Paws on the ground: How Colorado got its wolves back High Country News
A new study reports 309 lab acquired infections and 16 pathogen lab escapes between 2000 and 2021 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Flowering plant undoes 100 million years of evolution, shows signs of self-pollination Down to Earth
The Unending Quest To Build A Better Chicken NOEMA
Octopus DNA Reveals Clues to When the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Last Collapsed Smithsonian Mag
Climate/Environment
Shocking Wake-Up Call: First Marine Fish Declared Extinct Due to Humans Science Alert
Geologists say plastic rocks are now a thing ZME Science
Water
Water’s worth: It sits beneath Nebraska’s farmland and has serious value. But who owns it? Flatwater Free Press
Secret Acres: Boom or bubble? High farmland prices encourage investors, concern farmers Investigate Midwest
#COVID-19
It’s normal for your colds to last for weeks, remember?
https://t.co/URWuo2LENK— T. Ryan Gregory (@TRyanGregory) December 23, 2023
“Mystery illness surging through Britain after Christmas parties as Covid cases skyrocket”
Mystery. Solved by the end of the sentence.https://t.co/oqk7Mjl8NW
— Prognostic Chats (@PrognosticChats) December 22, 2023
Old Blighty
Downbeat UK growth data adds to picture of an economy going nowhere The Guardian
“Anti-terror” arrests in UK over support for Palestinian resistance Asa Winstanley, Palestine is Still the Issue
Africa
Oil Giant Angola to Exit OPEC in Output Quota Clash allAfrica
China?
Taiwan reports more Chinese planes, warships near island as election approaches The Straits Times. More importantly, on the economic front (Chuck L):
So it begins
China ends parts of ECFA (trade concessions for Taiwan products).
The Taiwan reunification process will be multipronged, multiyear process, that starts with economic warfare.
🧵
1/8 pic.twitter.com/Fp8RZJrJla— Zhao DaShuai 无条件爱国🇨🇳 (@zhao_dashuai) December 23, 2023
European Disunion
Germany to keep some coal units in service longer than expected Mining.com
(Chuck L):
At least 50 fertilizer production facilities have closed in Europe. This is stated in a report by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (a major financial group among the world’s top ten).
Fertilizer production in the EU has become completely unprofitable due to gas prices. 75% of the… pic.twitter.com/DPZyf6CJpc
— Mats Nilsson (@mazzenilsson) December 23, 2023
Freyr Battery Receives Shareholder Approval For Redomicile to USA High North News
Syraqistan
More than 200 dead in 24 hours in Gaza as Israeli raids turn ‘more intense’ Al Jazeera
In unprecedented slaughter of Gaza civilians, US claims Israel is the “victim” Aaron Mate
***
Gaza’s Allies Are Preparing Gradual Belligerent Steps to Stop the Israeli-US War Elijah J. Magnier
Israel-affiliated merchant vessel hit by aerial vehicle off India Reuters
Iran rejects US claims it is ‘deeply involved’ in Houthi attacks in Red Sea Al Jazeera
This is a stunning development and major defeat for US power in West Asia.
First, the US Navy admitted it didn’t have the ships for the mission.
Then, France, Italy and Spain withdrew from the coalition.
Now, finally, the US has backed down, citing the fear that Ansarullah… https://t.co/t9FysDCOON
— David Miller (@Tracking_Power) December 23, 2023
***
Israel is losing the war against Hamas – but Netanyahu and his government will never admit it The Guardian
Israel planning to end ground operation in Gaza in ‘3rd phase of war’: Media Anadolu Agency. “The third phase includes ending the ground operation in the Gaza Strip, reducing army forces and demobilizing reserves, resorting to air strikes, and establishing a buffer zone on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.”
***
Chances of war with Lebanon ‘increasing’: Tel Aviv The Cradle
Israelis wanted ‘pre-emptive strike’ on Lebanon: Did Biden halt it? Al Mayadeen
IDF strikes Hezbollah command center in response to border attacks from Lebanon The Times of Israel
***
Is Iraq really divided on resistance operations against US targets? The Cradle
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukrainian Artillerymen Report 60-80 Percent Fall in Firing Rates Due to Crippling Munitions Shortages Military Watch Magazine
Europe Must Ramp Up Its Support for Ukraine Foreign Affairs
London mayor agrees to send scrap cars to Ukraine Kyiv Independent
🇩🇪Germany has started talking about raising taxes for the sake of Ukraine.
Monika Schnitzer, a member of the economic Council of the Government of the FRG:
“Special times require special measures. Solidarity with Ukraine as the introduction of an income tax surcharge for…
— Zlatti71 (@djuric_zlatko) December 23, 2023
New Polish foreign minister visits Kyiv on first overseas trip, pledging continued support for Ukraine Notes from Poland
Oof. Estonia’s internal affairs minister says the country is willing to round up and forcibly return Ukrainian refugees who are drafted into the military. They just need to amend the existing extradition agreement with Kyiv. https://t.co/0EOHLMHyqe
— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) December 23, 2023
Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov makes news Gilbert Doctorow
Mechanized Stalinism Big Serge Thought
The Caucasus
Corridor games in the South Caucasus. What are the stakes? View from Baku JAM News
The United States talks peace but means conflict: What is behind the new ambassador’s hasty arrival? AzeMedia
Azerbaijani regime rushes to cement legitimacy as internal tensions brew Eurasianet
South of the Border
Argentines to Prepare National Strike Against Milei’s Abuses TeleSur
Javier Milei’s Argentina looks to veteran diplomat to mend ties with China: reports South China Morning Post
The Geopolitical Ripple: How China-US Tensions Reshape Business in Latin America The Diplomat
Biden Administration
The Grifter Defense: The Bidens Move to Embrace Influence Peddling with a Twist Jonathan Turley
2024
In her speech, American politician ( brainwashed) Nikki Haley says that H@mas was helped by Russian intelligence because October 7 is Putin’s birthday
“ Why Putin? Because he was more joyful than anyone about this attack, due to the switching of attention from Ukraine to… pic.twitter.com/y8hyC1NEY2
— S p r i n t e r (@Sprinter99800) December 23, 2023
In Connecticut, a rare election do-over could oust a sitting mayor NBC News
Texas Republicans in one rural county will hand count ballots. Experts say it’s “a recipe for disaster.” Texas Tribune. See NC on hand counted ballots here.
The Supremes
Angry About Your Kid’s After-School Satan Club? Blame Clarence Thomas. The New Republic
Our Famously Free Press
When The New Yorker Tried to Preempt a Future Biden Impeachment Consortium News
AI
Ethical Terminators, or how DoD learned to stop worrying and love AI: 2023 Year in Review Breaking Defense
Apple seeks multiyear deals with publishers to train its generative AI Interesting Engineering
Police State Watch
Out of Sight Bolts Mag. “Officials have responded to an overcrowding crisis in Texas’ largest jail by shipping more people from Houston to far-flung, for-profit lockups with even worse oversight.”
Groves of Academe
Open letter to the Columbia administration Rashid Khalidi, Mondoweiss
The Bezzle
Tesla Recalls May Be “Insufficient,” Cabin Cameras Also Appear to Be Overheating The Deep Dive
You’re Supposed To Be Glad Your Tesla Is A Brittle Heap Of Junk Defector
Did The Grand Theft Auto Hacker Do It With An Amazon Fire Stick While Under Police Custody? The Deep Dive
Class Warfare
2023 Is San Francisco’s Deadliest Year on Record for Drug Overdoses San Francisco Public Press
With some flight attendants on welfare, Alaska Airlines faces contract fight Seattle Times
Local communities keep trying to help workers. Corporate lobbyists and Florida politicians keep teaming up to stop them. Seeking Rents
Why Labor Unions Should Join the Housing Fight Law and Political Economy Project
Antidote du jour (via):
Bonus:
In a world where you can be anything, be kind 🙏 pic.twitter.com/pLsxDDMFxC
— WOW ANIMALS (@WOW_ANIMALS1) December 23, 2023
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
138 comments
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‘David Miller
@Tracking_Power
This is a stunning development and major defeat for US power in West Asia.
