“The Three Little Pigs Are Hurting Their Own Cause,” an Op-Ed by The Big Bad Wolf McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
The California Taxpayer Is on the Hook WSJ
There are risks lurking in the world of private capital Gillian Tett, FT. The deck: “A recent court ruling against SEC reforms of the sector is an unfortunate blow to transparency and fairness.”
Borrowers, Especially the Young, Struggle With Credit Card Debt in Potentially Bad Sign for Economy AP
Climate
Column-Compound Extremes in the Global Ocean American Geophysical Union. From the Abstract: “Marine extreme events such as marine heatwaves, ocean acidity extremes and low oxygen extremes can pose a substantial threat to marine organisms and ecosystems. Such extremes might be particularly detrimental (a) when they are compounded in more than one stressor, and (b) when the extremes extend substantially across the water column, restricting the habitable space for marine organisms. ”
The uninsurable world: how the insurance industry fell behind on climate change FT. Commentary:
Where do you see yourself? pic.twitter.com/g7WRBtxRG2
— Dr. William J. Ripple (@WilliamJRipple) June 4, 2024
Farewell to Climate Nexus, an inbox stalwart Nieman Lab
Water
Mexico City is just the beginning. Here are 11 other cities at risk of running out of water. Business Insider
Syndemics
Minnesota BOAH Reports H5N1 In Dairy Cattle Avian Flu Diary
H5N1 Bird Flu Isn’t a Human Pandemic—Yet. American Contrariness Could Turn It into One Scientific American. Commentary:
“It’s not lost on many scientists, here and abroad, that the paucity of data coming out of the US is not dissimilar to the limited information flow out of China in the early days of the Covid19 pandemic -a situation the US & other governments complained about loudly at the time.” https://t.co/SVEGwZC5gf
— Erin C. Sanders, MSN, WHNP-BC (She/Her) (@ErinSandersNP) June 7, 2024
And:
Every day more farms, more cows, more risk to humans. And still @USDA not sharing recent virus sequence data. And no one is testing the farm workers. And no one is testing milk or meat for infectious virus before it leaves the farm. https://t.co/O3CcrpixhP
— Rick Bright (@RickABright) June 7, 2024
And:
Agricultural authorities have slow walked or forestalled testing, and bottled up critical information. The immediate risk is that this virus becomes endemic in herds, and we’ll have to grapple with its persistent threat. This may have been an avoidable public health peril. https://t.co/3WnQtLUsoD
— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) June 6, 2024
* * * Why Is NIH Perpetuating Long COVID Denial? Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect. The deck: “Documents obtained by The Sick Times reveal the bastion of the medical establishment squandered a billion dollars on a long COVID study that seems suspiciously designed to fail.”
* * * North Carolina GOP lawmakers agree to add a health exemption to a bill that limits masking ABC. Commentary:
NC HB 237 update: I just tried to pull the new text. If this is the final version, it's very problematic, b/c if suggests a person can mask to avoid *spreading* a disease, but not to avoid *catching* one. It also doesn't define "medical grade mask" – are N95 respirators out? https://t.co/PZSYYGdJKS pic.twitter.com/nD5exO0Kzf
— J. Offir, Ph.D. (@dontwantadothis) June 6, 2024
N95 respirator gets top billing in stopping SARS-CoV-2 viral leakage into the air Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
* * * High Excess Death Rates in the West 3 Years Running Since COVID – “Serious Cause for Concern” SciTech Daily
China?
US tech sector pressures Chinese venture capital to divest FT
Exclusive: U.S. and Taiwan navies quietly held Pacific drills in April Reuters
Myanmar
Growing Rebellion: Myanmar’s Youth Flock to Armed Resistance, Rejecting Junta Conscription The Irrawaddy
AUKUS: No refund for $9.4 billion gift to US & UK submarine companies Asia-Pacific Defense Reporter
India
Modi’s allies demand funds, Cabinet positions as coalition gears to form India’s new government Channel News Asia
The Koreas
Samsung workers in South Korea take industrial action for first time Al Jazeera
Syraqistan
Inside the Base Where Israel Has Detained Thousands of Gazans NYT. Commentary:
The New York Times reports Israeli military is torturing people by impaling them with hot metal rods in their rectums and tying them to electric chairs. This information is buried at the end of a single article where these details are unmentioned in the headline or subheadline. pic.twitter.com/St3GJXkkG8
— Alec Karakatsanis (@equalityAlec) June 6, 2024
See also Human Rights Watch.
Israeli detention center faces legal challenge after ‘unimaginable abuses’ WaPo
* * * Israel Police Detain Palestinian Photographer Who Was Attacked by Jewish Youths During Jerusalem Flag March Haaretz. Commentary:
PICTURE OF THE DAY
Settlers in Jerusalem harassing a Palestinian journalist. https://t.co/YAQtbIl7ma
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) June 6, 2024
* * * Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is set to address the US Congress on July 24 AP
US judge recuses himself from Gaza case after trip to Israel Reuters
* * * Israeli army says it targeted Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon Anadolu Agency
Hamas Has Reinvented Underground Warfare Foreign Affairs
“Ali Baba and the 40 thieves”: Emirati-Palestinian shouting match blew up Blinken meeting Axios
Indonesia says readying peacekeeping brigade for Gaza Anadolu Agency
European Disunion
German Industrial Production Fell Again in Poor Start to Quarter Bloomberg
Why Is Hungary So Small? Uncharted Territories
BALKAN BLOG: The EU has no choice but to start accession talks with Moldova BNE Intellinews
Dear Old Blighty
Tories ‘will probably disappear’ as Reform ‘annihilates’ party, Dorries claims The Telegraph
New Not-So-Cold War
Not Just F-16s: France Confirms Ukraine Will Receive Mirage 2000 Fighters as Aid Military Watch
Live: Putin is ‘our common enemy’, Ukraine’s Zelensky tells French parliament France24
Zelenskyy to give speech in Bundestag next week Ukrainska Pravda
* * * Why Swiss Peace Summit could become a defeat for Ukraine and Zelenskyy European Pravda
* * * What Ukraine Has Lost During Russia’s Invasion NYT
Nazi Penguins, Woman Wagner Events in Ukraine
Wartime Lithuania New Left Review
The Caribbean
Russian warships to arrive in Havana next week, say Cuban officials, as military exercises expected CBS
2024
Joe Biden suffers ‘embarrassing’ moment at D-Day event in France, makes strange claim about Vladimir Putin Hindustan Times
Spook Country
TWITTER FILES Extra: The Defaming of Brandon Straka and #Walkaway Matt Taibbi, The Twitter Files
Antitrust
FTC prepares to sue largest U.S. alcohol distributor, alleging ‘secret kickbacks’ CNBC
Digital Watch
AI anime flood – An infringement investigation of 90,000 images Nikkei Asia
OpenAI to buy electricity from CEO Sam Altman’s nuclear fusion side hustle The Register
Understanding the real threat generative AI poses to our jobs Blood in the Machine
The Bezzle
UnitedHealth CEO Sold $5.6 Million in Shares the Same Day as Ransomware Attack HealthCare Uncovered (antidlc).
Boeing
Supply Chain
Aluminum at epicenter of US reshoring efforts with renewable energy twist S&P Global
Groves of Academe
Columbia Law Review Is Back Online After Students Threatened Work Stoppage Over Palestine Censorship The Intercept
Class Warfare
Surveillance pricing Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic
What one man learned living alone in the wilderness for 40 years WaPo
How complex systems fail Richard Cook (2002).
Antidote du jour (JJ Harrison):
Bonus antidote:
i probably check the page 10x a day for updates. he went from grumbling about how he hates cats to posting picture slideshows, taking her to the vet, laundromat, grocery store, buying every conceivable toy/scratcher/accessories/treats for her. it's been 11 days
— big challenges (@pududeer) May 23, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
198 comments
Comments are closed.
BACK TO GAZA
(melody borrowed from California Here I Come as performed by Al Jolson, 1924)
Back to Gaza we are going
Hamas hides behind each rubble wall
All the grenades they keep throwing
We dismount — and soon we have to crawl
I was born Israeli Jew
Killing’s something I must do
It’s a debt I was born owing
But this Gaza fight is such a brawl
I feel my heart go cold and numb
Why are we fighting for this slum?
