The Strange Story of the Algorithm Meant to Solve Life, the Universe and Everything Scientific American
Climate
Double Blue Ocean Event 2025? Arctic News
How satellite data has proven climate change is a climate crisis Space.com
Study documents extinction of 610 bird species, including those from Hawaii Star Advertiser
Nobody loves Biden’s Western Solar Plan. But it’s what we’ve got LA Times
The coevolution of fungus-ant agriculture Science. “Fungus-ant agriculture originated ~66 million years ago when the end-of-Cretaceous asteroid impact temporarily interrupted photosynthesis, causing global mass extinctions but favoring the proliferation of fungi.”
Hurricane Helene
‘The Death Toll Is Going to Be Tremendous’ The Atlantic
The shocking numbers behind Hurricane Helene’s path of destruction AP
I live in the County over from the BioLab fire that started because of the hurricane. Stephanie Ⓥoltolin, ThreadReader
Report from the field (KLG):
I drove cross country yesterday, a week after Hurricane Helene, on GA19 between Lumber City and Dublin. About 50 miles through utter devastation. No power; the traffic signals were dark and every intersection was a 4-way stop. Power and phone lines down. At least 20% of houses had major damage from wind or falling trees. In places all the trees were leaning at a 45-degree angle from the 60-90 mph wind. One pecan grove was completely flattened, which happened to many similar farms; pecans are a major cash crop for many in rural Georgia. Cotton crop will not be harvested. Soybeans looked just as damaged. In one place several large trucks were resting on their sides. Makeshift clotheslines on front porches. Some stores open on a cash basis only. Gas pumps powered by generators where they are available.
At least a half-dozen country church steeples on the ground. Two photographs attached. That is a downed utility pole in front of the brick Beulah Baptist Church. I stepped carefully around the wires on the ground Multiply by 1000 to get the full effect. It was impossible to stop in the worst places to take a picture because the shoulders of the road were covered in branches and logs that had been removed from the road. My favorite dogtrot house on this route was completely intact with, its cypress siding and new metal roof.
The Trump signs had been replaced. I have heard that FEMA is basically absent and that the state of Georgia is not much better. After previous storms the Georgia National Guard was out in force the next day. They must have been on another road. I counted utility maintenance trucks from at least 15 companies around the Southeastern United States. Those linemen are local heroes. Otherwise these very rural people have been mostly ignored, or so it seems.
Syndemics
DR Congo begins mpox vaccination campaign in bid to curb outbreak France24
China?
Chip war: China claims breakthrough in silicon photonics that could clear technical hurdle South China Morning Post
China set to fully control Portugal’s power grid amid Europe’s inertia Euractiv
Africa
Mercenary Politics: Algeria’s Response to Wagner in Mali RUSI
Quiboloy’s arrest – when self-proclaimed ‘Son of God’ plays politics Channel News Asia
Syraqistan
Israel pounds Lebanon in fierce wave of strikes FT
Israeli raids in Lebanon displace a quarter of the country’s population PBS
Moment huge explosion shakes Beirut BBC
* * * France’s Macron calls for a halt to arms sales to Israel, then does a U-turn Middle East Eye
Israel Targets French Gas Stations in Lebanon Amid Tensions with Macron FES News. Big if true.
* * * How Netanyahu is ‘running rings’ around Biden FT
Inside the State Department’s Weapons Pipeline to Israel ProPublica
US official says Israel has not guaranteed it would not strike Iran’s nuclear facilities Anadolu Agency
* * * How Iran Built Up a Russian Air Defence Network: What Are Its Strengths and Limitations Today? Military Watch
* * * As war and religion rages, Israel’s secular elite contemplate a ‘silent departure’ Guardian
Health sector has a vital role in advocating for peace in Gaza and the Middle East Croakey
European Disunion
Why Europe’s leadership wants war Al Jazeera
National Lockstep? New Left Review. Belgium.
