AP PHOTOS: Total solar eclipse sweeps across North America Associated Press (Kevin W)
Man imprisoned in NY calls the opportunity to view eclipse ‘sublime’ after successful lawsuit against the state Business Insider
Watch: Mount Etna puffs giant smoke rings in ‘extraordinary’ phenomenon Telegraph (Li)
Huge star explosion to appear in sky in once-in-a-lifetime event PhysOrg (Chuck L)
Blackstone Life Sciences backs Moderna flu programme The Asset (Micael T)
Alzheimer’s Is More Common in Women, And This May Help Explain Why ScienceAlert (Chuck L)
COVID-19
It’s official: A new Lancet Infectious Disease paper solidifies evidence of long-term viral persistence after #COVID-19.
Up to a quarter of people in the study harbored viral proteins indicative of persistent virus for up to 14 months after infection: https://t.co/2fLehSW9gq
— Amy Proal, PhD (@microbeminded2) April 8, 2024
Public health missing in action – "COVID shatters decades of global health progress, slashing life expectancy"https://t.co/Nnq5aG3KkS
— Prof Deborah Lupton Master of Public Health, PhD (@DALupton) April 8, 2024
Climate/Environment
And the mid-tier transformers have a 2-year lead time.
We identified this issues back in 2008 when we were working through grid discussion to be more electric.
Further degradation to the infrastructure comes from the transition of resistive loads to switching power supplies.…
— Carter Williams (@jcarterwil) April 6, 2024
Climate change: ‘Uncharted territory’ fears after record hot March BBC
Cutting-edge enzyme research fights back against plastic pollution NYU Tandon School of Engineering
China?
US, UK and Australia say Japan could join part of Aukus pact Financial Times
US pushes ASML to deny maintenance in China Asia Times (Kevin W)
Old Blighty
The Tory party has lost the plot – and could be bad news for Labour Guardian (Kevin W)
Thames Water is bust: our politicians need to deal with it Richard Murphy
Thames Water spends millions of pounds a week on consultants and bankers as the firm struggles financially Daily Mail (Kevin W)
Gaza
Someone with very strong diplomatic contacts described a specific, major escalation that Israel is primed to make. Would make the Iran embassy strike look like peanuts in terms of ripple effects. Am hoping to get a post from him. It would be hard to think the region does not wind up in a major conflagration if he is correct.
Israel-Hamas war: Netanyahu sets ‘date’ for Rafah offensive DW
IDF chief says withdrawal of troops from Gaza doesn’t mean war is close to end Times of Israel. Note the widespread misreporting of Israel’s action, no doubt fostered by Israel and US officials. Israel has “withdrawn” only from a part of Gaza.
Two Israeli Actions Misfired, Pushed Netanyahoo Into Retreat Moon of Alabama (Kevin W). IMHO, this is a premature call. Israel so far has made only small-beer placating moves. Per above, it is doubling down on attacking Rafah, something the Biden Administration has noisily opposed.
Iran’s retaliation against Israel will be a defining moment for the US Indian Punchline (Kevin W)
Hamas says Israeli proposal failed to meet Palestinian demands, yet it is under review Arab News versus Israel’s war on Gaza live: Hamas calls Israeli proposal ‘intransigent’ Middle East Eye
Israel’s war on Gaza live: Rafah threat raises questions over truce talks Aljazeera
*Sigh* per the tweet below. Surely Iran knows Hamas will not agree to release more than a very few hostages for less than a permanent ceasefire, which Israel will not grant? Oh, and the US seems perfectly OK with short-term ceasfires, since they are presumed to placate US voters. So is this about making clear to the US that Iran bent over backwards before striking Israel?
Some thoughts on the reported Iranian proposal to the US on how Biden can prevent Iran from striking Israel in response to Israel's bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus.@alihashem_tv reports that Tehran told Biden that it will hit Israel directly unless Biden secures a… pic.twitter.com/EdkeWkNkD0
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) April 8, 2024
Türkiye restricts export of certain products to Israel over Gaza onslaught Anadolu Agency
How Israel Commodifies Mass Killing Through Its “Palestine Laboratory” Intercept (Dr. Kevin). In case you missed it….
New Not-So-Cold War
Yellen Threatens Sanctions for China Banks That Aid Russia’s War Bloomberg. Because they worked so well against Russia.
” rel=”nofollow”>Meet Centuria, Ukraine’s Western-trained neo-Nazi army The Grayzone
Ukraine embraces far-right Russian ‘bad guy’ to take the battle to Putin Politico (Li)
⚡️🇷🇺📹 Russian Ministry of Defense: over 400 NATO satellites operate in the interests of Ukraine
They also help guide UAVs to targets deep inside Russia. That's why Biden is worried that Russia is going to jam NATO satellites with almost nuclear weapons.
But the Americans know… pic.twitter.com/WgC8OWK8Ou
— SIMPLICIUS Ѱ (@simpatico771) April 9, 2024
“Outstanding event” that fills gaps Tagesschau via machine translation (guurst). Important:
A Bundeswehr advance party has set off for Lithuania. It is intended to prepare the permanent stationing of around 5,000 German emergency services in the Baltic state
The Moscow target for the March 22 attack was selected in Kiev according to FSB interrogations of the gunmen. Which intelligence service knew Crocus City Hall was uniquely vulnerable to fire attack with just 8 litres of gasoline?https://t.co/kzODPE9IOw pic.twitter.com/bZffsH8R5P
— Dances_with_Bears (@bears_with) April 9, 2024
REVEALED: Trump has ‘secret plan’ to end the Ukraine-Russia war by getting Kyiv to give up land to Putin as former president boasts he could negotiate a peace deal 24-hours after being elected Daily Mail (Li). Behind the state of play, ‘natch.
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
T-Mobile’s New AI “Profiling” Privacy Toggle Is On By Default TMO Report
Imperial Collapse Watch
Beyond Lenocracy John Michael Greer. Anthony L: “Not ‘Leninocracy'”. Moi: Important.
Michael Mann, Explaining the Irrationality of War, NLR 145, January–February 2024 New Left Review. Anthony L: “….. at least a two coffee read.”
Michael Brenner: Morality Challenged ScheerPost (Chuck L)
Trump
Trump Media paid out millions to its executives. Here’s who got what. Washington Post (furzy)
Trump says abortion is up to the states, declines to endorse national limit Politico
Biden
Bidenomics and Its Discontents James Galbraith, Nation (Anthony L)
Will Democrats hold Biden accountable for arming Israel? Responsible Statecraft
RFK, Jr.
GOP Clown Car
Surprise ending: the Dominion Voting Co. source code I viewed has over 2.5 million lines of code. Instantly that told me Dominion is using their machines to cheat and steal elections. From a recent conversation with the extraordinary Jeff O'Donnell (The Lone Racoon), quoting "If…
— Peter Bernegger (@PeterBernegger) April 7, 2024
Abortion
Links between abortion and falling crime discomfit many but are clear, say the economists Economist (Dr. Kevin)
Our No Longer Free Press
Know who to blame for what’s happening to X in Brazil right now? The US State Department. pic.twitter.com/SysHFiXezQ
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) April 7, 2024
“What We Discovered Shocked Me.” The #TwitterFiles Brazil, w/ Michael Shellenberger Glenn Greenwald (Li)
Police State Watch
NYPD rolls out ‘barnacle’ windshield boots to force violators to pay New York Post
R.I.P. Roscoe, the robo dog who gave his life protecting the police Not the Bee (Li). ZOMG, that robot is more creepy/scary than the long-legged cockroach versions to which we have become a bit accustomed.
Falling Apart Boeing Airplanes
Report: Boeing ‘Put Wall Street First, Safety Second’, Creating ‘Yearslong Decline of Safety Standards’ Seattle Times
AI
The AI Act is done. Here’s what will (and won’t) change MIT Technology Review (furzy)
‘Social Order Could Collapse’ in AI Era, Two Top Japan Companies Say Wall Street Journal
How AI risks creating a ‘black box’ at the heart of US legal system The Hill (Dr. Kevin)
Mental health chatbots powered by artificial intelligence developed as a therapy support tool CBS News
Class Warfare
‘We just need a little help’: how a safe parking plan for people living in cars split a US town Guardian (Tom H)
Where Nursing Homes Hide Their Profits The Lever
Ivy League College Costs Soar to More Than $90,000 a Year Bloomberg
US banks warn Paris cost of dismissing traders will harm financial hub ambitions Financial Times. Oh, Americans can’t stand not being able to fire workers freely!
What Researchers Discovered When They Sent 80,000 Fake Résumés to U.S. Jobs New York Times (Kevin W)
Antidote du jour (Alex C):
And a bonus (Chuck L)
The duck is feeding the fish; Animals are amazing. pic.twitter.com/PdcYXBK2lI
— Timeless Pat (@timelesspat) April 5, 2024
A second bonus:
Listen to this musical parrot
pic.twitter.com/qqiOmuGKpp— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) April 6, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
189 comments
Comments are closed.
RESISTANCE
(melody borrowed from All Along The Watchtower by Bob Dylan)
We win if we simply persevere
As we told our Hamas chief
Trapped here in seclusion
No respite from our grief
Every well is tinged with brine
Babies die at birth
They’ve chopped the trees of Palestine
Gaza is hell on earth
Yet here we stand united
Though we all starve and choke
They’ve bombed and shot and hung us
And our faith never broke
Five times a day on the prayer mat
To pray and supplicate
This is the season of the plow
Like all else that must wait
The IDF are amateurs
Hamas is tried and true
The IDF pays heavy rent
At every rendezvous
We lack all means of subsistence
But won’t throw in the towel
Their murders and their poaching
Will never make us bow
Another day. Is there anything to eat? Stains that won’t wash away.
Tory party has indeed lost the plot. Though am not sure what food preparation book her late Majesty had in mind when telling a lettuce to pace yourself.
