Links 1/17/2024

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1. Antifa January 17, 2024 at 7:03 am

   MILLENIAL WINTER
   (melody borrowed from When I’m Sixty Four by the Beatles)

   It’s getting cold there’s snow in the air.
   We’ll survive somehow!
   We’ve got yoga mats and half a box of wine
   Maybe this will turn out just fine!
   Laid off at work with Master’s degrees
   No car anymore
   Hope you still need me we will indeed be
   Sleeping out of doors!

   We will soldier through!
   I know it sounds absurd
   What else can we do?

   I’ll be a busker singing the blues
   Don’t be woebegone!
   It’s a simpler lifestyle that we haven’t tried
   Our employer tossed us aside
   No more dull meetings stuck in the weeds
   Who could ask for more?
   Hope you still need me we will indeed be
   Sleeping out of doors!

   We can find some food in different dumpsters
   After hours each night if we hurry dear
   If we’re fast and brave . . .
   Food for completely free!
   And I won’t ever shave!

   No bills or bank cards sounds like cloud nine
   But for stomach flu
   Living in an alley makes a resume
   Very nearly worthless I’d say!
   We’ll have addictions that is the norm
   Stealing from the stores
   Hope you still need me we will indeed be
   Sleeping out of doors!

   WOOH!
   1. mrsyk January 17, 2024 at 9:08 am

      Heh heh. And I won’t ever shave!
      1. Bsn January 17, 2024 at 12:03 pm

         Ah, but you should shave, every day to be nice and clean.
         1. Offtrail January 17, 2024 at 6:10 pm

            Yes, take a lesson from Shrek.
   2. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 12:48 pm

      Dueling When i’m Sixty Four parodies

      When it gets colder losing my range
      Many days from now
      Will you still be sending me a tow truck crane
      Internal combustion greetings, run on 87 octane

      If I’d been out of power till quarter to three
      Would I get locked outdoors
      Will Elon still need me, will the grid still feed me
      When It’s minus 34

      Your gas powered truck would be older too
      And if you say the word
      I could stay with you

      You could be handy, giving a ride
      When my range is gone
      You can fill up in 10 minutes with all you need
      Those gas guzzlers tend to abide
      Driving on the 10, not in the weeds
      Who could ask for more

      Will Elon still need me, will the grid still feed me
      When It’s minus 34

      Every summer we can rent a Tesla
      From Avis or Hertz, if it’s not too dear
      We shall scrimp and save
      Supercharger for all your needs
      Gas stations are for knaves

      Send me a text, drop me an e-mail
      Stating point of view
      Indicate precisely what you mean to say
      Yours sincerely, wasting away

      Give me your answer, fill in a form
      Mine is bricked for evermore
      Will Elon still need me, will the grid still feed me
      When It’s minus 34
      1. Oh January 18, 2024 at 10:51 am

         Good job! Bravo!
   3. Sardonia January 17, 2024 at 7:59 pm

      God, I love these….
2. zagonostra January 17, 2024 at 7:21 am

   >The geometry of other people aeon

   Architecture has often been used as a tool to communicate specific narratives about social relations and distributions of power.

   I am reminded of the following line from Bob Dylan’s Tombstone Blues viz Gaza.

   The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone
   Causes Galileo’s math book to get thrown
   1. .human January 17, 2024 at 8:06 am

      I don’t remember where, or when, I read that if you want a quick take on how a country’s populace is treated, consider the number of corporate skyscrapers in its downtowns.
   2. CA January 17, 2024 at 8:51 am

      Beijing has a new ginkgo tree forest library:

      https://hypebeast.com/2022/1/snohetta-sub-center-library-ginkgo-tree-forest-design-beijing-china

      https://english.news.cn/20240114/48d6146a458b43c2bcb9248e7e91f088/c.html

      January 14, 2024

      Citizens visit Beijing Library to spend leisure time
3. The Rev Kev January 17, 2024 at 7:21 am

   “As Trump nears GOP nomination, elitist media again treats American voters like they’re stupid – it’s 2016 all over again”

   This article reports that the New York Times said-

   “The responsibility of Republican voters,” it declared in a Sunday editorial, is “to nominate a candidate who is fit to serve as president.” Trump, the Gray Lady insisted, “is manifestly unworthy.”

   If I lived in America and was a Republican, I would be having a good laugh about that. Mainly because when it came time, Democrat voters picked Joe Biden who is manifestly unworthy and not fit for office. And what is more, they are going to pick this octogenarian, corrupt doofus a second time.
   1. Dr. John Carpenter January 17, 2024 at 8:22 am

      If Trump is “manifestly unworthy” for office, how come he wasn’t removed from that office when he previously held it? Krom knows they tried. How come they couldn’t do it?

      (Full disclosure: I think both Trump and Biden are unfit to serve. The fact that both have shows I need to re-calibrate my idea of fitness for office.)
      1. The Rev Kev January 17, 2024 at 8:38 am

         These days, fitness for office means a pulse and loyalty to Israel. The odd thing is that Biden, Trump and Bernie all show an absolute loyalty & devotion to Israel – a country that did not even exist when all three of them were born
         1. JTMcPhee January 17, 2024 at 5:16 pm

            …and has been screwing over Americans and America ever since. Remember the USS Liberty!

            Likud does not equal Judaism. A big part of the essence of Likud is the Eleventh Commandment, “Thou shall not be a Freier,” Yiddish for “sucker,” and its corollary, “Thou shall make a sucker out of everyone else,” especially the big one, Uncle Sucker.” https://www.haaretz.com/2007-01-28/ty-article/thou-shalt-not-be-a-freier/0000017f-e3ad-d38f-a57f-e7ffa5630000

            Like Yahoo brags, he can “move” the US like a baby stroller, or words to that effect. https://youtu.be/K9KDhsFFfGU?si=ebR-sxtEPUdAmxFy

            The fervent prayers of the forking Rapturists may very well be answered shortly, but I expect they will discover there’s no last minute reprieve for them.
      2. Oh January 18, 2024 at 10:55 am

         Politicians don’t serve. They get served.
   2. griffen January 17, 2024 at 8:48 am

      I saw a post in, of all the unlikely places, Linked In yesterday afternoon bestowing the greatness of our sitting President Biden and the unfit, perhaps somewhat unhealthy status of former President Trump. “Joe Biden has a schedule that would run a 22 year old ragged…” Joe Biden rides a bike, and I guess he doesn’t fall. Joe Biden does not stumble on stage or going up a flight of stairs, apparently.

      Blech. I saw (at a minimum) one individual pushing back against the “Democrats are We” political tropes, and thought they were doing so quite well. Granted some of this might have, likely, included business leaders and thought leaders chiming in, I paid heed to it for 30 seconds then moved along.

      Americans should eat this platter of dog food in 2024 ! \ SARC
      1. NotTimothyGeithner January 17, 2024 at 9:29 am

         In 2012, these posts would just claim the great one was the greatest evah with so many accomplishments they couldn’t name one. Now they are claiming Biden a man with a known stutter doesn’t mumble. Just bizarre.
      2. playon January 17, 2024 at 2:24 pm

         I read that Biden has taken more vacation time than dubya did, I believe a record amount.
   3. JP January 17, 2024 at 10:12 am

      Democratic voters did not pick Biden. When it looked like Bernie was gaining traction the rug was pulled by the DNC and Biden was shoved down our throats.
   4. diptherio January 17, 2024 at 10:15 am

      Democrat voters did not pick Joe Biden, the DNC did. They are not being allowed a meaningful primary this time around. Let’s not fall for the fallacy that the voters have agency in selecting the party’s presidential candidates.
   5. Carolinian January 17, 2024 at 10:52 am

      According to their longstanding motto the NYT only has the news that is “fit to print” so they clearly see fitness as their specialty. And since the paper literally came to be during the Victorian era it may be part of their DNA. Doubtless the editors also use the royal “we.”

      Of course respectability isn’t what it used to be and allowing crooks like Genocide Joe into the club may signal a decline in the Times’ god like powers of judgment.

      But then royalty isn’t what it used to be either going by the UK where downmarket tabloids used to practically survive on it. In our current era Trump is starting to seem pretty normal.
   6. Katniss Everdeen January 17, 2024 at 11:36 am

      At this point, I hope all of the “elitist” media–nyt to joy reid–keep it up. This is not 2016 or even 2020. There’s been so much water under that propaganda bridge in the last eight years, it’s not worth the energy to even refute what the msm says anymore.

      It’s enough to know that they said it to know it’s all so much bullshit, unless you’re stuck in the beltway bubble.

      Now there’s Rumble and Greenwald, Substack, Grayzone, Useful Idiots, Napolitano and MacGregor, Tucker on his own, and even some stuff on youtube. Musk bought X, and while it’s not perfect, it’s way better than it was. There are video and alternate analysis everywhere.

      That these crazies don’t understand what 16% “confidence” in the msm means, must surely be the 8th wonder of the world, and only makes them look more stupid than I would have thought possible.
4. Colonel Smithers January 17, 2024 at 7:23 am

   Thank you, Yves, for the links, including to Lloyd’s List.

   I worked at Lloyd’s, the insurance market, not the bank, at the turn of the century, when it was still old school City, and am stunned that such stories and the brokers and underwriters who work there do not feature in the MSM. It says a lot.

