Your therapist wants you to go outside ScienceBlog (Dr. Kevin)
Critical Public Health Threat: Deadly Fungus Discovered in Commercial Soil, Compost, and Flower Bulbs ScienceTech (ma)
US probes nearly 70 suspected human cases of H5N1 bird flu Telegraph
Danish insect farm sets sights on feeding Europe’s livestock PhysOrg
Heparin: A Common Blood Thinner Emerges as Potential Cobra Bite Antidote ScienceBlog. If you are in cobra territory, Dr. Kevin recommends carrying a dose on you and practicing administering a sterile saline shot into your calf, for example, so you don’t muff it in a real emergency. He recommends using BD-II 1ml insulin syringes with 12 or 13 mm needles (a bag of ten might cost ~$10). We do have cobras here but only in the country, and yours truly does not do nature/wilderness hikes, so I am not at risk. The only victims of cobras I know of here are….furzy’s dogs! A friend of hers quipped she has an Arlington (cemetery) in her back yard.
#COVID-19
With many people getting COVID from the summer surge, a reminder that the CDC's isolation guidelines are inadequate.
It's best to isolate until you test negative on multiple tests. If you can't stay home the whole time, wear an N95 mask to stop the virus spreading to others. pic.twitter.com/0cFRgmb59Q
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) July 18, 2024
Climate/Environment
Breaking News!
Code UFB!!!As of July 16, 2024, global sea-ice extent hit a new record low for the date, beating the record low set just last year. pic.twitter.com/pRGJTmBDBm
— Prof. Eliot Jacobson (@EliotJacobson) July 17, 2024
Deadly floods engulf parts of South Asia as extreme weather devastates vulnerable region CNN
China places 15 provinces on emergency alert as deadly floods make their way north South China Morning Post
How effective are buried power lines in preventing widespread power outages in cases like Beryl? ABC 13 (Kevin W)
European Disunion
European leaders discuss migration and Ukraine at a UK summit as concern grows about direction of US Associated Press (Kevin W)
Germany found a way to get rid of Ukrainians Vzglyad via machine translation (guurst)
How France’s “allies” are turning the country down Anti-Spiegel via machine translation (Micael T). Important.
A Trump-Vance White House could undermine European security – and end up pushing Russia and China closer The Conversation. Kevin W:
Key sentence – ‘Putin’s Russia has proven to be an untrustworthy negotiation partner before, as the collapse of the 2014 and 2015 Minsk ceasefire agreements clearly demonstrates.’ WTF
Old Blighty
No more ‘basket-case Britain’: Europe welcomes Starmer reset in UK-EU ties Guardian (Kevin W)
The Caucuses
❗️US Army advisor to be attached to the Ministry of Defence of Armenia.
— Tigran Khzmalyan (Տիգրան Խզմալյան) (@TigranKhzmalyan) July 18, 2024
Gaza
A video shows Israeli army forces releasing a number of Palestinian civilians whom they had detained and tortured in detention centers. The video reveals how the Israeli army forced the prisoners to run barefoot under the threat of gunfire. #GazaGenocide pic.twitter.com/u4sXraG2Cb
— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) July 18, 2024
We Volunteered at a Gaza Hospital. What We Saw Was Unspeakable. Politico (Tom H)
UN court orders Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories Guardian (Dr. Kevin). But this is only a non-binding, advisory opinion.
Overwhelming ICJ Ruling against Israel Highlights Need for UN Action Sam Husseini
Jordan behind attempted sabotage of China-hosted Palestinian talks: Report The Cradle (Chuck L)
Bedwetting, nightmares and shaking. War in Gaza takes a mental health toll, especially on children Associated Press (ma)
Far-right Israeli minister Ben-Gvir makes inflammatory Al-Aqsa visit Al Jazeera (Kevin W)
U.S. Launches Effort to Stop Russia From Arming Houthis With Antiship Missiles Wall Street Journal (Robin K). This is almost funny. Headline plus lead photo of exploding tanker suggests Russia is doing this not. But para 5 states, emphasis mine: “The combination of intelligence that Moscow might be planning to provide military support in Yemen…” Ahem, the US needs intelligence to figure out Russia might assist the Houthis? After US supplied and targeted weapons killed people on a beach in Crimea, Putin warned that Russia was prepared to hit US assets out of theater, basically saying Russia now regarded it as on to back US-opposed active operations in other parts of the world. This humble blog even said the US if it had any sense would see the Houthis and Hezbollah at the top of the list.
