Links 7/17/2024

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1. Antifa July 17, 2024 at 7:01 am

   TIME TO CALL THE FIGHT
   (melody borrowed from Does Your Chewing Gum Lose It’s Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?  by Lonnie Donegan, 1961)

   Joe Biden’s crazy crew
   They don’t know what to do
   No donor moolah
   From Miami to Missoula
   They know Joe has to go
   Or they’ll get no more dough
   But every time it’s mentioned—
   ‘Doctor’ Biden shouts out ‘NO!!’

   Auld Joe rattles his saber
   He can barely stand upright
   Half the time he stands there staring
   Like a deer at a headlight
   He has lost his biggest sponsors
   Now they’re getting impolite
   When your man can’t toss the caber
   Ain’t it time to call the fight?

   Jill sticks right by his side
   It’s so undignified
   She leads him by the halter
   And claims he’ll never falter
   This farce is in full swing
   They’re laughing in Beijing
   They laugh at us in Moscow
   And that’s sooo embarrassing

   Auld Joe rattles his saber
   He can barely stand upright
   Half the time he stands there staring
   Like a deer at a headlight
   He has lost his oldest sponsors
   Now they’re getting impolite
   When your man can’t toss the caber
   Ain’t it time to call the fight?

   Joe’s not the favorite son
   His brain has come undone
   If not for his mad spouse
   He’d be back at his own house
   In future we’ll lament
   Joe Biden’s slow descent
   Into a palsied creature
   Not a stately older gent

   If wars are won through Narrative,
   What is the Narrative made of?
   Boom Boom!

   Auld Joe rattles his saber
   He can barely stand upright
   Half the time he stands there staring
   Like a deer at a headlight
   He has lost his oldest sponsors
   Now they’re getting impolite
   When your man can’t toss the caber
   Ain’t it time to call the fight?

   He can barely stand upright . . .
   He won’t read what we wrote him so we get him out of sight
   He goes to bed at 4 PM and sleeps all through the night

   Like a deer at a headlight . . .
   He hasn’t been our President for such a long time
   He lets us start a war any place at any time

   Ain’t it time to call the fight? Yeah!

   Reply ↓
2. none July 17, 2024 at 7:12 am

   HN discussion of the google stops indexing story:

   https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40970987

   Nobody is sure what is going on, but there is a mix of skepticism, analysis, and the usual “google is now useless” laments.

   Reply ↓
   1. Stephen V July 17, 2024 at 7:38 am

      Worse than useless. I did a search for ” IRS.GOV FEIN ” and the first result was not IRS website but a private co. Who will be glad to take $300 from you for something IRIS does for free ! I also dumped Duck Duck Go for coming up empty on the simplest stuff. I now use Presearch.com.

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      1. VTDigger July 17, 2024 at 9:28 am

         Always good to learn about new search engines. I’ll put in a plug for qwant here as well.

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3. The Rev Kev July 17, 2024 at 7:20 am

   ‘Darren J. Beattie 🌐
   @DarrenJBeattie
   The question isn’t just how in the hell that roof 150 yards away from Trump was unguarded
   The question is also how this gunman knew that it was unguarded’

   Simple. He walked by it and looked up. Footage has emerged of how people on the ground from a small distance away can see all of that roof. He only had to swing by that same area to make sure that there was nobody there and he was in business.

   Of course in the latest CYA operation, officials are accusing Iran of being behind this shooting. No, seriously. They are actually saying this. I thought that this was beyond pathetic until another US official swore that if you say the words ‘Thomas Matthew Crooks’ to a Farsi speaker, that in their own language that means ‘Death to America.’ I don’t know about you guys but I’m convinced.

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   1. zagonostra July 17, 2024 at 7:29 am

      Interesting how the “lone gun man” is always referred to with three names, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, they kind of stick in your mind. Incompetence or conspiracy? I tend toward the latter, but why a public spectacle? They easily could knock off Trump in a multitude of ways. The only thing I can think of is what people refer to as “The Revelation of the Method.” They, the “inner circle,” want you to know they can get away with it, or maybe they just benefit by drawing attention away from what they don’t want us to focus on, like genocide in Gaza

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   2. Benny Profane July 17, 2024 at 8:03 am

      Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!

