How to Treat a Patient Without His Consent New York Times
Cows have human flu receptors, study shows, raising stakes on bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle CNN (ma)
Clitoxin for Improved Female Sexual Function Feminine Wellness Newsletter. Dr. Kevin: “Another miracle of modern medicine …”
First Person To Receive a Genetically Modified Pig Kidney Transplant Dies NPR. Only 2 month survival. Seems like a lot of difficult medical intervention, as in probably not great quality of additional life.
Internet Use Is Associated With Greater Wellbeing, Global Study Finds Guardian. Wonder how careful they were about confounders.
#COVID-19
Panic. It’s Good For You. Jessica Wildfire (Randy K)
“faecal contamination of surfaces [with SARS-CoV-2] could drive disease transmission.
Viral shedding has been reported to occur longer before COVID-19 symptoms appear and could last as long as 30 days after cessation of symptoms.
SARS-CoV-2 shedding time has also been found to…— Hiroshi Yasuda (保田浩志) (@Yash25571056) May 11, 2024
Climate/Environment
How Microsoft Employees Pressured the Company Over Its Oil Industry Ties Grist
New Rules to Overhaul Electric Grids Could Boost Wind and Solar Power New York Times (Kevin W)
Canadian wildfires trigger air quality alerts across 4 U.S. states NBC (Kevin W)
China?
US sharply raises tariffs on Chinese EVs and semiconductor imports Financial Times
US proposes new round of tariffs on China, cites ‘unfair’ tech transfer policies that ‘burden’ US commerce South China Morning Post
European Disunion
Old Blighty
Why most people regret Brexit Economist. I confess to missing this last month; still germane.
Labour is headed for electoral triumph – then woe in government openDemocracy
On English Melancholy MIT Press Reader (Anthony L)
Gaza
‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 220: Resistance returns to the north, UNRWA says 300,000 people fled Rafah Mondoweiss (guurst)
Gaza death toll surges to 35,173 as Israel escalates assault Anadolu Agency
‘Like the war’s first days’: Israel unleashes heaviest Gaza bombing in months Middle East Eye
Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers: Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center CNN. From over the weekend. Note this was reported despite determined censorship.
Qatari PM says talks over Gaza ceasefire at stalemate Middle East Online
What Will Happen When the Holocaust No Longer Prevents the World From Seeing Israel as It Is? Haaretz (Dan K)
This Independence Day, Israel Has Split Into Two Incompatible Jewish States Haaretz (Dan K)
Gaza Protests
Virginia Commonwealth University students walk out of graduation BBC
I wish I had the bandwidth to take this up:
[Thread] Fun fact! Your private university’s police department is likely subject to FOIA disclosure. Would sure be a shame if everyone requested records from the departments in the thread below and *all* their emails about pro-Palestine encampments and rallies
— Theia Chatelle (@theiachatelle) May 13, 2024
Trump’s Biggest Donors Behind Group Doxxing Pro-Palestine Students New Republic (Erasmus)
Campus protest crackdowns claim to be about antisemitism – but they’re part of a rightwing plan Guardian (Dr. Kevin)
The Caucuses
Georgia opposition leaders urge UK to oppose foreign influence bill BBC (Kevin W). So much for any pretense of sovereignity.
New Not-So-Cold War
Blinken in Ukraine to offer ‘strong reassurance’ as US weapons reach front line BBC. Blinken looks absolutely terrible in this photo. And on top of everything else, he’s gotten pretty gray very quickly. Even with that he’s getting off easy relative to his malfeasance.
The Kharkov offensive and the replacement of Shoigu as Defense Minister Gilbert Doctorow (guurst). See also his food notes.
The reason I am skeptical is there is no reason for Russia to turn a Patriot over to China. They are more than capable of reverse engineering it on their own. BTW Russia apparently has the most extensive set of wind tunnels in the world and has kept all the data from their inception, so they also have the best aerodynamics modeling:
This photo from China purports to show an American Patriot system that is being carried transported to a factory for analysis and re-engineering.
It is suspected, that the Patriot unit was sold to Russia by the people operating it.
This has always been one of the great fears. pic.twitter.com/RejJky5R4h
— Alternative News (@AlternatNews) May 14, 2024
The US also had a plan in the late ’50s to nuke the moon, laid out in this document. The blast would have been visible from earth; its aim would have been to intimidate the Soviets. pic.twitter.com/JaJ0rSBME0
— Scott Hamilton RTM (@SikotiHamiltonR) May 11, 2024
Imperial Collapse Watch
Putin’s trip to China may show US threats are wishful thinking Financial Times
In Red Sea, US Navy paying the price of shipbuilding failures Responsible Statescraft (Kevin W)
The results of this yearly survey by the Alliance of Democracies are always fascinating because it directly challenges what we think democracy is: https://t.co/FYqB0CRHrJ
The countries whose citizens most perceive themselves as living in democracy are:
– China
– Switzerland
-… pic.twitter.com/VuFoGKzgo0— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) May 13, 2024
Niger, Biden’s Second Military Extraction Blunder After Afghanistan Torrence Stephens
How GPS warfare is playing havoc with civilian life Financial Times
Trump
The Appearance of Michael Cohen: A Wreck in Search of a Race Jonathan Turley
Biden
Joe Biden Doesn’t Act Old Enough The American Conservative
United, Delta, American among airlines suing Biden admin over fee disclosure rule The Hill
GOP Clown Car
Queering the word “queer” WhiteHotHarlots
Our No Longer Free Press
Independent journalist makes a documentary about the FBI and gets her money stolen/frozen by… Bank of America.
So much freedom in the US. https://t.co/2J0FWF0bUM
— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) May 14, 2024
HOW THE UK SECURITY SERVICES NEUTRALISED THE COUNTRY’S LEADING LIBERAL NEWSPAPER Declassified UK (Erasumus)
From PropOrNot to New Lines: How Washington is Weaponizing Media Alan MaCleod, MintPress
Falling Down Bridges
Crews conduct controlled demolition on Baltimore bridge 9 News (Kevin W)
AI
Web publishers brace for carnage as Google adds AI answers Washington Post (TF). This will hurt big pubs. Google has already throttled search results down to zero for small pubs.
OpenAI, Mass Scraper of Copyrighted Work, Claims Copyright Over Subreddit’s Logo 404 Media (Micael T)
AI Hitting Labour Forces Like a ‘Tsunami’, IMF Chief Says Yahoo
Aldous Huxley Explains How Man Became “the Victim of His Own Technology” (1961) (Micael T)
The Bezzle
Red, yellow, green … and white? Smarter vehicles could mean big changes for the traffic light Associated Press. Kevin W: “How many traffic lights are in North America and who pays for all these changes?”
Attack makes autonomous vehicle tech ignore road signs The Register
Cruise Is Back Driving Autonomously After Pedestrian-Dragging Incident The Verge
Brain Activity of Professional Investors Forecasts Future Stock Market Performance, Study Finds Such Science (Dr. Kevin)
Antidote du jour. From reader Chet G. who just had a hip replacement! He has sent red squirrels before, and points out that US red squirrels do not have ear tufts, while their European cousins do.
And a bonus (Chuck L):
Sometimes, the internet is awesome pic.twitter.com/WPtNMYsJp2
— Frank💥 (@frankbullitts) May 10, 2024
And a second bonus (guurst):
Чистюля 🦔 pic.twitter.com/V5TXiug2bE
— Etna (@Etnaetoya) May 11, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
191 comments
Comments are closed.
