets heralding “Hear, ye. Hear, ye. Nobody’s allowed….”
You really need the trumpets if you want to do emergency proclaiming. How else is a serf to know the rules?
RE: Mekong. That lake Tonle Sap NW to Nom Pen in Cambodia is one of the most productive fisheries in the world after the floods. Might the drought spell hunger for Cambodia?
NC on Tonle Sap. “Water is capital.” Geopolitics or not, messing with Tonle Sap is an enromous act of vandalism that does not speak well of the perp.
Yes, and that was an excellent take on the problem now that I have revisited the article.
According to the article, India is the only important economy in that bunch of losers, so how about the I goes to Iran, and we can start calling them the BRICBatS.
I am 99 percent positive that I posted this comment as a reply to Rev Kev 10:29 am. Mercury Rx is definitely getting his jollies on NC this time around.
Mercury definitely needs to have his wings clipped but you would have to bend down too low to do so.
“Emergency proclamation.” Hard to get more feudal-sounding than that.
All that’s missing are the trumpets heralding that “Nobody’s allowed….”
You really need the trumpets if you want to do emergency proclaiming. How else is a serf to know the rules?
Walmart putting police station in ATL store bc theft.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/retail-theft-gotten-bad-walmart-124523729.html
From a small jewelry store in California. Fox news.
https://www.foxla.com/news/california-jewelry-store-robbery-fail
I live part time in Southern California, it’s bad. It’s telling that none of the family called the cops while the would-be robber was in the store, people are truly on their own. I think there’s likely a distinction between walmart-type thievery, which involves food and baby/elder care products, and smash and grabs at high end stores. I watched a video of a sunglass hut getting robbed – two women with hefty bags just arm swiping things off the counters and off the shelves, it occurred to me these items are probably fenced. Especially since smash and grabs are a big problem at the high end in Europe. It’s understandable why stores don’t want employees interfering bc of liability, still the cynical part of me wonders whether stores get hefty insurance payouts for losses.
War! what is it good for?
Why, providing a future pool of employable pro-West Ukrainian mercenaries of course!
https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/a-backdoor-call-to-arms-foreign-fighters-in-national-defense/
Taibbi and Kirn. ~30+ minutes, public excerpt. (They start with Kirn mentioning Zeta Reticulans. / ;)
America This Week, September 8, 2023: “Comedy is Not Pretty”
https://www.racket.news/p/america-this-week-september-8-2023#details
” (They start with Kirn mentioning Zeta Reticulans. / ;)”
Oh, our reptilian overlords. What’s not to like?