   Two Tory politicians, David Cameron, who has family links with HSBC, (Standard) Chartered, Jardine Matheson and Panmure Gordon, and Hugo Swire of the eponymous firm, have links with Lloyd’s and ought to be aware of the risks from their circle, if not from the MSM and PMC.
   1. The Rev Kev January 17, 2024 at 7:46 am

      Thank you, Colonel. You would think that David Cameron would be well aware of the insurance risks in attacking Yemen. You would think. However, it is my understanding that he played a very large part in organizing the bombing of Yemen due to his experience in bombing places like Syria, Iraq and Libya. You can’t argue with that sort of experience. /sarc
      1. ambrit January 17, 2024 at 10:46 am

         Well, have everyone forgotten already the Aden Crisis? Anyone remember who won that one?
         See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aden_Emergency
         I remember a few years ago, (how time flies,) watching a video about Yemeni fighting against I believe the Saudi proxies. One older fellow was banging away with an old Lee Enfield .303 bolt action rifle. Dedication like that is very hard to beat.
         It looks like someone has figured out the perfect means of asymmetric warfare to use against the West. Hit them where it hurts most; in their wallets.
5. The Rev Kev January 17, 2024 at 7:53 am

   “Zelensky warns against “freezing” the war”

   Zelensky does not get to make this call. I guess that he is worried that this is what Washington will want to do in the Ukraine so that they can get to concentrate on the elections in only 11 months time. Not sure if the Russians will play ball however. Nonetheless, not everything that Zelensky said got reported in the main stream media. Like when he not only threatened Putin but also his children and grandchildren as in-

   ‘Putin will not “rest in peace, both in this world and in the next,” said Zelensky. “Neither his children, nor his grandchildren.” ‘

   Zelensky is what he is – a piano playing thug. And he was not alone making this veiled threat either-

   ‘Zelensky’s mention of Putin’s grandchildren came just a day after Anne Applebaum – an American journalist and wife of Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski – claimed that the Russian president “has a grandson with Dutch citizenship.” Her source was an associate of Alexey Navalny, a Russian blogger imprisoned for embezzlement.’

   https://www.rt.com/russia/590754-zelensky-davos-putin-grandchildren/
6. NN Cassandra January 17, 2024 at 7:55 am

   In Norway EV are big thing, 80% of new cars sold last year were electric only. So it looks like they can work in cold climate.
   1. ex-PFC Chuck January 17, 2024 at 8:48 am

      Norway will get a lot colder fast if/when the AMOC stops in its tracks.
      1. Polar Socialist January 17, 2024 at 9:49 am

         AMOC is mostly caused by the Earth’s rotation, so it only stops when the Earth stops rotating. And if that happens, Norwegians will have plenty of other issues to worry. And so will the rest of us, too.
         1. Janeway January 17, 2024 at 1:39 pm

            Correct, it won’t stop unless the earth stops spinning.

            But, it can slow down to the point where it has no useful effects for human civilization. A car going 75 mph is one thing, the same car going 10 mph is another.

            Both are still moving but is that really the comparison point?
            1. Irrational January 17, 2024 at 2:16 pm

               AMOC is not the Gulf Stream, see https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/gulf-stream-collapse-amoc/
         2. Jabura Basaidai January 17, 2024 at 2:38 pm

            thought the UK was the main beneficiary of AMOC not the Scandinavian countries – and that it was a thermohaline circulation caused by the different water temp above and below – thought your assertion was interesting, tried to find something about it but unable – most sounded like this –
            https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/amoc.html
      2. upstater January 17, 2024 at 1:09 pm

         The Grey Lady weighs in on the EV freeze-up in Chicago and discusses Norway at some length.

         Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

         A key fact about Norway:

         the majority of people in Norway live in houses, not apartments, and nearly 90 percent of electric vehicle owners have their own charging stations at home

         It’s a good thing most Tesla owners have NPR mugs and tote bags instead of 9mm Glocks.
   2. JohnA January 17, 2024 at 8:53 am

      There are plenty of charging points which means you are less likely to get stuck without power. Plus electric cars are exempt from parking charges, road tax, congestion charges etc., and there is tax relief on purchases, while combustion engine vehicles are heavily taxed.
      1. Carolinian January 17, 2024 at 10:59 am

         I spoke with a neighbor who has a Tesla and says he only charges at home. And that’s necessary around here because there are very few public chargers.

         Plus a lot of people who own Teslas are rich enough to have other ICE cars. The real issue is probably mass adoption of EV versus the demonstration project beginnings.
   3. JBird4049 January 17, 2024 at 9:02 am

      I am guessing that the Norwegians have better infrastructure than the United States and maybe better designed cars as well. America’s infrastructure is decaying, not improving, and much of the population lives in areas quite a ways from major population centers as well. Aside from the delusions of the upper classes for EVs, local governments do nothing to make it a practical choice, aside from mandating its use as in California. It is just stupid, wishful thinking.
      1. gk January 17, 2024 at 2:34 pm

         This presumably applies elsewhere in Europe as well. I once saw a Norwegian Tesla on a highway in Italy.
   4. Amfortas the Hippie January 17, 2024 at 9:11 am

      i have lots of experience with a golfcart…6 6volt lead acid battries, wired into one big battry.
      does not like the cold.
      wont charge properly when it gets below freezing….and is sluggish below 35.
      for extreme cold like weve had for almost 4 days, i keep it in moms barn(a hangar for it over here is in the works…have the material…working my way around the place)
      if you can keep it warm when it charges, the problems are less…altho that would effect its carbon footprint, i suppose
      1. juno mas January 17, 2024 at 11:15 pm

         Lead/acid batteries are particularly susceptible to poor performance in cold weather. Try placing a 60w incandescent bulb in the battery compartment overnight to keep it warm.
   5. FreeMarketApologist January 17, 2024 at 9:18 am

      I don’t doubt they work, it’s just the practicality and range effects that make me resistant to adopting an EV. I’d be curious to know the details of how they’re used/charged/etc. My rural New York ‘garage’ (a barn, detached from the house) is unheated, and while putting the car in a sheltered spot helps a bit, the space is usually only a few degrees warmer than the outside (currently 12F, won’t be going above freezing all week, and lows will be in the low single digits all week). If extending battery life / range is dependent on heating that space (even marginally), the economics of an EV aren’t going to work. Many people in this area don’t have enclosed parking that could be heated, so the practicality and economics of EVs are even less viable for them.
      1. GC54 January 17, 2024 at 10:51 am

         EV owner here of $16k used ancient Chevy Bolt w brand new 63.3 kWh traction battery. Car gets 260 miles of 45 mph average driving rationally one passenger on the flats and a full charge down to ~60°F, about 4.3 mi/kWh. The cabin heater takes 7-8 kW blowing hard (no ICE waste heat), or you can bundle up and resistively heat seats and steering wheel and paradoxically run AC to avoid fogging at 2-3 kW. Tactic in cold is to preheat cabin & traction battery on mains then depart 10-15 mins later. If the car is plugged in overnight in cold on a reasonable home L2 EVSE (240 V @ 32 A), the traction battery is kept at near optimum T; during driving it self heats as it discharges. Fast charging (L3 at > 50 kW) is very slow until the battery warms up. Edmontonians w Bolts report recently that 15-20% is diverted to battery conditioning, but car still fully charges overnight; I believe that Teslas suck more juice to more aggressively condition. (GM claims the battery should be on mains when it is below freezing to avoid the conditioning power draw at start; excessive heat kills the battery life not cold so ideally should be plugged in above 95°F too.) Getting a full charge during a workday with the car below freezing is another matter. In cold weather, range can halve so plan accordingly when considering your commute. All of this is thoughtless after a few days.
         Another hit on range are snow tires, the low friction OEM tires sold to push range are dangerous even in rain. Better 3-reasons drop range 5%.
      2. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 11:23 am

         When we were at Saline hot springs, there was talk of a Tesla owner who came to the hot springs on normal weather kind of conditions a fortnight prior and blew through 80 miles of range on the way out in about 10 miles thanks to conditions of the road which was quite uneven and dusty, and needed a tow out, a costly proposition off-road, around a grandido.
         1. juno mas January 17, 2024 at 11:23 pm

            Taking a Tesla on a 20 mile, rutted dirt road to the middle of nowhere is not smart. There are spots on that road that cause highway cars to bottom out. The battery is on the bottom.

            (My last trip there was 1980 before the Feds took the springs over.)
      3. Bsn January 17, 2024 at 12:19 pm

         If you can, put solar panels on your garage to feed the car. We put some up years ago and they paid for themselves in 4 years. Now the price of “gas” via our panels is free. Owning an EV is a long term solution. Depending on many variables, your EV pays for itself in 5 – 10 years. If kept in decent shape, you then have a “free” vehicle for many years. And keeping them in decent shape is easy. Had a Leaf for about 5 years. At the first (and final) “tune up”, the mechanic said there isn’t much to do besides just kick the tires.
      4. Will January 17, 2024 at 12:20 pm

         Here is a detailed explanation of the challenges facing EVs in cold weather. Also provides info on how the cold affects 12 popular EV models. It’s from a group trying to encourage EV adoption.

         https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-loss

         Keeping the EV in a garage probably helps ‘insulate’ the battery from the cold but I don’t think the garage needs to be heated. The important thing seems to be keeping the battery warm, which can be accomplished by keeping the EV plugged in overnight.

         The dead Teslas story in Links is about the inability to charge at Tesla charging stations. Presumably this means the cars were not plugged in over night and showed up to the charging station with batteries that were not heated up to the optimum temperature for a fast recharge.

         Aside from range issues, the big draw back for me is that they recommend minimizing how well the cabin is heated. ICs use waste heat from the combustion process to heat the interior but EVs have to draw from the battery. Which goes back to range, but what’s the point of showing up to your destination as a popsicle?
      5. Mikel January 17, 2024 at 1:00 pm

         So, the price of an EV has to include the price of a house right now?
         1. NYMutza January 17, 2024 at 4:26 pm

            For the price of Tesla Model S you can buy a house. :)
   6. Es s Ce tera January 17, 2024 at 9:48 am

      I’m in Canada with lots of EV owning friends, the parking lot at my work is at least 1/3 Teslas, and we’re all a bit baffled about the US midwest power grid. Yeah, if US infrastructure can’t handle the weather better to let the rest of the world have the EV’s.
      1. playon January 17, 2024 at 2:46 pm

         The US grid is in bad shape. We are in the PNW just south of BC Canada. Last week we had a cold snap that was down to 11 Fahrenheit for a few nights (not a big deal compared to where we used to live east of the Cascades) and we received texts from Puget power telling us we had to conserve energy. This is in the land of hydro power… we have a propane furnace so not a issue for us.
   7. Boomheist January 17, 2024 at 11:51 am

      Not to belabor a decades old point, here, but when I worked as a consultant in the 1970s, for God’s sake, back before there was a Department of Energy, and the Department of Interior dealt with energy issues, back when the oil embargo was just ending in the mid 1970s, we had a contract with DOI to determine the “net energy” of various forms of fuel production – that is, how much energy it took to produce a btu of usable fuel energy. This meant, looking at the energy inputs needed to, for example, produce a btu of coal energy by looking at the energy needed to run the mining equipment and vehicles, the mines, the transport to use a fuel; similarly for oil energy, hydro energy, gas energy, nuclear energy, and I think solar energy as well. I don’t think we were looking at wind energy as they was then barely on the horizon, one big effort in Vermont in the late 1930s and nothing since, surely not what we have seen in the last 30 years. Anyway, we did that contract, and then we got a follow on contract to look at the net energy of fuel uses at the end source; ie, for heating homes and buildings, for running various transport systems, for growing various foods.

