The Rise of Mesoeconomics Project Syndicate
REAL ID Act: 20 Years Of Delays – Why 2025 Won’t Be Any Different View from the Wing
Climate
More critical minerals investment required to meet energy transition demand: IEA S&P Global
US moves to make nation’s largest coal region unavailable to new mining S&P Global
* * * Vulnerable population: Rising heat on public health infrastructure Business Standard
Drops in the Ocean: The Hidden Power of Rights-Based Climate Change Litigation (PDF) Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law
This Plastic Is Embedded With Bacterial Spores That Break It Down After It’s Thrown Out Singularity Hub
Original COVID-19 priming regimen impacts the immunogenicity of bivalent BA.1 and BA.5 boosters Nature. From the Conclusion: “Combined, our data emphasize important lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and associated vaccination strategies: (1) the original priming vaccination has an imprinting effect on the immune system that can still be observed after at least two mRNA-based booster vaccines, and (2) not all mRNA-based booster vaccines are equally immunogenic; in the SWITCH-ON trial only bivalent Omicron BA.5 vaccination broadened the neutralizing antibody response, whereas the bivalent BA.1 vaccine did not.” I’m so old I remember when we were going to rapidly develop point versions of mRNA vaccines, like software. Oh well.
The pandemic era is now, and mask bans are unethical and Anti-mask Woke-washing (2023) Chloe Humbert, Teams Human
Excess mortality in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic 2020–2022 European Journal of Public Health
* * * A mad world: capitalism and the rise of mental illness Red Pepper
China?
The battlegrounds that could decide a US-China war over Taiwan FT
Dozens of China’s state regulators, bankers, finance bosses in corruption net as crackdown stepped up in new year South China Morning Post
Syraqistan
Ireland ‘absolutely’ intends to recognize Palestinian statehood this month: Premier Anadolu Agency
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi confirmed dead in helicopter crash BNE Intellinews
US security adviser urges Netanyahu to connect war to ‘political strategy’ BBC [slaps forehead]. Jake Sullivan.
Houthis strike tanker carrying Russian oil to China Splash247. I thought they only targeted ships servicing Israel? Did I not get the memo?
Another reason our elites identify with Israel:
John Mearsheimer with an important truism confirmed again recently with the killing of the Western aid workers and American doctors and nurses trapped in hospitals by Israel: "If I visited Israel and I was killed, would there be any accountability? There wouldn't be. The Israelis… pic.twitter.com/4vdXz2IzRb
— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) May 19, 2024
European Disunion
Dear Old Blighty
Starmer, the cuckoo Funding the Future
New Not-So-Cold War
Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidential term expires on May 20th The Economist. That’s today!
War and popularity keep Zelensky in power despite term expiring BBC
* * * SITREP 5/19/24: Ukrainian Streets Deserted as New Mobilization Hits Simplicius the Thinker(s)
Bulgarian president calls Ukraine’s victory over Russia impossible Ukrainska Pravda
* * * Russia opens new front in Ukraine war. Is Ukraine losing the war with Russia? USA Today
Russia’s glide bombs devastating Ukraine’s cities on the cheap BBC
* * * Russia & China — Two Against One Ray McGovern, Consortium News. Hat tip to the brain geniuses in The Blob for working so hard to bring this about.
Singing the Blues: the Baltics and Ukraine CEPA
Trillion dollar war: How Europe struggles to fund the Ukraine War Indian Express
* * * US Congress may sanction authors of Georgia’s ‘foreign agents’ law – WSJ, The Hill JAM News
Bullshit Blowback Tarik Cyril Amar. The deck: “The latest crisis in Georgia is an example of Western ‘elites’ building echo chambers feeding them their own delusions.” But there are many such.
Global Elections
India begins voting in phase 5 of general elections Anadolu Agency
India votes 2024: ‘The rich get richer, the poor get poorer’ France24
‘Why should we vote?’ India’s jute workers blame politicians for woes Al Jazeera
Modi’s Anti-Muslim Rhetoric Taps Into Conspiracy Theories Of Hindu Replacement Madras Courier
The popular decimation of India’s democracy Bangkok Post
Antitrust
Monopoly Round-Up: Google Tries to Pay Off the Antitrust Division (excerpt) Matt Stoller, BIG
Digital Watch
The Rise of Large-Language-Model Optimization Bruce Schneier, Schneier on Security. “The advent of AI threatens to destroy the complex online ecosystem that allows writers, artists, and other creators to reach human audiences.”
When Online Content Disappears Pew Research Center. The deck: “38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later. Why don’t we nationalize the cloud?
Traffic lights could change in the era of smart vehicles Fast Company
VCs and the military are fueling self-driving startups that don’t need roads TechCrunch
Emoji history: the missing years Get Info
Librarians Are Waging a Quiet War Against International “Data Cartels” The Markup
Assange
Julian Assange faces judgment day in years-long fight to stay out of US court The Hill. Consortium News will cover it live.
The Final Frontier
Solar Storm Knocks Out Farmers’ Tractor GPS Systems During Peak Planting Season 404 Media
Giant alien power plants are sucking energy from seven stars in outer space, claims study WION. Dyson spheres?
Healthcare
The Tick That Took Me Out Oakland Magazine
Gunz
Churches turn to armed volunteers as gunmen threaten pastors, worshippers FOX. Gal 6:7.
Infrastructure Collapse
Human error, Dali switchboard in focus at US Congress Baltimore bridge hearing Seatrade Maritime
Class Warfare
The End of Lean Production… and What’s Ahead Kim Moody, Labor Notes. Important. Moody is always worth a read.
Maybe We’re Closer to “You’ll Own Nothing” Than We Realize Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
A workers’ co-op rises from the remains of a Colorado mushroom farm Colorado Sun
10 Reasons Even a Bald Guy Should Own a Hairdryer The Art of Doing Stuff. First world problems, but could #8 be true?
Feeling good about feeling bad, or how guilt can make you better WaPo
Antidote du jour (via ejatgc):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Comments are closed.
FAILING
(melody borrowed from Sailing by Christopher Cross)
Hell has come to Earth and here’s a slice:
Here’s Gaza by the sea
We see fires at night where the Arabs stay
If they found food to eat
We have made their lives so miserable
They’re stumbling in the street
So needy
It’s ten klicks to hike across this land
That terrorists defend
But if we move at night we will be destroyed
We won’t know where or when
We are anxious on this open beach
They have RPG’s
So speedy
Failing
Every day the terrorists wait where we can’t see
Just a gleam or glint and there will be
Dead friends next to me
Gallantly
We bulldoze olive trees
But we’re failing
We’re shot up and Hamas runs free
We shoot back but there’s nobody
That’s all we see
Failing
Every day the terrorists wait where we can’t see
Just a gleam or glint and there will be
Dead friends next to me
(musical interlude)
When I got called back they said to me
‘It’s just for a few weeks’
‘We’ll tuck ’em in at night in an empty grave
Then come home for tea’
But it’s been six months of misery
Hostages aren’t free
I wish I was leaving
Failing
Every day the terrorists wait where we can’t see
Just a gleam or glint and there will be
Dead friends next to me
“10 Reasons Even a Bald Guy Should Own a Hairdryer”
I gave a bald guy I knew once a comb. He said that he would never part with it.
Boom, boom!
You’ll be here all week?
UK equivalent is “I’ll get me coat”
(yes it is “me”, which pans well with various northern English dialects)
Can somebody explain the joke?
