Country diary: Yet another peril for our poor hedgehogs – glitter Guardian
Why it might be time to stop riding horses Telegraph
Climate
What has worked to fight climate change? Policies where someone pays for polluting, study finds AP.
Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades (paywalled) Science. From the Abstract: “Our insights on effective but rarely studied policy combinations highlight the important role of price-based instruments in well-designed policy mixes and the policy efforts necessary for closing the emissions gap.”
New Federal Report Details More of 2023’s Extreme Climate Conditions Inside Climate News
Scientists closely watching these 3 disastrous climate change scenarios USA Today
Syndemics
Asia ramps up border controls, tests and vaccines as new clade of mpox spreads Telegraph
Thailand Confirms Asia’s First Case of New Mpox Virus Strain Bloomberg
Europe Does Not Need Border Controls to Contain Mpox Spread, Health Authorities Say Schengen
Clinical and laboratory predictors of mpox severity and duration: an Italian multicentre cohort study (mpox-Icona) eBio Medicine. From the Results: “our findings showed a direct association between the MPXV Ct-value [(the cycle threshold value (Ct-value, surrogate of viral load)] measured in the first week after onset in the upper respiratory tract and disease severity.”
From gay sex to miracle cure: Fake news epidemic follows mpox outbreak France24
* * * The Covid-19 Summer Wave Is So Big, the FDA Might Release New Vaccines Early Wired. Commentary:
Covid is ripping through college campuses.https://t.co/WVAwza6Vdj pic.twitter.com/V7h4SvHg3V
— Lazarus Long (@LazarusLong13) August 22, 2024
China?
Morality and rules, and how to avoid drowning: what my daughters learned at school in China Guardian
India
Despite operational risks, data shows digital payments cruising ahead Business Standard
India shocked by report on rampant sexual abuse in Kerala’s film industry South China Morning Post
Pine Gap Readies For U.S. Nuclear War Declassified Australia
Syraqistan
Israel Will Collapse Within a Year if the War of Attrition Against Hamas and Hezbollah Continues Haaretz
Shin Bet Chief Warns PM and Ministers: Jewish Terror Is Jeopardizing Israel’s Existence Haaretz
* * * Biden speaks with Netanyahu as US prods Israel and Hamas to come to agreement on cease-fire deal AP. Commentary:
1/
It’s time to tell a real Netanyahu story, one that I’ve periodically told friends in very senior positions.
In the early 1990s I was a practicing attorney with real clients, one of which was the first non-kosher upscale restaurant in Jerusalem.
The owners asked to meet. https://t.co/o6DfGooy5p
— Daniel Seidemann (@DanielSeidemann) August 22, 2024
Netanyahu’s office denies reports Israel considering international force on Philadelphi Route Times of Israel
* * * Dire Warnings As Israel’s Fascists Have Taken Over The Rein Moon of Alabama
Jews bow in prayer on Temple Mount, violating status quo, as police stand by and watch Ynet
Hundreds of Ultra-Orthodox Israelis Clash With Police Over Draft NYT
* * * Israeli soldiers share videos documenting ‘war crimes’ in Gaza Anadolu Agency
* * * Anger, Despair As Israelis Bury Hostages Who Died In Captivity Agence France Presse
Israeli hostages reportedly killed by fire started by IDF operation The Jewish Chroncicle
* * * Morocco pardons 4,800 jailed for cultivating cannabis – so they can farm legally Middle East Eye
Accusations of US Regime-Change Operations in Pakistan and Bangladesh Warrant UN Attention Common Dreams
Africa
The foreign powers competing to win influence in Africa FT
China’s green panda bonds are ‘reliable’ financing option for Africa, summit hears South China Morning Post
European Disunion
EU reaffirms commitment to lithium deal amid rising tensions with Serbia BNE Intellinews
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine’s shock invasion of Kursk takes away one of Russia’s biggest advantages and may force it to rethink how this war is fought Business Insider
Zelensky’s Misadventures in Kursk Patrick Lawrence, Scheerpost
Zelensky’s new offensive could spell disaster for Putin The Spectator
Ukrainian troops retreat on Pokrovsk front to avoid encirclement – ISW Ukrainska Pravda
* * * Biden’s Ukraine Strategy Is Missing in Action Foreign Policy
Cases against American, Italian and Ukrainian journalists who visited Sudzha City were initiated in Russia Ukrainska Pravda
* * * Russia’s new war middle class BNE Intellinews
Ukraine 2023/24 grain exports jump 60% so far The Pig Site
2024
Key takeaways from the fourth night of the Democratic National Convention Al Jazeera
Kamala Harris vows to ‘strengthen, not abdicate’ US global leadership FT. Commentary:
When Kamala Harris said she'd make sure America always has the strongest most lethal fighting force in the world and the crowd broke into USA! USA! chants I knew then she was going to defeat fascism
— Nate Bear (@NateB_Panic) August 23, 2024
Accepting historic nomination, Harris vows ‘America, not China’ will win 21st century South China Morning Post
Sometimes You Just Have to Ignore the Economists Zephyr Teachout, The Atlantic
Digital Watch
In a leaked recording, Amazon cloud chief tells employees that most developers could stop coding soon as AI takes over Business Insider
WildChat: 1M ChatGPT Interaction Logs in the Wild arVxiv. From the Abstract: “We compare WildChat with other popular user-chatbot interaction datasets, and find that our dataset offers the most diverse user prompts, contains the largest number of languages, and presents the richest variety of potentially toxic use-cases for researchers to study.”
The Final Frontier
Astronomers think they’ve found a plausible explanation of the Wow! signal Ars Technica
South of the Border
Nicaragua shuts down 151 more NGOs, including US Chamber of Commerce affiliate Anadolu Agency
Our Famously Free Press
‘Judging Freedom’ resumes on youtube.com: today’s chat with Judge Andrew Napolitano Gilbert Doctorow
Healthcare
Does Ozempic Burn Fat or Just Reduce Appetite? A New Study Offers a Clue Gizmodo
World’s first mRNA lung cancer vaccine trial launched Anadolu Agency
Boeing
Striking Is in the Air at Boeing Labor Notes
Boeing whistleblower points to past electrical wiring defects in 737 MAX Seattle Times
Imperial Collapse Watch
US military contracting vessels will haul back Army boats used in Gaza pier mission FOX
Class Warfare
Amazon Is Boss of Subcontracted Drivers, Labor Board Prosecutors Say Bloomberg
Antidote du jour (Calle Eklund/V-wolf):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
FREE
(melody borrowed from Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye)
Now and then off of the grid there’s frigid weather
I built myself a cozy cabin me and I
In the wild I have no referee
I do whatever might occur to me
The only currency is time—I’m a big spender
No survivalist admits to his own madness:
‘Shit Hits The Fan and in the end you have no friends’
My guns and ammo are for self defense
Bunkers full of food is common sense
Hordes of people might show up to take me over
I’m here with my Kalashnikov
All my booby traps will knock intruders into stuffing
This world is what I’m frightened of
A world that’s full of strangers and it’s too damn tough
In the wild I’m livin’ straight solo
Off the grid I’m not a beggar and I’m not encumbered
I left the life I used to know—
Running with the rats with nothing much to show
Running with the rats with nothing much to show
Running with the rats with nothing much to show
Way back then I was a rabbit who was hoarding clover
Wrapped up in an endless race I never ever could have won
Let someone else direct my day
Let someone else decide my pay
It felt just like a puppet show
Till I realized I’m running with the rats with nothing much to show
For years I let them lead me on
Then those years counted for nothing due to budget numbers
I was a thing to get rid of
I walked into the mountains and I’m living rough
Now I’m living like a real Thoreau
With the time I need to sit me down and simply ponder
In the wilds of Idaho
Sitting in my cabin in the winter snow
I’m free! (I let it go)
I’m free! (A rat with nothing much to show)
I’m free! (I let it go)
I’m free! (A rat with nothing much to show)
(I let it go)
(I just let it go)
(I let it go)
I’m free!