H5N1
(melody borrowed from Graceland by Paul Simon)
We fled from New York City
We sterilized the inside of the car
They told us not to panic on the TV
They said stay right where you are
We caught the H5N1
Spread from you to me
We’ve seen it firsthand
The fever the coughing the sore throat
Then suddenly you can’t stand
Manhattan’s abandoned it could not hold
It swept the boroughs it’s the new plague
All the bodies we have seen
Makes us think this will be
A wasteland
Once it turns pneumonia you’re gone
This virus kills you so fast
The first sign is your eyes turn bright red
You ache and you lose focus your face is flushed
You stumble off to bed
Your nose is oozing crud your bones hurt
Like they’ll come apart
You feel the struggle with your breathing start
There is no tomorrow
Out here’s a wasteland
Death and misery
We see it firsthand
No more penicillin we’re gambling
By driving through the outlands
The road twists through the canyons
Diagnoses in our pockets
It’s our ‘modus vivendi’
All the bodies that we see
Reminds us this will be
A wasteland
Where in this world will we find pity?
We masked ourselves and kept our hands so clean
The CDC is stalling lying
Their talking points are tinfoil
They say coat your nose with Vaseline
If they’re behind this it was well planned
My nose is oozing crud my bones hurt
Like they’ll come apart
I feel the struggle with just breathing start
I won’t see tomorrow
Ooh, ooh, ooh
A wasteland, wasteland
We see it firsthand
I feel the fever the coughing the sore throat
While driving through the heartland
Our own baby passed in the end
And our own death is pending
They say there’ll be smaller generations now
With all the bodies that we see
It’s plain that this will be
A wasteland
Oooohhhhh
A wasteland, wasteland, wasteland,
Driving the wasteland . . .
pretty sure i saw a supernova this morning, around 5am central…between bootes and scorpio.
cant find anything online about it, tho.
5 minutes later, a bright meteor flashed through the same general area.
If memory serves me right, Bill Bryson, in A Short History of Almost Everything, states that over half of all supernovas have been discovered by amateurs like yourself.
first uncloudy morning in quite a while…so i was very intent on the sky.
and i happened to be looking right at it when it brightened….lingered for a couple of minutes…then faded out.
orangeish.
Not a supernova — those rise in brightness over days and fade slowly over weeks.
Maybe an outburst from an accreting compact object.
—
Decades ago, during a meteor-watching party, there was a fireball that was headed more or less straight toward us. The trail was very compact, presumably viewed nearly along the direction of travel.
The glow lingered for an astonishingly long time. IIRC, it was still faintly visible nearly 10 minutes after the meteor had burnt up.
Given that you saw a meteor in the same area, perhaps this is an alterative explanation.
i remember a meteor storm, seen from outside huntsville, texas, circa 1993 that was like that…big sparky balls of fire…almost scary.
these days, i see meteors all the time….very little light pollution, and i’m out making rounds at 3-6am.
this wasnt like a meteor heading straight for me….
my eye was moving between bootes and scorpio, and there it was…a gradual(a minute or less) brightening…steady for a moment…and then dimming at the same relative rate….never seen the like.
and, again, it was orange…the meteors i saw this am were all white…and headed from east to west, more or less.
whatever it was, if it was more than a meteor, some telescope somewhere likely picked it up…and it’ll be reported eventually.
i have no idea where to watch for such a report,lol.
I wonder what an orbital correction burn would look like at the distance of a geostationary orbit.
It would be less than invisible. Orbit change maneuvers involved burns of less than ten seconds on thrusters with 10 lbs force. (they’re roughly the size of your fist) On top of that, they burn hydrazine, which doesn’t have a visible flame (so I’m told… never having seen one live, hydrazine is incredibly toxic)
Orbit *correction* burns were less than a second long.
Aurora Borealis? Was seen a few nights ago in Eastern Iowa.
we were cloudy for all that northern lights coming south thing, sadly….and this was due south.
Interesting, typically supernova last for several days, sometimes even weeks.
Wonder what it was?
What if it was a meteorite or falling satellite as seen face on?
Like a ’72 4 speed SS model with headers and mag wheels?
What a cool sighting!
You have to be outside to experience such things, about 20 years ago we had climbed Black Kaweah and had come down and were on our way to Boy Scout Peak when we got tired and there was the perfect bench to sleep that night so we called it a day, and were sitting in our Therm-a-rest chairs when at 10:10 PM the entire Kaweah range lit up red in front of us for about 3 seconds, wow, what was it?
The 1966 Leonid meteor shower was at a rate of around 100,000 per hour, and the eyewitness accounts are out of this world~
An example:
https://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/1966.html
The Leonids put on the best meteor show that I ever saw. It was in November 1998 or 1999 and I was in East Florida on an extended business stay in a small mom and pop motel on the beach a few miles south of Melbourne. It was a pretty dark area and I was sitting on the beach about 10:30 or 11:00 PM watching them in flying from the east overhead at a rate of three or four per minute.
Hmmm… Hungry Internet Dragons strike again.
I hope it isn’t Nibiru. That celestial body is also associated with meteor showers.
Twilight up high so probably a satellite glint. Depending on the geometry those can last for many seconds and move very slowly. Maybe you saw the Boeing X37, currently in a very elliptical orbit supposedly.
“…satellite glint”
I had the same thought. I once saw a point of light in the evening sky that flashed occasionally but didn’t seem to move. Luckily it was at a local astronomy club outing and someone put a telescope on it. It turned out to be a very high-flying satellite or piece of space junk. Through the telescope its motion was obvious but with the naked eye it appeared to sit in one place.
Alas, not a supernova. If that were the case, the interwebs would have been all over it, and so would my astronomy club. They’re all still emailing aurora pics though.
Other options would be a variable star, but none I’m aware of brighten and dim that quickly, or Venus, but I don’t think it’s currently visible.
My guess would be a meteor, maybe one of these: https://www.universeguide.com/meteorshower/alphascorpiids
It may have been the optical component of a gamma ray burst, similar to “The Clarke Event”, GRB_080319B which was visible to the naked eye for 30 seconds and set the record for the most intrinsically bright object in the universe ever seen by humans. If it was a GRB, you would be the envy of every astronomer on the planet.
For those interested in these sorts of things, recurrent nova T Coronae Borealis (also known as “The Blaze Star”) is expected to undergo another outburst sometime between now and September so keep your eyes to the skies.
Most likely a satellite flare. Large satellites, like Iridium communication satellites, reflect the sun very brightly over a small area of the earth as they pass around sunrise or sunset. For a few seconds they can be brighter than Venus. There are web sites that will predict these for you for your exact location. I think heavens-above.com still does this.
Another possibility is a satellite flare – a large reflective panel (solar array) just happens to line up to reflect sun at viewer. Flash usually lasts just a few seconds because the reflection is very directional.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare
Does Biden remind anyone else of Ted Baxter from the old MTM show? Just wondering.
There is a strong resemblance to the iconic ( if you will ) Caddyshack character that he played as Judge Smails. The classic comedy of Snobs vs Slobs.
“Come on, while we’re young!”
“Gambling is illegal and I never slice. Damn it!”