      Back then, and this was before we came to understand the need for hard to mine and energy intensive needs to extract rare minerals for batteries and electric vehicles, basically we determines that for the production of electric power the net energy aspect was about 25-33 percent for oil and coal fired power plants; ie, you burned two or three btus as waste heat for every btu you consumed. It was better for hyrdo, a lot better, I think for gas the efficiency was better, too, maybe even close to 50 percent (and by the way in the mid 1970s hardly anyone used gas for power production except for rare emergencies, the huge shift to gas came later). Nuclear was hard to estimate as it all depended on the energy costs for long term storage of waste, but it, too, came out high, ,maybe even as high as 80 percent.

      OK. Then when you look at cars, which then burned oil, we found that an auto burning gasoline ended up with, say, a 40 percent efficiency, meaning, for every 4 used btus in the engine 6 were wasted as heat, or something like that, Of course there were emission and health issues too about that exhaust, just as there were about the stuff spewing from smokestacks from coal and oil and gas powered electric plants. In one case, car exhaust generating smog over a city. in the other emissions creating acid rain and raining down on places downwind for hundreds iof miles.

      Along comes the idea of electric cars, a total removal of air emission issues locally. Hooray. But when you plug in that EV battery, and charge it, you are getting an efficiency totally dependent on the mix of power sourses for where you livre. Here in the Pacific Northwest, supposedly the hydro capital of the world, we still end up using a big percentage of power from coal fired plants, and gas plants. Let;s say for the purposes of efficiency we can average a net efficiency here of 55 percent, which is just a guess but I bet generally accurate. Other regions night have much lower efficiencies approaching 33-40 percent, places with big coal and oil plants, gas plants. Back when we did our study I was in New England, sourced by number 2 diesel powered electric plants, 25-33 percent efficiency, with some nuclear; now New England gets a lot of power sent down from huge Canadian Quebec hydro dams, so maybe New England is more efficient…

      Now you come to EVs, which everyone thinks are 100 percent efficient. They are not. It takes energy to make them, deliver them, maintain them, make the batteries, mine the rare matertials. All together let’s say they are, to be generous, 80 percent efficient, ie, they end up getting and using 80 percent of the power coming from the charger, 8 btus into their batteries and their drive trains from the 10 btus supplied. To come up with net energy of EVs, real efficiency you have to multiply two numbers – the net energy of the power grid and then the net energy of the EV itself….

      If the power grid is 55 percent efficient (most efficient mixture of hydro nuclear solar snd traditional coal and gas and oil production) then the net energy of the EV is (power NE)(vehicle NE), or (.55)(.80)= .44

      If the power grid is 30-40 percent efficient (mostly coal and gas) then the figure is (.30 or .40(.80) )= .24 to .32

      If you just buy a regular gasoline powered car with good mileage, its net energy comes out to be about the same if not better than what the end energy needs for an EV are. No need for charging stations or those rare minerals. Yes, air impacts such as they are these days will be local, not regional or national. Haven;t seen an analysis of simply keeping the existing infrastructure and fleet running for years and years, but I would bet that analysis would show a better result than an EV future for decades to come.

      This is a long way of saying the entire EV mania is false, built with rosy-colored assumptions, and will, in the end, save us little in the way of fuel needs and use. Or at least that’s what we found now nearly 50 years ago.

      I can only imagine the apoplectic responses this will get, but the truth is, and I think basic people get this, if you use a machine you need to plug in for power, then that machine’s efficiency is totally dependent on the efficiency of the power system, and last time I looked that efficiency isn’t any better than a high mileage well built gasoline or diesel vehicle.

      Sorry.
      1. Bsn January 17, 2024 at 12:23 pm

         Which would you rather breath? Exhaust from an EV or exhaust from a 2004 diesel auto? Sorry.
         1. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 12:56 pm

            I prefer Locomotive Breath…

            By Jethro Tull

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4JqvK3Fwn8
            1. IMOR January 17, 2024 at 2:47 pm

               Wuk, you are the all-time winner!
         2. Janeway January 17, 2024 at 1:51 pm

            Let’s take into account the air pollution from mining the lithium and other rare earth minerals, likely from China or Chile.

            Then let’s take into account the air pollution from transporting those to the refining factories.

            Then let’s take into account the air pollution from those refining factories.

            Then let’s take into account the air pollution from the EV manufacturing/assembly sites.

            Then let’s take into account the air pollution from the heavy ICE trucks that transport the EVs to the showroom.

            And finally, let’s take into account the air pollution from the electricity grid powering the charging of the EVs.

            Sorry.
            1. juno mas January 17, 2024 at 11:31 pm

               Yes, the solution to pollution is drive less. Consume less.
         3. Peter VE January 17, 2024 at 3:30 pm

            I think his point includes the exhaust from the power plant, which we can locate upwind of “those” people.
            1. bob January 17, 2024 at 5:19 pm

               It’s not about emissions, its about arrogance.
      2. SKM January 17, 2024 at 12:52 pm

         thanks so much for that detailed breakdown re EVs. As a lay person in this field I suspected something like this (the electricity has to come from somewhere!) but I had no idea of the figures. So thanks again. Then you factor in the carbon cost of manufacture of new cars…… even if I could afford a car, no way would I buy either a new car or, therefore, an EV
         1. Irrational January 17, 2024 at 2:25 pm

            I am not sure what to make of the stranded Teslas. However, couple it with the article NC linked to the other day about cost of ownership, this becomes a hurdle if a more expensive car does not do what you want it to when you want it to.
            Speaking from personal driving behavior we tend to do hardly any city driving, mostly medium to long trips on roads with a speed limit of 100-120 km/h. We have done the math on a diesel, hybrid and plug-in hybrid and – I am almost ashamed to report – with our driving behavior and without accounting for the cost of charging (!), the diesel wins out on total cost and carbon emissions. The hybrid is the worst choice, it just lowers high petrol/gas usage a little, the plug-in is highly sensitive to driving scenarios, but is a lot more expensive. It’s sobering and depressing.

            Hmm… all of my posts end up in moderation. I don’t think I am saying anything nasty and I supply either facts or links. Oh well…
            1. digi_owl January 17, 2024 at 3:27 pm

               As i recall, brands were reluctant to introduce hybrids as they are the worst of both worlds. But they did so in order to alleviate customer range anxieties.

               Basically you end up with a smaller engine and fuel tank as well as a smaller battery in a otherwise heavy vehicle.

               Anyways, the problem right now is that there are two competing interests stuck in a three legged race.

               The first interest is getting down CO2 from burning fossil fuels.

               The second is inner city air quality.

               Moving from petrol to diesel alleviates the first but result in higher NOx emissions, that makes street side air worse. In particular during cold weather with little to no wind.

               Frankly if they want EVs inside city limits, they should move to trolley buses and trucks using overhead electricity. And allow rural areas to continue to use diesel.
      3. GC54 January 17, 2024 at 1:02 pm

         Indeed, all good points. I’m under no delusions re my econobox EV’s net & embodied energy. My grid power is half nuke, half NG. I bought a used new-battery Bolt w the federal $4k tax credit as the most cost-effective way to get the instant torque, super responsiveness, and very low maintenance (so far) of an EV vs ICE car with its maze of piping under the hood, commonplace motives.
         1. Bill Malcolm January 17, 2024 at 5:31 pm

            AC power from interconnected grids cannot separate out the various generational inputs and types by region. AC power is totally unlike DC battery circuits, and thus, frankly, 99% of the general public talk through their hats on grid AC electricity. AC power is much more a push-pull phenomenon — electrons don’t travel through miles of wires, they oscillate back and forth over tiny distances within conductors. Sorry.

            So, after years of working for an electrical utility, it became obvious to me that the average citizen knows no more about AC power than does a gnat. I specialized in metering, and one does have to have a bit of a clue and understanding to comprehnd the principles behind various metering theory schemes.

            Boomheist is correct. The majority of the responses are uninformed to the max. It takes only a few back of the envelope calculations to show what’s what, and he gets it right. I gave up almost two decades ago trying to straigten out the total disconnect between reality and what people “think” about EVs and grid electricity. So have most utility engineers. Why bother when you’re faced with a wall of complete non-understanding, myths and magical conjecture? From people who believe they’re correct about something they have not the first clue about? You just give up to get along.

            Norway, with virtually all electricity generated by hydropower is an ideal place for EVs. It also, out of the other side of its face, flogs North Sea oil and gas for an essentially free ride both electrically and economically. The US is not Norway, which is, gasp, a special case and the only one I’m aware of.

            Any sane analysis of the best way to power vehicles, unaffeced by techno-dimwits and politicians and greedy capitalists, would rapidly come to the conclusion that the best solution in general is a hybrid vehicle, and not a plug-in one either — the PHEV is a creature born of existing electrical energy pricing structures, not engineering.

            Guess who makes proper hybrids? Toyota. No fools they. They research all options from EVs to hydrogen fuel cells to natural gas purely to make sure they can supply product to markets where some political winds blow that aren’t connected to reality. Which s virtually everywhere. Toyota has been criticized for being late to the pure EV game by all the folks who haven’t got the first clue what they’re nattering on about — which is virtually everyone. Sorry.

            And no, I don’t own a Toyota because their driving characteristics bore me silly. Since society as a whole has decided it’s a fine idea to proceed with its head firmly buried in the sand, I pick what I like to drive. It’s like the obvious climate crisis — nobody is really taking it seriously, we just all hope for the best and furthermore, hope we have a nice life and croak before things get really, really serious. Seems to me as I approach my fourth decade of existence that the human animal just works this way genetically.
      4. NYMutza January 17, 2024 at 4:34 pm

         There is lots of data that shows that solar power and electric vehicles are scams in that they don’t result in net reductions of greenhouse gases, and they impose enormous environmental risks throughout their supply chains and life cycles. Those who purchase electric vehicles and install rooftop solar panels are signaling how virtuous they are, but they are fooling themselves if they think doing so is going to move the greenhouse gases emissions needle even the tiniest.
      5. Revenant January 17, 2024 at 5:40 pm

         Not enough people understand this!

