Schrödinger’s Neighbor Says Thought Experiment Very Interesting But He’d Really Just Like A Straight Answer On Where His Cat Is Babylon Bee (Li)
A spirit so good people are smuggling it in suitcases BBC (Robin K)
What Can We Learn from Menstrual Blood? New Yorker (Dr. Kevin)
Struggling to Unlock Your Phone? You Might Have Lost Your Fingerprints Wired (Dr. Kevin). *Sigh*. Makes “lost” fingerprints seem temporary or a function of age. Yours truly did not have readable fingerprints in my early 20s and that has been persistent (and no, I have not done strenuous manual work or handled harsh chemicals). Goldman tried 3x to satisfy NASD requirements and had to put a note in my file instead. Having prints so shallow as to be not readable makes using contact lens very difficult. The lens makes a tight seal to the finger and does not want to release to the eyeball.
23&Me is collapsing: turns out, all that precious DNA data is worthless Sasha Latypova (Micael T)
#COVID-19
US faces another COVID-19 surge The Hill. And school is starting.
Univ. of Kentucky researchers find Alzheimer’s-like brain changes in long COVID patients University of Kentucky (Paul R)
Michigan Supreme Court won’t rule on COVID lawsuits, income tax trigger Detroit News (ma)
Climate/Environment
US Government Opens Up 31 Million Acres of Federal Lands For Solar Electrek
Largest dam removal in U.S. history frees Klamath River Los Angeles Times (Chuck L)
China?
China’s 5% Growth Target Faces Rising Doubt as UBS Cuts Outlook Bloomberg
China’s factory activity seen extending declines in August Reuters
Chinese leverage has crept up to a new record Financial Times
US trade chief Tai lauds Canada’s steep new tariffs on Chinese EVs and metals South China Morning Post
If voted to power, Kamala Harris would ‘responsibly manage’ US-China ties, Sullivan assures Chinese top brass FirstPost. Since when does one administration speak for a possible future one?
South of the Border
Venezuela’s diaspora flexes its might Aljazeera
The effects of the dollar shortage in Bolivia: international freight costs increase by 50% America Economia
Africa
Mpox outbreak in Africa: Looming economic crisis Africa News
The ripple effects of Sudan’s war are being felt across three continent Economist
European Disunion
German politician hit with paint ahead of state election DW. Sahra Wagenknecht.
France: What Happened to You, Man? Matt Taibbi
Old Blighty
Suicide rates in England and Wales reach highest level since 1999 Guardian
Far right is very real threat, says Keir Starmer BBC (Kevin W)
UK rail minister got engineer sacked for raising safety concerns Politico (Kevin W)
Gaza
UN food agency suspends operations in Gaza after car hit by gunfire at Israeli checkpoint Guardian
War on Gaza: Aid workers killed in Israeli strike on humanitarian convoy Middle East Eye (Kevin W)
How Israel’s Elite Intelligence Unit Targets Queer Palestinians in the West Bank DropSite (Dr. Kevin)
West Bank attacks: To western leaders, there are no red lines for Israel’s slaughter Middle East Eye (Micael T). A major escalation that’s getting pretty much no notice in the Anglosphere media.
President of the painters and allied trades union Jimmy Williams Jr says the union is directing its massive international pension fund to make sure none of its investments are going to support the “genocide in Gaza”. pic.twitter.com/KVVKKGMzS2
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) August 29, 2024
Israel is not an outpost of the West Asia Times (Kevin W)
New Not-So-Cold War
Last of the Wunderwaffen? F-16 Blasted Out of Sky in First Mission Simplicius. A Ukraine MP says friendly fire from a Patriot downed the plane. Some experts say it was hit on the ground by an Iskander and the pilot and others were in proximity.
EU to Move Forward With Russian Asset Plan Regardless of US Bloomberg
Diplomacy Watch: F-16 crashes, Zelensky says they need more Responsible Statecraft. At the close of his show on Friday, Alexander Mercoursis disagreed long form with the claim in the subhead, that Kiev seems “keen” to negotiate. Mercoursis, who IMHO generally is more optimistic about the possibility of negotiated outcomes than I am, says he has concluded Kiev will never negotiate (at least under the current regime) and (my words, not his), all they do is string various players along.
How drone attacks are changing the rules and the costs of the Ukraine war The Conversation (Dr. Kevin). Includes some questionable claims along with useful observations.
ICC orders Asian country to arrest Putin RT (Kevin W)
Kremlin wages campaign to justify Putin’s falling rating over situation in Kursk – ISW Ukrainska Pravda
Bloomberg: Ukraine war bankrupts Alaskan fishery International Affairs (Micael T)
Imperial Collapse Watch
How Many Americans Will Die From Civilization Collapse? Ian Welsh (Micael T)
Trump
The Slump American Conservative
After decades of anti-vaccine rhetoric, RFK Jr. pivots to chronic diseases — and gets Trump on board STAT
Trump seeks to shift debate on IVF with pricey proposal The Hill. Oddly one never sees covering Ozempic described as expensive. The only time I can recall that concern raised was with a big ticket, not great efficacy Alzheimers med.
Kamala
Kamala BOMBS First Interview, SPIRALS OUT of Control DeVory Dawkins. ZOMG, CNN asked some real questions. Even with an edited interview, she does not look so hot.
Harris rules out Israel arms embargo: ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ Anadolu Agency. Chas Freeman made some caustic comments about her statement on a new Nima talk.
2024
Harris Has Taken Narrow Lead Over Trump, WSJ Poll Finds Wall Street Journal
Texas T-Zones Obsolete Man (Micael T)
Leaked Gaza Cable. US military in 74 countries. Election Hysteria. Ken Klipperstein. See opening section on election interference claims
Our No Longer Free Press
All the news on Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest The Verge
The Geopolitical Fallout of Telegram Founder Pavel Durov’s Arrest Foreign Policy
Musk’s X banned in Brazil after disinformation row BBC
Major publishers sue Florida over ‘unconstitutional’ school book ban Guardian
Mr. Market Gets What He Wants
US economic growth for last quarter is revised up to a solid 3% annual rate Associated Press. (Robin K). Shameless.
Intel Weighs Options Including Foundry Split To Stem Losses; Shares Soar Bloomberg
AI
Digital twins are making companies more efficient Economist (Dr. Kevin)
OpenAI and Anthropic to share AI models with US government TechXplore (Dr. K)
This new AI pin could be the personal transcriptionist I’ve been waiting for – if it works ZDNET (Dr. Kevin). Great. Adds to AI training sets.
LLMs produce racist output when prompted in African American English Nature (Paul R)
Antitrust
Judges Rule Big Tech’s Free Ride on Section 230 Is Over Matt Stoller. Important
Class Warfare
Book Review: Technology and chaotic government programs doom family farms in ‘Land Rich Cash Poor’ Associated Press (Robin K)
Antidote du jour (Cheryl K):
A bonus (Chuck L):
That jaguar is gorgeous!! pic.twitter.com/hBMoja5T8q
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) August 29, 2024
A second bonus:
This is what happiness looks like..🐮😊 pic.twitter.com/Gw0ibXyljZ
— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) August 29, 2024
A third bonus. Having been a minder of Abyssinians (and this very model, a Ruddy), this is so how they are. Abys care about what their humans think, at least more than most cats:
— Cats That Heal Your Depression (@Catshealdeprsn) August 29, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
200 comments
Comments are closed.
Autonomous Semis in California. What could possibly go wrong?
California issues draft regulations for operating autonomous trucks Reuters
A bad idea whose time has come. Apparently Uber runs tests between Dallas and Houston.
What if one of those autonomous semis got annoyed with you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SutDTIhbQ2g (59 secs)
It’s a lesser light compared to Duel, as movies go, but since I’m a child of the 80s…Maximum Overdrive? The soundtrack may be the only memorable part of it.
“Who Made Who…Who Made You…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Made_Who
Duel – quite the movie. Never heard of it until one night I was going to bed and turned on the TV just to see what was on. Duel. What’s this about? Wow, this is kinda wild. Had to watch the entire thing as it drew me in from the beginning. I guess that might be what Spielberg was after.
Thanks a Million. Laying in bed, sick and reading NC.
When my eyes get tired of reading, I’ll put that film on. Looks fun and “escapist”. Getting better fast though and doing what I can: vit C, zink, quercitin, Ivm, herbs, washing, rinsing, etc. Wish me luck. Bak to the comentariat.
I think one of the best use cases for autonomous driving, to the extent that any exist as currently construed, is long distance trucking. Then the last miles can be driven by people to navigate situations where the traffic conditions are much more variable.
Yes, keep the autonomous trucks in separate lanes, maybe with some kind of physical guidance, which maybe the wheels would fit into and keep the massive vehicle going in the right direction, with electronic separation between them… We’d have to invent it, of course. Maybe an entirely-new mode of transportation!
Oh, wait — trains! (smacks forehead).
Sure. When you find a way to get US politicians to invest in rail for those purposes, let me know. Also, let me know when we can rely on commercial rail companies to not be awful with safety and maintenance…
And these issues wouldn’t be present with autonomous cars because…?
Not sure if that’s a serious question or not, but in the spirit of discussion let’s try.