/snark
That John Harris bit in the Guardian is a nice example of what I call Level 3 in political discourse: its purpose is to reinforce the belief that Labour v. Conservative party is politics. It briefly acknowledges that Labour has the same domestic and international policy agenda but most of the text is pure entertainment fluff for readers that love to hate the Tories. It is the job of Guardian writers (among many other media people) to minimize the public perception that a populist threat to the established powers could emerge.
And what’s with the “authoritarian Orbán” genuflection? I’d like to see a comparison of the UK’s suppression of political dissent compared to Hungary’s. Guardian has been very good at helping the state since they did the reforms forced on them to get back on the D Notice committee.
The Guardian article you cited, Terry ends saying “Popular on the US right, the deep state conspiracy theory holds that a permanent government of bureaucrats and operatives exists to thwart the ambitions of populist leaders.”
sigh /
I regard the Guardian as what (loyal!) readers of The Sun called that paper: a comic.
You don’t read the Guardian for genuine news. You read it to attune yourself to what the PMC don’t want you to know. To paraphrase (IIRC) “Yes Minister”: never believe anything until it has been officially denied. The Guardian does this. So it is useful. Just not in the way its supporters think.
Exactly. To read the Graun (or any other respectable paper) is to learn what the official party line on a given issue is for a certain carefully curated subset of the PMC at that time, to learn what you are supposed to pay attention to and what you are supposed to ignore.
Any “news” is at most secondary.
.Tom….re the deep state….Wasn’t this the entire premise of the great British TV series “Yes Minister”?
I always thought the purpose of “Yes Minister” was to serve as clever propaganda for hardcore thatcherite privatisation.
Maybe I read the series wrong but to me it epitomises the ossification of British society: “reform” is virtually impossible. There are a *few* examples of where Hacker gets the better of the civil servants but they are few and far between.
However Hacker has the best critique of UK society in his lecture on “who reads the various newspapers”. It is on YouTube. Both his co-stars corpsed – the only instance I can recall them doing so.
Although Thatcher loved the show, it is alleged that her admiration was rooted in describing how things were and not in how she wanted them to be. My paternal grandmother and her family knew Thatcher as a child and didn’t understand her sense of humour even then so maybe I’m wrong….
Your read is true at the same time. I think back then the other premise wasn’t controversial and therefore went unnoticed. There exists a permanent bureaucracy (i.e. deep state, e.g. in the UK it’s the Civil Service) that relates to a rapidly rotating cast of elected politicians who’ve gained government positions. That much was given. The drama and comedy simply arises from the power struggles between these two classes.
As I recall it, the controversy over the existence of a permanent bureaucracy that might pursue its own agenda didn’t arise until Russiagate. At that moment the media loyal to the establishment started denying that a deep state exists and accusing anyone of believing otherwise of being a right-wing conspiracy nut.
And as a consequence, new meanings of Yes (Prime) Minister emerged in this new political context.
It 100% was exactly that. And Maggie is on record confirming how true to life it was. (I’m sure there were plenty others.) That the Guardian calls it a right wing conspiracy theory today to believe that such a thing exists is … idk … who can take that sheet seriously?
‘Peter Bernegger
@PeterBernegger
Surprise ending: the Dominion Voting Co. source code I viewed has over 2.5 million lines of code. Instantly that told me Dominion is using their machines to cheat and steal elections.’
Probably most of that code is to hide the internet connections that allow counts to be changed so most of that code is just junk code that does nothing. I always thought that allowing voting machines to have internet access was wild but everybody seemed to be cool with that. Corporations will not allow people to inspect that code but the equivalent would be to hire a corporation to have anonymous people to go in to voting stations and count those votes who could not be challenged or even have their identities verified. They would say who the winners were and those people would just walk out and disappear as if they never existed.
That would be too easy to both prevent and get caught attempting – any network admin worth his/her salt could prevent unwarranted connections to the machine with a few settings. And also monitor the traffic in and out.
Would be much smarter to preset the vote ratio the machine will deliver to the who ever is collecting the result, so it would change the votes on the fly – wouldn’t matter how many voted or whether the results are collected real-time or when the polls close.
You would thinks so but here I was thinking of Karl Rov’s attempted hijacking of the 2012 elections but which was blocked. And that was a national Presidential ballot which you think would have been protected till kingdom come. The fix was in – until it wasn’t.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/12845-anonymous-karl-rove-and-2012-election-fix
And this was a repeat of how Ohio’s votes in 2004 were flipped so was nothing new. And don’t get me started on the shenanigans of Florida’s computer voting in 2000.
The ’00 election stimulated me to look into the whole issue of voting machines and how they are set up. My sense was then, as it is now, that I have no faith my vote will be counted. I fail to understand why those people with a modicum of rationality seem to believe that our very limited “democracy” is no longer what it claims to be. I’m not saying it is completely rigged but I know, as a former programmer, that it could be depending on who is running the election in a particular state. Too much money and power is at stake in national elections for them to remain honest given the technology that is available.
A deep dive on Dominion can be found at VoterGA.
It’s all fine!
This from the “Setting the Record Straight” page. First two words from the lede: “Baseless claims”
hahahahahaha. Baseless my sweet Aunt Fani.
Recall that there was a lot of good work being done on the problems with voting machines, and Dominion in particular, including by researchers on the “left,” in the ‘BT’ era – before Trump. But especially with the 2020 election, any whisper of such issues now constitutes insane “conspiracy theory,” if not sedition. It’s like a switch was thrown and the vulnerabilities of voting machines was added to the list of Unspeakable Subjects.
That’s one of the biggest gifts Trump gave the powers that be. The aghastitude aside, I’m sure there was plenty of rejoicing when he gave the issue of voting machines a MAGA paint job.
Netanyahu’s first instinct when losing is always to manufacture a crisis, make thinks worse. He has led the country down the path to genocide, now he has nothing to lose from literally anything. What could he do to confuse the issues, I wonder, to make things worse? So I would guess he’s going to nuke someone.
Or maybe invade Lebanon and bomb civilian targets in Beirut as having 100,000 – 200,000 Israeli civilians unable to return to the north of the country is getting intolerable. And if Hezbollah cleans the IDF’s clock like they did back in 2006, then he goes to running to old Joe to bail him out and save his bacon by having US naval and air forces bomb Hezbollah as well. But since the US Navy are hard pressed stopping Yemeni missiles, how would they stop Hezbollah missiles on their way to flatten Tel Aviv?
My money is on an outrage at the Temple Mount.
– He needs to throw red (heifer) meat to the Yeretz Israel crowd to maintain his Knesset majority and immunity from prosecution.
– it would be an enormous (in the true sense) distraction from Gazan genocide. A media spectacular
– he may think that Israel’s neighbouring Muslim states will vacillate on their response and that war will bring the US on side and anything short of war will drive a wedge between them and their Arab Street, to the detriment of both and Israel will sail through the middle of the space opened up…?
But what outrage would he commit at Temple Mount that he hasn’t already? He has nearly exhausted the list of Temple Mount outrages at this point. Also, if he goes after Temple Mount it would be unrelated to Gaza, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc., so could be used in evidence in ICJ.
HOWEVER, having said that, maybe he wants to make this war 100% about attacking Islam wherever Islam may be – Judaism/Christianity vs Islam? How would he go about achieving that, I wonder….since Temple Mount is holy to Judaism too, so I dunno how he could attack it.
Demolish it?!
Yes. Demolish Al Aqsa. Admit the burnt offering brigade to sanctify a new Temple etc. That was what I was implying.
At the moment, the Dome of the Rock shrine is undamaged and worship continues at the Al Aqsa mosque. That could all change….
Demolishing it might anger observant Jews as well, I think it’s the site of the Holy of Holies for Judaism. That said, it certainly might help clarify things for the diaspora about zionism, and for Christians as well.
He, and the fundies in his government, likely believe that the only way forward is to get USA involved against Iran – that’s all that matters now. When USA and Israel together crush Iran, the “resistance” will go away and Greater Israel will finally be just a few more genocides away.
Alastair Crooke has an interesting analysis of Israel’s behavior.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/04/08/brutal-chaotic-war-norms-conventions-and-laws-of-conduct-are-being-erased/
It is high time for some other middle eastern country to be able to respond in kind. Used to be called Mutually Assured Dererence, and it worked.
If attacking the Syrian Embassy does not get the response Israel seeks, Israel will simply keep escalating until it gets what it wants, then it will run screaming to its American thug.
Of course, everyone in State is on it, unless you believe that they are so stupid as to rival flatworms,
Thank you, Yves.
Further to the links about Blighty, readers may be interested in https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/03/29/its-not-just-thames-the-whole-of-the-english-water-industry-is-environmentally-insolvent/ and https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/private-equity-is-predatory-capitalism-with-a-long-trail-of-destruction/ and https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/the-labour-party-must-not-follow-tory-economic-policies/.
Since November of last year, I have represented my employer and other foreign banks operating in the City at engagements with the main parties, especially Labour. It’s not just the Tories that have lost their minds, Labour is doubling down and, led by the Blair organisation, having its programme drafted by private equity and big banks (Barclays, HSBC, Citi, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan in particular).
It’s interesting to hear Labour’s future ministers blame Truss, in particular, and Johnson and act as if decades of neoliberalism and austerity were not tragic policy errors.
The article on Tory meltdown misses the acute cause of it: the Reform party is taking its core vote with increasing momentum.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/09/rishi-sunak-latest-news-suella-braverman-reform-cameron/
More data here:
https://archive.ph/mSbap
Reform is doing this by seizing the Red Tory /Blue Labour policy ground, which has been abandoned post-Johnson and Cummings as the Tories have retreated to their comfort zone (and their donors’) of attacking public services (benefit caps, local government funding cap) and asylum seekers (Rwanda) and enabling property developers (shifting water pollution mitigation entirely onto agriculture) and business (unskilled immigration).
Reform’s key policy is to scrap Net Zero to pay for the NHS. There are plenty of other sacred cows to slaughter (the City, Big Business, Immigration).
