NT insect collection opens doors to citizen scientists to share knowledge, deepen ties around biosecurity ABC Australia (Kevin W)
To better understand the world, follow the paths of mathematics aeon (Chuck L)
Chuck L: “Potentially game-changing information conveyed in an annoyingly inefficient way.”
Japanese scientists have created a hydrogel that reverts cancer cells back to cancer stem cells in 24 hours
pic.twitter.com/tfw77dYFGv— Interesting STEM (@InterestingSTEM) February 16, 2025
#COVID-19/Pandemics
We are clearly in the midst of an anomalously severe flu season.
Although H5N1 has not been detected in high numbers among humans, there's a good chance that it's quietly playing a significant role without even infecting humans directly.
How, exactly? Let's lay it all out: 🧵 pic.twitter.com/abKiycb3VY
— Friesein (@Friesein) February 17, 2025
Opinion: Long COVID is solvable, but we need more clinical trials Los Angeles Times
Climate/Environment
🚨🌊🌡📈
And there it is, Global Sea Surface Temperatures reach levels not seen in at least 120,000 years before 2023 again!! https://t.co/SOdTHPuETI pic.twitter.com/Cb1CfyfCHi— Leon Simons (looking up) (@LeonSimons8) February 17, 2025
Widespread ecological damage from oil spills in Niger Delta revealed in international study Irish Times
China?
New tech could greatly extend life of lithium-ion batteries China Daily (Chuck L)
Koreas
Seoul blasts North Korea’s ‘inhumane’ demolition of family reunion centre France24
India
MODI TAKES HIS BEST SHOT – HOW INDIAN STRATEGY PUTS TRUMP IN FRONT OF PUTIN John Helmer
India is way too eager to embrace Trump’s America RT (Micael T)
Africa
Farmer-herder tensions ignite across Africa GIS Report
Young, old, refugees and returnees: thousands fleeing violence cross border into South Sudan Guardian
South of the Border
Argentina president faces impeachment calls over crypto crash BBC
Mexico Threatens To Sue Google Over Gulf Renaming Associated Press
European Disunion
Europe’s perfect storm: Trade wars, energy shortages, and political chaos FXStreet
German voters demand change as Europe’s biggest economy stalls Reuters (Kevin W)
Huge increase in fuel prices expected from 2027 Tasseschau via machine translation. Micael T: “Another political EU decision to impoverish people until you own nothing.”
Germany’s Shocking War on Online Speech: Armed Police Raids for Online “Insults,” “Hate Speech,” and “Misinformation” Reclaim the Net (Micael T)
Von Der Leyen’s Scandals: From ‘Pfizergate’ to Favoritism and Vanishing Texts Sputnik. Micael T: They missed UvdL biblical beating of Bundeswehr’s rifles into broomsticks”
The EU’s propaganda machine Thomas Fazi
Ambulances sound the alarm: “Forced to steal blankets from hospitals” Aftonbladet via machine translation. Micael T: “Perversions of privatization. If you can’t steal enough money from the public coffers, you start to steal things too.”
Old Blighty
Rachel Reeves has three options to dodge an economic crisis and all are unthinkable Guardian
The true extent of the energy crisis across Scottish communities Herald Scotland
Israel v. The Resistance
Trump’s Pro-War ‘Understanding’ with Netanyahu Daniel Larison
Israel says its army to stay in ‘buffer zone’ in Lebanon Anadolu Agency. This is what normal people call an occupation.
Hezbollah chief says Israel must fully withdraw from Lebanon by February 18 Reuters
Facilitating their Potential Demise: the Dangerous Game US Jewry is Playing with America’s White Supremacists Alon Mizrahi
New: The ‘I thought they were Arabs’ Defense Mark Wauck (Micael T). Wowsers.
A long-standing trope from Graham. No idea if his barking should be taken more seriously now:
Sen. Lindsey Graham says Trump must decide soon on Iran’s nuclear program—either diplomacy or military action. He strongly favors the latter, urging the U.S. to help Israel strike Iran’s nuclear sites. The White House hasn’t commented. pic.twitter.com/kTBcVhKU4k
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 18, 2025
New Not-So-Cold War
Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Kyiv ‘will not recognise’ US-Russia talks that exclude Ukraine Financial Times
U.S. Questions For European Governments – Another Wake-up Call Moon of Alabama (Kevin W)
EUROPE GETS AN ANATOMY LESSON Patrick Armstrong (guurst)
Visa, Mastercard may soon try to return to Russia — lawmaker TASS. IMHO this is being made into more than it is. This is a view by someone not party to the negotiations of something the Americans might want. But this is also a Trojan horse to get the US to reopen dollar payments. The history of sanctions is they tend not to be rolled back, and here I would expect that even if Trump were to break the pattern, that the process would not be quick. Moreover, this is one place the Europeans could throw a spanner by demanding that sterling, Euro, and other EU-non-Euro currencies be excluded. The UK and EU are in such a snit that the last thing they want to do is facilitate their tourists visiting Russia. This would impose coding time and costs on the networks. I have no idea how much of a dent that would make in the economic attractiveness of going back to the Russia market, particularly given that most experts think that most Russians are happy with the Mir card and thus Visa and Mastercard would have much much lower transaction volumes than before the sanctions were imposed. Regardless, it seems odd that the Russians would be flagging this as a priority from the US side.
US imposing ‘colonial’ resource deal on Ukraine – media RT
INTERVIEW: Certain EU countries nourishing ideas of annexing Ukrainian lands — Medvedchuk TASS (Chuck L)
The mad king of Kyiv: Why Zelensky can’t afford to end the war The Hill
Europe and Ukraine talks “No peace comes from such dictates” Taggeschau via machine translation (Micael T)
Angry farmers push Poland away from Ukraine Politico
Such EU humanity in the spirit of totally hateful Western totalitarian values!
🇷🇺🇵🇱 Russian tourists flying from Egypt to Kaliningrad are stranded in Poland without food and water.
Flight UJ681 of AlMasria Airlines made an emergency landing in Poznan. The Poles refuse to let… pic.twitter.com/aLMiy9wYRY
— Peacemaker (@peacemaket71) February 16, 2025
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Chase Will Soon Block Zelle Payments To Sellers on Social Media Bleepingcomputer. A spanner for the planned Twitter payment scheme?
Nearly 10 Years After Data and Goliath, Bruce Schneier Says: Privacy’s Still Screwed The Register
Imperial Collapse Watch
What is Trump’s Strategy Towards Russia and China? Larry Johnson
War and the Global Economy: Rising Debt, Policy Failures, and the Fear of Conflict in 2025 Avenue Mail
Britain: Operation Gladio’s Secret ‘Headquarters’ Kit Klarenberg (Micael T)
The Russian opposition is also hit hard by the closure of USAID Anti-Spiegel via machine translation (Micael T)
Trump 2.0
Trump’s Economic Recovery – A Dead End? Michael Hudson, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen, YouTube. A must watch
Trump’s ‘big stick diplomacy’ won’t go far in today’s world system South China Morning Post
Tulsi Gabbard Has Nothing to Say Ken Klippenstein
Democrats quietly prepare for a Trump constitutional crisis Axios. Paul R: “Good luck with that, Dems. Looking forward to the sternly worded letters.”
DOGE
Drug inspectors, AI experts, maternal health workers: Trump’s health agency cuts are far-reaching STAT
How the federal funding and hiring freezes are leaving communities vulnerable to wildfire Grist
Humanitarian effort in Syria decimated by US aid cuts Le Monde
Protesters target Tesla showrooms over Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Financial Times. From GM via e-mail:
There was a protest at the Tesla showroom nearby Stanford yesterday.
By a lot of people who Elon Musk was a hero of for many years.