‘Nate Bear
@NateB_Panic
When Kamala Harris said she’d make sure America always has the strongest most lethal fighting force in the world and the crowd broke into USA! USA! chants I knew then she was going to defeat fascism’
Well, I don’t know about that. Kamala Harris has never struck me as the sort to take on the Washington establishment. What’s that? Ohhh, that fascism. Sorry.
Yes. Had she been about defeating fascism other chants would have been called for.
When “Our Democracy” does it, its not fascism.
Insert the usual note that “democracy” didn’t stop the NSDAP, etc., but I’ll also add Hitler gained significant electoral support on promises to restore national pride and German glory.
So if you can’t beat them join them?
In grand St. Obama (genuflects) fashion, let The Nsrrative handle the PR.
She could defeat fascism by starting a (civil) war, and losing it.
My guess would be that not many of those grinning, chanting ninnies plan to contribute anything more than noise to that “lethality,” by far preferring to thank someone else for their “service,” while taking credit for their sacrifices and abandoning them when they are no longer useful.
As for “facism,” it’s just another word that has become meaningless due to overuse by people who don’t own a dictionary.
MIC platform – check.
Credibility – oops.
The crowd seemed to want to be gaslit, as if in a giant psyop, and no Beyoncé, either. Quite a production.
I forced myself to watch last night. War, lies, and empty promises were on the menu, and to thunderous applause. These people are worshiped by their base. It’s quite incredible to watch. All I could think of was, this is 2024… There is a book about how times were 40 years ago. The author is dead, and no doubt laughing from his grave.
This was as good as it’s going to get for blueMAGA. They peaked at 11.12 pm, exactly when her speech (too long and rambling) ended. At that time I tweeted #ShortHarris
Now we will find out what an empty vessel she really is. The question will be, can the media hide it?
They actually had her speech on TV today here in Oz and it was going on in the other room. I thought about going in to listen to it but realized that if I did, that I would never get that time back again so went back to my coffee. Priorities!
smart move RK – have not spent even a second on it – don’t have enough lisinopril to deal with it –
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Dems just want to get back to brunch and not have to think about politics. They literally don’t want to know. Things were fine with Biden, until he whiffed the debate so bad that it could no longer be ignored. Kamala’s “let them eat vibes” platform resonates because it’s giving Dems what they want; freedom from thinking about the bad stuff. Just “joy” and our democracy.
Sounds horrible–and predictable. It also sounds like we will have Nikki in the final two after all, albeit a version of Nikki not quite so dumb as to say “finish them.” Instead Kamala will bomb them to smithereens while reading Bill Clintom’s “I feel your pain” off the teleprompter. The dark forces who are really running things will have their perfect puppet.
Perhaps that’s unfair, but with a candidate so totally isolated behind a phalanx of spin doctors who can tell? We are the ones in the dark.
Taibbi and Kirn from last night. It’s a long podcast but the first section where they talk about the hypocrisy of the Dems re money is utterly a must watch.
https://www.youtube.com/live/B03us6vAR_A
Since I’m a Southerner may I point out that the now much despised slave owners had much the same hypocrisy. and had to invent an imaginary Walter Scott world of knights and nobles (or so said Mark Twain) to justify themselves. Nobody, even Hitler more than likely, goes around saying “I think I will do something evil today.” Only actions count, and this is what the current Dems most especially want us to ignore.
I’m sure Hitler believed he was a good man, so what he wanted could not possible be evil.
The DP is surely the party of phantasy. This heroic call to battle by Harris negates the whole BS about helping workers, the poor, the sick, the “minorities” with programs and cash. The reality is that the real money goes, as it has since WWII, to “defense” of, not the United States, but its global empire. Kamala Harris is the Donors wet dream.
Things I didn’t hear…
Orange satan cut taxes on billionaires! I’m going to raise taxes on billionaires because no one needs that much money!
I’m going to rise the cap on SS to strengthen americas pension!
It’s not an entitlement if you paid for it!
Medical care is too expensive!
There’s too many homeless and it hurts me to see it!
Student loans will go back to being dischargeable in bankruptcy!
Food costs have skyrocketed I’m going to increase food stamps!
Raise the min wage…$7.25/hr in the US is a sick joke!
Not one more US bomb will kill a palestinian child! Not One!
I will oppose anti mask laws!
I will put an end to the carried interest loophole!
It was a vapid speech and the three accents I counted (maybe there were more)
black girl from the hood
trying to match bidens strident belligerence (fail)
whingey mom who cares (no you don’t…vocal fry notwithstanding)
Jimmy Dore and Russ Dobular got this right, imo. Chicago. utube, 11 minutes. “This is William Gibson territory.”
Kamala Harris Was The LEAST Liked Vice President Ever! (Live From The Ramova Theater In Chicago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4MnY_ZP0Cc
I’ve only seen a few clips of the Dembot Coronation™. I couldn’t watch any more, my barf bag was full.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1826901117826965947
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
Kamala Harris, in the foreign policy section of her acceptance speech, revives Biden’s rhetoric that we live in a good-versus-evil world defined by a “struggle between democracy and tyranny” and that America needs to “strengthen its global leadership”
https://x.com/kamalahq/statu/KamalaHQ/status/1826821796219261136/video/1
She also said she’ll “always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that the terrorist organization Hamas caused on October 7th, including unspeakable sexual violence.”
In other words, as was to be expected, if she’s elected we’ll have just the same fanatically ideological America, seeing itself as leading a “democracy” camp in a fight against “tyrants”, but ironically acting as one of the most tyrannical empires in history in that pursuit, including abetting genocide.
4:35 AM · Aug 23, 2024
So like how Biden promised his donors back in 2019 ‘nothing will fundamentally change’, Kamala promises just more of the same failed policies. And we have seen Dark Brandon at work the past three years so what will – without the obvious puns – will Dark Kamala look like? Will she let that power go to her head? Will she seek to pay back all those that have opposed her like Tulsi Gabbard? She has never struck me as a stable personality.
Unlike Biden, whose vast experience kept the ship of state relatively balanced while oligarchs prospered and the rest didn’t, Harris seems to me scary. The DP filled here empty-suitedeness with so much air I’m afraid she’ll pop.
Kamala is very close to Hillary. Imo if she wins we get a twofer.
I wouldn’t have said Biden was a stabilizer except in maintaining the forever wars feeding trough, and I wouldn’t expect the potential twofer would be any different.
Norman Finkelstein on Kamala Harris: “She’s completely incompetent… she’s a moron.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1HvGnLTKMY
In a preview of things to come Michael Tracey says that Chicago was the most disorganized convention ever.
https://www.mtracey.net/p/among-the-hotties-for-harris-live
If she wins Harris will be the final Biden gift to posterity to go with Gaza and Ukraine. After all his was the only vote that made her first Vice President and now the Dem candidate.
And Biden himself is the gift of a political system that has been corrupted by money for years.
hard to describe it as a convention when in reality it was a coronation – there were no candidates to choose from – and Finkelstein’s description in the above link of what a convention would have looked like are probably correct – another campaign based on – she’s not him – and the wars will continue while class division and inequality in every metric gets even more obvious –
harris is simply the end results of clintonism. its obvious that faction rules the country. bill even got a hero’s welcome.
that ought to have excited the deplorable. i forgot, sarc!
regardless of who wins the election, harris most likely will be the end of clintonism. who ever takes over the country after that, will take over a smoldering ruins.
if the smoldering ruins is in one piece that is.
“she’s a moron”
This explains why she is the actual candidate and has chances to win the elections.