The safety record for trucks right now is very much better than rail. The scale of what goes wrong with a trailer on a truck is also much more manageable than a 2 mile long train derailing. We also have far more roads than rails right now. I understand that’s because “we’ve” decided that “we” shouldn’t invest in rail, but that doesn’t change where we are now. But with trucks, autonomous or otherwise, the investments are baked into road maintenance. The trucks are largely handled by private interests too.
And while we’re on the subject, we’re talking about trucks, not cars. There’s a huge difference there. Just to take one example, people driving cars are taught to give trucks and trailers space. I realize they don’t always do that, but the fact that people are aware they need to maintain some space around those large vehicles gives the algorithms and programming more space to adapt to changing conditions on the highway. And when things go wrong, there are designated crash zone and run off lanes for trucks.
I’m not a big fan of the technology or the people pushing it on us. But to the extent that there is a use case for it, I think you can make a good one for long haul trucking on highways. Past that, we’re not good enough at all the things we need the tech and the sensors to do yet to handle driving in cities. So last mile would still need to be humans.
The expense of making the highway system is the support depth of the roadway and bridges. Lots of engineered concrete and steel to handle heavy-wheeled vehicles (trucks). The railroad bed? A thin blade of steel, wood/precast “ties”, and some crushed rock bedding. A system that can carry massive loads with little friction using highly efficient diesel/electric locomotives.
The only transport more efficient is the cargo ship.
Depends what you mean by efficient.
Taxpaying rubes, who have been led to believe that driving on the freeway is the very definition of freedom, happily fund the current logistics network. In my experience Americans are generally so enthralled by the religion of the road that they will happily drive 8hrs for a quick photo op near a big tree or famous rock, then drive straight back. I know a guy who drove a motorcycle east to west coast in 5 days. Nobody made him. Nobody was after him. It’s as if they are only at home when they’re behind the wheel, the road being the only shared constant in everyones lives.
kind of like trains but using more gas, and undermining small trucking companies to the benefit of amazon et al whose coffers have been stuffed with cash to help pay for them to take over the world.
Yep… but I think this is a battle that’s already been lost.
We’ve decided we’re going to ship everything. We don’t have enough truckers to ship everything. We’ve also decided we need to overnight everything. Trucking is also dangerous and deleterious to human drivers long term. The obvious answer to that kind of a problem is automation. But we haven’t had the capacity to even imagine that until now. So we’ll see where this goes.
I’m expecting some amazing examples of sabotage if it takes off.
‘Alexander Mercoursis disagreed long form with the claim in the subhead, that Kiev seems “keen” to negotiate.’
Zelensky will only negotiate with his 10-point peace plan as the basis for it and the EU has agreed that this must be so. But they are faithless negotiators. Modi was in Kiev the other day trying his part to wind this war down. So Zelensky started to string him along and said that he was looking for a Global majority country to hold the second peace summit in and after talking about Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Switzerland got around to saying that India would be a great choice as ‘It’s a big country. It’s a great democracy, the largest.’ And then he dropped the boom on Modi. He said ‘But I want to be frank… We won’t be able to conduct a peace summit in a country who hasn’t joined the communique of the peace summit’ What he meant was that fiasco of a peace summit in Switzerland and which India did not sign off on. So here is Zelensky saying I will hold my next summit in India but only if you sign off on some of my 10 points plan from that summit. And if it even went ahead, I am sure that Zelenski would have more demands to make of Modi. Muted microphones for the Russian delegation perhaps?
https://www.rt.com/india/603243-kiev-karaoke-delhi-sees-zelenskys/
“Russia counters offers Zelensky Peace Plan” – Russian Foreign Minister Sergery Lavov announced he has been authorized by Putin and Russian Security councils to accept negotiations around Zelenskys peace proposal, which includes Russian troop withdrawal, on precondition that Zelensky transfers all private properties including mansions located in various nations, to a trust to be administer by the Russian Foreign Ministery.”
That’s just Lavrov being a bit of a dag-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_(slang)
Etymology is fascinating:
> All I had to do was stick my face into this gruesome mess and bite off the young sheep’s testicles. Dag a hogget. I had good teeth.
[My wicked, wicked ways / Errol Flynn]
Mercifully, the link sems broken…
Durn it. And there was so much more detail…
B 52’s – Give Me Back My Man • TopPop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swBDlOk0V6Y
Runs away …
okay, i love em so much i’ll tmi…
Early ’80’s, party w Goodman School of Drama kids, future Oscars Tonys Emmys & Globes in each others faces. i’d made brownies with a hash oil glaze, undoubtedly powder-coated affair, B 52’s going as way too many people were jumping leaping dancing. Downstairs neighbor knocked on door, let us know their chandelier had crashed to the floor.
man those were good dance jams. B 52’s forever.
I dont think Z is in charge to actually do a peace treaty. The parallels between Gaza and Ukraine and Biden are too obvious.
Both BIBI and Z are their leaders and in both cases if Biden said no, the wars would be over in short order. But Biden is saying yes to both. Listening to Biden speak it seems obvious to me that he is a complete believer in Israel and truly hates Putin and Russia and wants it destroyed.
Z will opt for peace when Biden says so, never.
Since the war will go past this election, it’s unclear what Trump or Harris ( who hasn’t said anything I could find) will do. But Harris’s potential advisor alluded to no change.
I have not heard much from “Biden” lately. Have you?
He was last seen wandering off the WH grounds to chat with some nearby workers fixing potholes. He seemed fascinated with their flat-blade shovels;)
He extended his vacation:
Biden continues vacation for second straight week despite saying he will ‘work like hell’ until end of term
https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-continues-vacation-second-straight-203803412.html
If you watch the video you can hear the attacker scream the traditional anti-fascist battle cry “Slava Ukraini”. Curious that DeutscheWelle deems this not worth mentioning. And how did his excess of nationalist fervor cause him to enjoy a cushy exile instead of doing his duty at the gates of Pokrovsk?
I assume you merely engaged in inept/hasty drafting.. “Slava Ukraini” is a Nazi, as in fascist, cheer.
https://x.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1502394789165162506
Yes, you cannot get more nazi supporting than that slogan.
It was reported elsewhere, but not in the DW article, that the attacker was Ukrainian. I wonder why DW did not feel fit to mention this.
Back in the 30s and 40s, the Germans called their press the ‘Lügenpresse’ which means lying press. But the Germans are using that term again and they really do print all sorts of rubbish so not mentioning the attacker was Ukrainian would be par for the course-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_press#21st_century_usage
You wonder if Ukrainian intelligence was involved like they were for the attempted assassination of Robert Fico. Either way, they should deport that guy back to the Ukraine where I am sure that they can find a use for him.
I find Blinken an astonishing character because he represents a combination of unimaginable stupidity and profound ignorance which places him lower on the evolutionary ladder than an amoeba, let alone Liz Truss and our other homegrown follies. He is already entering history as the man who is singlehandedly crashing the American Imperium. I wish him well in his efforts.
I took it as sarcasm, FWIW.
It may have started that way, but I’ve certainly seen it used unironically without those connotations, maybe by people who didn’t know better. It was an expression of general support for Ukraine after the current war started, and it was everywhere.
It started that way, and it didn’t change a bit. Bandera is a national hero in current incarnation of Ukraine, and CIA/USA have been supporting his gang since 1945, continuously. In the current day and age, general support for Ukraine means general support for Banderites, and general hate for Russia, and everything Russian, and Russian related. It is as fashist as it gets. Just because brainless people chant slogans without knowing their meaning, does not change the meaning of those slogans. It only makes those people who didn’t know better look like idiots, and they are everywhere.
Wagenknecht is the most interesting politician in Europe to me.
Thomas Fazi article I was reading earlier (pre paint thing)
“Who’s afraid of Sahra Wagenknecht? Germany’s ‘left-conservative’ has redefined populism”
Thanks for the link which gives us Wolfgang Streek’s Nibelungentreue, and which, for those of you who may have also missed it, brings to mind the most recent opus in Greer’s Ring cycle:
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-nibelungs-ring-the-politics/
Very interesting, thanks.
Thanks for the link! Wish I could vote for her.
Wagenknecht is the only serious politician in Germany with a clear cut vision of a future Europe which can deal sensibly with the problems within it’s borders and become a vital member of a multi-model, multi-polar system based on a mutual respect for national and cultural differences within and between nation states.
I think her “Prosperity Without Greed” is an excellent account of her thoughts in 2017, but none of her other books have been translated into English since then.
Given the fact that we have a EU ruled by an unelected Goebbels in drag capable of uttering only the most imbecilic soundbites totally divorced from any external reality, a France “governed” by a bite-sized Louis Napoleon, and a German government obsessed primarily with feeding it’s inner Nazi by hurling the ethnic tribes of the Ukraine fruitlessly against an ascendant Russia whilst maintaining it’s passion for settler-colonial genocide of an inconvenient indigenous population, it would be rather refreshing to have some thoughtful publisher release good English language translations of Ms Wagenknecht’s more recent publications, if only to prove to my late father wrong and that there is still hope that the German leopard does have the possibility of changing it’s spots.
Goebbels and Louis Napoleon had quite a few redeeming qualities. I have no idea what redeeming qualities VDL and Micron might have.
This has to be a joke. It did put a smile on my face.
This joke needs a bit of work. Maybe adding “barbarian onslaught”, or “subhuman orcs”, or something else to push it over the top.
I feel very bad about the paint.