New Not-So-Cold War
Russia may deploy nuclear missiles in response to US missile deployment in Germany — MFA TASS (guurst)
SITREP 7/19/24: West Searches for New Deflection in Russian “Barrel Crisis” Simplicius
Russia Sentences Evan Gershkovich to 16 Years in Prison on Spying Charges Moscow Times
Syraqistan
Will European Powers Return to Afghanistan and Recognize the Taliban? Sputnik (Robin K)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
USPS shared customer postal addresses with Meta, LinkedIn and Snap TechCrunch (BC)
Imperial Collapse Watch
Mark Sleboda: Putin and China Just Put U.S. Military on HIGH ALERT and War is Coming to Eurasia Danny Haiphong, YouTube. Note the remark at 23:10, of a new Pentagon announcement stating it is planning for decades of conflict. So elected leaders have no say?
Biden
The Memo: Biden on the brink The Hill
🔴 Joe Biden said he is ‘looking forward’ to getting back on the campaign trail as he defies pressure to quit his run for re-election
Follow the latest 👇https://t.co/L9mbDQ5lte pic.twitter.com/aFqK9ndlkv
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) July 19, 2024
Biden’s family starts discussing his possible exit plan from the 2024 race NBC.
Good news: Joe Biden has only minor COVID symptoms: a headache, a loss of smell, and an inability to see the writing on the wall. pic.twitter.com/FnI5LlmaIb
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) July 20, 2024
Trump
Trump didn’t say he wouldn’t defend Taiwan Asia Times
Trump Assassination Attempt Post Mortem
ANOTHER PROFESSIONAL UPDATE ON THE FAILED TRUMP ASSASSINATION — WAS IT A SANCTIONED PLOT? Larry Johnson
Police didn’t have ‘manpower’ to watch building Trump rally shooter fired from Washington Post (furzy). Note Lambert posted a tweet yesterday, which was originally a Facebook post, supposedly by a Butler police official who said it was bogus that the police underperformed. They were asked to provide only 7 men for traffic detail
Vance
How Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley funded the sudden rise of JD Vance Financial Times (Kevin W)
J.D Vance on Tech and the Internet Reclaim the Net (Micael T)
Why Trump picking Vance as VP is about US foreign policy Responsible Statecraft
Not ONE of my Republican colleagues has supported my efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr.
And about 90% of them want to cut Social Security.
Anybody who is under the illusion that the Republicans care two wits for the working class is terribly wrong. pic.twitter.com/GsTZLUYSeg
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 19, 2024
Abortion
Storm Lake has a complicated history with abortion Art Cullen (Chuck L)
Our No Longer Free Press
Facebook and Instagram’s algorithmic favoritism towards extremist parties revealed in new study PsyPost (Paul R)
Meta’s Policy on Zionism Exposed: CyberWell Scrambles After Israel Ties Revealed Mint Press News (Chuck L)
Antitrust
Antitrust as Allocator of Coordination Rights UCLA Law Review
AI
Academic authors ‘shocked’ after Taylor & Francis sells access to their research to Microsoft AI The Bookseller (Paul R)
Croudstrike 404
Companies around the world hit by Microsoft outage Financial Times. Lead story.
CrowdStrike and Microsoft: all the latest news on the global IT outage The Verge
CrowdStrike has performed the largest ransomware attack in history.
Accidentally.
— vx-underground (@vxunderground) July 19, 2024
Crowdstrike Analysis:
It was a NULL pointer from the memory unsafe C++ language.