Israelis fly dailies – bombing’s our thing
Mass killing – blood spilling — ethnic cleansing on the wing
A hit or miss still liquidates
Arabs doomed to dire straits
Thanks to the United States
That’s where our bombs all come from
(musical interlude)
Hamas never will succumb
They shoot us while chewing gum
Enlisting – resisting – disappearing
As we go – our tanks blow — all our troops are second-string
We persist – clenched fists – full of hate
To see them once would be so great
What fresh Hell did we create?
Gotta tell ya — this is dumb!
Right after explosions come
I’m so dizzy deaf and dumb
They’re shooting – I’m scooting – ass in a sling
Frenetic – no medic — blasting back at everything
And when it stops we hesitate
We’ve learned not to take the bait
We won’t last long at this rate
We aren’t having any fun!
Have a close look at the photo in the Taleb tweet (Palestinian journalist being harassed). Those amused and having fun expressions on the faces of the (kids?) people who are inches away from killing that poor fellow. Anyone else here read Lord of the Flies?
Anyone here read the Old Testament and its stories of Amalek and other “enemies” of Israel?
Those youngsters are just running true to form.
Alastair Crooke, among others, has talked about the extreme insularity of Israeli/Hebrew culture, and especially of the ultra-orthodox students who study Torah all day. Israeli schools have turned out several generations of students steeped in an identity that places them forever and always above the lesser peoples of this world.
That’s gonna be hard to get out from under . . .
Well, they better get to making a lot of babies, because they’re surrounded now, with just one good friend in the world.
Remember what Henry Kissinger said about being a friend of that friend, though.
America is nobody’s friend. People who think Israel controls America – or that America actually cares about Israel – is in for a rude awakening when the USA has to choose between themselves and their ‘ally’.
Torah! Torah! Torah!
Climb the Temple Mount
They sure are brave, massing that many boys to harass one man. I guess the IDF are their models. What cowards.
Gary Brecher wrote years ago that the IDF has grown soft, decades “showboating against corrupt Sunni Arab dictatorships”, or words to that effect. Well, the happy days are drawing to a close, and it won’t be long now I suspect.
Appointment in Samara
by Kendrick Smithyman
…Poor man, poor simple man, poor Idiota,
That you should come to this by wanting
Only wit. Tell me, that voyage into Tartary,
It profited? And in Cytherea once
You were thought successful?
So many miles from Zoom to Babylon
You mounted scores by galls, but vainly so,
To come to this; in a great house showing its laths,
In a great room in a great house, in a great bed
Unmade souring under a canopy, beneath wraps
Your huddled treasures are to be
Discovered. Poor man, poor forked radish,
Yellowed or washwhite, almost purged at last
You spend your plenty of ingenuousness
Contriving modes to be offensive. Now come
Old scrofulous Malatesta, and the Cardinal
His brother (in spite of asthma) to be kind.
That needles may be blunt or none too clean
Will be, in drawing from you, nothing much.
Your day protracts, but will delay no more.
Crows are roistering in the barbican.
We scatter for them crumbs of our Lenten cake.
Reading the HaAretz article about Jeusalem flag day brought 2 things to mind.
Futurama Christmas and Kristallnacht.
That photo brought a tear to my eye.
I saw that on the news last night and it wasn’t only that Palestinian journalist but also western journalists as well being rough-housed. They also had these volunteers there dressed in purple plastic vests whose job it was to get between people getting into a physical dispute but I guess that they were not there for this poor guy. With those teenagers, we are seeing the next generation of oppressors learning their trade.
‘Yamakuza’
Don’t worry, their limbs will likely be blown off by teenagers on the opposing side a couple years from now.
“Russian warships to arrive in Havana next week, say Cuban officials, as military exercises expected”
No word if they will be doing Freedom Of Navigation exercises off the Florida coastline.
After Putin and Medvedev’s comments this week , I wonder if some Zircons will be left behind in Cuba.
Cuban Missile Crisis II, the sequel is never as good as the original.
Funny that you should use that phrase ‘Cuban Missile Crisis II’. The guys at The Duran were theorizing that this is where things are heading for with Russia and the US. That the Biden White House will continue to ramp things up until we get to a point that there is a confrontation with Russia like there was back in ’62. Then to stop things going to full war, that the Russians will back down and will settle for a freeze or something in the Ukraine so that the US comes out of it looking like the winner and will be able to display dominance over Russia in front of the whole world. They did not say so but I would assume that this will have to take place before November so Biden can go into the elections with the political boast that he ‘beat the Russians’. It sounds insane but to tell the truth, would not be surprised that this might be the plan when you see the actions of the Biden White House.
Putin ain’t Khrushchev. Worth noting.
Rapturists are giddy with anticipatory “joy” about now. Ordinary people, at least those with even a smidgen of awareness and self-preservation motivation, not so much.
And “our” leader craps his pants in front of the whole world (see Hindustan Times link above, and numerous YouTube and telegram spots) and dodders off the stage. I’d call elder abuse, but it couldn’t be happening to a more deserving person and the polity that put this all in place.
Too bad that a lot of good folks will be consumed if the sh!theads get their wish and we experience what “burn it with fire” really means.
The sequel seldom has the same ending as the original.
well, yes, Remakes have the same ending, or not. -a.v.
and Biden sure ain’t no JFK……….to use an aphorism Larry Holmes used talking about Rocky Marciano……….Biden couldn’t carry JFK’s jock strap –
Not always. Star Trek II and Star Wars V were actually better movies.
So who knows – the same rare event may happen here as well.
ooooh, those kinds of Zircons, not the jewelry crystal zircons. Interesting question.
The range of 3M22 Zircon cruise missile is 1,500 km.
That’s considerably further than my zircon encrusted tweezers can do.
Riding the pygmy pony around the Montana floss farm may end up being the last viable activity in the USA, though I suppose not for long.
It would seem to out last hawking dish detergent. Once again, your handle is outstanding. It’s so….American.
‘Madge of Courage’
didn’t think you were old enough to remember that one Wuk
waxing it up….flossing it down
That could only happen if the US suddenly decides to declare its maritime boundary extends all the wayto meet Cuba’s , leaving no open international waters open between Florida and Cuba. Imagine the uproar that would cause. / ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters
(Yes, I know you’re being provocative. Morning. / ;)
Actually what you described is what the NATO Baltic countries are trying to do with Russia’s passage through those waters so there is a kinda precedent – kinda.
And a good evening to you. :)
Next up could be France declaring its maritime boundary extends across the Channel to the English coast. Every ship transiting the Channel henceforth is under French jurisdiction during transit. Um… not gonna happen. Maersk Shipping would have something to say, at the least. Then there’s the issue of closing international fishing waters. etc. / ;)
So would the Royal Navies stout men with hearts of oak who sail the seas in defense of woke. Three cheers for the Rainbow Pennant! (You do realize that it is Golden Nail Week in Portsmouth.)
I understand that you have to go to the bottom of the ship to see the Golden Nail.
And then bend over ever so far to get a good look. It’s a Naval Tradition!
Winston Churchill said of that tradition once that-
‘Don’t talk to me about Naval Tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash’
But he always was a cavalry snob.
Yet he was First Lord of the Admiralty at the opening of WW-1. Curious.
Equally curiously, Franklin D Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy in America during WW-1.
‘Yet he was First Lord of the Admiralty at the opening of WW-1’
And where he was responsible for one of the biggest fiascoes of WW1 – the Gallipoli campaign.
This is perhaps a tad esoteric but I have a much bigger beef with Churchill. It’s unfashionable these days to believe in the “key single action that fundamentally altered the course of history” but Churchill’s strategy to win the 1951 UK General Election is one that I firmly believe doomed the UK.
The 1951 UK General Election was weird. Not that the winner (under First-Past-The-Post) did not win the popular vote – that has happened several times – but that the “loser” (Labour) achieved the highest proportion of the eligible electorate to vote for them in British history (under the “modern full enfranchisement era”).