Sahra is the best dressed politician that I have ever met. I think I’ve said it before: Every time I meet her I want to ask her where she got her coat or her clothes, so that I might get them for my wife.
But I’ve hesitated to come right out with this, so it’s only a thought. But I’m sure the paint defaced some nice fashion statement.
Fico and Trump would have prefered paint, if they had a choice.
She was very nimble and fully aware and on the ball, seemed to have dodge the jet of paint almost entirely.
Oh yes I noticed that too. She is very easy on the eyes. And the Persian ancestry shows.
Re UN food agency suspends operations in Gaza after car hit by gunfire at Israeli checkpoint Guardian
Yet another mainstream media report that struggles to point the finger at who did it. You have to read half way down the article to see the car was shot at by the IDF (as if you cannot guess who did it). It is rather like all the air strikes and bombings the headlines of which almost never attribute blame. Even when it does, the BBC usually calls such attacks an ‘alleged’ Israeli strike.
Regarding “Univ. of Kentucky researchers find Alzheimer’s-like brain changes in long COVID patients”
If there is “a potential commonality in brain disorders across these conditions” what does this mean, logically? To me it means that we should not be looking at SARS2 as the direct cause of LongCOVID, but rather, they should be looking for a middleman somewhere in the body. And when this middleman is not doing , his job, it increases the risk LongCOVID. And that middleman will be the common root of all cases of Alzheimer’s, whether it is caused by a high sugar diet or SARS2.
IMH(well researched)O, the middleman is altered Purine metabolism:
Deregulation of purine metabolism in Alzheimer’s disease
Dysfunctional purinergic signaling correlates with disease severity in COVID-19 patients
Purines are the fundamental energy source for our neurologic and immune systems. If you do not have energy cellular energy you cannot fight off a virus or cancer. If you do not have energy you cannot think or have good blood pressure or have a good mood.
And this is something that can be fixed with nutrition, so it will never be researched. Magnesium, Zinc, and Manganese are all needed to control purine production and catabolism.
Thank you MS. I won’t say where I found this but it seems there may be a paradigm shift going on. Came across this yesterday and your mention of “metabolism” put me in mind of it.
The book is: Tripping Over the Truth: How the Metabolic Theory of Cancer…
It explores the new and exciting non-toxic therapies born from the emerging metabolic theory of cancer. These therapies may one day prove to be a turning point in the struggle against our ancient enemy. We are shown how the metabolic theory redraws the battle map, directing researchers to approach cancer treatment from a different angle, framing it more like a gentle rehabilitation rather than all-out combat. In a sharp departure from the current “targeted” revolution occurring in cancer pharmaceuticals, the metabolic therapies highlighted have one striking feature that sets them apart―the potential to treat all types of cancer because they exploit the one weakness that is common to every cancer cell: dysfunctional metabolism.
You are welcome! And yes, since ATP is a purine, and ATP (and GTP, ITP, and XTP) is the product of our metabolism, to me this connects cancer and purine dysfunction. The trick is that each one of us will likely have different reasons for this altered purine metabolism.
Potential Mechanisms Connecting Purine Metabolism and Cancer Therapy
IMHO, (And this is just a wacky theory we have been playing around with) I feel that people will low ATP are at more risk from cancer and cancer cells are a “last ditch” way for our body to make ATP when the normal process malfunctions. Cancer cells that are higher in ATP and the most dangerous. I hold the uncommon belief that the human body makes mistakes.
Or it may be the University of Kentucky has been funded to create “evidence” to be used by the Defence in any future war crimes trials.
“23&Me is collapsing: turns out, all that precious DNA data is worthless.”
Was going to comment on this when I got sidetracked by the photo caption, aka-
‘Anne Wojcicki, late Susan Wojcicki’s sister, ex-wife of Sergei Brin, who is ex-husband of Nicole Shanahan, who is RFK Jr’s VP pick. It’s not complicated at all.’
When it come time to write about the history of America in the early 21st century, I have just the chapter heading ready to go to reflect these multiple relationship of the elite that you read about again and again and again. I would call it ‘Chapter 13 – Happy Families’ and I have no doubt that you see the same in other countries as well.
And the sequel, Six Degrees of Defenestration? /s
Don’t forget that perennial favourite “self-help” book for Silicon Valley types: “Departure From the Normies.”
The 23&Me article is interesting. Some of the author’s other views expressed on that blog are even more … um … interesting.
Indeed. I went to the main “introduction” page, which contains statements that are somewhat different from the reality I usually inhabit, such as:
and
I do not feel like I am particularly cherry-picking quotes here.
Wow, from her about page:
Intend is a reach. I believe they care about profit over people for sure which has the same outcome.
Yes, she is not completely wrong about the generalities, but when she gets to the specifics it becomes clear she means something different and is living in a different reality.
How about “Muddled Cuddle Puddle”?
But to put it in perspective, this inbred kanoodling is what European elites have been doing for centuries. Have any scions of the techbros shown signs of pronounced jawbones yet? They do seem to have the midwittery down.
https://people.com/parents/esther-wojcicki-raising-ceos-doctor-success-advice-book/
Pride goes before the fall as they say. One of her daughters is dead from cancer, and 23&Me seems to be on its death throes. The world is cruel indeed.
Putin’s next coup. Elections in three eastern German states are likely to usher in Russia-friendly parties – Politico
I could only roll my eyes through most that article and couldn’t get through it.
It had all kinds of boxes and frames to put everyone one that was anti-war.
Here’s a frame for Politico: pro-war or anti-war…then who looks like a freakin’ “extremist”?
Putin’s coup, not to be confused with regular coup, because it consists of winning the elections in regular way, and does not include USA embassy.
I must admit it put a smile on my face that Politico considers local elections as coup, because it’s likely to usher into power parties Politico doesn’t like – but people do.
They could have use “warmongers and russophobes likely to loose in the elections – time for self reclection” instead…
I think they’re being tricky. A coup is not necessarily a coup d’etat, it can just be a blow, a victory. Of course 1) they probably used that word here for a reason, even though the coup d’etat interpretation is deniable and 2) yeah, totally, the AfD and the BSW are both ran straight from the Kremlin. /s
Well, those are “pro-Russia” parties, not “democratic” parties, so they don’t count. You see,
“The democratic parties — the SPD, CDU and even the Greens — never really managed to establish themselves in the East in the same way they did in the West, and that makes it a lot easier of course for a party like the AfD to slip in and take advantage of a more volatile electorate,” said Johannes Kieß, a sociologist at the University of Leipzig.”
Germany has enlightened academics who can ‘splain “democracy” to their authoritarian deplorables just like we do in the US. But if they keep doing stuff like this, it seems the West is going to have to destroy “democracy” in order to save it.
What an incredibly condescending piece of crap from Politio’s “chief Europe correspondent.”
I am very upset about this article “23&Me is collapsing: turns out, all that precious DNA data is worthless”.
There is a lot a doctor can do with someone’s genetic data if they practice Personalized Medicine, and I have seen it in action (One case was rather simple, fixing a case of hyperlipidemia with diet).
But drug companies do not want to get into Personalized Medicine because there is no money in it for them. They want to create one drug that will treat all cases of a disease, and that we know is impossible, since there are many pathways to diseases that are the result of both environment and genetics. Many researchers have a misunderstanding about genetics. Most gene changes do not causes disease, but the certainly increase the risk of disease, and mostly in combination with the environment. For the hyperlipidemia case I mentioned above, the diet/gene mismatch was fixed by greatly increasing long chain omega 3 fats and reducing all short chain Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats. They carried changes in their FADS1 and FADS2 genes that signaled this change, and Omega 3 is needed for Reverse Cholesterol Transport.
The author of that Article works in Pharma R&D so I understand. I knew the drug discovery aspect would turn up useless, but that did not bother me. I knew people could use the raw data to understand their risks and needs.
And to anyone here who thinks that genetics does not matter, then I will ask you, why do we all look so different? If genes do not matter, why do I have blue eyes and someone else has green eyes? Why do some people who come from Africa have extremely dark skin? If the environment can change these genetics, why can’t the environment change the genetics around our health?
Thanks for this. I’m skeptical about many of the promises that show up around the use of genetic data. But knowing likely risks is of real value nonetheless.
Wait until they file for bankruptcy, and the data is sold off to the highest bidder to satisfy creditors. Then you’ll really be upset.
Including to state and federal police agencies. Some of us warned people not to trust this company.
I have zero concerns about your claims, it is exaggerated fear mongering. There are strict protection against what you claim, and it comes with very, very high fines. Plus, the DNA they keep is truly anonymous Again, because of the law..
Besides, it is very easy for the local police to get your DNA right now. They just need to follow you around for a bit and pickup your discarded soda can you drank from.
And if we come to the point of having to worry about your claims it is already too late. The benefit I and other are seeing far outweigh these risks.
If you think those legal protections mean more than a fag end, I have a bridge to sell you. Cops break them all the time with no consequences. Just look at the case about 2-3 years ago where they cracked a murder case through those very same DNA databases (I think they mainly used Ancestry)
The DNA database you are referring to is called GEDmatch, not Ancestry, and uploading your DNA is voluntary and the cops were not breaking any laws doing so. People put their DNA up on their own. I did not do that and I do not recommend it. But even within that database you can tell them you do not want it used for police investigations and they have FAQs About Opting In for Law Enforcement Searches on their web pages.
