Silence of the wolves: How human landscapes alter howling behaviour Monga Bay
Meet one of NYC’s largest new residents: The fin whale Gothamist
Partying Like 1999? An NBubble Isn’t Here John Authers, Bloomberg. Key point: “There’s relatively little evidence of excessive use of leverage within financial markets, even if higher rates aren’t yet slowing down the US economy as had been expected.”
Major network outages in U.S. following two X-class solar flares The Watchers
Climate
Scientist sacked because he refused to fly home from Papua New Guinea starts his legal battle Canary
Plants can take up CWD-causing prions from soil in the lab. What happens if they are eaten? Center for Infections Disease Research and Policy
Water
Alberta’s Brutal Water Reckoning The Tyee
#COVID19
Solving the puzzle of Long Covid Ziyad Al-aly and Eric Topol, Science. “Preventing infections and reinfections is the best way to prevent Long Covid and should remain the foundation of public health policy.” “Remain,” lol. Commentary–
Long Covid is one of the world’s biggest challenges John Snow Project. So far. Hat tip, public health establishment (and, of course, their owners, masters, and thought leaders among the oligarchs):
Because nonpharmaceutical interventions to reduce the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission have largely been abandoned, vaccines are now the primary line of defense against both severe disease in the acute phase of the infection and Long Covid. Studies have consistently shown that vaccines reduce the risk of Long Covid by 15 to 75%, with a mean of ~40% reduction in risk. Yet vaccine policies in much of the world restrict boosters to older adults or those with risk factors for severe COVID-19, and with pandemic fatigue, the public’s appetite for boosters seems to be waning.
* * * Prevalence of persistent SARS-CoV-2 in a large community surveillance study Nature. N = 381. From the Abstract: “Persistent SARS-CoV-2 infections may act as viral reservoirs that could seed future outbreaks, give rise to highly divergent lineages, and contribute to cases with post-acute COVID-19 sequelae (long COVID)…. Individuals with persistent infection had more than 50% higher odds of self-reporting long COVID than individuals with non-persistent infection. We estimate that 0.1–0.5% of infections may become persistent with typically rebounding high viral loads and last for at least 60 days…. This work has profound implications for understanding and characterizing SARS-CoV-2 infection, epidemiology and evolution.” “Living with Covid” = “serial passage through the general population.” Important caveat: “The association between persistent infection and long COVID does not imply that every persistent infection can lead to long COVID (only 9% of individuals with persistent infection reported having long COVID) nor does it mean that all cases of long COVID are due to a persistent infection.”
Global Elections
Line of Succession New Left Review. “[T]he spectacle of a Biden-Trump rematch in the US, plus the dismal expectations for a Starmer government in the UK, suggest that problems with contemporary electoral systems are not confined to repressive or clientelist regimes.”
Khan loyalists sidelined as Pakistan’s rival parties reach power-sharing deal France24
China?
China revamps discipline inspection rules to ensure Xi Jinping’s instructions are carried out South China Morning Post. What, they weren’t already?
‘Disillusioned about China’, more Chinese aim for US via risky Darien Gap Al Jazeera
McKinsey-led think-tank advised China on policy that fed US tensions FT
Experts See Broad Prospects for China-Brazil Aerospace Cooperation InfoBrics
The first discovery of SFTSV in the Centre of Metropolitan Beijing, China (preprint) medRxiv. From the Abstract: “Severe fever with thrombocytopenia virus (SFTSV), an emerging tick-borne bandavirus, poses a significant public health threat in rural China. Since 2021, an increase in local cases has been noted in the rural-urban fringe surrounding Beijing…. Our survey revealed a diverse tick population in city parks…. These findings highlight the circulation of SFTSV in central Beijing, underscoring the need for urgent attention and enhanced surveillance measures.”
Japan
Kaiju Look The Baffler. The deck: “Godzilla’s radioactive origins.”
Syraqistan
Israeli minister says ‘proud’ of Gaza destruction Anadolu Agency. Video:
#Israel official states:
"I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did."— May Golan, Israeli Minister of Social Equality & Women's Advancement
-MyLordBebo pic.twitter.com/b9KRRMAJX2
— Arthur Morgan (@ArthurM40330824) February 23, 2024
Israeli ground offensive in Rafah ‘aimed at making Gaza uninhabitable’ France24. Or rather, habitable when real estate interests move in and pave over the rubble, body parts and all.
It is dark before the dawn, but Israeli settler colonialism is at an end Islamic Human Rights Commission
* * * Yemen’s Houthis strike Israeli, US, British targets Anadolu Agency
The Stunning Effectiveness of Houthi Harassment American Purpose
* * * Turkey’s 5th generation fighter jet Kaan makes maiden flight: report Turkish Minute
European Disunion
The state of financial knowledge in the European Union Breugel. The deck: “Financial literacy is essential in modern economies, where saving and preparing for retirement has shifted increasingly to the individual.” Ah, “financial literacy.” Note lack of agency.
Dear Old Blighty
Starmer is high in the pantheon of charlatans who have sought high office in this country Richard Murphy, Funding the Future
Starmer reported to parliamentary Privileges Committee over Hoyle threat The Sqwawkbox
New Not-So-Cold War
NATO Gives Ukraine the Go-Ahead to Cross Putin’s Red Line Newsweek
Putin Leads High Level Delegation to Inspect New Tu-160M Strategic Bombers Military Watch
* * * Russia was ridiculed at the start of the war. Two years on, it has reasons to be confident CNBC
Russia defiant two years into war reshaping global energy S&P Global
Armored vehicles and Patriots sent to Ukraine without solid sustainment plan, says Pentagon IG Breaking Defense
* * * War zone or not, Ukraine seeks to reclaim its role as a hub for clinical trials STAT (JT McPhee). Life’s little ironies….
In interview with Fox News, Zelenskyy explains why he fired Zaluzhnyi Ukrainska Pravda
South of the Border
Uruguay Stepping into Strong Position on Global Seed Stage Seed World
Antitrust
Why Was JetBlue-Spirit Blocked and What Does it Mean for the Airline Industry? Hubert Horan, ProMarket
The Fed Is Behind the Capital One/Discover Merger Matt Stoller, BIG
Law is not Code: On Algorithms and the Concept of Law (PDF) Studiengesellschaft für Wirtschaft und Recht (ed), Algorithmen im Wirtschaftsrecht (2023).
Digital Watch
Reddit says it’s made $203M so far licensing its data TechCrunch. Outright theft from Reddit’s poster, as with all AI, at least that bankrolled by Silicon Valley.