Since I am a professional C++ programmer, let me decode this stack trace dump for you. pic.twitter.com/uUkXB2A8rm
— Zach Vorhies / Google Whistleblower (@Perpetualmaniac) July 19, 2024
We are in the midst of one of the biggest meltdowns in tech history. The crowdstrike situation is already showing the institutional failure that happens when your incentives are growth at all costs with no regard for organisational memory and stability https://t.co/xUIi6E82ll
— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) July 19, 2024
For those who don't remember, in 2010, McAfee had a colossal glitch with Windows XP that took down a good part of the internet. The man who was McAfee's CTO at that time is now the CEO of Crowdstrike. The McAfee incident cost the company so much they ended up selling to Intel. pic.twitter.com/DgWid6MSK0
— Anshel Sag (@anshelsag) July 19, 2024
Russia Unaffected as Mass IT Outage Hits Companies Worldwide Sputnik (Robin K)
Class Warfare
Even a PhD isn’t enough to erase the effects of class Financial Times
Antidote du jour. Tracie H:
My husband pointed out this tiny kitten stumbling blindly about on our back patio. There are stray cats back there, and we’d not been aware of this one’s birth. I saw no parent, so picked it up and it’s little eyes appeared too crusted over to open, if it was even old enough to open them. A greenish fluid was leaking from them that had me concerned that it wasn’t normal, so off to the vet we went. The vet gave guessed its age at about 2 weeks, due to the presence of a tooth or two, placed a little drop of flea treatment (the fleas were almost bigger than the kitty, dubbed, “Indie” for Independence Day (it was that weekend), and equally appropriate, for an Indiana Jones adventurous-type spirit. He also provided us with some infection medication, and the sweet receptionist who was currently bottle feeding puppies had some advice along those lines.
When we got back home though, we discovered its mom had come out of hiding (an extremely shy feral kitty we are familiar with but hadn’t noticed her being in the family way) and was frantically pacing around calling out regularly. So, hoping the kitty’s eyes would be alright without the medication, since we hadn’t started it yet, and feeling that the Mom could care for Indie much better than we could, we set little Indie in his new basket here (sorry for the unattractive cardboard tag that we’d not taken time to remove!) and placed him back on the patio. It’s mom, Zsa-Zsa for her beautiful long fancy fur, was reluctant to come forward for him while we watched, so we left. When I later went to retrieve the basket I was greeted by a horrendous odor of quite pungent urine. Interesting. I’d been concerned for her with that flea medication. I’m guessing she washed it off with the only fluid available to her.
And a bonus (Chuck L):
One of the most fascinating processes in nature.pic.twitter.com/ixMuClswbf
— Figen (@TheFigen_) July 19, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
‘Ed Zitron
@edzitron
We are in the midst of one of the biggest meltdowns in tech history. The crowdstrike situation is already showing the institutional failure that happens when your incentives are growth at all costs with no regard for organisational memory and stability
Quote
schizo
@tulpapilled’
With a crazy boss, the guy has only one real option. With 2,000 machines to do, he should methodically start to do them but not rush the job. When he does 12 or 16 hours work – whichever he feels like – he should go home and make sure the phone is turned off. He should also note the overtime. The next day he should continue until in several days, the job is done. It is unlikely that the boss can get rid of him and replace him as techies would be in high demand fixing these computers right now. But he should understand that he is finished at that company and threats of lawsuits are just bullying tactics when he can prove how he went beyond reasonable work hours to fix the problem. The stress of a crazy boss is just not worth it. And did that boss really think that it was a good idea having just one guy to deal with 2,000 computers because of the savings?
Sounds like an inadequate, incompetent boss … who should be fired!
A*hole bosses are like kudzu in the southeastern US….grow like pervasive weeds that they are. Boss don’t know what is required or involved, just get r done,…sleep or eating not allowed!
I’d suggest the pivot is “I can’t answer my phone, I still have 1,997 machines left to repair and update to make sure these turn on.”. And I’m emailing HR in between… should they care. It’s near equal today, I’m guessing that they care about their job and the health of the employer as they offer concern for the person filing a complaint.
Good suggestions above. I’d also keep those 27 voicemails and all other correspondence…try to discuss in writing only.
Lots of ammo in case they come at you with litigation. Maybe contact an atty, too, for some advice on how to prepare.