Musk signals DOGE could look into gold at Fort Knox The Hill (Kevin W)
AI
The Generative AI Con Ed Zitron
The Bezzle
Emboldened crypto industry seeks to cement political influence and mainstream acceptance Associated Press (Kevin W)
Class Warfare
The ‘White Collar’ Recession is Pummeling Office Workers Fortune
Assume a Debt Crisis Stephanie Kelton
Antidote du jour (Tracie H):
And a bonus (Chuck L):
Two Kings….The AIR and LAND!
(ai) pic.twitter.com/N5MPlvYQbr
— The Figen (@TheFigen_) February 17, 2025
A second bonus (Chuck L):
🌟Debussy "Clair de Lune" on Piano for 80 Year Old Elephant
An elephant flaps will flap their ears when they're happy. She loves this.🌸🌸🌸 pic.twitter.com/pOOJ7pZANr— 𝗘𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰 🎼💝 (@Hoang_HQ) February 14, 2025
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Re: A long-standing trope from Graham. No idea if his barking should be taken more seriously now…
Correction: puppies yap.
Trump may be many things but he is not stupid. And now that he is President, he can ignore people like Graham. Israel has not got the wherewithal to attack Iran and can only do it with massive US help like happened last time – and that mission was a bust. But if Trump did so, then he must know the sequence of events. Israel/US missiles and aircraft attack Iran. Iran hits back with missiles on Israel and US bases like the big one in Bahrain. This leads to a regional war which the Pentagon gamed out to last about a decade with an uncertain ending. Because the US is now stuck in this regional war, the whole, complete, entire Trump domestic agenda gets throw into the garbage bin and the unpopularity of the war leads to a weak Democrat team taking back the Presidency in 2028. Lindsay Graham then does his happy dance. So no, I don’t think that Trump is going to go there.
Lindsey’s just trying to keep the dream alive for his dead friend John “bomb bomb bomb Iran” McCain. McCain in turn was carrying on the work of his father Admiral McCain who had a paw in the original 1950s Iran regime change. It’s a generational saga.
Plus there’s the big mystery of why so many other of our politicians, including Trump, are so devoted to the extremist branch of Zionism. It’s surely about more than just campaign contributions.
The crusades come to mind. I don’t believe Hegseth’s tattoos are merely ornamental.
I was wondering when someone would bring this up. The phrase, “wrapped in the flag and carrying a bible,” comes to mind.
One less adult in the room.
Or Trunp could bank on being re-elected as a war president. worked for Bush.
“New: The ‘I thought they were Arabs’ Defense”
So this Jewish guy in Florida is driving along when he sees two Palestinians in a car whereupon he ambushes them and tries to shoot them dead. Only it turns out that they are actually Israelis which he only finds out about later. Oops. Meanwhile the two guys in the car are only wounded and assume that it was an Arab guy that shot him leading to them indulging in a bit of hate speech by posting “Death to Arabs” online – until they too find out the truth. Oops. Now this happened in Florida but it does pose the question of how many times this happens in Israel itself. I’ve read about this happening there a coupla times.
This reminds me of the case of Michael Ron David Kadar, where Jewish community centers and synagogues all over North America, the UK, Australia and New Zealand received over 2000 bomb threats, by an Israeli Jew. No doubt that fabricated increase in perceived threat contributed to this particular incident.
This is also about racial and ethnic profiling, what reason could there be for thinking someone was Arab especially when they were not, which bias came into play such that he decided, mistakenly, they were Arabs? I’m actually curious about this bit. Was it darker skin, dark wavy hair, facial features?
It’s also about vigilantism, extrajudicial killing, which admittedly the police in the US kinda do, which probably encourages others to.
And the shooter seems to not fear legal consequences, which there wouldn’t be in Israel, and which rather prevent most people from going around killing anyone they want.
Or probably there are no consequences because he’ll just escape to Israel to avoid any, he has that immunity? This was the case with Michael Ron David Kadar, he escaped to Israel to avoid American courts, but that didn’t quite work out for him.
And that mindset that there are will be no consequences BECAUSE they were Arabs, per his immediate statement made to police, while smiling. For him it’s the same as shooting dogs, who cares about them seems to be his attitude. He seems to think America is like Israel in this regard.
Personally I was reminded of some similar incident in 2022, when a Ukrainian in Europe attacked other Ukrainians, having decided that they’re Russian. Actually I’m almost positive that happened more than once. The mistake was easy to make in both cases. A lot of Jews really aren’t that easily distinguished from Palestinians physiologically. So maybe he saw people who looked like they might be either Sephardic or Arabic – but for some reason he didn’t like the look of them – so he decided they must be the ones he doesn’t like.
A Palestinian acquaintance at my old parish (thus, obviously, a Christian and in fact Catholic) was fairly insistent that his people are of the tribe of Daoud (that is King David)–I assume he meant the Christians of Bethlehem, as his family was from there. I think there’s pretty good genetic evidence that Palestinians and Jews are basically the same people so the story that I heard isn’t really all that odd. So “mistaken identities” aren’t all that unexpected, I figure.
Historical, biblical, theological scholars and archeologists since the late 1990’s have reached the same conclusion. The older view has the Hebrews arriving in Canaan from Persia (1400-1200 BCE), but there is no cultural, written or archeological evidence. Nor is there any cultural, written or archeological evidence for any exodus of Hebrews to or from Egypt, or revolts. Anything in the Tanakh (Old Testament) dating from the Bronze Age or earlier has no corraborating archeological evidence, was likely written much later (as in, made up). The consensus now is the Hebrews were Canaanites who gradually developed their own distinct identity over time, becoming distinctly Jewish or even Israelite only much later (closer to the time of Jesus).
Alternatively, if one accepts the exodus story, the Hebrews were Egyptians who had developed their own distinct identity, arrived in Canaan later, were not themselves Canaanite and now want it for themselves. Which is problematic, perhaps why the prevailing view is they were Canaanites.
Having become a distinct group, God allegedly instructed the Israelites to genocide the Canaanites, they failed, so the Tanakh goes. Obviously, a genocide/ethnic cleansing would tend to erase evidence of cultural and historical roots.
There are many, many examples in history of small groups conquering larger ones and then largely merging with them but grafting some part of their identity to their subjects. This happened all over Europe, France and Bulgaria being some obvious examples. I remember reading that most Turks are “really” Armenians or Greeks, which would make sense, with the caveat that those Armenians or Greeks would themselves “really” be countless ancient Anatolian peoples that have been assimilated long ago in this way. I suspect that may well have happened in Canaan. South-north migrations (Amorites, Aramaeans) in the ancient Near East are fairly well-attested for other parts of the region, I’d be surprised if Canaan was somehow exempt.
From Iraq (Ur) according to Genesis. Even according to the Exodus story, they did not originate in Egypt.
I have my doubts about that claim for the Turks. I’ve immersed myself in long stories about the start of the Ottomans for a bit more than a year. Those histories indicate that Turks are a distinct people and have a distinct language that dates back for thousands of years.Their empire began at the start of the 15th century and they didn’t come from Greece, they came from Asia, fleeing the Mongols.
All of that is true, of course (except that they arrived and got started a few centuries earlier than that). But what do you think happened to all the people who were living in the breadbasket of Anatolia under the Byzantine Empire and speaking Greek or Armenain before the Turks arrived? Did the Turks exterminate or expel them all? They did do some of that, from time to time, but not en masse, and it would’ve been extremely impractical. I think it is much likelier that most of those people gradually accepted their less numerous but politically and militarily dominant conquerors’ language, religion and identity, forming the bulk of Turkey’s modern population. That is what I meant.
People can get very good at reading subtle signs, although it can mixed up. Irish people from Northern Ireland used to be able to pretty much identify each other as catholic or protestant on sight, much to the bemusement of people from elsewhere. The conversational give-away used to be how they pronounced ‘H’ (aich or haich).