Social-Media Company Reddit Files for IPO WSJ. Crime pays.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman Revealed as One of Reddit’s Biggest Shareholders Hollywood Reporter. The head thief.
* * * Google sends Gemini AI back to engineering to adjust its White balance The Register. Think of it this way: An identity is a bundle of properties, skin color and gender prominent among them (in the vulgate, a checklist). Google is now going to tweak those bundles, either by adding additional properties, or by kludging some sort of algorithm on top of whatever it is that its black box does. Well and good. And what happens when the bundle of properties includes political views, especially disfavored ones?
* * * Most big legacy news publishers across 10 countries are blocking OpenAI’s crawlers, report finds Nieman Lab
Manufacturing
Rolls Royce tackles Trent engine issues as profits take flight Leeham News & Analysis
Supply Chain
British Columbia’s multimillion-dollar mining problem The Narwhale
The Final Frontier
Zeitgeist Watch
Can This Body of Evidence Show Us How to Become Happier? Hilda Bastian, Living with Evidence
Don’t date robots — their privacy policies are terrible The Verge
Getting the Pump Harpers
Class Warfare
America’s Richest Men Ask the Courts to Make Unions Illegal Harold Mayerson, The American Prospect. It would be amusing if the Trump Court, heeding the siren call that “Republicans must become the party of the working class” (not), turned them down.
The Story: The Billionaire Behind a Right-wing Political Machine Texas Monthly
Amazon Made Airport Workers Toil In 100-Degree Heat Without Shade Jalopnik
Do You Own Your Body? JSTOR Daily
What Can You Do With a ‘Failed’ Postmodern Utopia? Atlas Obscura
A Forthcoming Documentary Examines How Civic Life in America Is a Matter of ‘Join or Die’ Colossal
Antidote du jour (via):
Bonus antidote:
Stunning drone footage captures wolves digging tunnels through deep snow in China's Xinjiang. #wolf #snow #Xinjiang #rare #China pic.twitter.com/HxLUcvEe7L
— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) February 22, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
132 comments
Comments are closed.
AVDEYEVKA
(melody borrowed from Doctor My Eyes by Jackson Browne)
Ukraine’s hour is near at hand
We’ll rejoin the Motherland all the dying
Shall be tendered to the past
We’ve survived as best we could
Gathered food and gathered wood simply trying
To survive until the last
Zelensky’s lies!
Everything went wrong
We realize
Russia is where we all belong
No one ever could be sure
Changes came in such a blur hesitating
Being careful by all means
Living through the winter chill
Took a whole new set of skills and we’re still reeling
From the horrors we have seen
Zelensky’s lies!
Were not reality
His secret spies
Killed anyone who disagreed
Is that our guys?
Now we sing and cry!
We recognize
The flags of Russia rolling by . . .
Like the Jackson Browne tunes and his lyrics…gets me thinking about another of his works and more recent entry.
From the album “Time the Conqueror”, one entry is titled The Drums of War. One of the latter verses goes like this, “Who took this country to war, Long before the peace was lost, Who are the profits for..”
I believe Browne was speaking to the Bush/Cheney White House but hey neocons and war hawks haven’t really changed their stripes since that period. If a child was born in America after 2000, they’ve come of age where this is now indeed the normal.
The Bush/Cheney neocons haven’t changed their stripes… shit they haven’t even changed offices. The same gang that brought you WMDs and reopened the Libyan slave markets moved as one to the democratic side… or maybe vice versa.
p.s.
Brava Antifa
Working link for “The Stunning Effectiveness of Houthi Harassment” article at-
https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/the-stunning-effectiveness-of-houthi-harassment/
You don’t need a trillion dollar budget a year to dominate sea control of a region? Who knew?
Fixing, thanks!
Quote…”suggest that problems with contemporary electoral systems are not confined to repressive or clientelist regimes.”
You think? Aurelien has a recent post examining this:
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/the-diversity-paradox?utm_campaign=email-post&r=jz47a&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I’d really like to know where we are supposed to find those quite likely mythical non repressive and non clientelist regimes.
“NATO Gives Ukraine the Go-Ahead to Cross Putin’s Red Line”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg channeling his inner war criminal here. He was saying here-
‘And according to international law, Ukraine has the right to self-defense. And it also includes strikes against legitimate military targets, Russian military targets outside of Ukraine. That’s international law, and of course, Ukraine has the right to do that to defend itself.’
What he does not say is that the Ukraine spends some if it precious missiles to target civilian cities and kill the people there. Under international law that is called a war crime and Stoltenberg knows it. He also knows that you have NATO troops help man those Western missile systems and that they get the latest targeting data from NATO satellites and the like. So they are not really Ukrainian strikes into Russian cities but NATO strikes into Russian cities. Stoltenberg is due to step down in a few months and his replacement promises to be a ball of fun. It looks like it will be the Netherlands’s Mark Rutte.
Maybe Jens meant:
‘And according to international law, Russia has the right to self-defense. And it also includes strikes against legitimate military targets, NATO and American military targets outside of Ukraine. That’s international law, and of course, Russia has the right to do that to defend itself.’
There’s a new game coming to town, Jens, it might be as close as just around the corner, and it’s not The International Rules Based Order. The only question is: Are you really going continue to pressure Russia into making you experience those new rules?
I think that Paul Craig Roberts is correct when he states:
To again repeat my warning, by allowing the war to drag on, Putin is inviting more provocations and more dangerous provocations. Putin’s way of fighting the conflict has cost far more lives than a quick and total military victory which would have been over before Western involvement could be organized.
Also, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, have waited too long to intervene to stop the genocide in Gaza. Their population will remember, much more so than what Gore Vidal called the United States of Amnesia, their leader’s abject failure.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/02/23/biden-moving-to-send-long-range-ballistic-missiles-to-ukraine/
IMO the “Will Russia lose the peace” is mis-framed because Russia has already lost the peace. In 2014. Because no red lines.
The only way Russia can get back Peace, is by announcing and enforcing Red Lines. Most important part being enforcing.
Demilitarized Zones won’t work – there will always be a longer range weapon to overcome it especially given that everyone knows Russia has no red lines.
The dangers besides what PCR mentions, is that The West scores a big hit that not ever Putin can ignore and the Russian public demands blood.
And there’s this opinion of the Bloomberg editorial board. Posting because it’s a reflection of some of thinking going on in the minds of some members of the blob:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-23/putin-s-war-in-ukraine-is-decimating-the-russian-economy?srnd=premium/
Don’t Buy Putin’s Bluff. The West Can Outspend Him.