         On a related note I have spent an unwanted amount of time in the weeds of the UK building regulations, opposing a neighbour’s plan to demolish a fine old house and put up two plastic McMansions. His main argument is the impossibility of refurbishing the old house for energy efficiency (a stupid lie) and to bolster his case he now wants to add a second double garage with rooftop PV (because the McMansion design forgot to include any, it is so eco-friendly!). I have discovered that the building regulations assume a solar PV array so a house without one will have worse emissions than the notional house of same shape and reference construction specification.

         However, I also discovered that the regulations deem the primary energy intensity and emissions intensity etc of grid electricity. Two things stand out.

         First, between the first edition in 2012 and the second in 2022, the emissions intensity of the grid has been assumed to drop by about 75%! The UK has indeed added a lot of solar and wind and closed a lot of coal but on a dark windless night the entire grid is running on fossil fuels and nuclear, including a dash of French nuclear va-va-voom. No justification was presented beyond a “more renewables” arm wave: I would really like to know if, as I suspect, the deemed energy mix is actually a *dreamed* energy mix, for political reasons, rather than the historical performance. We have had a week on windless Arctic nights so far and another week to go so January’s electricity will not be so clean!

         Second, when you look at the carbon emissions of electricity in 2012, it was terrible and, given the primary fuel efficiency, using gas for heating was far better. Now, in 2022, gas is still better than electricity but they are assuming that air source heat pumps (notionally 300% efficient but only deemed 170% efficient, which is some sort of room-for-error sanity) save the day because only they use only 1/1.7 = 60% of the electrical energy to deliver the same heat output.

         Having seen this, I have begun to feel the entire regulations have been written backwards from the “right” answer and we are going to have to spend billions on upgrading the grid and extracting thousands of tonnes of copper and aluminium and steel, just to abandon natural gas which remains the most efficient space heating option, while only marginally reducing overall carbon emissions.

         The building regulations should have been written to mandate near zero space heating demand (perfectly possible, a Passivhaus costs only a few thousand pounds more to build than a leaky one, if designed from scratch). This would have saved all the carbon etc and without the grid transformation.

         Cui bono?
      6. zach January 17, 2024 at 9:56 pm

         Tangential to the conversation of energy conversions and efficiencies, but important to the broader discussion of EV vs ICE, is how much (or how little) of the vehicles can be recycled at the end of their service life. Google says (via wikipedia) that 75% of an automobile (the search term i used) can be recycled, with the remaining 25% being landfilled, while “the global recycling rate of EV batteries is currently 5%” (via something called FutureTracker).

         I failed chemistry but I seem to recall learning something about how lithium isn’t such a nice thing to be in your drinking water. Or… it’s a doubleplusgood thing? It’s getting harder and harder to keep it all straight.
      7. NN Cassandra January 18, 2024 at 4:31 am

         While this may be technically interesting, it’s also irrelevant in practice. You may think 4% efficiency is horrendous and nothing could be build with that, yet the whole living world runs on this, because that is the efficiency with which plants convert sunlight. It works because sunlight is free and plentiful, so you may lose 96% of it and still come comfortably ahead.

         Also the point of EV is that the energy grid will be converted to generation from renewables, which we are doing because of the pollution thing, so the question if it’s more efficient to burn oil in each vehicle or in couple of big power plants is again technically interesting, but in practice irrelevant to what is being attempted.
   8. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 18, 2024 at 6:44 am

      All of this misses the point. My issue is being stuck in the cold, say the car spins out on ice. Or caught on a freeway behind a big accident. You drain the battery keeping the car warm. Then what???

      I do not find a car that must be towed when it runs out of fuel to be acceptable.. A hybrid with a small emergency gas reserve is IMHO necessary for safety.
      1. The Rev Kev January 18, 2024 at 7:22 am

         Last winter in America there was that big snow storm on the east coast that caught all those cars on the highway and those that had EV cars were screwed when their batteries ran dry.
7. Otto Reply January 17, 2024 at 8:08 am

   re: Ukraine aid benefits arms industry, not US economy Responsible Statecraft. Great piece. “In short, whenever military spending is increased, it just means that communities already accustomed to receiving large quantities of defense dollars are given even more than usual.” The US DoD infographic [PDF] showing the economic impact of warfare as usual is worth a gander.
8. G. Papadopoulos January 17, 2024 at 8:12 am

   Re: US as a travel destination
   Beyond the horrors of CBP at entry, there’s stories like this where a robbery gone wrong ends in a fatal shooting.

   Why would anyone want to come here? I’m working on leaving permanently!
   1. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 8:39 am

      I have a very skewed view of tourists from overseas visiting us, in that our National Parks are nothing like the rest of the country, in that there is really no hypercapitalism here and the all too often ugly debris field that accompanies it, nor are guns allowed other than to be carried* through the NP’s, if you were to shoot them-you’d be subject to instant arrest.

      Crime in general simply doesn’t exist in our nature sanctuaries, which is the main reason to come to these not so united states-our not so fetching cities dominated by cars, filth and overbuilding everywhere, notwithstanding.

      * Obama could have vetoed this in 2010, but being the milquetoast that he is, meekly bowed to the gun lobby.
      1. Carolinian January 17, 2024 at 11:06 am

         Latest sign at my Walmart: “Please no openly carried firearms.” They have to say “please.”

         Or maybe they don’t have to but they say it anyway. Perhaps this is Walmart famously knowing their customers?
         1. ambrit January 17, 2024 at 11:32 am

            The tell for me is that the W—M— website will not give out any information about ammunition stocks, prices, etc. for stores. They do sell it, they just do not want the ‘general public’ to know.
            1. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 11:37 am

               The locked glass ammo case @ Wal*Mart used to be my Baedeker for how the populace felt about not having enough pointy metal things.

               During the Obama years, the cupboard was pretty bare with only odd calibers for sale, and by the time Trump got in they were fully stocked, but Wal*Mart did away with ammo sales in Cali like 5 years ago.
            2. playon January 17, 2024 at 4:37 pm

               I recall that after hurricane Katrina the Walmart in New Orleans had a lot of weapons “liberated”.
               1. ambrit January 17, 2024 at 7:14 pm

                  Oh yes. And some high end local auto dealerships had SUVs and similar rolling stock “liberated,” by fleeing policemen and women!
                  I remember the National Guard troops that set up base in the half wrecked Volunteer Fire Department facility down the road. I believe they were from New York State. I teased one one lazy afternoon about her not having a magazine in her rifle as she patrolled our stretch of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She laughed and told me that they weren’t even being issued live ammunition.
                  Roughly, she said; “This is considered a quiet spot. The natives are friendly. Over in New Orleans now, they get live ammo, and permission to shoot too.”
                  The real story of what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina will probably never be known. Many of the witnesses are “silent.”
                  If you want to see a “gunned up” place, take a trip to Metairie, Louisiana, the main suburb to the west of New Orleans.
   2. Revenant January 17, 2024 at 6:28 pm

      As an alien, I can recommend SFO and SEA and, oddly, EWR (Newark) as ports of entry. Really quite civilised. Short waits and no line Nazis in the passport queue. I grew to like Newark best of all the NYC airports. It even has a train into Manhattan.

      I seem to remember BOS was not too bad. I also quite liked IAD on occasion but the gate-buses were as tiresome as they are winsome and the airport is miles away.

      JFK, LAX and ORD are all too sprawling and crumbling and domestic-traffic dominated (plus “weather” for ORD because the Rockies run 90deg the wrong way and allow the Gulf and Great Lakes air masses to meet!).

      I only tried DFW once and that was enough: US passport control destroyed my passport, kept me incommunicado for several hours and I caught swine flu.

      All the great texts warn travellers never to use MIA. It is a third world theme park ride if an airport and apparently British Airways top destination for lost/purloined luggage….
      1. Polar Socialist January 17, 2024 at 6:54 pm

         From my experience, ORD is still head and shoulders above JFK or LAX. Last time I entered USA with my family through ORD we landed seriously late and upon disembarking were given these bright waiver tickets by a nice lady waiting for us right at the gate.

         And sure enough, at every bottleneck trough the sprawl we were indeed led past the line and managed to catch our connecting flight. It did help a lot that the border control was satisfied merely seeing that we had Nordic passports and we were literally pushed trough the check point without the normal third-degree interrogation.
9. eg January 17, 2024 at 8:16 am

   Couldn’t the headline simply have stopped at “Bill Clinton’s Presidency Was a Disaster”?
   1. NotTimothyGeithner January 17, 2024 at 8:39 am

      It’s important to note the specific ways. The advent of the world wide Web and y2k spending covered how awful the Clinton years were to an extent. Naming Bob Rubin a day the reliance of Team Blue on the MBAs is important especially for older voters who were wrapped up in TV hoopla between Clinton and Gingrich or Bill’s extra curriculars. Gore would have been fairly awful too. Younger voters need to know it wasn’t always this way either. The article mentions the new jobs were largely garbage and at Wal Mart. Nostalgia is dangerous. How many 2008/2016 Hillary voters simply couldn’t see through her because they were younger in 1992?

      Not that I saw Biden embracing outright genocide, Biden’s presidency was doing better than expectations until he brought Neera Tanden into the fold. Clinton trash always produces the same results.
      1. Cassandra January 17, 2024 at 10:41 am

         ⁰NotTimothy, with respect, I suggest that you have not been paying attention to Biden’s stated beliefs about warfare in the Mideast and the state of Israel. He did have some good PR people working on his image during the Obama administration, but he is the same unregenerate >familyblog< that he has been these last forty years.

         Edit to add that this in no way diminishes the pernicious effects of Neera Tanden and her sisters in crime.
   2. Lefty Godot January 17, 2024 at 6:22 pm

      In the days leading up to his nomination, few saw who Clinton really was. By the time he ascended to power, it was too late.