The old joke in Belfast was that local Jewish people had to learn to judge whether to say they were catholic jews or protestant jews if challenged in rougher parts of the city.
There’s an old story about how some AI algorithm was very good at telling apart Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese. Then someone had this idea to have the subjects wear same clothes, etc, then the AI was totally confused. Basically, AI was picking up on the “style” differences (haircuts, clothes, makeup where applicable, and so forth). I imagine that humans are quite good at picking up such clues as well, possibly better than AI if one were familiar enough with the local customs–only to have their senses totaly discombobulated when everyone starts adopting the same “styles.”
Much older cases from the immediate post 9/11: Americans assaulting Sikhs, assuming they were Arabs because they wore turbans and beards.
Heh, you don’t have to go back in time for that one, just visit Alberta.
it does pose the question of how many times this happens in Israel itself. I’ve read about this happening there a coupla times.
I was intrigued by your assertion, so spent a couple of minutes looking for possible occurrences of that scenario. You are right: this kind of mishap happened repeatedly in the past. For instance:
Israeli soldiers shoot dead Israeli Jew mistaken for Palestinian attacker in second accidental killing in a week (2015).
Israel soldier mistakenly kills Israeli man he suspected to be a Palestinian attacker (2022).
Police say soldier fatally shot Israeli mistaken for Palestinian attacker (2023).
I did not spend more time looking for more examples, or older ones.
Well-known are the cases of the three Israeli hostages deliberately shot in Gaza by IDF soldiers, and of the Palestinian convert to Judaism killed by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.
There was another case about a year or two ago when a Palestinian attacked a group of people at a bus stop – if I recall correctly – and this Israeli guy helped take him down. Israeli security turned up to the scene, took one look and then shot the Israeli guy dead assuming that he was the attacker.
It may well be the one in the 2023 link (the story is also of an attack by Palestinians at a bus stop and an Israeli shooting at them before being killed by the military).
You’re right. That is the one. I skipped that one as I was sure that it happened back in 2022 but that article says it was in 2023. Thanks for pointing out the obvious to me (blush). And to think that these very same Israelis come to the US to train the police there in their doctrine.
Yeah, that would be Cop City in Atlanta GA, and soon to be built in the Bay Area town of San Pablo CA.
This is a big problem when police use maximum force for a minor infractions in the US.
Austrians behaved in a similar way 2 days ago.
Alon Mizrahi is saying the shooter was Ashkenazi and the victims Arab Jews, reminding us that, oh yeah, Arabs can be Jews too, e.g. Mizrahi. I’ll admit I had forgotten this dimension, had not had my coffee yet.
https://x.com/alon_mizrahi/status/1891586033361485931
The Arab Jews (other than Mizrahi) have forgotten this as well. Just like Jews, Irish, and Italians in the US think they are “white”.
I’m reminded of “the Sneetches” by Dr. Seuss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdLPe7XjdKc
Good analogy. Who’s the “fix-it-up chappie” in real life I wonder?
I can’t find the reference any more but there was a recent case in France where a Ukrainian attacked another Ukrainian, thinking he was Russian.
The mathematics piece is music to my ears. There is oodles to unpack in this, so I’ll stick to points that are most firmly in my lane. I bore people with this reference but it was/is a landmark in showing how and why the Central Limit Theorem has over-extended itself. For any of the numbers relevant to human behaviour, we simply can’t rely on it and it cannot even be uncontestably be proven to hold, once me move to discrete choices (choose one from A, B & C etc) and want to understand the “latent” (unobserved) scale as opposed to the continuous outcomes so many of us are used to thinking about. When we design experiments to properly tease out an approximation of this latent scale, it’s usually multimodal; mathematics doesn’t tell us why but fields like mathematical psychology tell us how to uncover this. It’s up to us to investigate why humans segment themselves in different ways.
Another thing that jumps out (given the well deserved jab at econometrics in the piece), is deterministic vs probabilistic behaviour. Economics sent itself up a cul-de-sac by largely embracing the former (causing problems like how to explain violations of transitivity). Those of us exposed to mathematical psychology and its related fields of academic marketing, which observed that people are inconsistent and then built theories that simple acknowledged this, used mathematics to uncover amazing ways to shed light on issues such as how people might rank a list of items, but we never lose sight of the fact that in a whole lot of contexts an individual might do something different, despite the intervention and conditions being unchanged. The error term is interesting in philosophical and other senses, since once you acknowledge human inconsistency, whole new avenues of research open up that don’t force you to fit a round peg into a square hole (as economics so often does).
The reference to econometrics reminds me of a story told to us by an econ lecturer when I was studying in the 1980’s. He said that at a conference he found that some Romanian economists were only aware of western economics via one journal – ‘Econometrics’.
It was explained that Ceausescu’s censors had banned all western economics journals except that one, reasoning that it ‘was of no obvious use or relevance to anyone and so was entirely harmless’.
Haha! Plus that chimes with comment you made in last day or so about problems valuing environmental outcomes in cost-benefit analysis. Richard Carson, who was lovely guy and incredibly open to ideas (and who calculated the fine to Exxon for the Valdez disaster), nevertheless had as his “home” field willingness-to-pay in environmental economics to implement CBA.
I could never really accept its relevance to areas like environmental and health economics, deeming all those “minor practical problems” far from trivial. Richard, having published with my boss and me on sources of intra-individual inconsistency, certainly showed acceptance of the math psych conceptualisation as an alternative. But by that point he’d reached an age where he could “get away with” saying things that certainly went against the grain of economics.
I was extremely enthusiastic about environmental economics (then a hot subject) until I delved deeper into it and found, as they say, epistemological issues.
My scepticism on most of those techniques relating to cost benefit analysis was deepened in my first job, when I found myself in a team doing assessment work around a new road (now part of the A41). The road was intended to open up an area of industrial dereliction as part of a development corporation, and seemed on the face of it to be a perfectly good idea. The guy in charge told me that they used every technique they could find, and each time came up with a negative economic impact. They were told to just keep trying, until eventually they could find a positive answer, and they did (I think they attached a spurious value to ‘community linkages’, or some such concept).
>” I delved deeper into it and found, as they say, epistemological issues. ”
is meaning exactly what – in this particular context?
@Terry Flynn
Do you happen to have the link to PlutoniumKun´s comment?
thanks
If I’ve managed to link correctly to an embedded comment then it is this
Essentially, it comes down to the commensurability of intangible assets, or put another way, if it’s possible to put a valuation on environmental goods.
The short answer is that its not – different techniques (such as contingent valuation, hedonic valuations, travel cost methodologies, etc), all give wildly differing answers to even quite simple questions which makes the practical applications of dubious value. Of course, this doesn’t stop economists using them.
It got even more hilarious when some precocious youngster decided to compare the value of a statistical life used in railways against that used in healthcare. Nowhere near the same. In fact whole orders of magnitude different.
Now, there are plenty of philosophical arguments as to why you might value a life differently when it comes to a potential train crash compared to disease. However, “NuLabour” etc had all patted themselves on the backs for being all scientific and using unchallengable rules regarding this and they began to realise they were in trouble: if there’s no “common denominator” to decide whether funding should go to HS2/cancer/house-building/etc then you actually have to make decisions and take responsibility for them. They really didn’t like that. Then when one of the UK “fathers of health economics” pops up and says “go die at age 75” they dissolved into a gibbering mess from which UK/EU/Canada/Australasia have never recovered.
I’m interested to know if the Romanian, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen was part of your environmental economics offering, or perhaps part of the “epistemological issue”?
Oh, that brought up some long forgotten memories. Its a long time since I’ve done any reading on this topic.