“You can owe me”
Some great lines in that movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGkyFs_SkIk&pp=ygUdY2FkZHlzaGFjayByb2RuZXkgZGFuZ2VyZmllbGQ%3D
Biden has a nouveau riche vibe but forgets where he came from. His character isn’t in those lampoon movies as those movies had strong northeast wasps v everyone else vibes.
He has more of a dumb jack donnaghy (30 Rock) vibe. He’s a company man and a climber. He’ll kiss the a@@ of the last Hapsburg. He buys right wing nonsense.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006) stands out, but we haven’t seen a great comedy with the other side I decades.
I choose the parallel from a Mel Brooks movie… The Governor William Le Petomayne at your service…
He always seemed to me like that kind of party guy who’s just great, unless some wants him to admit someone in his crew was driving drunk and ran over a puppy, or roofied a 14-year old. You know, that guy who has a real mean streak that he saves for defending the guilty and casual racism in the service of “having standards.”
I think he’s fine with WASPs if they wanna hang. And what did he say about Obama? “Wear shoes and speaks normal”? I forget but it was astounding.
We should civil asset forfeiture every building he and Trump have ever owned. On case they committed crimes in them.
LOL! Thanks. Hmmm does Cookies Nuland remind anyone of Sue Ann Nivens? / ;)
Sorry, but, to me, Sue Ann Nivens was relatable in a cringey way. You can laugh at and with that character. Nuland just evokes fear.
“Cookies” Nuland reminds me of Jabba da Hutt. (I have too much good will built up from watching Sesame Street to make the other cultural association.)
Kathy Bates. In Misery.
‘Scott Hamilton RTM
@SikotiHamiltonR
The US also had a plan in the late ’50s to nuke the moon, laid out in this document. The blast would have been visible from earth; its aim would have been to intimidate the Soviets.’
The following decade there was an even more brilliant idea floated. The idea was to create an inland sea in Australia using the waters of the surrounding oceans to fill it. And how were they going to channel it there? Through an enormous ditch created by detonating several atom bombs in a line of course. I think that this was an idea of Edward Teller. Say, do you remember Trump’s idea of nuking hurricanes for which he was mocked? Teller was there first-
‘Teller also proposed the use of nuclear bombs to prevent damage from powerful hurricanes. He argued that when conditions in the Atlantic Ocean are right for the formation of hurricanes, the heat generated by well-placed nuclear explosions could trigger several small hurricanes, rather than waiting for nature to build one large one.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller#Non-military_uses_of_nuclear_explosions
Teller was a downright nutball after the war…
He just loved his bombs – they were like his own kids and could do no wrong.
Who thought a good name for a female sexual drug would be a portmanteau of clit and toxin (clitoxin)?
There are marketing people whose job it is to come up with these names! Life
Never ceases to amaze.
And they went to university for years to learn how to do this. :)
Just like the people that designed the Apple ad.
Experts agree the unintentional humor is the best kind!
I always thought that the drug namers were frustrated Scrabble players. With their penchant for names made up of high-scoring letter words, it screams “if only I could put this word over triple word with Z over triple letter…” . How else to explain: bevyxxa, ozempic, zyprexa, and the like.
Long ago, a goal when naming was to make the ‘generic’ name sound like something bad, and the trademark name invoke something wonderful.
How drugs get named….
https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-do-drugs-get-named/2019-08#:~:text=Pharmaceutical%20names%20are%20assigned%20according,or%20indication%20of%20the%20drug.
https://www.statnews.com/2017/02/08/drug-names-process/
Yeah, when I first read that I thought that sounded fishy.
Anyway, the disclaimer from the website reads as follows:
“Important Legal Disclaimer: This is an off-label use of botulinum toxin; no results are ever guaranteed (no therapy works every time). If considered, it should only be done by a physician who has been properly trained and certified to do the procedure and only after considering all other options, including the option to do nothing, and only after a signed consent that includes the fact that results may vary and are unpredictable for new, off-label therapy and includes all the usual contraindications and possible side effects of botulinum toxin. Click on “Clitoxin” below to see more of the research:“
A man?
The article about an extra traffic light for “autonomous vehicles” perfectly illustrates what kind of unnecessary costs this “revolution” is incurring on us both mentally and physically.
Adding one more light to the pole? For what? “To follow the car in front of you”. What then is the difference between an extra light signalling that it is safe to go? Or does the white light signal that it is ok to crash into all other vehicles out there driving on white light instead of the green light?
Let me have a guess: a start-up from Silicon Valley would have a “smart” way to exchange the current traffic lights with “smart” extra-many lights?
Is there anybody in the autonomous vehicle/driving space that is thinking straight or not in bezzle-terms?
A quick search that there are about 300,000 traffic signals in the US. To revamp them all would be a scammer’s idea of heaven and you just know that private equity firms would have their grubby mitts on lot of those contracts.
That doesn’t seem enough. I would have guessed in the millions. But that’s my bicoastal bubble-brain not acknowledging the huge expanse of open country in the US.
I’m guessing that there are more than 300000 in NY state alone.
Well, it all depends on what you consider a “traffic signal”. The US Federal Highway agency estimates there are 330,000 traffic signals in the US. If you consider each red/green/orange light on the pole a signal then, yes, a million would be a plausible count.
Otherwise, RK’s quick research is reasonably accurate.
Well, just spit-ballin’ here, but wouldn’t be surprised if some psychos are thinking that a way to make the costs and changes seem necessary is by the mass destruction of the old infrastructure. Letting it whither and rot isn’t filling their pocketbooks fast enough.
“Is there anybody in the autonomous vehicle/driving space that is thinking straight or not in bezzle-terms?”
They wouldn’t be in the biz if they weren’t, iykwim.
Spray-painting over or otherwise interfering with the extra light would be an easy sabotage that remains safe for non-artificial drivers. And more simply than the one(s) described in the subsequent article link on a “GhostStripe” attack.
The author here seems to have a few hobby horses to ride and misses out on some important information. That original Obama-era agreement with Niger had a lot of clauses where Niger surrendered their sovereignty to the US causing much resentment. Here is some examples-
‘The Embassy further proposes that United States contractors shall not be liable to pay any tax or similar charge assessed within the Republic of Niger in connection with activities under this Agreement and that such contractors may import into, export out of, and use in the Republic of Niger any personal property, equipment, supplies, material, technology, training, or services in fulfilment with activities under this Agreement. Such importation, exportation, and use shall be exempt from any license, other restrictions, customs duties, taxes, or any other charges assessed within the Republic of Niger.
The Embassy proposes that United States contractors shall be granted the same treatment as United States personnel with respect to professional and drivers’ licenses.’
In addition, the US paid zero rent for the use of that airbase. So who negotiated that agreement on behalf of Niger? Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamed Bazoum who became President in 2021 until the coup gave him the boot. I wonder why. The smart move on the part of the US would have been to send in a team of negotiators to have a new agreement where the US would pay rent and maybe back payments going back to 2013 to sweeten the deal. And to get rid of all these extra-territorial agreements too. Instead, the Neocons went in like gang-busters and not only demanded the 2013 agreement be re-accepted but that Niger must cut all relations with Russia and Iran. I think that it was only hours later that Niger gave the US the boot. (Picard facepalm)
https://www.rt.com/africa/597057-us-niger-cut-military-relations/
Gotta love the US Empire’s idea of “soft power,” no? Like the American tourist speaking louder and louder in American, so the dim wog will somehow finally understand what Karen is demanding… I hear the same behavior is displayed by Brits too.