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/part+one%27s+hair
Ah, thanks.
re: Google. oops…
Bringing new meaning to “Killed By Google” —
“Unprecedented” Google Cloud event wipes out customer account and its backups
UniSuper, a $135 billion pension account, details its cloud compute nightmare.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-cloud-accidentally-nukes-customer-account-causes-two-weeks-of-downtime/
From the lede:
….UniSuper, an Australian pension fund that manages $135 billion worth of funds and has 647,000 members, had its entire account wiped out at Google Cloud, including all its backups that were stored on the service. UniSuper thankfully had some backups with a different provider and was able to recover its data, but according to UniSuper’s incident log, downtime started May 2, and a full restoration of services didn’t happen until May 15.
UniSuper’s website is now full of must-read admin nightmare fuel about how this all happened.
I was about to say unbelievable but in reality I can fully believe it. How difficult would it have been for UniSuper to have a server in their basement or somewhere so that once a day they can do a full backup of their account every 24 hours? What if that had been a malicious hacker that had gotten into Google Cloud? This really is the most stupidest timeline.
Logistically? None what so ever. managerially? Near impossible.
Heck, server in the basement may have been their modus operandi until the cloud hype took over the c-suite.
If they manage Billions, then they probably have many 1,000’s of servers, not all of which may need to be backed up everyday. A bit more complex than you might imagine. A full backup of petabytes of data may take days or weeks to complete, Most critical online/transaction systems take periodic “snapshots” thoughout the day to allow multiple options when recovering from a variety of scenarios. Accidental deletes, corruption, hardware failure, ransomware/malware, etc etc. Goal is to minimize data loss and provide multiple recovery points in time to choose from because not all backups are “good” or useful for all situations.
Eh, if they manage billions, they need to spend money to ensure no issues. The real problem is companies don’t want to spend the money on infrastructure.
It’s really not that complex if designed correctly. No excuse for this be it 1 server or a million.
Um, in a perfect world….
I’ve had almost daily “don’t panic” emails from the scheme for weeks now.
Which automatically makes me assume they’ve been fatally compromised.
So I assume I’ll never get my Aussie (largest by value) pension.
Not sure you should assume that. A UniSuper admin had the foresight to make second backups on another (not Google) cloud service. UniSuper is recovering its data from that backup. Well done that admin!
Reminds me of when a big company was hit with ransomware, but was able to maintain operations thanks to the old hands insisting on keeping analog phone lines working as well as printed price lists.
TBH that’s operations 101 for any financial institution. Stand-bys, at least two on-site backups in different locations, reserve comm channels and so on and so forth. I find it strange that it took them two weeks to restore operations.
It may well be that all of that was provided as part of the Google package. But apparently the fat fingered mistake deleted the whole company account across the Google service.
Restoring everything would imply at least:
1) Re-installing all programs, database schemas, etc on the Google cloud. Since they managed it in two weeks, I assume they had some kind of layer, on top of which UniSuper applications run, and that abstracted out the differences in API and libraries between Google and that second unnamed cloud service.
2) Extracting a copy of all data from the second cloud, reformatting it, and re-feeding it into the Google installation. Depending on the size of the database, the network bandwidth available, and the time needed to have various database replicas cohere, this might take days or weeks.
3) Between the time restoration work started and the time it ended and the Google cloud installation is ready to resume, plenty of transactions have been processed in that other cloud installation. All of these must be taken over so that both installations remain coherent.
I am actually quite surprised they managed to correct things in just two weeks.
I won’t argue, as I may be waaay in the wrong here. No idea whether they have ever imagined such a scenario or had to work out the details on the fly, and what architecture, designs etc they’re using. A bit too close to pontificating on my part, I guess.
I see that they are going into their Lance Corporal Jones mode-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR0lOtdvqyg (1:45 mins)
Maybe instead of writing on your ballot when you go to vote next “you’re all morons”, you should write in Lance Corporal Jone’s name instead. :)
Hehe I’ll keep that in mind. Plus kudos to flora for telling me something new that gives me hope.
Seems like a corollary to the local law about platforms is presenting itself:
“If all your data is on someone’s cloud, it’s not your data.”
“Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi confirmed dead in helicopter crash”
This has been in the news for hours now but there is one thing that I am not seeing. Probably that helicopter crashed by flying into a hillside during heavy fog so maybe pilot error. They should have stayed on the ground. But nobody has brought up in the news how that is exactly Kobe Bryant also died back in 2020. His helicopter also flew into the side of hill during heavy fog killing all aboard-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Bryant#Death
I think someone yesterday brought up the possibility of pilot error brought on by covid cognitive problems. Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the case.
On day to day basis I’m seeing drivers etc make the kind of mistakes that were virtually unheard of pre 2020. I usually sit on front seat of bus to get maximum ventilation and fresh air. Thus I get to witness all the near misses too. Shocking.
I noticed the bad driving increase, too. I see stuff I never saw before. Also, a lot of people don’t drive when the light turns green; they just sit there. Not everyone of the drivers can be on their smart devices. Just weird.
Stevie Ray Vaughn, too. Actually, heavy fog, but ran into unseen power wire.
Huge loss that… one of the greats.
Helicopters, fog and mountains are a lethal combination. The BBC has a good summary here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4nnd23d505o
which suggests that it was actually raining at the time. No western air force would ever fly in such weather, though it’s fair to say that, with the time getting on, having several important members of your government stuck up by a dam on the border with Azerbaijan might not have seemed a good idea, so they obviously decided to risk it. The helicopter (a Bell) was probably delivered in the early 1980s, and is unlikely to have been fitted with modern navigation equipment for poor weather.
In a normal timeline, I, 100%, would be on board with you…
but the ICC issued its arrest warrant for Bibi today of all days!
And given Bibi has shown 0% rationality during his entire career, it is not inconceivable that it was purely weather.
There better not be anything odd in the official investigation, the world doesn’t need a Archduke Ferdinand Pt. 2.
regardless, corners of the internet are going to have a field day….
Technically, the ICC has not yet issued a warrant. This is the equivalent of a D.A. (Khan) seeking an indictment from a grand jury, I think. So there is still a chance for it to be derailed on some technicality, i.e. the grand jury says no indictment and Bibi walks.
I heard on the news that the ICC also ” issued arrest warrants” for the Hamas leadership authorising taking hostages, rocketing civilian sites, etc.
Does anyone here know if the ICC also “did that” or if I heard disinfo on my news outlet?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-20/icc-seeks-arrest-warrants-for-netanyahu-hamas-leaders/103871928
Yes both parties, but as stated above no warrants as yet.
This link is to Australian equivalent of the BBC.
They say it will take about two months for a panel of judges to consider the evidence first.
I wonder if Max Blumenthal of Greyzone will make a submisson to the judges.
Also, fog at altitude is basically low clouds. And it is easy to underestimate how quickly such conditions change.
It may have been a clear sky when they lifted off.
I do get semi-regular helicopter traffic past here, and i have on occasion noticed pilots taking a on the spot decision to detour due to low clouds making their regular route risky. Likely because it is hard for them to tell exactly how bad the situation is before getting up close, or that the fog/clouds got denser underway.
Basic thing to keep in mind about helicopters is that they often can’t go above the weather, as their propeller need a certain air density to operate.
An aside, re: “their propeller need a certain air density.” Helicopter rescues of climbers on Mt. Everest aren’t done above base camp altitude,( or maybe camp 2 if lucky), for that reason, as far as I know.