A bunch of Liberals jumped ship from their doomed party and gave Churchill his overall majority in the UK House of Commons – I’ve never read a satisfactory account of why those voters jumped to Churchill rather than Attlee. And whoever won in 1951 was gonna reap the benefits of the final end of rationing etc and become the “acknowledged winner of the peace”. I believe the UK would have been very different had Attlee got the victory he deserved in 1951.
Perhaps why the brass was quick to set up the SAS when he was getting itchy for something similar in WW2.
https://alaskabeacon.com/2023/12/28/u-s-preparing-to-claim-new-ocean-territory-off-arctic-alaska-and-in-central-bering-sea/
That triangle in the Bering Sea looks as dodgy as but as far as the main section is concerned, I am sure that Canada would have claims over the eastern section of that US claim. Still, even though the US has never ratified the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, I am sure that such a claim would be legal under the International Rules Based Order which Biden referred to again during his Normandy speech.
Looking at this bathymetric map (link below), one can clearly see the US has no legal claim to anything beyond the 200 miles. The whole north coast of Alaska is at the edge of an escarpment that drops to over 10000 ft. In fact, the US has more of a right in the direction of Russia to the west.
https://images2.imgbox.com/45/83/r2gyE0oK_o.jpg
Thank you, well worth a read. The claims are based on international law as provided in United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (there’s a helpful link in the article). But, of course, But for the U.S., there is a catch: The U.S. Senate has not ratified the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the treaty under which such claims are adjudicated. More, Murkowski said her understanding is that the U.S., without ratification, has the right to make claims, but it does not have the right to mount challenges. Without ratification, she said, “we’re limited in terms of our ability to not only defend our claim, but then to push back on others as well.” My read is that the US hasn’t wanted to ratify this treaty because A) it would give the treaty legitimacy, and B) it would run crossways with other foreign policy (read colonialist pillaging) goals.
I have the impression that the lack of ratification is also one of the excuses the Navy use when they sail between Taiwan and the mainland etc.
Were trapped in a Neo-colonial paradox!
International lawyers have argued that relevant portions of UNCLOS have attained the status of customary international law. Historically US has objected to Part XI of the convention as regards seabed mining / resource extraction.
As far as Taiwan Straits, US draws the “12 mile limit” around both Taiwan and its islands as well as China; the rest is considered international water for navigation purposes (says nothing about EEZ or Continental Shelf provisions). China considers the strait to be “internal waters”.
To my knowledge, US has never asserted any sort of territorial sea claim over the entire Florida Straits, but there is some sort of framework agreement between US and Cuba over EEZ rights, which have at times been at issue as regards oil/mineral extraction.
Thanks. That’s interesting.
I’m sure that the U.S. wouldn’t object to Russia installing a few anti-ballistic missile batteries in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, to ‘protect them from an Iranian attack.’
Regarding Tory wipe-out: Labour should be careful what they wish for. They say history doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme.
Political historians know all about the 1993 Federal election in Canada, how a Conservative Party was demolished, replaced by a party called Reform, which later had heavy influence in moving the debate to the right after a left(ish) victory in 1993 didn’t give a bright new dawn.
South Park nailed what this UK election is like a very long time ago-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7pfsneLSSM (1:48 mins)
I knew it would be that clip before clicking ;)
The Guardian has also spotted the parallels with 1993 Canada.
Why do I find that debate infinitely more compelling to watch than the real ones but boast and present??? And more honest to boot. So truthful it’s frightening. Thanks for that levity to start the day.
OMG, what on earth are thee people thinking, or can they even think. Make primary aluminum with “renewables”, huh! Let’s be clear about the metallurgy. Primary Al is basically electricity. Starting with alumina, formula Al2O3, you use electricity to separate the atoms. It takes just over 14,000kW per metric tonne. This is a lot of power.
Hence almost all smelters constructing since the mid-80s have been in two places — where there is large scale hydroelectric power or in places like the Middle East where they can either flare off-gas or make power to make Al and export it. Even in the US a high percentage of our original smelters were built to be powered by hydro.
And, a smelter needs pure baseload power. If they shut the pots will freeze. They also need cheap power. So how are you going to do it? Not with solar or wind, that’s for sure.
Finally, we have a growing, power voracious AI/datacenter sector, crypto miners, and now Al all who want cheap power.
These people exist in an alternative dimension where it exists if they think it does. Until it doesn’t of course, which is when the problems really start. You can apply this ‘logic’ to just about everything around us.
Bright political futures, with those lucrative social media posts and the coveted panelist spots.
Soon we’ll read about 51 energy experts opining on aluminum. /s
Sounds like a PE pitch book talking point to me. Actual results unnecessary.
{adjusts Reynolds Wrap (FD*) toque to a rakish tilt…}
It was incredibly rare in natural metal form until ALchemy came along, and had we not discovered how to produce it, there’d be no airplanes (the engine block of the Wright Flyer was made of aluminum) and warfare would have remained like it always was, slugging it out on the ground, albeit with a balloon assist,
* I must have 7 or 8 rolls of it, what if I had to outfit headgear for my Praetorian Guard?
“… what if I had to outfit headgear for my Praetorian Guard?”
Simple. Contract it out to Krupp. Ask for their catalogue of aluminium helmets, or Aluminiumhelm.
See: https://epicartifacts.com/product/luftwaffe-aluminum-parade-helmet/
I hate to say it, but we seemed to really go to the dark side when we adopted our version of the stalheim in the 1990’s for our G.I. Joes & Janes, which appears very close in looks.
Not for nothing was it at first nicknamed the “Fritz”. And it was about this time that soldiers stopped being soldiers and were now called warriors instead.
Thinking’s not required
Neither’s good behavior
When you’re on the fritz.
Just in time for the introduction and adoption of the “Homeland’ moniker, Chertov being the first Czar.
Joe Chernenko being the penultimate Czar?
Once upon a time we had a smelter here on the Columbia. Then, simultaneously, the good lord held back on the winter rains and the bright boys in Finance (Enron) concocted a scheme to harness the electric grid to extract wealth.
The Bonneville Power Administration was then faced with maintaining the status quo (the salmon runs and the local economy) or joining the free-for-all that was the electric grid. They followed the money. In the end, the salmon lost, the local economy lost (the smelter closed), Enron lost. BPA won. Free enterprise at its best. /sarc
The gov’t givith, the gov’t takith.
I think all of the big smelters in the PNW are now closed:
Deal seeks to revive last aluminum smelter in PNW, cut waste
https://apnews.com/article/business-legislature-washington-jay-inslee-state-legislature-4ab89334f9f7c95a16fb464618d13d6b
The efforts to restart the Ferndale smelter failed.
Hmm, makes one wonder:
Boeing stopped buying Russian aluminum – the second time it ended sourcing a crucial metal from Russia since the Ukraine invasion
https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-stopped-buying-russian-aluminum-crucial-building-planes-titanium-2022-9?op=1
What about the Alcan in Kitimat, BC? That is Pacific North West as well…
in all this about aluminum smelters not one word about Iceland?
Actually, what happened with aluminum in the Pacific Northwest during the Enron meltdown is much darker.
Aluminum smelters have been subsidized everywhere that they have ever been built, and have destroyed every developing economy they touched. In the Pacific Northwest, they were the proximate cause of what remains in real terms as the biggest municipal bond default in history (WPPSS nuclear projects 4 and 5), and nearly bankrupted Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) three more times over ten years as BPA desperately struggled to keep the smelters afloat.
In the late 1990’s the Northwest aluminum smelters unilaterally broke a contract where BPA was already losing money on every watt-hour of power they got while eliminating salmon from the Columbia Basin, and negotiated a secret contract that not only increased the subsidy, but gave the smelters the right to shut down the smelters, fire the workers (~250 people per smelter), and arbitrage the subsidized power at market rates. Which they proceeded to do during the California Enron meltdown.
BPA was losing money selling power to the aluminum companies for less than $0.02/kWh that they were selling to California for over $3.00/kWh. Enron only ripped everybody off for a little over $1 billion during the wild ride in California. The Northwest aluminum smelters ripped off nearly three times that much over the same period.