However, I’m sure opinions vary. The point is the global defense spending.
We’ve got money
Yes we do!
We’ve got money
How about you?
Go Team!
I’ve got shells, yes I do!
Etc
If you would be a bit cynical you would be forgiven for thinking that these wars are part of WEFs depopulation plan.
The WW II bombing was only effective because Patton got into Germany and overran it. Headline grabbing gnat attacks with are pointless strategically and therefore terrorism.
With rights and prerogatives comes this thing called responsibility to act justly.
Long range fires of US donations could be considered US attacks, done irresponsibly. Those NATO attacks would be irresponsible toward the survival of the world.
Terrorism is not defense!
The WW II bombing was only effective because Patton got into Germany and overran it.
He did? I guess the British and Soviet Armies and other allies were even slower than I thought.
Yup!
I don’t think there’s anything under international law that forbids Russia from supplying nuclear missiles to Syria, Yemen, Serbia, Cuba, and Venezuela. So yeah, let’s re-do the Cuban(Turkish) Missile Crisis, but make it more multicultural this time around.
Stoltenberg is right of course. There is an international armed conflict in progress between Russia and Ukraine, and in such circumstances attacks on each other’s countries are part of the conflict. For that matter, attacks on each other’s’ forces outside the territory of each country are part of armed conflict as well. The fact that the Russians have tagged Ukraine a “Special Military Operation” is a political label only, and doesn’t change the fact that it is an international armed conflict. However, as Stoltenberg correctly notes, these attacks have to be limited to “legitimate military targets.” That, however, is a constraint of international humanitarian law, which is a completely different subject (ius in bello as lawyers say.) As I pointed out a few days ago, any order given to western forces to attack non-military targets would be criminal act, up to and including any political figure who OK’d it, and any such order would be illegal.
As regards western involvement itself, this is the complicated question of the definition of “co-belligerency.” The standard definition, of co-belligerents, as far as I know, is “states engaged in a conflict with a common enemy, whether in alliance with each other or not.” There’s a lot of argument about that definition but neither Russia nor the NATO powers have claimed to be at war with each other, and diplomatic relations have been maintained, so it’s doubtful whether the “co-belligerent” argument applies. But that’s a bit beside the point. There’s no armed conflict between Russia and NATO nations, although either could start one of it wanted to. There’s no question of “right” involved. Equally, foreign nationals in Ukraine helping the Ukrainian war effort would, I think, generally be agreed to be a legitimate target.
With all due respect (and I mean that not in the sarcastic sense it’s mostly used) the difference between a “war” and a “special military operation” is not just a label in Russian legal and military thinking.
A legal example could be that if Russia was fighting a war, the ministry of defense would have to, by the law, report the progress weekly to the state Duma – casualties and all. For a special military operation that reporting is only required after the end of the operation. And there would probably be movement towards mobilizing the 20 million (or so) reservists.
Militarily, in Russian thinking Ukraine is only a part of the theater of war against NATO (or the West). It’s not big enough for a proper war, it’s merely an operational space where the armed forces of Russia try to effect the opponent to accept a political goal pertaining to limiting the NATO expansion and save the world from a nuclear war. By forcing USA to accept a buffer zone in Europe that makes a nuclear war less likely.
Oh, I agree. I was thinking at the purely international legal level, where “armed conflict” is defined as resort to armed force between states or protracted violence between states and non-state actors. In the Russian legal context, I quite accept it’s more nuanced than that, but if you ask the simple question “is there an armed conflict in the Ukraine” the answer is yes.
So what does Russia propose to do about it?
I’m not too worried about prions because we’ll all have Long Covid brain damage before they become a problem
That’s how my friend feels about COVID. He figures that global nuclear war will get us before long COVID so he doesn’t worry about masking.
Long Covid, nuclear war, political upheavals? We’ve got a Jackpot and we’re all winners!
Optimist! You really think we’ll escape the ecosphere collapse that easily?
Something about this incredibly bleak thread made me laugh. Thank you NC commentariat for your dark humor! Gotta laugh some even through the darkness
I’m not too worried because I rely on the Three Stooges Syndrome as my defense.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8
I am not too worried since you can’t take life away from life. And what’s not to like in RIP (for a bit of time in the afterlife?)
Shepherds have known for a long time not to graze where scrapie victims lie.
America’s Richest Men Ask the Courts to Make Unions Illegal
Labor Unions are themselves created by law by Congress and the proper way for Richest Men to end this is to change or abolish that law. But should they succeed in their current method, it seems to me logical that an equal, balanced, and fair application of the law by the Courts of their efforts to make Labor Unions illegal via the Courts, is that the Courts also rule that corporations should likewise be illegal based on the exact same logic, as there is not really much difference in their definitions…
Wikipedia Labor Unions:
“Labor unions represent United States workers in many industries recognized under US labor law since the 1935 enactment of the National Labor Relations Act. Their activity today centers on collective bargaining over wages, benefits, and working conditions for their membership, and on representing their members in disputes with management over violations of contract provisions. Larger trade unions also typically engage in lobbying activities and electioneering at the state and federal level.”
Wikipedia Corporations:
“A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people – authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law as “born out of statute”; a legal person in a legal context) and recognized as such in law for certain purposes. Early incorporated entities were established by charter (i.e., by an ad hoc act granted by a monarch or passed by a parliament or legislature). Most jurisdictions now allow the creation of new corporations through registration. Corporations come in many different types but are usually divided by the law of the jurisdiction where they are chartered based on two aspects: whether they can issue stock, or whether they are formed to make a profit.”
Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, Labor Unions lobby government, corporations don’t lobby government. Or at least it’s not worth mentioning if they do.
Those rich businessmen may have to ask their buddies in the Supreme Court to rejigger the First Amendment to make what they want to do legal first-
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-8-1/ALDE_00013139/
Of course those unions could reconstitute themselves into corporations which would automatically give them free speech and access to dodgy financing.
Unions are themselves corporations, like all nonprofits, at least in Canada are required to provide articles of incorporation and to register as a corporation, to have a board of directors, etc. Members are the stakeholders, obviously. So to make it illegal to unionize would seem to me, at least in some countries, to put a stake through the heart of how corporations come into being. It’s an interesting thought…
Ah yes , remember that Bill that Senator Hugh Seagal quashed back in 2013? It was aimed aa unions but people suddenly noticed it would apply to all the provincial and federal professional associations such as the Canadian Medical Association, the Law Society of Upper Canada and so on. Conservative senator’s amendment guts union disclosure bill.