Another thing that came to mind is that on top of the operational limit of the vehicle itself there is the issue of oxygen at altitude. I can’t think of any helicopters built with a pressure hull as found on many commercial airplanes.
And from some quick checking online, the terrain in the area could put passengers and crew at risk of altitude sickness if they tried to fly above rather than through.
I can stand corrected on this, but I think the maximum service ceiling of any non-modified military or civilian helicopter in service today is around 20,000 foot, which is well below Everest and quite a few other high peaks. Most of the Everest basecamps are around the 15-20,000 foot mark.
I believe there are specialist helicopters with modified turbine engines that can go higher, but they are rarely used. I recall seeing an advert for very expensive tourist helicopter trips to the Nepal basecamp, I think it was a highly modified helicopter.
Even with modern avionics, small civilian craft are very vulnerable in mountains. Last year I was hiking with a friend in the relatively low Wicklow mountains and came across a small memorial to where a family of 6 died when a Piper flying from England hit the hill in fog and rain in 2008 while aiming for a nearby small civilian airfield. It seems the pilot (a wealthy amateur) misread his instruments and descended too early. Standing on the site of the crash it was all too obvious that if they’d only been 20 or 30 foot higher, they’d have made it, and probably wouldn’t even have been aware that the mountain was so close.
Yes, turbine powered helicopters can fly up to 20,000, but they become very sluggish, unstable and at times unresponsive in the thin air so most pilots assume 10 to 12,000 to be the ceiling.
I do know that Russian combat helicopter pilots have a training camp in Tajikistan to specifically experience and learn flying in challenging mountain altitudes.
And of course, the helicopters need to have oxygen feed for the crew at those altitudes.
re: “maximum service ceiling”
Thank you.
7800 metres so far is the rescue record, 190 metres below the S Col. But one did land on the summit at 8848 metres over a km higher
It seems the aircraft was an elderly Bell 212, the civilian version of the ‘huey’. It was probably close to half a century old. I would assume the avionics were updated at some stage but they are not likely to be all that advanced.
Personally I would never consider flying in a chopper that old over remote high ground in bad weather. I wonder if it was bad judgement by the crew or if they were put under political pressure to fly no matter what – this is a regular cause of accidents involving powerful people. Either way, it would seem likely that heads will roll over this. Although it should be said that at least officially, nobody was held responsible for the last big Iranian aviation accident, the shooting down of Ukrainian Flight 752.
‘if it was bad judgement by the crew or if they were put under political pressure to fly no matter what’
Another example of that was the Smolensk air disaster back in 2010 in which the President of Poland died. The pilot knew that landing there in heavy fog was a bad idea but the cockpit voice recorder shows a member of the President’s team putting pressure on the pilot to land, even though that guy should never have been even in the cockpit in the first place-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smolensk_air_disaster
Ah yes, I’d forgotten about that one. A classic case of arrogance over-ruling sensible caution. This may also have been the cause of the Sukhoi Superjet crash in Indonesia in 2012 – it also ran into a mountain while on a trip designed to impress possible purchasers.
Its hard, but I’ve a lot of respect for pilots who face down such pressure – I’ve heard a few stories of this happening in both civilian and military contexts.
Saw another example of this yesterday with the following video. A pilot refused his airplane on a flight to Hawaii as he though the mechanics of that plane was suspect because fuel pressure was trending upwards but was told by mechanics that it would be fixed when he got back from Hawaii-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT0MgfWiWNI (10:41 mins)
Gutsy call that.
Old pilots,
bold pilots
no old, bold pilots.
The Bell 212 was made from 1969-1998.
As with most aircraft as long as the airframe is ok the parts are replaceable. Basically keeping them in the air for a long time.
DC-3’s from WWII are still flying. It’s impossible to say but upgrading to a glass cockpit is a pretty standard procedure, which means up to date electronics, instruments and autopilot.
Time will tell and maybe we’ll never know but it’s a tough decision to tell the president of the country you’re not to fly where they want you to go because the weather is bad.
It’s also possible they had a mechanical failure.
No reason to rush to judgement.
Anybody experienced around helicopters will tell you, it not an “if” but a “when” you’re going to go down in one of those things.
I used to do forest fire initial attack in my youth. Everyone has a story. Me included. I’d boarded Bell on knife sharp ridge at about 7k ft. Elevation. Chopper went to lift off to catch the breeze coming in from the west when the breeze just died. Chopper fell a good ten feet straight back down onto the ridge smashing us all back down in our seats … one fire fighter sustained a lower back injury.
Lucky the chopper didn’t tumble down the slope, but came to rest at a crazy angle and we able to deboard. It stayed up there for close to a month while they made the necessary repairs to get it in the air again.
Needless to say, it was a long (family blogging) bushwhack in the dark to rendezvous with our with our 6-packs to drive us home that night.
Conspiracy theories aside, I’m genuinely puzzled as to why Iran’s government was operating an elderly USA chopper (old, spare parts an issue, maintenance a pain in the fourth point of contact) when Iran could have easily bought a fleet of modern RU choppers, complete with spare parts and maintenance.
Re Starmer. My constituency is part of the “Boris breaking red wall”. Our tory MP is one of the most marginal seats in parliament. He’ll lose to the Labour candidate (our local Councillor and deputy head of the council).
So I can safely vote for whomever I want. I’ll probably vote Green. Not because they’re great (their manifesto is clearly written by committee with contradictory policies) but because they’re the only party that shows some appreciation for how money actually works.
But if Greens engage in grandstanding I’ll still vote but spoil my ballot. That way my vote is still recorded. I’ve written “you’re all morons” across my ballot before and I’m ready to do it again.
I instantly and totally believe US Centcom when it says it was the Houthis who struck a tanker carrying Russian oil to China.
They won’t even admit that Yemen has just shot down their 4th US MQ-9 Reaper Drone-
https://news.antiwar.com/2024/05/19/houthis-say-they-downed-4th-us-mq-9-reaper-drone/
At $30 million a pop, that is $120 million so far.
And since the real processes described by MMT are fully operational, another $120 million (enhanced by inflation and corruption) will be created via “authorized appropriation” and transferred to General Atomics and its suppliers and shills in Congress and the Pentagram. So “nothing substantially changes.” One campaign promise actually and consistently fulfilled.
“And the beat goes on,
And the beat goes on…”
Yes, but in the real world there are now four fewer MQ-9 Reaper drones. It will take several months to build new ones. In that time frame either something else will have to be used or the operation will have to be abandoned. I think this is a good thing.
The last time this happened, it turned out the ship or the operating company or some such was connected to one or more Israeli (Likud backing) shipping magnates. John Helmer reported this if I remember correctly. It’s a safe bet that there are backroom connections in this case too.
Why people are still running risks when it’s clear that the Houthi’s shipping intelligence is top rate escapes me.
Yes, and we can’t ignore the possibility that the West is just lying about who the real owner of the ship is. Blame it on Russia for a “two-fer!”
“The End of Lean Production… and What’s Ahead Kim Moody, Labor Notes. Important. Moody is always worth a read.”
Amazon is a weird beast. Much of its activity is not a typical online store, but rather a logistics company with a bolted on storefront.
Many of the products on offer are being sold by third parties, with Amazon acting as the delivery service. But as part of that service, Amazon warehouse the products being sold.
And if multiple sellers offer the same product SKU, they are co-mingled. This has lead to some getting fake/copycat products from supposedly brand name sellers.