That rip-off had two immediate consequences:
First, BPA was forced to run the dams in a dry year to lose money selling power to predatory aluminum companies, which meant that they broke the laws protecting Columbia salmon. The 2001 salmon cohort died.
Second, the smelter arbitrage scam left BPA technically bankrupt, unable to make its annual payment to the Federal government on the bonds that built the Columbia dams and Pacific Northwest transmission system, for the first time in history. The only reason that did not happen is because Bush II’s new Treasury Secretary, former Alcoa CEO Paul O’Neill, gave BPA a pass on paying back the Federal government in 2001.
And here is the most delicious part: Paul O’Neill had just been appointed, and still personally owned a huge chunk of Alcoa stock when he told BPA that they didn’t have to pay their bill in 2001. The billion or so that Alcoa extracted from BPA and California goosed Alcoa quarterly earnings to a point where O’Neill cleared about $13 million on the deal.
There’s more. Lots more. Aluminum smelters are the gift that keeps on giving.
Mikerw0,
It actually seems to me that renewables
and aluminum smelting should be two
great flavors that go great together.
Seriously.
The smelter would need better thermal
control and planning than the traditional
get it up to steady-state-and-keep-it-there.
I’d be sort of shocked if a smelter designed
to be a dispatchable sink of renewable
power had less than a factor of five
difference in power draw between a
“don’t let the pots freeze” and it’s maximum
power draw. Wind and solar are very
predictable a day or so in advance, which
would be required because you would want
to ramp up/down the power to the smelter
slowly.
I don’t know how it will ever be done in our
current system though, as it would require
not operating the smelter at the optimal
(economic) rate continuously, and not near
the maximum capacity for throughput. The
managers and the accountants would look
at the system and think stuff like “We could
have four times the throughput if we always
ran full speed”, or “We could improve our
profit by fifteen percent if by only tripled
our off-peak utilization”. I think either the
off-peak electric rates would need to be
truly prohibitive, or the plant would need to
be straight up prohibited from increasing
off-peak usage.
J.
Although my immediate second thought
is why are we doing this *here* in the US.
It would make way more sense to build
a smelter in Australia or Indonesia, near
where the bauxite is actually mined. I
dunno how pure bauxite ore is, but it
intuitively would seem more sensible to
not ship raw ore halfway around the
planet before refining it. Is the plan to
start actually mining bauxite in the US
again for aluminum production?
J.
RE: Thruster glitches and helium leaks can’t stop Boeing’s Starliner astronaut test flight — but why are they happening?
Bad accounting department and Sr VP of Accounting eliminated 4 bolts?
wondering if those folks piloting the Starliner might be getting nervous about being able to get back home? – it would be a hoot if they had to abandon the unit there –
Um, where’s the cat box in that trailer?
The trailer is the cat box. The poor fellow suffers from Schrodinger’s Trailer Paradox. He cannot discover if the trailer smells like something died in it until he opens the door.
His own toxoplasmosis lab?
Hmmm…. I wonder if Long Covid increases susceptibility to toxoplasmosis?
Someone should do a time analysis of numbers of cat videos on social media plotted with Long Covid rates.
I rather think that the increasing insanity in our world is why there are so many cat videos, but that cat certainly looks happy and relaxed despite being in such a small trailer. The man is doing somethings right.
Lady is apparently the name he landed with. Possibly he is a fan of the late legend of country music , Kenny Rogers ?
Maybe. I’m wondering if it might be the Styx song.
The same theme done in Country and Rock styles.
Maybe this lady helped him get his mojo back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR3uP7IYz44
Doctorow on “Surveillance Pricing” is todays must read. I have already encountered this in observing the price differences for the same products between the “Suburban WalMart” and the “Ghetto WalMart” in our half-horse town. As far as groceries go, I observe that the shops in high income neighbourhoods often have higher produce prices than in the low income neighbourhoods today, but that the quality of the produce is noticeably higher in the “rich” area.
Another area where surveillance pricing could happen is in utility pricing. Now the meters that the public utilities use are “networked” and remotely read. The situation is ripe for abuse. Think of it as a “Flint Water Financialization Scheme.” Electricity is already being billed using “peak load premium pricing” schemes.
Welcome to the Brave New World.
Whilst we were away, Tiny Town ran outta electricity around 7 PM a couple of days ago in the midst of the first heat wave of the year where it was 106 in the shade, with power only returning the next morning.
According to what I read of accounts locally, the power company didn’t tell anybody what was going on, and only opened a cooling place with water from 3 to 6 PM yesterday, after power was restored. Better late than nevermore.
The culprit appears to have been a raven which fried on the power lines around the lake, setting off a small fire, but don’t quote me on that.
Apparently it’s last word was “Nevermore!”
More of this has been going on and people believe stats from academics based on prices as if everyone sees the same price. It’s beyond accounting for differences in regions – people on the same block or in the same household can get a different price for the same thing at the the same time.
Different devices, even.
I know people who put things in carts and leave them (accepting all cookies and etc) and wait a few daysfor discount codes to show up.
Not sure if this is coincidence
Probably not.
My boss and I logged on at adjoining desks in the office to the BA website to book him a flight. I was consistently shown better pricing than he was. Either BA knew he was loaded and price insensitive SOB from some complex profiling or they just ran with the fact he was using a Mac Book and I was using a Thinkpad!
What’s interesting about this problem is that there’s only so much money in the consumer wallet. And consumers have a maximum debt load. So at the end of the day, profit increases by one sector should result in profit reductions in other sectors, all things being equal.
So when a sector of players is engaging in price fixing like collusion on price of rent by landlords and the FBI acts on that (as talked about in the article), I have to wonder if the FBI is acting at the behest of other sectors that are seeing their profits erode in the face of their customers spending more of their wallet on rent rather than going to bat for renters per se. If I’m the Fed Gov, do I turn a blind eye like I’ve been doing? Or do I wake up only when it’s egregious like this? Or do I want to be more assertive and start “reforming” sectors which are monopolistic to allow more profits to go to other sectors of the economy that are more “productive” / less monopolistic. Regardless of what’s driving that, if I’m a sector of players colluding with monopoly-like benefits, then I make sure to have a trade organization with lobbyists deployed and campaign contributions deployed to provide a protective moat.
It’s interesting to compare to price fixing between one player and their customers in the form of tailored pricing. Because it’s likely that some of their customers aren’t stretched and actually have regular savings. That’s the target rich environment: get more of their wallet share. As long as there’s customer wallet unclaimed, there’s room for multiple players to be doing this. This can go one of two ways for the customer dependent on their habits: the customer uses more and more of their savings to keep up their spending habits. Or the customer keeps on top of things and simply reduces their spend elsewhere.
It’s also interesting to compare to inflation that happens even without price fixing collusion or tailored pricing. I suspect virtually all of that inflation is pegged to what is happening to consumer wallets and max debt load. I think the big players have economists who simply track those two metrics and raise prices accordingly. And the little players simply watch what the big players are doing and match accordingly. In which case, everybody’s piece of the pie is the same, more or less, albeit with greater profit less whatever inflation occurred in operating costs and cost of goods sold.
P.S. on tailored pricing. Because there’s a rarget rich environment out there (customers who aren’t stretched) and because there’s room for mulitple players to be doing this, I can imagine Fed Gov being just hunky dory with this happening. Once it starts creating winners and losers between various sectors of industry or between players within a sector, then I can imagine Fed Gov getting involved at that point. Again, not for the consumer’s benefit, but to referee the game between the players.
>>>Doctorow on “Surveillance Pricing” is todays must read. I have already encountered this in observing the price differences for the same products between the “Suburban WalMart” and the “Ghetto WalMart” in our half-horse town.
I have noticed that even within the same grocery chains within the same city, but in different zip codes, it is as if the stores are different companies; worse service, lack of proper stocking (open boxes on the floor near the shelves, disheveled and rude workers, poor quality food, just a mess, but the another store is just beautifully put together.
You can see a similar process with different bank branches as even the services offered are different. Checking and credit cards everywhere, but help with property loans and more specialized services, not so much. If I remember correctly, technically, everything is the same, but the knowledgeable (and polite) staff, no so much. Just as with the grocery stores.
