Patient readers, my triply-redudant connectivity system has had a hiccup. In the interests of speed, I did not archive any links for you, as I have recently been doing. Sorry! –lambert
Bald eagle thought to be hurt was really just ‘too fat to fly,’ Missouri officials say St Louis Post-Dispatch
Baby boom prompts call to boost wild beaver population BBC
‘Obscenely greedy’ oil executives handed Swiss jail terms for role in 1MDB fraud FT
Climate
How heat affects the mind American Psychological Association
Yes, corn can sweat. And it may be why hot Midwestern summers are getting more humid PBS. Handy map:
Urban heat island can't compete
Corn fields spike dewpoints into the lower 80s meaning heat index goes to 120°F 📈
Iowa yesterday was literally steaming from the climate-fueled corn sweat 🌽 pic.twitter.com/rsWpeMsgcH
— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) August 27, 2024
Living in tree-filled neighborhoods may reduce risk of heart disease, study shows NBC
Lightning & Thunderstorms – World Map Blitzortung.org. Animated, near-real time.
Water
Water On The Brain: Irrigation Then And Now 3 Quarks Daily
Syndemics
The disappointing international response to mpox FT
Fibrin drives thromboinflammation and neuropathology in COVID-19 Nature. From the Dicussion: “Although clotting complications in COVID-19 have previously been attributed primarily to systemic inflammation14, our findings suggest that coagulopathy in COVID-19 is not merely a consequence of inflammation, but rather serves as an apical driver of infection-induced thromboinflammation and neuropathology. Our data reveal a causal immunomodulatory role for fibrinogen in thromboinflammation and neuropathology in COVID-19.”:
Japan warns against panic buying as rice shortages bite Channel News Asia
China?
China’s international use of renminbi surges to record highs FT
Chinese Localities Adopt ‘Sell Everything to Save the Day’ Policy to Ease Debt Caixin Global. Commentary:
4/9
That's because the only sustainable way to increase the role of consumption in the economy requires that households retain a larger share of GDP, which in turn means that some other sector retain a lower share. In the end the least bad "other sector" is local governments.— Michael Pettis (@michaelxpettis) August 29, 2024
Protests on rise in China amid sluggish economy, housing crisis: Report Business Standard
China’s urban-rural gap is a threat to growth. Is the divide too wide to fix? South China Morning Post
‘Little desire to have kids’: More young Chinese choosing pets over children Channel News Asia
Are China’s vast bamboo forests the answer to forever fossil plastics? South China Morning Post
How to Manage Escalation with Nuclear Adversaries Like China RAND
People’s uprising against an autocratic state Anarchist Library. Bangladesh.
Africa
World’s police in technological arms race with Nigerian mafia BBC
Syraqistan
Largest in 2 decades, Israeli army launches major military operation in northern West Bank Anadolu Agency
Israel has launched a massive assault on the West Bank. Why and why now? Al Jazeera
Gaza breakdown: 20 times Israel used US arms in likely war crimes Responsible Statecraft
European Disunion
When French Citrus Colonized Algeria JSTOR Daily
New Not-So-Cold War
Russia warns the United States of the risks of World War Three Reuters
Did Ukraine just call Putin’s nuclear bluff? Vox
The False Promise of Ukraine’s Deep Strikes Into Russia Foreign Affairs
Ukraine successfully tests its first ballistic missile Politico. The deck: “Ukraine’s president offers no details on the test, but says that it was ‘positive.'”
Ukraine to present ‘victory plan’ to US – Zelensky BBC
* * * Pentagon maintains restrictions on Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia Ukrainska Pravda
Russia says Ukrainian drone attack started fire at oil depot, disrupted air traffic Anadolu Agency
* * * The Murky Meaning of Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Foreign Policy
* * * How the Russian Establishment Really Sees the War Ending Foreign Policy
Biden Administration
Almost half of FDA-approved AI medical devices are not trained on real patient data, research reveals Medical Xpress
Fermilab is ‘doomed’ without management overhaul claims whistleblower report Physics World
2024
Vibes:
How it started. How it's going.
Ten years later, and it's still a good look! https://t.co/NKXRGNgJPv pic.twitter.com/KeI1gn7HSg
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 28, 2024
Harris and Walz to sit down with CNN for first formal interview of campaign Al Jazeera
Spook Country
Durov formally charged, released on €5mn bail BNE Intellinews
Pavel Durov and the Abuse of Law Craig Murray
Telegram’s Loudest Defender: The Global Crypto Industry NYT
Hmm:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says Donald Trump told him this week that former CIA Director Mike Pompeo "begged" him to not release the JFK files.