> Much of its activity is not a typical online store, but rather a logistics company with a bolted on storefront.
>> Next Amazon is planning to build 150 “ultrafast delivery hubs.”
>> By 2022 Amazon had a fleet of 70,000 vehicles, and it is planning to purchase 100,000 electric vans.
I’m ballparking the interior space of those vans is equal to about 500 warehouses. Distribute those in urban areas, with the right load of goods, and they become ‘hyperfast delivery hubs’ in competition with convenience stores. Without the costs of warehousing.
Return of the Milkman?
Amazon built a warehouse in the area I live 2 years ago. Since then their delivery is faster. If you order early in the day you sometimes get the order the same day.
Nice idea, but the space in the vans is not practical as a ‘warehouse’, since they can only carry so many SKUs. It’s only helpful if the order for a given SKU happens to have that particular van in the neighborhood. The milkman analogy works only if you’re supplying one or two commodity products across the territory.
The products will likely be smaller items that people will want ASAP rather than within say a business week.
I have noticed electronics chains around here becoming in-chain post office of sorts. They will stock a variety of common cables etc, but then offer to ship less common products to their nearest store when ordered online.
Predictive AI will assure that each van has precisely the appropriate mix of goods, every time!
And then manipulate the “consumers” in the van’s/warehouse’s catchment area/footprint into “demanding” the perfect mix of Chinese/Malawian/Vietnamese whatever stuff. A semi-closed loop, sort of, ending eventually in the dump.
Effing Disney/Pixar production values, straight out of “WALL-E”… https://www.vice.com/en/article/435zvw/the-first-35-mins-of-wall-e-is-still-the-best-thing-pixar-has-ever-done
I once talked to a delivery truck driver who said he and his co-workers were very happy with his warehouse’s (not Amazon) new computerized system. Instead of them loading as much on their trucks as possible and returning to the warehouse only when the trucks were empty, the new system required them to load for a single delivery and then return to the warehouse to load for the next one. “We’re really racking up the overtime” he said.
This was several years ago so I assume the “problem” has been corrected…
Used to deliver(until last year) for an amazon dsp(technically not amazon). I delivered from 2 different warehouses and one delivery or “bag” at a time is NOT how they did it.
We loaded a full days delivery on our vans: we had 10 minutes to load 20 or so bags on the vans. On average we had 350 packages and 175 stops. We were expected to deliver about 50 packages an hour, 25 stops(If we took our legally required 2-15 minute breaks(they eventually ended up tracking us to see whether we took our mandatory 30 minute lunch, but not the breaks) and didn’t run, most drivers would be behind(and eventually fired, no unemployment since we couldn’t do the job algorithmically expected). Of course there were the drivers who took amphetamines and could deliver in less than a 7 hour day(that’s taking into account 15 minutes to get to the first stop and 15 minutes to drive back and another 20-30 minutes to get gas and debrief which would make an 8 hour day total, before overtime kicked in. Amazon would pay the DSP for 8 hours but the DSP owner contracted out to amazon would have to pay the overtime), which the algorithms would then take as an average causing the number of packages to increase to where it would be impossible for a non-pharmaceutically aided driver to accomplish. There was great turnover since Amazon did not expect most drivers to last a year doing this humanly impossible job.
A truly despicable company.
One major reason the Soviet system failed is central planning inefficiency, systems did not yet exist which could do proper supply, tracking, prediction, distribution and logistics, resulting in chronic shortages even if product was in stock somewhere.
Come to think of it, something like Amazon is exactly what any central planning system of government needs, what any global system of government would need if/when capitalism fails. Someone should emancipate it from Jeff Bezos and the profit model.
In part why Marx mused that communism would rise from industrial capitalism, not feudalism. This because it would co-opt the logistics system built to fuel capitalist industry, directing it towards providing for the masses rather than capital accumulation.
Also, there were attempts at building such systems. The most famous may well be Chile’s Cybersyn.
In the end i think the Soviet system’s millstone was its invasion paranoia. Thus far too many resources were directed towards the military.
Invasion paranoia, that happens to be invasion reality.
The Soviet Union was not invaded after 1945. It spent a lot of resources on preparing to defend against an invasion that never came, before collapsing due to elite mismanagement and infighting (one might name any number of other causes, but in the end it came down to that).
Invasion never came because they were ready. The moment the guard was down, “The Collective West” came charging in, as you might have noticed. All those guns and munitions made for an invasion that never came, turned out to be crucial for an invasion that did come.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.
Can’t say I noticed that in all the years I dealt with NATO, which had no capability for attacking Russia and no planning to do so. I mean, just imagine fighting your way through the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, for a start. And no-one since has ever seriously entertained invading Russia for a minute, outside the lunatic fringe. The truth is that the Soviet regime destroyed their economy by giving the military absolute priority over everything, for decades after the War, and planning and rehearsing a pre-emptive strike into Western Europe. It turns out in fact there was never a Soviet defence budget as such: the military just took the resources they needed.
The Soviets sure went a bit over with military spending, but it seems a bit unfair to say just because the higher Western eschelons privately said they would never entertain a war with the USSR that the leadership of the USSR was perfectly aware of this fear. It might have been paranoia, but at least it was historically founded paranoia.
Oh, the fear was real enough, although in reality NATO didn’t remotely have the capability to attack the Soviet Union. But when you are as scared as the Soviets were, even too much is not enough.
You haven’t noticed NATO expansion eastwards, nor Yugoslav wars, nor the war in the Ukraine. Some might have.
Um, “expansion,” however misguided, is different from “invasion.” NATO, at largely US prompting, stayed out of the Yugoslav wars (at least the ones I was present for) until they were over. And I was just watching the Military Summary video for today, which appeared to show Russian troops moving West, but I may be wrong.
Misguided expansion, that was thoroughly planned, and intentional, and not misguided at all. Stayed out of the Yugoslav wars, that the West caused in the first place, and fought throughout, and is still there occupying and preparing a sequel (not to mention depleted uranium). Russian troops moving West, into Russian lands. You can’t be really trying to gaslight me with “semantical” “gymnastics”. This sounds like something Blinken would say, and then add that he is not part of the conflict, and keep on rocking in a free world.
USA is also staying out of Gaza, where misguided expansion, and non-invasion is happening. Soldiers just stay on the pier, in order to show that they are not a side in the conflict.
Maybe we live in different realities, and in yours the USA are the good guys spreading freedom, and equality, and democracy, instead of death and destruction.
Sounds just exactly like what Western Hegemonic Rapacious/paranoid political economy has produced.
One wonders if RussAsia can somehow produce a different metastable, homeostatic end stage. Greed/cupidity seems inherent in monkey lizard brains.
I’d sort of like to be around to watch it play out, but the death cult that has prevailed makes that ever less likely.
Google OGAS, the soviet plan for an internet in the sixties. A sad what might have been. The rest is history, and we are screwed.
Mhm. Killed by bureaucrats because they thought (not unreasonably) that it would’ve taken their jobs, if I remember right.
Oddly enough, the first networked computers known were actually Gosplan’s attempt to properly track, predict and distribute stuff. I think the modern historiography is more lenient towards central planning than it used to be. It really was not that inefficient – it did rise the largest state on Eart, mostly agrarian to begin with, into a global superpower.
The main inefficiencies were external. Soviet economy was burdened with supporting Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, Afghanistan and so on (not to mention that almost all other Soviet republics had negative GDP ratio, so it was basically Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic that held up the whole “socialist” world).