800 bases aren’t cheap. As the line goes, pretty soon we are talking about real money. When the US brought “prosperity”, a base might make sense, but what good are they especially the ones where the soldiers aren’t spending locally.
Domino theory was farfetched for the spread of communism, but I’m not sure it’s not possible if the US starts making better deals relative to the locals.
They invented it.
I venture to guess it was Victoria, not Karen, making the demands. If fat, ugly Victoria was making demands on me, my first reflex would be to say, “get the ‘family blog’ outta here”.
Niger, being landlocked, is vulnerable to the empire leaning on its neighbors who provide access to the oceans. That may be what’s behind Benin’s recent actions. Marcus_Herve is a worthwhile TwiXit account to follow regarding recently independent former French colonies in north central Africa.
https://twitter.com/marcus_herve/status/1790041591027036617
‘The President of Benin…is not going to allow the transport of crude oil that China 🇨🇳 has already paid for.’
So the President of Benin is going to make an enemy of China now? Does he really want to go there?
The link on “OpenAI, mass scraper of copyrighted work …” leads to a different site on the lunacy of rebuilding on a disaster site (a worthy read, in and of itself.)
Working link for “OpenAI, Mass Scraper of Copyrighted Work, Claims Copyright Over Subreddit’s Logo ” article at-
https://www.404media.co/openai-files-copyright-claim-against-chatgpt-subreddit/
Artists and creatives often are the lead critics of the status quo – even with all of the neoliberal economic co-opting. What better way to silence them than through stealing their work and cutting into royalties or tying them up with bogus copyright claims.
And they get to call the thieving and leeching “innovation.”
The dog on the piano was an antidote for the general tenor of the news.
Could have done with an ashy cigarette stuck to his bottom lip and a tumbler of iced scotch on the side.
We could all do with that, on occasion. I was never a good smoker though. Couldn’t get addicted to the things no matter how much I tried. The dog is also a better jazz musician than me. Thanks for nothing, three years in the conservatory.
the intro is awesome and the howls on key – just flat out amazing – love it!!
The piano playing went so well with the vocalizations that I wondered if somebody had dubbed it in – but no, the dog is really doing the keyboard as well. I am frankly astonished.
I’m pretty sure it’s an overdub. Those pretty chords usually require a reach across keys with outstretched human fingers vs multiple keys right next to each other.
Still a job well done.
My credentials? I grew up with a piano and spent a lot of time plinking on it because I was too lazy for proper lessons.
I agree. As an amateur jazz pianist not only is the sound tone incompatible with the keys being “stepped on”, but the tonal sound does not match the range of a tuned piano keyboard. If you listen to the rhythm (syncopation) of the sounds and watch the paw placement they are slightly out of syncronization.
More fake reality from the internet. It’s amazing what folks can do with their free time.
Agree, the chords are way too spread apart for a dog paw. And no wrong notes at all.
AI AI AI AI, fooled again by a fake fido, it so cheapens when something genuinely astounding occurs~
I would like to transcribe it.
Who owns the copyright?
It sounds like Ligetti, minus the howls, but maybe he wrote something there too!
going to send it to the folks at WRCJ and bet they can figure it out
It’s quite simple really, but the dog didn’t play it. It’s in C minor and pooches paws couldn’t pick out single white key notes, plus around 0:28 s/he’s in the wrong register for the pitch.
My take: the person who made the dog video is the owner of the piano and was musically proficient enough to create a sound track that matched reasonably well with paw-to-keyboard action.
For those unfamiliar with Ligetti, here’s a composition for piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlSoSRrZOPs
Not your typical Classical fare.
Thanks for link!
I like him, along with Hungary’s earlier on, Bartok, Kodály. All range of Europe.
Hot Ligeti Dog
well i agree – on second look/listen it’s rather obvious – but your comment of Ligetti made me wonder where the tune came from since it does have a familiarity – that’s why i thought of WRCJ, the classical DJ’s during the day are quite knowledgeable – it does sounds avante garde classical not jazzy
That is a great video that and so well done. Goodboi.
>What Will Happen When the Holocaust No Longer Prevents the World From Seeing Israel as It Is? Haaretz (Dan K)
I know this was in the opinion section of Haaretz, but I’m surprised to see it being published. It is a damning admission of what many people who have been and are being called anti-Semites have been saying for a long, long time. Yes, a clear view of what “Israel is”, a immoral Nation really look like.
Israel has become addicted to both the regime of Jewish supremacy over the Palestinians and its ability to leverage the memory of the Holocaust so that the crimes it commits against them won’t mobilize the world against it…
We’re approaching the moment, and perhaps it’s already here, when the memory of the Holocaust won’t stop the world from seeing Israel as it is. The moment when the historic crimes committed against our people will stop serving as our Iron Dome, protecting us from being held to account for crimes we are committing in the present against the nation with which we share the historical homeland.
A very powerful statement. The author, a former director of B’Tselem, has been a leading Jewish voice for Palestinian rights and liberal tolerance. This position seems to be a dying one among Israelis today, just as Israel’s ability to shield itself with the Holocaust is reaching its end. His is not the condemnation of an outsider but of someone who has tried hard to change his country’s doomed trajectory from within. Hannah Arendt’s observation from 1955 might finally be relevant – not to our bought-and-paid-for political leaders, of course, but to the rest of the world.
It seems likely Israel will require total control of Gaza going forward, otherwise they will face a 5-10 year drip drip of Israeli war crimes in Gaza being exposed over time.
CNN sometimes accidentally reports a bit on the humans in Gaza, like this piece:
“The woman said it was tense last night. “Even the water distribution guy is afraid to come by. People are afraid to leave the tents at night to relieve themselves because they are afraid of the quadcaptors (armed Israeli drones) … All of us have hepatitis. There are lot of infections among people.”
The woman pointed to a scar under her ear and said it had been causes by a sniper’s bullet which had broken her jaw when she was trying to retrieve belongings from near Nasser hospital. “There was a window covered by a blanket and the sniper got me here.”
“Why would they target me? I was at a school. It was empty.”
Her son, 18-year old Raed Abu Salem, has a face injury which he said was caused by shrapnel from a drone attack in Khan Younis when he was trying to get water. He also lost several teeth.
“I would say how good-looking I was,” he said, when asked what he feels when he looks at his photos before the war. Now his injuries are painful and he has to eat through a syringe.
His mother said she was struggling to feed the children. “These kids haven’t eaten. We don’t have fresh water.”
Of course the US is already accepting amputee children from Gaza for medical care….without the slightest shred of self-recognition—say, how did these kids come to be maimed like this…….
Is Israel the first “Western Democracy” to systematically use killer drones against a civilian population?
Israel might not be the first “Western Democracy” to commit crimes against civilians, but it is the first country to use the Holocaust as somehow exculpatory. I think the author substantiates the claim that Israel is indeed trying to justify itself and that this casuistry will no longer have any purchase on peoples judgement, at least outside of the our AIPAC funded U.S. Congress.
Gooooooooood Mooooooooorning Fiatnam!
Away in a manger, it was all about the kill-ratio, west bank-more land, the powers that be at the Knesset assured us-with victory (and beachside condos) in sight, and the numbers on their side with a tidy 30-1 ratio of Gazans gone versus Israeli losses on October 7th, how could their cause not be just?
…experts in Papua New Guinea, Marshall Islands, Palau, Czechia, Micronesia, Hungary, Nauru & Argentina, being in full agreement.