First, the US Navy admitted it didn’t have the ships for the mission.’
It’s amazing what $1.2 trillion doesn’t buy you. Like a Navy with the right ships to bring to a fight. This tweet says that France, Italy and Spain withdrew from the coalition and I wondered about that. Did they do this because they found out that Jake Sullivan was running this whole operation, a man who either knows nothing about everything or everything about nothing. Or did they refuse to serve under US command as they were worried that their ships might be sacrificed in lieu of US ships. Or was it that they heard from multiple sources that the US wants to use that force to confront Iran with which would put them in a losing position. That coalition of potential willing partners is getting smaller and smaller all the time.
Watching events unfold this past week or two certainly looks, to me, like a step by step exposure of how toothless our Empire has become. All posture, optics, and myth, now being agonizingly exposed in a drip drop drip fashion day by say as people in sandals driving Jeeps and Toyota pickups, using cheap drones and relatively cheap missiles, show each and every day how helpless we are to stop these attacks which are roiling world trade and the world economy. Maybe the carrier groups and flights over Bab el Mandeb will stop the attacks on commercial ships. That seems to be the hope. But, so far, it seems that every passing hour of every day shows again and again how helpless we are in this new eras of small mobile weapons and suddenly obsolete multi-billion dollar carrier groups. This realization is seeping into general awareness like a rising tide.
It feels like a huge shift is occurring, enormous, right before our eyes, and our leadership and the media are refusing to see it, report it, yet anyone who looks sees the obvious, happening right before our eyes, right now, yesterday, today, Christmas Eve, tomorrow, Christmas Day, the highest celebration of the West’s dominant religion, Christianity,y, homage to a Palestinian man we call the son of God exactly as Israel bombs Palestinians with US weapons and support.
Stop this bombing and the attacks on shipping will stop, say the Houthis. The bombing continues. The Houthi attacks continue, and so does the revelation the US is more of a naval paper tiger than our own worst fears. At least so it seems this Christmas Eve.
Will Christmas Day be observed around the world by Christians and non Christians alike as a day of peace and rest, as has been the case traditionally? Or will this day become, this year, the moment the West dies on a cross of its own making?
My sis and her hubby were significant players at the er, ‘Estes rocket factory’ in Tucson, and I really wanted to get his take on Red Sea goings on, and asked how long we could afford to drive Ferrari Testarosas and park them in front of steamrollers. in order to stop Trabants from using the road?
He seemed upset that the Houthis were so underhanded in their approach-doing things on the cheap, and declared ‘We ought to bomb the shit out of them’, seemingly oblivious to the glaring mismatch in cost of doing business.
Kind of what I expected really, not a trace of retrospection whatsoever.
Brother in-law must not remember the Saudis tried ‘to bomb the shit out of them’ for years with US supplied JDAMS, ground crews and satellite and AWACS targeting. It didn’t work out as planned.
He swings so far right, a slight breeze might topple him over…
Asked how long it would take to replace 1 to 4 million $ missiles and I was shocked when he uttered 18 months. Could you imagine us in WW2 operating like that?
This dovetails into the
” Gaza’s Allies Are Preparing Gradual Belligerent Steps to Stop the Israeli-US War ” story.
Why don’t Gaza’s allies just declare the end of oil exports to the U.S. until the genocide stops and there’s a Two State Solution implemented?
I bet the U.S. would drop Israel like a hot potato. Tech billionaires and American zionists can write checks out of their personal accounts to fund their favored country.
“Why don’t Gaza’s allies just declare the end of oil exports to the U.S. until the genocide stops and there’s a Two State Solution implemented?”
Doesn’t the USA produce enough oil and gas to be self sufficient?
Just about, and who knows how that will last:
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/imports-and-exports.php
Maybe i am reading the charts wrong, but it seems like USA is still importing crude, though more from Canada than OPEC lately, while exporting refined products.
It is. I have forgotten some of the details. However, IIRC United States has to import a certain variety of crude because the oil companies do not want to do the expensive months long changing of their refineries to produce the fuels used by Americans and Canadians using North American oil. It is just easier to import the “right” kind of oil to make American gasoline.
It reminds me of the example of shipping butter cookies to the UK from China via container ships instead of making them locally. The Scottish and the English can make their own shortbread cookies. Heck, the Americans as well, but at least for a while, it was more profitable to ship cookies across the Pacific and/or the Atlantic.
Ugh, don’t get me started. The Norwegian coastline is dotted with communities where the main non-municipal employer are fishing related for centuries.
But in recent years catches off the coast has been shipped to China instead where it is turned into fish sticks and other packaged goods, and then shipped back in frozen condition.
It’s not merely about what the US can produce for itself.
Oil is bought and sold in a concentrated and integrated global market. Thus, anything that increases or decreases the global supply will affect prices and likely impact the American economy.
Gaza’s Allie’s do not include the big oil players beyond Iran, though gulf exporters pay lip service to mollify their street. The Allie’s that are willing to actually do something are hisbollah/houthis plus some Iraq factions, with Iran providing some hardware behind the scenes.
This picture of the nativity scene in Bethlehem’s Lutheran church was around the internet for a while, but now seems to have been scrubbed, hence the esoteric link:
https://www.radiohc.cu/en/noticias/internacionales/341371-bethlehem-church-creates-rubble-nativity-scene-to-draw-attention-to-gaza-genocide
Merry Christmas
I cannot blame them. It was their hospital in the Gaza that was one of the first hospitals there to be stormed and destroyed by the IDF.
Clicking through to the link, I see that the picture was ‘deleted’ while the text soldiers on.
Picture is still available here, thanks to Hizbollah media:
https://english.almanar.com.lb/1995842
Not taking on the houthis presumably confesses they can’t possibly take on Iran unless they use nukes. And I wonder if their missile defense systems can handle at least some of israel’s collection? 500 mph cruise missile delivery? Didn’t Iran get some of Russia’s s300’s?
I agree that Christmas should be celebrated as a spiritual day for peace.
Christmas, however, is a Federal Holiday which might seem odd because the US separates church and state.
The S.Ct weighed in on this and, it’s my understanding, they ruled as Christmas has little or nothing to do with religion, it can remain a Federal Holiday.
It’s more about Santa Claus delivering 2000 pound bombs to Tel Aviv.
Or did they refuse to serve under US command as they were worried that their ships might be sacrificed in lieu of US ships.
That’s my guess rev.
It’s always a “good investment” to start a war that other people die in
Of course the ultimate goal was to attack Iran on any pretext. Even if nobody said that, even behind closed doors, everyone knows it.
Seems that the vassals got cold feet.
Estonia to forcibly return Ukrainian refugees?
This would constitute ‘refoulement’, which is formally codified in the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention).
…”The general prohibition against refoulement, or ‘forced return’, is a fundamental principle of international refugee law. Often referred to as the principle of ‘non-refoulement’, in general terms, this concept prohibits states from returning a refugee or asylum-seeker to territories where there is a risk that his or her life or freedom would be seriously threatened.”
https://www.asyluminsight.com/forced-return
Still, it helps Ukraine so it would probably pass without comment from Brussels.
/s
I believe EU has to soon form a committee to find both international and EU rules that haven’t been broken yet.
Who would have know that total, shameless corruption is so contagious?
There are several references in the Treaty (including Art 9) to national security grounds for refouling or refusing refugees, and it would be open to the Estonian government to argue that its national security would be enhanced if more Ukrainians were fighting the Russians. Or something. In any event, the real issue is what national legislation Estonia has to implement the provisions of the Treaty, and so how, if at all, any decision could be challenged in the Estonian courts. Some sort of national legislation seems to be supposed in the Treaty, but I don’t think it’s compulsory. And the Ukrainians who have fled to avoid military service would have a tough time claiming to have a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
The wider and more interesting question is what this will do to the currently fashionable “refugee” discourse in Europe. After all, if anyone who came here from Afghanistan during the fighting was a “refugee”, even if they just came looking for work and a better life, then there’s no question that these Ukrainians are “refugees.” But the reverse of the argument is obviously true as well.