      Reply ↓
      1. ambrit July 17, 2024 at 9:14 am

         Bidenjuice! Bidenjuice! Bidenjuice!
         There, fixed it for you. Now you’re conjuring up the “More Effective Evil.”

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   3. griffen July 17, 2024 at 8:35 am

      It’s like the slow drip of every day news releases being even worse than the admitted facts on the ground from just one day or one week before. Just for a comparison, and only to draw on from my professional experience. I recall the news developments being much this way starting about late September 2008. One involved in financial markets and facing the now real timeline that XYZ bank or XYZ broker dealer is in worse shape..now they are seriously worse… financial losses just kept getting ever worse and looking ever more gloomy.

      Three people on security detail were inside that building? Oh come on, smell the roses. Cya to your early retirement. At a minimum, it is time for Secretary Mayorkas to hit the road.

      Reply ↓
   4. Carolinian July 17, 2024 at 8:46 am

      I fully believe that “nobody f**ks with a Biden” extends to anyone having the gall to run against him for president and that he would have been happy to Nordstream Trump. After all he’s been trying to put him behind bars as an alternative.

      But inventing explanations for things that seem hard to explain is the essence of any conspiracy theory. It’s way too early to get started on that. Nobody blamed the Secret Service for JFK and thought they were part of some kind of a plot (well maybe some). Incompetence seems like the best call on Butler until proven otherwise.

      The problem is that people who pretend to be shocked by an assassination attempt shrug at the lawfare and Russiagate and other equally outrageous extremes. Their real concern is plausible deniability.It’s not as though our rulers abhor violence.

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   5. bertl July 17, 2024 at 8:59 am

      So the plot was laid when the would-be assasin was christened? An example of the Divine process of forward thinking not quite working out as intended? Or maybe it is just a convenient coincidence that it translates back as Thomas Matthew Fraud (English to Persian, Google translate; Persian to English , Reverso)? It does’t even approach the standard CYA test of credibility, Occam’s razor – unless you really do think Trump’s salvation was a powerful message to US voters of Heaven favouring the election of The Donald, and I’m pretty sure that many will but that belief will based on a much simpler and more direct back story of outright collusion to create an opportunity for your average youthful passing sniper who gets the urge to blow away the Once and Future President.

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4. zagonostra July 17, 2024 at 7:22 am

   >Trump’s VP Pick Vance Says Iran Needs To Be ‘Punched Hard’ Antiwar.com (Kevin W)

   “Joe Biden has done nothing to help our ally Israel. Joe Biden has made it harder and harder for Israel to win that war. He has prolonged the war to take out Hamas,” Vance said

   I haven’t seen any article that puts a timeline on when Vance was selected. Was he someone foisted on Trump? If so was it right after the assassinations attempt, as some speculate, or was it well in advance. Quotes like the one above, and other bellicose statements on Iran, are depressing. No succor for a war mongering polity intent on death and destruction instead of improving the lives of its citizens.

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   1. The Rev Kev July 17, 2024 at 7:45 am

      The Neocons were always determined that Trump’s VP be a fellow Neocon and wanted somebody like Rubio. Trump chose Vance instead which did not make them happy so maybe all this ra-ra talk by Vance is to somewhat sooth them. Of course once in power, Iran may not be such a priority. A lot has changed with Iran since Trump had Soleimani murdered back in 2020. For a start, Iran is now in BRICS so has solid contacts with both Russia and China, neither of who will abandon Iran to an American attack. In addition, Iran is getting more and more Russian equipment and technology which is really ramping up the difficulties of attacking that country. So in the end, Vance may shove Iran on the back-burner for the real target – China.

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      1. Carolinian July 17, 2024 at 8:58 am

         Iran also just elected a “reformer” and that may help with a less confrontational relationship–except with Israel of course. But the current Iran hating government in Israel may not last long.

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      2. pjay July 17, 2024 at 9:15 am

         Read along with the Larison article, this is pretty depressing. Not really a surprise given his previous positions, but depressing given this emphasis right out of the VP blocks. Larison makes a relevant observation with which I agree:

         “The Soleimani assassination is a good test of someone’s foreign policy judgment. Politicians that think that the assassination was a good idea and necessary confirm that they have terrible judgment and shouldn’t be trusted to make good policy decisions. Those that recognize that it was a pointless and reckless escalation even if it didn’t lead to a major war are much more likely to be prudent and wise in other situations as well. Vance has shown us which camp he is in.”