Ah, but it’s going to be arbitration with the arbitrator selected by then company, if any of the few USian companies I worked for is any indication.
The techie doesn’t mention if these are physical machines or virtual ones. When it comes to devops, a lot of deployments on virtual machines are controlled by deployment tools and scripts, so it’s feasible to have very few people look after these “machines”. Not that this means one should only have a single person in charge of looking after them, just very few if all you need to do to update all of them is to change a single configuration file or script.
All that works great combined with normal tech support outsourced to a cheap bidder multiple continents away until the only way to recover the machines requires physical access to the machines. And that’s the case with this issue as the machines are failing at boot time, so none of the remote access solutions work unless you’re dealing with a server that has some sort of ILO capability built in that allows for remote access even when the server can’t boot up.
Plus, from what I’m hearing most of these systems use drive encryption as well as standard, so first you need to find your record of the backup key to unlock the decryption (hope you didn’t store that on another Windows box), manually type that in before booting it into safe mode, then manually delete the affected bad file.
Then rinse and repeat for the other 1999 machines.
Amazing what damage someone can do accidentally when the “security” system has completely unfettered access to the machine.
We are in the midst of one of the biggest meltdowns in tech history…
Please remember that for years CrowdStrike, supported by Microsoft, has attacked China as a technology threat. With each attack on China being highlighted through American media in support of stopping technology trade with China. Even Chinese cranes, to be used for loading and unloading ships at American ports have been portrayed as a threat. Chinese rail cars are supposed to be used for spying on passengers…and on and on.
The point is, finding America’s technology security problem has been with CrowdStrike.
Pogo had it right-
‘We have met the enemy and he is us’
https://library.osu.edu/site/40stories/2020/01/05/we-have-met-the-enemy/
“A loss of X dollars is always the responsibility of an executive whose financial responsibility exceeds X dollars.”
– Weinberg’s ‘First Principle of Financial Management’ and ‘Second Rule of Failure Prevention’
– ‘First-Order Measurement’, Quality Software Management, Volume 2, Gerald Weinberg, Dorset House Publishing, 1993
re: Politico’s volunteering at Gaza hospital.
From Col. Kurtz monologue on horror – after witnessing lopped off vaccinated arms:
“The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that. These were not monsters, these were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that.”
>>>among US PhD-holders in science, social science engineering and health. [commas sic in article]
Lots of (IMO) dubious PhD programs. A PhD doesn’t necessarily correlate to intellectual achievement (versus being a credential). see Dr. Jill Biden, lol, see Masters degree factories at many unis.
But the article doesn’t delve into the fields of PhDs studied. ugg, I gotta read the actual paper to answer a basic question that the journalist should have addresses.
my unscientific prejudice from experience is that people who go out of their way to be addressed as as a non-MD “Doctor” are dolts.
Agree and disagree. I don’t use my title these days as it has no relevance to what I do in life. My PhD was appropriate form of address for a number of years. These days? Nope.
On other hand it should not be forgotten that the old TV comedy trope “are you a proper doctor?” is backwards. “Proper” doctors hold a research PhD. Medics have for centuries been “physicians” who are given the honorary title of “Doctor” due to one of those evolutions of language. Plus all of my “medical doctor” friends NEVER EVER use their title when booking flights, especially if the flight has the slightest possibility of going into US airspace. The last thing they want is to be called upon to help only to be sued by a USian. What a sad world we live in.
/pedantry And for the record, I liked the article, it certainly resonated a lot with my experience of academia.
PS to give more informative response as to why I liked that article. A PhD shows certain things but often not what many people think. “Well run” PhD programs teach you how to question things, how to think, how to investigate issues in a systematic rigorous way etc. The “conclusion” is, 99% of the time, utterly banal and arguably adds nothing or just the most minute addition to the sum of human knowledge. This means it is most definitely not a ticket into a higher social class: it just shows you can master critical skills consistently.