That was exactly what I was wondering: if Ukrainians of “military age” can be shipped back for reasons of convenience, why not any other “alleged refugee”!
Maybe, the Ukrainians subject to deportation could claim that they are ethnic Russians/Slovaks/Hungarians/Ruthenes who are facing persecution if returned to Ukraine? That, besides being true, might cause problems for the Western narrative.
“or political opinion”. So if they claim that in fact they want a neutral Ukraine, and are pacifists and refuse to fight, which is ultimately a political stance, that has no standing with the European Human Righst Commission? Nice…
Isn’t being anti-war a political opinion? It certainly appeared to be in the USA in the 60’s.
This is over my pay grade, but there would seem to be an additional issue. They would not be returning the entire population but males deemed able to serve. I would think they’d have to be extradited on an individual basis, for draft dodging (which probably would fly legally, assuming extradition treaties and Estonia making draft dodging a crime). But it would be a complete mess on a practical level. Too much legal work and time for each body brought back to serve.
Put it another way, the remark about amending the extradition treaty is bunk. You do not extradite in bulk.
“You do not extradite in bulk.”
You do not if you observe International Law. However, if you follow a ‘Rules Based Order,’ you can pretty much do anything you want.
This can be a precedent for the United States. If the Baltics can deport all Ukrainian males of a certain age range back to the Ukraine, then that will be precedent for America to deport “illegals” to the South en masse.
The first thing to note is that those Ukrainians are most probably not refugees — i.e. individuals fleeing persecution because of their political activities, religious beliefs, ethnical origin, etc — but persons under subsidiary protection — i.e. individuals fleeing danger to their life because of an armed conflict.
Whether a person liable to perform military service can claim subsidiary protection or not will depend on what interpretation Estonia and Ukraine give to applicable international conventions, and what their respective laws stipulate about compulsory military service in a time of war as a motive to seek asylum.
Further, the difference in status will have a very practical consequence in the medium term, since in principle the subsidiary protection expires once the conflict is over.
The directive on Temporary Protection which was activated in March 2022 (I think?) seems to make it rather difficult to refouling Ukrainians. It also provides persons under it’s protection possibility to seek refuge status or asylum. Or unhindered travel to another EU member state (that is not planning to extradite anyone to AUF).
On thew other hand, what I can gather from the directive itself, the maximum duration for the directive is two (2) years.
As with anything relating to Ukraine since March 2022, I expect Estonia and EU both to just ignore the laws, rules and directives and do what they think should be done.
For what it’s worth, Finland is planning to offer one-time sum of €2500 to any Ukrainian in Finland to return to Ukraine.
That EU directive on “temporary protection” closely matches the “subsidiary protection” of international conventions. The revealing bits are art 3.1:
Temporary protection shall not prejudge recognition of refugee status under the Geneva Convention.
and 4.1:
Without prejudice to Article 6, the duration of temporary protection shall be one year. Unless terminated under the terms of Article 6(1)(b), it may be extended automatically by six monthly periods for a maximum of one year.
See articles 20 to 23 for the return (possibly enforced) of people to their home country after protection has ended..
The revealing, and unsurprising aspect is that this mechanism is meant to be exceptional — clearly EU countries do not want to impose themselves the obligation to grant subsidiary protections to the vast crowds of human beings fleeing wars — especially if those wars were caused by NATO, the “international community”, or their allies. And the reasons can be found mainly in articles 8, 12, 13 and 14.
Of course it’s illegal. Estonia knows it, the refugees know it, Brussels knows it, Kiev knows it.
What is anyone going to do about it?
‘Mats Nilsson
@mazzenilsson
Dec 23
At least 50 fertilizer production facilities have closed in Europe. This is stated in a report by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (a major financial group among the world’s top ten).
Fertilizer production in the EU has become completely unprofitable due to gas prices. 75% of the cost of nitrogen fertilizer is the cost of gas.’
Sounds like food may get to be more expensive in the EU, especially if they have to start buying fertilizer. And that would probably mean buying it from the US or maybe India. But doing so is going to cut into their budgets unless the farms in the EU start to shut down which means that food too has to be imported-
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/fertilizer-production-by-country
“And that would probably mean buying it from the US or maybe India”
Or Canada. Go long on Nutrien.
Nobody of influence and authority in Europe cares. They and theirs won’t starve.
>>>They and theirs won’t starve.
Any civilization, empire, country, or society that took that approach either was about to fall, or as with the British and the Irish, used starvation as a means of ethnic cleansing; that last bit presupposes that the economy was functional otherwise and that much of the population supported such actions; does anyone see a functional economy and massive political support from the general population in Europe or North America if hunger becomes even more of a thing than it already is?
You’re kidding, right? Most of humans throughout most of history have been ruled by glorified sociopaths.
On the occasions when decent people got power, they are quickly replaced by sociopaths, as sociopaths will do whatever it takes to get power and aren’t hampered by scruples.
Yes, but wise sociopaths make sure that the peasants don’t get too hungry. It is the fools who don’t that tend to lose their power and often their lives. While it is not a given, it has happened enough to be axiomic. Of course, the Bozos that are our leaders are being textbook in their folly. Whoever writes an updated version of The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman after the current parade has ended will have the Biden Administration in it.
Far as I can tell, that works mostly in romantic fantasies and Les Miz.
As. I recall, last minter we shipped so much lng to eu we tripled gas price from about $3/1000 ft3 to about 9
Fertilizer uses Ng feed stocks, so likely U.S. fertilizer price would also jump. The result would be higher food/fuel prices just as Biden runs for re-election. No free lunch.
Otoh, vast profits for Ng producers, imo better than last winter.
Actually, I wonder where India gets its gas from.
re: hand counting ballots.
the rhetoric from the demparty sounds a lot like talking points from the mothership.
Gillespie County, Texas is to my south..i rarely leave Mason County, but when i do, i usually go there(HEB, my doctor, etc).
there are a lot of right wingnuts, but not near as many as other places out here.
and, having dug into this issue somewhat in the past…the deadline on reporting, imposed by the state, is the biggest issue.
i dont remember if thats in the bloated texas constitution or not.
but if gop were serious about this, they could campaign on it, sans crazy conspiracy theories, and likely win a ballot amendment.
there is a lot of distrust in institutions….in my experience, bipartisan and especially nonpartisan…but theyd hafta cultivate trust, which aint gonna happen outside of the goptea true believer faction without abandoning their insane reliance on fearmongering about communist joe biden, etc.
there’s plenty of real, verifiable problems with the voting machinery….to say nothing of the captured election process.
i doubt the state goptea bigwigs actually want democracy,lol…but its right there, laying by the side of the road, if they do.
dems sure as hell aint gonna pick it up…just yammer and fundraise about how crappy it is.
It’s amazing that article and you can sense the panic and desperation at the thought of hand-counting ballots. You know, the way that it has been done in the bulk majority of America’s history. And here they are talking about 30,000 people which is small. When I was working at the polls, we did about 1,200 voters (compulsory voting here) and it only took an hour or two to sort the ballots and to count them into their groups. You had observers from the parties watching (the same people who handed out how-to-vote papers all day long) what we did but as soon as it was obvious what the result was going to be, they shot through. So I have no doubt that for that many people, your would need only two dozen polling stations and you would have the results in the same evening.
And guess what? You would not have to spend big money storing all those voting computers until the next time you needed them. No upgrades needed or overhauls. No servicing needed and having to keep on staff or on contract IT techies to do all this work. No wondering why those very same voting computers needed access to the internet come election time. I guess that the real threat is that so many rice bowls would risk being broken hence the hysterical tone in this article.
Hand counts, audit trails, election day only.