Cops cannot get into my 23andme data even if it was still on 23andme. The data is as safe as you make it.
If a cop wants to get your DNA it is much easier than going on a website, they just need to follow you and pick up something you drank from and discarded.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/nation/use-of-online-dna-databases-by-law-enforcement-leads-to-backlash-and-website-changes
It is voluntary, but people are enticed to load up their results from Ancestry, 23andMe, etc. to find family genealogy. Moreover, as that article describes, the company may violate its own ToS to aid the police at its own discretion. So the site may say “we protect your privacy,” but as Yves intoned, that promise is hardly more than a marketing gimmick.
I do not disagree with you. As I said, do not upload the raw data there then. But this has nothing to do with 23andMe nor anything to do with the companies that run the full genome.
The data is as as safe as their infosec practices permit it to be; we keep seeing larger and larger data breaches all around.
You obviously seem to know something about genetics and its possible applications to health. And though I have no expertise, as a relatively informed layman I agree with much of what you say on that topic. But respectfully, if you actually believe that the “law” could protect your genetic data from a government agency that wanted it, or that it is “as safe as you make it,” then I have to assume you are incredibly naive in certain other areas.
Your point about the cops being able to just trail you and grab some DNA from a coffee mug is valid, but only covers the case where the cops already have a suspect.
I am much more concerned about the case where they have DNA evidence, but no suspect. The scenario goes something like this:
(1) Cops have a crime scene with DNA
(2) Cops run the usual checks, FBI databases, past criminal offenders, etc. No dice.
(3) Cops go to a Judge and say, “hey, that 23 and me database, that would be a nice thing to have access to.”
(4) Judge says, “by golly you’re right! SInce the users gave it up voluntarily, and it is in the public domain, they have no 4th amendment rights, it isn’t a search under the Constitution. Have at it, boys!”
So far, that hasn’t happened yet, to my knowledge. But if that DB were to be sold off to the highest bidder, the cops might not even have to go to a Judge. Just buy it off the dark web or something like that.
We have to remember our history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_dispute
The police went as far as requesting a Federal Judge to issue an order forcing Apple to write a special version of their OS just to short-circuit the security feature that disables an iPhone after 10 successive incorrect password attempts within a certain period:
And remember, this is Apple, a much more powerful Tech co. than 23 & me. And one that has a history of standing up for users privacy rights. Do you think that the managers of 23 & me would stand up to a court order?
I’m not familiar with 23 & me’s purported security and privacy measures. Perhaps the database is truly encrypted in a way that only the end users have the private key. But I would not be surprised if these keys are being surreptitiously stored in the cloud, somewhere. Once 23 & me goes under, who knows what data they will selloff or a bankruptcy judge will order them to sell.
Remeber the crypto-currency truism – not my keys, not my crypto.
” Did you find any exact matches for those DNA traces we picked up?”
” No, but I found a 95% match.”
” 95% , eh? Well . . . it’s already Friday afternoon. Let’s just frame the poor random bastard and call it a day.”
I myself have never gotten any of these DNA self-discovery analyses. For exactly this reason.
Yeah, I’ll go with what Yves said. I don’t trust the police and I certainly don’t trust the private sector to give a rats behind about the Fourth Amendment.
There are some missing interviews that I would love to read. Bonus for audio and especially video versions!
First one is with the person, or people, at Goldman who is purported to have said that providing cures was not a sustainable business model.
Jacket design for long-form book treatment would feature a vampire squid with a hypodermic needle clutched in each tentacle.
“EU to Move Forward With Russian Asset Plan Regardless of US”
Who’s Bloomberg trying to kid? Washington is behind this whole asset seizure by the EU because they will benefit from it. Somewhere about 90% of Russian assets are in the EU and only a small fraction in the US. So when the EU goes ahead with this, a lot of investors will suddenly get nervous about their own investments and so will pull their money out of the EU. Guess where they will likely park their investments then?
utube, ~4+ minutes.
Soviet Union and European Union by Vladimir Bukovsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irq0yOhVsE0
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1829612443590393881
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
US foreign policy in one headline: “success” is “severely hurting” others… And failure is when others thrive… Just a purely destructive and nihilistic mindset.
Plus in this instance it’s not even true: the only thing the US was successful at was to boost China’s domestic chip industry and reduce US semiconductor firms’ revenues. I’m not the one saying so, this was the conclusion of the US Federal Reserve in a recent report on the matter (see next tweet * ).
Source: https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-29/jake-sullivan-hails-success-in-curbing-china-s-chip-ambitions
* https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2024/04/the-anatomy-of-export-controls/
4:09 PM · Aug 30, 2024
“How Many Americans Will Die From Civilization Collapse?”
I tend to be more optimistic here. People adapt. They may scream about it, shout about it and deny that they are doing so but it will happen. “Jobs” like social influencer will lose all meaning and a lot of the nonsense that you see in daily life will just go away. People who know how to do things will be the first to adapt while those that work in BS jobs will need to figure out how to make themselves useful. The novel “World War Z” goes into this problem a fair bit. Here is an extract about this problem-
‘Ours was a postindustrial or service-based economy, so complex and highly specialized that each individual could only function within the confines of its narrow, compartmentalized structure. You should have seen some of the “careers” listed on our first employment census; everyone was some version of an “executive,” a “representative,” an “analyst,” or a “consultant,” all perfectly suited to the prewar world, but all totally inadequate for the present crisis. We needed carpenters, masons, machinists, gunsmiths. We had those people, to be sure, but not nearly as many as were necessary.
The first labor survey stated clearly that over 65 percent of the present civilian workforce were classified F-6, possessing no valued vocation. . . . You would have entire suburban neighborhoods of upper-middle-class professionals, none of whom had possessed even the basic know-how to replace a cracked window. Those with that knowledge lived in their own blue-collar “ghettos,” an hour away in prewar auto traffic, which translated to at least a full day on foot. . . .’
There is more on this page quoted which I can recommend but especially the last sentence-
https://johnmjennings.com/what-world-war-z-teaches-us-about-essential-workers/
People will adapt.
I also think people will adapt. Also, civilization collapse will not be instantaneous. Even in the fastest versions, there will be a year or so of a transitional period where people will be able to organize themselves. I come in relatively well positioned, but I am confident my community would be able to get a more sustainable agricultural system up and running. During crisis, people tend to really come together. So I am not particularly worried.
Collapse is not an overnight thing but comes in stages. If you know what to look for, you can prepare accordingly. Dmitry Orlov wrote a book called “The Five Stages of Collapse” which is well worth reading. The old Soviet Union went far down the levels but managed to pull itself back from the final stages. Here is a review of that book-
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-10-09/review-the-five-stages-of-collapse-by-dmitry-orlov/
I’ll lovingly challenge you there. Black swans are a matter of perspective. Nero was a turkey who woke up and his palace was empty.
If I may presume to be optimistic, A Darwinian Survival Guide has rapidly become canon in my orientation. It has the historical and theoretic base which brings coherence to the more practical tomes.
(The other tomes are A Pattern Language, Permaculture: A Designers Manual, and Coppice Agroforestry.)
I hate to be Debbie Downer, but the Mayan civilization collapsed after a 7 year very bad drought. It does not take much in the way of food scarcity to bring down a society. Happened also to the Anasazi in Northern New Mexico. IIRC took more like 50 years of falling agricultural productivity, but in the end, there was cannibalism.
All the Anasazi had to hack apart one another for ‘top sirloin was crude weaponry made out of stone, and cannibalism was widespread in the aftermath of their collapse. We will be much more efficient, methinks
Come on now Wuk. Knapped flint blades and points are much “sharper” and durable than steel edges. Some persnickety surgeons use knapped blades for precision work in slicing and dicing their ‘customers.’
As for the cannibalism, there is the ‘coping strategy’ of “zee bugz, zey is delecious!”
The new neo-liberal motto for Food Security is: “Don’t raise the food output, lower the demand!”
To complete the panorama of precolumbian civilizations, the Moche of Peru, which are best known for their splendid ceramics and some impressive cities (with pyramids), sustained a super El Niño / La Niña event that, from 536 to 594, saw 30 years of intense rains and flooding followed by 30 years of drought.
There is evidence of the larger urban centres having been suddenly destroyed by fire and abandoned at the end of this climatically catastrophic period. Ceramic production was abandoned. Subsequently, the Moche civilization, just like the Anasazi, shattered into smaller communities desperately trying to survive while embroiled in merciless wars against each other (the remaining localities erected defensive walls, which was uncommon before).
The Moche lingered on for about a century before disappearing completely.
Yep. After there isn’t enough food, all bets are off!
As I recall there was evidence that drought was a contributing factor to the civil war in Syria.
Food security: how drought and rising prices led to conflict in Syria
But I think few expect that it’s possible here; I guess we’re gonna find out given the current trajectory. The NY Times keeps running deep dive reporting about aquifer depletion in the midwest. Pump baby pump!
Occasionally I drive past a new compound of acres of organic vegs. They are open to the public on Saturdays; I visited once. The whole shebang has recently been (expensively) fenced-in and I assume it’s not only to keep the deer out.
The USA is as awash in guns as any basket case African country in the 1980’s and 90’s bent on killing one another, and most of them have hardly every been fired, or not at all.
My far right brother in laws who are in the mid 70’s got all armed and dangerous, and I asked them what they would do if somebody broke into their house and stole a 75 inch TV?