I would like to ask Anthony Blinken, what is the definition of an IDF “precise operation” vs. “major operation?”
Is it 30 tanks vs. only 29 rolling over Palestinians? Or five dead kids run over by bulldozers vs. only four?
How many hospitals need to be reduced to rubble for it to be “major?”
Asking for a friend.
30 pieces of sliver in the hand beats 30 pieces of sliver still in blush.
Hey Wuk, thought about you when I read this post today. Interesting stuff from both the numismatic and fiscal point of view…
https://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2024/05/renovatio-monetae.html
Nowadays they just pull it out of your account.
When a new ruler appeared on the scene, he or she didn’t want the old king’s mug on a coin, so that was a major reason for recoining with seignorage a nice perk.
You could bring raw silver or gold to the U.S. mint in the 19th century to have them turn it into coins, but by the time of the Comstock Lode, the biblical standard of 16 ounces of silver equaling 1 ounce of gold was already way out of kilter as it remains today at a 90-1 ratio, and they stopped the process.
On the Turley piece, I predict that the Judge will not grant the MTD (motion to dismiss.)
The case is going to the jury. And juries are unpredictable.
Pretty irrelevant either way as an appeal is baked in.
There are two lawyers on that jury. They are going to have to be severely afflicted with TDS to convict, after all that.
Considering Engoron, Bragg and James, it is clear that severe TDS has been rampant in legal circles in NY state for about over seven years.
Except this crew is so infected, a hung jury would be thrilling. Unfortunately it will mean lots of media frothing and a further waste of tax dollars as they try to mount a new trial by September. The only thing that might save us is if those lawyers aren’t infected, demolish the whole premise of the trial in the jury room and the jury renders a not guilty verdict. There would still be aghastitude in the media, but it would be over and we won’t have to waste time waiting for the appeal.
On that “Patriot Missile System in China,” commenters point out that it’s clearly labeled “ inert” and the trailer markings indicate in Taiwan, which is only “China” in the boggled mythology of the “patriotic internet.” Also comments provide pix of the real thing, and note that the wiring on the prop is nothing like. It’s either a dummy or a training aid or a not very sophisticated bit of propaganda.
“Trust, but verify” turned out to be one tiny bit of good advice from Ronnie “Star Wars” Raygun. .
> and the trailer markings indicate in Taiwan
Thank you. Taiwan has MIM-104, and the last drills were reportedly in March this year.
https://www.voanews.com/a/taiwan-conducts-missile-drills-in-face-of-china-military-intrusions-/7542885.html
So it’s more like “sold by the US”, but nevermind.
White Hot Harlots: Queering the word “queer.” Recommended.
My general attitude is that “queer” “theory,” “gender” “theory,” and just about all economic “theory” outside of Marx are a bunch of term papers held together by spit, masking tape, and Elmer’s Glue. One must be thankful at least that the academics who invented queer theory latched on to the word “queer.” It’s awkward enough, since the pejorative side is never going to go away, no matter how much chirping and nail polish. But there are so many other words that they could have stumbled on–I guess we’re lucky.
The article is truly a good read for anyone concerned about the outbreaks of moral panic, the endless U.S. puritanism, the hairsplitting about desire and sexuality (binary what?), and the general culture of enforced unhappiness.
A spicy essay: The author even tries to revive the original meaning of “the personal is political.” No, it does not mean personal characteristics.
And then you can go back to reading Colette, Shakespeare’s sonnets, Melania Mazzucco, or Bashō to imbibe from them how the heart engages in the many complications of sensuality and affection.
When I hear the word “theory”, that’s when I reach for my gun.
They want more money. Also, snipers.
Ah yes the good old impartial BBC. A day or so ago, a BBC journalist interviewed by the BBC about the decision by Israel to ban Al Jazeera from reporting from Gaza, said with a very straight face, yes but many people consider Al Jazeera to be propaganda.
If he wants to see what proper propaganda looks like, he should take a look at BBC reports from their chief Moscow correspondent, who does not file anything unless he can put some anti-Putin spin on it.
Was that before or after the UK paid the Georgian opposition leaders to ask for said urging?!!?
Re: Patriot in China
It literally has “INERT” written on the canisters. Means those are not real missiles. E.g., here’s a photo of similar things used for training:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63994648
The launcher looks about right, but I’m not that familiar with the system.
My guess is it’s a mockup, either for training or a movie prop.
Not a “system”; appears to be M902 or M903 launcher. I kind of doubt you would be trailering a launcher with war shots in the cans. IMO the interesting part of the launcher would be the electronics module (LEM).
‘Radix Verum
@NotRadix
I have been de-banked by Bank of America. They are currently holding my funds hostage.’
The same happened about a month ago to Yanis Varoufakis-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rScgE1flrVw (1:23 mins)
He was told by an answering machine that on the grounds of national security, that he would not be told why and was told that there was no appeal at all.
Then: Run on the bank
Now: Bank on the run with your money
And people thought that all that security glass and security was there to keep out the bank robbers. It was actually to keep out customers demanding their money back.
Fun fact. When you have money on deposit in a bank, you don’t actually own it anymore. You own a claim to that money. In a way, you loaned that bank your money – and now they get to have a loan of you.
Somehow, I am reminded of civil asset forfeitures, which is when the police – local, state, and federal – including the FBI seizes not just your money as in the actual cash in the wallet, but any property at all because reasons. The reason usually is that they suspect that it is proceeds from a crime and no, usually people are never charged with a crime.
Technically, there is a process to get it back, but it is usually convoluted, you need to pay for a lawyer out of pocket, and you have to prove that your property is innocent. Cash, houses, cars, businesses, whatever because someone, somewhere can claim some property might be guilty of something (it’s a legal loophole as if you are charged with a crime, you actually have rights even if they are frayed).
But corrupt as it is being as the agency keeps the money it steals, it still is the government, but now “private” companies are doing it as well.
A good reason to bank at two banks, not just one, if you can. Have 2 credit cards from different banks and different card issuers, if you can. Stay away from the big wall st banks, if you can. And keep some cash on hand. You never know what will happen next. My bank discontinued their old ATM-only cards. You can still use a their debit card at their ATM machines. (I don’t want a debit card.)
Remember, when you deposit money in a bank you are essentially loaning your money to the bank. At that point the bank controls your money, controls the use of your loan to it. Normally this isn’t a problem. These aren’t normal circumstances.
The big banks seem to be the worst actors. See Well Fargo, for example.
Wells Fargo manager stole over $1M from bank accounts of vulnerable customers, feds say
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/wells-fargo-manager-stole-over-1m-from-bank-accounts-of-vulnerable-customers-feds-say/ar-AA1iaAVK
Fortunately, I left California before interstate banking, so I had to close my Wells Fargo account. I opened one, fortunately, with a NY credit union (and now use Unicredit, I’m afraid. I opened an account with a small local bank, but Unicredit bought them)
China?
Lazy American BIZ; too lazy to earn money, now needs the Fed to defend their greed by jacking tariffs. no wonder we are in decline. Thanks Ron, George 1&2, Bill, Barack, and current. I Like Ike.
There’s also this element to it all: the techno-feudalists can’t have other countries manufacturing enough things that people can afford and own when they want to rent as much as possible to you and maintain control over those things and services and your behaviour.
How much does or will the tariffs increase inflation here in the USA? How much inflation was caused by Trump’s tariffs?