That was the rule when so many readers were younger. Our living room was the counting room, with nice neighborhood ladies shooing away the curious little kids while they worked to ensure a legitimate vote. There wasn’t so much concern about election irregularities in those days. Of course, that is excepting the extracurricular activities in 1960 Chicago as one of the infamous examples.
Now people have to watch out for machines that switch votes before they step away from the screen, so the Machine achieved sentience. Those machines and the people who manipulate them do a disservice to all, for the benefit of a select few.
Hand counting is relatively easy in parliamentary systems when there is essentially one candidate on the ballot. Sorting presidential ballots into 3 piles “red”, “blue” and “other” could be done reasonably fast. But in NY State my ballot easily has a couple dozen federal, state and local offices in addition to several others items like constitutional amendments or bonds. Hand counting would require handling the combined ballot 25 or 50 individual times… or have 25 or 50 separate ballots and do each separately. Ballots in western states are even more complicated.
I get the concerns with dozens proprietary automated systems. But somehow ATMs dispense cash with probably 5 or 10 9’s of reliability. POS systems can fail, but generally are extremely reliable. The most obvious solution is paper machine readable paper ballots, a national standard with open source software and not networked outside.
Simples. Just give each category of item to be voted on its own individually coloured ballot paper, and its own box-with-a-slot. That’s what is done here down under. Then count the important ones first.
or big jars and colored rocks.
its only hard because some people want it to be hard, because they dont like competition or being challenged about their divine right to rule.
Hand counting proposals have to provide methodologies and resource requirements that address the realities of US elections. My ballot in the IL 2022 general election had 95 contests (elective offices, judicial retention, ballot initiatives). It may be conceptually simple, but that’s a lot of ballots and a lot of boxes!
Hand count advocates in AZ did a trial count of 850 ballots with approximately 36 races. The link below is to a report of their results, and estimates of resource requirements and costs for hand counting a primary and general election. The estimate for number of workers for the latter was based on the legally allowed 19 days of counting.
https://lfportal.mohavecounty.us/bos/0/doc/2038269/Page1.aspx
If you take a country like Switzerland, elections to parliaments (local or national) follow a proportional system. Each party has therefore its own list of candidates as a ballot, which voters can throw unaltered into the urn. But they can also:
a) strike out (manually) the candidates they do not like;
b) double (manually) the name of candidates they particularly like;
c) add (manually) names of candidates from other parties;
d) write up (manually) their own ballot, by listing all the candidates they vote for on the official blank ballot.
Counting is done by hand, of course. It is not the harrowingly time-consuming problem fraught with unsurmountable fraud and error that the proponents of voting machines present.
In fact, I do not think that a voting machine would work in such a context. There are efforts to set up a secure online, web-based voting mechanism, but tricky security issues must be solved.
Are there any good examples of countries that hand count ballots that contain a wide range of items to vote for – and has demonstrable integrity?
I’m pretty curious on this as I’ve felt like part of the issue of hand counting American ballots is the amount of items on them seem overwhelming and would increase the difficulty of tabulating the count.
(I definitely fall on the side of hand counting but there’s a practical issue I’m accounting for as well)
I’d assume Switzerland might, because they vote on everything. Vao’s comment suggest that it’s not a huge problem for them.
My sense is that one of the problems in US is that ballots are designed presuming a machine count, whether mechanical or electronic. “Hanging Chad’s” would not have been an issue if ballots were designed to facilitate hand counting from get go, for example
Supervising at one of Bosnia’s first elections and observing at one in (now North) Macedonia, it was the same with hand counts. There were multiple parties in those countries, making for a confusing scorecard, at least for outsiders to keep sorted.
But each party had representatives seated in chairs lining the ballot box rooms. They all watched the casting of votes into transparent boxes like hawks. As they did the manual count of the votes, standing by when the containers of ballots were unlocked and dumped onto the middle of a big table. When the sealed bags of paper ballots left for where the overall counts were tabulated, the counts were accurate.
When I observed in Kazakstan, the biggest worries were in those locales then experimenting with electronic voting machines, (though the fix had previously been put in in other ways, like arresting opposition candidates on trumped up charges just before the election).
But hand counts have stood the test of time, at least when the whole process is transparent, with mutual oversight.
“Like arresting opposition candidates on trumped up charges just before the election.”
The Fourth Wave (sweeping aside the Third Wave and quite a lot more) cresting. Iosyf Bidenko and his gang learned a lot of lesson from the wrong parts of the world.
“Like arresting opposition candidates on trumped up charges just before the election.”
That sounds familiar somehow. Something, something, Trump…
…and remember, starting on the next working day, the ballot papers are counted slowly and carefully by full time employees of the electoral office to confirm the initial count.
The hand wringing by the liberal goodthinkers in that article was truly astounding. I have participated myself in hand counting ballots, and it is not rocket surgery. This guy pretty much summed it up –
“It’s not anything that’s really complicated. If you go ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5’ then you can do it,” Treibs, who has no experience hand-counting ballots, told Votebeat. “So it’s not like calculus, you know? If you have a good attention span, then I think most people can do it.”
You know what, when we did our recount I don’t think anyone had any experience hand counting ballots either. I know I didn’t. Our city clerk was new at the time and had little experience with any elections. And yet we got it done in a few hours and got the right result. Nowhere in that article did I see that actual methods of hand counting discussed. I guess the TX Tribune, rather than doing actual reporting, would rather have readers believe some possibly past their prime senior citizens will be pawing through ballots and we’ll just have to take their word for whatever they come up with. That is of course not how it works. We had a preset and thorough methodology, it was taught to us in about a half hour before the recount started. Ballots were divided into stacks of 50 if I remember right. Counters were set up three to a table. There was a counter for each candidate, and a neutral arbiter should disputes arise. I went through my stack of 50, tallied the results, and then handed my stack to the person counting for the opposing candidate. If we both got the same result, we marked it down and started on the next stack of 50. If we differed, we did it again until we were in agreement. The neutral person kept track of the totals for all the stacks of ballots counted at our table, and we were able to double check their results before handing them off to the city clerk.
Not only did we get the correct result, but the original count was done by machine and we were able to determine exactly what I was hoping to find – the machines undercounted votes because despite the disparagement of human capabilities by TX liberals, actual people are better able to determine voter intent than machines are. The result of the election didn’t change, but the hand count showed more votes overall across the board. The machines only tally a vote when the little circles have been perfectly filled in. If someone puts a check mark or slash through the circle, the machines don’t count it but a human being can. And in “our democracy” which is so under threat according to the TDS-infected, doesn’t everyone’s vote deserve to be counted?
And I find it rather disturbing the way they go on and on about the costs, as if getting the count correct might be too expensive and not worthwhile in “our democracy”. Normally politicians would be slapping themselves on the back for all the jobs they created – why not here? Because these vote counters are generally retired people, hale and hearty senior citizens with a sense of civic duty. This is where all those “costs” go – to retired people who could probably use some extra income, which they will then spend in the community in which they live. And the amounts being tossed around are really pocket change in today’s world. Why do I get the impression that if instead of spending thousands on hand counts that goes to local senior citizens, we were to spend billions on hand counts that went to people from outside consulting firms affiliated with the Democrat party, suddenly the liberals would be all for it?
I worked election day in Seattle a couple of years as one of the volunteers at a polling place, about 20 years ago, before voting machines and digital record keeping. All hand counting. I came away reassured that voter fraud was damn near impossible. The counting was overseen by people from both parties, the checks and balances were simple and clear, and my takeaway was that fraud on voting day was nearly impossible. It was very reassuring to me.
I felt the same way after seeing it in action. My counterpart and I each recounted several stacks of ballots, and in all but one case we were in agreement. But I do remember one instance when the counter for the opponent came up with one more vote for my candidate on one stack of ballots than I had. I pointed this out to him, we recounted that one stack, and my tally turned out to be correct.
It did occur to me that if I had just agreed with his original tally, I could have gotten one more vote for my candidate. That is the only way I could see that any fraud was possible, but waiting for an opponent’s vote counter to make an error in your favor and not telling them about it is an extremely inefficient way to try to overturn the valid results of an election.