In so many ways, Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom in the movie “Nightcrawler” is the personification of a corporation. It’s a chilling performance.
That performance was something remarkable, and quite a stark presentation of the nature of that business…”if it bleeds it leads”. And yes, it was a chilling thought experiment on the realities of persons who pursue such “avenues” and the second rate producers who might oversee the proliferation, shall we say, of horrid details on death and the like. And his character spouting corporate diatribes that he uncovers online.
That penultimate scene prior to the end of the movie, though, in the street…he puts his only associate / employee directly in the path of harm…
A wonderful movie that didn’t get the notice it deserves.
This effort is all part of a long, well funded plan to use the Courts to completely undo the New Deal. They are succeeding.
And, have no doubt that Medicare and Social Security are in the crosshairs.
The prospect of illegal unions gives rise next to confederacy 2.0, the one where involuntary servitude reappears. Agency disappears, north of Richmond, or at least hides its identity.
And make billionaires illegal while they’re at it.
They may get their wish, and they may be reminded that unions were the compromise. Wildcatting is always on the table
This is my thoughts. Go ahead, don’t let the federal government regulate unions. Watch thousands of work actions occur on a local level.
“America’s Richest Men Ask the Courts to Make Unions Illegal
Labor Unions are themselves created by law by Congress and the proper way for Richest Men to end this is to change or abolish that law.”
Why go through that much trouble, when an unelected and unaccountable court can do the job so much faster?
And, yes, one could by the same token abolish corporate limited liability. Whether turnabout is fair play doesn’t matter here. The only question is not of logic or fairness but strictly one of power. Unions don’t have it and rich people do.
“More Than 40 Percent of Americans Know Someone Who Died of Drug Overdose; 13 Percent Say Deaths Have Disrupted Their Lives” RAND
“The experiences and needs of millions of survivors of an overdose loss largely have been overlooked in the clinical and public health response to the nation’s overdose crisis,” said Alison Athey, the study’s lead author and a behavioral scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “Our findings emphasize the need for research into the prevalence and impact of overdose loss, particularly among groups and communities that experience disproportionate rates of loss.”
Now do mass shootings and Covid and add that to the stats. And include casualties that didn’t result in death but other serious side effects. Cumulative effects…
Major network outages in U.S. following two X-class solar flares The Watchers
~~~~~~~~~~
It’d be a Hobbesian existence without the Leviathan of electricity, although humanity somehow made do without it for the first 69,800 years of our 70,000 year run on this good orb and its typically faithful Faraday Cage.
A few years ago was on a backpack trip to Willett & Sespe hot springs with a couple of longtime friends from LA & SD and I posed the question of what would you do if we got back to our cars at the trailhead after the walk and none of our steeds would start-the batteries dead, a silent but deadly X28 class solar flare shorted out the world.
I’d have the easiest of a bad scenario in that once I walked to the Friant-Kern Canal, I could follow it up to the Kaweah River, and be ensured of gravity fed water from the Friant on. Food would be problematic, but the 80 miles i’d have to walk from the trailhead to there is lightly peopled and heavily tree’pled with orchards. Many of these have large holding ponds for water. En route I’d pass by Maricopa, Ca. which is the perfect coda for the energy age in that it looks like Texas or Saudi Arabia in that there are pumping jacks every 25 feet in what looks like a forest of them. The last time I was there, every last retail business on the main drag was out of business-the resource curse!
My biggest worry would be just about the only thing that still worked without electricity-guns.
Imagine the envy of what a backpack (we’d have 2 water filters on us) with everything you need to survive (just add food & water!) in a world where by default walking (save bicycles) would represent the only (I left equestrians out, because I never really see anybody riding horses, there must be 300 here in Tiny Town and they are essentially giant pets that never get ridden) transportation…
The San Diegan wanted to get back to his wife and kids, and I get that, but a long walk where surface water is scarce with large stretches of nothing, and you’d be in competition with 20 million others all in the same boat, those electric pumps that brought water from far away weren’t working anymore.
The Los Angeleno said ‘i’m coming with you’.
How about a foldable bike kept in the boot of your car? If overnight we go back to the 19th century sans electricity, at least one of those should get you back home much quicker. They may not be elegant but hey, whatever works.
We used to do this backpack where we’d get a 9 PM start and ride a few miles on asphalt around Lake Piru to get to the trailhead which took you into the California Condor sanctuary in the backcountry. We’d camp at the trailhead, ditch the bikes somewhere and off we went, reverse the process riding back to the cars.
I’m good for participating in the Tour de Burn for a week’s ride on relentlessly flat terrain of the Playa on my trusty E-Ray (A circa 2008 Schwinn Sting-Ray a friend electrified) but i’m not much of a bike rider and when you add a backpack, not the stablest platform you ever saw, and you’d have to walk the bike up hilly sections, why carry the weight?
I’ll hoof it…
I hear a comfy pair of walking shoes is handy. Both my parents walked miles to school each day, uphill both ways – in the snow.
They weren’t barefoot?
My mother did too! And as a devout Catholic to church on Sunday. Living through the Depression made that generation resourceful.
I’ve kept a folding bike in in the boot since 2003. Quickest way around town is to park the car in a shaded structure and bike from there. While riding uphill is a good workout the downhill is all breeze in the face.
I’ve been reading about Horace Kephart who helped found the AT. He wrote a book about what you just said called Camping and Woodcraft. It was very popular and influenced the Boy Scout Manual which was once the second best selling book next to the Bible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Horace+Kephart
Thing is though that these earlier outdoor manuals were all about hunting and fishing since water isn’t enough. Their influence can be seen in Hemingway’s stories of upper Michigan like Big Two Hearted River*. And for some of us their influence lingers even though we travel via computer controlled cars as even car camping can be a totally electricity free experience.
So whatdya say? Can we truly become wilderness denizens without joining our fellow predators?
*Gore Vidal snidely sniped that Hemingway stories should have been published in Field and Stream.
The only livestock you could hope for would be dairy cows in mega-dairies in Godzone-there are practically no range cattle, and seeing as they are all quite efficiently milked electronically, i’m seeing issues from the get go, ’cause you gotta milk twice a day, and no way-no how is the hired help gonna milk 6,000 cows.
You’d have better luck with deer, but you’d have to get to where they are-not vice versa.
Some years ago was on a long backpack trip from Jerkey Meadow trailhead to Crescent Meadow and the first 30 miles were through the Golden Trout Wilderness-where hunting is allowed, and didn’t see much in the way of deer, they’re wary.