         Maybe I missed it, but has anyone traced Vance’s level or sources of support by the Israel lobby yet?

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   2. ilsm July 17, 2024 at 9:15 am

      Vance is in trouble with the “Putin is the devil incarnate” crowd because he sees Ukraine as not in US’ national interests.

      To say “national interests” instead of “Putin bad and WW III needed” is a problem!

      Reply ↓
5. JohnA July 17, 2024 at 7:31 am

   Re Startup Makes Butter Using CO2 and Water

   Whatever the merits or otherwise of this spread, like all innovations and new technology, when it comes to prioritising by TPTB, it will always be used to make guns before butter.

   Reply ↓
   1. k July 17, 2024 at 8:37 am

      If it turns out to be inedible, it could always be marketed as Gun Butter ( gun grease). Think of the market!

      Reply ↓
   2. marcel July 17, 2024 at 8:38 am

      I bet that startup uses CO2, water and tons of energy to make tasteless “butter”.

      Reply ↓
   3. griffen July 17, 2024 at 8:48 am

      Using in the morning to spread on warm toast, and a fresh glass of juice made with their Juicero; surely, such advances are possibly innovative but not really additive I will suggest.

      I’ve always or often wondered about the appeal of avocado toast at $15…if we’re listing items in daily life I would neither own nor even wish to try.

      Reply ↓
      1. ambrit July 17, 2024 at 9:22 am

         At roughly $1.00 USD per smallish unit, try and find a consistently “smooth and edible” avocado at the local grocers today. If you do find one, do indeed make your own “avocado toast” dish for lunch, brunch, or other ‘sophisticated event.’
         I “grew up” in Miami where you could literally sneak into a neighbours yard and pluck a ripe green spheroid from the bough. Nothing beats fresh.

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         1. Wukchumni July 17, 2024 at 9:30 am

            I grew up where the Haas avocado originated and was surrounded by trees, and then somebody figured out that avocados don’t pay property tax, and they cut them down and put in tract homes now worth a cool million clams per.

            We used to have avocado wars, and the only rule of engagement was your projectile had to be on the soft side, and if you hit your adversary just right, the thing would explode on their person and leave a gooey green mess. Like we’d waste good Wonder Bread* toast on them?

            *Wonder Bread builds strong bodies 8 ways

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   4. Captain Obvious July 17, 2024 at 8:50 am

      The news should say: “Bill Gates makes something that is not butter”. Now he just have to kill all the cows in order to make people buy it. Well, not all cows. He will keep some for himself, ’cause he surely ain’t going to eat this stuff.

      Reply ↓
      1. ambrit July 17, 2024 at 9:24 am

         Ah! Now all becomes clear. This is really about reducing ‘bovine flatulence.’ Save the Earth by eating junkfood.
         I knew all along that I was “ahead of the curve.”

         Reply ↓
   5. MicaT July 17, 2024 at 8:52 am

      Essentially an E fuel.
      Made the same way.
      Co2, hydrogen, electricity
      Just arranged differently

      Reply ↓
6. funemployed July 17, 2024 at 7:58 am

   If I was Trump I definitely wouldn’t get that ear fixed. Might have the surgeon snip off a little extra for show.

   Reply ↓
   1. Benny Profane July 17, 2024 at 8:05 am

      Maybe a small patriotic tattoo.

      Reply ↓
      1. Wukchumni July 17, 2024 at 8:33 am

         Or a teensy-weensy Van Gogh-inspired self portrait on the lower lobe?

         Reply ↓
         1. Randall Flagg July 17, 2024 at 9:13 am

            C’mon man, Trump was just trying to get his ears pieced the hard way.
            I still can’t imagine where we would be right now if that shooter had been successful.

            Reply ↓
            1. Wukchumni July 17, 2024 at 9:19 am

               …help me Rwanda

               …we might have been on the verge of being Tutsis & Hutus, but with more effective weaponry

               Reply ↓
            2. The Rev Kev July 17, 2024 at 9:20 am

               One thing would have been certain. If Trump had been killed, the media would have downplayed it as much as they could and after the funeral, they could not deep-six stories about him fast enough.