I used my main copy of my PhD as a literal doorstop for around 5 years. I was utterly sick of the field in which I worked by the time I got it. Which is a shame, because I had had to learn how to program in Fortran (from zero knowledge) in order to do my simulations. If I’d kept up those skills there’d be banks or other institutions bidding bigtime for me, given that loads of “legacy systems” are now in danger of being unfixable (and the current IT meltdown is another example of crappification).
To address a point Louis Fyne made, yes there are definitely dodgy PhD programs. I remember a Facebook convo with some FB friends. One of them (doing PhD in US Liberal Arts dept) admitted she’d cried upon questioning from some external at an evaluation point during her doctorate. Twas clear this was not “external bullying” but she was a victim of helicopter parenting as part of the “younger generations” and literally had never been told “you have that bit wrong” in her life. Possibly why she was one of the people who, when I left FB giving my email address to keep in touch, she was one of the ones who ghosted me from then on.
>Anybody who is under the illusion that the Republicans care two wits for the working class is terribly wrong.
So says Senator Sanders. Funny bit, he’s always in a fit about it. I’m supposed to be laboring under the illusion that the Democrats care two wits about the working class as well? Hell, I would settle for one wit that appeared to give sh*t. In either party. But I think all we have are nitwits in DC.
Agree that most of the Democrats cold give a damn about the working class these days. Lots of reasons to give Bernie grief but, at least he isn’t a Democrat.
Well he didn’t say the Democrats cared or for that matter don’t also want to cut Social Security. Bernie showed his true colors by not going third party and supporting Biden instead.
The public is desperately seeking authenticity. And while Trump with his warmed over supply side economics is a dubious populist, his corny embrace of his fan base seems to be real. I wonder how many of those thousands at Butler are on Social Security. Would he betray their love??
Wish Sanders had gone third party back in 2020 when they stuck the shiv in. Think he was afraid his legacy would be the next “Ralph Nader”.
Bernie could not play the actuarial tables and stay in the race into the Democratic convention in 2019.
There was a nonzero chance that Biden would have a health issue leaving an opening for Bernie.
Sanders folded early
Just thinking the same thoughts…come on Bernie, your political party controlled both houses in Congress and also the White House in 2021 to 2022…let alone other periods of holding the edge in 2 out of the 3, where they could have pushed something through.
Also concur on the nitwit description. Or as we’ve seen elsewhere, DC is like Hollywood but for the ugly people.
Fighting For,
Fighting For,
Always Something,
Worth Fighting For…
Hey Bernie. The trillions you voted for to send to the MIC and foreign wars would cover SS nicely. You old fraud. I want my money back, with interest.
>Anshel Sag
@anshelsag
·
Follow
For those who don’t remember, in 2010, McAfee had a colossal glitch with Windows XP that took down a good part of the internet. The man who was McAfee’s CTO at that time is now the CEO of Crowdstrike. The McAfee incident cost the company so much they ended up selling to Intel.
Take that those of you who say one person can’t make a difference in our world today…
How many times can someone fail, and again be in a leadership position that leads to half the internet going down around the world when a mistake is made?
‘Tigran Khzmalyan (Տիգրան Խզմալյան)
@TigranKhzmalyan
❗️US Army advisor to be attached to the Ministry of Defence of Armenia.’
Methinks that Armenia is being set up to become a failed state, merely to become a problem for their neighbours which are Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkiye. And all of those countries have problems with the west by coincidence. Tough luck if you live in Armenia and I can’t wait for the first NATO base to be set up. Apparently the US Embassy in Armenia is huge and occupies a 23 acre (9.3 hectares) block so must have a huge member of people working there, some of whom even work for the US Embassy.
“Why Trump picking Vance as VP is about US foreign policy”
Was listening to the guys at The Duran and they made a keen observation. If Trump wins in November, that will be his final term as you cannot serve more than two terms as President. In any case, Trump will be 82 years old when the next election rocks around in 2028 so he may start experiencing the same sort of problems that has dogged Biden. So what this means is that J.D. Vance will be the Republican Presidential candidate in 2028 and will be Trump’s successor. And he will be only about 44 years old come 2028. There is a campaign for old Joe to “pass the torch” meaning resign but it looks like here Trump will be passing the torch to Vance and their combined vision of America. Hmmmm. President J.D. Vance.