Reform will not win power – this time. They may not even win a seat, given how extreme the Tory vote is in the shires (30k majorities requiring 40% swings to overturn). They will certainly spoil the Tory vote in marginals to let Labour through. And that is probably the point: in opposition, the Tories have no policies that Labour have not stolen nor vice versa. They cannot be a credible opposition. Reform will be in third place with a nationalist populist agenda and will make all the running against the government and official opposition. At the next election, the Tories’ three hundred years of history will be irrelevant: Reform will have as many ministers (zero) and as much patronage.
In practice, the age old cycle of British politics will see the Reform platform incorporated into the Tories’ (Labour is beyond the Pale for them both), as UKIP was over Brexit, and an invigorated, non-neoliberal Tory party face down Keir “Trilateral Commission” Starker at the next election.
To be even-handed, Labour are also terrified of Reform because it represents the electoral coalition that Johnson deployed against them and, now deCorbynisation is complete, they are structurally incapable of opposing it. There are too many Net Zero, DEI, intensely relaxed about becoming filthy rich Blairite rice bowls to break….
Tony Blair, Thatcher’s greatest “achievement.”
You see his ilk stomping all over Europe, as “center-left moderates”…
“Türkiye restricts export of certain products to Israel over Gaza onslaught”
‘Türkiye lists several types of aluminum and steel products, paint, electric cables, construction materials, fuel, and other materials in restrictions’
An uncharitable view would be that this would never have happened except for Erdogan’s losses in the recent election. He could have done this any time in the past six months but only chose to do it now to make it look like he is getting tough on Israel. Somebody wake me when he actually cuts the oil flowing to Israel.
Sultan wannabe cares about Gaza as much as he do about Kurdistan or Armenia.
He cares a lot about crushing Kurds and Armenians. It sometimes get in the way of his efforts to fragment Syria and Iraq and blackmail more goodies from the West, so he cares so much he’s paying a price for it.
Turkish export of steel, food, and laundering of stolen Syrian oil and transit of Azeri oil are major factors to the Israeli economy. So if “fuel” actually includes sale and transport of raw crude, it might be a significant impact.
But Erdogan is a snake, maybe a scorpion. He’s going to keep backstabbing Arabs and abetting US and Israel even if the strategic situation and his domestic position has turned strongly in Israel’s disfavor. It is in his nature.
Once upon a time as a much younger and unwise man, I indeed stared at an Eclipse closely enough that I actually bought the car…Onto the happenings yesterday I was ill prepped to gaze skyward without the properly fitted eclipse eyewear. Alas, work colleagues were better aligned and correctly prepared to observe or that’s what they say ( Midwest US, and also New York ). Having undergone eye surgery in late 2022, I am disinclined to risk the damage and revive the genetics of bad but now corrected nearsightedness.
South Carolina got a real glimpse of the total show in 2017, so that was one for the books.
I traveled ca 100 miles to see the total show yesterday, wowsers! The rapidity and completeness of the decrease of light from just before, to totality, was the most amazing thing. It was something like, on a normal day, going from the sun just having set to two hours later, all in one second. The birds started singing their morning songs.
Wow. Here in UK we had total eclipse around 20 years ago. However only Cornwall in extreme southwest was guaranteed 100%. It was a real gamble to travel there given British weather, but it paid off for some IIRC.
I lived in Bristol at the time so was pretty southwest and we got a big dose but not 100%. It was cloudy but the transition was still amazing. The birds went quiet and major streetlamps activated. I envy people who get an eclipse both nearby and in an area that isn’t so grey & cloudy as UK typically is. (He says, 2 days after an early April day when the thermometer hit 20 celcius here!)
The eclipse was somewhat overcast when I viewed it from St Ives (Cornwall!) but still impressive. What was more impressive was the wave of flashbulbs firing all along the coast as people took photographs. A friend out to sea said the entire coastline of Cornwall was lit like a firework sparkler.
Please tell me they were not attempting to photograph something 8 minutes away if travelling at the speed of light, with a lightsource a zillion times too weak!
On second thoughts don’t. I have relatives in Cornwall.
I think the flashbulbs belonged to emmets photographing each other at the moment of eclipse. Look at me in the dark! Just like any night. Except it’s day. But the photograph doesn’t show that. :-)
I’m from a mixed-race household, part-Cornish and part-Devonian. But Cream on First!
Thank god they’re just silly and not terminally dumb :-)
And I agree cream on first!
Another mixed race part Cornish, part Devonian (brought up in Devon) here, jam on first imho
Also saw the eclipse back in them days.
aye. i was standing out in the dirt road for the total part.
chickens all went into their house.
geese and turkeys and the latters’ guinnea entourage suddenly froze in place and were uncharacteristically silent.
saw 2 planets.
and yeah…the rapidity of the going and coming of the light was pretty darned cool.
i can definitely see how primitive people would have been freaked out.
i immediately thought of Fenrir eating the sun.
Jupiter was up to the left and Venus was down to the right, but further down was Mars and Saturn.
Uranus was up slightly above Jupiter, but it is so faint that even in the best of circumstances it is hardly distinguishable.
I only saw Venus as I was busy fumbling with my camera and concentrating on getting some pics, which I did.
“The rapidity and completeness of the decrease of light from just before, to totality, was the most amazing thing.”
Yup. I experienced 2017 partial, and that was strange, but this experience of totality proved the fanatics right- there is a solid difference between 95% partial and total. Very strange experience. The actual eclipse, the sight of the sun obscured, is an amazing thing, but the “horizon” edge of the shadow was something, too. Glad I was deep in the Adirondacks, because the traffic soaked drive back was at least pretty.
Lacking the proper eyewear (which I let my wife and son use), I pulled a “Plato’s Cave” and settled for watching the darkness descend on the streetscape from indoors.
Too late to talk about it now but some good music to have watched that eclipse by would have been the first four minutes of the first track of Pink Floyd’s album “Wish You Were Here”-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLIy2t-KAc0 (10 mins)
One of my favorite LPs. What a sound.
Speaking of Pink Floyd, here in Ohio, which was a sweet spot to see the eclipse, a radio station played “Dark Side of the Moon” when totality happened at 3:11 pm. Cool idea.
I was looking forward to testing the theory that if you are in the 100% zone you can use the eclipse to summon the apocalyptic demons. Unfortunately, I slept in.
Well, maybe next time.
Had a lovely experience. It was cloudy on and off here in my neck of the woods in Eastern Ontario but we saw most of the lead up and all of the main event. We were lucky to be in our own backyard. I didn’t want to be with a crowd whooping and hollering and cheering. Feels like a more solemn event to me.
For fun here is a bit from Jimmy Kimmel – they’re out on the street asking average Americans to explain the eclipse. I’d like to believe that they’re actors. Tried to get just the bit but if it starts earlier, fast forward to 9:40ish. https://youtu.be/F7iANkAUB_k?si=MkeV3FNjU0ymLkqT
I welcome our AI overlords/Terminators/Aliens. We are officially beyond saving.
We watched in our little abode also, we were in the totality zone and it was frickin’ awesome.
Nine month old Aussie pup was running around carefree until it got dark and then she gets in between wife and I and is like ‘what’s going on here’.
Much more awesome than my expectations, for sure.
The ol’ Archdruid needs to stay in his lane. Pretending rent is high because gubbermint…smh.
I skimmed it quickly, it’s a mixed bag. He’s going in the same direction as Jamie Galbraith’s concept of the ‘predator state’, which was much better, conceptually, in my view. He also doesn’t know enough to explain empty storefronts in big cities, too. Corporate landlords won’t drop asking rents because it would mean they have to re-value the whole building and write it down to ‘market’ levels. They’d rather have a little less cashflow so they can prop up higher asset values. How can they sustain this? There’s a cartel of other corporate landlords doing the same thing!
Yves has gone through this stuff before. If govt has a role, it’s accounting rules and accommodating property developers and landlords, not over-regulating small business.
My take was that he lumped a couple of things together without really explaining the difference….in our town during the GFC, hi description fit; tax breaks and incentives for supposedly being unable to find lessees for your storefront office buildings so they wouldn’t have to drop rents, so that the assessed values would stay up, so that the taxes wouldn’t go down.
The small business regulations can be a thing too though. I don’t know about where I live now, but in California in the 60s and 70s, my mom and my stepdad both had small businesses, and they talked about building codes and other regulations that really hurt their bottom lines. These regulations apparently were written by and for larger concerns that could accommodate the extra cost, but smaller businesses were definitely hurt. I’m sorry but I was too young to understand so I can’t give examples, but I know that my stepdad, at least, got tired of it, closed shop, and went on to something else.
The annoying thing is that govt regulation is a necessary corrective to the impulses and exactions of the Looting Class. Of course it gets gamed, always has, always will, but there are lots of really good reasons for the national and international codes setting standards for electrical and plumbing and fire and earthquake and hurricane protection.
But in the booming zero-trust political economy, codes become artifacts with just a soupçon of mandate to them. Enforced by the few to maintain supremacy over the many. The days when colonists in the American colonial-settler excrescence could go west are long gone; welcome to the reality of autocoprophagia.
As my Contracts professor in law school repeatedly reminded us, “there is no right without a remedy.” And eventually, one might suppose, people oppressed and injured by enough “might makes right” may “take up arms against a sea of troubles.” See, e.g., Gaza and south Lebanon and Donbass and other places.
I wonder where on the arc of dysfunction the Russian Federation is?
From the article
Isn’t that what you just said?
And he isn’t so much complaining about government as bad government.
Of course many on the left these days think “government” is a good thing no matter what and even when it is the FBI or CIA. This is as foolish as the no government crowd.
“it’s accounting rules”
I really should sit down and study accounting, as i suspect that oh so much of what is wrong in this world comes back to the rules about what column the numbers go in.
When accounting rules start driving business decisions then things have gone wrong. The usual answer to this is, of course, more rules.