      Clinton really was a right-wing DLC Democrat, and anyone paying attention knew that early in the primaries. The rationale for picking him was always that right-wing Democrats were supposed to be the only ones who are “electable” because McGovern Trauma. That was the big selling point for Clinton then, like it was for Jimmy Carter before him and Joe Biden after him. But voters aren’t electing a Democrat just for the sake of being able to say they did that. That’s the DailyKos fallacy. (And the bad assumption of the idiot No Labels bunch.) Voters are electing a Democrat to do something for working people, like FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and LBJ did (even if imperfectly in many cases). And Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden all failed the voters on that score. So they were either voted out in their re-election bids, or got a second chance but left the party with a toxic reputation among workers and others among the precariat. And their diagnosis of losing is always the same: “We weren’t centrist [right-wing] enough!” The party just needs to be replaced by a real opposition at this point. Their fakery has long exceeded its sell-by date.
10. Trees&Trunks January 17, 2024 at 8:26 am

    Unfortunately, the Damon & Schwab video is not for real. He does make a few really funny videos though.

    https://rumble.com/c/damonimani
11. Colonel Smithers January 17, 2024 at 8:30 am

    Thank you, Rev.

    You’re correct.

    Cameron’s ancestors have been prominent in the City, politics and court since the early 17th century. An ancestor was a Tory / royalist MP in the long parliament and is reckoned to be in the top 100 most scandalous MPs in history. However, unlike them, he has never got his hands dirty and learnt anything outside Eton, Oxford and Westminster.

    At Oxford, Cameron’s tutor, Vernon Bogdanor, reckoned he was the best PPE student he had taught and nicknamed him the professor and thought he could teach PPE. Bogdanor was rewarded with a peerage and, to make sitting in the upper house easier, transferred to nearby King’s College, London.

    In the university holidays, Cameron interned at Jardine Matheson. JM’s stockbroker was Panmure Gordon, led by Cameron’s father and grandfather. JM’s banker and cross shareholder is HSBC. HSBC’s first manager was Cameron’s great great grandfather. Another great great grandfather was the first manager of Chartered Bank, now Standard Chartered. As PM, Cameron employed a Keswick heiress to JM.

    Upon graduation, Cameron joined Tory HQ. On the morning of his interview at Tory HQ, his godmother called Tory HQ from Buckingham Palace to say that a rather nice young man was on his way for interview and hoped he does well.

    After Tory HQ and in advance of a parliamentary career, but also eased out after a fall out with the woman who later became my boss and against whom Cameron and Osborne still nurse a grudge from their Treasury days, Cameron got a job from Michael Green at Carlton TV, the London TV channel. Green famously employed anyone likely to advance his business interests and social climbing.

    This is a decent write-up, https://www.qmul.ac.uk/mei/news-and-opinion/2016-blog-archive/items/the-cameron-illusion.html. However, the identity of the caller from Buck House is disputed.

    A general once said to Cameron that fighting in Libya, Iraq or Afghanistan was not the same as the playing fields of Eton.

    This ease in life coupled with arrogance leads to the tragedies you mention above and his management of the Tory party that led to Brexit. It’s not uncommon. Look at the new French PM and foreign minister.
    1. The Rev Kev January 17, 2024 at 8:46 am

       Thank you, Colonel. The boys at The Duran were mocking the new French PM in that he looked like a younger clone of Macron himself. They even laughingly said that he might even be Macron’s son when you see them in the same photo together. But for this guy to choose his husband as Foreign Minister was just nepotism on steroids. France, what has happened to you? You used to be a serious country once. I can only imagine what feelings are like in the provinces.
12. The Rev Kev January 17, 2024 at 8:33 am

    Have to admit that the two Tigers in today’s Antidote du jour make a nice bookend to the two Snow Leopards at the top of the page.
13. timbers January 17, 2024 at 8:45 am

    ‘One of the biggest mass migrations in American history’ ********* The reasons are compelling. I have been just recently exploring the possibility of selling my house in Massachusetts and buying a house in Tennessee, when I decide to stop working. The benefits are impressive such swapping a $6000 annual Massachusetts house tax for $700 to $2500 in Tennessee plus keeping a big chuck of my proceeds from Massachusetts home sale. And, no Tennessee state income tax on 401K withdrawals…unlike Massachusetts. BTW in looking at homes online, have not noticed solar panels on roofs. In Massachusetts they are common.
    1. t January 17, 2024 at 10:13 am

       I have wondered how much is retirement to places like the Villages. Everyone I know who moved out of California, which is a mere dozen, couldn’t afford LA or San Francisco (Oakland) and the second or third child. But housing has almost caught up where they are now.
    2. Carolinian January 17, 2024 at 11:11 am

       Plus you’ll be closer to Opryland.

       We invite our frozen Northern cousins to join us. However you may need to develop a higher tolerance for humidity.
    3. griffen January 17, 2024 at 11:13 am

       Happy hunting on a new home. I have family ties that linger in the northeastern portion of TN, Johnson City and Greeneville. I spent a lot of time in Greeneville, near my mother’s sprawling family of aunts and uncles ( grandparents are there for the remainder of time at Andrew Johnson cemetery ). Be a bit forewarned, the sales tax is pernicious in the state. Knoxville airport isn’t too far away, which was a convenient entry and exit point for a time 10 to 15 years ago.

       Tennessee and western North Carolina offer so many outdoor options as well.
       1. timbers January 17, 2024 at 11:53 am

          Interesting. Johnson City is on my list of searches. Also Murfreesboro, Knoxville, Jefferson City, Clarksville, Nashville. If it’s a newly built home so far Meritage checks out to be a quality builder. DR Thorton is everywhere but get rather bad reviews quality wise. So I’m considering cookie cutter new construction and existing stock.
          1. Carolinian January 17, 2024 at 2:16 pm

             Be aware that Tennessee is very mountainous and weatherwise has one foot in the Midwest. Low in Nashville this morning was one. In SC where I live around 20.

             Not that this would faze somebody from Massachusetts of course.
14. Mark Gisleson January 17, 2024 at 8:49 am

    Regarding the Des Moines Register, I wish I could tell you more about Brianne Pfannenstiel. I’ve followed her on X for years but I’m not a regular reader of the Register anymore and don’t know enough about her. Lucas Grundmeier I know nothing about other than he’s about thirty years too young to be heading up an editorial staff. I cannot imagine what people his age imagine news to be but whatever it is, that’s what I’d ascribe that editorial’s weird vibe to.

    I’d rec following Pfannenstiel on X, as well as Gavin Aronsen.
    1. Lunker Walleye January 17, 2024 at 11:32 am

       Thanks for the suggestions, Mark. I followed both.
15. timbers January 17, 2024 at 9:03 am

    “Black Mountain Analysis” For the first time, I get why there can be reasons for Russia not striking “decision centers” and supply line infrastructure. Some decision centers can also be sources of intelligence from locals favoring Russia.
16. The Rev Kev January 17, 2024 at 9:10 am

    “European Parliament calls for fixing share of GDP to help Ukraine”

    I fully agree with the European Parliament. They should give 5%, no, 10% of each country of the EU’s GDP to the Ukraine each and every year. And they should totally empty out each country’s armouries and send every tank, every artillery piece, every APC, every bullet that they have in storage for their own defence to the Ukraine. And in a few weeks on the 2nd anniversary of this war, von der Leyen should announce that not only are they going to seize all those Russian frozen assets but that they will be sending it to the Ukraine. And in the same message, announce that the Ukraine is now officially part of the EU as part of an emergency decree not requiring a vote by their members. If all this sounds nut to you, be assured that there are EU Parliamentary members who would think this all most reasonable.
    1. NYMutza January 17, 2024 at 4:47 pm

       The Europeans should also send all of their vacation days to Ukraine. This way they can all stay home and no longer annoy the rest of the world with their “holidays abroad”.
17. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 9:14 am

    Its 30 years to the day since the Northridge earthquake in LA and I was in the thick of it after being on the outskirts far enough away where nothing much happened.

    I had to pick up some aged round metal discs in Orange County on the day of the temblor, so I spent Sunday at my parents in East LA where the quake certainly woke us up and the chandelier was a swaying for a minute and that was that.

    Took a shower (the last one for 3 or 4 days) and got in my jalopy to head to the west side of town where my business was, and nobody knew nothing on the radio, for instance there was no advisement to avoid the 10 Freeway, on account of it being collapsed, and luckily the 105 freeway had just been opened late in 1993, so when I got to the place where the 10 Freeway was coned off, all I had to do was take side streets to the 105, and then onto the 405, and then finally back on the 10 and had just made the long sweeping turn from the 405 when in the still darkened skies in the City of Angles, a transformed exploded about 1/2 a mile away, which remains the best ad hoc fireworks show i’ve ever seen, oh the colors!

    I got off on Lincoln Blvd and soon after had to swerve to miss the side of an apartment building which had fallen onto the street. I remember glimpsing somebody’s bathroom a few stories up and thought to myself what a difference 34 miles away in proximity made.

    Northridge got all of the ink, but Santa Monica was quite the mess.

    A brick church on Arizona Ave had completely fallen onto itself, if there had been anybody in it, they would have surely been all dead.

    I did a walkabout all over Santa Monica in the wee hours and beyond, and i’d guestimate that every other plate glass window in retail stores were shattered, it was a glaziers’ whet dream.

    The thing is, it really wasn’t that big of an earthquake in the grand scheme of shakers, some 60 people perished, and I remember they included heart attack victims in the total-a bit of a stretch there.

    It was my wake-up call to get the hell out of there though, and I appreciated the message, alas here I am nowhere near a fault zone.
    1. Lambert Strether January 17, 2024 at 9:42 am

       I thought it was “the 10.” Are you really from California?
       1. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 9:45 am

          I would have called it the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway, if I didn’t know any better.
          1. ambrit January 17, 2024 at 11:09 am

             Is this the same as the east west running I-10 Interstate Highway? Here, we call it “I-10.”
             1. NYMutza January 17, 2024 at 4:51 pm

                Depending on where you are traveling on Interstate 10 the highway has various names. Near the beaches in southern California it is known as the Santa Monica Freeway.
       2. hk January 17, 2024 at 11:56 am

          Usually I-10, but “the 10 Freeway” is not unheard of locally.
       3. jm January 17, 2024 at 12:00 pm

          “Are you really from [Southern] California?”