The comment came during RFK's interview with Tucker Carlson who called Pompeo a "criminal."
"I was astonished that Trump didn't declassify… pic.twitter.com/0LjbuasYTL
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 27, 2024
Digital Watch
Imagining Intelligent Machines Communications of the ACM. “The current advances in AI are based on ideas invented decades ago, enhanced by huge data and compute. I believe these statistical methods have a ceiling. Without new ideas, everybody will, in time, be doing the same thing and the results will be increasingly incremental.” Commentary:
With enough money, you can bubble sort anything.
— Phil Libin (@plibin) August 27, 2024
The World’s Call Center Capital Is Gripped by AI Fever — and Fear Bloomberg
Why AI can’t spell ‘strawberry’ TechCrunch
* * * Can Tech Executives Be Held Responsible for What Happens on Their Platforms? NYT
TikTok must face lawsuit over 10-year-old girl’s death, US court rules Reuters
* * * Roblox is Already the Biggest Game In The World. Why Can’t It Make a Profit (And How Can It)? Matthew Ball
CrowdStrike estimates the tech meltdown caused by its bungling left a $60 million dent in its sales AP
Tumblr to move its half a billion blogs to WordPress TechCrunch
Net Negativity: Thinking About Online Brutality and Ways to Fix It Nippon.com
The Final Frontier
The Local Bubble: How our solar system got caught up in a cosmic crime scene Space.com
Zeitgeist Watch
The Best Novel About 21st-Century Male Loneliness Was Written in 1989 Literary Hub
Class Warfare
Work to Rule and Open Bargaining Back Down Kroger Warehouse Bosses Labor Notes
The slow evaporation of the free/open source surplus Baldur Bjarnason
The Shrewd Business Logic of Immigrant Cooks JSTOR Daily
Labor’s Reckoning: What We Can Learn From the Cold War History of the AFL-CIO Workday Magazine
Chaos and cause Aeon
Antidote du jour (KetaDesign):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Re;China, Michael Pettis
Yes, China is failing, as it has been for 20-years or more… failing upwards, but still failing– if you stand on your head, it will be obvious.
The stagnation of China’s GDP in U.S. dollar terms in 2022 and 2023 was mainly due to the appreciation of the U.S. dollar. China’s real GDP growth was three percent in 2022 and 5.2 percent in 2023. In 2023, per capita GDP in China reached around 12,514 U.S. dollars.
(Handy chart, too)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263770/gross-domestic-product-gdp-of-china/
I really wish our economy was as bad as theirs…
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1pPhp
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China and United States, 1977-2023
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1pPhr
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China and United States, 1977-2023
(Indexed to 1977)
Danny Haiphong has recently visited China and is doing some good boots on the ground reporting. Carl Zha also gives a fresh perspective that counter much of what is coming from Western MSM outlets.
DH: “WHAT I AM SEEING IN XINJIANG IS SHOCKING!”
https://x.com/SpiritofHo/status/1828763059114151967
When I visit countries in Africa for work or research, I like to go into a random supermaket and pick a selection of goods to see their (stated) country of origin.
A couple of weeks back I was in Lesotho and the goods were (almost universally) either from South Africa (food goods, mainly) or China (anything manufactured).
Every country I’ve been to in Africa in the last few years has a market dominated by Chinese goods. What could ‘The West’ possibly do to overturn this dominance?
Nothing, really.
“TikTok must face lawsuit over 10-year-old girl’s death, US court rules”
The beginning of a lawfare campaign to get rid of Tik Tok in the US by making it too expensive to stay because of litigation? US courts can be pretty dodgy. One, a few short years ago, decided that Iran had to pay the survivors of the 9/11 attack multi-billions of dollars because everybody knows that Iran caused 9/11. Iran never bothered turning up in that court. If this Tik Tok case is successful, then expect a swarm of claims.
There is a slight “benefit” from all the repression we see building in the West by creating new categories of thought crime in the UK and EU on social media undermines “globalization” and the whole idea of the US global empire spreading through soft power–instead we will have blocks of nation-states each imposing rigid controls within their borders.
Unless Trump is elected in the US there will be no more “liberal democracy” in the West–even then the trends don’t look good to those of us who once favored liberalism both cultural and political along with a genuine globalism rather than the current WEF model of international tyranny.