Both replied they would let loose with a volley, and when I mentioned we were talking about an item worth $500 new, it didn’t seem to dissuade them from their appointed rounds, and these are well off old men.
That’s because your hypothetical doesn’t really work. Your relatives could not know, in actuality, that the person would stop at taking a TV. In real life a criminal who breaks into an occupied dwelling will very possibly not restrict himself to taking objects. And they could not know that the criminal wasn’t armed.
I phrased the question, as somebody has stolen your TV set, would you shoot them as they were fleeing, both nodded their heads yes.
We are a sick country that will have quite the reckoning served up, high velocity style.
Get with the GamePlan (TM) Wuk! It’s now a part of the New Improved Jackpot.
“Jack a round into the chamber Jack! Here come those starving shoplifters again!”
Oh, okay, that is different. But you didn’t write that above. The particulars matter a lot.
In other words, collapse is what happens when people think there’s an app for everything.
It just came to mind … tangentially the IT outages from a few weeks ago due to that nefarious efforts of rogue hackers from Kreplikastania…oh wait it was Crowdstrike who done it. Bad IT company, bad!
Asking for a friend but wasn’t Delta essentially grounded or nearly so due to that outage. I forget the accurate term from this movie, but in Live Free or Die Hard the movie plot was a coordinated attack on key IT and infrastructure….
That CrowdStrike feels like a dress rehearsal for something coming to us in late October.
Fire Sale.
Good movie!
Americans have been engineered to be about as atomized and low skill as possible for a society. They carry toxic delusions about individuality and freedumb, which will prevent them from working collectively within their communities to solve collective problems. Compared to the besieged peoples in Southern Lebanon or the Donbas, they have no idea how to survive true hardship.
Many of them also believe that when time comes, their guns will solve their problem for them. It’s best to stay out of the way until their ammo runs out.
Over half of all gun deaths are suicides.
I can only imagine what the percentage would be in even more dystopian conditions than what exists now.
We seem to have a bunch of people fighting imaginary ghosts and being all Braveheart about it. These are folks who feel threatened by a drag show. Another example: one of the tee shirts I see people wearing at agricultural fairs I go to is “Stomp My Flag and I’ll Stomp Your Ass!” Obviously I have missed seeing the hordes of subversives going around stomping flags that these people are puffing up their chests and saying they’ll beat up. And country music foregrounds being aggrieved at how put down “us normal folks” are by some imaginary “them” as one of its recurring themes.
When it comes time to fight somebody real, a lot of underwear will get soiled in a hurry. The Fox watching Americans are too used to fantasy battles with hobgoblins that exist primarily in the creative imaginations of their narrative managers. And being the unstoppable bully only works when your enemy can’t or won’t fight back.
re: “When it comes time to fight somebody real, a lot of underwear will get soiled in a hurry.”
Most folks who frequent agricultural fairs, and gun shows, have kinfolk in the armed forces, and/or have served themselves. They are not superhuman; they will pull a high pucker factor if the situation warrants it but, IMO, are less likely to soil their underwear compared to the PMC. I wonder how many PMC can harvest, field dress and butcher a deer, a cow or a chicken.
The PMC will not fight. I mean, what would they do, hit you with their “Hate Has No Home Here” signs? They’ll get on Twitter and come up with a new hash tag for a gripe-fest. But the people being all macho about an invisible army of flag-stompers are not going to last long in a real fight either. It’s good that we have two huge oceans discouraging other countries from invading us, really good, but it’s also encouraged a lot of fake bravado. If only some of that could be turned into serious action against the banksters and tech billionaires and their ilk, instead of big talk about imaginary villains from a Fox News outrage piece.
re: “But the people being all macho about an invisible army of flag-stompers are not going to last long in a real fight either.”
I would not be sure about that. Some of those folks might just surprise you. Remember the Redneck Army of Blair Mountain, WV?
Um, no.
In truth, I think y’all’s talkin’ ‘bout different people.
No human adapts to Venus.
Or anything else on this planet, sadly, as I’d be okay with humans being gone.
Thanks for the Matt Stoller link. This is big. A sea change in thinking.
I read The Slump article from the American Conservative. It looks like they want their party back. Polling has changed greatly in the more than 100 years they have been done here. The methods have changed from written questionares to phone polling and now the Internet has its share. The companies that do them are businesses that exist to make money. They sell the product so it is no surprise the published results are difficult to believe. There are those who desire to influence the polls (the PMC will crawl over broken glass to participate) and others, mostly poor, conservative, or hard to access groups who refuse to take part in them. These groups are under represented in the data so pollsters have to extrapolate results to get to the desired proportion of that group. These problems generate bad data and result in bad polls. Garbage in, garbage out.
I have spent a lot of time this year trying to understand the polling process. Polling is time sensitive product so older results have diminishing value. Sources on You Tube have their biases but they are open about it unlike the MSM. People’s Pundit has a regular broadcast on polling called Inside The Numbers. A very long program he does with Robert Barnes called What Are The Odds? (episode 73) discussed response bias and push polling. They also discuss the accuracy of different pollsters very early in the program which is interesting. That link is here: What Are The Odds?
Inside The Numbers from two weeks ago showed the software used to create the poll and the host discusses how to phrase questions so they are unbiased. Episode #517 from yesterday (Friday) is a 2 hour show called New Polling and Kamala’s First Interview. The first ninety minutes deals with the Harris/Walz interview and can be skipped. I recommend starting at the 1 hour 31 minute mark when the polling analysis begins for about twenty minutes. After that he takes questions so the poll stuff is about 20 minutes. The link is here: Inside The Numbers
For perusal and analysis by the brain trust, a fair assessment of the current state of play:
https://newrepublic.com/article/185427/israel-gaza-ceasefire-united-nations-needed
I was not aware that the US was squeezed out of the Oslo accords. Today I learned something. It does make sense, maybe my hazy recollection of Clinton claiming credit for it is correct but it was just his usual “slick” maneuvering.
The main point is that the US can never be a good faith mediator when it is a party to the conflict itself, in terms of being a hidebound ZIonist cheerleader.
Not being agreement-capable, extending to those influenced, persuaded, cajoled, manipulated or coerced, too.
The US was involved in the Oslo process by sabotaging it during the Clinton era.
Yes, post facto. But I didn’t know it was negotiated in secret specifically to exclude the possibility of sabotage beforehand.
Maybe Russia could get secret negotiations between Israel and Hamas going? I doubt it, though. Netanyahu wouldn’t risk his captured stooges ( the US Congress and Executive branches) suddenly getting uppity and halting the flow of weapons.
You have written that Clinton tried forcing a by-pass of the Oslo Process which ended up erasing it ( if I understand correctly the comment I read). If Clinton really did that, did he do it by accident in pursuit of a look-at-me win after the embarrassment of the Lewinsky affair? Or did he do it on deep stealth purpose as part of the ongoing American effort to thwart an actual peace outcome when such an outcome threatened to become real?
If no one has written a detailed second-by-second history of every thing Clinton did in this regard, perhaps someone should. If this was yet one more thing that Clinton reached out and touched in order to destroy it, perhaps we should know about that.
Solar.
The 31 million acres is really just 9 million more than what was already proposed earlier in the year.
The vast amount of land will never be touched because it’s not buildable or not needed and lots of land needs space for the critters.
Using sort of a round number of 100mw per 640 acres ( sq mile) and using all the land adds up to 4.8 trillion watts.
It’s still back to the big issue of transmission line construction. SunZia is the largest one approved in almost 20 years. 550 miles, to transmit 2GW $10 billion and took I think 12 years to get permits. Now another couple to build.
How much of this is just PR from Biden who knows?
From the president who’s made solar more expensive due to tariffs in the US than anywhere else.
Lots of battery storage too!
These vast solar installations are largely unnecessary, and extremely damaging to ecosystems. Rooftop solar has enormous capacity if fully utilized. The problem for government is that rooftop solar largely leaves out big corporations (such as PG&E in California) from massive profit opportunities. So government much prefers to despoil wilderness with giant solar farms that provide profit opportunities for Big Business. The environmental costs are greenwashed away.
Re: Kablather Harris interview, with America’s Dad! Tim Walz
Am I the only person who experiences actual pain when listening to Harris speak? As her lips start to move, a wave of apprehension builds in me. But, as she never seems to arrive at a coherent point, there is no release of tension. Not even the relief of derision. The stress builds and builds, my face locked into an aching rictus of disbelief at what I am hearing. Am I alone?
No
I share your pain!
You’re not alone. She does an excellent impersonation of someone with important things to say. Her words, however, might as well be a reading of this week’s school lunch menu, delivered with gravitas and arm waving.
She’s like an Animatronics doll set to “platitudes”. I get more than a whiff of Uncanny Valley listening to her. I literally cannot watch the video segment for more than a minute. Maybe that’s why her speaking time clocked in at less than fifty percent of the total interview, her handlers want to avoid the “Hillary” inverse relationship of speech to popularity…
O and Hills both mention almost in passing they had one speech, one set of policy proposals for general public, and a second private speech and set of proposals for the donors and Dem power players. They were good at that game.
I’d guess KH is good at the private speech thing. How else could she be where she is? She’s terrible at the public part of the game, suggesting to me she never thinks about the public or the effect of her actions on the public. She’s been floated up to this position by … not the general Dem voters, imo. It shows.