This really startled me when I first noticed it about twenty-five years ago.
>Slovakian Prime Minister Fico’s First Speech After Surviving Assassination Attempt
Very interesting reading.
The reluctance of some large democracies to respect the concept of a sovereign and self-confident Slovak foreign policy became grist to the mill of the Slovak opposition…
The government, which was formed by the opposition in 2020-2023, fully submitted to the interests of large countries and, above all, after the start of the war in Ukraine.
it immediately adopted the concept of the single correct opinion and literally looted the Slovak armed forces’ stockpiles, significantly reducing Slovakia’s defense capabilities and joined the camp of the countries promoting a military solution to the conflict in Ukraine.
In return, the Slovak government could do as it pleased.
Between 2020 and 2023, there was a widespread abuse of the penal code to liquidate the opposition, opposition representatives were accused and detained without evidence, there were instances of suspicious deaths in custody.
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/slovakian-prime-minister-ficos-first?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Oh, so they followed the american model
Also, Fico went there:
I want to ask the anti-government media, especially those co-owned by the financial structure of G. Soros, not to go down this path and to respect not only the gravity of reasons for the attempted murder, but also the consequences of this attempt….
I have no reason to believe this was an attack by a lone madman.
“Why Swiss Peace Summit could become a defeat for Ukraine and Zelenskyy”
These planned talks are already a fiasco and Switzerland have been made to look like fools for even hosting it. It’s probably why the Swiss knocked back a 5 billion Swiss franc aid package to the Ukraine the other day. Biden won’t be going as he has a Hollywood fundraiser to attend with George Clooney. Xi won’t be going, especially after Zelensky insulted China recently. Lula of Brazil won’t be going nor will India’s Modi. Saudi Arabia is giving it a miss as well. Even Argentina’s Milei won’t be going. Germany’s Scholz has admitted that there will be no peace negotiations but that the whole point is to have the whole world rally behind Zelensky who is not even legally the leader of the Ukraine any more. I can imagine how the Swiss will be grinding their teeth until this make believe conference is finally over. Was it worth it for them?
Well, the Swiss also ‘host’ the Davos Conference every year. That often ends up just as delusional as this so called “Peace Summit.”
I’m still waiting for that Swiss Financial Knife I ordered back in 2008. It assumes everything under the sun. (Including a can opener of course.)
If you got that Swiss Financial Knife now you might be disappointed as the newer ones will have no knife-
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/swiss-army-knife-without-blade-victorinox/
So you will also have to assume a knife as well.
The kindest cut of all.
Were all the available blades sent to the Ukraine as military aid? That would explain it. With the ever increasing Russian production of blades, a real “sharp tool in the box” gap has arisen. Western industry must get to work to catch up, pronto!
I saw that a couple weeks ago and thought it was one of those AI hallucination reports. Is that thing really moving in the market? There are several superior multi tools to the good old Swiss Army Knife but it’s such a habit/tradition that people who lose them buy another.
What gets me is that the fear of “knives” is so strong that airlines and other places actually ban the tiny ones on Swiss Army Knives or other multi tools. Although they are more dangerous, it reminds me of the fear of guns. The suggestions about them often do not do anything except to raise controversy, fear, and conflict.
Our society’s ever growing list of fears as well as the security theater done over them is just not healthy, practical, or usually even very effective. However, it does allow the authorities more reasons to intimidate, search, and abuse people “for your safety” as well as give new media and politicians more ways to gin up attention.
Heck, all those losing, occasionally genocidal, wars of ours are for our supposed safety.
And now, it is the horrid pocket knife.
I think the whole thing matches the headline-only level of reality of Biden’s mythical but much touted ‘peace plan’. The Biden bunch probably got the idea of the fake ceasefire plan from Zelensky. Every headline that says “[doomed leader]’s Peace Plan” is a win even if the rest of the headline says it is a lie or a failure. Don’t think of an elephant.
‘I’ve seen the elephant…’
Was a term used by 49’ers who headed home before getting to California, William Swain in his diary called them ‘backtrackers’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_the_elephant
I’d met that term once or twice and sensed it’s meaning from the context but I had never realised it had such wide use.
The Wikipedia article has plenty of examples but they miss a big one: Sam Gamgee in Lord of the Rings. There is a running joke from the time ghey leave the Shire about Sam wishing to see an elephant on the journey, finally satisfied in Ithilien when, as he and Frodo skirt Mordor south to the pass of Cirith Ungol, they are mixed up in a party of Southerners journeying north, to answer Sauron’s call, with their War Oliphants (IIRC, Faramir ambushes the Southerners).
I cannot imagine Tolkein was innocent of this usage in writing it. And, thinking about that, I wonder if Sam’s succession to leading the Shire after Frodo goes into the West is an allegory for the UK-US transition of power. There’s a lot of plain-speaking Midwestern farmboy in Sam….
“the whole point is to have the whole world rally behind Zelensky who is not even legally the leader of the Ukraine any more.”
The Duran duo have been pressing the point that, yeah, he’s now beyond his expiration date, and they take it further and speculate he’s gone after they start drafting 18 year olds. Then he’ll be replaced by an even more illegitimate leader, picked by us. Maybe the Ukrainians will rise up over that, but, there’s nobody left to do that.
The other point the Alexes made was that the point of the Swiss summit is for Zelensky to get some appearance of legitimacy by showing the backing of world leaders. Not having even Biden show up will make (even bigger) mockery of that charade.
Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits
“OpenAI to buy electricity from CEO Sam Altman’s nuclear fusion side hustle”
Yet another reason to love Sam, he is funneling $$ to his side hustle nuclear power firm Helion to power his energy sucking monster “Stargate”.
Unrelated but this is an ex-board member dishing some dirt about this psycho who didn’t even tell the board about ChatGPT.
https://youtu.be/SnlbbA0xmZ8?si=EP-el1OSKUcMnOXc
If you’ve got the time and inclination you can check out a Commonwealth Club interview with Sal Khan waxing enthusiastic about the future role of AI in education. Don’t know much about Khan’s history or the algebra he teaches, but I had a vaguely positive feeling about his educational endeavors. I found the interview rather disturbing and the anecdotes of how his daughter has been using AI rather creepy.
https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/video/sal-khan-how-ai-will-revolutionize-education
I used to listen to there presentations regularly but quit after it seemed that most of their guests were of the techno optimist or anglo superiority persuasion. There were some valuable perspectives but it seemed to be too much chaff not enough wheat.
That video of Biden trying to sit down (that’s actually being kind. He looks like he’s doing something else) is really something, but, for me, his being led by the arm by faithful wife away from that stage is even worse. The WWII vers watching that must have thought, jeez, looks like George at the home. Before he died.
The NYT ran a thing yesterday about wonderful Jill cutting her France trip short to fly back and support Hunter in his time of need. Little late for that, it seems. Who’s going to change Joe’s diapers in the meantime?
Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that poopie in your pants?
Hey Joe, I said, where you goin’ with that poopie in your pants? Oh
I’m goin’ down, hopefully my old lady can lend a hand
But has the press investigated the poop allegation? May just be a rumor in need of Pinocchios. We the public demand a full accounting.
For Presstidigitation it’s a process of elimination…
So now we’re hunting for the press ganger who has the scoop?
Sure, the fourth estate is seldom forthright, but we can’t let that little thing get in the way of their angle of repose when delivering daily news.
So, since there is poop talk going on, I don’t feel so bad mentioning the “cultural phenomenon”, Wheel of Fortune.
Tonight is Pat Sajak’s last show–after 41 years. Take a look tonight if you want to see what age 77 can look like. That would make Sajak the same age as Trump is now, and the same age as biden was when he “campaigned” from his Delaware hidey hole in 2020. Sajak also enlisted in the army during Vietnam.
And just by the way, Alex Trebec was 80 when he died of cancer. I’d also mention that several of those 100+-year-old WW2 vets remained standing while biden folded and had to be led away.
Aging can be done vitally and gracefully, just not by someone with Alzheimer’s like biden. I’m tired of his giving all the rest of us “seniors” a bad name. I, for one, am not done yet.
Sajak/White 2024!