I have been interested in history for decades. When younger, I would read about periods like Nazi Germany and wonder what it would be like to know what is going on and object in a sea of propaganda. Little did I know…It is not as dangerous yet to voice your objection in the US. I have told my congresscritters I know and object. Interestingly, for the written objections I have not received the usual perfunctory response. Probably on some list. What percentage of your objecting population can you imprison before it falls apart?
When younger, people use to give the Germans a lot of flak for letting the Nazis take over the country in the early 30s and asked how could they have let this happen. I’m starting to get it now.
Yes, me too. I got into a somewhat heated discussion with family a few months ago regarding the protesting students. My family was disagreeing with student tactics. Apparently, protests should never be inconvenient or embarrassing. I defended them, of course. I said it was great for them to show the world all Americans are not pro genocide. I should have also asked how history books would have treated aggressive German protestors of the Nazis. Would protestors destroying infrastructure to slow down the death camps be celebrated? Of course they would. Basically, even with me telling my family facts, they obviously can not internalize that Israel is actually committing genocide. I think they would have to see it in person, like when the Allies took the local Germans to see the death camps.
At least the Germans did not cover their ears like DNC attendees did as the names of dead Palestinian children were read as they left the convention (seen in Water Cooler this morning).
Which reminds me. There was a campaign group called “Muslim Women for Harris” I say was because when they saw how Palestinians were denied a platform at the Convention, they simply disbanded-
https://www.rt.com/news/602968-muslim-women-for-harris-support/
Good thing that Harris does not need the Muslim vote come November.
RK……you’re such a card
“Good thing that Harris does not need the Muslim vote come November.”
hahahahahahaha –
i assume you are bring facetious with that last remark – my comment just before this got lost in misunderstanding i fear and was meant as a joke as i thought yours was also – we’ll see if it pops up – guess it did….whew…..was worried for a minute –
I was. I think that the election may very well be Harris’ to lose. And by alienating all the Muslim voters out there, she may very well lose it. American Muslims have already seen how their voices were shut out of the Convention so have drawn their own conclusions. And for the Democrats, they won’t be good ones.
over here Drumpf is being portrayed unfavorably just about everywhere, even on Fox sometimes, and not getting quite the pulpit he had last time but what is probably called ‘his base’ is probably even more fervent in getting him elected – and the more Kamala insults by ignoring the genocide the more votes she will lose, not just Muslim – i wish in my heart i felt that voting mattered, but that ship sailed in the 60’s – will vote for dems in Michigan because i want Line 5 out of the Straits before it leaks and ruins northern Lake Michigan and Huron, and that is something our governor and AG have been working on but sad to say that our reps in Washington are not helping at all in this regard – and don’t get me started on the Anthropocene disaster – oh well, out to the garden and yard work……i do not yell at clouds btw –
“At least the Germans did not cover their ears like DNC attendees did as the names of dead Palestinian children were read…”
This is heartbreaking and infuriating, and necessary to know.
When they say, “Never again,” they of course refer to not allowing a second holocaust against the Jews. They never intended that promise to refer to the Jews as the actors. In other words, Jewish holocaust, “Horrific!”; Palestinian holocaust, “We gotta do what we gotta do.” And the “greatest nation on earth” lends a major hand.
Errr… The Germans protesting the Nazis were the Communists. Even after World War II was over, many high ranking Army officers were pro-Nazi and wanted to attack the Soviet Union. I suspect that has never changed, although General officers now are less competent.
Not to excuse what happened in the 1930s, but Germany had ~ 500,000-750,000 civilians die prematurely up to March,1919 due to the Triple Entente’s blockade, which continued for five months after the western front fighting ended since the British and French realized that if Germany could use its gold to buy food, it would have less available for reparations. Not to mention the Ruhr and likely related hyperinflation, “war guilt”clause, etc.
I can only shake my head at the current insanity in the US over Ukraine and Gaza. And Ukraine iafter Dems laughed at Republicans for believing the birther garbage.
Re that blockade. The British author Jerome K. Jerome wrote in his autobiography how people that he knew from his visits in Germany before the war had starved to death. People like little old ladies. But I never knew that they continued that blockade after the war for so long just for “reparations”.
there are about 800,000 policeman in america, really a occupying army using terror. the armed forces are well understaffed, the national guard is spread all over the world.
the nafta democrats will lean heavily on private sector goons. yet in the end, america has over 330 million people. spread out on half a continent.
the fascist will surely result to shows of force. in major cities. even then, might be hard to control.
but in smaller cities and the country side, will be much harder to contain with shows of force.
see gaza.
As we ought to have foreseen from their habit of psychological projection, the Democratic Party is now a plainly fascist organization.
Americans seek escape from uncomfortable reality; as America is a society defined by sharp class differences, the forms this escape takes generally vary depending on the class of the particular American, with at least a few exceptional means by which the whole of the country seeks escape. Our ruling class, those working in media, government, and the heights of business, take refuge from fact in the glory of imagined power; being too distant from the ground-reality of those who realize policy in practice, this is a well-fortified haven, for a while, until inevitably it becomes impossible to continue to hallucinate. The professional-managerial class hides from the world in on-demand prestige TV, and consumerist hobbies. The working class, to the extent that its members can afford to escape a reality with which they must daily struggle, does so with petty personal dramas and conspiracy theories. All use drugs, and all consume corporate propaganda in the form of television and film.
The Democratic Party is comprised, mainly, of the top two strata of class society, having discarded the working class in the 1970’s from a policy perspective, and from a practical standpoint, understanding that the voting base is made up of more educated and higher-income Americans. From their perspective, it would be time-consuming, and anyways pointless, to do anything to change this; instead it completes the circle in the logic of ‘meritocratic’ thinking: the wealthy can influence the political system; their interests are by definition the national interests; if the poor deserved influence in the country, they would work hard and have their virtue rewarded with wealth; there is no need to speak to anyone but the already well-off.
A combination of these two factors, along with the hyper-polarization which has resulted from the need to secure voter turnout and to bolster in-group conformity every two and four years, explain how the Democrats can simultaneously ignore both a pandemic and a genocide, while still maintaining that they are the party of social justice; many even identify as ‘the left’.
Trump won in 2016 by mobilizing anti-establishment sentiment; in response, the Democrats have identified with and fortified the establishment. They have been able to maintain the conflicting identification with progressive, rebellious counter-culture, because that itself was successfully commodified and corporatized in the 1980s.
The stories Americans tell themselves about their lives, the national cultural imagination, is bounded by and only expressible through an impressively simplified Manichaen dualism, where there are ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’. In the 2000’s, I used to read law enforcement forums (before they wisely went private) and would be shocked, first by the open racism, but also at the simplistic thinking, the use of those terms, ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ by adults with guns. These were police officers – not exactly rocket scientists, and not even economics majors. During those years, when W. Bush was behind the ol’ Resolute desk (why is the desk famous?), the actual left, as well as the Democrats, would mock the opposition’s lack of subtlety, nuance, grace. Twenty-odd years later, those three virtues are utterly wasted on the Democrats as a whole. They have given in to cop-thinking.
If it quacks like a duck? Although I think the aspirations of the Dems on view at the convention are more, as Taibbi and Kirn mention in link above, toward empire and being part of that long ago English upper class that ruled the world. Hitler and Mussolini would be far too vulgar for our Dems. And that’s why they hate Trump too. I have mentioned HBO’s The Gilded Age and we are reliving it with a financial and political landscape to replace the transportation/mining/manufacturing landscape of that era.