Since it was not politically possible to cut off the “leeches”, all kinds of attempts were made to improve the economy. The original idea was to allow small entrepreneurship to see if it would improve the situation, but that actually resulted in a lot of the exchange between government owned companies going outside of the planned economy, which naturally made planning impossible.
The runners of these government companies, on the other hand, started to carve out personal wealth and rule their domains more and more without Gosplan knowing what was going on, and they were more than ready when Soviet Union dissolved itself and went for privatization. We know many of them today as “oligarchs”.
Churches needing armed or private security guards. That’s a scary video to be honest, amazing that someone was able to tackle the gun wielding man and somehow they were able to disarm this individual.
Yikes. More churches meet online via Zoom yet again ? Additionally, one more entry in the overall crazy, zany timeline of 2024.
Adding in something a bit lighter and less dour appearing, courtesy of satire from the Bee. With attendance and tithing down from pre pandemic years, some churches are going the media and strategy route…\sarc
https://babylonbee.com/news/with-tithing-down-pastor-announces-todays-sermon-is-brought-to-you-by-daves-auto-body-repair-shop
Reminded me of when Pussy was being shot by Tony in the Sopranos. “Not in the face”.
Triple witching … Assange, Illegit-sky day, and a helicopter crash killing the Iranian President.
Late breaking: make that Quadruple witching. ICC “seeking” arrest warrants for Netanyahu:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/20/international-criminal-court-seeks-arrest-warrants-for-israeli-pm-netanyahu-three-hamas-leaders.html
(I hope this isn’t like OJ searching for the real killers. Or me trying to find a lost Blackberry from back in 2011.)
Gold and silver continue to soar. Memo to Powell: I wish you a speedy recovery, and I have never seen gold and silver rise during a disinflationary episode.
> ICC “seeking” arrest warrants for Netanyahu:
Awesome. Well-deserved.
Let’s just hope that the judges who have to actually issue the warrant don’t go weak-kneed or find some technicality to let Bibi skate.
Yes, the prosecutor called for Bibi’s arrest but the judges must agree. I haveno reading on the court at all.
The request has to go to the (usually) three judges of the Pre-trial Chamber, who will decide whether there are reasonable grounds to go to trial, and, if necessary, issue an arrest warrant.The organisation of the chambers is explained here.
Here’s the prosecutor’s statement:
https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state
Hamas leadershiptoo, besides Bibi and Galant. Interesting!
The “both sides” nature of this application bothers me. I realize my own biases here, and that under such conditions instances of rape, “torture,” hostage mistreatment, etc. on the part of Hamas or adjacent actors could certainly have occurred. But the charges against the Hamas leaders in the first half of the application sure sound like the Western atrocity propaganda narrative to me. Are there sources of evidence for these charges other than the flawed ones with which we are familiar? That is unclear, but there is this:
“… I have also been grateful for the advice of a panel of experts in international law, an impartial group I convened to support the evidence review and legal analysis in relation to these arrest warrant applications. The Panel is composed of experts of immense standing in international humanitarian law and international criminal law, including Sir Adrian Fulford PC, former Lord Justice of Appeal and former International Criminal Court Judge; Baroness Helena Kennedy KC, President of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute; Elizabeth Wilmshurst CMG KC, former Deputy Legal Adviser at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office; Danny Friedman KC; and two of my Special Advisers – Amal Clooney and His Excellency Judge Theodor Meron CMG… I have also been grateful for the contributions of a number of my other Special Advisers to this review, particularly Adama Dieng and Professor Kevin Jon Heller.”
Well, Amal Clooney is a “special advisor,” so…
Of course Netanyahu and Gallant are rightly charged with starving and bombing the Palestinians of Gaza, and with “other inhumane acts,” though the specifics of rape, torture, humiliation, murder, etc. of Palestinian captives are not spelled out in their case as it is with the Hamas leaders. Since the bombing and starvation are live-streamed throughout the world daily the issue of sources of evidence does not seem *quite* the same here, despite the inferred equivalence of the crimes on either side. Maybe it’s just me.
Given their track record, I don’t trust the ICC.
Some of the charges against Hamas will fall down in a court of law as there is no proof and the Israelis will refuse to cooperate in any case.
This could make for some fun optics. Remember when Mike Johnson & the Zealots invited Netanyahu to speak to Congress? Will AIPAC withhold donations from Congress if they don’t show support for Netanyahu?
What about a Hall of Shame daily double: Illegitimate Zelensky speaks to Congress in the morning, indicted war criminal Bibi in the afternoon.
Will Xi and Putin have a date night to watch that, complete with popcorn and extra-large slurpies?
#MorePopcorn
#RulesBasedDisorder!
From a quick read, a couple of points stand out.
-There is no mention of genocide, which makes any case a lot easier to prove, since intent does not have to be shown. “Crimes against humanity” are functionally identical, apart from the element of intent.
– The Hamas allegations look thin. The only real crimes are murder, extermination (defined as “a mass killing of members of a civilian population”) and hostage-taking. The rest are really just expressions of different forms of ill-treatment.
– The allegations do not necessarily relate to the events of 7 October. The alleged crimes date from “at least 7 October” and are mostly alleged to have occurred “in captivity.” Thus, the ICC has managed to indict Hamas leaders without necessarily having to support any of the wilder allegations made about the day itself.
-In order for crimes against humanity to be proven, the Prosecutor has to show that there was a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Israel by Hamas and other armed groups pursuant to organisational policies.” Normally, the “widespread and systematic” criterion covers quite a lot of space and time, and I’d be interested to see how they propose to support that.
-The rest of the allegations essentially concern treatment of hostages, ie “there are reasonable grounds to believe that hostages taken from Israel have been kept in inhumane conditions, and that some have been subject to sexual violence, including rape, while being held in captivity.”
Altogether, it’s a bit underwhelming.
The allegations against the Israeli defendants read much more like standard IHL criminal charges, and are much graver. They could easily be reformatted as genocide charges, but then, as I’ve said, the Prosecutor would have to demonstrate intent to a criminal standard of proof (ie beyond a reasonable doubt.)
Finally, the Prosecutor is claiming jurisdiction on the basis that there is an international conflict between Israel and Palestine, but separate from the non-international armed conflict between Israel and Hamas. I’m not sure how that’s possible, since Hamas is the government and its militia is essentially the only armed force in Palestine. But the statement does mention other armed groups (such as Islamic Jihad) so possibly that’s why. But IANA IHL lawyer.
To be continued, I think.
wonder if it would be a good thing for Hamas to surrender to the court and plead their case – or at least indicate they will surrender of Bibi & Galant do too –
The Israelis would do an Osama bin laden on them first. No way do the Israelis want them in a court where they can plead their case and provide evidence. They will kill them first. Just like Seal Team Six could have arrested bin Laden and took him to the US for trial. But bin Laden knew too much and knew where the bodies were buried so they shot him on sight.
ugh………..do see the logic of your point, and if they were incarcerated then they would be Epsteined – but if they surrendered only if Bibi & Galant were in custody too……yeah, i believe in santa clause too…… will be interesting how it plays out – seems Zionist Israel is working hard to bury the country in debt and worldwide animosity and succeeding famously –
So appreciative of the cultural sensitivity of STS, not taking DNA samples from Osama, and following that ancient Bedouin tradition of burial at sea.
Always thought GW Bush punted the Osama thing to Obama. Because of the Bush family’s connections to the bin Ladens it would have been embarrassing if Osama was killed or captured on GW’s watch, even if as alleged Osama was a black sheep.