I don’t think the epistemological problems applied to Georgescu-Roegen. He was on the ‘right’ side in pointing out that mainstream economics simply ignored issues of pollution and material degradation. So far as I’m aware, he didn’t advocate the use of valuation measures in an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable.
Thank you for the reply.
From what I recall, having last read his work a decade ago, he would have viewed monetary valuation of ecological questions as category errors.
His main point was that life and the thermodynamics in which its embedded come first. And having the capability to understand how our activities impinge on life and its supporting thermodynamics, we should act accordingly, or at least that’s what I took from it!
Romanians studied Political Economy, because they believed that, while microeconomics plays some role (prices of eggs if abundant or scarce), things are ultimately, at root, politically, ideologically driven. Which Western economists have made an art in hiding and obfuscating…
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
Albert Einstein
It’s my opinion that mathematics is a spandrel use of the language module in our evolved brain.
Language necessarily converts reality to symbols that are then socially conventionalized. Mathematics reverses this flow taking social conventions we choose to think about, converting them to symbols and then reducing them into coherence with all the prior efforts at this work. A powerful tool to systematize systems, but not equal to non-systemic eventualities.
Indeed. The classic example comes from my field of best-worst scaling. If I give you four airlines you can choose from (with all other facilities/times/features/etc being equal) to do a flight from LHR to JFK then you have 4×3=12 distinct pairs of “best airline, worst airline).
My bosses and I amused ourselves for donkey’s years asking how many people in courses evaluated the 12 differences in utility in their brain, choosing the pair (best and worst) that maximised that difference. Never ever had someone admit to doing this. That’s the maxdiff model – a mathematical model that is archetypal in the sense that it is incredibly useful in building all sorts of stuff to do with preference elicitation (including some VERY relevant issues in ranked choice voting) but is “wrong”. Wrong in the sense that NOBODY decides best and worst that way. Everyone decides best from 4 and worst from remaining 3 or vice versa.
The mathematics systematized stuff but the maxdiff technically does not produce outcomes equal to eventualities. I once delved into the differences – you have to really really go into the weeds to find any meaningful differences, hence why it is “useful”. The time the Guardian reproduced a terrible industry black box piece talking about a “maxdiff experiment” I wrote to them and called them on it. Owen Jones himself, who clearly wanted to make a big splashy article about this, took things no further. Even those mathematical morons knew they were dancing on quicksand. Interestingly google no longer indexes that original article of his….
Mathematics is closer to the humanities than the sciences as it is a kind of language, the language of being qua being, as Badiou puts it.
As for being a bridge between science and the humanities it only works to convince that scientism or materialism cannot be right. The connection problem is rather the hard problem of consciousness.
Thank you for the comment, with which I agree.
I was using “spandrel” in the Gould/Lewontin sense of an evolved, genetic function (the language module in the brain) that resulted from selection pressures being put to use for a function completely different from addressing that selection pressure.
So, math, like language which created in the mind the space for it, is at the core of being human, but not its core: between them they are how we represent to ourselves what we’ve experienced with our senses, but when you think about it our representations never do justice to the experience. So, yes, the hard problem of consciousness! We don’t know anything…
I would love to pick your brain on developing health surveys at population level that might help drill at some more root problems in people’s behaviour. I am a bit sick and tired of what incom braket you are in, what is your highest level of education, are you happy (why, and why not are not on the menu), you feel you belong t the community (why or why not again not on the menu).
Myself I hate using estimates of this or that and rather prefer to show the full distribution of responses.
Thanks. I hesitate to say more, partly because this is not the place to self-promote but also because I get annoyingly frequent long covid flare-ups making me akin to a zombie.
Moderators allowed me to mention my (most cited) publication: a piece explaining the psychological model of choice by me, Carson & Louviere….open access but written for our peers rather than the general public. A public lecture of mine is still on YouTube too.
I often took down my own hosted posts after the kind of hassle Yves et al got :(
“INTERVIEW: Certain EU countries nourishing ideas of annexing Ukrainian lands — Medvedchuk”
‘Earlier, Medvedchuk stated that historical events show that Ukrainians have always been saved by Russians, which should happen naturally now’
Yeah, nah. I don’t think that that is going to happen. Russian officials, including Putin too I think, have said that what those countries that border the Ukraine do is their business and has nothing to do with Russia. I think at the time they were actually talking about Hungary and Romania but there are others in the line. Might be a smart play by the Russians as the Ukrainians are already going nuts over Russia taking four Oblasts as well as Crimea. But if NATO countries start doing the same, this will promote discord in that organization and give the Ukrainians several more targets. But in the end it would leave the Ukraine swinging in the wind with no friends.
I think the point Medvedchuk – who at this point is, and I do not mean this in a bad way, Kremlin’s hand puppet – is completely different, and comes at the end of the article.
In effect:
– EU countries want to take back certain parts of Ukraine.
– The reason EU countries want to do this is because their ethnic minorities in Ukraine – e.g. ethnic hungarians – are oppressed.
– THEREFORE Russia is fully within its rights to take back “historically Russian” territories (hello, Odessa), where ethnic Russians are being oppressed.
Now, thinking about this from the Kremlin’s perspective: either the war ends “soon”, i.e. before it spreads to additional oblasts, or it ends “not soon”, as Russian troops grind to the Dnieper or beyond. In either case, I am sure they assume that the “new Ukraine” will have a pro-Russian government, either with Medvedchuk or some other equally pliant and compliant individual. [To wit, yesterday Nebenzia outright proclaimed that one of the key conditions of negotiations with Trump is a new government in Kiev.]
In the first case, the new government will need to have a narrative explaining why our “Russian friends” attacked in the first place. As well, I distinctly recall Putin throwing out the word “federalization” a few months ago, implying that even under this scenario they might still lop off additional sections of the country (e.g. Kharkov-Sumy-Odessa-Nikolayev). Again, there needs to be a story told by pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians here, at least nominally.
In the second case, the Russians themselves will need a narrative, e.g. for their BRICS partners, especially as I kind of expect, given the rhetoric by Russian official figures and the Defense Ministry, that as they push deep enough into new oblasts they’ll start pulling the same referendum-annexation stuff as in September of 2022. Hey, BRICS partners, here are some telegenic Ukrainian (i.e. not Russian) politicians explaining what we’re doing, and suggesting the EU would have done the same if it could. Or something.
I mean, at the end of the day this comes down to – the Kremlin wants to annex more, for security reasons if nothing else (they’d be fools not to take the oblasts next to the Russian border, for example), but they clearly do not with to annex the whole thing. Thus, a narrative must be constructed. It is no coincidence that in the very last line of the article, Medvedchuk is referencing the Hmelnitsky rebellion in the 1600s, where the non-Polish elites in Ukraine eventually turned to the Russians for protection.
Moon of Alabama: the questionnaire to the EU misleaders does lack one line of questions: Where do you personally plan to be physically during the war with Russia? Are you ready to go to the front personally together with your core family members (excl. minors)? If you are ready to go to the front personally, are you ready to go to the Ukraine front already now? If not, why not*?
I have a strong intuition that the Kaija Kallas, Pål Johnssons and other war frothing pigs in the EU misleadership-class somehow think they and their family will live unscathed through the war they are so eager to provoke.
*affordability of tickets to Kiyv and Ukrainian recruitment centers will not count as an answer. There will be a NATO-managed fund created for this purpose. There may also be GoFundme and similar democratic citizen initiatives that will help you logistically to go to Ukraine to let some war steam out.
Kaija Kallas, like most Estonians, probably grew up with and around relatives who were killed or imprisoned by Stalin. I seriously doubt she harbors any delusion of personal invincibility.