And so Michelle can give a tale about her parents’ scorn for riches while herself collecting $750,000 per speech and Obamas as a couple being worth many millions post presidency. Bill Clinton too came from the lower middle class as did Biden. As in the HBO show people like this take status and riches very seriously indeed. Whereas Trump, at least one generation away from such things, treats his wealth almost as a joke with Trump in huge letters on the side of his plane and a stated preference for the lower middle class and McD fish sandwiches. Trump in other words is a cultural class traitor who makes a joke out of their great aspiration and for this they hate him.
Dollar book Freud perhaps but our ruling class definitely need a shrink so we, the many, need to at least take a stab at it. FDR was also old money and a class traitor and despised by some so there’s an analogy of sorts right there. It doesn’t make Trump a good guy but we need to worry whether his replacement will be worse.
So the obsession with “privilege” is very much a matter of projection from those who can’t get enough of it. In their great magnanimity they may do something for the poor but don’t count on it.
Your observation about “being rich” and Trump vs. Dems is very astute, I think.
The key difference between the rich Democrats and Trump is not that one does not flaunt the wealth and other does, but how they do it. The Democrats use their wealth as the platform for moralizing,lecturing, and hectoring. Trump doesn’t. The former inevitably fall into hypocrisy because the rich do as rich do, which is use their money to shield themselves from things that the regular people have to deal with. People can see this. A jerk who knows he’s a jerk and is open about it is infinitely better than a jerk who insists that he’s not one while still acting like one, let alone a jerk who thinks she’s a saint while still acting like a jerk. It doesn’t change the fact that all of them are jerks, obviously, but like Solzhenytsin said, it takes people who think they are saints to do true evil, and god help us if the people who think they are saints are in fact evil jerks.
I believe I heard Kirn say that 80 percent of the country’s wealthy (not sure how defined or if I heard it right) are now with the Democrats.
If that’s true then it would be a stunning reversal from the days when rich people were inclined to be Republicans. But given the shift of wealth to Wall St and Silicon Valley one can well believe that it is true.
The duo’s main point reinforces the idea that the pretense of a classless society is becoming ever more threadbare and the parties have either converged or somewhat done a switcheroo. The problem for all these would be aristocrats though is that the American empire is likely to have a much shorter life than the British. Just like Israel our elites seem to be living in the 19th century. I’m not sure if The Gilded Age was successful but Downton was a big hit.
The rise and appointment of Kamala reminds me of another great film by Hal Ashby – ‘Being There’:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_There
Altough it might be Kedgeree between her ears.
Chance would be better than her – that movie immediately reminds me of Shirley MacLaine’s reaction when Chance says he ‘likes to watch’ – enjoyed all of Jerzy’s books but “Painted Bird” and “Blind Date” were particularly chilling –
Yes. Had she been about defeating fascism other chants would have been called for.
Commitment to sucking till the last drop of blood, and scorched earth policy.
“Patrick Lawrence: Zelensky’s Misadventures in Kursk”
Pretty good report that but you can add on that the Ukraine launched a night-time drone attack – carrying an anti-tank grenade – on the Kursk nuclear power plant. Putin has already confirmed this and has invited (demanded?) the International Atomic Energy Agency to come inspect the evidence for themselves next week so that IAEA Director Rafael Grossi can scratch his head and wonder aloud where that drone could possibly have come from-
https://t.me/tass_agency/267932
In passing, the TV news here in Oz was adamant that there was no evidence of this claim and I mean adamant.
That looks like (smaller) half of RPG-7 tandem charge HEAT warhead. They really are on a shoestring budget. :)
Sudzha City (population 6,036) is a hotspot for visitors. For reasons beyond their control, these law-abiding excursionists were not in a position to reveal if the nature of their trip is business or pleasure.
For those of us old enough to remember him: does Tim Walz remind you of Don Rickles?
Mr. Warmth becomes Mr. Valor?
An insult, but not in a funny way …
Nah, RIckles had charisma and was funny. Walz looks like the parody of a parody of a Prarie Home Companion bit.
Someone once said Beto O’Rourke was a rich person’s idea of the youth. Walz strikes me as a rich person’s idea of a salt of the earth midwesterner.
…everybody has a casserole to play
YouTube is wall to wall with his ad, which is on programs I don’t regard as having much overlap with the D base, like Judge Napolitano and the Duran Duo. And it’s weirdly presumptuous. “Hi, I’m Tim.” No second name, no saying he and Kamala are running for office. Next sentence is “Will you give money to our campaign?” again assuming you of course know what he is talking about and are sold. Next line I don’t recall as clearly but was something like “We’ll make wise use of it.”
By that point I had found the “Skip” button.
There’s the mute button too when the intro vid won’t allow the skip button to show until it has played in full (with an orange progress bar), rather than a 5 second countdown.
Walz strikes me as a cross between Rickles and Wallace Shawn (the guy from Princess Bride), but not at the level of either. Both Rickles and Shawn, per Christopher Smith, were funny and had a certain charisma. Walz is just a bad caricature (I disagree with the PHC comp, too–PHC was funny. Walz is just terrible and offensive and what irks me is that this is intentional. As Kirn put it, it’s a minstrel show, with Walz as the whiteface.
“Never get involved in a land war in Asia!”
Yes, for triple (at least) irony, given what passes for the Dem foreign policy nowadays.
Really? Have you been kidnapped? Blink if you are kidnapped.
Rickles had that intact frontal lobe, dichotomous to what one would recognize as a democrat here in the Gramscian interregnum.
Re Zelensky’s new offensive could spell disaster for Putin The Spectator
The piece concludes: “Putin may bluster that the invasion represents an unacceptable escalation that has diminished any prospect of peace. In truth, it’s a powerful argument for him to bring this conflict to an end as quickly as possible before the next military humiliation stretches his credibility as defender of his country once more.”
Exactly, but not in the way the author envisages – by Putin being forced to the negotiating table. The Russian forces can instead bring the conflict to an end more quickly by accelerating the attrition, therefore ensuring there are no Ukrainian forces with the strength to attempt another invasion. The Ukrainian forces are down to their last knockings as it is, with street snatched conscripts too poorly trained or even willing, if at all, to fight effectively, unless Nato gets directly involved. In which case the Russian gloves will definitely come off.
Yeah, to believe that the Kursk operation will bring Russia to negotiate one must be extremely obfuscated by The Narrative including hallucinatory dreams.
” The Ukrainian forces are down to their last knockings as it is, with street snatched conscripts too poorly trained or even willing, if at all, to fight effectively”
I hope that’s true, but I’m fairly certain it hasn’t been established as fact. We’ll know better towards the end of September, when Ukraine’s latest tranche of conscripts has been tested under fire. If they’re good troops, they’ll hold up. If not, we’ll see mass desertions on the front line.
Until that happens, the talk about Ukraine’s manpower depletion is mostly speculation, or even deliberate disinformation.
Well, at the beginning of the war Russia had 10x the population of Ukraine. That indicates Russia has a much larger pool of potential recruits (and reserves) than Ukraine does. In a war of attrition that means Russia wins.
The only possible sense it makes is to go for a quick short-term win by getting in position to credibly threaten nuclear blackmail via attacks on the Kursk power plant. Which I guess in the planners’ minds would cause the Russians to freeze all their other activities to come running and defend against this, or ask for emergency negotations, kind of like Sauron’s orc armies all freezing up when he perceived the One Ring was in danger of destruction. I expect there will also be more attempts on the Zaporizhzhia plant in the near future. And it looks like Kiev is intent on pouring more troops into Kursk. By the sound of it, close to 20,000 already in (of which over 5,000 have been destroyed or captured). I think this qualifies as a “Hail Mary pass” type of thing, possibly MI6-inspired.