          Fixed it for you.
       4. IMOR January 17, 2024 at 2:57 pm

          That’s an exclusively SoCal thing, mocked in the rest of the state for at least 35 years before “The Californians” sketch premiered.
          1. NYMutza January 17, 2024 at 4:56 pm

             It is pompous Bay Area people that dislike referring to numbered highways prefaced with “the”. “The I-10” rolls off the tongue quite easily and is readily understood, so I have never understood the opposition to its use. Ironically, people in the Bay Area have no problem referring to Los Angels as “LA”, but heaven forbid if San Francisco is referred to as “Frisco”.
    2. Jabura Basaidai January 17, 2024 at 4:32 pm

       “…avoid the 10 Freeway, on account of it being collapsed, and luckily the 105 freeway had just been opened late in 1993, so when I got to the place where the 10 Freeway was coned off, all I had to do was take side streets to the 105, and then onto the 405, and then finally back on the 10 and had just made the long sweeping turn from the 405 when in the still dark….” –
       is this from an episode of The Californians?
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt-tG6ufH90
       1. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 9:11 pm

          I used to have SoCalist movement ju-ju, and it appears I haven’t lost my touch, although quite rusty behind the wheel.
18. JBird4049 January 17, 2024 at 9:22 am

    >>>The Bill Is Coming Due on a Record Amount of Commercial Real Estate Debt

    Can I just mention the shortage of housing nationwide? How hard is it to build apartments instead of more offices as there has always been a crying demand for housing for four decades; the financial incentives and the political pressures have pushed for more empty commercial buildings and less housing of any kind especially dense housing. This does not mention financial investors buying and holding empty housing. Just what does this say about the United States?
    1. lyman alpha blob January 17, 2024 at 11:33 am

       Oh, we still build new affordable housing here in the US. Just not for US citizens –

       https://wgme.com/news/local/homeless-new-mainers-start-moving-in-to-brunswick-housing-development

       If you’re an asylum seeker, the state will build you a house, find you a job, and pay your rent to boot!

       Meanwhile the house across the street from me sits empty as the absentee owners try to sell this little pre-fabbed crapbox that was built for $170K just 5 years ago for 750 large. And the burgeoning local tent cities were recently removed. Not sure where the new ones will pop up, but they will, because nobody wants to help them – they’re already in the “go die” demographic.
    2. Bsn January 17, 2024 at 12:34 pm

       A real good discussion of the Commercial Real Estate situation on the Desai/Hudson recent podcast, here (with video and transcript).
       And about a month ago there was an interesting article in the NYT regarding the problems of retrofitting large buildings (especially skyscrapers) for housing. Many problems with codes for egress, air circulation, fire, elevators, etc. – but it can be done in many cases – especially older, pre-60s buildings.
    3. Mikel January 17, 2024 at 2:23 pm

       They don’t dare frame the issue for what it is: the other shoe to drop from the 2008 era.
       That would show what utter failures the policies and “fixes” have been. That shows they have nothing to offer.
19. CA January 17, 2024 at 9:34 am

    https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1747406969793859659

    Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

    Alex Lo, columnist of the South China Morning Post:

    “Germany, and much of the West, is making the Palestinians pay for the Holocaust. That’s not moral accountability; it’s moral cowardice, and blindness and self-delusion of the worst kind.”

    [ That the German political class, after the genocide in what is now Namibia, after the Holocaust, after Guernica, after Dresden, would not be supporting the very survival of Palestinians is beyond my understanding. ]
    1. Feral Finster January 17, 2024 at 12:00 pm

       Because some victims are more worthy than others.

       Ukrainians, for instance, are some of the most worthy victims imaginable. Unless those Ukrainians are fleeing the brutality of the Kiev regime. Then they are not victims at all.
20. fjallstrom January 17, 2024 at 9:37 am

    “Not able to verify….but wowsers if bona fide:”

    Nah, the light doesn’t look right. And the account is making vidoes mixing footage from events with memes and other footage to de facto tell short stories. Why would such a person be invited to Davos and why wouldn’t it just be another mock-up?

    Everything points to not bona fide.
21. The Rev Kev January 17, 2024 at 9:42 am

    “Google Search Really Has Gotten Worse, Researchers Find”

    Well there is good news and there is bad news. The bad news is that Google search has been turning to crap for a very long time. Stuff that you use to be able to find has disappeared. Yves has stated that if she tried to use Google to write her book “Econned” now, that it would no longer be possible. Facts and recent history that you know for a fact happened cannot be found but are buried about 4,000 pages in. It now has the same sort of reliability as Wikipedia which is not saying a lot

    And now the good news. The main stream media along with many people like Al Gore have been telling us not to do your own research by, you know, reading. They say that doing your own research leads you into conspiracy theory echo chambers to the point that the phrase ‘doing your own research’ is conspiracy level stuff. Forget the fact that every teacher and every professor that you ever had always told you to do your own research. So if you stop doing your own research and just accept the latest narrative, then you don’t really need a good search engine anymore and Google will work for you just fine.
    1. Carolinian January 17, 2024 at 11:18 am

       Hey I like Wikipedia. Just bear in mind that on certain topics it isn’t reliable. But there’s a vast array of topics.

       However I avoid Google and have for some time due to their spybot business model. The truth is that the overwhelming number of searches are going to be for routine information and search is simply easier than say having a software dictionary. When I do turn to Google the results are usually about the same as DDG/Bing.
       1. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 11:45 am

          I’m always amazed when Wikipedia can boil down what a book i’ve read is all about in a couple pages, its almost a Cliffs Notes Cliffs Notes in that regard.
       2. ForFawkesSakes January 17, 2024 at 6:22 pm

          I see more errors on Wikipedia than I feel I used to. I just fell down a rabbit hole of child actors in the studio system and found a satirical article posted as fact, which was referenced on another child actors page.

          Long story short, Surely, Surely Shirley was not an actual Broadway show. Shirley Temple and Jane Withers never actually starred in a musical show featuring the world’s oldest living orphan.
22. The Rev Kev January 17, 2024 at 9:57 am

    “Bernie Mocks the Left’s Vow Not to Vote for Biden Over Israel”

    Can’t disagree much with this. At least Bernie has not announced his candidacy for President. His good friend Joe probably told him not to. Actually, Greenwald was going kinda easy on Bernie. As an example, watch this recent video clip of his from a few days ago-

    https://nitter.net/TurncoatD/status/1746261019943653830#m (2:16 min video)

    Greenwald is being very subversive here. Since he is talking about Jewish success in Hollywood, there is the implication of other areas of American life that would be the same.
23. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 9:58 am

    Had some dental surgery yesterday that was quite painful to my wallet, but not so bad in terms of my mouth…

    They prescribed me 16 Vicodin, of which I took a couple and they certainly helped, but don’t think i’ll need the rest for recuperation, which is nice as I’ll keep half and give the other half to my longtime backpacking partner for our mutual emergency kits.

    The labeling on the pill bottle is interesting, there’s a big round sticker on the cap that proclaims:

    Caution: OPIOID
    Risk of Overdose and Addiction

    While the writing on the side of the bottle says:

    Caution: Opioid. Risk of overdose and addiction. Ask your healthcare professional if you should have Naloxone on hand in case of overdose.
    1. JP January 17, 2024 at 10:28 am

       I keep an 80 mg oxy in my back pack. I think it’s been there for 15 years. Wounder what the shelf life is.
       1. ambrit January 17, 2024 at 11:18 am

          80mg. oxy! Are you expecting to have to deal with a bear eating an arm or leg off?
          Drug expiry question: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/drug-expiration-dates-do-they-mean-anything
          If it’s for another, do have a stretcher handy, or a travois.
          1. JP January 17, 2024 at 5:51 pm

             Unscheduled trail amputations. But you can cut them and I like to travel light.
    2. JBird4049 January 17, 2024 at 10:34 am

       IIRC, the number of deaths by opioid overdose is more than twice of deaths by guns for the past few years. Are any of the Sacklers in prison?

       What a country! The guilty go free and wealthy, while the desperate, the poor, and innocent die.
    3. playon January 17, 2024 at 4:48 pm

       When my mother died I inherited her collection of opioids which they had her on for arthritis pain. I must say I like having them around for emergencies and they work great for the occasional bad headache too, I usually break them in half..
    4. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 18, 2024 at 7:12 am

       That stuff does nothing for me. I have a very high pain tolerance, but 2x have suffered excruciating pain. Neither opioids or synthetic opioids did anything except make me feel worse. High doses of NSAIDs more effective. They do bother your stomach after a while but for me less than the opioids.
24. Butch January 17, 2024 at 10:41 am

    I don’t comment much, but I read all of you as much as I can. Please, please stay safe in this somewhat less than fun weather…
25. Jabura Basaidai January 17, 2024 at 10:46 am

    about to run out in the bitter cold here in Michigan but on a quick scan didn’t see these links above – will go through the links when i return but wanted to add these two to the mix –

    what could go wrong?
    https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/01/16/researchers-in-china-create-the-first-healthy-cloned-rhesus-monkey

    kinda goes along with the link about land ownership yesterday – oh the arrogance – maybe the oligarchs will fund the cloning along with longevity to populate this nonsense –
    https://apnews.com/article/new-california-city-tech-silicon-valley-4097f0872c4e18ca9d75776e2d8974d9
26. Arizona Slim January 17, 2024 at 10:53 am

    Even here in Tucson, it has been cold. We’ve already had snow flurries this winter, and don’t get me started on my garden. The formerly magic garden is truly tragic now.