Reports on twitter (Kennard, Murray) that Sarah Wilkinson a long-time prominent peace activist / journalist got the jackboots treatment this morning. I believe the below was posted by her husband
“The police came to her house just before 7.30am. 12 of them in total, some of them in plain clothes from the counter terrorism police. They said she was under arrest for “content that she has posted online.” Her house is being raided & they have seized all her electronic devices.”
She got Starmered.
So the arrest at Heathrow of Richard Medhurst wasn’t just a one-off but part of a campaign to imprison anybody who criticizes Israel. Not the UK, Israel. Kit Klarenberg and Vanessa Beeley have also been harassed as well by UK authorities. No wonder Eva Bartlett had to seek asylum in Russia. Hopefully Wilkinson won’t be treated in court like Julian Assange was-
https://thecradle.co/articles-id/26634
Those “riots” created the perfect atmosphere for this kind of thing to be unremarkable.
At this point in the UK there will be a full-scale Orwellian state and the EU may well follow suit. France has been able, so far, to nullify the last election, Germany has been cracking down on dissent for some years now in its uniquely bizarre way. But the UK is following the simple, in your face, Orwellian pattern. Unlike the US there is little opposition to repression. I treasure the Second Amendment, it gives the population a deterrence to full-scale tyranny.
I ask SCOTi our AI model, based on an open source model, the question about how many r’s are in strawberry. I thought people might like what it had to say.
SCOTi:
The letter “r” appears twice in the word “strawberry”.
user Why do you think that?
SCOTi
Upon re-examining the word “strawberry”, I realize that it’s actually spelled S-T-R-A-W-B-E-R-R-Y. Therefore, I think the correct answer is that the letter “R” appears three times in the word “strawberry”.
user Do you know why you thought it only had 2 Rs originally?
SCOTi
Upon reflection, I realized that my original response was likely due to a combination of factors:
1. Pattern recognition: My language model is trained on vast amounts of text data, and it often relies on patterns learned from this training. In many words, the letter “R” appears only once or twice in close proximity (e.g., “carrot”, “berry”). This might have led me to initially assume there were only two Rs.
2. Lack of attention to word specifics: When I generated my initial response, I didn’t thoroughly examine each character in the word “strawberry”. Instead, I relied on a quick glance and pattern recognition.
Thankfully, when you asked for clarification, I took another look at the word and corrected myself!
Of course the video in that article was worth watching to show you how an AI can act like a low-grade moron-
https://x.com/petergyang/status/1765611617960747246
May I edit that a bit? Expensive low-grade moron….
Here’s a link to another real-time online lightening and thunderstorm map. It also has setting options to display (or not) cloud cover, rain radar,etc. This one has a zoom in/out feature, and if you zoom in close enough the thunder option shows the expanding sound rings of each strike.
https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en#
>Chaos and cause – Aeon
Newton’s discoveries fostered the belief that the Universe, previously shrouded in mystery, was now laid bare, sparking an unprecedented optimism in the power of science.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Kepler are given short shrift. The more you look into the history/details of Newton, the more you question his apotheosis in our educational system.
I can’t wait to see what will his next announcement be. According to emerging wunderwaffe pattern, in three days he should mention first Ukrainian very long range cannon.
Yeah, that’s the ticket, we need to make it successful!
Rand has done so much studying over the decades, you’d think they would have learned something.
From a collection of people who are mad as hatters:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2024/how-to-manage-escalation-with-nuclear-adversaries.html
August 28, 2024
How to Manage Escalation with Nuclear Adversaries Like China
The United States needs to define a theory of victory for a potential future war against China, and then start investing in the capabilities it will need to make it successful…
I think they are just asking for handouts. This so called “theory of victory” will require X billion dollars, and will come with free revisions for an entire year!!!
>Gaza breakdown: 20 times Israel used US arms in likely war crimes Responsible Statecraft
Since October 2023, 116 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli airstrikes or sniper fire in Gaza, representing 86 percent of all those killed worldwide, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Prolonged communication blackouts are commonplace in Gaza.
And this morning as I scroll through TwitterX feeds, I see students returning to college being arrested and harassed for protesting the ongoing Israeli genocide in Palestine. With the treatment that protestors are receiving from modern-day storm troopers dispatched at the behest of authorities to tamp down on peaceful demonstrations, the supposed Western Civilization’s mask has dropped for all to see. And what is revealed is the personification of Medusa, a good metaphor for the Collective West.
Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden, but when Neptune…mated with her in Minerva’s temple, Minerva punished Medusa by transforming her beautiful hair into horrible snakes…In classical Greek art, the depiction of Medusa shifted from hideous beast to an attractive young woman, both aggressor and victim, a tragic figure in her death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa
Regarding “Fibrin drives thromboinflammation and neuropathology in COVID-19”
So, what breaks down Fibrin? Plasminogen. What stimulates Plasminogen? Lysine. (Plasminogen has a lysine binding site.)
And Lysine analogues are known Anti-Fibrinolytics.
Does lysine impact the expression of other viruses? Yes.
I very quickly scanned the article… and could not find any layman’s utility statement about sources of fibrin.
Similarly, your point about lysine- that it may have effective offsets.
Day to day living— sources of fibrin in my life, sources of lysine in my life?
Google and wiki indicate that both are parts of the miraculous workings of a healthy body and organs….
Mom was right–diet, exercise, sleep, less stressers. Oh, and disregard that universal aging/mortality brick wall at the end!
Obama – “How it started. How it’s going.
Ten years later, and it’s still a good look!” ****** Is this a commercial for high end men’s and women’s suits and business dress attire? Because that’s what it looks like to me. And every bit as deep and fulfilling on substance. Better dress goes with better propaganda and diversion.
Wait – you mean that we are not supposed to judge a book by it’s cover? I thought that the colour of the clothes that Obama and Kamala were wearing were trying to de-emphasis their blackness. To make the right people more comfortable with their appearances.
The tan suit has a (stupid) history:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controversy
I get that plurality of viewpoints is nominally a good thing, but that Anatol Lieven article in Foreign Policy (“How the Russian Establishment Really Sees the War Ending”) is really testing the concept.
Anatol gives the game away in the second paragraph, when he flatly states that his anonymous interlocutors are perfectly comfortable with ending the war by freezing it along the present line of contact. Later on, they, these anonymous sources, or at least some of them, double down by suggesting that, perhaps, the annexed areas of the four Ukrainian regions not yet under Russian control will remain under Ukrainian control, but in a “demilitarized” fashion.
There is no way whoever good old Anatol is talking to is “anyone” that matters in the present government. Aside from the minor point that any such outcome would be viewed in an exceedingly unfavorable light by the Russian public, one that still remembers the Khasavjurt agreement as a form of “betrayal” (which it more or less was); aside from the fact that Putin’s latest public peace offer, one that the arch-conservatives in the room (and Helmer’s sources, apparently) view as a form of betrayal-weakness-appeasement-whatever, was clearly predicated on Russia taking the entirety of the four annexed regions; aside from constitutional issues, since these regions are now legally (under Russian law) part of Russia; there is also the fact that the Russian government made the move to annex them in the first place directly in response to Ukrainian offensives of August-September 2022, and concurrently with rolling out plans for the partial mobilization. This was literally the next step on the escalation ladder for them, and absent a military defeat, or some sort of “betrayal” by Putin himself (unlikely, to put it mildly), there is zero reason for the Russians to climb down.
But not according to Anatol’s sources. I guess it’s nice to know that there are still affluent people in Moscow, as well as current or former government officials, who think in terms of what can we give away in order to wind this thing down and go back to the time before Western sanctions. Or something to that effect. However, the article as a whole purports to present the view of Russian “elites”, and I somehow highly doubt that at this point any of the key stakeholders – the oligarchs, who are making money hand over fist off the war and will continue to do this during the reconstruction phase; the military and the security services, whose budgets swell ever more as Cold War 2.0 comes more and more into view; the state bureaucracy and associated hangers on, though I guess you can make an argument that some of these individuals aren’t all too happy about having to show results for once – would agree to the sort of climb-down that Anatol is gesturing at.
I mean, at this point we might as well start linking to the Mick Ryan article from a day or two ago, about “Ukrainian strategic audacity” and “Western timidity”. [Per Ryan, a retired Australian major general straight out of “The Pirates of Pensance”, Ukraine will “fail” in the Kursk region only if the West does not provide it with sufficient weaponry. I’ve read the news today, oh boy…]
>Can Tech Executives Be Held Responsible for What Happens on Their Platforms? NYT
For now, tech executives have little to fear, with cases like Mr. Durov’s likely to be outliers, experts said.