Syndemic anecdote. I was informed a couple of weeks ago by another parent that the younger sister of my child’s classmate, 8 years old, died in her sleep. Rumor is she was feeling sick when she went to bed. 8 year olds are not supposed to die in their sleep. The family of the parent I was talking to was also ill with the flu. Different family. We were on the phone. They were tested for both Covid and flu. Flu. The family had been struggling for two weeks. They did complain about their unusually long period of symptoms. I tried to emphasize how unusual it was to get flu in the summer, trying to lead to a discussion of Covid. ‘Well, people travel, always low levels, it happens..’ etc. utterly insane time we are living in.
OMG how awful. And depressing.
Yes, we talked at some length about how this was an ultimate nightmare for us. Can you imagine going into your child’s room in the morning and finding them dead! Horror. I am grateful for this website, and grateful to have the knowledge about Covid that I do, but it is stressful. When I go off about Covid my family rolls their eyes, including a physician! But, they indulge me some. We all still were N95 masks on a plane for example. I see in a following comment, another mention of a weird child death. My god, are we now going to have to be stressed when our children go to bed feeling ill? Is this going to be a new Covid consequence? Are these deaths just a fluke? Am I being paranoid? I, unfortunately, don’t think so
A later wave of the Spanish Flu took out young adults in their prime…
Recently went to a funeral of a friend’s 10 year old daughter. Similar situation – feeling ill for a while, no real diagnosis, symptoms went away, but then suddenly came back. Her mom drove her to the hospital when symptoms returned and she died on the way there. This child had just performed her dance recital the day before her death, so this was an otherwise healthy kid. Nobody knows why she died, but the family started a gofundme campaign to try to get to the bottom of it. Not sure if they’ve received an answer yet.
Hey guys, Ukraine can still win! This could be the magic moment, honest. /s
Jees H Christ, what a an absolutely moronic press we have
It’s pathetic … no doubt aimed at the low information voters not paying attention to the conflict.
Narrative setting for the post Labor Day home stretch to Kamala’s coronation.
I can’t tell who gave to Channel 12 News the letter from Ronen Bar (head of Shin Bet) to the Israeli PM, cabinet, and AG. I guess it was Bar. Either way, we previously wondered if Israel has a power struggle between the brown shirts and constitutionalists or if it is committed to the former. If the head of Shin Bet sends this deeply alarmist open letter to all the world it suggests the struggle isn’t over yet but that Bar is at or close to desperation. Imagine of the FBI boss did something like that.
If things start to fall apart in Israel, I wonder if we will see assassinations of leaders start up. I would not be surprised. Netanyahu might decide to do a Kursk and invade Lebanon leading to intolerable casualties and destruction by Hezbollah not only of the IDF but northern Israel as well. That could trigger all sorts of trouble in Israel itself. Not so much a civil war as different factions fighting it out for control of the country.
Factions starting to assassinate each other’s leaders seems to me far-fetched.
What I think may well happen in the short term if that extremist faction completely overwhelms the “constitutionalists” is the following: militias violently assaulting, in an organized manner, those protesting crowds demanding a truce and the return of the hostages from Gaza. Together with death threats collectively and individually addressed to the hostages’ families intimating them to shut up, to refrain from giving critical interviews, and to stop splitting the nation in its existential fight against Amalek with their unrealistic, defeatist requests. And actual assassinations / burning down houses of those who are refractory. Then moving on to assault violently all those who look lukewarm in their support of the current way to establish Greater Israel — and that will include those Jewish religious extremists who refuse military service.
‘Factions starting to assassinate each other’s leaders seems to me far-fetched.’
Maybe. But remember that Israel’s Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated back in ’95 by a right-wing religious extremist who was acting on the orders of god-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yigal_Amir
And with this assassination, it cleared the way for Netanyahu.
I suspect the Iran retaliation we’re all waiting for and expecting will likely be an assassination. In which case, power vaccuums may form and we might see the knives come out within the Israeli coalition. When was the last time anyone saw Netanyahu aboveground, I wonder. And we may be looking at a Shin Bet assist, because right now eliminating the three (Netanyahu, Gantz, Smotrich) would be in the greater interest of Israeli stability for very many people, including the US.
I don’t know if eliminating Netanyahu would necessarily be stability inducing. In an odd way, I opined before, that Netanyahu is the only thing keeping everything in balance: the “constitutionalists” would never be able to handle the mix of ultranationalists, religious fundamentalists, etc, of which there seem to be way too many. If course, the breakout of open violence suggests that even Netanyahu is losing it, but, if he goes, the chaos would get completely out of control, I suspect.
The evidence that Netanyahu is a stabilizer is that israel has been stable throughout and before the war.
Imo the Torah students refusing to serve is very de-stabilizing. The idf is exhausted, wants to call up 10k older reservists. Why should they when the younger zealots won’t? Plus many might be seculars, or their wives might be; this has potential to drive quite a few out of israel. And when a secular leaves it makes those remaining part of an ever smaller minority. And the ultras have a very high birth rate. Israel looks to becoming quite unattractive for secular women.
Imo it’s possible the resistance has calculated that slowly increasing modest attacks is the safest way to win the war, granted a vast number of gazans will die. Maybe the us bases in Syria? Putin might have provided such advice, it would be consistent with Ukraine war.
Re: Israel and the MoA post
One wonders how the level of mayhem, death and destruction including genocide in the world can be reduced. We see that the governments of the two principal purveyors of this violence exhibit psycopathic symptoms, and both have nuclear weapons. Both seem willing to use them if confronted militarily by an outside power. An internal collapse, whether a civil war or something less horrible would seem to be the only way the rest of the world could live in some sort of peace.
It seems that Israel is a powderkeg waiting for a match. The Iranian government, that has suffered from repeated high profile political murders, is working on a suitable response to the most recent ones. I wonder if the assassination of Rabi Dov Lior would be the spark that would light the fuse. If it were only that easy in the US.
Re Israeli fascism, I’d like to pimp Gabriel Piterberg’s book “The Returns of Zionism” which I’m finding revelatory. Along with making it very clear that there never was a “socialist” version of Zionism that did not support a policy of Arab exclusion, there’s a remarkable chapter on one of the most influential Israeli ideologues, Gerhard-Gershon Sholem, who during the mid-20th c. waged a prolonged, successful struggle to use mystical Judaic teachings in the Kabbalah to undermine the relatively staid, law-oriented interpretations of the Torah that he felt inhibited Zionist “vitality,” i.e. expansive ruthlessness. Piterberg’s traces the sources of Sholem’s effort to suppress the restraining logic of a Judaism that had been elaborated during a long period of “exile” requiring accommodation and encouraging assimilation in favor of an expansionist nihilism. He takes you through a bizarre political-theological history, going back to the shameful conversion to Islam by a 17th century would-be Messiah, Sabbatai Sevi, to avoid execution. This set off a contorted attempt to rationalize his apostasy that culminated in an explicitly nihilistic endorsement of “redemption through sin,” in which anything goes in the achievement of Messianic aims. The extent to which this led to the sheer negation by Sholem and his followers of the heritage of exilic Judaism is remarkable; in their view that heritage has been dialectically superseded, and thus silenced, by Zionism rampant.
This is all new to me. But it does seem that Sholem’s successful legitimation of Jewish messianic mysticism was, unfortunately, not a marginal cultural project, it’s integral to mainstream arguments over the essence of Judaism. Fascists like Rabbi Lior have a lot to draw on
When you lose Shin Bet…
Regarding “Nicaragua shuts down 151 more NGOs, including US Chamber of Commerce affiliate” from
Anadolu Agency:
One of the points in Ian Welsh’s post of yesterday, “How Europe Could Reinvigorate Their Economy”
is
This is interesting.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-to-build-a-50000-ton-forging
Thanks for that link. An impressive article about impressive machinery. Never knew the importance of presses in the 20th century or what they were used for but I liked the way that you could punch out parts that would do away with dozens of others. now that’s engineering.