Once we popped over Farewell Gap into Sequoia NP there were deer everywhere-the animals knew the gig and were hanging out in neutral Animal Switzerland.
Yes no hunting at NP (fishing yes?) unless you are Teddy Roosevelt who once bagged yet another trophy for Sagamore Hill and got away with it. Of course he gets a little credit for the NPS itself.
BTW if interested one can download a pdf of Kephart’s book from the Library of Congress.
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/public/gdcmassbookdig/bookofcampingwoo02keph/bookofcampingwoo02keph_djvu.xml
What you need is Henley’s Book of Formulas.
https://gutenberg.org/files/53143/53143-h/53143-h.htm
From 1914. It tells how to make anything you need using things available in over 100 years ago.
If you can find one, another good resource is a very old Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. It had all sorts of recipes for making lab equipment with available materials (beeswax, linseed oil, …).
I had a sort of funny thought about solar flares, geomagnetic storms, and AI. What if, what if an entity like ATT and Starlink have onboard AI doing traffic routing to load balance heavy traffic or no traffic accepted on one node to the other nodes, and they in turn become overwhelmed and have to load balance and offload excess to other nodes, etc, all based on the programming assumptions built into the AI code? Sort of like the NYC great blackout when one electrical switch tripped and cascaded the entire electrical grid from the CA border to NYC going down? Remember that? (Yeah, that’s probably not what happened here. Maybe somebody cross connected a major switching hub somewhere by mistake. Human error. But this does begin to look like a cascade event, whatever the cause. )
Shorter, I guess, redundancy costs money, safety costs money, engineers monitoring the system activities costs money, maintenance costs money. Companies are in the business to make money, not to spend money. Ask California’s Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) about cost savings. / ;)
The very first Connections dealt with the NYC blackout of 1965… and how computerized could it have been 59 years ago, compared to now?
James Burke Connections, Ep. 1 “The Trigger Effect”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ
Yep. Now we’re told that AI is safe and efficient, computer algo’s are safe and efficient, and people blindly think computers/programs do not make mistakes.
So what could go wrong with CBDC’s, for example. / ;)
(Keep some cash on hand. Ya never know when the electricity or some infrastructure card reading system will go down, even on a sunny day.)
adding an aside: human error is always with us, even in AI. How could it not be, considering AI is human created.
Thanks for the link.
Illan Pape’s article is a bit cheerful.
Also “War zone or not, Ukraine seeks to reclaim its role as a hub for clinical trials” has a silver lining: there will likely be more women and old people tested in drug trials, which is sourly needed. Too bad that in order to do this you need to kill the younger men first…
I can see it now. ‘Hey, you got both your legs blown off in the war? Then sign up for this clinical trial or you will not get your disability pension this month.’
About the pentagon IG observation that US/NATO gifts of complex mechanized systems were without concern for logistics support…..
The US army has two broad types of maintenance: direct, performed by the personnel operating the mechanized equipment, and indirect which is performed by soldiers assigned at battalion, brigade or depot echelons. Those two type are further broken down to repairs done on the major item such as the command track of a patriot unit.
The gifts sent to Ukraine went to a place where indirect support would be done by soldiers in the US or Germany!!!
They had a plan it was just expensive and ineffective…. without considering where talent and parts would come from.
While in case of newer systems there is a talent for relying on contractors to do the logistics!
This type of issues has been seen before as in the break up of Yugoslavia, seems no one learned.
To a large degree this is a reflection of the problem that NATO has – lack of standardization. You you have French tanks, German tanks, British tanks, American tanks, etc. Logic would dictate that NATO should settle on a heavy and a light tank and all countries manufacture or buy them. Same for artillery, APCs, etc. Supply lines would be much simplified, maintenance would be easier, spare parts more plentiful and so on. But NATO never went that way and I heard of how this can play out. I think that some two million rounds of 155m have been sent to the Ukraine as they all fit in that NATO supplied artillery right? Not so fast. The caliber may be the same but each country has different quantities of powders and the like for their shells which can play havoc in trying to aim them. Brian Berletic covers a lot of this in a video he dropped today and it is worth watching-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrlMFFXmbxQ (41:55 mins)
An additional problem for the Ukrainians. Rats have been eating the cables of Western vehicles as some of the protective sheaths of electrical wires in those Western vehicles are made of corn fiber.
Ah, but the NATO members do have different military needs. During the recent exercise in Estonia and Finland the UK contingent learned that their equipment is shait in below-zero temperatures.
It’s a totally different kind of ballgame and there’s no military standard that can cover the 5 to 30 climate zones and 5 vegetation zones (with sub-classifications according to the elevation, soil and flush) of Europe, not to speak of the globe.
Finland is still using 7.62 mm as the main cartridge, because +80% the country is forest and that’s the smallest caliber that flies straight in the forest. I guess NATO standardization means switching to 5.56 NATO that is kinda usable in less than 20% of the country. Yay!
Yeah i think during the Vietnam War US soldiers came to fear the 7.62 firing AK-47 for its ability to go through tree trunks and continue on through the soldier hiding behind it.
Norway has largely retired 7.62, as the G3 got replaced by the HK416, but i think it is still retained as a DMR round for the HK417. At least while stocks last.
Standardization has been a buzz word for decades. We do have 5.56mm NATO ball for that.
155mm is too big for a cartridge like round. You have the shell which is jammed in the barrel to compress into the lands and groves rifling.
Then 4 to 6 bags of “powder are shove in the breech closed, and the gun might fire.
That process can be different for different tubes. For example, some countries like .45 caliber tubes (barrel is 45 times the diameter of the shell) other countries use shorter .38 cal for 155mm tubes. Longer barrel more time to spin, and more effect from burning gun powder.
I do not think NATO standard applied to 155mm artillery systems.
I was not around artillery long enough to know other advantages of longer barrels, or the difference in rounds at the ram in step.
US artillery is large investment for decades. Probably US should be NATO for the bigger guns.
– “May Golan, Israeli Minister of Social Equality & Women’s Advancement”
Out of curiosity I looked May Golan up. She has a Wikipedia page. Here’s the second paragraph:
“Before being elected to office, Golan was known for a number of inflammatory statements she made about African asylum seekers in Israel, referring to them as rapists and infiltrators who would spread HIV among the Israeli population. Golan says “If I am racist for wanting to defend my country and for wanting to protect my basic rights and security, then I’m a proud racist”.[1]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Golan
So she’s been “proud” for a while now – well qualified to be Netanyahu’s Minister of “Social Equality & Women’s Advancement”! “Equality” and “Advancement” for some, genocide and ethnic cleansing for the rest.