I haven’t seen any numbers published for either.
Is the U.S. slip sliding into the line of fire in Gaza?
The Pentagon says the U.S. military’s long-awaited temporary pier off the shore of Gaza should be operational later this week and officials hope that the first trucks containing food and other aid will finally roll off of the causeway and onto Gazan soil.
While that is potentially great news for starving Gazans, it puts American armed forces personnel at heightened risk despite Biden’s assurance that the operation won’t involve U.S. personnel on the ground in Gaza.
Quoted in Newsweek, Michael DiMino, a former CIA military analyst and counterterrorism officer now serving as public policy manager for the Defense Priorities think tank, questioned the significance of distinguishing between the U.S. having “boots on the ground” or off the shore in Gaza.
The risk of the U.S. getting dragged into an active shooting war is about to become a real possibility, according to DiMino:
As terrible as the situation is in Gaza right now, let’s hope events don’t take a turn for the worse in the coming days.
Hopefully the Israelis won’t do a USS Liberty on them to put the blame on the Palestinians.
That is exactly what I was thinking as well.
Turn this “con” on its head and get the Turks to supply ‘security’ to the project. For extra fun, have the UNRWA put in charge, with the UN as security ‘contractor.’
For what it is worth, today the various “security services” are sophisticated enough to be able to backtrack missiles, planes dropping bombs, or artillery shells to their points of origin. Whatever the false flag turns out to be, someone not “in the loop” will soon figure out the con and publicize it. Americans and Europeans might not get to hear about it, but the rest of the world will.
We are entering a multi-polar information world.
Well, there was some reporting that the pier was Netanyahu’s idea, so what do you think is going to happen? False flag operation to look like Hammas attacks the US….the Reichstag Fire is here……
I initially though Netanyahu (and Biden) wanted the pier so they could–in a totally humanitarian way/s–offer to evacuate the remaining Gazans that way–and that may still be the case.
To where?
Evacuate them… to a pier? If I were Gazan I would hardly trust that the showers weren’t next.
Watch the Gazan Palestinians end up on the Texas Mexico border.
Our we assuming that they would survive the journey? They could take the journey in “coffin ships,” “hell ships,” or more of those Covid cruise ships and airliners. So bad, so sad, what can you do?
I really do not like how I am thinking nowadays.
…not Fort Rworth or TonaRwanda ?
(as they are now calling it, emulating the Brits choice of relocation to a place their 2 legs bad exports weren’t from)
Madagascar, where the lemurs are a leaping.
Operation Ironclad?
A pier is that it’s easy to destroy when no Americans are on it.
He couldn’t get much sleep in that sleeper train Russians made him roll in.
Mecouris pointed out a while ago that the Kiev mafia and western operatives should have escape routes and timing worked out, because that’s the only way out of Dodge. No air travel.
‘Reader Chet G. …has sent red squirrels before, and points out that US red squirrels do not have ear tufts, while their European cousins do.’
They look pretty harmless to me but some people freak out about them-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myzC3f0j9kw (4:54 mins)
We now have black squirrels in Boston. I first saw one maybe 6 years ago and now there are many. If I manage to get close they look like they might be very dark gray, so dark it looks like black. Other people I spoke to have seen them too.
I’ve seen black squirrels on the grounds of Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, CA. According to a quick online perusal black squirrels are a color variation of the eastern gray squirrel. Western gray squirrels are native to California but I found no mention of them having a black variation. That’s as far down that rabbit hole that I’m gonna go right now.
Black squirrels in Eastern Iowa, 20 years ago very rare now pretty common. It’s a recessive gene I think, I looked it up a while back.
Lots of black squirrels up here in Ontario, along with grey — reds are rarer.
Around these parts (south central Michigan), the story is that they were imported from England by W. K. Kellogg himself:
https://wrkr.com/battle-creek-black-squirrels/
This is a great read on collapse and biologic response. Thought provoking and a different perspective…
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-collapse-is-coming-will-humanity-adapt/
This is really good. I could split some hairs, but I’ll read the book instead, since this is a conversation and likely has imprecisions.
> How are we going to get the federal government to support these efforts?” And I said, “They’re not going to.”
This seems more realistic than Richard Heinberg‘s ‘Power’, which contains the phrase ‘give up power’ several times.
thats great, Mikerw0.
well worth a read.
of course, i’m a bit biased, because the strategy they advocate is exactly what ive been up to out here.
by the door from the little greenhouse to the house, proper, is a quote from Statius…possibly misattributed:
“he plants his trees to serve a race yet to come”.
Eldest finally noticed it month and a half ago…and soon thereafter piped up that “”you know, i really need to know all the shit you know, dad…”
so he’s finally taken an interest in the systems i grow and encourage…from soil to succession in the pasture….why do i plant wheat in the garden beds?…because its aleleopathic and curtails germination in the spring of weeds i dont want….etc etc…x10000.
all these apparently random things i do around here that noone notices….or completely misinterprets,lol…witch’s ladders hanging from mesquites arent just creepy warding nordic artforms…but train the limbs horizontal, so there’s shade…and eventually more wood from the vertical growth off those laterals(theres a name for this i saw here at NC some time ago, but i dont remember it).
anyhoo…thanks for the read.
Espalier, perhaps?
That was one of the best articles I have ever read on NC.
There’s an article by the book authors summarizing their book at the Univ of Calif. journal Global Perspectives
https://online.ucpress.edu/gp/article/5/1/115331/200356
The field biologist perspective has a lot to tell us, I think.
Thank you, that clears the quibbles.
State of the economy alert:
I’m seeing ads for Disney for 4 days at 99 a day (some limits, but if you haven’t been, you won’t care) I haven’t glanced at traveling since covid, but all things considered that feels “reasonable.”
The last time I went was tacked onto a spring training trip bc we could get a late deal, but I feel like it’s a reduction compared to the last couple of years.
“Blinken in Ukraine to offer ‘strong reassurance’ as US weapons reach front line”
Hmmm. Graying hair, bags underneath his eyes, worried & frazzled look on his face. I wonder how he will look if the Ukrainian front line collapses altogether and on his watch. I hope to find out.
This guy started his time as SecState by insulting China and telling Iran they needed to offer concessions on the nuclear deal that Trump ripped up.
Blinken is too stupid to realize it, but he was destined for failure at that point. His boss is a dope. The US decayed horribly since 2001.
Much of job is functioning in a world he simply doesn’t understand. He likely can’t even believe he has to field questions about the genocide that aren’t platitudes about the “good Muslims”.
I believe the US’ terminal mistake was to believe whatever bullshit about the world they told their public. All politics is local and nowhere is that more true than in America. They make up nonsense about the world and sell it to the public then act on that as if it were reality. As the world deals with reality, the US operates in a parallel plane. They could get away with it back in the Bush-Cheney years, but no longer.
This is all too true.
Blinken doesn’t have to be good at soft power as long as and to the extent that he can fall back on hard power. “Take the crumbs we offer you and if you don’t, then we’ll just have to do The Other Thing….”
Like Dubya’s Mayberry Machiavellis but with fancy degrees.
It seems like he is aging more rapidly than normal. If this leads to reduced years on this planet for him……….. well he deserves what he gets and I hope he gets what he deserves.
I don’t think heaven is a possibility when he gets what he deserves.
If only someone would just go ahead and slap the smirk off that mealy mouthpiece.