Remember that America has now gone through 12 and a half years of declining productivity in manufacturing:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=m2mB
January 30, 2018
Manufacturing Productivity, * 1988-2024
* Output per hour of all persons
(Indexed to 1988)
The downside to creating stamped (pressed) automobile bodies is collision repair. A modern vehicle with its cosmetic, beer-can veneer cover over a stamped body creates situations where even a minor collision damages the alignment of the running gear and makes repair nigh impossible. And the vehicle is “totalled” by many insurance policies.
“Now that’s engineering.”
Really important.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-to-build-a-50000-ton-forging
August 21, 2024
How to Build a 50,000 Ton Forging Press
By Brian Potter
I remember reading about this: in 1950, it was found that the swept wing variant of the F-84 fighter, the F-84F, could not enter mass production because there was only one forge press in the entire country that could be used for the wings, and that was urgently needed for the B-47 bomber. So the straight winged version of the modernized F-84, F-84G, had to put into production in its place. (It seems that the advent of swept wing aircraft really increased the demand for heavy forge presses.)
I saw the one at Wyman Gordon in action. It was like a full size house pounding nickel alloys into disks for the hot end of commercial jet engines. Let it suffice to saw it was awesome. I was working for Special Metals in the early 90s that produced billet through vacuum melting and forged it prior to sending it to Wyman.
There was complete signed traceability of every single parameter; over 600, IIRC. Reading about Boeing and dodgy titanium, I wonder how clean and complete records are now. Outfits like Wyman, GE, Pratt, etc regularly audited everything.
> In a leaked recording, Amazon cloud chief tells employees that most developers could stop coding soon as AI takes over Business Insider
> We know from Akerloff’s work on phishing equilibria that if fraud can happen, it is happening
Adjacent to a rumor of gushing reports from Google coders that AI is about to change things bigly:
: So much for Learn To Code.
: The single most important coding issue is that the western economics system is writ in COBOL. Wouldn’t it be great if that code could be auto-re-writ in C+-, or the AI could just take the whole thing over?
The problem is, the code itself may be perfect, but how it fits together gets farther away from human understanding. A failure is unlikely but inevitable. Let me be foily. Some nations have forces trying to shift to crypto, adjacent with forces seeking a cashless society. When The System crashes, there is a window for them to advance. Crypto is also a penultimate Ponzi scheme. IBGYBG. Ergo, pushing The System into collapse advances the aforementioned interests.
What better fall guy than an inanimate entity prone to hallucinations?
RE: Sometimes You Just Have to Ignore the Economists
While I agree with the argument she is making, I have to say I’m a little befuddled by seeing Zephyr Teachout published in the neocon rag defending the inchoate and likely nonexistent position of Kamala Harris, especially given the treatment she has received from the Democrat party over the years.
What the hell is this supposed to mean?!!?? –
“Although Harris has not specified the exact design of her proposal, one hopes…”
Sounds very similar to the time Harris said she supported universal healthcare until someone explained to her what it meant and she immediately backtracked. Clearly she’s just mouthing nice sounding words again without knowing what she’s talking about. Why should I believe she’s serious, and more importantly, why does Teachout?
I sure hope we aren’t witnessing yet another leftist succumb to whatever crazy Stockholm Syndrome the Democrat party seems to cause any time some otherwise sincere lefty gets too close to them. Teachout sure as hell isn’t going to get jhat she wants by counting on the likes of Harris.
I have been worried about Teachout for awhile now. I admire her, but there seems to be some monumental denial coloring her positions recently. I don’t know if she has succumbed or if she just cannot admit to herself the lesser evil is not lesser just evil.
It is very hard to know you are on the road to purgatory and have to accept there are no longer any ways to get off.
Partisanship is a heck of a drug.
A wonderful collection of links as ever but may I make a gentle plea? Archive.pH continues to be down in the UK whereas archive.is functions normally. Could the linkmasters kindly give some consideration to using archive.is by preference in future links, please?
Same in France, I can report.
Maybe just use the original link like in the olden days and we can paste it into archive.xyz if we need to?
Israel Will Collapse Within a Year if the War of Attrition Against Hamas and Hezbollah Continues – Haaretz
What happens if the genocide continues?
Then the west will double the amount of weapons and ammo that they are sending Israel, even if it is breaking their own laws. I suspect that Oz is sending the Israelis gear, not that you would hear about it in the news, and all the big western countries are taking part in this genocide as well. What I cannot figure out is what do all these countries get for helping out with a genocide? What is the payout? The gratitude of Israel? Would that and five bucks buy you a cup of coffee?
With all the talk of ‘Persians’ of late, my mind keeps going to the crusades. That part of ‘Economic Hitman’ where he recounts a casual debate in a cafe with some Muslim intelligentsia (ostensibly 30+ years ago!), who spoke of the inevitability of civilizational conflict along Abrahamic lines, exemplified and precipitated by Western aggression… which I recall to say, that the prize is Jerusalem and a heavier North for the multipolar world, with an unflinching eye on singularity. Israel is doing our dirty work. I say ‘our’ with shame, but that sentiment has surely depreciated, and is going exponential in its approaching liability. What a shitshow.
Is Covid 19 on track for being the longest outbreak ever?
And if so, what are all the things different about this outbreak from all others in history?
This is an interesting question. How long of a lull do you have to have for it to be a separate outbreak? I think the plague had decades of intermittent activity in the 1300s but I think there were periods of quiet that lasted years. So, I believe those were separate outbreaks not one continuous one. Covid hasn’t had a lull more than a couple of months for four years. A four year outbreak seems pretty exceptional.
The Russian or Asiatic Flu of 1889, which may have been a coronavirus, had recurrences until 1895.
As for other serious outbreaks, AIDS is still with us. It’s just no longer as deadly due to anti-virals.
And there still are measles, tuberculosis, cholera, etc. outbreaks.
Yes, and there are plenty of things endemic now.
I guess my question should have been that “it’s among the longest outbreaks.”
BTW: Measles and TB have vaccines that are considered more sterilizing.
Hence the term “endemic”. It appears that the virus and its effects will be with us for the indefinite future. Perhaps worldwide physical and mental enfeeblement will slow us down as a species, which might not be a bad thing if one considers the earthly tenure of some of our less clever evolutionary ancestors such as homo erectus. Ever the giddy optimist, me.
My wife tried to watch the entire convention, thankfully, on C-Span so we could see the Convention as-is. I located myself nearby with headphones listening to music or whatever but would watch bits and pieces when I walked to the kitchen. I have a visceral hate for the DP so it was better that I not watch their festivities. But I kind of “got” where the Party was at. Seemed to be centered on identity politics (mainly black people, “women”, but Hispanics were also featured), fantasy, sentimentality, and a kind childishness one sees in cults (I’ve seen it a lot in my life). The only speech I wanted to watch was Liz Warren’s because she knows exactly the problems working people have and though she has compromised herself into obscurity, it was nice to see her give, little scent of reality to the proceedings.
She repeated the JD Vance couch joke which is an acknowledged lie generated by a Twitter user. That doesn’t seem to indicate that she’s based in reality.
RE: Biden’s Ukraine Strategy Is Missing in Action Foreign Policy
We know the objective but the means and methods that have been put on it (The Strategy) are failing miserably and I guess nobody in the Administration wants to put it in black on white and less so is willing to stamp a signature on that.
This speech is my recital, I think it’s very vital
To rock (a rhyme), that’s right (on time)
It’s Tricky is the title, here we go…
It’s Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time
It’s Tricky… it’s Tricky (Tricky) Tricky (Tricky)
It’s Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time
It’s Tricky… Tr-tr-tr-tricky (Tricky) Trrrrrrrrrrricky
I watched this little girlie, her tone was kinda squirrely
Went online to watch her bust out, I had to leave real early
The DNC are really sleazy, all they just say is not Trump, me!