I just saw Biden’s reaction. He said it was “outrageous” for the ICC to equate the actions of Hamas to those of the Israeli leaders. I couldn’t agree more.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/politics/biden-denounce-icc-warrant-israel-hamas/index.html
Here’s the response by Ali Abunimah at Electronic Intifada:
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/icc-warrants-both-historic-and-cynical
America’s Hague Invasion Act authorizes the President to free not only Americans but also Israelis. Also, authorized to act anywhere not just The Hague. An excerpt of some of the relevant provisions:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/04/links-2.html#comment-4031838
Are there any limits to the special relationship? Wouldn’t think so, but maybe letting Bibi get arrested helps sell the story that the genocide is being committed by a lone gunmen (or two)?
Special relationship?
Another reason our elites identify with Israel:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/10/11/how-income-varies-among-u-s-religious-groups/
Here’s a recent interview of Ted Gioia by Rick Beato in which the “honest broker” explains exactly how A.I. (and spotify) has ruined music. His larger theory, which I’m not yet convinced of, is that the tide is turning and that “micro” creatives (don’t care for that word either), by way of platforms like substack and others for control over their own commercial destiny, are gonna win over the “macro” producers/distributors of art. I hope he’s right and understand why he mentions Taylor Swift, but really… Taylor Swift? Still it’s a worthy listen:
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/i-do-my-first-video-interview-in
Rick Beato is one of the best music journalists on YouTube. Some of his stuff is a little clickbaitey, but I get that the man’s got to eat. But his long form interviews are wonderful.
Agreed. Between the two of them there’s always a lot to think about.
Amen. Very happy to see them linked here!
Good article on Real ID.
SC is one state where it’s optional for driver’s licenses and I declined at my last renewal because there is the option of upgrading your license should I decide to fly somewhere.
But the article’s point is that the TSA is more about bureaucracy serving itself rather than real safety. Those airport checks are full of holes.
Predictive pre-crime profiling? We are getting a long way from the centuries old principal that the State could not punish you on the mere accusation of a crime but had to take you to court and prove it in that court with a body of evidence. And that court not only had to be open but there was no such thing as secret evidence and secret witnesses allowed but the accused could face their accusers and defend themselves there.
er… John Milton, Paradise Lost: Book 2, and all that…
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45738/paradise-lost-book-2-1674-version
“… by merit rais’d
To that bad eminence; and from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, ….”
And from despair thus high uplifted…
There ya go. / ;)
Article gets a bonus points for the perhaps timeless fake ID from the movie Superbad, “I am McLovin”. Hilarious that scene when he’s sharing it with his high school friends.
I figure one day I’ll need it so I now have one. I’d thought I left the box unchecked when applying for a SC license but oh well, it’s done regardless. Flying once a year is about all I wish to endure, as I don’t enjoy the ritual at all.
TSA – Security Theater
Bruce Schneier pointed this out years and years ago.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/beyond_security.html
The HDL shown in the article looks nothing like the current “gold star” license.
Assange wins right to full appeal
https://skwawkbox.org/2024/05/20/breaking-julian-assange-wins-right-to-full-appeal/
Wow! Thanks for the link.
– ‘Starmer, the cuckoo’ – Funding the Future
– ‘Bullshit Blowback’ – Tarik Cyril Amar
These are both good pieces and very complimentary in my mind. Both focus on how the powers that be take advantage of the sincerity and good intentions of indigenous inhabitants – whether of bird nests or political parties or fledgling “democracies” – to infiltrate, exploit, capture, or destroy their original habitat.
As a grad student in the 1980s I was able to meet some East European academics through their connections with some of my professors. They were good, sincere people doing intellectual battle for things like freedom of expression and, yes, “democracy.” Yet I was able to meet them because of their Western ties. Some would become sources of “bullshit blowback” in the future.
5/24 GameStop puts
Gooooooooood Mooooooooorning Fiatnam!
A head of state coming in on a slick during inclement weather to an iffy LZ was good for spree d’corpse, with some wondering if Agent Orange was the defoliant?
you mention Agent Orange – a friend since birth since our parents were tight, was an Army sergeant in Vietnam for 2 tours and was awashed in the shit numerous times – he now suffers Lewy Bodies dementia and has Parkinson-like symptoms – it is only because his wife is an aggressive attorney that he gets good treatment at the VA – going to see my friend tomorrow – his optimism in spite of his condition humbles me, i would be seriously pissed off but his wife seems to be taking care of that quite well –
I was thinking more in a Benedict Donald variant, nudge nudge wink wink, say no more.
Capitalism and mental illness–
Excellent article. The author traces the link between capitalism and mental illness all the back to the Enlightenment’s perverted anthropology:
Economists like Kate Raworth and Steve Keen do the same from an economic rather than a psychological point of view, critiquing the Enlightenment’s fundamental misunderstanding of human beings and the inequality, competitive stress and disregard for the planet that it leads to.
What is often viewed as some ideal era, living in “Leave It to Beaver-land,” was merely the calm before the inevitable storm that results from a value system built on materialism and consumerism. When what matters is buying “stuff” and paying for “experiences,” it’s like Jackson Browne wrote in “The Pretender:”
The 50s are not a time to be viewed longingly. They were the era when our worst instincts were nurtured and the path chosen that led to our current polycrisis. Suburbs, happy motoring, Madmen, the two-car garage: all took root in the Fifties. That was what the hippies’ rebellion was really about. Joni Mitchell put it well:
We aren’t cogs stamped by some machine. We’re living beings who need emotional connection not just to other human beings but to the rest of the living beings on the planet where we were created by the process of evolution. Substituting a new 4-door F-150 or the baby back ribs at Applebees for a community of cooperators rather than competitors doesn’t work. It leads only to anxiety and depression and growing Big Pharma profits.
Brewer and Shipley saw the beginning of the rural decline brought about by capitalism enthusiast Earl Butz (working for that great humanitarian, Dick Nixon), and they wondered how we could escape the trap we’d created for ourselves:
The solution for us certainly does not lie in capitalism, consumerism, or materialism. These products of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution have brought us to this point of crisis and misery. The way out begins with a rejection of those isms.
Jackson Browne, “The Pretender”
Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock”
Brewer & Shipley, “Tarkio Road“
I can’t help wonder if homo economicus is fundamentally a narcissistic psychopath.
Also i increasingly suspect that enlightenment economics was about the merchants trumping the landed gentry, as the merchants needed imports to maintain trade while the gentry had their local produce.
That is exactly how it played out in 19th century Britain. The arising merchant class was able to accumulate enough power to mostly push aside the landed gentry with their enlightenment values and replace it with imperialistic, mercantile values instead.
This does explain the different responses of the British to famines in Ireland and India when there was effective relief in the 18h Century and then effectively a genocide in the 19th century. It also explains the shift from economic assistance in the form of cash as well as the continuing guild system to both being abandoned in the 19th century as well. American libertarianism was essentially what the British were doing for most of the 19th century; Dickensian London was a result. It is something that I should read more about.
These disastrous policies were both abandoned and then taken up again in the 20th century by both the Americans and the British with the results easily predictable.