Here here, same story. I was an Elections Inspector in Berkley Ca. many times. Fast efficient and all done in one day. And, I must laugh as I too read the Texas article. My question, if hand counting is done when an election is challenged, why not before hand, on election day? In Florida, (Gore/Bush) did they just run the ballots through the machine again? No, they were hand counted.
aye! that iconic picture of the cross-eyed man staring at a hanging chad,lol.
it may be that the handwringers have that image in their minds when “hand counting” is mentioned.
Thanks for the first hand report. As I’ve said in previous comments I’m on the skeptic side based on a very limited knowledge of hand count methodology. Does “a counter for each candidate” mean each candidate in each race (e.g. I count for Jane Doe in the state senate race, and then for John Smith in the mayor’s race)?
I agree that hand counting and prompt results would be worth investment in public resources (not your depressingly likely prediction of Democrats turning it into a grift). Sometimes (as in the linked post) identifying those requirements isn’t even considered.
Adding: According to Verified Voting the county in the linked post uses hand-marked paper ballots. However, much of TX, unlike most states, uses ballot marking devices exclusively for in-person voting and has limited eligibility for hand-marked mail in ballots.
https://verifiedvoting.org
This was actually a fairly complicated ballot. It was a city council race, there were seven candidates, and the top two would take office.
#1 was not in question – the recount was between the 2nd and 3rd place finishers, where there had been a small margin of difference. Had it not been for me, there likely would not have been any recount at all, but I had been pressing for one for several years because I wanted to see how well the machines worked, and I was told repeatedly by city officials that the only way there was ever going to be a recount was if there were a particularly close race that fell within the limits set by the state. This election was close enough to be eligible for a recount, but I don’t think the rules automatically triggered one. One of the candidates had to ask for it, and given that one of them was my better half, we made the request, and I finally got the recount I’d been wanting for years. But the city required each of the candidates to get volunteers, which presented some difficulties as it forced the candidate being challenged to recruit several counters. I’m not sure what would have happened had they refused, but in this case the #2 and #3 candidates were friendly with each other and it all was arranged without too much difficulty. There were eight tables set up in the counting room at city hall, with one volunteer counter for each candidate at each table. The volunteer counters representing the candidates were family and friends, while the third neutral arbiter at each table was paid for their time by the city. I can’t remember if they were full time city employees or election clerks.
We were tasked with only looking at votes for the 2nd and 3rd place finishers, so we didn’t re-tally any votes for the other 5 candidates. It did require fairly close attention – ballots where three candidates or more had been checked were invalid, to name one example. And we did our best to determine intent, counting checked boxes instead of filled in circles as valid. That’s why we counted more overall votes than the machines had.
Don’t remember the total number of ballots, but it was at least a few thousand. The city clerk and the city attorney were paid to supervise, along with the eight paid neutral counters. Maybe the city attorney was paid extra, but I think the recount was part of the city clerk’s duties anyway. The whole thing, from training a couple dozen people to the final tally, was over in four or five hours at minimal expense. The final tally narrowed but did not overturn the original count. But we did determine that about 1.5% of votes that could have been counted were not counted by the first machine count. And these are supposedly the “better” voting machines – no touch screens, there is a paper trail, etc.
My better half is a lefty and so was the other candidate involved in the recount. When we asked for it, the biggest complainers were the local liberal goodthinkers, using the same tired excuses as those in the TX Tribune article – it will take a long time, cost too much, blah blah blah. Funny thing was one of the conservative candidates on the ballot, who is a rather corrupt individual that I really don’t much care for, had no problem with the recount at all despite there being zero chance he would benefit from it.
Don’t forget, hand counting is demanded by right wingers. California lawmakers ban most hand-count elections, targeting far-right Shasta County
Any election or public policy based on vote counting by electronic machines, intermediated by the internet, is suspect and such elections, tax policies and laws approved by that election should be ignored as potentially fraudulent.
Paper ballots, marked by hand, counted in a public manner, retained indefinitely, are the only valid ways to count votes.
Photo ID should be used for voting, the same was as to obtain a drivers license, buy a gun, register your child for school,buy an airline ticket or stay in a hotel.
>>>Photo ID should be used for voting, the same was as to obtain a drivers license, buy a gun, register your child for school,buy an airline ticket or stay in a hotel.
I do not particularly accept that a driver’s license should be used for anything but for driving. Please tell me why I should have to show proof that I am I especially if I pay with cash? This does stink of a police state.
The worst thing that has ever happened to elections is the near infinite variety of electronic machines thrust into the process. If it is programmed, it can be hacked, compromised, diddled, somewhere along the line. That said, I want to believe that the results have been mostly honest and mostly reliable. There is no absolutely 100% foolproof voting and vote counting method, but I like the picture of hand counting closely watched by gimlet eyed partisans looking after their party interests. Is there some law that says the results must be breathlessly announced 30-seconds after the polls close. I remember going to bed not knowing if Nixon or Kennedy had won in 1960. The most recent election in the village in which I live was wrangled over for weeks. In each case the sun rose the next morning. The business of government continued.
State laws govern the amount of time allowed for counting ballots and certifying the count. It’s the public that has become accustomed to immediate results, which are “breathlessly announced” by the media using statistical predictions based on partial counts posted by states as the counting progresses.
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/canvass-certification-and-contested-election-deadlines-and-voter-intent-laws
That’s a fun rant about Teslas being junk, but doesn’t that company offer a decent warranty for repairs, and, even so, don’t most states have lemon laws that would protect a car buyer from a 24 hour major defect?
There are Lemon laws. The problem is it is difficult to get a vehicle declared a lemon.My friend had a GM product that constantly over heated. They tried for almost a year to fix it. Finally they decided they couldn’t fix it and declared it a lemon. For that year most of the time it was in the shop.After replacing the engine 3 times they gave up on fixing it. I suspect it ended up at the auction and someone ended up with a dud.
Well, sure, but the suspension failing after a day?
I’ve heard of a suspension of disbelief, but this is ridiculous!
Benny, you’re surprised at suspension failing a day after purchase? Well, you should not be because, yes, if you clip a curb at high speed, or did something else stupid, resulting in subsequent failure, it’s on you, not Tesla. Look, an external force being input into the suspension isn’t horribly unusual, with the end results being a parts failure that leaves the suspension dangling. And it could have happened ten minutes after taking possession or a year later. The only question is, did the suspension fail without some unusual external input?
That, and should this damage be covered by warranty? I don’t think so. Moreover, if you look at the overall tenor of the article you see what I would term a hit piece. Basically, the author has an agenda and makes it clear.
Me? I have zero doubts a Chevy that clips a curb in likewise fashion could similarly have a suspension failure. Or a Toyota, or a Ford. In fact, I suspect if this were truly an engineering fault (the right front wheel of tens or hundreds of cars falling off) it would result in NHTSA initiating a recall with the manufacturer. They aren’t falling off left and right, else we’d have said recall.
And note, I don’t own a Tesla, nor do I have a hankering to own one. In fact I have zero thoughts regarding buying/owning one of those automobiles. Minor point being, I have no agenda for defending the company.
Instead of an agenda, I have two eyes and a smattering of common sense, meaning I’m not blinded to what is obviously a journalist suffering with an ethical problem and worse, failing to disclose what is an opinion piece. This, as opposed to a story where there is an effort to inform the reader who, what, when, where, and why.
Had he/she interviewed Tesla, or even queried the technical report that resulted in Tesla denying a warranty claim resulting in a $14,000 repair bill he might have found, for example, that the repair technician (who gets paid regardless) noted the wheel and tire bearing witness marks of having kissed a curb at high speed. Or maybe he noted a wheel with impact cracks, or scrapes and a different tire than the vehicle was delivered with on the right front, or some other bit of evidence.