If the accounting rules really say that a building with one tenant paying USD 1,000 per week is worth more than the same building with three tenants each paying USD 500 per week, then those rules are clearly garbage.
It is more like the landlords are “kicking the can down the road” by tolerating negative cash flow because they want to be ready for future tenants who will pay a higher price.
This is known as price anchoring, and may be illustrated by a case I’m familiar with from the internet bubble era.
My boss’s wife worked for an internet company and had an option to buy her company’s stock valued at 600k by exercising an option for 30K. She hesitated and the stock dropped lower.
Then she waited some more and the stock dropped more.
Final result was the option was never exercised because the price was always higher previously..
Landlords might find it more palatable to sell buildings at a one time loss with the new owners willing to accept lower rents commensurate with the lower purchase price.
I don’t see how it is profitable to leave something vacant rather than get SOME money coming in.
One takeaway from the article is that when I see Jay Leno promoting a product, I’ll remember what his name means in Latin.
Indeed. I am a big fan of JMG’s occult writing, and especially the recent series on Levi’s Doctrine and Ritual. His political analysis is… wanting, to say the least.
He’s a self described “Burkean” conservative, which means he clings to the old ways no matter how barbaric as he’s sure that the new ways have to be worse.
Nevermind that he’s archdruid of a spiritualist movement invented in whole cloth in the 19th century and has no connection to the historical druids destroyed by the Romans two centuries ago.
Egh, 2 millenniums ago…
“Nevermind that he’s archdruid of a spiritualist movement invented in whole cloth in the 19th century….”
Was it that long ago? Gerald Gardiner died in the 1960s.
I mean, sure.
But all spiritualist movements are invented and hoary old age doesn’t,make them less phoney.
I don’t put much value in supposedly uninterupted lines of transmission.
If there indeed are any timeless spiritual truths to be discovered it should be able to independently discover and re-discover them in any day and age.
When our humble hostess says “Important.” and little else – I, for one, sit up and pay attention. I have immense respect for JMG’s scholarship and his ability to crank out mountains of informed commentary- I too have “skimmed” his writings anxious to get to the conclusions or the ‘juicy bits’ of the essay. Those here at NC may be hasty in dismissing the concept of lenocracy as just another framing of the “crapification of everything” – I think it points a deserved finger at America’s glorification of “mob rule” dating back to at least Al Capone’s absolute ban on the sale of spoiled milk in his city. I remember Providence, RI in the ‘90s under the leadership of mayor “Buddy” Cianci- he was previously forced to resign and serve some jail time for hospitalizating some unwise dude (iirc a lovers quarrel) – he ran for reelection and won in a landslide. A local friend explained, “the garbage gets picked up and the streets and sidewalks get fixed. Everybody loves him!” As long as the wise guys get their “vig” – a skim from your cash register- everything’s groovy. So when government gets drowned in lenocracy (mobbed up) checks and balances get thrown overboard and “it’s turtles all the way down”. I remain “long on pitchforks” and prefer to dwell where good water is plentiful and the neighbors know how to farm and barter.
‘Social Order Could Collapse’ in AI Era, Two Top Japan Companies Say”
Wall Street Journal
The part about emotion recognition…
If the creepy, dead-eyed, over glossy “AI” representations of humans are an indication, the alleged “emotional recognition” scam should be banned for being fraudulent and the people making the claims arrested and/or fined.
And I will always be angry or frustrated while interacting with a machine for customer service.
Are these f’ers really this daft?
Someone, somewhere, is getting points for the speed and number of interactions regardless of outcomes – and never ever looking at lost customers.
Meanwhile, for extreme high net worth individuals there is a special bank of live human customer service agents who have the numbers of assistants and managers and so on so they can check in regularly to make sure everyone is happy.
This can be seem with your online broker.
All the financial advice for portfolios under a certain amount get the robo advisors. Once a person hits the high six figures, they’ll be able to get a person on the line for advice.
Soon, with this same logic being applied across various industries, the term for being lower class will be “getting the bot.”
Working link for the Grayzone “Meet Centuria, Ukraine’s Western-trained neo-Nazi army”
https://thegrayzone.com/2024/04/07/centuria-ukraines-western-neo-nazi-army/
‘We just need a little help’: how a safe parking plan for people living in cars split a US town
This one reminds me so much of Austin 10 years ago. Back when we had homeless people and not just a bunch of methheads and junkies. And yes, I know the radical left doesn’t like those words. Call me what ever you want, I’ve heard it all before. Sedona is about to learn a very, very hard lesson. When the city council refused to enforce the camping ban in Austin, they thought it would be a great idea to announce that to news media. The migration started in earnest then. It had been bad but once they started announcing it, drug addicts flooded the city and all the places where regular homeless people lived were turned into meth camps. Rather than deal with short term rentals, or the incredibly corrupt local real estate industry, the city council doubled down and repealed the camping ban. They killed the city that year, 2019. Then after the riots of 2020, the defunded the police. The cut up the body and buried it all around the world so that it could never be brought back to life.
It always seems to start with one if these terrible alternatives to actually doing something about our corrupt real estate industry. “Let’s just make a place for people to park their cars while they are sleeping in them.” “Let’s setup camps under the highway overpasses for people to stay.” Never “Let’s kick Airbnb out of town and make all the short term rental owners let people stay in those houses for free.” I’ve heard so many ‘socialists’ in Austin claim that we just need to change3 city code to make ‘density.’ “We just more housing supply and magically the prices will go down.” You know, socialists pushing market capitalism, just like you would expect in America.
The craziest thing I have ever seen real estate ‘people’ pull off was the marketing of the repeal of the camping ban to the radical left in Austin. They seem to have gotten the Homes Not Handcuffs ‘people’ to convince the DSA that repealing the camping ban was very good and caring for homeless people. The actual truth is more likely that after years of the city council refusing to enforce the camping ban, there were a few fires started by homeless campers (during the strictest burn ban) and the city council realized they were in deep liability and had to do something. So they ‘repealed’ the camping ban which gave them cover to go round up all the campings everywhere and dump them under the highway overpasses. The Homes not Handcuff idiots went along with this con.
I predict that Sedona will become yet another city that demirats will destroy and a lot of people there will wonder WTF happened to their homes and home town. Hopefully it won’t be as bad as Austin with machete attacks becoming common and the socialist prosecutor refusing to enforce the law. But I guarantee you there’s going to be a flood of methheads and junkies headed to Sedona. They will hear about it themselves, or people with situations they need a solution for will send their methheads and junkies to Sedona. It’s the unfortunate result of cities trying to solve the nations homeless problem on their own, a massive disaster for the housed and unhoused alike. That’s the saddest part, Austin was once a place where homeless people could live, maybe even get to a point where they can improve their lives. Now it’s just a place to go and get handouts until you die of a drug overdose.
“Radical Left”…I hear the New York Post is hiring…
You can argue against his language, but his points are correct. The problem is real estate and AirB&B, and no one will fight it because the local pols are in on the game.
And you know what happens when you try go go against them as a local government? This:
https://www.wmur.com/article/judge-denies-conway-attempt-ban-short-term-rentals/38903866
From the article, Sedona can’t “kick Airbnb out of town” because that would be illegal under Arizona law.
Are there no ways for the city to make it uncomfortable for short-term rentals to operate? My guess is ‘yes’ – JMG’s ideas about government regulation and small business in his Lenocracy essay aren’t entirely a fever dream. Whether the city has the guts/imagination to use them against a well-funded and popular-with-the-PMC local industry is another matter.
I’m sure there are lots of ways local government can inconvenience short term rental landlords, if they are willing to risk being sued.
Are methheads still a thing? Thought they had become fetanylheads. But I do believe a more practical approach to homelessness would be more productive than feel good ordinances. The homeless themselves are living on the edge of survival and, especially if they have cars, will act accordingly. Therefore they are going to head for a big city where there are more resources. It will hopefully be someplace warm since you will spend a lot of time outside. And a friendly attitude by the authorities surely attracts more homeless than conservative areas like mine where we do have homeless but not in overwhelming numbers, despite being in the South. I’m not sure what AirBNB has to do with all this other than there tend to be a lot of them in wealthy or resort towns that fit the above description.
Surely the root of the problem is the loss of non college employment more than the lack of housing. The PMC have created a social desert and called it peace–for them. Then they get hysterical over politicians who suggest that things, in fact, are not great here in the USA. It’s all a dream world until they start camping under your bridges.
As I was saying (from above Ecosophia)
In other words a class war litters the ground with victims. The preferred notion of the elites (that poor people are simply lazy and useless) doesn’t work if there are no jobs to be had. Meanwhile the “work” that the professional classes so pride themselves on often consists of “bullshit jobs” that are little more than makework.
Anyhow, thanks for the Greer.
I understand that meth is making something of a comeback.
In the UK it is Pregabalin that is back in the news.
Half of all sectioned people at local hospital dealing with such cases were there due to Pregabalin in about 2018. Clinical colleague told me. It was reclassified to be like benzos. But it’s back on the rise :(
How are people abusing preglabalin? It doesn’t make you high. I should know, I have been prescribed lots of the stuff. It is nasty stuff, makes you tired all the time.
I did get off it. It took awhile.
It is massively addictive, you quickly develop tolerance and it definitely makes you high when taken alongside any of a number of prescription or over the counter meds.
Took me 2 years to get off it on my return to UK, after an idiot doctor in Sydney put me on it.
Yes, Meth is now made with a new cheap process (sorry I don’t have a link, so hear/say.) It is also being cut with Fentanyl to make it more “tripy”. The extreme addictiveness of this has produced more “grave disability” to the point of leaving them lying in the street with a pipe or syringe. The cities in CA are finding this so bad that Prop 1 and Care Ct were passed to try to “fix” the problem.