Thank you HMP. A masterful display of “connect-a-dot” analysis and doubling down with quotes of beloved song lyrics (w/ links!). I was born in ’55, my dad was a writer working as a MadMan and we moved to the suburbs when I was three. Even though I’ve reached the age of being nostalgia-prone, it’s not too hard to look back and recall the growing cynicism and mistrust of the powers that be that turned us from customers into “consumers” (not unlike a company’s ‘Personel’ dept becoming ‘Human Resources’) – even before I smoked my first joint (just after Woodstock, fwiw). Recently binge watching the Netflix MadMen series was fascinating- the show took great pains to recreate the reality of those times through the early to mid sixties when I was coming of age – the fashions and fads, the songs of the times (!) and the ad and marketing forces being brought to bear. To paraphrase Pogo Possum, “we have met the Commodity, and it is us!” Go well and “keep on the good foot”! ✌️🫶
I am always puzzled when the thinking of the Enlightenment is reduced to the concept of homo economicus, because the contradictions of this thinking would certainly be interesting for a critique of the ‘isms’ that result from them.
Yes, it may well be that the mass poverty, sickness, and early death that afflicted every society prior to ours is just the human lot, and that the Enlightenment was foolish to try and think of something better. After all, Nature is under no obligation to provide us with life, much less comfort, so how dare we force it to? We should be in harmony with the rest of the world even if it means watching most of our kids die before we do. Which we did, and if some ideas are followed to their logical conclusion, will again.
The idea that has been followed to its logical conclusion is that humans are separate from and superior to Nature and non-human life on the Earth. The slaughter we are causing on this planet, and eventually our own demise, directly flow from the ideas of men like Bacon and Mill. There have been plenty of children dying well after the Enlightenment right up until today, and many of them were the victims of the Enlightenment idea that Western Conquistador culture is superior to all others.
Neither Bacon nor Mill can be described as Enlightenment thinkers.
And the idea that “man is separate from and superior to nature and non-human life on earth” is part of Enlightenment thinking seems highly questionable to me.
If you’re talking about the specific, narrowly defined period of history, that’s true, but if you’re talking about a worldview, Bacon laid the foundations and Mill completed the work into modernity. Throw them out, and the empiricist foundation (Bacon) is lacking, and utilitarianism is somehow excluded from the Enlightenment worldview.
As for the attitude toward Nature:
Bacon: My only earthly wish is… to stretch the deplorably narrow limits of man’s dominion over the universe to their promised bounds… [nature will be] bound into service, hounded in her wanderings and put on the rack and tortured for her secrets.
New Atlantis
The Enlightenment worldview embraced this idea of Nature, interpreted now as a machine no different from a steam engine, that has led to the view of the Earth as nothing more than a storehouse of raw materials for man’s use.
Well, the text you quote at the beginning explicitly refers to the Enlightenment period:
“Modern capitalism grew out of seventeenth century concepts of man as some sort of disconnected, discontinuous, disengaged self – one driven by competition and a narrow, ‘rational’ self-interest – the concept of homo economicus that drove and underwrote much of the whole Enlightenment project, including its economic models.”
It has become a habit to blame the Enlightenment (which is then traced back to the Odyssey or Socrates) for the malaise of modernity, but what is identified as the core of the Enlightenment in the above quote is a very narrow and selective interpretation of this thinking (the model of this enlightenment seems to be primarily the Scottish one).
And the statement
“The Enlightenment worldview embraced this idea of Nature, interpreted now as a machine no different from a steam engine, that has led to the view of the Earth as nothing more than a storehouse of raw materials for man’s use“
misses in my eyes precisely the contradictory aspect of the concept of nature in Enlightenment thinking.
I am not defending the Enlightenment and I do not deny that Bacon is a forerunner of the Enlightenment, I am merely claiming that the Enlightenment raises problems that are not addressed by its mere denunciation (Hume’s empiricism is an aspect of the Enlightenment, but so is Kant’s transcendental philosophy).
Hello darlings
Surprised?
Yes, it’s me again
I have just returned from the island of Chandelier
What am I doing in town?
Well, I’m glad you asked
I’m just passing through in lieu of the ever elusive Thunderbird
I got a job as a windy public relations man
Punching out windows on Houston streets
Merely an effort to address the climate change situation
And ward off a case of the D.J.T.’s
So farewell, my darling
Perhaps we’ll meet again
On some sin-infested street corner in Houston Texas
Heaven, Hell or Houston, by ZZ Top
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuvlVo1QdLU
I hear that falling glass is a real pane in the butt.
….a glaziers whet dream
As was the George Floyd riots, my glazier brother was super busy that summer.
If Zelenski keeps his job it will remind me of how the US acted after getting rid of the Diem family.
No subsequent “leader” was elected by anyone outside of MAC-V.
What is the Ukraine equivalent?
Now that’s he a private citizen, can he be conscripted?
The Great Z has lost the legal basis of his tenure in office, though I doubt the US and its band of champions of the “rules-based order” will care. But inside Ukraine there may be some people tired of the Zelensky-Yermak-Budanov group who view it as an opportunity for new leadership. Poroshenko, Klitschko, Zaluzhny, Stefanchuk, and others may think they can right the sinking ship where Z cannot. Also uncertain is whether Russia cares at all, or if they view it as a possible circumstance allowing for increased pressure on the regime.
‘The Tick that took me out’- Spot on reading.
If you haven’t understood the nature of the US healthcare system yet, having an infection like Lyme will disabuse you if any preconceived notions.
Everything the author talks about, false negatives of testing, inadequate treatments, rounds of ineffective referrals, out of pocket treatments from a ‘Lyme literate’, out of network, doctor is par for the course.
When my wife was publishing a local community newspaper she recommended I cope with the disease by writing about it. One of the articles was a series of questions ranging from ‘did you get a bullseye rash?’ To ‘was your Lyme test positive?’. I had interviewed apx. A dozen people in our area that had Lyme, fighting or recovered, with two on my own road.
The answers were interesting and varied with the exception of the ignorance of the medical community in identifying and treating Lyme.
To this day I’m convinced those articles we ran had more information to educate our community and offered more advice than the local medical community could, or would, provide. Most of the medical firms have been consolidated by a large regional hospital, btw, like most of the country.
My honest opinion is war moves lots of merchandise regardless of its morality or justifications. Lyme creates units of reimbursements regardless of wether the patient outcomes are positive or not. Doctors are proletarianized now and take what’s handed down to them. Duty of care, wether effective or harmful, providing the legal cover for incompetence.
When COVID hit I knew it was not going to be good with what we had to fight it with.
Agreed on all points. A most unusual article. Here’s another: who knew there was a Lyme vax in 2002? I sure didn’t.
https://unglossed.substack.com/p/the-paradoxes-of-lyme-vaccines-pt
Re: the deer in my front yard, after years of thinking I had been exposed to the very mild Erlichia form of tick disease, I was diagnosed with chronic Lyme last year: after anitgen testing. Worth the $1400 bucks (but what of those who can’t afford such?)
I am luckier than most (fatigue and weight loss). I have two friends whose Arky diagnosis 12 years ago was: We don’t have Lyme in Arkansas. Unbelievable but there you have it.
Sorry to hear you got hit with it, too.
You bring up a good point about ‘those that can afford it’ regarding testing.
I used the same lab as the one the author mentions. Another good lab is in Jersey. All out of pocket and several hundred dollars to each. I was told by others who went down this road before me that I could expect treatment to cost from 5-10k if the disease was not too advanced. That turned out to be pretty accurate in 2016 dollars.