    OTOH, leave it to my alma mater to put a positive spin on things. Link:

    https://www.michigandaily.com/campus-life/umich-students-participate-in-diag-snowball-fight/

    This U-M alum wishes that such an event had existed back in the day. Because I so would have been there!
27. Mikel January 17, 2024 at 10:56 am

    “Bernie Mocks the Left’s Vow Not to Vote for Biden Over Israel” Glenn Greenwald, YouTube

    I also have an anecdote related to that.
    I have a friend in one of the Biden administration’s election year prime target demographic: black woman in her 50s, in the media, living in a major city in a blue state. Democrat party member. For years, I’ve made known the my varying case against Biden. She couldn’t see past…”but, Trump.”
    Cue Gaza/Israel. She informs me that now she is finally thinking that she can’t bring herself to vote for Biden. Her teenage son and his friends call him Genocide Joe. That is a game changer for her. She now seems to be more open to my long standing criticisms as well.
    1. ambrit January 17, 2024 at 11:20 am

       Ah, but will she turn against ‘The Party?’ That’s the deciding issue.
       1. Feral Finster January 17, 2024 at 11:58 am

          Of course. It doesn’t matter why a person voted, whether they voted whilst holding their noses because the other guy is Pure Evil, whether the voter is Kool-Aid Chugging True Believer, whether they voted to make their spouse happy, whether their vote was strategic, whatever.

          The vote counts just the same.
    2. Carolinian January 17, 2024 at 11:36 am

       The chickens may be coming home to roost for the Progressive Except for Palestine Dems. At least they need a leader more cunning than Biden to conceal their longstanding support for that other white supremacy. Biden is a big PR fail.
       1. JBird4049 January 17, 2024 at 12:11 pm

          >>>Biden is a big PR fail.

          Unless President Biden is unusually blest, he is not going to make through another four years unless he is embalmed or made a cyborg. Nobody wants Kamala Harris, and It looks like my state governor, Gavin Newsom is the fall back. I do wonder how President Gavin “Good Hair” Newsom would do? He is more… aware than President Joe Biden is, and I am convinced he has even less of a soul then Biden has. And no, I am not really joking on the soul bit. Gavin really is more of a lizard than Biden is. Of course, it could be the old familiarity breeding contempt thing, but still.
          1. Pat January 17, 2024 at 12:55 pm

             I admit I have years of evidence from Joe so that might fuel my contempt, but the most I will grant you is equal status. Both are demon slime in human form.

             Sadly I think that much of the Democratic Party, their preferred consultants and most of the usual contractors are all part of the same slime. Same for Republicans. Apparently being more psycho lizard than human is a job requirement for advancement in the Beltway.
    3. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 11:40 am

       Bernie recovered nicely from injuries when the Donkey Show bus ran over him in 2020, and then he requested that said bus be put into reverse and roll over him again just to be sure.
       1. Mikel January 17, 2024 at 2:02 pm

          And nobody there, but his family, to scrape him up.
28. CA January 17, 2024 at 10:57 am

    https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1747643369944465630

    Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

    NATO chief Stoltenberg with the usual Orwellian doublespeak: “We are not moving to Asia but China is coming closer to us”

    https://aa.com.tr/en/world/alliance-has-to-address-developments-in-asia-nato-chief/3110745 *

    When the closest Chinese soldiers to Europe are stationed in – guess where – China!

    And the closest NATO soldiers to China are stationed – guess where – in China as well! (the US actually has some troops in Taiwan:

    https://wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-expand-troop-presence-in-taiwan-for-training-against-china-threat-62198a83 )

    * Alliance has to address developments in Asia: NATO chief

    10:33 AM · Jan 17, 2024
29. lyman alpha blob January 17, 2024 at 10:59 am

    Yesterday I made this comment about perhaps why Iowans didn’t seem to concerned about “local” agriculture related issues (they don’t own the farms anymore), but did care about border issues (farm workers are often illegal migrant workers, not locals).

    Today I ran across this – https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/osha-finds-mississippi-slaughterhouse-responsible-202039769.html

    TL;DR: A 16 year old migrant worker who was hired using fake documents was pulled into a chicken processing machine, mangled and killed. OSHA has determined the factory to be at fault, and has “proposed” about $200K in fines.

    That’s it. That’s what a child’s life is worth – somewhere south of $200K. Unless hell freezes over with this week’s cold weather, I’m quite sure than none of the big ag executives who allowed this hiring and the unsafe practices at the plant will face any punishment whatsoever. Rinse and repeat.

    Enjoy your chicken nuggets.
    1. ambrit January 17, 2024 at 11:25 am

       Advisory: This product produced in a facility that processes beef, poultry, and long pork.
       “Hoy es el dia de Soylent Verde!”
30. Mikel January 17, 2024 at 11:15 am

    “$1.2 Trillion US Travel Industry Is Plummeting, Says New Study” Bloomberg (ma). Who would want to travel here?…

    Well, looks like the situation is this: The USA doesn’t have visitors. It has migrants.
    1. ambrit January 17, 2024 at 11:54 am

       Also, “visitors” bring money in, “illegals” send money out. I use the term “illegals” for the sake of convenience. I have considered using the older term, “guest workers.” However, the question would then become, guests of whom? The embarrassment to certain elites could be ‘discomforting,’ so…..
       1. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 12:59 pm

          Want to nip illegal immigration in the bud?

          Declare war on remittances, make it awfully awkward for them to send their gotten gains earned in the USA back home.
          1. NYMutza January 17, 2024 at 5:08 pm

             What??? No balikbayan boxes????
          2. ambrit January 17, 2024 at 7:39 pm

             Sorry to harsh your buzz, but there is serious money in “remittances.” The wire transfer companies charge more than needed, but not enough to spur the rise of a serious competitor. Western Union has inherited the mantle of “Mr. Five Percent.”
             See, the original: https://www.dailysabah.com/arts/mr-five-percent-the-complex-story-of-oil-in-middle-east/news
             I foresee a version of the “serve in the Army to become a citizen” scheme coming. (Shades of ‘Starship Troopers!’) A “guest worker” need only work a set period of years for an “approved” corporation to earn citizenship. (This was originally known as ‘Indentured Servitude’ and was the basis of much of the early American economy.)
             Everything that was old is new again.
31. Feral Finster January 17, 2024 at 11:35 am

    Alex Lo, columnist of the South China Morning Post:

    “Germany, and much of the West, is making the Palestinians pay for the Holocaust. That’s not moral accountability; it’s moral cowardice, and blindness and self-delusion of the worst kind.”

    I cannot possibly be the only one to notices that this is a blood libel directed at Gazans. Not only that, but a blood libel directed at people whose ancestors were not the ones conducting the Holocaust.
32. Feral Finster January 17, 2024 at 11:41 am

    “We will recognize israel if there is a two state solution”

    “We agree that regional peace includes peace for Israel, but that could only happen through peace for the Palestinians through a Palestinian state.”

    Megatron: This is a clear confirmation that Saudi Arabia accepts Blinken’s proposal for a Palestinian state with an Israeli puppet President, that will be totally controlled by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

    Something that means the Palestinians will continue to live under the control of the Zionists and something they must not accept under any circumstances if they want an independent state.

    TL:DR the Saudis are ready to sell out and are in fact impatient to do so.
    1. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 17, 2024 at 12:54 pm

       No, as we said, the Saudis know the 2 state solution is absolutely na ga happen. This is just calling Biden’s and Blinken’s bluff.
33. Mikel January 17, 2024 at 11:54 am

    “A friend in Oregon who did not lose power said places nearby have been dark for 5 days and it’s another 5 days before power is projected to be restored. And….drumroll….stores were taking only cash.”

    Priceless.
    But the mentality of the corporate masters of disasters is IBGYBG. Once the shit hits the fan, they’ve already collected. Short-term thinking rules. They don’t care about the longer term effects of their implementation of rushed, dystopian fantasies.
34. Feral Finster January 17, 2024 at 11:55 am

    “Bernie Mocks the Left’s Vow Not to Vote for Biden Over Israel Glenn Greenwald, YouTube (Robert H). I personally know one-issue voters on Israel…as in the other direction. So turnabout is not fair play?”

    See, one issue voters are bad. Very Very Bad. But only if that causes them to vote against Team D.

    One issue voters are Very Very Good when that causes them to vote for Team D.
35. tegnost January 17, 2024 at 11:58 am

    Re migration in the us

    Speculating here, this is why, imo, the min wage is still $7.25/hr, if it was double that in rural areas the cities empty out while now here is a premium for being in the city what with the large city min wages higher than in the red states
36. Mikel January 17, 2024 at 12:03 pm

    ‘One of the biggest mass migrations in American history’: Economist says 5M people have fled ‘blue states’ in the last decade, wishes these places would ‘stop avoiding reality.’ Here’s why” MoneyWise

    FFS say it: High cost of living, especially for housing. UNAFFORDABLE housing.
    But that doesn’t jibe with their BS “the consumer” is strong meme.
37. Feral Finster January 17, 2024 at 12:05 pm

    Anyway, I see that France is sending another 40 Scalp missiles, on top of the additional 85 promised a couple weeks ago, and that France will sign a “security guarantee” similar to that signed by the UK. (Yes, we all know that the “security guarantee” is basically worthless according to its terms, but it is a signal to Kiev and a token that more concrete promises may be on offer, as long as they continue to fight.)

    Those missiles will be used to target Russian civilians for as long as Russian dithers.

    Stop kidding yourselves. The West is nowhere near done doubling down and will only continue to do so, unless and until those in charge start to face very real and very personal consequences.
38. Mikel January 17, 2024 at 1:07 pm

    https://www.businessinsider.com/antony-blinken-boeing-jet-breaks-down-stranded-davos-trip-2024-1?op=1/
    The latest awkward news for Boeing: Blinken’s plane broke down on his Davos trip

    Perfect.
39. Tom Stone January 17, 2024 at 1:12 pm

    I was thinking about American exceptionalism and denial this morning and recalled a conversation with a friend that occurred 30 odd years ago.
    Like myself he had a fondness for history and Sci Fi and I happened to mention American political murders, his response in a heavy tone ( He was a lean 290 lbs) was “”Tom, Tom, Tom, America. Does. Not. Have. Political. Murders.”.
    I brought up Jack and Bobby, Dr King, Fred Hampton, the MOVE activists in Philadelphia…and his response was “THAT”S DIFFERENT!”.
    The Petite Bourgeoisie are never comfortable when anyone tries to move the Overton window by questioning the approved narrative.
    I’ve always been a little less than respectful of Authority which is why I chose “Tom Paine” as a registered alias and why when I was asked whether I was “Blue Collar” or “White Collar” I responded by saying I did not wear a collar because I was not a slave.
    1. JBird4049 January 17, 2024 at 7:49 pm

       “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”

       Political assassinations have been a thing for centuries in America. Honestly, there are periods of American history where political murders are rare, and it never has risen to the levels of some American supported (and trained) oligarchies and dictatorships as in most countries in the Americas, plus Iran, Indonesia, and South Vietnam. Who wants to have murder as a method? It might give your enemies ideas. But when it looks like the poor, the desperate, true reformers, threats to the monied and privileged might actually succeed, then the assassins are released. Assassins who are often the police.
40. lyman alpha blob January 17, 2024 at 1:16 pm

    RE: Banks prepare to take on the Biden administration over billions of dollars in overdraft fees

    I doubt that the Biden administration is really serious, and I also doubt that banks have already really cut overdraft fees as much as the article claims. Having worked for a bank, it was glaringly obvious how they would rig the system to deliberately cause accounts to overdraw so they could collect more fees – clearing the largest check first so all the smaller ones would bounce, etc.