Of course, the lack of psych hospital and detox beds are vanishingly staggering. Also in the Bay Area staffing of mental health/behavior health groups is a devastating 30% vacancy. Efforts seem to be more for building large projects for the county jails to deal with it. Defunding police responses and funding non-police responses are happening, but unfortunately meth addiction and psychosis are a recipe for violence. Course the fentanyl just kills many. What a mess and hard to see where it can end.
“What Researchers Discovered When They Sent 80,000 Fake Résumés to U.S. Jobs” New York Times
All saying what people probably thought it would say…but the real holey moley reveal:
“…Being gay, as indicated by including membership in an L.G.B.T.Q. club on the résumé, resulted in a slight penalty for white applicants, but benefited Black applicants — although the effect was small, when this was on their résumés, the racial penalty disappeared…”
And they didn’t see that as still being a “racial penalty.”
If indicating membership in a LGBTQ club on a résumé eliminates any bias, how pronounced was the bias, anyway? And it predictably didn’t offer any analysis of class as a part of the study. I wonder what percentage of callbacks “Jethro” or “Joe Bob” would get. Seems pretty shoddy overall.
>R.I.P. Roscoe, the robo dog who gave his life protecting the police
Ray Bradbury’s prophetic description/warning in Fahrenheit 451 of the “Mechanical Hound”.comes readily to mind:
… Sniffing its quarry with “sensitive capillary hairs in the Nylon-brushed nostrils,” the Hound growls and then scuttles silently toward its prey on eight rubber-padded feet. Sighting through the “green-blue neon light” of its multifaceted eyes, the Hound is masterminded by a central command for rapid deployment and near perfect accuracy.
,,,Originally, dogs served as the rescuers for firemen…the Hound has been made into a watchdog of society. Like the Furies, the Mechanical Hound has been programmed (by the government) to avenge and punish citizens who break society’s rules. The ones who are not loyal to the rules must especially be punished, and the Hound serves as the enforcer of these rules.
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/fahrenheit-451/character-analysis/the-mechanical-hound
On electronic voting, I asked one of the county elections people while primary voting 18 months ago about their electronic machines; he claimed confidently that they were secure. Was extremely rude and condescending when I suggested the list of names on the receipt didn’t necessarily match the digital scan code also printed on the electronic-marked ballot that slides into the counting machine. Assumed the tone one takes when talking to a crank.
Even if there’s an off by one error or some other innocuous mistake, how would you know?
Imagine if we had an actual democracy.
The way you can tell if the scan code on an electronically marked ballot doesn’t match printed selections on the ballot is by recounts.
Where this would break down is if ballot marking software changed both the printed selections and what’s encoded, and the voter didn’t look at the printed names carefully enough to notice. Most jurisdictions in most states use hand marked ballots not ballot marking devices.
I’m not clear about your reference to a receipt. Is this a separate document from the ballot+scan code document?
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/post-election-audits
https://verifiedvoting.org
That clerk fits an archetype. For a variation, see Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office viewable on Masterpiece Theatre. The lack of transparency in both cases is only one of the problems, to which add accountability, or countability.
In-person voting on paper ballots counted that day is the only way to go, as dozens of countries around the world have shown. Not foolproof, but not a blackbox of chicanery either.
I posted a link in yesterday’s Water Cooler with details about current initiatives for hand counts in several states.
Everyone who likes the idea of paper ballots, individually processed, with every voter able to confidentially confirm that their individual vote was counted correctly, should be all over mail-in ballots as a fabulous and secure workaround to voting machines.
Nope. There are too many ways and opportunities to hijack them. I can think of three without even trying.
Ballot put in the publicly observable ballot box by the voter. Then that ballot box is also opened and then counted in public view. That is what I want. Limited mail in ballots can be allowed for those not physically able to vote at the polling place, but otherwise once the ballot leaves the voters hands it is never out of public view.
Hi, Brazilian here. Our government/legal system is NOT censoring X or trying to make it leave the country. That’s the narrative peddled by Musk and his far-right minions.
What happened is that during the electoral periods of 2018 and 2022 there were surges in fake news and other types of malicious content that were, in part, spread through X. Most of the banned accounts have to do with that.
In January 2023 there was a coup attempt akin to the Capitol invasion in the U.S., but worse. The main buildings of the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary were invaded and vandalized. A new surge of disinformation ocurred, most of it through X. A new wave of banned accounts was necessary.
You see, according to our Constitution anybody can say what they want, if they don’t hide who they are and if they don’t commit a crime in the process. Honestly, this has been properly implemented here. But that changed when Twitter, Meta and other companies enabled anonymous hate speech and dishonest attacks against our electoral system.
We do have a great, safe system of electronic voting, no other country has reached the same level of security and efficiency yet. Fake news against this system undermined its credibility without a single grain of truth in the narrative that was used.
Besides, ousting Bolsonaro denied Musk some important business opportunities in our country, such as controlling lithium deposits.
On top of that, it’s known that X is not generating profits here. Elon wants out, but he won’t do it admitting financial issues. He is trying to push our supreme court to ban X, just in time to make him and the company martyrs that will agitate the far-right before the municipal elections next October.
That would also have repercussions internationally, agitating the far-right in the U.S. and elsewhere.
So, PLEASE don’t just say it’s an episode of censorship. It is not. Disinformation in Brazil is a real threat, with dire consequences. We had to endure 4 years of Bolsonaro because of that. We almost suffered a new coup (twice). And X is part of what enables these far-right plots. The company has protected criminals in the past and it is trying to keep doing it during the next elections, above our law.
In my opinion, this blog should be more careful with this subject. Avoid portraying the situation as a one-dimensional case of “the U.S. is using Brazil to censor us”. What happened with the principle of “we need extraordinary evidence to make extraordinary claims”? Neither FOX News or Glenn Greenwald are interested in showing the complexities of the case.
If you can’t or won’t reach out for Brazilian sources, at the very least don’t pretend you have all figured out and that we are somehow censoring the 2nd richest assh*le in the planet. That’s exactly what that unhinged psychopath and his fan base wants.
I see Shellenberger as an honest reporter. He says straight up people are engaging in heavy self-censorship out of fear of going to jail. He depicts the rise in censorship as recent and dramatic and many Brazilians (presumably non-reporters) not aware of it. l
He also says the judge asked for very outrageous information from Twitter, such as the real identity and direct messages of those who merely retweeted certain hashtags.
I don’t find your comments to be intellectually honest in light of that.
Well, I am just a very politically active Brazilian who has been following our internal issues since 2002, what do I know about our big picture compared to foreign reporter that spoke to a few interest-driven sources.
What I am saying is that the accounts linked here are far from presenting the whole picture. I don’t know any person who is afraid of being censored or imprisoned, maybe some exist. Especially among those who actually spread disinformation and hate speech.
What I do know is the incredible damage caused by the lack of regulation that is promoted by Big Techs on purpose.
Musk is not only campaigning for the impeachment of the judge he is targeting, but also saying that the same judge tipped the scales against Bolsonaro in the last election.
This can lead to very dangerous consequences here, where I live. We went through 2 coup attempts since the 2022. One during the election itself, another right after the beginning of Lula’s term. It’s not far-fetched to imagine that something else along these lines may happen soon. Considering that Bolsonaro is being investigated many fronts, it’s bound to happen, he won’t go to jail without a fight.
Musk’s offenses were not shown here, so to many readers it may seem like he is the victim in this story. That’s the main problem. We can debate social media regulation all we want, but not at the expense of others.
I could go over the list of catastrophic outcomes we already had in the past years due to the lack of control over disinformation and hate speech. Our Congress has been avoiding the discussion of a project that has been presented years ago. So unfortunately it’s up to our Supreme Court to make arrangements to avoid new catastrophes. There is literally no one else.
I don’t have any other reason to comment about this except for a need to set the record straight. It’s a bit baffling that you assume that I’m being dishonest.
I know you think you are being reasonable, but your position is virtually identical to that of American Trump hater who demand censorship, particularly of alleged “misinformation” that is actually accurate, such as the Democratic party e-mail leaks that were falsely depicted as Russian hacking/propaganda, Hunter Biden’s laptop (again depicted as Russian propaganda, again proven to be genuine). Similarly, challenges to Democratic party propaganda were demonized as disinformation, such as pointing out that the Covid vaccines did not prevent contagion (which in turn meant the vaccination mandates were not warranted) or that the Steele dossier was a fabrication paid for by Hillary Clinton’s operation.
So for starters, any set of partisans saying they have the truth and should be allowed to censor is a dangerous premise.
Second, your argument that the fact that you are unaware of censorship means there is no censorship is bogus. Shellenberger pointed out the uptick as both very recent and severe. Journalists and not the public at large is the target. I can tell you as someone who has been on the receiving end of multiple censorship efforts directed at my site and other independent Internet publishers, the overwhelming majority of voters, even supposedly engaged ones, remained unaware because:
1. Journalist who accept censorship will not talk about it because it threatens their standing plus calls their reporting into question (did they nevertheless knuckle under a bit?)
2. The few who do scream bloody murder early find that their complaints are seldom if ever amplified, and thus do not get into wider circulation.
This dynamic would be even more extreme with the threat of jail time.
Third, you completely ignore the astonishing, abusive demands made by the judge of Twitter about people who posted tweets, including many many many that were completely anodyne. If you don’t have a problem with that level of thuggery, you do not value freedom of speech. But you sort of made that clear, you are all on board with censorship as long as the censors think like you do.
Shellenberger is not based in Brazil, does not speak Portuguese or have any special contacts there, and like Taibbi, he was very close to Musk for breaking the Twitter story. Here’s a tweet from a reliable local source on one of your points.
https://twitter.com/BRASILWIRE/status/1778167421519417702
>How AI risks creating a ‘black box’ at the heart of US legal system The Hill (Dr. Kevin)
While AI tools are being used to inform criminal investigations, there is often no way for defendants to challenge their digital accuser or even know what role it played in the case.