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine, Nato membership and the West Germany model FT
J.D. Vance’s Point of Departure for Peace in Ukraine The American Conservative
Ukraine left in security limbo with Zelensky U.S. trip results unclear WaPo
* * * SITREP 10/5/24: Post-Ugledar Landscape Unfurls into Dark Ukrainian Future Simplicius, Simplicius the Thinker
Russians attack warehouses and lorries in Odesa – photo Ukrainska Pravda
* * * Oligarchs from Putin’s entourage acquire land in occupied Crimea for large-scale construction projects Ukrainska Pravda
Ukraine seizes US$6 million in cash, jewellery from official accused of helping draft dodgers South China Morning Post
Largest Cypriot bank has closed about 20,000 Russian accounts since 2022 Ukrainska Pravda
* * * Notes on Ukraine in the Long Crisis Some Communist Study Group
Biden Administration
Joe Biden, Temporary King The American Conservative
After a day of legal whiplash, Biden’s student loan cancellation plan is put back on hold PBS
2024
Trump returns to failed assassination bid site, vows to fight ‘enemy within’ France24
The swing state battles that will win the US election FT
The Law of Presidential Retribution Bob Bauer, Lawfare
Clinton Legacy
Digital Watch
Why WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has gone ‘nuclear’ against tech investing giant Silver Lake CNBC
Matt Mullenweg: ‘WordPress.org just belongs to me’ The Verge
Assange
A Very Peculiar Triumph Craig Murray
The Final Frontier
Centaur, an icy body in space, is shooting multiple jets of hot gas. What’s going on? WION
The 420
An undulating thrill Aeon
Class Warfare
‘They’re just mad’: Boeing strikers prepare for long haul FT
A National Movement to Organize Amazon Takes Off Labor Notes
Here’s How Loper Bright is Stripping Away Workers’ Rights On Labor
How to win a Nobel prize (2024) and Majority of mathematicians hail from just 24 scientific ‘families’ Nature (2016)
Identities, Partly Relational Concepts 3 Quarks Daily
Antidote du jour (Tony Hisgett):
Bonus antidote:
— trailcam (@Trail_Cams) October 5, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“France’s Macron calls for a halt to arms sales to Israel, then does a U-turn”
That’s just Macron being Macron. He flips and flops on his positions from day to day and it seems that the only thing that Macron is invested in is Macron himself. As a leader his opinions can be dismissed.
Mathematics notoriety: the serious mathematicians I worked with in academia were far more interested in their Erdős number – the mathematical equivalent of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, except the “key person” is a genius and not an actor who now sells mobile phone contracts every family blogging 30 seconds on UK TV/YouTube.
The Wikipedia article as of this date gives a good summary of this brilliant mathematician and why some people in this field boast about how low their number is. I have a value of 3, which apparently is the median value for winners of the top prize in mathematics, the Fields medal. I’m not going to boast – I got lucky by getting to work with one of the gods of Mathematical Psychology between around 2003 and 2017. The guy was one Anthony A J Marley (who collaborated with one of the collaborators of Erdős and thus got an Erdős score of 2 (Erdős himself of course provides the zero on the scale).
PS an anecdote you may or may not be interested in on the subject of mathematics “that did stuff”: Tony’s PhD supervisor (and 50 year collaborator) was Duncan Luce, who was part of a cohort of highly skilled mathematicians who directly or indirectly did gruntwork for the Manhatten Project.
When the USA came scouting for “the next generation” of super-mathmos to the UK in the 1960s, Tony, who turned down a scholarship to Oxbridge in favour of getting his BSc from Birmingham (because “I wouldn’t have fit in, being a farmer’s son”), got rapidly hoovered up to UPenn and ultimately the top west coast places when the head of the British Civil Service in Whitehall told him privately “go with the yanks….we can’t do anything for you in this country”.
Tony had brilliant anecdotes, one a little bit rude about a certain winner of the “Nobel” Prize in Economics that makes me laugh to this day. RIP Tony.
If understand this correctly I would have a 2? I lived with a cal Berkeley professor who worked on the manhatten project at the same time as Erdos.
Unfortunately it is only on peer-reviewed publications. So unless you CO-AUTHORED a paper with someone who CO-AUTHORED a paper with Erdős you are not a 2. Sorry.