Or spend some time and rock a rhyme, I said “It’s not that easy”
In Chicago the people talk and try to make me rhyme
They really (squawk) but I just (walk) because I have no time
And in the city it’s a pity cos they just can’t hide
Tinted windows don’t mean nothin’, they know who’s inside
It’s Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time
It’s Tricky…(How is it W?) Tricky (Tricky) Tricky (Tricky)
It’s Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time
It’s Tricky… Tricky (Tricky) Tricky (Tricky) huh!
When I wake up after sleeping funny, mirth takes up mostly all of my time
I’m not singin’, lyrics keep ringin’ cos I make up a rhyme
I’m not braggin’, just people naggin’ cos they have such a low bar
Always tearin’ what I’m bearin’, I think they’re goin’ too far
A girl named Kamala follows Joey and there’s hell to pay
Then D dissed her and dismissed her, now she’s smiling away
I ain’t buyin’, girl be lyin’ when I saw her on TV
They even bother with Hunter cos a pardon is guaranteed
It’s Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time
It’s Tricky…(How is it?) Tricky (Tricky) Tricky (Tricky)
It’s Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time
It’s Tricky… Tr-tr-tr-tr-tr-tricky (Tr-Tr-Tr-Tricky) Tr-tr-tr.
It’s Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time
It’s Tricky…(How is it W?) It’s Tricky (Tricky) Tricky (Trrrrrricky)
It’s Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time
It’s Tricky… Tricky (Tricky) Tricky
It’s Tricky, by Run D.M.C.
“PINE GAP READIES FOR U.S. NUCLEAR WAR”
The only good news is that if there is a nuclear war, then Pine Gap is sitting in the middle of a desert so a nuke would not take out a nearby civilian town or city. I would imagine a hypersonic nuke launched from a sub off our shores would do the job for the Chinese or the Russians.
I wonder about the Aussies working at that place. Probably they have red knuckles showing that they worke there. Every time they go to touch something, an American “minder” would rap them over the knuckles with a wooden ruler. :)
…on the breach
Brilliant movie by Stanley Kramer, it stuns with the normalcy of human reactions. Also brings home the reality that a nuke anywhere can have terrifying repercussions in places so far away.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(1959_film)
A unforgettable film with Gregory Peck. You will never hear Waltzing Mathilda the same again. You can watch the entire movie (with ads unfortunately) on YouTube for free if you have their app.
There’s also a remake from 2000:
On The Beach 2000 (remastered)
I liked Rachel Ward.
https://www.nytimes.com/1959/12/18/archives/screen-on-the-beach.html
December 1959
‘On the Beach’
By Bosley Crowther
THERE is an initial impulse to say of Stanley Kramer’s “On the Beach,” the new film that he and John Paxton have refined from the novel of Nevil Shute, that it is concerned with the imagined annihilation of all mankind on this earth, the slow poisoning of the last pocket of surviving humans by radioactive fall-out from a nuclear war.
And that would be absolutely accurate, so far as the situation and plot are concerned. For the crisis in this deeply moving picture, which opened at the Astor last night—and in theatres in seventeen other places all around the world—is that which confronts a group of people in Australia in 1964 as they helplessly await the inexorable onset of a lethal cloud of atomic dust…
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/us/politics/biden-nuclear-china-russia.html
August 20, 2024
Biden Approved Secret Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on Chinese Threat
In a classified document approved in March, the president ordered U.S. forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea.
By David E. Sanger
…nuke would not take out a nearby civilian town or city.
At the bottom of the article is a graphic showing Alice Springs is toast.
Depends on the size of the nuke. Even a small one would take out all that electronic gear.
What an extraordinary set of comments.
” For starters, Kursk represents the biggest blow to Putin’s illusion of control since the Wagner mutiny last summer — as well as the biggest defeat at the hands of the Ukrainians since the loss of Kherson in September 2022.”
But, as a land-based military operation (i.e., battle, offensive, etc) Kursk is Russia’s only defeat since the loss of Kherson in September 2022. But it may have no strategic signficance compared to what’s happening right now at Pokrovsk and Chasov Yar, where Russia’s winning, and the stakes are high.
I have no idea how this war will turn out. I’m just a layman. But I don’t trust Owen Matthews, who comes across as just another breathy Russia/Putin-hater.
Lambert, are you going to be doing a deep dive on Kamala’s DNC speech? I always enjoy when you do those.
Re Deep Dive:
Lambert, be careful you don’t hit your heard on the bottom!
Crass Bottom Boat?
I wonder what the BMpox will be like on the playa, that is ingesting far too much alkali dust…
Stop by and say hello if you are in the neighborhood, i’ll be @ Tiki Fvckos camp all week and then some.
Ever curious in regards to what goes on in a Burning Man camp, full of ordinary extraordinary types?
Here’s a glimpse of activities, and please try to make it to Gilligan’s Island night, i’ll be one of many Skippers on hand-the one that greatly resembles Ernest Hemingway.
https://scratchpad.fandom.com/wiki/Burningman_Tiki_Camp
RE: Why it might be time to stop riding horses Telegraph
This article brings up a serious and legitimate issue.
Peak oil didn’t go anywhere. We don’t have enough cheap crude oil to continue living this way. 2100 is going to look a lot more like 1900 than 2000. We won’t have the gasoline to drive our cars everywhere. We’re going to go back to using horses for everything.
I’ve often wondered if horses would much prefer to pull a wagon than to be ridden by a human.
I almost never see any of the 300 ponies here in town with a human in the saddle, and yes all vehicles will be going back to exactly 1 horsepower, and I don’t think a 7 year old horse that’s never been ridden is a good candidate~
We do have bicycles now, including electric assisted ones, that can be charged…
Hummingbird wholesale delivers hundreds of thousands of pounds of organic food on an electric bike each year.
With a solar charger, definitely more practical than a horse, at least on the road.
We ride unshod without a bit using what is commonly referred to as natural horsemanship, where you treat the horse as a partner rather than a subordinate. It takes a bit more patience and for us a lot more bribes, but it makes it easy to tell if your horse is enjoying it or not. If they don’t come running up to greet you and won’t load themselves in the trailer you know something is wrong. As for using a horse for transport, I’ll just note that hay is not very energy dense and as someone who has shoveled plenty of manure, horses are not that efficient at extracting the energy from it, so I wouldn’t plan on going very far unless there is plenty to graze on. Also being prey animals they are not all that excited about having some strange contraption following behind them so it is not all that easy. Don’t expect to just harness up a wagon and go with any sort of control.
Nice, Henry D, but you know what will happen when everyone needs a horse – we’re back to Black Beauty levels of abuse. A friend who travelled to India came back with horror stories of how donkeys and horses were treated. Then she went to Chile and came back with even more of these stories.
Ann, I agree though I still out hope that our society through this 4th turning will transition back toward a spirituality that holds nature and its creatures as sacred, but I realize that is not the world most of us currently live in. I still worry that if society breaks down someone will be desperate enough to try and eat the horses or that without power it will become a real challenge to gather enough hay to get them through a winter. I’m pretty good with a scythe, but when you start talking acres and tons of hay I and already feel the pain,
Solar (PV) charged electric bikes seems like a better modern transport team than the ole Mule Team.
“Not a wholesome trottin’ race, no!
But a race where they set down right on the horse!
Like to see some stuck-up jockey’boy
Sittin’ on Dan Patch? Make your blood boil?”
We got trouble.
“Heed that warning before it’s too late!”
Or even better, the capper line of the whole whizbang:
“Remember, my friends,
Listen to me
Because I pass this way but once!”
Spotted my first Harris yard sign today. “Unburdened by what was.” Laughed for the rest of my commute but also despaired.