Her history is informative.
Ghoulan? /:(
‘Iron Golem’
Another Israeli “finest mind of the 19th century.” Perhaps those who spend so much time fretting about Christian Nationalism should consider the country the evangelicals so ardently support. But then there’s no such thing as intellectual consistency among the Hillarys and Pelosis of the world. They are all about stirring up emotions.
“But then there’s no such thing as intellectual consistency among the Hillarys and Pelosis of the world. They are all about stirring up emotions.”
They are all about power. If Christian nationalism were in their interests at the moment, they would be all in for Christian nationalism.
The thing with these will to power types is that once you pull back the mask, it’s like staring into the abyss. There really is nothing else there.
Both the Jewish nationalists and the Christian nationalists share a deep and profound belief in the End of Days as described in the Old Testament and Torah. To wit — that this Earth and its peoples are a short term project by God to see who will follow all the rules he set down. The Judaic version has all true Jews going to a happy afterlife after watching all the sinners and Christians get boiled in lava or some such. The Christian version has Christians going to the happy place while all the Jews and other sinners get boiled.
This matters because this underlying belief in the absolute rightness and certainty of their worldview — and their cause — sets them free to get right at the boiling of non-believers, without waiting for the End of Days. Why not? They’re going to be boiled anyhow, right?
And what is their cause?
Well, the Jews who believe this way want to build their Third Temple on the site of the current Al-Aqsa moswue, and build a Jewish nation that spreads out over multiple existing nations of the Middle East because that will cause their Messiah to appear with the End of Days just as soon as they accomplish this — along with their complete and total vindication. Any and all thefts and murders instantly forgiven and forgotten. When you’re on the right side of history, you’re right, period.
Well, the Christian nationalists want to see that Third Temple built, and the Jewish homeland created, because that will bring their Messiah Jesus back (and the End of Days) just as soon as they accomplish this — along with their complete and total vindication.
One may be forgiven for wondering if these are suicide cults.
In action out here in this world, both parties are prone to feeling like any means to their end goals is just fine, since nothing in this world matters except bringing the End of Days.
This is the core belief that lies behind such words as Ms. Golan speaks.
Homicide cults, sir. Other people do the dying.
The monsters are no longer hiding their true selves. They’re loud, they’re proud, they’re proclaiming their monstrousness. Heydrich would be pleased. / ;:(
Of course. This is Golan giving the world the middle finger and daring anyone to do anything about it.
Genocide Joe would jump to polish her middle finger, if only he could remember where he last saw it. Commander, though, would probably bite it right off. Trump, on the other hand, would likely sit down with the finger and swap stories about ****hole countries in Africa, then finger her for a donation.
Interesting that it is illegal to get a DNA test in Israel.
Guess they don’t want the cat out of the bag about how many Jewish people are not from the Middle East by any stretch of the imagination, or hallucination.
‘China Xinhua News
@XHNews
Stunning drone footage captures wolves digging tunnels through deep snow in China’s Xinjiang’
In that video clip you can see the difference between wolves and humans. The wolves took a hard right to go in a better direction. A human would keep on going straight as they were making such great progress.
> Law is not Code: On Algorithms and the Concept of Law (PDF)
> To increasingly hand over legal decisions to algorithm-based systems, as recently propagated with renewed vehemence by Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Siboney and Cass Sunstein
Sunstein is a favored Taleb chewtoy, and has been clarified on NC for his Covid werk, so I’ll let that go.
Kahneman with Tversky was a serious power duo, bringing insight and wisdom with their research, in particular exposing the fiction of Rational Man. But without Tversky, Kahneman has become unmoored. Six years after Tversky died, Kahneman laid this on the table in his nobel speech:
> because we tend to reward others when they do well and punish them when they do badly, and because there is regression to the mean, it is part of the human condition that we are statistically punished for rewarding others and rewarded for punishing them.
which sounds awesomely great and wise, until you realize, a simple wu-wei strategy of doing nothing would outperform those strategies in the game he offers. Tversky would’ve called him on the boundary violation. Add in the dictums of ‘The fastest learning occurs with rewards given immediately on the successful completion of a test,’ and ‘Punishment provides perverse performance,’ which Kahneman as a psychologist damn well knows. Now he’s re-anchoring to robot judges, he should go try to understand Godel again. But that’s maths, which was Tversky’s gig.
Contrast such abstraction with this empirically-based statement:
> A beginner will experience this strange sensation as pain (it is painful—your muscles are ripping), but after a while it feels like a kind of revelation. What was once painful now breeds growth.
That’s from the ‘Getting the Pump’ link, an excursion including
> In most endeavors, there is a point at which the idea comes into contact with reality, and if the idea isn’t harmonious with reality, one is forced to reevaluate.
Jordan Castro does a very fine walk in the woods with this essay, and I will go back again.
Thanks for the link.
What is the current market value of the brilliant commentary at Naked Capitalism to the bot builders?
Ha ha just kidding. : )
Nobody will use NC Comentaries to train AI. The AI is supposed to be amoral in the minds of our elites…
Partying Like 1999? An NBubble Isn’t Here John Authers, Bloomberg. Key point: “There’s relatively little evidence of excessive use of leverage within financial markets, even if higher rates aren’t yet slowing down the US economy as had been expected.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Until a few months ago i’d never heard of Sam Altman or Nvidia, the latter I initially assumed was a hand cream sold online, and that may still prove to be the case.
For those doing 30 to life in the big house, you are kind of a prisoner of Zenda if you got in on advantageous annual percentage rates, with mortgages now topping 7%, oh my!
You ain’t going nowhere, but the pool of buyers is also shrinking-zugzwang.
Excessive use of leverage was what the housing bubble was all about, and until used cars started going up in price, the only commonly held used consumer item that went up in value, demonstrably on any old stucco in SoCal, but offer not limited to California.
I don’t own any office buildings or any CRE so it means nothing to me, but what do you do if you’re the financial powers that be, which bailed out everybody and their mother if they were the right people in 2008, do you just cut everybody a check for a trillion worth of losses and expect that as usual, nobody really cares-just makes the means mean nothing in the scheme of things.
The hammer seems to be coming down on AirBnB’s et al in many locales. Here’s the latest from the nearest Big Smoke in Visalia
https://thesungazette.com/article/news/2024/02/22/visalia-council-at-odds-over-airbnb-regulations/
The short term vacation rental is the real Boogeyman of housing bubble round deux. The owner has no community ties aside from leaching off of it for profit’s sake, knows none of the neighbors, his boy didn’t play on the local little league team, nor did any of his kids go to school here. The houses have nothing in them-so they are ready to be sold-as in we can show it tomorrow, would you like to make an offer?