This, because tires, even a new replacement that is seemingly identical, will differ from an actual production tire. How? Usually by having something molded-in that discloses this. Knowing Musk’s penchant for technological solutions, maybe the Tesla has a bit of technology helping disclose this fact. Maybe something like an RFID chip, or a sensor that opens and closes thus sending a signal to be stored when a tired/wheel is removed and remounted. These are obvious first-pass thoughts.
But we won’t know this because the journalist was so intent on taking down Tesla, he/she didn’t investigate and tell us the unbiased truth.
Well, fine, but, I’m like the author. I’ve driven new, old, in between, for fifty years. I drove an old VW bug with a hole in the floor a thousand miles. To Chicago. I mean, wtf, you walk into a dealer and buy an upper middle class status object (that says, I care) and it breaks that fast? Maybe, user fault. Maybe, an agenda against Tesla. I get it, but, if you have trust in the story, wow. How far we have sunk from Japanese quality. I’m at the age and point in life when I may try to find a quality low mileage Forerunner, and I’ll probably die with the car in the driveway.
If you want to be reminded of how arrogant and dense the Detroit managers were, read David Halberstom’s The Reckoning. When the Japanese were first beginning to produce cars they had no self-confidence, lots of fear that they wouldn’t be good enough. Detroit kept making big gas guzzlers and Japan kept building their dealerships, repair shops, and logistic chain. And listening to the workers on their assemble line, which the Detroit managers have never been willing to do. The result, anyone who wants a reasonably-sized car with good mileage and good quality will buy a Japanese brand now.
” for example, that the repair technician (who gets paid regardless) noted the wheel and tire bearing witness marks of having kissed a curb at high speed. Or maybe he noted a wheel with impact cracks, or scrapes and a different tire than the vehicle was delivered with on the right front, or some other bit of evidence. ”
Or, for example, he could have written a long story about lots of strange issues Tesla’s have. Lots more issues that other car manufacturers. And, it turns out there are ways to track those problems, and to track those problems in relation to other car manufacturers. Or maybe he hit a curb in outer space. Elon makes rockets you know! You can’t say he made that guys wheel fall off!
And, surprise– Tesla sucks! On their own. Just stop and think- Maybe the reason that all of these people have problems with Tesla is that there are problems with Tesla? Shot in the dark, I know. We need another decade or two of listening to this twat tell us that that tunnels will solve traffic and no one will need to drive. We’ll have level 17 AI driving our cars in 5 years You doubt him!?
What a hunk of junk. I wonder how all those fan-boys that ran out to buy them in the first years feel about them now. And trying to blame customers when those cars start to break up is odious in itself. Normally cars are not supposed to do things like that. What would a Tesla engineer call it then? A spontaneous rapid disassembly? Can you imagine climbing aboard one of Elon Musk’s rockets to Mars – only to discover that the people that built that rocket are all ex-Tesla engineer?
Meanwhile, sighting of Cybertruck in the wild.
To-date everyone I know who has purchased a Tesla (the vast majority the Model 3) are very satisfied with the vehicle. They love the way it performs and the ease of driving it. There are lots of Tesla fanboys and fangirls out there.
Indeed, and I know quite a few Tesla owners and can annecdotally report the same satisfaction levels, at my work the parking garage is probably 1/4 Teslas. So I’m regarding that rant with suspicion. There’s enough Teslas on the roads that many people have friends and family members who own one and can report if things are as bad as makes out, which I doubt.
There are also owner based youtube channels like Wham Bam Teslacam which put intense scrutiny on how the cars handle in different situations, there is no other car on the market that automatically self-records events from so many different angles, thus making it easy to do after-action analysis and for owners send in videos. You don’t even need to own a Tesla to see with your own eyes what’s going on with them, if the wheels fall off it will be recorded and the owners will send the vid to Wham Bam.
I took a run and a detour through the parking lot of a Masonic lodge. There were an unusually large percentage of Tesla cars in the lot. I barely understand the secret initiations that go on within Freemasonry. Is there some connection between Freemasons and Tesla cars or is this a coincidence?
The rant is based on an extensively reported Reuters piece. Did you bother reading it? It describes how Tesla is playing games so as to avoid defects being reported so in turn as to escape recalls.
The fact that Consumer Reports is now on the case means these concerns are real and not trivial in number.
And over the years, we’ve run many accounts of Tesla problems that would be unacceptable from any normal car company, like falling off bumpers, gaps in the exterior and interior.
This video is anecdata but reviews build issues from the factory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcH2vXtgbdg
Another story on a new door not fitting properly (!!!)
If this sort of thing happens at all, it is not happening only once.
We have two used EVs, a 2014 Toyota RAV4 EV and a 2014 Tesla Model S each starting with about 40,000 miles when we bought them. The Toyota is ok but not as fun to drive because the regenerative braking sucks. You can one peddle, regenerative brake, drive the Tesla and have a much smoother, controlled drive and much greater acceleration.
The Toyota is only good for 100 miles around town driving and has had a couple of minor problems. The Tesla is good for 250 miles and has had several problems in the 10,000 miles we have driven it. All door handles open when you walk next to it with a key and three of the doors have been fixed because not only the handle opens but the door cracks open and will run the heating system & battery unless you manually shut the door. Also, the rubber sealing the sunroof has been replaced.
We charge them at night and for around 1,700 miles per month, it costs about $180 at pGEs outrageous electric rates.
If you want other than Tesla, MG and Volvo are coming soon with some affordable EVs before GM, Ford, and Stellanis figure out how to make a good EV.
Hope you’re not depending on solar to charge them at night with electricity prices offset by daytime solar. Used to get 35 cents a kilowatt hour credit for energy fed back into the grid, now get like 3 cents. So much for our Green Governor Newsom.
https://www.ocregister.com/2023/12/21/californias-push-for-rooftop-solar-panels-isnt-going-so-well-right-now/
Newsom’s five member P.U.C. has nothing but cripple the solar industry in favor of the nuclear power industry which their lord and master, Gavin Newsom, seems to love. We’re facing our what? Fourth PG&E bill raise and now a new one to pay for the moribund Diablo Canyon, which should have been shut down years ago.
It’s a bit too ranty but I’m not sure anyone can disagree with this.
But on the other hand the computer I’m typing on has been extremely reliable for years so it’s not like the bugs can’t or won’t be worked out. And Musk’s other company Space X now reportedly conducts about half of all space launches so that’s not to be pooh poohed at either.
Clearly though Musk isn’t a consumer products guy and nobody is stepping in to make him be that. The Biden people seem a lot more worried about his takeover of Twitter since that may affect them.
One could point out that Detroit’s cars used to be pretty shoddy until competition forced some improvements. A good friend recently had her Ford made SUV power steering fail on the freeway but managed to get the thing home. A web search suggested this was common with this model although it was not new like a Tesla. Blame Musk and tech culture but also poor regulation.
I’m not a fan of Musk by any means, his views on a lot of things really pains me, I think his social views are a work in progress, but I understand what he’s doing on the technical front. The author does not come from the design world and therefore doesn’t understand that Musk is specifically NOT reinventing the wheel, he himself says for example that rocketry is very old and predates him, he’s not reinventing anything, he’s instead taking the wheel back to what we call first principles, the fundamental essence of the wheel, removing all the unnecessary bits and process steps.
Musk makes a comparison between Space X and NASA, points to the Columbia disaster as having traumatized NASA, directly affecting NASA’s ability to innovate since – every decision is now steeped in bureaucracy and overwhelming safety concerns, resulting in rockets containing overabundance of redundancy and safety systems, dramatically increasing the bloat and expense. But more importantly, also contributing to a great reluctance to experiment and try different things, to make mistakes. He points out that since Space X is not putting people in space and sees mistakes as learning opportunities, is not as affected by things blowing up, the program is able to conduct radical experiments and iterate around what went right/wrong, hence why the program has come up with so many engine versions whereas NASA has not.
Also, when Musk geeks out on engineering and rocketry, he spends a lot of time dwelling on process mistakes, he has story after story of how management, bureaucracy or power imblances in relationships led to this or that critical design flaw and how they’ve had to really scrutinize and rethink the design and engineering process above all else to control for these factors.