I grew up in a very keeping up with the Joneses hood in east LA, and one of the neighbors circa 1965, got a few cute little monkeys and had them in a cage on their driveway, so 3 or 4 other neighbors followed suit, that is until said primates starting flinging poo at their captors, and that was the end of it.
p.s.
I employed a covered lip reader to decipher what Jill uttered to Joe, and it turns out she said…
Let’s Go Brandon
I was honestly willing to giver her credit for some quick thinking.
Seeing him start to buckle, she decided to act like she had something very important to tell him and he had to crouch down to hear it.
But I’ve gotta admit, the poop angle is more on trend.
Looking forward to his upcoming debate with Trump. Biden’s contingent at home is probably contacting the drug cartels down in Mexico with a ceasefire offer provided the later send their best stuff to Washington DC ASAP using the diplomatic pouch.
One of Trump’s few demands was that the debate take place standing up.
I hope you live long enough to get old. You will then have the opportunity to experience some of the problems associated with old age.
I’m in my elementary golden years phase where the prostate is increasingly calling the shots, can’t wait for the rest of my second act.
I have lived that long but unlike Biden I am a man who knows his limitations.
Does anyone really think Biden has any meaningful volition? He is a living prop, and we are witnessing abuse.
Woodrow Wilson’s wife at least had to handle that in a time with no electronic media. Jill has to parade him around in front of millions.
The same was true of Nancy Reagan in Ronnie’s second term when people began to wonder who was actually running the country.
The Astrologer? It happened in other, more refined places and times…
“Poor Jill” is the one who made the decision to go through with this puppet show, and to try for another four years of it. Sick, and frankly as unpatriotic as it gets.
Joe and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pool of D-Day veterans
Joe fell down-nearly breaking his crown
And Jill came tumbling after
Yes. Not many 82 year olds, even in good health, would think themselves presidential material.
I’m plenty old, and taking that ride downhill. But I wouldn’t dare run for POTUS. I have my limits.
When Biden came on the election scene ‘lo those many years ago, I knew he was losing his mind as he said and did many of the things I do, and say…I recognized the moves.
The only difference is I am quite content to age gracefully and not sign any contracts etc. without legal representation, while the old man is trying to run a country…..and probably doing about as well as I could
I believe you are being too modest.
Just my opinion, but at this point it’s elder abuse. WTF is wrong with Jill to continue this charade?
The only people they are fooling at this point is the die hard and apparently blind vote blue no matter who voters who thinks Trump can’t put a sentence together and Joe only has a stutter.
Whilst I am in no mood to defend the Bidens, such actions by Jill are, alas, all too common. One of my sisters is a senior secretary to oncology consultants at my local hospital. It is unwise to ask her about what spouses, but especially adult children, of very very ill people will do to keep the relative alive.
She will vent bigtime about the ability of so many people to fail to see the reality in front of them; fail to acknowledge that it is time to gracefully accept reality and stop the suffering.
FWIW the whole language of terminal conditions and ones that are potentially terminal like cancer/dementia is Orwellian. Talk of “battling” it etc is like “the war on terror”. WTAF? But, as noted so often here, we are living in the stupidest timeline.
I made the final call terminating life support for both my mother and stepfather—a sad but necessary task. Among others, my son, then ten years old was present for the event with my stepfather, whom the boy cared for deeply. I am counting on him to do the same for me. The life support capabilities of contemporary medicine have burdened us with this dreadful responsibility. Yet it must be done.
Thanks for that. Yes, the whole subject is dreadful but must be dealt with…..in a way we commonly don’t deal with in the “oh so advanced western cultures”.
Seeing how people’s views change when they are party to such decision-making was very humbling for me when I worked in this area. And I wasn’t even “at the sharp end” of it all.
My grandfather recently died of end-stage Alzheimer’s. His medical directive was very simple, it mostly said, “No.” He was a farmer; if he could, he would have added, “Take me out and shoot me.”
My mother honoured his directions to the letter.
Sorry for your loss and thanks for sharing that. It perfectly illustrates the solution to the recent controversy here in UK over whether assisted dying might pressurise vulnerable people into “lowering the burden” on relatives.
If people have not made their views known by the time things get really rough then it is already arguably too late. We should all have been given realistic information about the “nasty pathways in health” and been made to set out our views in end of life care directives way before the event.
Being unsure is perfectly acceptable. The document is meant to be amended over time as we all experience life and see death in others.
Just went through this with my mother, Terry. She was begging the hospital to let her go home to die, to have a few decent days left at home, just to get away from the Machine. I had to fight tooth and nail, even arguing with family to stress the importance of getting her out. When we did it was by the skin of our teeth. You’ve never seen someone more happy to get home, even though she had only 5 or 6 days left. I’d been through this before, so knew the terrain better than my siblings, both of whom were in various states of not quite seeing how bad it was (that’s perfectly natural, nobody wants to see it, TBF).
Anyway, all ended well, and the hospice care at home was great – but damn, a couple of very stressful days before getting her home, in her own bed. It shouldn’t be a fight.
My dad has dementia also, so watching Biden (and the elder abuse thereof) is disgusting, truly vile; I despise the cope-head Dems who want to put it down a stutter (a stutter he didn’t have 15 years ago, mind). Cowardice of high order.
Being firmly in the Camp of Revulsion of both Biden (Harris) and Trump(Mysterioso), all I can say is the RNC and DNC, and many-too-many voters are really suffering crisis levels of panic and DCD
(Delusional Cognitive Dissonance). This is going to be a looooong 5 months coming up– domestic and international.
And logic would reasonably indicate that after five months, the poo will REALLY hit the fan…
My grandfather was a WWII vet struck down with dementia. Everytime I see a clip of Biden, I think, looks just like grandad did. They can try to gaslight us, but there’s too many of us who’ve had the painful experience of watching a relative sundown like this and we know what we are seeing with Joe.
EDIT to add, my problem isn’t with aging or Biden being old. It’s that, as much as I dislike Biden, it’s painful to watch this abuse. I do relate it to my own family. It was hard, but we tried to be as compassionate to my grandfather as we could. With Biden, it looks like he could really use some people around him willing to put his best interests above theirs.
Like the family who’s keeping Grandpa alive for the pension cheque, the Biden clan is keeping the ‘big guy’ upright to keep the money flowing.
Identical for me with my dad. Watching that look in Biden’s eyes in a recent interview, god almighty, and the slack mouth. What is wrong with these people? One thing my mum did with dad (before she fell ill herself) was to slow down the process by reducing stress. Very hard if not impossible to do this if you’re the freaking President. It can only accelerate with him. Calling out to dead people, meeting with Mitterand, barely able to walk UP steps, that awful vacant look in the eyes….etc
With dad I knew it was getting bad when he stopped actively following politics, then stopped using personal pronouns. It went from “John went out” to “The fellah went out”, or “He went out”. Executive function lasted a long time (able to make meals for himself) but after the stress of Covid era, the last bit of cheese slid off the cracker, and then mum & brother had to watch him like a hawk for YEARS. I don’t know how they did it. I would have cracked.
Anyway, any Dems or shitlibs reading this: shame on you. A disgrace.
Is he the face of American dignity?
I think our minds went in the same direction.
Given some of the stuff I’ve heard about him, a live on TV first might be soon: a Presidential Code Brown.
Brutal regime,
embattled junta,
depleted forces.
Law mandate,
compulsory service,
men and women.
Urgent need,
mounting losses,
nationwide resistance.
Attacks,
pushing ahead.
Serve the military or embrace the revolution.
Resistance forces,
escalating attacks,
junta targets.
United in determination,
defeat the junta,
widespread atrocities.
New recruits,
receiving training,
military strategy,
diverse capabilities.
Slava Karenina!
Yep
‘Unusual’ cancers emerged after the pandemic. Doctors ask if covid is to blame.
Paper
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-4210090/v1
Here is another one. I see many stories drawing stark differing conclusions.
https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000282
https://x.com/fitterhappierAJ/status/1799073507298639970
AJ Leonardi, MBBS, PhD
@fitterhappierAJ
AJ Leonardi, MBBS, PhD
@fitterhappierAJ
·
For what its worth dept:
About the only meaningful ruling regarding firearms has come on account of Hunter…
Not to mention North Korea, that is entering a renaissance.