As far as I can tell, based on Wolf Richter’s excellent blog, the CRE mess is spread far and wide, banks hold some of the bad debt, but a lot more is in pension funds, hedge funds, and foreign sovereign wealth funds.
So if it all goes pear-shaped, as the Brits say, it will be kind of like a turd sliced into thousands of pieces and distributed among many punchbowls.
At least, that is the hope. We all know that sometimes things play out differently than even the wisest hands predict.
So in essence, nothing was learned back in 2007-08…
I think we are reaching into Fight Club territory when it comes to the US equity market rules…Rallies will go on as long as necessary. FOMO, or possibly whatever else one might wish to ascribe when it comes to missing out in the best market ever. I half joked this week that my work colleagues, if we pool resources to buy either of the Mega Millions tickets or the Powerball tickets, maybe we broaden to buy Nvidia shares instead.
Nvidia, unlike some of those memorable fave theme stocks from the 1999 era like a Pets.com, does produce earnings which is usually a crucial feature ( I say usually from a view of hindsight and cynicism ). Price to earnings when earnings are growing as they have been, attracts broad attention. For me, it does seem an incredibly narrow market rally, others mileage may vary. I have exposure on a few interesting ETF offerings, one is called COWZ (proverbially these are “cash cow” dividend payers) and another is called RSP ( Equal Weighted exposure to all the S&P 500 ).
Tantrums may develop during 2024 if the mean Grinch, er, Chair Powell, says “no cuts for you” and leaves the punch bowl as it presently is…
That’s an interesting Stoller on bank cards. Clearly being a card issuer is a license for printing money–literally–and explains why the card companies and their banks can sometimes seem loosey goosey on security. What’s a little fraud when you own the cash cow?
It might be worthwhile to see how other countries handle this and whether their native plastic is better regulated.
A Forthcoming Documentary Examines How Civic Life in America Is a Matter of ‘Join or Die’ Colossal
I read Putman’s Bowling Alone around the mid 2000s. I agree it is an important book. I was dismayed to see that the documentary features people like David Brooks and the Clintons as being sympathetic to his viewpoint. These are the cheerleaders and implementers of the ideology chiefly responsible for the destruction of our ‘social capital.’ Featuring the Clintons is particularly appalling. One of their political strategies is to divide. It goes to show that you can be brilliant in describing a pathology, but lack insight into its etiology. It is a terrible irony (and bad omen) that the label for what we must preserve, ‘social capital,’ borrows from the lexicon of the ideology responsible for its destruction!
What being sympathetic to the viewpoint of David Brooks has entailed; I would prefer to be apart:
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/opinion/l-avoid-war-crimes-080535.html
Avoid War Crimes
To the Editor:
In ”A Burden Too Heavy to Put Down,” * David Brooks writes, ”Inevitably, there will be atrocities” committed by our forces in Iraq. Did he forget to add that they must be prosecuted?
War crimes are indeed more likely if influential commentators foreshadow impunity for perpetrators of the ”brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt.”
The choice is not between committing war crimes and retreating ”into the paradise of our own innocence.” A third option is for the United States to strive to avoid complicity.
It is untrue that ”we have to take morally hazardous action.” Those who choose it, or urge others to, cannot evade or distribute responsibility by asserting that ”we live in a fallen world.”
* https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/opinion/04BROO.html
BEN KIERNAN
New Haven, Nov. 4, 2003
The writer is director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University.
Yes, you are right. The inclusion of David Brooks is also appalling. If the people moved enough by books like Bowling Alone to make a documentary still feel it is productive to turn to people like Brooks for commentary, then we we are truly doomed. Talk about missing the big picture. I guess it is just all our fault for not joining enough clubs! Foolish us! There are still some clubs flourishing though, like the WEF!
“The inclusion of David Brooks is also appalling…”
Yes, appalling, but David Brooks is the norm among NYTimes columnists. The fierceness, harshness, of every NYTimes columnist is chilling to me. I would never think of being honest were I a student of Paul Krugman. Kristof is chilling… Who could I possibly relate to and trust among the bunch? So, I want no such bowling friends or really even bowling acquaintances lest I accidentally make a comment I actually believe.
“I read Putman’s Bowling Alone around the mid 2000s…”
A fine comment indeed, but as yet I do not know where to go with it. So, I will be thinking.
CNN is confirming that Ecuador backed down and now won’t send obsolete USSR-era weapons to the US, for relaying to Ukraine:
https://news.yahoo.com/cnn-ecuadorian-president-rejects-sending-093849161.html
This shows that Russia is capable of diplomacy. I guess Blinken will be left to rage and Bloomberg won’t print a retraction of the story from the other day that this was a climb-down by Russia.
Ecuador could prove an interesting card in the Hegemony 500 race in that they are by far the largest country that uses the Yanqui $ as its national currency of the few players in the Greenback League.
What if they went over to Chinese Yuan?
Operationally that would be difficult, not to mention the blowback that would surely come from Uncle Sam.
Maybe the new BRICS currency, should that ever come to pass.
Not sure China would approve, as they seem to avoid anything smelling of “reserve currency”.
Not sure China would approve, as they seem to avoid anything smelling of “reserve currency”.
[ China holds about $3.2 trillion dollars in foreign currency reserves, and another $1.5 trillion in foreign securities. The idea being, always protect the currency, which is what several Asian central banks forgot about doing in the 1990s. This allows for endless currency exchanges with no risk of concerted speculation against the Yuan. ]
https://english.news.cn/20240208/6390ea03b0ed48909e863be32c58289a/c.html
February 8, 2024
Ecuador’s National Assembly approves free trade agreement with China
QUITO) — Ecuador’s National Assembly on Wednesday approved the free trade agreement between Ecuador and China, according to local authorities.
China is Ecuador’s second-largest trading partner. China and Ecuador formally signed the free trade agreement on May 11, 2023, making Ecuador China’s 27th free trade partner.
The approval marks the completion of all legal approval procedures for the agreement on the Ecuadorian side….
Give it a little while.
About joining clubs to save society, clubs were very popular in Germany prior to the rise of the Nazis. Nazis forced every club to prove their loyalty to the Nazi regime. Clubs/groups/unions/churches can definitely have social/political power, but there are always opposing powerful groups. Now that we are all phone addicts we have group chats online but are also more isolated.