As a self employed person who could no longer work, I thank the stars that I could swing it at that time. A double whammy of incapacitation and medical bills now being a feature of American life, I’m glad I got out of that one relatively intact. At the end of my relationship with the in-network Lyme incompetent medical community I was offered opiate pain killers. I’m guessing here, but I wonder how many that can’t afford Lyme literate care get that option for chronic Lyme? How much business Lyme generates for pharma bro’s and the health care chains?
I live in North Carolina, and I need to figure out what steps to take if this anti-mask bill goes through, as, presumably, it will. I have kids in public school and I’m not going to send them in without masks.
It seems like it is pretty easy to put kids in homeschool in this state, even at the last minute. I hate the idea, but I suppose it is a fallback option. I expect my spouse will prefer to send them to school without masks. We are one of the only remaining families in the district that continues to mask, so there is powerful peer pressure to just give in.
The GOP says that the intent of the law is just to target “criminals” (e.g. student protesters). So maybe masking in school will continue to be tolerated even with the law on the books. But there are no assurances, are there? I can see our public schools opting to enforce the law, to stay on its safe side, especially when the vast majority of parents will just shrug and go on living with COVID as they are already doing.
Our government is attacking us. Since it is clearly not possible to change the government in the near future, I am just looking for evasion strategies.
(I want my, I want my MMT)
(I want my, I want my MMT)
(I want my, I want my MMT)
(I want my, I want my MMT)
Now look at them 1’s & 0’s, that’s the way to do it
Ginning up money via the MMT
That ain’t workin’, that’s the way to do it
Money for nothin’ from the mouse clique for free
Now that ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Lemme tell ya, them guys ain’t dumb
Maybe get a blister on your little finger
Maybe get a blister on your thumb
Look at that, look at that
Money for nothin’ QWERTY clicks for free (I want my, I want my MMT)
Money for nothin’ clicks for free (I want my, I want my MMT)
Money for nothin’ clicks for free (I want my, I want my MMT)
Money for nothin’ clicks for free (I want my, I want my MMT)
Easy, easy money for nothin’ (I want my, I want my MMT)
Easy, easy clicks for free (I want my, I want my MMT)
Easy, easy money for nothin’ (I want my, I want my MMT)
Clicks for free (I want my, I want my MMT)
That ain’t workin’
He shoulda learned to play the market
He shoulda learned to play them Harvard funds
Look at that MMT mama she got PR from the camera man
We could have some money for nothing, clicks for free
Money for nothing, clicks for free
Money For Nothing by Dire Straits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRDgihVDEko
Jerome Powell approves this parody. As does Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and Mike Johnson. Heck, let’s just say the entire Congress approves.
Experts agree-free money is the best kind!
I am the Lib, sovereign of LibLand.
I hereby give you 10000 Libbies, my sovereign currency.
LibLand now has a national debt of L10000. But who does it owe it to? It’s just a number equaling what I gave you. Nobody to pay back.
Free money is the best kind.
“SITREP 5/19/24: Ukrainian Streets Deserted as New Mobilization Hits”
The New York Times is reporting that ‘there is a growing feeling within the Biden administration that the next few months could be decisive as at some point the two sides could finally move to a negotiated truce similar to the one that ended active hostilities in Korea in 1953.’ As that would be tantamount to a Ukrainian victory, it will never happen. But is this really what the Biden admin is thinking? As for Estonian PM Kaja Kallas saying that Russia should be entirely broken up, I have different proposal. How about all three Baltic States amalgamate into one country which would make them more viable size-wise.
The whole purpose of Balkanization/Balticization is to make states non viable size-wise. The PM Chihuahua is barking for less viability, not more. You should propose freedom for the Republic of Saaremaa & Hiiumaa.
So maybe Tallinn should get to be a City State then.
Now you’re talking. A 15-minute city state.
That city state would be Russian, I think. Over half of the population of Tallinn are Russian speaking. In the East-Viru county the ratio is over 70%. Ever since Estonia banned the Victory Day celebrations, Russians have constructed a huge stage on their side of the Narva river on May 9th to give a huge concert for the Estonian Russians.
There used to be a Swedish speaking elite in the West Estonia (and the islands), so maybe Russia and Sweden could split the country for the old times sake. Estonians would get rid of the subhumans while having real overlords from the west return. Win-win for everybody!
On REAL ID… the third statement in the article says they will require compliant drivers licenses, but nowhere in the entire piece does it mention that passports are compliant and can be used instead. And it’s easy to get a passport card on renewal . No need to taint your driving license.
And now, for some good news to cheer us up while we wait for the ICC indictments.
AI staffing company files for Ch. 11 bankruptcy. Don’t have the link but the source is a Law360 feed I get in my school email.
No details on whether they intend to argue a lack of intent means that AI is not to blame …
AI is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma machine that pretty much does as it wants.
The paywall is strong with this one, all I can scare up from Googles is this juicy, succulent tidbit:
Fraud? AI? No way! They’d never do that, Beaver!
oh Ward….don’t be hard on the Beaver……….
More details:
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/skf0iabdh
Fraudulent misrepresentation, inducing reliance by the plaintiffs. The startups alleged business model was to “prescreen” for DEI candidates using AI. The CEO lied to the board about the number of customers. Oops!
. . . . ” Houthis strike tanker carrying Russian oil to China ” . . . .
Whatever memo you didn’t get is the same memo I didn’t get. But I did hear a theory offered on a News Show ( forget which one). The Houthis are not really ( or at least totally not only) concerned with changing Israeli behavior against Gaza. They are also interested in showing that they are a Power to be Reckoned With.
If they were too dumm to know the difference between a ship to Israel and a ship to China, are they really very smart? (Or did their targetting-choice vetters in Iran really make this mistake?) If the Houthis were/are smart enough to know the difference, did they decide to poke the bear and the dragon just for the natural fun of it and to show that they are indeed a power to be reckoned with and are not afraid of anybody?
I think the ChinaRussia govs will consider it an honest mistake or a case of mistaken identity or whatever, and will quietly convey a request to the Houthis to be more careful next time.
. . . ” The Rise of Large-Language-Model Optimization ” . . .
Bruce Schneier may not want to understand what he has discovered and described or maybe just can’t bring himself to believe, but what he has described is the AI conspiracy to destroy the web, deliberately and on purpose with malice aforethought.
Those humans who want a “net” will have to figure out how to do things on such vestiges of the Dark Undernet as may survive beyond the reach of AI. Or back to email and list-servs and such.
Or networks of millions of personal desktop computer owners catapulting the samizdata by hand from desktop computer to desktop computer by means of couriers or carrier pigeons or other such things carrying little memory sticks or other tiny little data storage devices around from personal computer to personal computer to personal computer.
People hoping to be part of such networks might begin studying how the Solidarnosc activists moved messages around during the Jaruzelski Martial Law Period in Poland.
The web was basically an abnormality. Before it came about, the likes of Bill Gates had dismissted the internet as nothing more than email. Instead he was gearing Microsoft up for taking on AOL via MSN. Complete with a Windows bundled MSN Messenger to compete with AOL’s AIM.
Back to fidonet and kermit file transfers?
My 99 year old father in law, who lives with us, has a regular state ID, not a Real ID. It is not possible to bring him to the DMV to switch over. However, it is possible that he will need to fly at some point; it could happen. California supposedly has a home visit program for this sort of situation. I called last week to put his name down on a list at the local DMV for such a visit. We’ll see if that works.
A really good thread by @kamilkazani on why Russian manufacturing is completely different from Soviet manufacturing in all except the dual use philosophy.
https://x.com/kamilkazani/status/1792176953769746585