               Reply ↓
   2. converger July 17, 2024 at 8:06 am

      Do we know for sure that it was a bullet, not a piece of shattered teleprompter?

      Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev July 17, 2024 at 8:16 am

         If it was a piece of shattered teleprompter, then surgeons would have had to go in and make sure that there were no fragments left in his ear before cleaning up that wound. We have seen no such reports of a surgical procedure like that being carried out. So it was almost certainly a lucky miss by an amateur shooter. But I will let the Life of Brian have the last word here-

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5i1cJIwE7M

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      2. Jackiebass63 July 17, 2024 at 8:27 am

         Does it matter? Either could have been fatal.

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      3. Yves Smith Post authorJuly 17, 2024 at 9:29 am

         This appears to be a liberal meme to discredit the idea that Trump barely escaped being killed.

         The bullet that missed him killed someone behind him, FFS. No chatter from the Secret Service worrying about broken glass. They all went to the ground immediately. You’d have cut hands or knees or both if glass had been on the ground near the podium.

         Please do not make comments like this which verge on being nonsensical in the absence of supporting evidence.

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   3. The Rev Kev July 17, 2024 at 8:08 am

      Was thinking the same thing myself. He should leave that ear with a scar that will be a mark of his character for whoever he meets. And it sure beats having to pull your shirt up to show your scar each and every time-

      https://photos.com/featured/president-johnson-shows-surgical-scar-bettmann.html

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      1. Benny Profane July 17, 2024 at 8:17 am

         https://hti.osu.edu/opper/lesson-plans/cold-war-conflict-in-vietnam-the-vietnam-era-presidency/images/johnsons-scar

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   4. ex-PFC Chuck July 17, 2024 at 8:35 am

      Orville Freeman, who was Minnesota’s governor in the late 1950s, had been wounded in the face while he was serving as a USMC officer in Bougainville during World War II. Our family friend and neighbor Chris Erickson was a state senator who caucused with the Conservatives (at the time Minnesota did not allow major party affiliation in the Legislature), and he frequently remarked you could always tell whether it was an election year or not by which side of his face Freeman presented to the photographers.

      Reply ↓
7. k July 17, 2024 at 8:03 am

   Antidote: Amazing how high they fly – and you can still hear their odd calls. Always fascinated by them.
   thanks for the pic!

   Sandhill Cranes

   Reply ↓
   1. djrichard July 17, 2024 at 9:21 am

      I got close to one of these guys at Sylvan Heights Birk Park in North Carolina where they have a couple behind fence. I enticed one to feed from my hand. In the process left some nice marks in my hand and also gave a low kind of a growl – imagine their trumpet dialed down to where it’s a low guttaral sound. Sounded like a dinosaur. Anyways, it was very cool!

      Reply ↓
8. Benny Profane July 17, 2024 at 8:13 am

   Awful advice telling anybody not to exercise for a few months, unless one has an orthopedic injury. Trump uses the same illogic to justify his sloth, that exercise just “drains energy”, like we have some sort of finite supply to be conserved. But, in case you haven’t noticed, we are a nation of sloths, heading for a miserable old age of diabetes and lazy boys in front of the TV.

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   1. The Rev Kev July 17, 2024 at 8:25 am

      It’s all part of the economy of effort approach to medicine-

      Don’t run if you can walk.
      Don’t walk if you can stand still.
      Don’t stand still if you can sit.
      Don’t sit if you can lie down.
      Don’t lie down if you can just go for a snooze.

      It’s all suppose to be very scientific like.

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   2. Wukchumni July 17, 2024 at 8:28 am

      I believe that every human has a finite amount of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

      Neil Armstrong

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      1. Terry Flynn July 17, 2024 at 8:49 am

         Hehe. Whilst we know that ideas along the lines of a fixed number of beats is an old wives’ tale, like many it has a kernel of truth in it. When awaiting the on-call cardiologist to check my ECG* when I had been TWO HOURS in Supraventricular Tachycardia and was the “top priority patient” in the Emergency Department, I got the politest but firmest telling off in my life by the ED consultant.