Anybody seen the latest Ukrainian army recruitment ad?
https://www.bitchute.com/video/AcaujZ8qAtkH/ (1:13 mins)
Yep. Good stuff. 😉
Fake news. Russian propaganda and not even very well done Russian propaganda. A real Ukrainian military commissar wouldn’t be nearly that nice when corraling up fresh meat.
But good tr0lling satire. / ;)
“The Kharkov offensive and the replacement of Shoigu as Defense Minister”
There has been a lot of talk on the net about the reshuffling, especially Shoigu’s promotion. Was thinking earlier that now that Putin is President still and the war in the Ukraine is entering it’s terminal stage, that perhaps the purpose of this shuffling is to give the Russian Federation the leadership team that it will need in the post war period. That they are thinking beyond the war and considering who would best be needed in their leadership roles.
The appointment of Belousov might indicate that the war is not in the terminal phase as far as Russia is concerned.
Why appoint an economic planner with goals like making spending more efficient and improving the technology pipeline? My sense from Belousov’s speech today is that we’re looking at a policy of long-term elevated military spending with more aggressive modernization, not a post-war planning mindset.
Shoigu did not have the skills to deliver this without exploding the budget, so he got kicked upstairs. Perhaps too crudely put but I think there’s something to it.
The war in Ukraine is heading for a terminus sometime late this year or very early next year. The war of NATO against Russia, of which the Ukraine operation is one phase, will go one for much longer, probably until the economic collapse of either or both of the US and the EU. Or till nukes fly.
As the war in Ukraine winds down, expect more anti-Russian provocations to occur, in Armenia, Moldova, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and other assorted nations near Russia. The “Western” ruling class will not give up just because one set of proxies has been worn down. So Russia has to stay ready.
It’s my understanding that “improving the technology pipeline” in this context is about getting new innovations from smaller operators tested, accepted and deployed faster. The “old guard” of Russian military industry which has existed since the 18th century are pretty good an experienced in churning out basic stuff (rifles, ammunition, tanks, fighter, trucks etc) by the million.
But things like Lancet or Scalpel, Penicillin or Repellent and others have all been invented by much smaller operators, of then completely outside the military industry. Letting the armed forces to take better advantage of these actors with better integrations to the procurement processes is what I believe to be Belousov’s main task.
That, and acting on the remaining corruption and bureaucratic friction so that they don’t hinder the continuing expansion of the armed forces. If Russia is still getting a over a ten thousand new contract soldiers every month, just lodging, clothing, arming and feeding that mass of men is becoming a challenge in itself.
Also weeding out wasteful elements within the MOD bureaucracy; straight after getting rid of Shoigu they arrested one of the generals ( general Kuznetsov) responsible for MOD staffing. The crime? Accepting an exceptionally large bribe. Expect more clearing out of greedy traitors. The new guy in charge of MOD has got degree in mathematics and economics and worked with Putin for many years.
Mecouris was just talking today about this continuing corruption purge. He was also talking about an appointment of a person, forgot his name, to head of shipbuilding, which is certainly forward looking, when sanctions end and Russia is sailing again. How many ships do we make again?
It’s official – Jerome Powell is a disaster.
I tuned in to his speech in Amsterdam and this guy is in denial. He cannot bring himself to admit that he failed in tightening monetary policy enough to offset the tsunami of reckless fiscal spending.
Fiscal dominance means he is boxed in. He’s still in denial.
Not that there is a great bench because of the nature of the beast and Biden, but I always come back to why did Biden reappoint a Trump appointee. Even if Powell was trying, his goal would naturally be to undercut Biden because that is what Republicans do. Then he is a Republican and naturally has terrible ideas.
Something changed with Powell last December.
Prior to that he seemed to be laser focused on inflation. Then, with no underlying data to support it, he flipped to leading the market on like a tease with pivot talk.
I suspect someone in the deep state had a talk with him. You know, it would be a terrible thing Jerome if something were to happen to that nice family of yours.
How tight is fiscal policy when the meme “stonks” are trying to rear their heads again?
If Powell sees excessive fiscal spending as blocking monetary policy from working, he has a duty to speak up.
Of course, his salary may depend on him not understanding that fiscal dominance is wrecking his work.
Why should anybody expect anything less than a disaster from anybody in important positions in the United States. I could do better despite my all encompassing ignorance.
fwd – https://www.exploring-economics.org/en/orientation/
Interesting site. I wonder what Yves and NC economics gurus’ opinions on these different schools of economics?
Off hand, it seems that Neoclassical & Austrian are bogus.
Ecological would seem to be a good school. Many key primary resources like petroleum & lithium on Earth are limited. A steady state economy would need to be implemented before the Resource exhaustion of key minerals/resources occurs. Indefinite-time/exponential growth on a finite planet is impossible.
Post-Keynesian (presumably Modern Monetary Theory is part of this school?) & Marxian have interesting concepts.
I guess Economics is at a primitive stage like Medicine 200+ years ago. In a social science concerning power in society, protecting the current 0.1%/Ruling Class overides the Scientific Method in testing the existing schools/theories.
It seems crazy to me that students learn the Failed Neoclassical school as Intro Micro & Macro courses, with little/no exposure to topics from the actually useful economic schools.
That is a pretty interesting site you’ve found, but per your questions, I personally don’t see economics as a science, at least not in the main. I consider it more a subtopic of social philosophy, and I don’t know if I would even consider it something that “progresses” so much as “co-evolves” with a specific society’s weltanschauung. Whether physics or medicine actually progress in a more objective way is a whole different debate.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t valid ideas out there; some subtopics I’d consider rigorous enough to be fully scientific: accounting-based arguments are usually pretty solid (like in balance-of-payments analysis), the theoretical side of game theory (as opposed to actually treating it as a model of human behavior), certain things in econometrics, etc.
AFAIK most of the actual mathematical models the mainstream schools focus on, while they work as toy modeling problems, don’t fit and explain (you can get any model to “fit” the data if you add enough factors) reality enough to represent valid empirical knowledge.
On specific schools though, if you’re interested, it’s probably best to be a little aware of what they all say, but do so critically, considering the source and the results. Even as they’re coming back into style a bit more, Marxist theory probably still doesn’t get the attention it deserves. The school itself is pretty diverse, but if you ever read Marx directly, he’s actually very Aristotelian. My personal favorite is probably the Institutionalist school though, which takes an anthropological approach to things.
aye.
when i finally got around to studying economics…i started with a college textbook…was underwhelmed at all the religious aspects(ha!)…and endeavored to instead start in on source material.
reading Smith(both wealth and moral sentiments) and then marx(kapital, then grundrisse), i found them…to my great surprise!…pretty complimentary.
and the former had little to do with the econospeak we’ve been treated to for decades in msm and congress.
filled all this out with whatever i could get my hands on…ricardo, malthus, collected works of J.S. Mill…and all the way up to folks like Veblen and Galbraith.
i was helped in this by our ancient and native born lawyer emeritus’ estate sale…he was an unapologetic new dealer…and i got most of my Marx from his shelf(nobody else wanted such stuff)
i encourage endeavors like this.
econ is rightly part of the Humanities…ie: it aint physics.
removing the Political from Political Economy was a mistake…or a crime, depending on yer point of view.
>>>econ is rightly part of the Humanities…ie: it aint physics.
removing the Political from Political Economy was a mistake…or a crime, depending on yer point of view.