The Manhatten thing is also entirely different from Erdős. The Manhatten stuff I referred to was just an interesting(?) side note on the application of mathematics. Tony’s supervisor was part of teams that did the legwork that made sure of stuff like whether the Enola Gay could physically (in theory) escape the blast given their equations on bomb yield etc….
Much thanks to our own KLG for the reporting on the ground there in Georgia. Where I am, here in South Carolina has been impacted so tremendously, so it’s been more simple to focus on where I know as well as who I know. Something is not right, at all, with the scenario there in Georgia being described.
Hoo, then I read up on the BioLabs factory issues, haven’t been that way in a long while but remember Conyers is situated on I-20. It’s like a double down on apocalyptic scenes for these southern states. Don’t breathe the air and don’t believe the government, possibly?
Hoo boy, Tropical Store Milton is strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico. Major hurricane threat to West Florida. Will FEMA even have enough money on hand to deal with this one?
On the bright side, maybe all those FEMA personnel will abandon that hotel that they booked out for themselves thus freeing it up for locals made homeless by the destruction of their homes in that hurricane
Makes you wish they sought to promote the general welfare, instead of promoting the military-industrial complex!
And it looks like Russia and Iran are trying the Reagan strategy of bankrupting their opponents with increased military spending, as disasters plague the homeland. What goes around comes around.
Ventusky rainfall projection Wednesday at 11 am.
Congress hasn’t appropriated funds for FEMA disaster relief for FY 2025.
“Congress passed a three-month stopgap last week to prevent government funding from lapsing ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline to avert a shutdown. Notably missing from the bipartisan agreement, which was passed a day before Helene made landfall in Florida, was billions of dollars in additional funding for FEMA’s disaster relief fund (DRF).
Appropriators said the deal instead allows for the agency to use the fund’s resources faster for disaster response for the duration of the stopgap, allowing FEMA access to draw from roughly $20 billion starting Oct. 1. But funding negotiators on both sides have acknowledged the need for more resources in the months ahead.“
https://thehill.com/business/budget/4910588-hurricane-helene-congress-disaster-funding/
“How to win a Nobel prize”
So I was reading this article when it reminded me in it that there are no posthumous Noble Prizes which is a great shame. Maybe what they should do is have an unofficial Nobel Prize that can only be awarded posthumously to recognize those scientists who through ill luck never lived long enough to receive an award. Some people will protest that this would be only a made up prize but so what? The “Nobel Prize” in economics is only a made up prize by a Swedish bank and people don’t have a problem with that. This being the case, I would like to nominate Rosalind Franklin as a nominee who tragically died at 37 of ovarian cancer but who would in the course of events have been awarded a regualr Nobel Prize-
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/rosalind-franklin-a-crucial-contribution-6538012/
The slightly rude joke endemic in the math psych community is that one winner of the “Economics” *ahem* Nobel ALLEGEDLY only got it because his co-author died before they could award it to HIM.
I leave it to the reader to work out who I am referring to. Hint, what he got the prize for is not what he became “famous for to the average person in the street”. (And what he is famous for was recently shown to be utter rubbish via a link on this very site.)
Plus the theory that got the prize has been comprehensively debunked by multiple independent groups of researchers across mathematics and the social sciences. So, yes, Rev Kev, they totally should be giving the prize to people posthumously.
China set to fully control Portugal’s power grid amid Europe’s inertia Euractiv
So, Euractiv is tearing it’s hair out on the news that China has invested heavily on the Portuguese grid which in turn was favoured by lack of European investments and the austerity drive in the EU. Good to know.
With the economy of the EU heading down, the EU may not have the surplus funds to invest in such projects as all they want to do is invest in the MIC instead. And, taking a guess here, I would suppose that Portugal might be a good investment as you never really hear of them doing crazy stuff. Wikipedia says ‘In 2018 electricity was generated by 23% hydroelectricity, 26% natural gas, 22% wind, 20% coal, 5% biomass, 2% solar and 2% oil.’ so it sounds like they have not put all their energy eggs in the one basket-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Portugal
HandsOffUhuru.org/letters is conducting a campaign for letters to the judge requesting leniency for the 3 Uhuru leaders that were simultaneously convicted and acquitted of being Russian agents. I encourage those of you who have been following this Kafkaesque case to write on their behalf. The website has sample letters and bios to flesh out your letters. Letters submitted directly through the link by October 15 will be submitted first to the defense attorneys for vetting.