A clever pastiche of Genocide Joe on that signage would work wonders, ya know.
There are 3 Harris-Walz signs on my way to work along a main Hanover street. Very boring-blue background with white lettering. They are in front of million dollar houses. The same houses also have “reproductive health is on the ballet. vote democrat” signs.
Just saw the 2nd one in my liberal very neighborhood yesterday. That one was pretty standard “Harris 2024”. First one was more dire and had been up for a while, with warnings about the death of “our democracy” if we don’t vote the right way. I take a wide turn when walking by that house lest I catch the TDS. Had not seen any Biden signs at all before he got the hook.
Trump signs had been on the decline in the rural environs – used to be lots of them all over the place whether it was an election year or not, but fewer over the last year or two. But they’re picking up again. Saw quite a few again on a recent excursion – yard signs, bumperstickers (“Trump in a Landslide” was one), etc. Not in every yard by a long shot, but more than two.
Recent polls say Harris takes the state by a wide margin though – we’ll see… Hard to believe the polls given the definite lack of enthusiasm for her until recently.
Practically no Trump signage here in Godzone, as opposed to 2016 and 2020,,,
Twice smitten-thrice shy.
Twice shy, thrice no-show, I think. (I’m skeptical that the polls missed as many Trump voters as they did back in 2020, let alone 2016). I do wonder if the Harris “surge” is a giant Bradley effect (NB: in 1980, Tom Bradley, the black mayor of LA, consistently outpolled George Deukmejian, the GOPer, in the race for the governor of CA, but the reality turned out to be quite different. How exactly this came about is highly disputed–the conventional wisdom is that people lied to the pollsters b/c they didn’t want to look like racists, but the real culprit might have been something else–with much of the blame going to the pollsters. At any rate, the Obama election of 2008 supposedly put this to rest, but there are many ways that pollsters could still delude themselves–the persistent bias in exit polling by Edison Research for years is well known. (in 2000, Media outlets infamously called FL for Dems early, based on their exit polls, only to retract the call hours later…and we know how long FL stayed undecided that year.))
Get over it. Harris will be a perfect president of the USA. She’s pure puppet.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/23/covid-tests-us-will-offer-free-at-home-kits-starting-late-september.html
U.S. will again offer free at-home Covid tests starting in late September
CNN reporter interviews a healthcare professional at the DNC:
https://x.com/AcrossTheMersey/status/1826767637894103228
Video at the link.
Thanks for that link. It should be hoisted up into the next Links page as it is a perfect summary of the media gaslighting a whole nation.
Apropos of nothing at all , I suppose. but I was amused by a front page article in the Grauniad on the French political scene. It mentioned Melenchon’s party as the ‘hard left ‘ while grouping the Socialists, Greens, and the Communists! As presumably the reasonable ones. Harder left than Marx?
Coffeepot Fire is now @ 2,683 acres with 0% containment and there are about 800 fire fighters working the line and enough aircraft up in the ether to seriously wonder about mid-air collisions.
When this fire gets wrapped up 5,000 more acres from now in mid September, it will have cost $50 million to fight and everybody gets paid right away.
No structures will have been lost in the fire and a smattering of Giant Sequoia trees in some of the most remote groves imaginable will be saved.
There seems to be a bottomless pot of dead Presidents to pay for fighting these fires, i’ve never heard of one where they had to stop because funds ran out.
As a software engineer with 40 years experience, I’m always faintly amused by these kinds of pronouncements, which we have all heard in various forms over the decades. I assume the people making them have MBA degrees and have spent little or no time “coding.”
The way current AI platforms work is to do a kind of probabilistic copy and paste from their training materials. That is, given what their output has been so far, examine the training set to determine what’s the most likely next word. Repeat this as often as necessary (someone coined the term stochastic parrot). It’s easy to see that not only is this process devoid of actual thought or imagination, but also that it’s built around plagiarizing other people’s work and passing it off as their own.
So, even in the extremely unlikely event that an AI could somehow output working software, it’s clear that that software was originally written by another company whose work was copied and put into the AI training set. Taking this one step further, an economy built around AIs cranking out software is in fact built around companies copying and pasting each other’s work. It obviously precludes innovation in the field, because AIs don’t understand software and can’t think.
Sounds like a perfect formula for killing off an industry or technical field. The fact that leaders in the industry would actually propose this is about as terrifying as it gets.
> The way current AI platforms work is to do a kind of probabilistic copy and paste from their training materials.
One wonders how easy it would be to “poison” this material. My guess is “very” and I would bet some smart people are working that problem right now.
That’s already happening. And the biggest producers of the poisoned training sets is the AIs. And then there’s deliberate use of AIs to produce poison.
<"it’s built around plagiarizing other people’s work and passing it off as their own."
Well if the training data is licensed under MIT or similar, don't see the problem. If it's GPL 2 or later, I don't think there is a problem but it seems to be an open question ATM.
Writing as one who develops / releases artifacts as open source / GPL 2 or later or comparable CC license (depending on content) except for certain fonts which are SIL/Apache.
I don’t think the process of sucking in training data is respectful of any kind of licensing or copyright or any other legal formalisms. Like any other new Silicon Valley business, the whole thing is based on ignoring the law.
Obtaining permission to use copyrighted material is a lengthy and time-consuming process that’s not compatible with ingesting the entire internet in 2 years.
It seems like our leaders in industry and society at large no longer want innovation, foresight, creativity, or any of those forward-looking human traits. The future is so over now, from here on it’s time to loot our existing base of people, organizations, and natural resources for maximum wealth extraction, with occasional bursts of speculative asset inflation to get the most out of the program. Then, when the curtain falls and the Red Death holds sway over all, the .1% and their offspring still around to witness it can say, “We did it our way! Wouldn’t change a thing if we had it to do over!”
Agreed. The capabilities of the current AI are vastly overrated.
I can see some sort of coding assistant being extremely helpful by zeroing in on the information I need to implement a particular function. I can see it writing an example I could learn from. I can’t see it solving new problems.
Papers are now appearing showing that the utility of AI is falling as it more and more is training on its own output. Think ouroboros.
Apparently there are ways to hasten the demise of AI. Some engineers have devised ways to modify images that corrupt AI databases.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/23/1082189/data-poisoning-artists-fight-generative-ai/
Right. 1) Coding is easy. Finishing is hard. 2) It has always been as exactly hard to write precise specs as it is to write correct code. (You have to give the AI a spec of what to produce.)
The workflow of English specifications being transmuted into C++ source code symbols, say, dates back to when humans were reading the spec and then writing the code, and had enough software engineering knowledge to understand how to do this transformation.
AIs don’t know about specification languages or code. They just read and write numeric values according to probabilities derived from their training set (with some randomness mixed in to keep the output from always being identical for the same prompt so it’s more realistic to humans; this is where the “stochastic” part of “stochastic parrot” comes from.) There are preprocessing and post processing steps where the input and output languages are transformed to and from numbers. So their “thinking” is completely divorced from the actual subject matter domain.
It’s hard for it’s hard for me to see anything useful coming out of this arrangement except in certain cases where it works sort of by coincidence.
Unrolled version of Daniel Seidemann’s Netanyahu story:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1826701474346529003.html
I involuntarily saw a couple minutes (not contiguous) of the Dem convention on TV last night. Mark Kelly, Leon Panetta, and Kamala Harris. They were awful. Kelly basically praised the Iraq war. He served in it and I’m sure he did a good job, but that doesn’t make the war itself good. It’s terrible if the Dems are trying to rehabilitate that disaster. Panetta was on next, saying the US had to keep being the world’s policeman (not his words) and intervene in everyone else’s everywhere. Then Harris sounded like a total lightweight. I don’t even remember what if anything she talked about.
Heck of a job, Demmies.