Kaffka’s Castle come to mind:
The castle is the ultimate bureaucracy with copious paperwork that the bureaucracy maintains is “flawless”. But the flawlessness is a lie; it is a flaw in the paperwork that has brought K. to the village. There are other failures of the system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(novel)#:~:text=The%20Castle%20(German%3A%20Das%20Schloss,supposedly%20owned%20by%20Graf%20Westwest.
Andrew Glikson touching on many themes found here. “Oppenheimer’s legacy – Portents of a nuclear war on a burning planet”, Arctic News.
“Ivy League College Costs Soar to More Than $90,000 a Year”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/05/your-money/paying-for-college/100k-college-cost-vanderbilt.html
April 5, 2024
Some Colleges Will Soon Charge $100,000 a Year. How Did This Happen?
Some Vanderbilt students will have $100,000 in total expenses for the 2024-25 school year. The school doesn’t really want to talk about it.
By Ron Lieber
It was only a matter of time before a college would have the nerve to quote its cost of attendance at nearly $100,000 a year. This spring, we’re catching our first glimpse of it.
One letter to a newly admitted Vanderbilt University engineering student showed an all-in price — room, board, personal expenses, a high-octane laptop — of $98,426…
This explains the PMC besides the outright crowd. They are stuck in their own treadmill where there lifestyles are dependent on low monthly housing payments and turning housing into an asset they can flip. Disruptions means they can’t afford tone send their kids to the right schools and so forth.
In 1966 full time tuition at the U of Missouri was $250 per semester. 50% of the freshman class flunked out the first year and many of the rest did not graduate. Today, for many young people of middle class families, college is a four year vacation. The universities and the local merchants and landlords do not want to lose any of their paying customers, so the standards are lower. Today, hate to say it, but we have too many college graduates that have not learned very much.
Debt is discipline, so either the students have family money (and can be counted on not to rock the boat) or the debt-load will make it impossible for them to rock the boat.
Very sharp and clever tactics. The British Army did something similar when they sold officers’ commissions.
Gaza War ends. Will Biden get a Nobel?
Genocide Joe’s strategy might be to say he facilitated direct murder of Palestinians in lieu of slow starvation, to reduce suffering, thus making his a true humanitarian Nobel.
Will Biden get a Nobel? Why not. Obama got one before he even did anything. And his acceptance speech came out as a war speech just to put the boot in. These days I put some of the Nobel prizes at the same level as the Eurovision Song Contest or the Hollywood Academy Awards.
That would be a really really nice retirement gift would it not? I plan to help speed him back to Delaware. Why would I do that? He is aiding and abetting genocide. He and his minions “speak with forked tongues.” He cannot resist the impulse to allow his mouth lead a life of its own, i.e. Putin’s a killer, Xi is a dictator. The pose of Joe the kid from Scranton is way way past its shelf life. And, in my opinion he lacks the capacity to execute his office.
TBH The Norwegian Nobel committee were so burned by the Obama award, that I doubt they would dare. On the other hand, they are happy to dish them out to anti-Russia dissidents, so why not Navalnya? Too late for her hubby, but no doubt she is sufficiently consoled by now.
They could name it the Nobel Dynamite Award so it would be more appropriate. It would go to the best user of explosives.
RE: Trita Parsi, X post.
If his second point is accurate, leveraging the embassy hit to a ceasefire in Gaza, that truly is a genius asymmetric response. It really makes the resistance seem like the rational actors in the ME.
After hearing about it yesterday in MOA comments i went down the intellectual rabbit hole and started to think of other targets that could be hit in response.
I don’t think Israel proper would be hit. Currently Israeli society is fracturing and a military strike would stop that process from continuing.
I don’t think hitting an embassy in response would be of any use. Iran for the time being has the moral high ground and hitting an embassy in response is really just condoning the behaviour.
Socotra island? Possibly but why not leave it to the Houthis.
Netzarim Corridor? This one seems to check all the boxes. Asymmetric, In Gaza targeting an invading army, Help break the blockade preventing people from returning to the north, etc..
There might be a certain grim irony in attacking the Israeli Embassy in Ecuador.
“Meet Centuria, Ukraine’s Western-trained neo-Nazi army’
When the Ukraine finally collapses, guaranteed that these guys will do a runner to Europe instead of fighting outside the Zelensky Bunker. The west will take them in as honest refugees and the security agencies will help them settle as they will see them as future fighters against the Russians. But what will happen is that they will be free to spread their ideology of white supremacy and all the rest of it. There are already a few NATO countries that have an infestation of – protected – Nazis but these guys will spread throughout the continent and maybe further. The US? The UK? Canada? I could easily see them reorganizing themselves as a new mafia in which they will use their western combat training to push out or absorb the local mafias as they take over the crime networks to finance themselves. And they will have no shortage of weapons either. This is going to be a bad brew in the coming years.
The blowback that I’ve previously mentioned.
I could easily see them reorganizing themselves as a new mafia in which they will use their western combat training to push out or absorb the local mafias as they take over the crime networks to finance themselves.
Over 20 years ago, in a discussion about organized criminality, my Hungarian colleagues explained to me some aspects of the protection racket in Budapest.
For a price, the local mafiosi would provide protection (typically to clubs and restaurants), and they enjoined their “customers” to call them if somebody caused them any kind of trouble. But they were honest: if the Albanian or Ukrainian mafia was involved, they could do nothing — those other gangs were just too ruthless.
Would not be the first time that the CIA took in stray Nazis and gave them homes.
For decades, it was an open secret that Klaus Barbie was alive and well and working for the Bolivian government.
Also Reinhard Gehlen and his whole network.
You’re probably being wound up with “two more weeks”-isms. US Intelligence has no idea what’s going on. Netenyahu is firmly in the driving seat and the likes of Smotrich are navigating.
Israel is in no position to launch another front against Hezbollah, and neither is the US. That leaves only airstrikes; on embassies, on installations in Iraq/Syria/etc, on Hezbollah, or on Iran itself. The latter makes it only slightly awkward to proclaim that Iran has launched an unprovoked retaliation but the media will not care and will be only too glad to roar fecklessly from the podiums once again to wash anyway their genocide stains and distract from ICJ and UN rulings. A hotter war gets Israel and Netenyahu out of the frying pan for now.
I assume an air campaign against Iran or Hezbollah is also still within logistical and political reach of the US/Nato, since they have not yet run through much air munitions in the Ukraine as of yet. Of course they probably haven’t deployed enough forces to the region since the US/UK cabinets have not been briefed on Israeli plans (they will get these via MSM twitter posts). So the Israeli air force will have to carry the campaign solo for a week or so. The only potential wild cards are, Turkey, Ansarallah, and potentially Iranian anti-air defences(escalatory in any case).
Do not expect so much as a junior staffer to have considered or even be monitoring Arab/Muslim public reactions to this. Or EU and US/UK ones either. The most candid assessments of the coming months will be coming from the Chinese UN delegation. Not much point watching most ‘official’ sources anymore.
It’s not about transfomers or even electricity, but about general approach to infrastructure building and maintenance. Soviet built power grid in Ukraine could take countless missilies before seriously degrading, because it was intentionally built to be robust. Infrastructure built to maximize profit will always be on the edge, and have problems with “transition of resistive loads to switching power supplies”, and bad weather, and birds, and Chinese balloons, and everything.
Properly built grid don’t have voltage sagging, and should be able to handle all types of loads. Blaming EVs for poor grid is like blaming cars for bumpy roads, and trains for buckled railways.
Transformers.
It’s a sign I suppose of how the Biden administration has completely missed the chain of requirements for the electric revolution.
If you’re going to electrify everything you have to start at the end use ( house or business ) and work towards the production. And this administration has not done anything about that.
Take the discussion about the age of transformers in the US.
Then take oh let’s say the 60 billion they want to waste in Ukraine. How many transformers factories could you build with that? Good jobs.
Adding and level 2+ ev charger, electric heat, hot water, cooking to homes that are gas powered, is a staggering increase in the load on the electric grid. And it’s beyond the capacity in most places. That’s all of it. Wires, transformers, and generation.
I know there are smart people who know this, but I guess they are not in this administration
What you call 60 billion to waste, some call profit. It’s all about perspective. From Ukrainian perspective, they need money and transformers. :)
The experts are out there that can work this all out from end-user to production. People with years in the field and in the industry itself. But do they get listened too? What happens when these experts go into meetings to explain what can and can’t happen-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg (7:34 mins)
I used to work for the firm in your video as an expert but the skit left out part of the fun of being the expert — meeting schedules, deadlines, and budgets conceived by thinking similar to that which defined the requirements.
Another long term challenge are the intellectual resources to do the work. Of all the people studying electrical engineering something less than 2% specialize in production and distribution. Most are studying application, primarily in the electronic fiddley bits. As Steve Keen stated technology without power is no more than sculpture.
“Transformers.
It’s a sign I suppose of how the Biden administration has completely missed the chain of requirements for the electric revolution.
If you’re going to electrify everything you have to start at the end use ( house or business ) and work towards the production. And this administration has not done anything about that.”
Other than in Texas in the wake of the power shortages and failures during the winter storm, little has been done for years on electricity transmission needs. Looking to the Chinese energy system gains from ultra- high-voltage transmission, there is a model.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202307/02/WS64a140f5a310bf8a75d6cbec.html
July 2, 2023
China’s largest ultra-high voltage cross-river power transmission project put into operation
Waste management.
For all the old ICE vehicles and the new waste generated by EVs and other electronic devices…not seeing that on the radar either.
At least President Alzheimer’s Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm are requiring that new transformers be more energy efficient but caved to utility demands to delay implementation of these standards.
“These updated standards—which includes a longer compliance timeline of five years—will save American utilities and commercial and industrial entities $824 million per year in electricity costs, and result in more demand for core materials like grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES).”
https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-finalizes-energy-efficiency-standards-distribution-transformers-protect-domestic
Thank you for Lenonocracy, a rabbit hole from which I am only now emerging. Everything about the leno analogy works for me, both from the perspective of my political experience and from my years of writing resumes for folks from all sectors of the economy. A must read for anyone who spends time thinking about politics.