         “Terry, you’ve been getting these since age 10, you have a PhD in med stats, you work with consultants in multiple specialties and some rather famous clinicians. How the family-blog have you not had this seen to before now? All things considered, you’ve probably made your heart quite a bit older than the rest of you.”

         *The consultant told me he wasn’t gonna give me the “magic potion” (aka adenosine) until the cardiologist OKed it since my ECG was “a bit weird” and if I was not in SVT he might kill me rather than reboot my heart! Plus, I avoid doctors precisely BECAUSE I have worked with so many of them ;-)

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         1. ilsm July 17, 2024 at 9:25 am

            I avoid urologists and colo-rectal surveyors!

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      2. The Rev Kev July 17, 2024 at 8:53 am

         I bet that his heart was beating plenty when he was trying to land on the Moon and Buzz Aldin called out that they only had 60 seconds of fuel left.

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      3. ddt July 17, 2024 at 8:55 am

         Nematology prof at UC Davis also shared the same theory. Also an avid smoker.

         Reply ↓
      4. ex-PFC Chuck July 17, 2024 at 9:00 am

         https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=lie+down+until+it+passes&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.toxicards.com%2Fdata%2Fcards%2Fwhenever-i-feel-the-need-to-exercise-i-lie-down-until-it-goes-away-475.png

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   3. Yves Smith Post authorJuly 17, 2024 at 9:33 am

      That is bullshit.

      You must never have had mono. Not only is walking a few blocks all one can do in a day, but if you were somehow able to jack yourself enough to be able exercise with mono, you would risk damaging your spleen.

      Plenty of other ailments require months of recovery.

      Reply ↓
9. Mikel July 17, 2024 at 8:21 am

   Haiti May End Up Foiling US Plans for Kenya – Orinoco Tribune

   “…Last Sep. 25, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in Nairobi to ink a still shrouded security deal with Kenya, making it a key U.S. chess piece in East Africa. The Kenyan police deployment to Haiti and the drafting of Kenya into NATO were only parts of Washington’s larger plan to use Kenya as its regional cop to fight “terrorism” and stop the growing influence of Russia and China across Africa….”

   NATO – the biggest threat to peace in the world – just really grasping for relevancy everywhere one looks.

   Reply ↓
10. Wukchumni July 17, 2024 at 8:25 am

    I don’t know what to make of it really. surrounded by a largely oak savanna that didn’t drop their leaves until December last year-after the winter of record in the Southern Sierra for 125+ years, perhaps the ground being so saturated with water extended the usual leaf drop by 2 months, and now some of my oak trees are shedding leaves in mid July-surely a defense mechanism against something, and the only something was our recent heat dome where low temps seldom got below the 80’s and highs below 110, a phenomenon, I as a native son of the golden west, have never experienced, nor has anyone else with 6 decades on the books, nor the forest for the trees.

    I’ve been pretty diligent about removing dead limbs on trees, but there are still many i’ve not got around to, and some dead limbs that were 10 feet high have drooped down to 7 or 8 feet in just a fortnight’s time, and they are the weakest link-unaffected by the amount of nourishment a tree gets, so a different issue from the leaf drop-all heat related.

    Oak trees can go dormant and shut down, humans aren’t afforded that luxury.

    It doesn’t take much to throw things out of kilter, and the big heat seems to approximate the difference in temps the Little Ice Age went through, albeit on the other side of the gig.

    All of the present glaciers in the Sierra Nevada were formed in the Little Ice Age, and if you look at historical photos of them from the 1800’s and early 1900’s, all have receded quite a bit, but to have lasted say 500 years as a relic of a time of pretty moderate change in the climate, where the temps were less than 1°C cooler, not 1.5°C warmer.

    There was about 1/20th the current population, and the world was more or less completely disconnected from one another, apparently no internet back then.

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    1. Jackienass63 July 17, 2024 at 8:35 am

       Where I live in upstate NY the white oak don’t shed their leaves until spring and new leaves are sprouting. Red oak shed right after maples in the fall. There are other oak varieties but not common.

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    2. vidimi July 17, 2024 at 9:35 am

       Imagine how much worse things would be if this climate change malarkey was real /s

       Reply ↓
11. flora July 17, 2024 at 8:27 am

    Teamsters president speaks at the GOP convention. utube. ~17+ minutes.