Kaja Kallas actually grew up as the privileged daughter of a father that rose high in the old communist regime and did very well out of it, including the family home. She seems to have lacked nothing when growing up but in a way is invincible. When it was found about two years ago that her husband was making bank doing business with the Russians still, it never hurt her career any as it still led to her present job – just as soon as she shook the dirt of Estonia off her shoes as she left the place.
Jeff Sachs talks about how he personally knew and worked with Kallas’ father–a trained economist and high ranking Soviet official. “Locals” playing on Western ignorance and stereotypes of their countries for grift is common throughout the “East,” but Kallas has the advantage of being a blonde European, even if her audiences are just as ignorant about Estonia as they are about Cambodia.
Finally found the link that I was thinking off to support what I was saying in my comment. She is not who she says that she is-
https://xcancel.com/ivan_8848/status/1807316158434922839
If communism had not collapsed, she would right now be a high official in Estonia’s communist regime.
Yep.
This ideological 180° turn (career-wise a 360) is symptomatic and at the core of why our former opposition in Europe is where it is. In fact I would argue, the Kallas-syndrome is a successor to the dissident leftists who had fled the East to then turn rabidly “anti-Communist”. May be this demonization of “Communist” and “Soviet” by their former own is one of the big tragedies since 1917.
p.s. since in the other thread you mentioned Ceausescu – to enjoy privilege with the class enemy in Switzerland or France as offspring of Socialist elites was of course one of that system´s revealing features. Which caused a historic rupture within leftist think all over Europe. Which is why I think Bolivarianism at the other end of the world is so important. Sorry for stretching this topic so much. But the underlying real threat of Kallas is just that: the Kallas-es of this world undermining leftist grass-roots and solidarity structures in China, RU and the Global South. This is covert elitism to the bone. It used to come from the “right-wing”. Well, we have discussed this enough here before…
Unfortunately Putin has the habit of leaving the rulers alone. So they are freely riding in and out of Ukraine, fully trusting Putin’s promise to not bomb them. But taking chance on any peace deal is of course bridge too far, they must protect Ukrainians from such folly.
Those freely riding in and out of Ukraine are not the rulers, but muppets.
I glancingly came across an article yesterday that was pointing out that there appears to be an international data standard for missing birth years… it turns out to be that in those cases if you need to place a date in that field you should use the year 1875.
Now I don’t recall if the article said that was in fact what the SS Administration used, but it would explain all of the 150 year olds Musk was complaining about who are collection SS; 2025-1875=150.
Just goes to show you how little they know what they are doing or messing with. What can go wrong?
Serious people would have explained how birth dates work – source, verification, process for unknown or flagged dates, etc.
Shrieking fraud is not helpful.
Given his adventures with regulatory agencies and the fiasco that led to his having to actually buy the everything app, the definition of fraud had been explained to Elon. The number of MAGA Americans who are genuinely ignorant is difficult to estimate.
Meanwhile, the rest of us eagerly await one of the cases to lead to action – anything from putting people on a performance improvement plan to criminal charges.
This is frustrating on so many levels. First of all that programmers took shortcuts by saying “just put this year in, it’ll definitely stand out so everything will be fine”. Don’t underestimate human stupidity and making 2 digit years led to all that hoo-ha in the run up to the millennium. Whilst we largely dodged a bullet there, a lot had to do with putting programming right before midnight. A friend was a junior doctor on an OBGYN rotation at that time in a regional hospital in the UK. At midnight 2000 all of one type of critical monitor for premature babies failed – think IIRC it was to do with regulation of ventilators – having been previously deemed “not urgent systems for patching” – sheesh; thankfully there were only a few being used and enough docs/midwives available with skills to avoid deaths.
A second frustration is the decreasing tendency for supposedly quantitative experts to LOOK at their data before they do analyses/jump to conclusions. My old field required you to do things like basic SORT functions in a spreadsheet to identify the subgroups of respondents who’d used decision rules that were obviously intended to game the system or indicated some lack of engagement with the task or were just incredibly certain of their views. You never ever wanted to average “respondents with inconsistency in their responses” with these other groups. It is akin to putting infinity into an equation and expecting answers that conform to all your traditional stats training.
Some groups – yeah I’ll pick on economists again because they’re some of the worst offenders – loved their latest statistical tool; principles of data interrogation and cleaning are disappearing, leading to this kind of nonsense. More haste, less speed. Anyone remember the last person to espouse the “move fast and break things” approach? And what happened to him?
Today’s second antidote is a balm for my soul. “Clair de Lune” was performed at one of the first recital I visited as a child. I enjoyed the response from the elephant as well.
Here’s the link for more piano & elephant goodness (and the place of original upload of the video):
https://www.youtube.com/@PaulBartonPiano/videos
P.S. The “Two Kings….The AIR and LAND!” antidote is AI shlock, which makes it anti-antidote.
the term anti-antidote = antidote
antidote – a remedy to counteract the effects of poison
anti-antidote – (more) posion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mej5wS7viw
yes. I got that. I tried to express my sympathy for the verbal construction of “anti-antidote” – the act of inventing the term “anti-antidote” is an antidote itself.
Yeah, too compliacted, I know…
Not too complicated, just meta (meta-antidote?). My thoughts were more along the line of counter-counteroffensive (aka. coked-up clown level).
Two Kings….The AIR and LAND!
Seems unrealistic, AI generated, it’s going to get more and more difficult to tell what is real and what is computer generated.
If one had not realized that those eagles are not indigenous to Africa, and that the images of the lion are seriously off, there is the (ai) indication in the twit.
But yes, I, too, would prefer to look only at genuine videos.
It’s bad enough to see images online that at second glance you can tell are AI generated. But seeing the video version is even worse and we may have to come up with a term just like ‘uncanny valley’ – but for animals. Seeing AI-generated videos of things like cats dressed up as soldiers is amusing but this lion and eagles video was, well, frankly I do not know what the hell it was or is supposed to be. i can see the need for a program/app down the track which will let you know if a video that you are watching is real or just AI generated and label it accordingly.
The choice of soundtrack is part of the giveaway. Not using the natural environment sounds that would also make the video compelling. The AI generated videos usually sub some kind of musical soundtrack for sounds that would be created naturally.
Have you seen real estate listings which use AI to doll up an otherwise empty or sad-looking house? It’s so prevalent on realtor.ca, now a majority of Toronto house photos look faked, made up. In the lion and eagle vid I immediately noticed the lion’s mane of hair was moving in an unrealistic manner. Eventually the AI will improve to a point where we won’t be able to spot the offness.
I think this will lead to a situation where we will not be able to lay eyes on what is real anymore. Photos on real estate listings will be 100% AI generated, all imperfections hidden, rooms larger than they are, yards greener, etc., and we’ll have realtor misrepresentation (above and beyond what they’re already doing).
Now extend this to car listings. Sales listings. eBay, Amazon. Newspapers, news media. Life becomes a film, a work of fiction, nothing real anymore, film production applied to every aspect of living.
I figured it was fake before I noticed the (ai) in the description. My tell was the impossibly great camera work. Not only did it capture an extremely event, but from multiple angles and zooms with perfect lighting.
“Germany’s Shocking War on Online Speech: Armed Police Raids for Online “Insults,” “Hate Speech,” and “Misinformation” ”
I saw a brief bit of that interview with those three “enforcers” and they were all having a good laugh how it effected people when they seized mobile phones from “offenders”, much more than if those people had just been fined. Good thing that there will never be any blowback from their activities and if the AfD gets in, they had better hope that Trump does not send a detachment of DOGE people to cull such government employees at the request of the new government. I would not mind betting that such censors would seize people’s mobiles for the crime of having the Palestinian flag as a wallpaper to that mobile.