I found this bizarre DOJ press release helpful, although it is emphasized that these letters are strictly for the purpose of requesting leniency in sentencing; comments on the verdict itself, which will be appealed, are irrelevant as the verdict is now beyond this judge’s control.
Just a personal note on my nearly year-long experience with cancer treatment. On Tuesday, I’m slated to have what should be my last of four surgeries that I’ve received in an attempt to control the three independent tumors in me that were discovered first by colonoscopy, then by the PSA prostate test, and finally the CT and PET scans along with a blood test for normetanephrine that uncovered the pheochromocytoma removed along with my right adrenal in July.
This surgery will take out what remains of my rear end and re-adjust the colostomy that was done last December. The adrenalectomy was more dangerous because the tumor raises blood pressure, especially during a surgical procedure. (BP reached a high of 233/111 and a low of 76/36 in that surgery.) But this rectal surgery will be hard to recover from. Infection is a big issue, and the pre-surgery preparation, with exercise, special diet, flushing out, strong antibiotics, is daunting and anxiety-inducing. It will require many hours on the table, five to seven days in the hospital, and weeks of recovering at home.
The good news is that all this should buy me an amount of time that’s not insignificant to me. Yet another CT scan was done 10 days ago that pronounced, “No evidence of new metastatic disease.” When I’m finished with this, I’ll still be under treatment to control the prostate cancer which entails an injection every three months and four pills a day to achieve chemical castration. That should be good for 2-3 years before the prostate cancer learns to grown without testosterone, and I’ll take that. All this is bonus after my “three score and ten.”
It’s been quite a year, with the last six months seeing both my spouse and me in the ER minutes away from death. I’ve been impressed by the expertise, skill and technical capabilities of the doctors I’ve had while at times being appalled by the bureaucracy and philosophy underlying the medical industry. None of this treatment would have happened without LBJ’s good old Medicare, and I’m grateful for that, even though I was not a fan of Lyndon. An improved, completed version of Medicare for everyone, especially children, would be the humane and civilized thing for this country to implement, but it’s obvious we’re moving away from that. Before long, I wonder if such sophisticated medical treatment will be available to anyone outside the rich. Already, it’s not available as a practical matter in places like those hit hardest by Hellene with the closure of hospitals in rural areas. I’m aware of my privilege living in a city that’s a major medical center.
I’ve appreciated the support I’ve received from the commentariat here. The kind words have meant a lot. Our country is learning the hard way that it’s impossible to get by on just individual grit and determination. It takes a community, and this one has been an important source of support for me in many ways. We have to hang together, etc. Be careful out there.
im cooking today.
i’ll light that fire in your honor, HMP.
Thinking of you, mate.
Re: Hillary
She’s come full circle since her early days of railing against minority and artists owned labels under the guise of protecting children from naughty words.
I’m so old I remember Tipper Gore.
I’m so old I remember Betty Ford before she came “out” of the bottle.
I wonder what malady a “Hillary Clinton Clinic” would treat?
Putin Derangement Syndrome? I’m sure that he is at the top of her Excel Enemies List.
Listening disabilities like being bloody tone-deaf.
Inability to see white stains?
Or dodgy real estate?
ALLEGEDLY…since Have I Got News For You is back for new season.
Narcissism.
I may be a minority in this thinking among non Republicans but re: student loan forgiveness. Aren’t they going about it all wrong? Instead of forgiving loans, why doesn’t the government reduce the cost of university tuition (ala many other civilized countries in the world)?
It seems so backwards to me but then so does just about everything that this country is doing in recent years.
Re AP The Shocking Numbers
“According to AccuWeather, Helene dumped a shocking 42 trillion gallons of rainfall on the Southeast.
That’s enough water to fill Lake Tahoe once, the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times, and enough water to flow over Niagara Falls for almost two years.”
Even beyond the cost in lives and private property the cost to governments for fixing this is going to be tremendous. Will an economic storm follow the physical? And if not how many hurricanes will it take?