I sometimes wish people would stop obsessing over Musk the personality, forget him, he’s not the important part, and focus instead on the process design phenomenon, which is an innvoation I think worth considering on its own merits, and also transferring everywhere.
Weren’t the Columbia disaster, and the Challenger explosion before it, determined to be attributed in part by decisions made by project managers and not technical engineers? There are probably family members of those 14 (total) astronauts that died whom have real concern with unencumbered innovation on manned space flights.
Traveling at 70 MPH on California freeways in a Tesla may feel similar to some.
Guh?
Well that’s part of the problem! They don’t have a decent warranty reserve, and they lie and say these failures are a customer caused problem. They are maintaining “profitability” by pushing off warranty costs to the consumer as much as they can get away with.
Um, Tesla uses underhanded means to evade such laws. That’s the starting point for the rant, no?
Biden has been pushing EV and you can’t do that without Tesla which arguably revived the whole idea. In slight defense they aren’t Chevrolet and building a car atop thousands of tiny batteries–with the need to save the weight they push around–was inevitably going to lead to some dubious compromises. The article says those suspension arms, perhaps the most abused part of your car, are made out of aluminum rather than steel.
Which is to say the Tesla is a sports car–traditionally troublesome–pretending to be a bread and butter car with the newer models.
The best description of the Tesla market was done by a podcaster I refuse to mention because of some really foul things he has said about most with no money, but I liked this: It’s middle aged to older divorced or never married white guys who want an object that says, first, I care, I’m sensitive, but, of course, I have this money to burn. Hello.
First Marine Fish Declared Extinct Due to Humans
whole species disappearing makes my heart rend and tear!
Me too, and human beings most definitely have and currently are driving species to extinction. But in this case I think the headline is a little overblown. About 2/3 of the way through the article you find this –
“This unique, dinner-plate-sized ray was only known from one specimen collected from a Jakarta fish market in 1862 (pictured). Despite extensive monitoring of markets and survey efforts not a hint of this species has been found since.”
Based on one example from a couple centuries ago, I’m not sure how one can say this was a distinct species, and not perhaps an individual specimen with a mutation of some sort. And science writers aren’t always the most clear, especially if they aren’t scientists themselves. For example, the specimen is pictured in a color picture, which didn’t exist in 1862. Maybe this was a recent photo after the specimen had been taken out of a jar – the article doesn’t say.
‘Twas the morn before Christmas, when all through the blog
The creatures were stirring, using a mouse;
The postings were hung by the moderators with care,
In hopes that a story from Nick soon would be there;
The commentariat were nestled all snug reading threads;
While visions of sugar-pill tales danced in their heads;
And Yves in her element, you really had to clap,
Had just settled our brains on Naked Cap,
When out on the Red Sea there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my modem to see what was the matter.
Away to a new window I flew like a flash,
Tore open another page in order to suss out the clash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen navy,
Gave a lustre of mayday to objects below looking wavy,
When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But a slayer of misinformation, not a in the headlights deer,
With an old school blogger so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment he must be Lambert, getting his licks.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
“Now, Conor! now, Conor! now Helmer and Hudson!
On, Katiebird! on, Jules! on, Yves & Nick-go blitz them!
To the tales of the media! to the tales of the street named Wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”
Merry Christmas and the happiest of New Years to all…
I remember Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck if …” comedy routine from the 90’s.
Lately these links make me think he just needs to update his shtick for the 2020’s.
You might be a failed state if …
You’re working for an airline and need to go on welfare
You have cities full of homeless …
Your best alternative to an addled war monger v. indicted businessman is a female warmonger.
I’m here all week, Try the veal.
I find your ideas hilarious, insightful, and would gladly watch your special on NetFlix …
“Israelis wanted ‘pre-emptive strike’ on Lebanon: Did Biden halt it?”
More likely it was the IDF itself. When they do a war game against Hezbollah, they lose every time and Israel goes down in defeat. And what are they going to strike Lebanon with? The bulk of their forces are fighting in Gaza trying to dig out Hamas. The forces that they have along the northern border is just enough to hold the line. Some hot heads may be suggesting that they bomb a Beirut civilian suburb to show Hezbollah that they mean business but then Hezbollah could bomb a suburb in Tel Aviv. The optics of that happening would be a disaster for the Netanyahu government. But if they are going to fight Hezbollah, they should really defeat Hamas first. Still waiting.
“And what are they going to strike Lebanon with?”
The US, if they can.
Sure, the US may lose, they may eventually leave, tail between their legs (Lebanonisa very different proposition from Iraq), but if they can turn Lebanon and Syria into failed states, that’s a win from Israel’s perspective.
Re Haley–the new mouth of the South (formerly Ted Turner) and with any luck this will all be over after the first few primaries and her resultant return to a greatly deserved obscurity. To be sure there’s the “soft bigotry of low expectations” to waft her along but with Nik they are never low enough.
And Lauria’s takedown of Jane Mayer and the New Yorker in Consortium is worth a look. Clearly when it comes to TDS the smart and sophisticated aren’t much more reliable than our former guv.
The Lauria article was especially significant for me. Though I had long been critical of the “liberal” media, the final straw that indicated to me there was no hope whatsoever were the two Russiagate articles by Jane Mayer. Mayer had been one of my favorite investigative journalists, a real hero of mine. I was blown away when I read the ridiculous puff piece on Steele. But her article “proving” massive Russian intervention in the 2016 election was even more shocking (two of her top three sources were Clapper and Brennan). When I read those two pieces of pure propaganda it was over; any tiny bit of remaining illusion was stripped away for me. By the time her Hunter Biden cover up contribution came out I had given up on Mayer, and the New Yorker.
Thank you Yves, for your continuing efforts to keep a light shining for us.
Too bad we can’t exchange our ‘Mouth of the South’ Haley for the eloquent MEP Clare Daly. Here she is on fire again, ripping the EU’s ‘Frau Genocide’ :
https://x.com/ClareDalyMEP/status/1738968791269134498?s=20 (1:16 min)
Haley say what people of influence and authority want to hear. She’s going nowhere.
To be fair, Biden and Young Hunter could be videotaped selling political favors to bona-fide swastika,-sporting Ukrainian nazis in exchange for fat envelopes of green cash and the MSM would insist that was a Russian talking point and that what Putin wants you to think, besides, Team R and Trump are really bad.
Somebody else called it, but, she really comes off as Queen Karen in that video.
Re: Self-pollination developing in Parisian Pansies
As a gardener, I’ve seen dioecious (having individual plants of one sex i.e. male plants and female plants) species go full hermaphroditic in response to temperature shock. Mother Nature has a lot of tricks up her sleeve.
Incidentally, there are plant species that are pollinated by gravity or wind – these are species that antedate the rise of insect pollinators. Evergreen trees are an example of monoecious plants that have male flowers higher up the tree and the pollen falls down onto the female flowers. Cannabis plants are an example of dioecious plants that have pollen from male plants windblown to female plants – hence the delicious stickiness of the female flowers that capture the pollen. And cannabis plants are prone to hermaphrodism – female plants develop male flowers and self-pollinate. But the seeds so produced have a lower proportion of viable seeds – “feminized seeds” in the trade lingo – and produce more female plants than male plants.
So once we stupid techie humans figure out that loading up the environment with poisons in order to genocide insects is pretty much tantamount to genociding ourselves then the mighty insect kingdom can resume its work of pollination.
When the environmental conditions are real difficult (lots of car traffic for example), Possum can determine the sex of their offspring to ensure they have more female babies. Nature is smart.
It’s been around a lot longer than we have as a species. And it will still be around when humans are not around anymore. It’s consoling to realize this amid the tragic destruction of the biosphere done by humans.
Re: Haley
My friends asked what I wanted for my birthday, and I requested an invasion of the Bahamas, but in the end settled for a Tommy Bahama shirt.