People talk about the brutality and callousness of the American police, which is very noticeable, but it seems to be spreading to other countries. In much of the United States, the police act as an occupying force or even prison guards, and this is increasingly normal the poorer the area, or the greater the local corruption, or both; if Europe is becoming poorer, more corrupt, and increasingly discontented, it is almost axomatic that the police will become more repressive, callous, even cruel, and often corrupt. It is like a universal law. I would not say that what the German government is doing is particularly German, but it is disturbing to see someone acting like an American, if that makes sense.
Not to mention more “multicultural.” Usually, this is a trope for police misdeeds against “racial minorities,” but this has always been applicable to hillbillies and rednecks, too–anyone who is not part of the official “mainstream” culture is suspect. One difference for Germany is that the police might be increasingly guided by wokish and transnational culture so “Germans” might be becoming redneckish, so to speak… although, in German history, my understanding is that stories like this among different German tribes seems to have been commonplace to begin with (one of my good friends from grad school is Alsatian by ancestry–his ancestors came to Texas when Alsace was German, and his family still tell jokes about the Prussians, well over a century after leaving Germany. If the authorities in Alsace were Prussian–I assume they had to have a large share, seeing that it was “federal/imperial territory” and all that–they would not have treated Alsatians, even German-speaking ones, without inherent suspicion, I suspect.)…
his family still tell jokes about the Prussians, well over a century after leaving Germany.
Ein Schwabe, ein Bayer und ein Preusse…
You mean that kind of joke?
The thing is, such jokes are variously configured to mock the Prussians, the Swabians, or the Bavarians.
Mostly mocking the Prussians, as far as I know. Mind you that my friend’s father’s side is Alsatian and his mother’s side is Wuerttemburger, so they wouldn’t care that much (i think) about Bavarians or Swabians.
I still find it odd that if you are travelling these parts today you will find this kind of “local patriotism” everywhere. It´s an informal superstructure under the official EU-supranation/administrative rule/idea. As a kid I had less understanding for it than I do today. Even if I grew up with it I will always be a stranger to it however. In comparison I find US regional patriotism much more cosmopolitan.
On the other hand the culture behind these regional jokes is today one of the best defense mechanisms to the globalist onslaught. This is true for the “EU of the regions” as well as the countless projects to create local currencies (which I know nothing about, whether it makes sense or not in terms of opposing centralized power.)
p.s. Put into a formula: on local level the US is international on the national level its often provincial.
Would make sense about poverty. In Germany every fifth child live in poverty. In one of the richest countries on earth. Even though on the everyday life all works as should, The corruption at the higher levels of politics is really third-world level.
https://archive.org/details/2021-05_Die-Anstalt_CDU-CSU-Affaeren_Politsatire-mit-Max-Uthoff-und-Claus-von-Wagner
This is what happens when Israelis do the training….
Germans?
Never gets old:
The Big Lebowski – Parking / Nihilists scene
3:44 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AEMiz6rcxc
(Three Germans!!! Just like in the CBS report – it´s the same people. They just wear disguises for 60 Minutes. They usually wear leather. I bet my sweet panties on it.)
p.s. The Coens must have been involved in that CBS piece.
>Britain: Operation Gladio’s Secret ‘Headquarters’ Kit Klarenberg (Micael T)
Moreover, Cossiga testified, Britain was “the headquarters” of every European “stay behind” organisation. Namely, Fort Monckton, where MI6 operatives are trained in every covert discipline, including surveillance, sabotage, assassinations, entrapment, and other black ops. According to Cossiga, Italy’s Gladio legions and “special services” similarly received instruction in these murderous dark arts at the facility, and from the SAS. A secret base in Sardinia was also “made available to the CIA and to other intelligence services,” to enhance “stay behind” operations in the country and beyond.
Interesting connection of Gladio and Britian’s role, though both the U,S. and Brit’s Secret Services work closely and would more than likely know what the other was doing.
What amazes me is that young Italians I know don’t know or don’t care about Gladio. When I bring it up, I get a “not Gladio again!” They are not interested, either “black pilled” or rather want to focus on the “good life,” getting a stable, decent job and integrating into a social structure that allows them to have prestige and money to travel and enjoy themselves. They can’t be bothered with pesty facts of history.
Musical antidote: A Japanese student, Hiroshima survivor, gifted me Aka Tombo (Red Dragonfly) in calligraphy on rice paper. My gf was a harpist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW-nqh2IuWI (3:12)
I’m surprised Musk’s lie, or misunderstanding, or whatever about millions of dead people receiving SS hasn’t gotten more pushback: “What a sensible person would do in this case is ask someone at the Social Security Administration to explain what these numbers mean. Musk, instead, posts them with zero idea of what they represent, and makes millions of people believe SS is going to millions of dead people.”
https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1891493105313988735
https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1891491332222312940
“They’re coming for your Social Security. And they’ll get it.” -George Carlin
https://nypost.com/2025/02/17/us-news/elon-musk-cries-fraud-on-20-million-in-social-security-database-over-age-100/
However, Musk’s bombshell has long been known by the Social Security Administration (SSA) watchdog, which released an audit in July 2023 showing that 18.9 million people listed as 100 years or older — but not dead — were in the database.
Only 86,000 people living in the US at the time were actually centenarians, according to the Census Bureau.
The same inspector general’s office found in a March 2015 audit that 6.5 million people with Social Security numbers but no death information were over 112 years old — despite just 35 people on the planet having reached that ripe old age.
In both audits, the inspectors general concluded that “almost none” were actually cashing Social Security checks — despite the glaring accounting errors identifying people born in 1886 and 1893 as still living, in two extreme cases.
Roughly 18.4 million uncovered in the 2023 audit had not received benefits or reported income for 50 years, meaning they were likely dead.
“We believe it likely SSA did not receive or record most of the 18.9 million individuals’ death information primarily because the individuals died decades ago — before the use of electronic death reporting,” the report states.
Around 44,000 were actually receiving benefits, with 13 of those older than 112.
SSA doesn’t keep track of cashed cheques?
I don’t know when the switch happened or if they still offer paper checks, but it is electronic deposits in a bank account now.
Yeah, just speaking metaphorically. I mean they are talking about the ages of people in their database, and whether or not deaths were recorded, but it seems like it would be important to know if the cheques are actually being cashed and if so then by whom.
WIRED
No, 150-Year-Olds Aren’t Collecting Social Security Benefits
Elon Musk claims to have found rampant fraud in the Social Security Administration. There’s a much simpler explanation.
https://archive.is/sVEv2
(But I do not get this story. If there is nothing to it why is it being stated and why do they report it?)
I assume the people with the very old SSN#s were not deleted when they died. Maybe they had surviving spouses who got their benefits (reduced IIRC)? So spouse dies, perhaps that account wiped but not the account of the spouse that died first?
CoffeeandCovid blog has a takedown of this matter that seems to be on other something after reviewing an Office of the Inspector General report on the matter from 2023: (a) the SSA has stated most (but not 0) of the 18+ million SSN associated with someone over 100 were NOT receiving direct payments and (b) these SSN are valid but the SSA could not say if they were being used to validate or affirm entries in to other federal departments.
It also noted the Fed Treasury Department had set up but never implemented a system, “Do Not Pay”, meant to check for fraud in the system. DOGE is turning it on…
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/freedom-fried-tuesday-february-17
Pulled from your link:
“These systems default to the reference point when a birth date is missing or incomplete, meaning all of those entries in 2025 would show an age of 150.”
So the system engineers who wrote the requirements for a system where virtually every action is age-dependent did not impose a constraint on inserts or updates of data to require that date of birth is NOT NULL. Maybe not fraud, but doesn’t seem like a good design.
This is presumably an IMS system. I don’t think they had NULL values.
On several occasions in my life, I have had very old couples who both suffer from a bit of confusion. Not necessarily dementia. They often have no heirs or POAs. I am dealing with one such situation right now.