I’m thinking of making it a rule of thumb law that no major project can be undertaken in the US unless major corporations are allowed in to take a slice of the pie whether they are needed or not, or even if it ends up killing the project itself. Unless they are let in, they will use their power and influence to kill any project unless they are allowed to get a cut. And this may be why there is hardly any high-speed rail in the US.
‘SIMPLICIUS Ѱ
@simpatico771
⚡️🇷🇺📹 Russian Ministry of Defense: over 400 NATO satellites operate in the interests of Ukraine
They also help guide UAVs to targets deep inside Russia. That’s why Biden is worried that Russia is going to jam NATO satellites with almost nuclear weapons.
But the Americans know very well that nuclear weapons are not needed for these purposes. The products of the Almaz-Antey VKO concern cope well with space purposes.
All that remains is to make a decision.’
Yes, Russia has the weaponry to hit satellites from the ground but would only do so if general war broke out. And this is for a very good reason. The debris and torn bits of metal of those destroyed satellites would stay in orbit and spread out where they would hit other satellites which would make the problem worse. You have enough of that and you get a Kessler Syndrome-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
And the end result of that is that we lose the use of space for centuries at the very least.
Watch: Mount Etna puffs giant smoke rings in ‘extraordinary’ phenomenon Telegraph
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Smoke Rings on the Playa Burning Man 2008
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHpBComsngQ
Looking at Alex C’s dog in today’s Antidote du jour, I almost can see a sense of betrayal as the dog is saying ‘This wasn’t the walkies that I was promised!’
Agreed, not a pleasant looking walk….The musical parrot has given me an ear worm of epic proportions I’ve been whistling that little ditty all morning
https://www.pcmag.com/news/second-ransomware-group-demands-unitedhealth-pay-for-stolen-data
Second Ransomware Group Demands UnitedHealth Pay for Stolen Data
The RansomHub gang suggests it pulled off the UnitedHealth hack but was ironically swindled out of the $22 million ransom by the ALPHV/Blackcat group and now wants a payday of its own.
Despite reports to the contrary, the Feb issue is still not totally resolved. The pharmacies seem to be able to dispense medications. however, over and over again – I am getting reports of patients having to pay through the roof prices because they are still not able to clear their insurance plans. This has caused at least one hospital admission, as the patient could not afford their life-saving med.
I am also hearing scattered reports of huge sums of claim money not being paid as of this date. And also complete and total arrogance from this company as a response.
The Holy Grail for hackers may be contained in this data and medical records. I hear from multiple people that at least some of this information involves health care facilities frequented by the well-known and fabulously wealthy. In other words – you may soon be all reading about “Insert name here” and their herpes diagnosis unless the individual ALSO pays up.
These systems are as dangerous as they can be. I constantly remind myself of what life was like with paper charts and how much safer and more ethical it was. I am reminded of the Nixon years when an unfortunate incident of attempted theft of medical records was exposed. That individual had to go through hoops and risk legal issues to get that chart. Now, all you have to do is punch a button. What could possibly go wrong?
Not too worry. pretty sure they have a solution for that too. Universal Identification to use the internet.
FYI – the working link for the NY Post barnacle boot: https://nypost.com/2024/04/06/us-news/nypd-rolls-out-barnacle-windshield-boots-to-force-violators-to-pay/
(is missing the //nypost.com/2024/04/06/ part of the URL)
Anybody have a cure for back spasms. I’ve got them bad.
i take a superhot bath(119…but takes forever to fill, so likely less once i get in) with epsom salts…and eat something with potassium(taters, nanners).
prevention is better, however.
for me, i know the kinds of activities that will cause my back muscles to seize and knot…overhead things, like fixing a ceiling fan…hanging rafters////or using a hoe overmuch.
so i pace myself…or if its a one time deal like rafters, ill just get it done and plan to lay there in pain for a day to pay for it.
notably…those activities are outside the norm, for me…so those muscles dont get used thataway…so they are weaker, and prone to over exertion.
my bones and joints are so screwed that things like stretching dont really help.
Thanks Amfortas. I have too much pain to get in a tub.-Using a heating pad now.
Alternate between an ice pack and a heating pad.
Good luck, spasms suck.
Thanks, how low long for each?
Around 45 minutes, don’t usually track it that close.
A little liquid pain reliever seems to help also.
Thanks! Feels like labor pains for the last week. Giving birth was not this hard.
This video worked for me.
Look for Stuart McGill back exercises. They go by the name McGill Big Three or similar. He has a book “Back Mechanic” which is good but a little pricey. Just find web pages or videos about these.
Unfortunately, it takes time. I was in a similar place. Pretty much couldn’t walk. I was in bed with a heating pad and a bottle of Chardonnay. It took a few months to start being pretty mobile. It took over a year to be really good. That was about five years ago. Now I’m better than ever. You might try advil or aleve other anti-inflammatory drugs. I didn’t at the time, but just recently learned about this for another injury.
Best wishes. I’ve been there and I know it is really painful. I think the one insight I got which was really helpful was that even though some of the exercises hurt a bit I wasn’t doing damage to myself. Usually, we associate pain with some sort of bruising.
If possible you should see a doctor to make sure there is not something more serious going on. If you can afford it get a few weeks of physical therapy to teach you how to stretch and exercise safely and effectively.
Try humming or playing a low b flat.
Re Michael Mann–while I mostly agree with his points about the irrationality of war, he undercuts himself by adopting the party line on Putin rather than concentrate on Biden as a good example of his premise. The “reconstitute the Soviet Union” trope is quite stale and shows he hasn’t invested much research into the current situation.
So yes there is a fog of pre-war as well as war itself. In fact that first fog may be by far the most powerful. As Churchill said, “history will approve of us because we shall write it.”
He starts right of with the idea that a hegemon the one, great force for peace and thus implying that the US’ striving for hegemony is a noble cause disturbed only by those nasty revisionist powers who do not realize or care that they should submit to the hegemon in the greater interest of all
Painting those opposed to hegemony as the particularly irrational ones.
The entire “realist” explanation of how and why wars happen also seems quite dubious in all sorts of ways.
Sure, SOME conflicts get started that ways, but many others (including all of the US’ wars over the last thirty years) can’t really explained that way at all.
Got so annoyed I immediately had to take a pause, will read the rest of course but that really wasn’t a promising start.
Maybe our version of “rationality” would be schemers who don’t know what they are doing–the best and the brightest syndrome.
Of course the Germans had a crack plan to knock out the French quickly at the beginning of WW1. It didn’t work out either.
In fairness to Germany, it was in a very difficult strategic position, sandwiched between two major powers that were allied against it and unable to fight a long two-front war. It was actually Russia that mobilized first, nominally against Austro-Hungary but implicitly against Germany as well. This put Germany in a “use-it-or-lose-it” situation.
I’m coming to the conclusion, after reading the ACOUP blog in particular, that historians should not comment on current affairs, or rather, they should not comment as “historians”.
Obviously, they are entitled to their personal opinions, the same as everybody else. However, whilst they can easily identify ancient Roman propaganda, know the importance of comparing various medieval sources and appreciate 20th century political memoirs arose out of the context in which they were written, they don’t seem to employ that same scepticism when dealing with contemporary events.
I agree. Besides having their personal politics and career prospects tangled up with current events, historians may not have the information they need to write accurate accounts until decades later. The author of the “A Peace To End All Peace” history about WW1’s impact on the Middle East had to wait until the participants’ personal correspondence was available. The various memoirs and published official records were simply not reliable.
Indeed. Would have been at home in the Guardian.
I’m interested in reading the paywalled Economist piece on abortion & crime rates: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2024/04/08/steven-levitt-and-john-donohue-defend-a-finding-made-famous-by-freakonomics
If a kind person can share a workaround, or post the text, I’d be grateful!
https://archive.is/m3zl0
Thanks. I’ve already misplaced the video but there’s been something on YouTube about lead poisoning and after adjusting for time lag, early life exposure is remarkably good at explaining antisocial/illegal behaviour later in life. Abortion isn’t ruled out but isn’t primary factor. The relationship holds across countries with different patterns of relaxation of abortion law.
I think I fell down a YouTube hole starting with something like “the guy who accidentally killed the most humans in history”. Spoiler alert – he didnt do it accidentally and karma caused one of his inventions to kill him.
Yes, tetraethyl lead (invented by Midgley, it killed several.workers, cannot remember if it killed him) is a much better explanation for the drop in crime than abortion.
As is the general drop in the ratio of young males to total population in Western countries. The post WW2 crime wave is potentially a result of the baby boom which has now faded out. I seem to remember a set of predictions highlighting the dangers in 21st century for violence in the Middle East and Maghreb driven by this young male population dynamic.
Yes that’s the guy! He knew lead in gasoline was terrible – he got lead poisoning himself – but on recovery went on to personally advocate for it in commercials. He also pioneered CFCs in refrigerators.
Worst murderer in human history. He got polio…. Invented a sort of exoskeleton involving ropes and artificial joints to regain some mobility…. But got tangled up in it and it hanged him. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
Very much deserved his ending. The guy had a much bigger death count than Adolf. When I first read about how he went out, I thought of that film “Final Destination”
Thx for the film recommendation!
Not the sort of film that I would ever see but in that guy’s case, it is appropriate-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Destination_(film)
Leaded gasoline, CFC, DDT, to name a few. The list of chemical miracles that turned out to be curses is staggering.
The major problem in the middle east is not the number of young men, but the number of young men with nothing to do. In particular Saudi Arabia thanks to the oil allowing them to pay the men to just exist.
perhaps this will be what proves UBI to be a bad idea, and that make-work is somehow needed…
I agree that UBI is not good. I much prefer the job guarantee promoted by most adherents of MMT.