I experience the “aching rictus” at my other end. As in p.i.t.a.
Visualize ace prosecutor Kablather, hectoring a jury, using what she imagines is sincerity and even a faint blush of credibility delivered with that trademark nasality. The jury can’t wait to get to the deliberations if only to make the blather stop.
How many defendants have spontaneously admitted their guilt on the stand, just to make the pain end? Perhaps she truly is an avatar of justice!
*vomits
Now I can’t help myself…Joe Pesci in one of his titular roles as the lawyer for the “two youts” in My Cousin Vinny…but by the end of the movie he has earned some credibility in wherever county of Alabama and managed to win / defendants were not guilty after all.
Who knew car talk on a witness stand could be two things at once? Informative and also quite attractive when a younger Marisa Tomei is up there.
vapid and unbearable
linked here the other day
https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/press-releases/wealth-of-five-richest-men-doubles-since-2020-as-five-billion-people-made-poorer-in-decade-of-division-says-oxfam/
An empty pantsuit is just what the oligarchs ordered
Hillary could play the tough guy way better and I’m sure she’s weeping in her chardonnay at the spectacle
Here’s Jimmy Dore’s takedown of the interview:
https://youtu.be/cIdgRkU9LQI?si=kGMaEOMTcOS_wfxs
Kamala’s “discussion” of fracking is choice…Dore is right, she looks hungover.
So, over half of the 41 minute interview was not shown due to objections by her ?staff?.
As a prosecutor there is no joy to be on the receiving end of questions
There is a lot of outright assertion on pro-Russian Twitter that Kamala Harris likes to take a drink (Wine Mom) and a lot of innuendo that the drink takes her. But there’s nothing about this in the MSM or even here on NC. Is this all propaganda? The silence around some of her, um, failures to make sense is, er, Bidenesque. Is she in her cups half the time?
YOU HAVE DONE IT AGAIN! Why the hell don’t you use a search engine? Why do you keep making me waste my time on your speculations that you could easily verify or debunk on your own? I told you you are on your way to getting banned over this. I am not kidding.
It’s not “pro-Russian Twitter” FFS. Stop propagating the BS meme that any dodgy comment about Harris is Russia connected.
I hear this regularly from my right winger contacts who are not interested in geopolitics, the sort that also calls Harris a Marxist or Communist.
And it happens to be true:
Kamala Harris, the only major candidate who drinks booze, has great taste in wine
https://www.sfchronicle.com/wine/article/Kamala-Harris-has-good-taste-in-wine-15478759.php
The article reports she is a member of a wine club, visits a tasting room regularly, and loads her own case(s) into her car.
However, it also shows her dining with Willy Brown for lunch and they have only water on the table. One hard core wine enthusiast I know would order wine at lunch (and this was a working Covington partner, so he was not overdoing the tipple, he just wanted to taste and show off his wine skills every time he could).
She is also close to Hillary and Hillary apparently has a capacity for drink. None other than the NYT reported her knocking back scotches with generals.
Does she drink to excess? Who knows? Even if she did, her aides and the press would cover for it the same way they did Biden’s cognitive decline.
But attributing that bad performance to being hung over is charitable compared to concluding that this is Kamala at her best.
I’ll just leave this here:
Kamala Harris America’s Wine Mom 2024 shirt
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/992551205372691217/
Wouldn’t be the first leader who tipped the bottle too heavily. Australia’s first Prime Minister was named Edmund Barton and in a era where everybody was a heavy spirits drinker, he acquired the nickname of “Barton the Boozer.” Personally I am suspicious of people who are teetotallers and I believe that both Trump and Biden fall into this category. A civilized person should know when they should get drunk.
Boris Johnson’s perspective (from 2016 Times article “Drunk in charge of the nation”)
A politician has to be careful. “The crucial thing about using alcohol at political engagements is you have to know exactly how much to have. It starts well, there’s a terrific elan, but then after a while what happens with alcohol, if you’re not careful, is two things.
“Your words start to slur and then you find yourself speaking very fast for no particular reason and then you suddenly start slowing down for no particular reason. And then you become somehow disembodied and you’re spectating at this event. “And then a blackness, a morbidity descends. And then you become sort of bitter,” Johnson says, trailing off.
A former full-time journalist, Johnson believes booze with lunch can help enormously to make the words flow: “I certainly find that if I’ve drunk a bottle of wine at lunchtime I can write a piece unbelievably fast and it’ll be as good as anything else. I can do 1,000 words in 45 minutes and it will be fine. But if I’ve done it at dinner, no good.”
Johnson is unabashed about his fondness for drink: “Sometimes I drink a prodigious amount but I also go days without drinking at all. I haven’t been drunk for a very long time.”
The sacramental aspect of shared drinking, its signal that a relationship has become closer and less formal, is alcohol’s real importance to politicians, believes Johnson: “Oh yes, alcohol’s crucial, absolutely crucial. You always slightly worry about people who don’t drink.”
Johnson is in no doubt that Churchill himself benefited from his gargantuan consumption of alcohol. “God, yes, absolutely. Churchill was very clever at making it work for him. His consumption was formidable but he could use it as fuel. He could keep producing and performing. It’s the high-density lipoproteins. That’s what you need to focus on. That’s what alcohol gives you,” he says with the serious tone of a family GP
wait until after the debate. It could be “The Democrats’ Day After: Part 2–The Joy is Gone”
After watching some of the interview–most of it must have been bad since it took 45 minutes to get whatever video they got. When I watched it I felt that the Democratic Party, by nominating her, was actually attempting to actually lose the presidential election and maybe salvage Congress and wait for Newsome to run in ’28. The set up was tacky the two candidates looked tired and scared. We have to understand the the Democratic Party contains almost all of Hollywood and the corporate media who all have highly capable people to do makeovers, supply whatever drugs as well as supplying needed including speech coaches and so on and so on.
I watched bits and pieces, but that’s about all I could take. I got a bigger kick out of the blueMAGAs telling me how CNN screwed up the interview and made her look bad. The media was too click bait instead of substance. They also had too much production time and commercials. It was also too chopped up and had too long of breaks, so they couldn’t focus on Harris. So the conclusion was – bad CNN.
Or, maybe, just maybe, she is an empty suit with no policies or vision – and all they could extract was 18 minutes. The rest was probably incoherent. Like someone here said earlier – an oligarch’s wet dream – a puppet for the donor class. But that would never enter the steel trap known as the brain of a PMC noggin who thinks she is trying to save democracy and has more talent than providing that finger on chalkboard cackle.
Kamala doesn’t look well; she really doesn’t. She appears exhausted. I wonder how many times she has had covid. If it weren’t for her husband’s recent covid, and Hillary’s convention covid, I would have assumed that her handlers were trying to protect her, but maybe not.
Trump doesn’t look wonderfully well, either, but as a germaphobe he may be trying to avoid a second infection with things like nasal sprays.
you are not alone
Israel is not an outpost of the West – Asia Times
Well, in that interview, more harsh views expressed against China than Russia.
Also, back-handed compliments throughout.
And despite the entire conversation being about Russia, China, and Iran, BRICS was not mentioned once. Zero significance to the people having the conversation.
But they appear to have one concern only and all relations seen thru a lens of “what does it mean for Israel”.
Not surprising. Caroline Glick is an Israeli journalist/author who worked with Netanyahu back in the late 90s and is a full-on Zionist so check out her Wikipedia entry-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Glick
David P Goldman is just a rabid Israeli supporter from way back. It’s always other nation’s fault.
I remember there was a commentator keyboard-named “Spengler” who affected a world-weary-wise cynicism-of-outlook to burnish the realism-patina of his editorials. I then read that “Spengler” was David Goldman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_P._Goldman
Sewage sludge, near and dear to Lambert’s heart. Who could couldda known.
Something’s Poisoning America’s Farms. Scientists Fear ‘Forever’ Chemicals. NYT archive
Should gardeners be concerned about the free compost available from some residential utility waste treatment plants?
Well there was this article from three weeks ago here in Oz-
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/10/glass-plastic-roof-insulation-oyster-shells-what-australian-consumers-found-in-garden-soil-products
Buyer beware!
I don’t even take the free compost from leaf and yard waste given out free by the county (it looks great!), much less sewage sludge. The composted yard waste likely contains ChemLawn residue.
I have the luxury of adequate space and plenty of trees and grass clippings to DIY.
If there is no sewage sludge mixed into the municipal free compost, then that free compost should not have any of the particular problems that sewage sludge brings with it. Of course it would still have all the problems that come with whatever was collected by the authorities for composting . . . all the roundup, neonicotinoids, herbicides , all the everything else that homedwellers use in their yards and gardens.
Just saw this you beat me to it. We’re all truly screwed. Was washing vegetables other day realized it’s pointless if it absorbs poison from the soil itself, plastics, whatever. Same with meat. If only it were just poison on the outside!
This stuff is rich in antibiotics as well! Talk about a circular economy, eh?
If the vegetables being eaten were grown without sewage sludge, then these particular problems will not be present in those particular vegetables.
As more word of this gets more and more out, more and more homedwellers might start growing what food they can in their own yards. They may also start looking into which, if any, farms are Verified No Sewage Sludge.
Theia Chatelle: DropSite. Israel Targeting Palestinian Gayfolk to Blackmail Them.