It is not unusual at all, indeed it may be fairly common, that one of them dies, and then never gets reported as being dead. The surviving spouse has no one looking after them and are not capable of dealing with it themselves. They are in a situation with their brain function that it is challenging to transact business at the grocery store. Back in the before times, when my profession still had some modicum of compassion, social workers really helped them through all this private business. Now we have HIPPAA – so absolutely not a finger is raised to help. Indeed, the social workers are so understaffed now that they can barely complete any task. I am not criticizing the SWs – it is just it is far too important for hospital systems to have 200 administrative staff playing tiddlywinks with computers than actual employees to take care of patients. I have seen all kinds of issues occur with the survivor – and I have also been horrified at how long this actually draws out before anyone in the government does a thing about it. This was also quite a problem when for the longest time ( not sure if this is still going on – have not been confronted with it for awhile ) when clergy members were not allowed in Medicare – but at times their spouse was.
Social Security Admin bureaucracy does not seem to be terribly competent at these things at times–especially when there are some additional communication issues. When my dad passed away, SSA mistakenly declared my mother deceased instead. Mother was a bit proactive about these things and actually called SSA to inform them of this and might have inadvertently caused the problems herself, so to speak. Although there was a Korean-speaking SSA person involved as an interpretor, mother did get a distinct impression that something wasn’t being communicated correctly. It goes without saying that fixing the situation in full took months (as unexpected secondary consequences kept showing up–apparently, when SSA records that you’re dead, a bunch of other places act on that information, too). I’d heard stories like this before, too in immigrant communities, and yes, in US of A, not abroad (India does seem to have an unusually large number of these stories, at least based on what I read.)
Yes. Thank you. I wonder if Musk and crew know that SS is not like a standard defined benefits pension system? It is an insurance policy that in addition to retirement pension also covers the covered person’s dependent family members — the wife or husband and their dependent children until the child is 18-years-old in the event of the cover person’s untimely death or complete disability. That insurance aspect has saved many families from poverty. The lowest income cohort receiving the largest benefit ,(relatively speaking, but still small),compared to the wealthiest. SS is one of the most progressive programs to come out of the New Deal. Maybe that’s is SS’s ‘sin.’
and add: making an assumption with regard to SS payments that any beneficiary who falls outside of the statistical expectation – say outside a 65 to 95 age range – that anything outside this age range is questionable and therefore probably invalid, without further human examination of the individual case of the individual beneficiaries named, is a badly misguided assumption. imo. A personal, human, non-AI investigation is necessary to make a determination. / my 2 cents
Re The ‘White Collar’ recession is pummeling office workers, but the end might be near
Not so fast… DOGE, if its like the Clinton/Gore “Reinventing Government”, hundreds of thousands will be laid off. As I type, Southwest Airlines is firing 1750 people by email. The HQ is on lockdown:
https://x.com/xJonNYC/status/1891610266728636728
The CEO sez: “I know this will be hard, but we will get through it together.”
Onemileatatime.com said “The thing is, it’s not like Southwest is in a dire position, or is losing money — the company just isn’t as profitable as it used to be, and is taking action to correct that. I mean, the company has been planning an additional $750 million accelerated share repurchase program for this very quarter (the first quarter of 2025). If all of this doesn’t sum up corporate greed and why many people hate big corporations, then I don’t know what does.”
Maybe that Southwest Airlines CEO will next fire all the airline stewardesses and replace them with food and drink machines at the back of the plane – payment only through a Southwest app on your mobile of course. Who knows? Maybe Southwest airlines will get as good as Yorkshire Airlines one day-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VLYpKGVBUg (2:10 mins)
They are under pressure from vulture fund kingpin Singer.
https://simpleflying.com/southwest-airlines-paul-singer-control-battle-analysis/
I worked for USAF as a civil servant through most of the Clinton years.
There was no forced separations/layoffs. There were recurring early retirement and cash incentive to resign.
Often an early retiree would show up as an A&AS contract employee in same base maybe different office.
DOGE needs to audit all bills submitted by A&AS contracts through USG.
There was the short lived too small peace dividend after 1991.
Yes, VERA/VSIP was used at many activities but there was also BRAC and RIFs, at least in the USN. The department I ran had Economy Act “contract” with Sacramento Army Depot for circuit card repair. They got BRACed so we had to contract out to the private sector.
If you want to watch RFKJ’s welcoming ceremony to HHS today at 10am ET:
https://www.hhs.gov/live/office-remarks-ch1/index.html
Page removed.
Thanks for all the links, comments (they’re back!!). Politics is trending over climate/health, understandable. Sea surface temps up in these posts, but I would implore posters to move away from X, as those of us that have abandoned X, are unable/unwilling to engage on that platform. There are alternatives such as Bluesky or author’ webpages. We miss so much good info, the price we must pay. Please help make NC accessible to all. Join the war against the wealth class. Keep up the good work!
Reading your comment, I am reminded that Lambert has previously replied cogently, convincingly, and at length in denying this request. If you weren’t the one who made it, peace. If you were, please heed his words. To cede to your request would mean depriving the rest of us of a great range of information and opinion. Reading tweets does not imply approval of Musk.
Thank you, and I respect your position.
Looks like the comment I replied to has been (rightfully) removed.
Sadly Bluesky is inferior to Twitter in many ways that matter to us: number of participants in key areas of interest, great difficulty and time-wasting in reading what Twitter calls tweetstorms, and for me, wanting too much information to create an account.
IM Doc’s vivid descriptions of the echo chamber and brigading on Bluesky convinced me to not bother looking there…. Not that I ever log into twitter either, but there have usually been enough workarounds available if I’m really interested in something posted here.
I like bluesky myself and I didn’t feel I had to give that much info to them. They ask me to confirm my email everytime I log in and I just ignore that. One reason I like it there as there are far more rebellious types…
“New tech could greatly extend life of lithium-ion batteries”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08465-y
February 12, 2025
External Li supply reshapes Li deficiency and lifetime limit of batteries
Abstract
Lithium (Li) ions are central to the energy storing functionality of rechargeable batteries. Present technology relies on sophisticated Li-inclusive electrode materials to provide Li ions and exactingly protect them to ensure a decent lifetime. Li-deficient materials are thus excluded from battery design, and the battery fails when active Li ions are consumed. Our study breaks this limit by means of a cell-level Li supply strategy. This involves externally adding an organic Li salt into an assembled cell, which decomposes during cell formation, liberating Li ions and expelling organic ligands as gases. This non-invasive and rapid process preserves cell integrity without necessitating disassembly. We leveraged machine learning to discover such functional salts and identified lithium trifluoromethanesulfinate (LiSO2CF3) with optimal electrochemical activity, potential, product formation, electrolyte solubility and specific capacity. As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrated a 3.0 V, 1,192 Wh kg−1 Li-free cathode, chromium oxide, in the anode-less cell, as well as an organic sulfurized polyacrylonitrile cathode incorporated in a 388 Wh kg−1 pouch cell with a 440-cycle life. These systems exhibit improved energy density, enhanced sustainability and reduced cost compared with conventional Li-ion batteries. Furthermore, the lifetime of commercial LiFePO4 batteries was extended by at least an order of magnitude. With repeated external Li supplies, a commercial graphite|LiFePO4 cell displayed a capacity retention of 96.0% after 11,818 cycles.
If the “breakthrough” involves injecting lithium into each of the hundreds of small batteries that make up an electric vehicle pack then it doesn’t sound very practical for that use at least.
If the DC fast charge voltage of an EV is 400v, this implies about 100×4.0v cells in series.
Then, there is a lot of paralleling going on to get capacity.
Making larger cells is a safety issue as if one develops an internal short, then the resulting fire could be news worthy and not confined to a smaller cell.