I would venture that the vast majority of people want to be doing something that is valued. Of course a certain income is necessary but beyond that people have immense needs pertaining to purpose in life.
Thank you!
To place in the “upon further investigation” file. And, in the spirit of skepticism, I read the article “COVID-19 Virus Can Persist in the Body More Than a Year after Infection” and found it is suspect. Who is funding the researchers doing the study and writing the paper? From this link with in the original article I found this: New private venture tackles the riddle of Long Covid—and aims to test treatments quickly. And…. within that article discovered ……. “The enormity of the problem really outweighs the size of the response,” says one advocate, LCRI co-founder Henry Scott-Green, a Google product manager.
A co-founder from G’aggle. Well, that’s comforting to know G’aggle is helping. The NIH efforts are not enough and I love the verbiage here……(comparing) NIH money to the bonds in an investor’s portfolio—“lumbering, slow-changing things that give you the core of what you need.” But, “Sometimes to make a rapid change or to pivot in your investment strategy, bonds are not going to be the tool you use,” he says.
It’s so nice they are commenting on their “investment strategy”.
So we trust science, Fauchi (et al) and now we trust G’aggle. I’m all in , are you?
One of my very first uneasy feelings about the entire COVID experience was when people like Bill Gates were placed front and center on the media reports. And then to add further dismay, when foundations linked to people like him and Sam Bankman Fried began sponsoring all kinds of “studies”.
Why on earth are computer and financial swindlers and grifters in the forefront of discussing this with the population? It really continues to be very disconcerting that this is all just treated as being normal. I as a medical historian really cannot come up with any analog to this behavior during an emergency in modern medical history.
The first article you refer to is an article about another article, which has been published in ‘The Lancet’ – do you also the ‘Lancet’ article suspect? If so I’d be interested to know your reasons.
Thanks Raymond, here’s one example of why the Lancet is suspect: Lancet Study on Covid Vaccine Autopsies Finds 74% Were Caused by Vaccine – Study is Removed Within 24 Hours
An excerpt: However, less than 24 hours later, the study was removed and a note appeared stating: “This preprint has been removed by Preprints with the Lancet because the study’s conclusions are not supported by the study methodology.” While the study had not undergone any part of the peer-review process, the note implies it fell foul of “screening criteria”.
And keep in mind, Lancet gets most of it’s funding from (shhh don’t tell anyone) pharma corporations.
The solution to name biases in hiring processes is really simple: Have somebody not directly involved in hiring decisions remove the name.
If a company really wants to be thorough, they could double-blind interviews as well by having a TTS program transcribe the interview and having another party make the decision of whether to hire. Given that most non-technical interviews are poorly predictive of job fit anyway, there’s not much to lose in this experiment.
Another large container ship loses power while leaving port – this time New York Harbor. Sal of “What Is Going On With Shipping” reports on it:
APL Qingdao Loses Propulsion While Departing the Port of New York/New Jersey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de21JU3iyb0
Looks like tugs came to the rescue, and no bridges were in danger.
He also reports that the fuel delivered to the MV Dali at Baltimore had been checked and the fuel testing showed no contamination, but there are still fuel issues which may have contributed.
I doubt if there are any direct links to the Baltimore accident, but I would not be surprised if a systemic degradation of many factors in all aspects has increased the risk of this happening. Fuel is one of those factors.
My understanding is tugs are pretty much required in the NYC port (this second-had from a tug operator friend of Lambert), but with a big honker ship like that, they’d still need more help if it went inert. But at least they could keep it out of trouble in the meantime
I know it’s only tuesday, but i feel pretty confident saying this’ll be the best thing i hear all week.
Well, tuesday, in my time zone anyway.
One of the things I find curious about the Biden family is that they don’t have much Money.
Joe and Jill have the houses in Wilmington and Rehoboth beach, the ’67 Corvette and their retirements, but I doubt they are worth more than $10MM.
Brother Jim got some nice contracts and pulled in a few hundred K from Americore, but again, not a lot of Money.
Hunter pulled in $20MM from foreign sources that went to various Family Members, but most of that $ went to $11K per night Las Vegas hotel rooms,sports cars, hookers and blow, he’s currently $6.5MM in debt to Kevin Morris.
Genocide Joe was in the Senate for 36 years, during that period it was legal for him to trade stocks on inside information, enough time to build dynastic wealth for anyone with a little patience.
When I look a the deals Jim and Hunter made, they are all “Get rich quick” schemes or raw influence peddling, often involving sketchy characters like “Whitey” Bulger’s nephew Devon Archer.
Compare that to the Clinton’s Billions or the $200MM plus that the wizard of Kalorama is worth.
I know, it’s really hard to figure where it all goes, but gambling and cocaine both have their own reputations to uphold ;)…I figure nancy’s great great great great great grandchildren have college funds to go with some fancy legacy admissions…can’t be on the wrong side of the class divide of the new millennium
“The average age of an installed transformer in the United States is 38-40 years, and the suggested lifespan of a transformer is 20 25 years. Currently, more than 70% of U.S. transformers are aged more than 25 years (DOE).”
Now pretend that you’re planning to convert ICEs to electrical en masse. Think that might possibly affect grid load?
> Someone with very strong diplomatic contacts
Iran likely already knows Israel will try and bomb its nuclear power plant and trigger a meltdown with catastrophic effects. (If this happens France is fucked by the way with its heavy reliance on nuclear power). Longer Iran pauses means increased preparation for increasing likelihood of Israel igniting a long regional war. And giving families time to celebrate Eid before things get hard.
Merkel knew what she was doing when Germany closed its nuke plants. Nuke plants are fair-weather energy sources. In war, nuke plants become no different to having enemy nuclear warheads sitting in your own backyard. Shows how far thinking & pessimistic Merkel was.
There’s also the problem of Israel using tactical nukes. If Israel is willing to cross to line and bomb embassies, is the use of tactical nukes any worse of a red line to cross? Israel can’t beat Hezbollah by itself let alone Iran. So an outright war means tactical nukes will inevitably be used, delivered by US made F-35s. Radiation impacts will be nothing compared to the geopolitical (& financial markets) fallout for Israel & US (and rest of the West).
Need to keep in mind that Iran may consider Israel’s use of tactical nukes as ultimately in Iran’s interests. ME countries are well conditioned to absorb damage (martyrdom) while the geopolitical ramifications for US & West will be orders of magnitude worse. I don’t think Israel cares given its in an ‘end of days’ rapture.
On the whole 2.5 million lines of code thing. The election watch guy said he could do it in 77 lines using pandas. What is pandas? It’s a third party library which contains code to do the tabulation. Do you want your election machines to be using third party libraries? That would be another source of weakness.
If dominion is not using third party libraries and instead implementing everything themselves, 2.5 million still sounds like a lot, but IDK.
Still should do handcounts.
Quote:
…so we might expect between 37,500 and 125,000 bugs in that code, amirite ?
Well, pandas source only has 900,000 lines of code, so it’s three times more secure… if we use line count as a measure of security. If he needs to use openssl for secure communications, it’s another 100,000 lines of source code.
Oh, wait, I’m being stupid here… pandas need Python, which is 2372512 more lines of source code. Not counting other dependencies panda has, we’re already into 3.4 million lines of code needed to run his 77 lines.
Also numpy is in there, that’s another ~200k lines of python (not that all of it is being called).
The Dominion code doesn’t just tabulate, it also retains the identifiers of the ballots it reads, and issues a long “tape” audit log printed on thermal receipt paper rolls like a cash register. It takes four separate USB keys to boot up, and a further separate magnetic key to operate beyond self-test. (There are also several physical locks, though they’re not ultra sophisticated.) Those encrypted keys have to match each other, so the D. code has en/decryption. Many models also have an “Accessibility” touchscreen interface with a further cable-attached handheld controller, so there’s all of that code. Oh and then it will *print the touch-screen entered ballot” so that the voter can review it before submitting it to be scanned. So yes, these machines will also *mark a blank ballot* if needed.
The thing is, people are doing this. People fill in their ballots, people tend the machines, people read the audit tapes, people transport the memory cards (encrypted yet again) and the bundles of ballots to the county office, people examine those stacks and sample them randomly to do statistical checks, people build and code the voting machines and system. People do it all. It’s you.
Of course, manual counting is always possible, but with many individual candidates and propositions on a single sheet they’re not easy to count. A typical scenario is for teams of two or three people to look at one specific contest section and tabulate just that one, then pass that ballot on to the next team working on the next item.
I’ve participated in two manual recounts. One was a city council race of ~38,000 ballots, with a team of 22 active counters working in pairs, it took us 11 hours to manually recount a single contest. Why so long? We kicked three people out for various kinds of cheating (a team of two cooperating to miscount, an observer grabbing ballot stacks and throwing them in the trash); so about 4 hours in we collectively decided to start over, rather than fudge past the tampering. It was a matter of honor, our duty to the public as a whole. It’s what we signed up for… well, most of us. Even so, we didn’t count every ballot, we stopped around the 4/5th mark because the outcome became incontrovertible, enough for the challenger’s representatives to concede.
Somewhere near the end I suddenly realized that I, final-tabulating the team sheets and momentarily unobserved, could alter the outcome of the still-close race right then and there. I lived in the district, I knew the asshole who was winning personally, I had voted against them. The hairs on my neck stood up as I realized that in my hands was the collective will of my own neighbors, the will of the people, and by strange circumstance their choice was mine to accept or subvert; I could feel the weight of the legal paper sheets in my hands like they were made of lead (or gold I guess). I chose to honor them, not for their sake but for my own, so in coming months and years I could still look my neighbors in the eye without effort or shame. Could I have gotten away with it? Not necessarily. But maybe.
If one wants to cheat an entire election, it only takes concerted effort and determination, and some luck. The counting method guarantees nothing in itself. The ballot is secret inasmuch as it doesn’t have a name on it, but beyond that it’s a public document. But it’s marked by people, counted by people with or without automation. And some people cheat, some think it’s their right to do it.