I recommend this article for the sheer scale and vileness of the attempts to blackmail gayfolk by Israeli “intelligence.” (I don’t use the misnomer “queer,” especially now that some “theorists” say that we are “post-queer.”)
Every once in a while I see comments here about gayfolk being too evident. It’s “identity politics.” Well, in the history of gay liberation — and recall the Lavender Scare during the McCarthy era — one of the reasons for rise of the movement is to end blackmail. Why do you think it was so common to raid bars for gayfolk in the U S of A? What happened at Stonewall?
The “irony” is that the Only Democracy in the Middle East is engaged in such practices. Well, so was J. Edgar. And the story of Bayard Rustin is worth noting.
Yet the central problem is that once the government is oppressing people with different sexual leanings and practices, it won’t take the government long to try to get into your “straight” underpants.
And then who are you going to call? Divine?
PS: It is also worth your while to go to the YTube web site for Sarde After Dinner. Among the many wide-ranging discussions led by interviewers Médéa Azouri and Mouin Jaber are discussions of gayfolk and the laws governing sexuality in Lebanon. (It’s all much less repressed that one may think.)
If one may be allowed a riff on your topic perhaps societies have historically shown a lot more tolerance toward bisexuality than open gender switching. After all “breeders” are necessary for social maintenance and as far as capitalism is concerned the more breeding the better. Of course Gore Vidal, who had his fling with women and was a bit of an expert on the ancient world, contended we are all bisexual anyway.
H’wood has always been big on sex and violence–“kiss kiss bang bang”–as the two most fundamental ingredients baked into our cake. It was perhaps inevitable that both would tangle with the long arm of the law as the wielders of power have their own concerns.
And just because someone is gay or bisexual doesn’t mean their reproductive organs stopped working.
Re Asia Times–talk is cheap.
Israel has a lot of cards to play here. Russia does not want a fight with Israel in Syria. A fight between the Israeli Air Force and the Russians in Syria could go either way I don’t know enough about the military details to make a prediction but the Russians from what I can tell do not wish to find out.
Meanwhile Friday’s Alastair Crooke discusses the delusion that Israel’s US supplied air power makes them dominant and invincible.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/08/30/we-told-israel-look-if-you-guys-have-to-go-were-behind-you-all-the-way/
Airplanes are good at killing people but not so much at controlling territory. The Asia Times interviewee says that Iran has no army to speak of (they seemed to hold their own against Iraq) but how many divisions can the 9 1/2 million field? Crooke says any war with Iran would inevitably need an invasion of Iran with its 70 million population. The cheap talkers don’t like to get into the inconvenient details but reality has held them back–and their neocon supporters in the US–so far.
And finally this is a good long read on the ME.
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/30/chris-hedges-report-roots-of-mideast-conflict/
Israel doesn’t have anything to offer any country that a country can’t get from somewhere else.
But threats and blackmail they have in spades.
That’s interesting that “We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we’re behind you all the way’” article. The implication is that if Israel had not broken their teeth going up against Hezbollah back in ’06, that the Bush regime would have been encouraged to launch an attack against Iran. So Hezbollah’s resistance may have stopped a regional war back then. That was the era of ‘Everybody wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran’ that was heard in Washington at the time.
Aerial bombing is okay on soft civilian targets the US and Israel usually hit.
It did nothing to the Houthi and Hizbullah and Iran are dug in deeper!
Crooke’s point was in part they are ignoring the alternate minority view on the US WW II Strategic bombing study which said “it” was not worth the opportunity costs. It: diverting tech and manpower to long range bombing.
I don’t think any will collapse like 1940 France or 2003 Iraq.
Vice President Harris lashed out at a reporter who had the gall to ask if perhaps the Administration should pause its supply of weaponry to Israel. First, she stressed, another question like that and the reporter would end up with more than a fat lip. (More like “no lip,” she laughed.)
Second, the VP repeated that the Administration might consider a pause in said supply once Israel had blasted into nanoparticles every Palestinian under the age of 13, with the greatest firepower set aside for those Palestinians under 7. (The VP’s giggling continued.) She added that even if the Administration were to temporarily halt its gift of munitions, the Administration would nevertheless continue to assist Israel as it starves and otherwise tortures those Palestinians – – the kids, especially! – – whom the IDF were unable to obliterate.
In other news, the VP reminded Palestinian-Americans that they would be well-advised to heed President Biden’s instruction that if a voter is Black, he or she had no choice but to vote Blue. Finally, in what at first blush sounded like a threat, but surely could not have been, the VP reminded all Palestinians to kindly memorize, if they had not already, the spelling of l-e-t-h-a-l.
Vice President Harris lashed out at a reporter…
[ This does not appear to be at all correct. Failing to label this as a sort of irony, if that is what it is, strikes me as unfortunate. ]
What happens at the BDSM Club should stay at the BDSM Club.
Population of Iran is 88.5 million. Also a very large mountainous country, and you have to go through Syria and Iraq to get there from Israel. Utterly delusional people, but it is the Asia Times!
That Asia Times article was self-parody. Iran has no land army to speak of and no tanks and therefore Israel would win a war. Sure, if true and if Iran decided to invade Israel with tanks (presumably through Iraq and Syria/Jordan, then Israel would win.
But why would Iran fight on Israel’s terms?
And is it even true? Iran had a million men under arms in 1980’s and fought US-armed Iraq to a draw despite sanctions and as far as I know has not demobilised.
Regarding the Abyssinian video, our Abby adopted us a dozen years ago and what a breed!
Gracie is the mother of our hair’m and Abbys kind of resemble miniature mountain lions.
Aaw, I miss my boys. They are such great cats.
2024 and election, a topic I would not have read or followed closely but heck this is America in 2024. Who is the voice for the neglected, or somewhat struggling young male say ages from 20 to 34? Well naturally it might be Trump but I’m not too sure of it.
Caught an interview this morning on the Smerconish show on CNN, with a professor Scott Galloway. Here below is a related article to expand further. Galloway made some compelling points, notably that the Dems aren’t exactly offering much to this demographic.
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/29/nx-s1-5086473/richard-reeves-boys-men-masculinity-2024-elections
Oh cmon man, they’re offering a lower standard of living that can be assuaged by a stint in the army…
and free tampons!
Wondering out loud, but will this current generation of 20 something’s to 30 something’s be one of the very first ( seemingly in a long time perhaps ) to learn the adage, of own nothing and like it? Gen Z may not have it so great, crushing levels of student debt and a possibility of not owning a home to raise their burgeoning children…
I’m a member of Gen X, and the mood and commentary back in the early to mid 90s was not very encouraging then. Grunge Rock was highly popular for many reasons. From a decidedly not grunge rock band…”every generation blames the one before, and all of their frustrations come beating on your door…”. The Living Years by Mike + the Mechanics ( funny I just learned it’s a “+”, and I always thought it was “&” ! ).
Thank you mods…the internet almost fooled me.
Thanks for the Matt Stoller link. As noted the defendant was TikTok and my first reaction is wake me up when Facebook is held liable for the Gaza genocide for failing to take down any posts related to 40 beheaded babies even though they are never shy about taking down pro-Palestinian posts.
Also, this seems like an invitation for lawfare attacks on Twitter/X on behalf of Ukraine for allowing (publishing) posts of Ukrainian killing of civilians on the argument that it justifies or aids and abets Putin’s totally unprovoked and continued slaughter of civilians (insert sarcasm tag) or any other platform that content that goes against the narrative and plaintiffs that can attract high-priced and well-financed lawyers to bring cases.
Musk is one of our oligarchs, that’s different. And France is making theirs uncomfortable, imo they’ll think twice before doing that here.
“Bloomberg: Ukraine war bankrupts Alaskan fishery’
I’m willing to bet that Russian crabs are still making their way to places like New York and LA via third countries just like with oil and gas.
Coffee Pot Fire rages on, now at 7,000 acres with scant containment, but no real threat to buildings or people (aside from 400 AQI for the residents of Tiny Town) and it will be a $100 million fire by the time it gets put out.
I’m grateful for this, but do we have an bottomless pot of money in which to fight these conflagrations?
Yes
Do we have an endless pot of goods and services to buy with the endless pot of money?
https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/putin-keeps-kim-sweet-by-giving-more-purebred-horses-qzw6j8gwm
https://archive.is/VvLL7
Putin keeps Kim Jong-un sweet by giving him 24 purebred horses
Delivery of Orlov Trotters is a partial payment for artillery shells urgently needed for Russia’s war in Ukraine
Thanks to Kevin W for David Goldman link. Issues were explored in the interview from a different perspective, It is the Israeli exceptionalism viewpoint, I believe. I have added the information to my scale.
What was not discussed was equally interesting. The actions Gaza and the West Bank are justified by the October 7, 2023 attack. The mass murder that has ensured tilts my scale to the opposite of David Goldman.
President of the painters and allied trades union Jimmy Williams Jr says the union is directing its massive international pension fund to make sure none of its investments are going to support the “genocide in Gaza”.
[ Unlike President Biden and Vice President Harris, there is an entire trades union that understands the intolerable nature of genocide and knows the destruction of the Palestinian people must be stopped. That President Biden has been supporting genocide and Kamala Harris promises the same if elected is for me intolerable. I can learn from brave, moral trades union members. I will not be intimidated to immorality by the likes of lobbyists for a foreign country passing through a period those citizens will come to forever regret.