    WATCH: Teamsters President Sean O’Brien speaks at Republican National Convention | 2024 RNC Night 1

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDnocISOKc

    Reply ↓
12. Steve H. July 17, 2024 at 8:28 am

    > New Memristor Device Challenges the Von Neumann Bottleneck With Ionic Innovation SciTech Daily (Chuck L)

    >> Researchers at EPFL have developed a novel nanofluidic memristor, a device that mimics the brain’s efficient ion-based information processing.

    Genuinely amazing. Memristors had dropped out of sight for awhile. At least one attempt to claim the effect wasn’t real, and in truth the technical issues have been large. And the programming differences meaning it would be easier to train up a new generation of programmers, all the rest would immediately be working on legacy systems. But there’s a race, and the winner, wins.

    That nanofluids are the solution is icing on the cake.

    Reply ↓
    1. caucus99percenter July 17, 2024 at 9:03 am

       I’m eager to see the details of the “non-von”* architectures and programming techniques they are exploring, for processors based on memristors.

       * not based on the Von Neumann computing model

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    2. CA July 17, 2024 at 9:12 am

       https://english.news.cn/20231011/295aca91a38f4a88a852d6d420975484/c.html

       October 11, 2023

       Scientists develop fully integrated memristor chip with low energy consumption

       BEIJING — Chinese scientists have developed a fully integrated memristor chip with improved learning ability and low energy cost, according to a study * recently published in the journal Science.

       With artificial intelligence (AI) technology profoundly changing the way of production and life, learning becomes highly important for edge intelligence devices in order to adapt to different application scenarios.

       However, current technologies for training neural networks require moving extensive data between the processor chip and off-chip main memory, which incurs massive energy consumption and hinders the learning process.

       Based on 11 years of research, scientists from Tsinghua University developed a full-system-integrated chip consisting of multiple memristor arrays and all the necessary peripheral circuits to support complete on-chip learning.

       “The chip integrates complete circuit modules to support autonomous learning, and it has successfully demonstrated various learning tasks including motion control, image classification and speech recognition,” said Yao Peng, the co-first author of the study, from the School of Integrated Circuits, Tsinghua University.

       According to the study, the chip can achieve autonomous learning with only about three percent of the energy consumption of the conventional application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) when running the same task…

       * https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade3483

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13. Es s Ce Tera July 17, 2024 at 8:28 am

    re: Climate change/record temps everywhere

    Toronto just had a major power outage lasting over 12 hours. Allegedly caused by was massive flooding due to record rainfall (over 4 inches in a freak rainfall). Apparently, a transmission station was flooded, so apparently we’ve got a single point of failure in our grid. But for one day and night much of the city was without AC.

    Since power outages are a normal and frequent thing in cities everywhere around the world, with these worldwide record temperature increases I was thinking humdrum periodic outages will soon become catastrophic killer events.

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev July 17, 2024 at 9:05 am

       That’s rather disconcerting that. Toronto is suppose to have a population of nearly 3 million people but to have a single point of failure in the grid as you say sounds like a lack of planning – or imagination.

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       1. ambrit July 17, 2024 at 9:31 am

          Redundancy in hardware is antithetical to “the bottom line.”
          Get with the program consumer!

          Reply ↓
14. midtownwageslave July 17, 2024 at 8:29 am

    Re the Sean Davis tweet – stochastic violence?

    Also, let’s not underestimate the power of incompetence. Perhaps DJTs detail was busy with other things the night before the attempt.

    https://www.vox.com/2014/9/30/6870841/white-house-crasher-omar-gonzalez-secret-service-explained

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15. TomDority July 17, 2024 at 8:31 am

    ABC news last night did a segment with Joe Biden where Joe Biden asks why the news has not fact checked the 28 lies Trump shat out during the debate – fair enough that Trump should be called out.
    Later, and this is funny and really serious and dispiriting to me, The report was on Menendez being guilty of all counts and the half Billion dollars he had stashed at home – Printed on screen was Billion with a B and the reporter said Billion – with a B – and muir said Billion as well —- So I guess fact checking is never done even with such an obvious and easy statement by Muir or the Reporter or the screen test like that was million not billion. So a number that is off by 1000xs is let go – un-fact checked and unrecognized by Muir or anyone else in charge with any actual neurosynaptic activity.
    As for Anchoring in the realm of Finance and Economics – well that anchoring has been ongoing and in combat for supremacy for ever.

