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.
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)
‘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 …
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.
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.
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”
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.
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.
“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.
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”?
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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?
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”.