Jimmy Williams and trades unionists are honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King. ]
Kamala BOMBS First Interview, SPIRALS OUT of Control – DeVory Dawkins. (Darkins)
I’ve never heard of Devory Darkins. Before I even clicked start on the interview, I saw that he has 136K subscribers. This video now has over 1.3 million views in 1 day. For the number of subscribers, that’s not often seen on YouTube.
Lots of concern out there about “the message”.
Values independent of positions!
The headline for the Nature article their website shows me is somewhat related but does not say anything like that.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07856-5
August 28, 2024
AI generates covertly racist decisions about people based on their dialect
By Valentin Hofmann, Pratyusha Ria Kalluri, Dan Jurafsky & Sharese King
Abstract
Hundreds of millions of people now interact with language models, with uses ranging from help with writing to informing hiring decisions. However, these language models are known to perpetuate systematic racial prejudices, making their judgements biased in problematic ways about groups such as African Americans. Although previous research has focused on overt racism in language models, social scientists have argued that racism with a more subtle character has developed over time, particularly in the United States after the civil rights movement. It is unknown whether this covert racism manifests in language models. Here, we demonstrate that language models embody covert racism in the form of dialect prejudice, exhibiting raciolinguistic stereotypes about speakers of African American English (AAE) that are more negative than any human stereotypes about African Americans ever experimentally recorded. By contrast, the language models’ overt stereotypes about African Americans are more positive. Dialect prejudice has the potential for harmful consequences: language models are more likely to suggest that speakers of AAE be assigned less-prestigious jobs, be convicted of crimes and be sentenced to death. Finally, we show that current practices of alleviating racial bias in language models, such as human preference alignment, exacerbate the discrepancy between covert and overt stereotypes, by superficially obscuring the racism that language models maintain on a deeper level. Our findings have far-reaching implications for the fair and safe use of language technology.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07856-5
August 28, 2024
AI generates covertly racist decisions about people based on their dialect
By Valentin Hofmann, Pratyusha Ria Kalluri, Dan Jurafsky & Sharese King
Abstract
Hundreds of millions of people now interact with language models, with uses ranging from help with writing to informing hiring decisions. However, these language models are known to perpetuate systematic racial prejudices, making their judgements biased in problematic ways about groups such as African Americans…
That is what I see. The rephrase is a rephrase of something the Nature headline writer seems to have phrased with extreme caution. When they do the latter and you do the former you are meddling where you may not want to if you ask me.
Thank you for the comment. For a second there I was thinking Nature dot com was reading my cookie file and feeding me a custom headline.
US economic growth for last quarter is revised up to a solid 3% annual rate Associated Press. (Robin K). “Shameless.”
They haven’t finished yet. The last line:
“Thursday’s report was the Commerce Department’s second estimate of GDP growth in the April-June quarter. It will issue its final estimate late next month.”
There will revisions of revisions. It’s almost like reading TS Eliot instead of stats. I definitely call all of it “narratives” these days more so than stats.
And there was this yesterday in Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-08-30/bls-data-slipups-are-becoming-a-pattern/
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has become an enormously important economic actor. Its repeated mistakes demand a thorough investigation.
Lots of gamblers like the volatility. About the only people being served with a lot of this non-sense.
Just got a Harris knocker. I’m completely exhausted from spending the past 5 hours doing community service or else I would’ve been able to come up with more on the fly than I’m anti-war and she’ll finish destroying this country if elected.
If it happens again just tell the “knocker” that you have to do the “community service” as a result of bombing a Public Private Project Opportunity Zone. Pretty sure they will not come back.
It also helps to tell them that Trump IS Democracy. Then watch them go all scanners on you.
I once had a downstairs neighbor who didn’t want to deal with a particular doorknocker at a particular time. So he said that he told her: ” I just got out of the joint for Aggravated Rape. But I swear I didn’t do it! Want to come in for a beer?” She left.
That article about University of Kentucky studying the similarity of covid brain-fog and early dementia conditions makes me think that ” covidementia” is a word whose time has come.
Alzheimer’s proceeds predictably and stepwise through the brain structure from the entorhinal cortex (just behind the cribiform plate of the olfactory organ in the nose) to the giant pyramidal neurones. This appears to be because the withdrawal of synapses by the affected neurone triggers the decline of the next neurone in the sequence.
Alzheimer’s can be “staged” by where neuronatomically the changes to neuronal morphology, histology and biochemistry can be located in the brain (Braak staging after the work of the husband and wife team Braak and Braak, famous for extensive neuropath studies on humans but also on animals, e.g. dementia is polar bears!).
The earliest Braak stages of Alzheimer are associated with no functional memory or cognition deficits. Mid-stages are associated with mild cognitive impairment,MCI, the prodromal stage of Alzheimer’s. The later Braak stages, of gross neuronal change and damage, are associated with early and late Alzheimer’s, I.e. you have to have brain tissue like cottage cheese to meet the current clinical diagnostic criteria for dementia (because of the brain’s immense cognitive reserves).
Separately, Alzheimer’s disease is associated with neurones in the S and G2 phase of the cell cycle. There are phases that cells pass through when dividing. They are transient, usually hours max. Alzheimer’s disease neurones get stuck in these phases and, once there, are much more sensitive to insults like hypoxia, which trigger apoptosis (programmed cell death) in these fragile diseased neurones.
So my thought is that covid is causing vascular trauma (it’s not really a lung disease but a vascular disease damaging the alveoli) and in patients with early Alzheimer’s in their middle age, this additional insult to their failing neurones is enough to catapult them up the Braak stages.
“Covidementia” is just accelerated Alzheimer’s disease or vascular-infection-intensified-Alzheimer’s.
It’s Klippenstein, not Klipperstein. Sorry for pointing it out, but this mistake is made consistently.
Special for Lambert and others.
Local journalism article, newspaper edition, a cautionary tale of corruption.
Curious why he’s always credited as Ken Klipperstein and not what his byline says, Klippenstein?
Eleven emails in fifteen hours my commercial email account received that many emails from the DNC and the Harris campaign. I thought the billionaires had filled their coffers. But I guess not enough for the PR value for oodles raised in this period.
Or it wasn’t as much as they said and need to make up the difference. I don’t know or care which. It reads as desperate no matter the excuse.
Rather disturbing podcast.
https://rumble.com/v5ct8np-dr.-gilbert-doctorow-l-russias-kursk-recovery-the-mission-no-one-saw-coming.html
It makes sense that Kursk was a US/NATO project. As far as the “red line”? My thinking is that the US can do more or less anything that doesn’t work. But if it works, not so much.
F-16 successfully bombing Russia won’t be ignored.
kinda late my time but hopefully some will see and read these links –
ran across this on yahoo yesterday – the emphasis of the environmental justice tragedy on Stockton is a fair accusation, but the environmental cost even before the impact on Stockton is appalling – a British energy company, Drax, has partnered with Golden State Natural Resources, a government-linked nonprofit, and plans to build two industrial plants in rural California counties that would produce one million tonnes of compressed wood fiber pellets a year – BBC Panorama, a BBC television investigative current affairs documentary program, found that in 2023 the company took more than 40,000 tonnes of wood from so-called “old-growth” forests in British Columbia Canada – following the investigation, the company issued a statement expressing confidence that its “biomass is sustainable and legally harvested.” – WOW! – calling it sustainable is some major BS –
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article291722575.html
the wood pellets sourced from Californian forests are then hauled by train to Stockton and put on a boat to be shipped overseas and it is called “carbon neutral” – the plan calls for sourcing wood from areas that encompass eight National Forests in California – hey Wuk, you know about this?
https://www.desmog.com/2024/03/04/wood-pellet-giant-drax-targets-california-forests/
Everybody knows that giant Sequoias make the best wood pellets. /sarc
The whole things reads as a scam using international rules to make believe that it is “carbon neutral” but if you went into it I am sure that there would be subsidies for this mob, probably from the Californian State government. If they were doing this by chopping down California’s eucalyptus trees, then I would say go for it. Take as many as you want. Instead, they are going for old growth forests because as wooden pellets, it might make it sound more eco-friendly when it is added to gardens in Asia.
Unfortunately, wood pellets are also perfect for burning in thermal power plants. It’s Third World tech, but, as the old railroads could show you, perfectly feasible.
Time for some real Eco-terrorists? Blow up a few production facilities under construction? It has been done before, and successfully too, from both a practical and public relations perspective. (The secret is to avoid at all costs killing ‘innocent’ workers and civilians.)
Sequoias were typically used to make grape stakes and fenceposts, as the Brobdingnagians tended to shatter internally when cut down. I read an account of a 12 year old in Atwell Mill around 1900 whose job was making pencils out of Sequoias for export to France.
Sequoia wood is quite shitty for burning, as an added bonus in the, er pellet plan
I am not Wukchumni and I know nothing about Drax in California, but the same sort of thing is done against the multi-species National Forests of part of the Eastern U.S.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02676-z
Here’s some more about Drax doing this in Canada.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68381160
And here is an article noting that Drax does indeed plan the same thing for California. ( Drax can’t “make” the relevant California or National authorities allow it. The relevant California or National authorities have to want to allow it.)
https://www.nrdc.org/bio/rita-frost/drax-coming-california-forests-partnering-gsnr