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16. The Rev Kev July 17, 2024 at 8:37 am

    “To war with Kaja Kallas – Brussels’ total break with Moscow”

    Kaja Kallas may have ideas about having Ursula von der Leyen’s job one day and she may just get it. She is an opportunist that will always get in front of whatever the new narrative is. She tried to make out that she was repressed when the Soviets were in Estonia but it has come out that her family were among the ruling class. She was gung-ho about attacking anything Russian but which did not stop her husband having lucrative dealings with Russian companies which she denied all knowledge of. Now that she has Borell’s job, she dropped her home country of Estonia to make her way to the big time games in Brussels. I’m sure that in the next year or two she will be raging against the Iranians as well as the Chinese as that will be the new coming narrative. She is young and on the hustle.

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    1. bertl July 17, 2024 at 9:26 am

       Even allowing for the fact that I’ve never understood the point of Estonia, a hamlet passing for a village, it is a strong reminder of the Nazi roots of the European Project. Was it ever really intended to function as a Common Market so that the member states could prosper through trade with each other, or was the acorn planted to deliberately become a federal state with a taste for genocidal warfare?

       The only dignity the EU can now cling to belongs to Orban, given that the charmingly thick élite drones of the Fourth Reich seem intent on destroying the creature they, and their èlite drone parents before them, created. When Trump and Vance walk away from Europe, it will collapse into little more than a gaggle of impoverished, scrabble farm countries, most of which will be unable to acquire the cheap energy which made their industries possible, let alone competitive.

       But, in the meantime, let’s just enjoy the entertaining failures of Useless fonda Lyin’ and the spawn of two families committed to two competing versions of totalitarianism as they dance to the grift.

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       1. Benny Profane July 17, 2024 at 9:37 am

          If these people have any doubts about the near term future of our support of Ukraine and NATO, the JD Vance VP pick should convince them to change their direction.

          Click to Edit – 

          

          If these people have any doubts about the near term future of our support of Ukraine and NATO, the JD Vance VP pick should convince them to change their direction.

          SaveCancelDelete

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17. Terry Flynn July 17, 2024 at 8:39 am

    Re NHS productivity, OK I’ll bite, since health economics technically remains my “home discipline”. Throughout my 20+ year career the question of measuring the productivity of health care systems generally, and the NHS specifically, was seen as an issue for the brave or foolhardy. Andrew Street (these days at LSE) was a great guy who took on the task for many years. The trouble is, so many outcomes of healthcare are difficult/impossible to measure. Who cares if we are doing more joint replacements per GBPmillion if all the additional patients go into “catastrophic decline” – a topic my “top boss” in Bristol in 2009 wanted to investigate. FYI this is the guy who literally wrote the textbook on rheumatology used in UK medicine and who was chucked out of the US (ahem, I mean global) rheumatology professional association for blowing the whistle on Vioxx, only to get their medal of honour when the scandal was properly uncovered. He also was on a certain notorious BA flight that landed in Kuwait, but that’s a whole other interesting anecdote.

    A non-trivial number of elderly people getting joint replacement go rapidly downhill and die within 6 months. Nothing in the pre-operative clinical data predicted who would follow this path and my boss was understandably upset and wanted to use the quality of life instrument I co-developed to attempt to better identify potential people in future.

    Returning to the specifics of the BBC article – “money” and “staff” – the answers are well-known to certain health economists, as well as huge numbers of people who work in systems like the NHS (and I did real “at the coal face work” during the early part of the pandemic when our local hospital lost most of its admin staff in oncology). As the “Manchester school” people pointed out loudly from the mid 1990s to at least 2009 (when I left UK), there is a very stupid system of treatment funding, in that “cost-effective” new treatments get funded for everybody who need them but there are vast numbers of existing, old, cost-ineffective (and often harmful) treatments that should also be being evaluated and discontinued but are continued willy-nilly.