    That being said, I will use this an opportunity to give readers a public service announcement on the best way to avoid overdraft charges. Your bank can already help you do this, but will never tell you about it because it deprives them of bigger fees – it’s called the Overdraft Line of Credit, or ODLOC in bank parlance. If you have an ODLOC in place and you bounce a check, you merely pay the interest on the overdrawn amount – no more $35 fees because the account is overdrawn by $2. The interest rate on these is high, but it still amounts to pennies on small overdrafts if you pay the overdraft balance back quickly. When I first got one, it was truly interest only that you paid for any overdraft. Since then I believe my credit union has also instituted a $5 fee on top of the interest, but still much cheaper.

    Not only does an ODLOC prevent you from racking up fees, it’s also a great way to build up your credit score if you are in need of a loan. I had very bad credit at one point, then pretty much no credit at all after not going into new debt and paying my bills on time for 15 years or so. When I applied for a mortgage, they had barely any record on me (and no record of the old debts I never paid off!), and needed more info before they’d give a loan. So I deliberately overdrew my checking account a few times, paid it back right away to show that I could responsibly use credit, and all of a sudden I had an 800+ credit score. Sometimes you can beat the system.

    When I worked as a teller, in order to get a monthly bonus, we were required to pitch products at the teller window and document our efforts. The bank wanted us to push new products and the accounts where they could make high fees. I pushed the ODLOC instead, and was amazed by how many people never knew such a thing existed. Piss a banker off and ask for yours today.
41. Mikel January 17, 2024 at 1:33 pm

    “Qatari PM says US/British attacks on Houthis risk regional escalation, urges diplomatic efforts” Arab News

    He must mean continued regional escalation, but I’d imagine framing it as something that hasn’t happened yet is more politically convenient.
42. Wukchumni January 17, 2024 at 1:51 pm

    …a Kopek for your thoughts dept:

    When I was in the coin biz before the turn of the century, Communist country coins were to be avoided generally even if we’re talking about coins much older than their then current regimes, nobody cared all that much about Tsarist, Chinese or what have you, it was pretty much a no-go zone for yours truly.

    Why bother with markets where there wasn’t a market, nor did the citizens of those countries have a pot to piss in.

    My late mother had some Czech coins, and they were just auctioned off, and the prices fetched were about 10x what they would have been worth circa 1990.

    It’s even more pronounced with older Chinese & Russian coins, some Chinese coins are worth 100x what they used to sell for, back in the day.

    Now conversely, most older numismatic coins from the USA, Europe & Japan have fallen in value since 1990, Japan in particular.
43. Tom Stone January 17, 2024 at 2:00 pm

    Blue Collar or White Collar?
    Boring Bill who owned a Motorcycle machine works with one employee and who picked up a BS in Chemistry in 2 years at Hayward State because he was curious.
    Red Diaper Peter who was a Tool and Die maker and a Ballet Dancer.
    Peter the Trot, an Archaeologist with a black belt in Kendo who worked as an auto mechanic between digs.
    Not everyone fits neatly into a box.
44. IMOR January 17, 2024 at 2:38 pm

    “The 11 Democrats who backed Sanders’ resolution included Sen. Rand Paul…”
    Andalou Agency on Senate vote agains Sanders’ aid report resolution.
    Even from abroad, is this type of thing so hard to get right? I also note that for the third time in three days, otherwise useful Red Sea shipping link refers to Houthi attacks as “indiscriminate”. They are not. Do these writers mean to say ‘unpredictable’? Again, if anyone had an editor anymore, not difficult. (Or just a tiny instance of stenography for our warmongering clowns, but not necessarily.)
    1. Revenant January 17, 2024 at 6:13 pm

       The “indiscriminate” is the official stance. All MSM report Houthi attacks as Islamist violence against the west rather than calm and selective opposition to genocide. Read an article by the BBC, if they mention Israel it will be to dismiss Houthi claims of such targeting as “alleged”.

       It’s quite depressing….
45. CA January 17, 2024 at 3:09 pm

    China Chip Imports Suffer Steepest Drop on Record After US Curbs

    [ What this actually means is that China has effectively been able to use domestic chips as a replacement for restricted foreign chips. We simply do not recognize how adept Chinese research-development and manufacturing capabilities are.

    Also, though the New York Times has article after article on dire economic problems in China, what we find is a fine general growth year of 5.2% and productive gains all through the economy. ]
    1. Polar Socialist January 17, 2024 at 3:27 pm

       According to the semiconductor industry forecast reports, close to half of all the new fabs in 2024 will be in China. Something about reaching 8.6 million wafers per month – 80% of what Taiwan and South Korea can do combined.
       1. CA January 17, 2024 at 4:10 pm

          “According to the semiconductor industry forecast reports, close to half of all the new fabs in 2024 will be in China…”

          Apparently, and with irony:

          https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202401/1305386.shtml

          January 15, 2024

          Chinese, US researchers jointly develop new type of stable semiconductor graphene with 10 times higher performance than silicon
          By Leng Shumei

          Researchers from China and the US have jointly created a new type of stable semiconductor graphene, which displays performance 10 times higher than silicon and 20 times larger than that of the other two-dimensional semiconductors. The achievement marks “a leap from silicon chips to carbon chips,” Ma Lei, leader of the research from the Tianjin International Center for Nanoparticles and Nanosystems (TICNN) at Tianjin University, who led the research, told the Global Times.

          The achievement, jointly made by Ma’s team and researchers from School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, was published online * on the website of the journal “Nature” on January 3, 2024…

          * https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06811-0
          1. playon January 17, 2024 at 5:36 pm

             We will see – I first read about this ten years ago.
             1. CA January 17, 2024 at 6:49 pm

                Thank you for the proper caution; I should not have speculated.  So far China is evidently working on and meeting its semiconductor silicon needs.

                This is interesting but speculative:

                “Chinese, US researchers jointly develop new type of stable semiconductor graphene”
       2. CA January 17, 2024 at 4:47 pm

          Chinese national investment has been running at and above 43% of GDP since 2017. German national investment, by contrast, has ranged from 21 to 25% of GDP since 2017:

          https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/October/weo-report?c=924,134,534,158,111,&s=NID_NGDP,&sy=2007&ey=2022&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1
46. digi_owl January 17, 2024 at 3:31 pm

    The massive mistake of mobile messaging was to not include an upgraded protocol in LTE like it was done with UMTS. Yes, MMS was a bit of a mess with its use of special SMSs that triggered a WAP download of the message content that could in turn be degraded by the network operator before delivery. But it allowed every device to have a baseline service that worked across brands.

    But LTE was conceptualized as a pure TCP/IP pipeline for mobile devices, allowing the biggest device/OS brands to dictate terms.

    That said, imessage is more a “problem” in USA than elsewhere.
47. digi_owl January 17, 2024 at 3:39 pm

    If there is any weight to the idea that we are living in a simulation, it is looking more and more like the original code used was from an MMORPG…
48. Eclair January 17, 2024 at 3:41 pm

    Strange absence on my X feed of current photos and reports of destruction in Gaza. Just checked in to X today and saw nothing related to Gaza. Well, some verbal reports are there. But for weeks, the feed has been full of photos of bombed buildings, little shrouded bodies, reports and photos of relatives, reporters, academics killed. No …. nothing. Have we moved on? Has Elon declared a ban?
    1. Offtrail January 17, 2024 at 6:44 pm

       I’ve noticed a diminuation of Gaza stories on my Google News feed.
    2. The Rev Kev January 17, 2024 at 7:31 pm

       Elon went to Israel a few weeks ago and since then he has been suppressing pro-Palestinian accounts on X so obviously he made a deal with Netanyahu. What does he get out of it? Probably an ally in Congress to stop these repeated attacks on him.
    3. playon January 17, 2024 at 8:05 pm

       I see some things, it helps if you are following someone of Arabic descent.
    4. Eclair January 18, 2024 at 12:58 am

       X news feed back to ‘normal’ at a few minutes before 10 PM PCT, Very strange.
49. ArvidMartensen January 17, 2024 at 10:13 pm

    Trump. Over the past 9 or 10 years, there has been evidence that people in high places are s**t scared of him being President. Why? I presume it’s all about the money and keeping the gravy train choo-chooing along. And maybe Trump will also unearth a few bodies they want to keep buried..

    He ain’t great presidential material. But it appears he can read a room (or country), and this has paid off handsomely.

    They have thrown everything at him.
    Russiagate: Accusations of being a traitor, which they threw everything at. False testimony, illegal wire=tapping, entrapment of GOP staff, fully-fledged media campaign, impeachment
    January 6: By all accounts, another case of entrapment using the FBI and ?? That one is still playing out.
    Sexual Misconduct: Doesn’t touch him
    Business Fraud: Still playing out.

    I wonder that if all these look like failing, or actually fail, will the only other option come into play. And if it did, what would the US population do? Would they cry and wear black and wait for an official investigation? Or would they take to the streets with pitchforks or their more automated equivalent?
50. none January 18, 2024 at 3:12 am

    Not able to verify….but wowsers if bona fide:

    OMG … did Damon really say that to Klaus Schwab?

    It is satire, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/damon-imani-davos/ .
51. Adhyyanvimarsh January 19, 2024 at 7:45 pm

    The war against the truth of war.

Comments are closed.