Technically you can serve more than 2 terms as President.
https://cornerstonelaw.us/22nd-amendment-doesnt-say-think-says/
They did everything so much smoother and savier than the Democrats. Vance actually looks rather dangerous as a pseudo-populist republican.
Let’s hope the voters remember how much the Democrats torched themselves. Unless they put up an honest to God new dealer, they deserve another reckoning come 2028.
> Vance actually looks rather dangerous as a pseudo-populist republican.
He presents as “nationalist” and “pro-worker”, but at least he’s not also “socialist”. /s
It’s a start. Name me another senator or rep talking like he does. And, no, not Bernie, please.
Flora pointed to the Taibbi/Kirn post convention podcast where they highlighted an article by Christopher Steele–yes him–saying that Trump/Vance was a threat to the UK and that “we” (the British establishment, spookdom, press?) must do something to stop it. It seems that Cecil Rhodes old dream–that the English speaking US and UK would unite to rule a colonized world–still hangs on in the corridors of MI6 and it’s former minions. Meanwhile over here the hysteria of Russiagate and then Trump’s first impeachment shows similar thinking among our own would be rulers of the world. It’s enough to make you believe the old Rhodes scholar conspiracy theory, but shared class interest probably suffices.
A Trump return likely won’t really clear the Swamp but they do seem worried.
Re Cecil Rhodes old dream–that the English speaking US and UK would unite to rule a colonized world. That seemed to be a big thing in the 19th century and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle talked about it in one of his Sherlock Holmes stories. The hope in that story was that that minor spat between the US and the UK would be forgotten and both countries would one day reunite with that flag of that country being the red & white stripes of the US flag but a Union Jack in place of the stars. Something like the old Continental Union Flag-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Union_Flag
Karma eventually comes for the company (Crowdstrike) that aided and abetted the Russiagate story for the Clinton campaign and DNC.
Recall, the FBI just took Crowdstrike’s word (and data) and did NOT feel the need to take possession of the DNC servers themselves and conduct their own examination.
A Trump-Vance White House could undermine European security – and end up pushing Russia and China closer:
Seems to me Biden and his foreign policy team have already accomplished that.
Not sure how these two Brit authors will manage to get out of their twisted knickers.
Heparin: A common blood thinner emerges as potential cobra bite antidote.
I’m expecting an announcement this week of a 1500% price increase of this drug. Due to…uh…inflation and…um….supply chain issues.
Cobras in the US? Anywhere but a zoo?
“Your therapist wants you to go outside”
That therapist has a point. And it can be in your own house yard or even a park. Anywhere to get you out of yourself. It can be disconcerting to look at a tree and realize that it will still be here long after you’re gone. From my back patio I can see a range of mountains and there you are talking about hundreds of millions of years. Once, I was reflecting on such things and almost had a feeling of humility – but luckily the feeling quickly passed.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1814535601355694479
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
Everyone should read this devastating article by two American surgeons who travelled to Gaza:
https://politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/19/gaza-hospitals-surgeons-00167697 *
They’d never been in Gaza before and write that “in our combined 57 years of volunteering, we’ve worked on more than 40 surgical missions in developing countries on four continents. We’re used to working in disaster and war zones, of being on intimate terms with death and carnage and despair. None of that prepared us for what we saw in Gaza this spring.”
* ‘Nothing Prepared Us for What We Saw’: Two Weeks Inside a Gaza Hospital
1:39 AM · Jul 20, 2024
My partners dad/stepmother live in Prawet, Bangkok, and occasionally get a King Cobra in their garden – not just a country thing :)
The main danger when that happens though, is stopping the dog from trying to go after it – as usually they only attack when cornered (and it’s supposedly baby king cobras that are more bitey/dangerous). Think the dog had to get an antidote/shot before.
Did a hike part way up to Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai last year, and had to research/be-mindful of this. The monks do the hike multiple times a day, though, so that particular path is usually quite safe. I really would want to be carrying something as an antidote doing a proper hike, though.