    As the article states, capital spending has been atrocious and it is now that buildings are literally falling down. I did my post-doc work during the 2nd Blair term (when Brown turned on the funding taps) and though a lot of the new builds were funny money (aka PFI), you really noticed how many new NHS and associated buildings went up. Plus my unit got the luxury of 5 year guaranteed funding cycles, allowing us to “do research the old way” rather than scramble to publish or perish.

    Regarding “things on the ground”, I’ll end with an anecdote from my (latest) visit to cardiology on Monday. I am scheduled for a CT scan within a fortnight. They insisted on prescribing three (yes three) tablets of the beta-blocker I am on to push up my dosage on the 3 days in run up to scan, to hopefully push my heart-rate down to 60ish (which is apparently better for scan resolution etc). The clinician had been talking shop with me so knew I had a stash (not “out of date”) of higher dose pills at home, and a pill cutter, so there was no reason for me to be adding to the zoo that is the out-patient pharmacy. FFS. Plus, I said quite openly “if you think that dose will bring me anywhere near 60 bpm, then I’ve a bridge to sell you. You should warn them they’ll be using that short-acting med to lower my pulse on the day”. No. That didn’t work. Because the boxes have to be ticked (checked for those across the pond). Never mind productivity increases. I’m frankly surprised the NHS hasn’t collapsed entirely already.

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18. Mikel July 17, 2024 at 8:48 am

    The question isn’t just how in the hell that roof 150 yards away from Trump was unguarded

    The question is also how this gunman knew that it was unguarded

    — Darren J. Beattie 🌐 (@DarrenJBeattie) July 15, 2024

    And what about how the allegedly shy, socially awkward “loner” so confidently walked out in the open with his gun to the building. Almost as if he thought somebody had his back…

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19. ChrisFromGA July 17, 2024 at 8:53 am

    Trouble in Chosen paradise:

    Orthodox mob attacks 2 IDF senior officers

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev July 17, 2024 at 8:57 am

       This was always going to happen. They have a history of attacking police and soldiers when it suits them as they know that those soldiers and police are probably just secularists. And they can turn quite violent.

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    2. Wukchumni July 17, 2024 at 8:59 am

       …the People’s Affront of Judea?

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       1. Terry Flynn July 17, 2024 at 9:05 am

          You were close to owing me a new keyboard! Now I have hiccups from swallowing water weirdly.

          Bravo.

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       2. The Rev Kev July 17, 2024 at 9:06 am

          “Splitters!”

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       3. wol July 17, 2024 at 9:27 am

          I love this site!

          Reply ↓
20. Craig H. July 17, 2024 at 9:05 am

    Seems about right, looking at the volume of phishing e-mails I receive.

    Whenever I peek in my spam folders things look bad but for me the gmail and protonmail spam filters are almost 100% effective.

    (Cross fingers and knock on wood.)

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21. Randall Flagg July 17, 2024 at 9:20 am

    >https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/16/24199686/puerto-rico-fossil-fuel-industry-lawsuit-climate-change

    Yea, about that lawsuit, perhaps Vermont should team up with them in a cost sharing move…

    >https://www.carbonbrief.org/daily-brief/us-vermont-becomes-first-state-to-enact-law-requiring-oil-companies-pay-for-damage-from-climate-change/

    As a small State that’s a tall order for us financially.

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22. Ghost in the Machine July 17, 2024 at 9:21 am

    Plastic surgeon reveals $10,000 surgery Donald Trump would have to undergo to fix his bullet-damaged ear Daily Mail (Li)

    He should not get it fixed. Visible reminder

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23. vidimi July 17, 2024 at 9:24 am

    tis appears to be a record year for flooding. The 711mm in China in 24 hours is insane, but Toronto got it pretty bad as well last night with almost half of that, which is still almost a semester’s worth of rainfall in one day. Blame the remnants of storm Beryl.

    I live between two rivers in France, about 30m from one and 70m from the other so the risk is quite high. Torrential rain runs off mostly into the rivers and we have hundreds of reservoirs upstream to control water volumes, but when the levee breaks, i’ll have no place to stay.

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24. Rob July 17, 2024 at 9:36 am

    The video of the owl and the helium filled bubbles triggered me to visualize the owl as the dark matter/energy in the universe causing galaxies to collide and intermingle. Kinda like a square dance caller lol.

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