Love the story about the 18-year old hacker. A damn shame such a penetrating mind is being railroaded by banal video game corporate interests. May he engineer an escape.
Hack the planet! Merry Christmas.
“One of the most cataclysmic events affecting the Sierra Nevada in historic times impacted the Garfield section of the grove. On December 20, 1867, a warm rain fell on heavy snowpack blanketing the higher elevations of Dennison Ridge. One observer wrote that “the north side of Dennison Mountain” fell through the heart of the grove into the South Fork of the Kaweah, destroying a reported one-third of the grove’s forest. The avalanche and landslide swept down from as high as 7,500 feet, covering hundred of acres, and devastating an area about 2.5 miles long and ranging in width from 1,500 to 4,000 feet. A natural dam was created measuring a half-mile wide and 400 feet high, and the reservoir that formed behind it breached the dam on Christmas night.”
“The flood scoured the canyon, then flooded Visalia in the Central Valley to a depth of five feet. Sequoia logs and tree sections were carried to the valley, where they floated far and wide beyond the riverbanks. Though new growth has disguised most signs of the 1867 avalanche in the grove, its effects are still dramatically apparent in the vicinity of Snowslide Canyon, where dense sequoia forest ends abruptly at an avalanche boulder field which swept away all that was growing there before the slide.”
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Not much threat of it happening today, no snow on the ground up top. In 1867 it had snowed for about 3 weeks before the pineapple express showed up and got the ball rolling. You can still see the destruction some 150+ years later.
This area was what was to become the original part of Sequoia NP in 1890, greatly expanded since.
Re: Guardian article: an acquaintance in media has been stunned by the cold lack of professional solidarity shown by western press while unprecedented numbers of journalists are being killed, and indeed targeted, exemplified by this quote from the piece: “The narrative [that Israel is winning] was helped by severe difficulties for the few journalists still operating in Gaza, including the risk to their personal safety”.
Someone take this guy’s press pass.
The western media have form. There has been a cold lack of professional solidarity with Assange during his 7 years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and then now 4 years in virtual complete solitary confinement in a high security prison.
The MSM sleep soundly, knowing that they never will so much as think a syllable thst their masters would approve of.
Therefore, Assange bothers them not a whit.
Oh tannenbaum, dept:
I always found the idea of decapitating a perfectly fine pine in the prime of it’s life and then ‘tree-animating’ it by making sure it still gets water in the living room, kinda repulsive.
In theory its a celebration, well expect for the object of our short-term desire, usually sent to the dump afterwards shortly after New Year’s.
My town’s Parks Dept recycles all discarded trees brought to their collection site. They chip them and use them for mulch in the towns public garden and flower spots, and give away any left over mulch to local gardeners in the spring on a you-haul away basis. Pretty good idea.
In theory our trash pick up service does the same thing, only that the green mulch bin and brown trash bin all get picked up the same day and it all goes into the trash truck.
‘Potemkin recycling’
In our village, used trees go to local goats, who relish the green snacks in winter.
Mmm. Local goats. I love goat cheese. Really. Chevre (goat) cheese is wonderful in egg dishes such as omelets. / ;)
Us too. Goats for the win!
Ours get used for some local wetlands preservation project at the Royal Botanical Gardens.
Kill A Tree For Christ
ya, sorry, I keep trying to make that a meme but it just makes people mad
Season’s Greetings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUWMjUjit_U
Acknowledging the tough economic conditions almond growers have faced in recent years as production costs soared while earnings plummeted, the Almond Board of California maintains that the long-term outlook for the tree nut remains positive, even as the industry struggles through some growing pains.
Almond leaders say changing times and shifts in consumer behavior mean the sector will need to evolve and innovate to remain competitive and drive global demand for the state’s 3.5-billion-pound crop. They outlined their efforts and ways they’re trying to address economic challenges during the “state of the industry” presentation at the 2023 Almond Conference last week in Sacramento.
Nearly 10 years ago, when almond prices reached a record high of $4 a pound, the sector seemed unstoppable as farmers rushed to plant more trees while U.S. and global markets gobbled up supply—not just the nut itself but in the form of myriad almond products.
Fast forward to 2023, with prices at $1.40 a pound, the words “oversupply” and “overplanting” come up “a lot these days,” Waycott said. So is talk about the industry’s abnormally large carryover inventories, even though production has dropped by more than 500 million pounds from its high point three years ago.
Impacts of the pandemic, especially how it congested ports and snarled supply chains, delaying shipments of almonds and other California agricultural exports, played a key role in the current supply overhang. But even before that, Trump-era trade wars that resulted in retaliatory tariffs on almonds also hurt the industry’s ability to sell product to key export markets such as China.
https://www.ourvalleyvoice.com/2023/12/22/almond-farmers-see-silver-lining-amid-tough-times/
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There is around 300 million almond trees in Cali, greed was good while it lasted, but that was then and this is now…
Tomorrow’s the big day and happy that to NC. I have this album.
https://www.openculture.com/2023/12/an-introduction-to-vince-guaraldi-the-jazz-composer-who-created-the-best-christmas-album-ever-a-charlie-brown-christmas.html
It is the only sheet music that would motivate me to relearn the piano. We had it when I was a kid, and it was a lot of fun to play.
Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective
Musk ought to be in jail, or following my comment yesterday, it’s lose a finger time!
A third of a Billion loss on office space in Pavlovegas, is that a lot?
…must make more happy-go-lucky videos!
https://therealdeal.com/national/las-vegas/2023/12/20/blackstones-hughes-center-in-las-vegas-nears-default/
#MysteryIllnessSurgingInBritain
Yes, immune system deregulation is now the family-blogging Wooly Mammoth in the room.
Ugh.
Re: Flowering plants and 100 years of evolution
Here’s an opinion piece on what non-native plants do to California ecosystem:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-12-24/los-angeles-southern-california-native-plants-drought-water-use-landscaping-gardening
RE: Europe must Ramp Up its support for Ukraine (Foreign Affairs)
This is written by a German Bundestag member of its Foreign Affairs Committee. It contains a lots of hand-wringing about Russia’s ease of evading sanctions via Germany’s trade (e.g. advanced machine tools!) with slippery third parties (e.g. Kyrgyzstan), and other interesting details.
The writer advocates that Europe commit to sole support of Ukraine in absence of the U.S. It should do this now in anticipation of Trump’s re-election, when it’s definitely jigs up. Overall tone is “EU must do this, EU must do that…”, with lots of specifics, admitting all the things the EU is already not doing. There’s the usual magical thinking, but I thought the ending was fairly grounded in reality:
All in all, I can’t imagine the EU being willing to be sole supplier of money and weapons to Ukraine. It would require that the EU commit fully to an endless struggle they’ve been unwilling to fully commit to already, by the author’s own admission.
The article proves the case against its own thesis. Maybe that’s the writer’s subtle intention. If so, that’s an interesting rhetorical device!
A reminder that all of the creative driving schools have their final exams during the last week of the year, stay safe!
“creative driving schools” gave me a hearty chuckle.
Stay safe indeed commentariat!
Tucker Carlson visits Julian Assange. Rumble ~14+ minutes.
https://rumble.com/v42wkvh-tucker-carlson-visits-julian-assange.html
The Carol of the Bells
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FydDhuAYcOI
and
Once in Royal City – Choir of Kings College, Cambridge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtiCLJvyePw
What the hecK! Why is audio suddenly not available on these two clips? Whereas audio was always available before? Inquiring minds would like to know. / ;)
Sorry, my mistake. If listening with normal computer audio everything is OK; if listening with audio ear phones, not so much. Sorry for the possibly misrepresentation, depending.
the story of “The Carol of the Bells” :-
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_of_the_Bells
Live Christmas trees affect indoor air chemistry, researchers find Phys.org. Bottom line: You can open a window! Which helps…. with other things.
The Colorado wolves article has some great footage of wolf release. Wolves are up to 130 pounds of dog on stilts. I would not stand behind those cages; I would use the safari technique of staying inside the car.