And also has a massive amount of artillery aimed at Seoul.
Do wonder how long that SK industrial output would last should the situation go global…
Mexico City is just the beginning. Here are 11 other cities at risk of running out of water. Business Insider
~~~~~~~~~~~
Cali is looking good water-wise for the immediate future thanks to the epic 2023 storms that filled up reservoirs, along with this winter’s strictly average effort, but we were only a year or 2 away in the 2 epic recent droughts, from being in deep kimchi.
Most every Californian in a Big Smoke near the Pacific Ocean is dependent on water from far far away, that might not be so bueno.
There’s a veritable shitlode of H20 to the left of us, but little has been done in that regard…
Los Angeles September 11th, 1952 campaign speech: The American Future
Adlai Stevenson
Desalination would be a good use of surplus solar power in California, although there are surely better uses.
I was involved in the seawater greenhouse business. If you build a poly-tunnel like greenhouse facing into the prevailing wind and pump seawater down a baffled front wall, air currents and sunlight work together to evaporate freshwater into the airflow, producing a cooling freshwater environment. The remaining salt water is concentrated and cooled by the evaporation and cab be used in a liquid to air heat exchanger to condense out fresh water from the moist air. The greenhouse can produce a surplus of freshwater and of course fresh produce.
The drawback is seawater destroys everything, especially heat exchangers!
Market update!
The monthly ritual of the BLS jobs report resulted in pivot mongers once again having the football snatched away from them, like Charlie Brown attempting a field goal with Lucy the holder. Eat turf!
Hourly earnings up 4.1% over the past year, and over a quarter million “Jobz” were conjured up by the BLS, a feat of statistical legerdemain worthy of Penn and Teller.
Meanwhile, gold and silver are getting monkey-hammered, as they appear to have been a proxy bet on the Fed folding up like the Buffalo Bills special teams and D against Pat Mahomes and Andy Reid.
The dread pirate Powell is no doubt befuddled, and suffering from anxiety as he watches the feckless tools in the ECB get ahead of him in the great currency debasement game. Even Bill Belichick & Brady couldn’t compete with the winning record of central banks in turning currency into toilet paper.
…you don’t believe in the Great Pump Kin?
The great pump kin will continue to be stonks. We can all eat Nvidia chips for breakfast in about 2 years! I hear if you dip them in guacamole they go down easier.
I’m a sheltered sort who had never even heard of Sam Altman until about 6 months ago, and initially I was under the assumption that NVIDIA was a stock based on sales of a popular hand creme that all the celebrities were touting as the next best thing.
p.s.
Would Lucy snatching the football at the very last second as Charlie Brown is about to kick it, be what we call Quantitative Tapering?
I’m a big fan of colorful metaphors, but even I can’t quite come up with a good comeback to that.
Perhaps you should send that one to the Fed’s suggestion box, it could be a new tool in their “tool box.”
I’ll disguise myself as a molar and sneak into Jackson Hole claiming to be the Tooth Fairy.
Quantitative Tampering
Either term would indicate something happening on the Q.T.
The dread pirate Powell is no doubt befuddled, and suffering from anxiety
Hey, has anyone heard how Dread Pirate Powell’s recovery from the ‘rona has been going?
RE: How complex systems fail
Reminds me of the Big Ball of Mud theory of how IT goes bad. I won’t drop the direct link since it says it’s not safe, but if you are interested, you can access it through this reddit link – https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/qxe46z/this_paper_examines_this_most_frequently_deployed/
The basic theory is that a person writes some elegant code for a specific purpose, and it works great. Then someone using the system needs something new, so the developer adds a bell. Then later another whistle. Requests keep coming, the system gets more complex and harder to manage. The developer then gets frustrated and quits and nobody left understands how the thing works. Things fall apart.
I believe that and today’s link can be applied to societies at large. It all kind of plays into the inchoate theory I have about why societies, nations and civilizations rise and fall. People come together for some common purpose and build out a system that allows the group to survive, and then to thrive. But if you do it well enough to survive for the medium to long term, something gets lost unless the group is extremely diligent, which they generally are not. Nobody wants to pay new people to learn and then monitor a system that is already working pretty well. So the achievements made by the founders last for a couple generations, maybe more, but nobody can beat that 2nd law of thermodynamics, and things start to crumble. The problem is that the people who constructed the system and put it in motion, who understand all the nuances that aren’t included in the instruction manual, are no longer around to instruct the people who now need to fix things. It is easier to build the Parthenon than to fix it a few hundred years later.
In short – it’s the maintenance, or lack thereof, that causes collapse.
The Winchester Mystery House method. Pretty soon, stairs are ending at the ceiling, chimneys end in the middle of a room instead of the roof, and doors open into the air.
https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
I think that was the basic premise of Burke’s original Connections, as he starts with how the 1965 NYC blackout happened do to a system that in theory worked as designed but still caused a problem do to the complexity it had reached.
And once more i wonder how much of this comes back to capex and opex accounting rules, resulting in management skimping on maintenance as it looks worse on the quarterlies.
Idiocracy
WALL-e
City of Ember
Great movies that touch on this in similar ways.
City of Ember reads like a more up beat version of the Anime series Texhnolyze.
That’s Tainter’s theory of civilization collapse. You increase complexity until the law of diminishing returns sets in. Eventually you don’t have the resources to maintain what you’ve got, (sort of like the US’ infrastructure) and the whole thing simplifies to a less energy requiring state.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477.The_Collapse_of_Complex_Societies
The trio of ladies in their 70’s car camped across from us were from LA and they had brought the LA Times with them as they had finally found a use for it in lighting a campfire, and its even thinner gruel than when I last saw it’s ghastly appearance almost a year ago and was obviously on a starvation diet begging for editors to fix clumsy syntax errors and misspellings that had plagued the fishwrap. We put it out of it’s misery by cremation.
“BALKAN BLOG: The EU has no choice but to start accession talks with Moldova
But do the Moldovans really want to join the EU? Doesn’t seem such a good idea these days as it is being run as a sort of a mafia operation ( ‘Do what we sez or your economy gets it!’). And the EU may want President Maia Sandu to get another term but it seemed that she only got into power through some dodgy vote counting of votes of Moldovans outside the country. But I wonder about the status of Transnistria which would never, ever agree to go into the EU. That could be a flashpoint of conflict with the EU.
Transnistria and Gagauzia too.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/moldova-brings-criminal-case-against-pro-russian-gagauzia-leader-court-2024-04-24/
https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-russia-moldova-gagauzia-evghenia-gutul/
There is a stolidness in the Moldovan spirit (half of Moldova is in Romania), especially among the less educated population – the educated Moldovans are class AAA ( I know some personally and while they are quite successful, would never make their dad say “I am proud of you” because expectations
https://www.ivey.uwo.ca/faculty_research/directory/oana-branzei/
https://journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/130/19/3193/56563/Cell-scientist-to-watch-Dana-Branzei ).
And from”our” (Romanians) impression, it was a Russian policy to keep them low. The Ottomans used to call them Bogdan’s Oxes (he started the ruling dinasty in Moldova). It pays now.
But at least half of Romanians are against the war as promoted by the west. Maybe 75% would like reunification, but have a bit of misgivings due to the Russian influences.
They like to profit from the EU but few are in awe. Would prefer to uproot corruption at home. No better place like home.
> Why Is Hungary So Small? Uncharted Territories
It’s a mostly pretty good summary of the geography and history, if a bit heavy on teleology. The comment from Balazs Speder who’s Substack profile says “economist at the central bank of hungary” is especially interesting and seems even handed, afaict.
It treats the Kingdom of Hungary a bit as continuously having a voice there. From 1526 to almost 1700, it didn’t. A third was an Ottoman province (Buda pashalik), a third was incorporated in Austria and a third kept its separate autonomy (Transylvania – it paied to be beyond the mountains). In time, the entirety of former Hungarian kingdom was incorporated in Austrian empire. In 1867 or so, there was a big crisis in Austria and to mainatin the state, they bribed the Hungarians, gave them co-dominium while snatching the Hungarian crown. Then it became Austro-Hungary. Basically let’s opress the other populations in the empire together…
What one man learned living alone in the wilderness for 40 years WaPo
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I enjoy my wilderness as much as the next outdoorsy type or maybe a bit more, but really couldn’t imagine making a full time living out of it.