> Nazis forced every club to prove their loyalty to the Nazi regime.
Down to stamp-collecting clubs! Richard Evans shows this process (gleischalung) in detail in his magisterial The Coming of the Third Reich, which I highly recommend to everyone.
Evans also wrote Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years (1830-1910), which I should read. Apparently, the same contradictions (and idiocies) we face today with public health. From the linked interview with Evans:
Plus ça change, comforting in a way, I suppose….
Batshit crazy is the “New Black”.
Seriously, have there ever been so many powerful people behaving in a manner that is objectively insane?
Sending sick kids to school to subsequently infect their families with a deadly disease, the Israeli’s slaughtering the innocent in droves in God’s name, NATO escalating a fight that they can not win and that may well result in a Nuclear exchange, the Biden Administration going all in on the Bananas part of a banana Republic at home….
Things may come completely apart well before November.
Everything is performative. Emperor’s New Clothes in a modern context.
It’s so batshit crazy that it almost seems a sensible explanation that aliens are demanding the earth’s “powers that be” decimate the human race in exchange for the survival of a few privileged humans. Haha! Of course if that were the case the aliens could have obliterated the human race already. Could make a good sci-fi plot though.
No need for there being aliens involved. Rather that they have done the math and shown that there needs to be a radical reduction in population for the planet to be sustainable. And these people are doing their level best to be on top in the aftermath.
And it may well have been known as far back as the 60s-70s, based on the quote from LBJ that Oliver Stone dug up for his documentary series.
That quote being?
Perhaps the Owl means the one where LBJ tells the Joint Chiefs of Staff at a 1963 Christmas party, “Just get me elected, and you can have your war.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_billion
A familiar idea. The Russian language version of the article makes it clear that it was actually around since the 1970s here. It is, of course, roundly dismissed as a conspiracy theory, but I think such theories owe some of their staying power to the often striking observable behaviour of elites. To a lot of people, they look evil enough to do those things.
> Of course if that were the case the aliens could have obliterated the human race already.
That depends on how sadistic the aliens are; I remember a science fiction story where time-traveling humans created plagues and disasters to create a form of art, like opera. “They were careless people….”
>Things may come completely apart well before November.
There was joking yesterday on a conservative slanted radio talk show yesterday in New England that had yesterday’s cell network outages as being a trial run for upsetting or canceling next November’s election. They
did also have a guy on who speculated on the numerous causes it could have been, all very legitimate. Network updates going bad, etc.
But yes Mr. Stone, in this nation ( and world ), S is going off the rails it seems…
One thing most may not be aware of it that unlike the landlines of old, the cell network is very centralized.
In order for it to function, each cell has to be in contact with servers that track and route traffic to and from the correct cell and thus phone. This is what allows a phone to move between cells. Thus if those servers are either down or disconnected the network is partially or fully disrupted.
Landlines by contrast were more hierarchical, allowing the local switchboard to continue to function even if it had lost its connection to the core.
> Landlines by contrast were more hierarchical, allowing the local switchboard to continue to function even if it had lost its connection to the core.
And of course landlines had their own power supply (“copper”), so if other forms of communication went down, the landline remained. No wonder people in California want to keep them!
Well, down in the great state of Alabama, there’s thousands of human beings patiently waiting in cryogenic suspension to take their bite of the apple. And probably reading their bibles, too. The future belongs to the frozen.
…musical accompaniment…
Embryonic Journey, by Jefferson Airplane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo1aft5wX6o
And the journey ends, or begins, with, Sir your womb is ready now.
The Covid eating of brains is proceeding apace.
> The Covid eating of brains is proceeding apace
Zombie movies crossed with Office Space:
@Lambert
I don’t know who this person is, but these Tweets came across my feed. Thought you might be interested since you wrote a post about this not too long ago. Tweet thread link below from Julie Kelly;
@Lambert
I don’t know who this person is, but these Tweets came across my feed. Thought you might be interested since you wrote a post about this not too long ago. Tweet thread link below from Julie Kelly:
Here is the complete Tweet:
Adding, I like Kelly, even if she is a conservative. IMNSHO, looks at the detail, doens’t make things up (subject to correction by people who know conservatives better than I do!!)
TULARE COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) — Visitors drawn by the beauty of Sequoia National Park often stop in Three Rivers.
Tourists and locals alike love Sierra Subs, which ranks #8 on Yelp’s Top 100 Places To Eat in the US.
“They deserve it,” says Chris Schloussin. “They work hard. They are always generous.”
“It’s humbling, absolutely,” says Co-Owner Allison Millner. “We were pretty surprised.”
But Allison and her husband, Dane, know why people stop by.
“Because they’re creative, different sandwiches,” Dane said. “You’re not going to find anything like our sandwiches on anybody else’s menu.”
https://abc30.com/dine-and-dish-sierra-subs-three-rivers-yelp-rating/14457336/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#8 of all restaurants in the USA!
It’s where I was eating lunch about 8 feet away from Zuckerberg last fall…
They’ve been in business for about 15 years, bought the current building they’re in back in 2019 and remodeled it with a grand opening of March 2020, which was spectacularly bad timing.
So during the pandemic they stayed open but you couldn’t go inside-everything was done through windows outside, and the owners joked that it was essentially a food truck with no wheels!
Please stop in on them if you happen to be in my neck of the really big woods, think I’ll have lunch there today~
Your restraint having been in such close proximity to Zuckerberg’s eminently punchable face is admirable indeed.
“Amazon Made Airport Workers Toil In 100-Degree Heat Without Shade Jalopnik”
Gotta love the F scale.
37.something C for those in the rest of the world. Still bad, but not water boiling bad.
Well those avid French people also tried to redo the calendar, how did that work out? I prefer the metric system for everything except temperature. 100 degrees is HOT, and it starts to get dangerous after that.
Note that it tracks closely to our own bodily temp as well.
One to file under lawfare:
10 alumni bring suit against Harvard for “devaluing diplomas” with antisemitism
The broad language being used here (“rampant”) seems to imply they’re looking to do a little reputational damage of their own, which makes the whole situation a farce.
I myself am in full popcorn mode watching the Harvard twat-eratti tie themselves in knots over genocide vs. antisemitism.
Very bad if they actually win; spells the end of autonomy for universities.
“NATO Gives Ukraine the Go-Ahead to Cross Putin’s Red Line Newsweek”
Russian indecision has caused the West to lose all fear of Russia.
If the West has lost all fear of Russia, the West is very foolish.
Judge them by their actions.
LOL!