The operative clause in NYT’s sentence above is “for now.” How much meaning is contained in those two words. For now, your first amendment rights are protected, for now “my body, my choice,” for now, you have natural rights not dependent on positive law, for now you don’t have to pay for the next breath you draw…
>Pavel Durov and the Abuse of Law Craig Murray
Only a fool would be surprised that the EU Digital Services Act is being shoehorned into use against Durov, apparently for lack of cooperation with Western intelligence services and being a bit Russian, and is not being used against Musk or Zuckerberg for limiting the reach of pro-Palestinian content…
So in short, the arrest of Pavel Durov appears to be pretty blatant abuse and only very tenuously connected to the legal basis given as justification. This is simply a part of the current rising wave of authoritarianism in western “democracies”.
Good reporting from Craig Murray. I also read on RT that His indictment included a dozen charges, including refusal to cooperate with authorities, complicity in offenses related to child sexual abuse material, and drug trafficking… basically all the crimes that the FBI had on Hunter Biden and that anyone who saw images of the infamous laptop viewed; if ever there was a case of projection…
Interesting analysis from Fyodor Lukyanov.
Fyodor Lukyanov: The arrest of Telegram’s billionaire boss shows that big changes are coming
Big changes are coming to the global information sphere, and the Telegram founder’s standing is a canary in the coal min
https://swentr.site/news/603170-fyodor-lukyanov-arrest-of-durov/
There is a persistent story that Durov went to Paris because he was invited to dinner with Macron which I can well believe. It was a setup at the highest levels. The French are throwing all sorts of charges at him, including that he committed “serious acts of violence” against his own son and it sounds like they are just throwing any charge that they can against him to see if anything will stick. Sorta what they have done with Trump. In addition, it seems that the French also want to arrest his brother.
Of course there are consequences for what France did-
‘Macroeconomist and UnHerd contributor Philip Pilkington echoed these concerns, warning in an article this week that Paris’s move could drive investors of all stripes out of France, and Europe in general.“The damage that this could do to France’s image in the eyes of the technology and entrepreneurial communities is profound,” Pilkington wrote, pointing out that Durov’s detention has opened a Pandora’s Box in which the French state begins to systematically bring criminal charges against the developers of internet communication platforms.The Durov case will likely lead to an exodus of entrepreneurs from Europe – a far cry from French President Emmanuel Macron’s promises in 2017 to make France a “startup nation,” ‘
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240828/jim-rogers-durovs-arrest-could-end-frances-attractiveness-for-high-tech-1119940407.html
This adds to Macron’s political problems. He has refused to name a new Fr prime minister from the winning coalition in this year’s election. There are serious calls for his impeachment.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/08/27/french-president-macron-refuses-to-name-prime-minister-from-left-wing-coalition
and from the AP
https://apnews.com/article/france-macron-new-popular-front-prime-minister-1e5e603a0ed8fc6630dd6461ffd56dfc
Tucker interviewed Mike Benz yesterday. One twtr-X clip.
MikeBenzCyber
explains how NATO declared war on free speech after Trump and Brexit to crush the rise of populism. Tucker’s reaction is priceless.
https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1828941145055084682
Gilbert Doctorow’s latest interview with Dima is interesting. “Russia’s Kursk Recovery…” offers a far darker view of what is going on than some others (say Mercouris–who I want to say I greatly respect and am a paying subscriber to). The degree of American support for the Kursk attack that his source suggests rings true to me. His source’s suggestion that the two aircraft carriers in the American force sent to the eastern Mediterranean might be used in a planned decapitation attack on Russia might be more plausible than it seems at first. He mentions other indications that Kursk may not be the eccentric adventure that we have thought it was. His narrative suggests one possible way the two wars, in Ukraine and in the Mideast, could be become one, and I have been looking for that to happen.
I recall from a comment on MoA that those aircraft carriers are in the Gulf of Oman, not the E. Med. Plus, no need for aircraft carriers to launch nukes when subs can do so much more stealthily.
So, Doctorow may have made an error in logic there. Not 100% sure, though. It feels to me like we’re one miscalculation away from a nuclear exchange.
How exactly are two carriers in Mediterranean going to decapitate Russia? By secretly launching a big salvo of JASSMs from Aegean Sea towards Crimea?
Adding one more clip from the Tucker – Benz interview. “The Whole of Society” is a new-ish blob idea.
MIKE BENZ: ELON IS UNIQUE… HE DOEN’T FOLD UNDER PRESSURE
Tucker:
“Do you think that the ‘blob’ you so vividly describe can tolerate Elon allowing the world’s population to say what it thinks through the election and beyond?
And what implications does this arrest have for him?”
Mike Benz:
“Well, it’s a complicated issue because Elon is very unique.
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1828962108349792457