Talked to 7 or 8 hearty folks doing the Pacific Crest Trail and they’d accomplished 806 miles of walking according to the sign that stated that in the Vermillion Resort, and were just the vanguard of many hundreds more stymied by having to approach snowy High Sierra passes while potholing going up and a cautious glissade coming down the other side, and they were only a quarter of the way done with the PCT, wow.
They stop for resupply, a hot meal and perhaps a motel room every once in awhile. The name of the PCT camp at the resort is Mushroom Camp, which may or may not have a few meanings-and i’d like to think it does, other than their tiny tents popping up and then disappearing only to be replaced by another sojourner passing through.
“Nazi Penguins, Woman Wagner”
‘The training period for the mobilized was shortened on May 28’
Saw a video clip recently with this Ukrainian soldier saying how he and another guy were walking the streets a few days previously but were nabbed for the army and now found themselves on the front-lines. Four of them were driven out and dumped on some post with no officers or NCOs to lead or teach them. Soon after the Russians lobbed some artillery their way and then there were two left.
RE: US judge recuses himself from Gaza case after trip to Israel Reuters
I wish I could think of a more erudite comment than “under the circumstances, WTAF are u.s. judges doing going to israel,” but…under the circumstances, WTAF are u.s. judges doing going to israel???
This cannot be normal behavior. How is it permitted for US government officials to take, essentially paid propaganda trips to other nations? Can they do this anywhere and the FBI/DoJ just won’t pass comment? How about a trip to Russia, or Ukraine, or God forbid France!
At what point do these ‘Hasbara’ activities pass from being a PR campaign and start becoming bone fide hostile takeover by foreign NGOs?
“I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the 12 tribes of Israel. And to the Nakba, for which it stands,
one nation, under suzerainty, with fealty and bootlicking for all.”
Maybe the US needs a foreign agent law like the country of Georgia just passed. Oh wait!
“Our Only Ally in The Middle East”
Just like the tapeworm is “our only ally in our body.”
To make sure they have a good grip on things, on the legislative, executive and judicial branches. See Rep T. Massie on Tucker on the issue:
https://twitter.com/KeithWoodsYT/status/1799172505942560842
Meanwhile, feral hogs continue their relentless advance:
As voracious omnivores, they have rooted their way across Canada, ferreting slugs and bugs from soil and poaching eggs from nests. They slurp up frogs and ducklings from wetlands, wolf down mice and clear meadows right down to plant roots. In parts of Manitoba, they specialize on acorns, an important food source for birds, squirrels, and deer. “Pigs seem to be savants at scanning the landscape and finding the best quality food available,” says Brook. “They’ll even scavenge road-killed white-tailed deer.” They eat live deer, too. In February, the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation released a photo of a boar running across a field with a fawn in its mouth.
I’m wondering if feral hogs could be used to control invasives such as Japanese knotweed or purple loosestrife.
They had no effect whatsoever on invasives in RFK Stadium as of late…
We had feral pigs here, but a few local hunter types rigged up a hunting blind not far from where they were enticing the porkers in, with a nice feed bin-a swine thing to do.
Must be highly effective as I haven’t seen one in years…
A few times a year previously i’d see a hog conga line crossing the road in front of me as I approached, snout to tail-around 10 of them varying in size from 100 to 350 pounds, scurrying from one side to another in a hurry.
Wild pigs tended to be harsh critics of lawns, for when they got through with taking one apart in the worst roto-till job ever when in search of grubs, it’d look like a shambles, and produced colorful local lingo such as:
‘I heard Steve got pigged again, what is it with his lawn, anyway?’
Would have been a great plot line in any post-apoc movie or zombie show. You thought the zombies were bad, here comes a herd of 10,000 feral hogs! Those shows never think things through.
With respect to bold statements about fire safety and EVs… the truth is we don’t have the data yet. No one does. This article from Car & Driver is pretty good discussing car fires in general. But the issues driving the claims of EV fire safety and that concerns are overblown are based on assertions that haven’t been tested yet.
You have to maintain any vehicle. We know how poor maintenance practices correspond to fire risk in ICE vehicles. We don’t know how this shakes out with EVs yet. But maintenance assumes a certain starting point, and the starting condition for a vehicle is directly related to manufacturing quality, and that’s where the problems start. It is true that not all cars are made to the same level of quality, however, that caution goes double for EVs. Also, the risk statement for an EV with respect to fire, regardless of manufacturer, is different from an ICE. For an EV, you have the energy source, fuel package, and means to sustain a fire, all in one, even if you do nothing to the vehicle. For an ICE, you need to do a lot. A gas tank doesn’t ignite without a lot of help and the fuel package is expended quickly.
You’re also compounding the issues of new tech and unknown risks with EVs. Contractors haven’t optimized the installation of home chargers yet. Cities have people trying to steal or damage the charging lines. So the question isn’t just, do EVs catch fire more often than ICEs, it’s do EVs as used and experienced catch fire more often than the average car? We don’t have the data on that yet. I won’t be surprised if the answer is yes.
This all smacks of various companies trying to make something happen. Talk to me about how much better EVs are for the average user in another 10 years. Hopefully while we’re both on a train enjoying a cold drink because neither of us needs to drive where we’re going if public transportation get better.
More than frequency of fires, I am concerned about severity of consequences. This concept of hazard is a public health-type approach. We are allowing EV’s the privileges of ICE cars, when in some situations they are much more dangerous because existing fire suppression methods cannot extinguish them if they catch fire. There are rules about warehousinf and shipping Li-Ion batteries but we happily allow EV’s onto.ferries and into.car parks….
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Why is Hungary so small? is the best read of the day. Well done whomever shared this with Lambert & Co.
Never truly provided the answer: that they didn’t have the numbers. In 1919, in Paris, arguments were made with Austrian produced demographic maps, and demography won. Also, it didn’t help that in 1919, the second communist government in Europe was ruling in Budapest, after Moscow… only with the hope that they won’t loose territory. They got kneecapped by the Romanian Army.
> Understanding the real threat generative AI poses to our jobs Blood in the Machine
From the article
I can certainly see AI doing dull jobs. Dirty or dangerous? Sure, as long as it’s dull. If the only risk to dangerous jobs is to the AI itself, then sure no problem. But how common will that be? Invariably dangerous work has repercussions beyond the entity performing the work itself.
This can be generalized to any job responsibilities that has risk-based decision making baked into it. There almost always are repercussions beyond the person doing the job. So they have to do outreach to socialize and get concurrence on the path forward. Are AIs going to do that? How do they do that in the face of known unknowns? Unknown unknowns?
Executives and managers want to push responsibility for risk down the management chain as far as possible down to the rank and file if and when possible. Will rank and file AIs take “responsibility” for risks? If anything I can imagine the oppposite: AIs constantly nagging their adminstrator on what to do about risks. And if it’s good it will do this to a fault – imagine how annoying that will be for somebody who has to administer AI. “Here I was blithely ignorant of all the risks out there and all this AI does is keep identifying risks! It’s shifting more responsibility on me, making my life more complex!”
I think most jobs have some degree of risk to them. Even the dull ones. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
We will know AI is truly “generative” when it can “accept risks” just like the vice admiral does in another article in today’s links: AUKUS: No refund for $9.4 billion gift to US & UK submarine companies Asia-Pacific Defense Reporter
All that said, I guess the counter example is AI used in military applications, e.g. making death-by-drone decisions. I’m sure the military is more than happy to farm that out to AIs. “We don’t want to know and thankfully the AI did us the courtesy of not asking.”
Re: Southern/Glazer
Free goods have a long history in the biz. Buy 20 cases, get two free. The alterative is a promise of exclusivity (regional, of course) and there are only so many items you can do that with. Separately: Unless you have some mass market brands (Gallo, etc.) repping is a dismal job. As I tell every kid: No buyer in the history of the world has ever returned a rep’s call. ;)