Technically, the following is not a crime, nor was it a mistake of business interests and elites, they were removing all the economists who were not orthodox neoliberal e.g. the Chicago Boys, which started in the 1920s, removing Mill, John, Galbraith, and Veblen, censoring Adam Smith, blocking any study of Karl Marx, and finally eliminating eliminating the extensive writings both political and the philosophical from economics. Also, the economists who were not purged wanted to make the slimmed down field of economics “scientific.” They wanted of the mamby pamby political or philosophical stuff even if it was honest unlike modern economics.
It took roughly seventy years for the process to be complete. Neoliberalism’s subversion and seizure of education, business, government, even social and religious from the 1970s onwards did not cause the corruption and institutional rot we now see everywhere. It did feed and empower that process. Would the wealthy business owners who started the process around the turn of the twentieth century done so if they knew the end results?
*Sigh*
Econ is not part of the humanities. It is a social science like anthropology and sociology.
Thank You Thank You Thank You!
Economics has basically 2 schools. Those who seek to understand reality, and those who reinforce the political status quo, often mindlessly. One group makes more money, trains most students, and has secure economics careers. The other is worth paying attention to.
Re:Brexit
Emotionally speaking it’s what people want to do, but the US will regret withdrawing from global trade also.
It’s not really withdrawing from global trade. It’s withdrawing from unelected, unaccountable globalized “decision makers” like the EU or the WHO. / ;)
The faithful will claim the EU leadership is elected, by proxy. In that commission president is appointed by the council. That is in turn made up of the heads of state of the member nations. That in turn are chosen by the people via election.
Yet once chosen, it seems the council has little power to curtail the commission. And the parliament only has the ability to yay or nay a commission legislation.
The Council of Ministers can block any proposal by the Commission for primary legislation, so describing the Council as having little power is misleading to say the least.
In practice the Commission seeks to work in cooperation with the Council and individual member states. It would be counter-productive for it to do otherwise.
The Parliament can amend legislation and has the power to dismiss the Commission. This latter power was used in 1999. The power of the member states in practice means that if the Council wanted the Commission dismissed it would almost certainly happen.
The council, the commission, the appointees, the appointees decisions effects on the council, … / er, Rube Goldberg machine?
“Independent journalist makes a documentary about the FBI and gets her money stolen/frozen by… Bank of America.”
This is the real reason why demonetization must be opposed, and why governments are so eager to enact it.
Try living without access to your money. Any person or any movement that steps out of line can be brought to heel right quick, and not a single cop has to pick up a baton to do it.
Based on what she says in the video, her troubles began when she tried to deposit a “donation” check with mismatching amounts to what sounds like a personal account. So you’ve got what is technically a bad check plus maybe mixing in business with personal transactions. If this is commonplace and normally not a problem she really could be getting singled out. But it’s flaky enough that I’m not a 100% sure.
That’s what she was told by the big Wall St. bank.
Even if in this case BoA were as pure as the driven snow, we can be assured that no bank ever would freeze an account at the behest of some alphabet agency, because that would be unethical and possibly even against the law!
I was wondering what happened to Guardian reporting, it’s anodyne at best and spreading government propaganda at worst. Shame
Remember the visit that MI5 paid The Graun right after the Snowden revelations were published?
The goodthinkers at The Guardian got the message, right quick. They have carefully hewed to the neocon line ever since.
Just submitted my UAW4811 strike authorization vote. We’ll see where this goes… I wasn’t around for the previous strike but it seemed pretty well organized.
Failed state watch. Even the NY Times admits our grid is “creaking”. From New Rules to Overhaul Electric Grids Could Boost Wind and Solar Power
Fascinating, Captain. Provided for comment and not necessarily for truth.
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/leak-biden-admin-thinks-ukraine-will?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=7677&post_id=144627175&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1cc3o&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
FF. You can delete the part of the URL beginning with a ? . Shortens up the URL.
In this one you could delete everything after the word “will”. It works just fine. The part beginning with the ? is for tracking.
LOL. For some reason, the only time I successfully posted a link, I did it by hand (and I take out the cruft.) For some reason, the /tag doesn’t work when using the button. I fought with it a while out of stubbornness but gave up.
If you use the ‘link’ button in the ‘reply’ box it will automatically add an often unneeded “http://” – [a href=”http://”] – to the URL, resulting in a broken link that starts with “https://https://”. You can delete that unneeded “https://” in the link box before pasting the in the link, or delete it after the link has been added.
Most often there is no need to use the button to add a link, just paste it in and it will be enabled automatically.
True. The ‘link’ button isn’t needed to leave a simple text copy-and-paste URL link. Thanks.
Labour is headed for electoral triumph….no mention at all of The Workers Party, only a mention of both major parties losing voter share. In the Rochdale by-election George Galloway won in a landslide getting more votes than the top three parties put together. He claims he will have candidates in almost every riding ready to run for next election. Should be an interesting election.
From the perspective of power, winning is all that matters. It doesn’t matter if you win ugly, if you win by cheating or lying, as long as you win.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202405/1312130.shtml#:~:text=when%20discussing%20the,current%20growth%20rate
“when discussing the issue of “overcapacity,” we should first focus on the demand side. “In fact, global sales of new energy vehicles continue to rise,” he said.
Data from Clean Technica showed that for the whole of 2023, global cumulative sales of new energy passenger vehicles were 13.68 million units, a year-on-year increase of 31 percent. Wang believes that the consumer market is not saturated, judging from the current growth rate”
https://www.firstpost.com/world/russian-firms-spend-4-billion-dollar-from-rupee-vostro-accounts-to-buy-india-arms-rupee-13769478.html#:~:text=Exporters%20in%20Russia,a%20foreign%20bank.
promote bilateral trade in local currencies.
“Back in July 2023, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) permitted 20 banks operating in the country to open 92 SRVAs of partner banks from 22 countries as part of efforts to promote bilateral trade in local currencies. Russia was one of them.
“Exporters in Russia, who started trading with India using Indian rupees, have recently spent nearly $4 billion to buy India-made defence equipment and armaments, among other imports and Indian securities. This amount come from funds which were lying idle in their Vostro accounts.
Till October, Russian exporters held about $8 billion in Vostro accounts. These accounts were set up to facilitate trade between Russia and India, using Indian rupees and are managed by a domestic bank on behalf of a foreign bank.”
“Russian funds (in rupees) have also been invested in Indian government treasury bills.”
“The hospital said it had “no indication” his death was related to the transplant”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/12/health/richard-slayman-death-pig-kidney-transplant.html#:~:text=Patient%20Dies%20Weeks,to%20the%20transplant
“Patient Dies Weeks After Kidney Transplant From Genetically Modified Pig
Richard Slayman received the historic procedure in March.
“Joe Biden Doesn’t Act Old Enough”
It’s always fascinating to get a glimpse of what the right thinks constitutes the ‘far left’. The problem with Biden, apparently, is that he’s too woke and keeps kowtowing to the ‘extreme left’.
As hypocritical and useless as liberals are, it’s always good to remember that the self-professed right are, actually, stupid.
Actually, that is all part of narrowing the frame of the debate – whatever it may be.
@NC team:
Wrong link for this headline:
“OpenAI, Mass Scraper of Copyrighted Work, Claims Copyright Over Subreddit’s Logo”
provided link leads to Noema article on “The Lunacy Of Rebuilding In Disaster-Prone Areas”