I can’t access the paper to see if they estimated a “years until signicant impact” or if there are environmental concerns with chromium being used and disposal of the batteries.
The Tesla Model S has 7104 cells to inject.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202502/1328361.shtml
February 13, 2025
Chinese researchers develop ‘precision treatment’ to help lithium-ion batteries regain near factory-fresh capacity
A Chinese research team has developed a unique method that could help used lithium-ion batteries regain near factory-fresh capacity and performance, China Media Group (CMG) reported on Thursday.
The findings of the research team from Fudan University in Shanghai were published in the academic journal Nature on Wednesday.
Expanding the lifespan of batteries has long been a critical issue, as batteries fail when active lithium ions are consumed. “Our study breaks this limit by means of a cell-level lithium supply strategy. This involves externally adding an organic lithium salt into an assembled cell, which decomposes during cell formation, liberating lithium ions and expelling organic ligands as gases. This non-invasive and rapid process preserves cell integrity without necessitating disassembly,” the researchers said in an abstract posted on Nature’s website.
This innovative technique has the potential to significantly enhance the performance of lithium-ion batteries and reduce waste, which is essential for electric vehicles (EVs), smartphones and large-scale energy storage infrastructure, according to the researchers.
The team leveraged artificial intelligence and organic electrochemistry to develop a lithium carrier molecule that can be injected into degraded batteries to replenish lost lithium ions, effectively providing a “precision treatment” to help batteries regain a near factory-fresh “healthy” status, Gao Yue, a member of the research team, was quoted by the CMG report as saying.
The researchers expect that the technology could extend lithium-ion batteries’ lifespan from the current range of between 500 and 2,000 cycles to an unprecedented range of between 12,000 and 60,000 cycles, according to a report on Fudan University’s website.
This is an internationally “unparalleled” achievement by Chinese scientists, said Gao, adding that it is expected to pave the way for high-performance, cost-effective lithium batteries, addressing the problem of insufficient battery lifespans in EVs, consumer electronics and large-scale energy storage…
Too bad : (
The longer Li chemistry stays economically viable, the longer it’ll take for cheaper, more environmentally friendly chemistries to start down the incremental volume driven cost reduction path.
Shades of x86 CPU architecture. There were plenty of designs that were ‘better’, cleaner programming, more secure, more energy efficient etc, but none of that mattered in the face of Intel’s market share.
Good for extending the lifespan of already sunk resources, but in the long run, we really need safer chemistry, preferably something that doesn’t resemble an IED quite so much.
Because this process uses LiSO2CF3 as the functional salt and it is ‘expelling organic ligands as gasses’, I’d be concerned that those gasses are likely fluorocarbons, which are not environmentally desirable.
Trump’s Economic Recovery – A Dead End? Michael Hudson, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen, YouTube. A must watch
The last 8 minutes or so….playing my broken record. Indeed.
“America may conquer the rest of the world through neoliberal ideology more than in other dimensions,” Hudson explains.
That’s what the ruling class wants to live on more than any state that can represent people – neoliberal economic ideology.
Thank you. Would it be too foily to wonder if USAID money and other US foreign ‘investments’ found its way into influencing university economic departments all around the world? The Chicago School goes a-traveling? Hayak and Friedman on tour. / ;)
“Would it be too [foolish] to wonder if USAID money and other US foreign ‘investments’ found its way into influencing university economic departments all around the world?”
A very important question, the answer to which I would surely think is “yes.” Working for American Democratic and Republican administrations has been an important boost for academic economists. Conformity in academic work has struck me as a necessity. Absence of conformity, even for renowned economists, has been harshly dealt with:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2002/jul/06/globalisation
July 6, 2002
The contented malcontent
By Charlotte Denny – Guardian
For a man who has provoked a collective temper tantrum at the highest levels of the International Monetary Fund, Joseph Stiglitz is looking remarkably relaxed. The Nobel laureate has just launched a stinging attack on the organisation and its handling of the crises that have swept through the world financial system over the last 10 years in his latest book, Globalization and its Discontents…
What do you have to comment on Michel Hudson’s assertion that Marxist economics are exiled from China…?
“What do you have to comment on Michael Hudson’s assertion that Marxist economists are exiled from China…?”
Sorry, but I have no idea what this could mean.
China is socialist, with Chinese characteristics, and the political-economic system so described is evolving and continually being re-evaluated. The point is inclusive successful development.
Michael Hudson says that to the Chinese “Marxism” is just another name for “Politics,” and that the majority of the Communist Party Economists were trained on garbage university economics in the West as opposed to their own homegrown ones.
Michael Hudson says that to the Chinese…
China is a 5,000 year old civilization of 1.4 billion, and this Chinese leadership is highly knowledgeable and perfectly able to define what China is and is becoming. Too few in the West understand as yet, but more and more will learn. President Xi sought to explain this to Macron and Macron was sympathetic beyond French politics.
As for Chinese economists and the leadership, a large number are primarily science or engineering trained, even Xi. But this is in keeping, as the magnificent 27 volume work on Chinese history of Cambridge scientist Joseph Needham explains.
China is socialist, with Chinese characteristics, as shown from the ending of severe poverty and improving well-being from there shows. Also, the cultural and science advents of the day show the same.
In David Harvey’s Brief History of Neoliberalism, there is a chapter, entitled “Neoliberalism with Chinese Characteristics”. The title is self-explanatory.
Overall, I found it a compelling read.
https://x.com/thinking_panda/status/1644368570141507584
ShanghaiPanda @thinking_panda
President Xi told a story to President Macron:
Chinese ancient musicians Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi’s friendship was
strengthened by music. Boya played a piece of music that only Ziqi
could understand, demonstrating that true friendship requires mutual
understanding and appreciation.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtH6VGWaEAEL0vA?format=jpg&name=small
11:56 AM · Apr 7, 2023
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-02-18/Xi-meets-private-entrepreneurs-boosting-confidence-in-private-sector-1B67cBS9lwQ/p.html
February 18, 2025
President Xi meets private entrepreneurs, injecting confidence into private sector
A highly anticipated symposium on private enterprises was held in Beijing on Monday, where Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech after listening to representatives of private entrepreneurs, including Huawei’s Ren Zhengfei, BYD’s Wang Chuanfu, New Hope’s Liu Yonghao, Will Semiconductor’s Yu Renrong, Unitree Robotics’ Wang Xingxing and Xiaomi’s Lei Jun.
The private sector enjoys broad prospects and great potential on the new journey in the new era. It is a prime time for private enterprises and entrepreneurs to give full play to their capabilities, President Xi said.
Unswerving support
During the symposium, President Xi reiterated his unwavering commitment to the private sector, stressing the fundamental policies for the development of the private economy have been incorporated into the national institutional system and that “this cannot and will not change.”
Xi urged resolutely dismantling obstacles that prevent enterprises from accessing production factors equally and competing in the market fairly, further opening the competitive areas of infrastructure to various business entities in a fair manner, and continuously making solid efforts to address the difficulties faced by private enterprises in obtaining affordable financing.
He also stressed the effective protection of the lawful rights and interests of private enterprises and entrepreneurs in accordance with the law.
China has set up a bureau under the country’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), specializing in promoting the private economy’s development…
A way to make lithium batteries that’ much cleaner.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20250217/russia-rolls-out-breakthrough-technology-to-produce-lithium-1121576159.html
MODI TAKES HIS BEST SHOT – HOW INDIAN STRATEGY PUTS TRUMP IN FRONT OF PUTIN – John Helmer
India is way too eager to embrace Trump’s America – RT
Not really surprising developments when one notices the relationship between Modi and oligarchs in India and relationships among oligarchs in the USA.
RE: “Visa, Mastercard may soon try to return to Russia ”
In response to the IMHO…
I’m remembering a Scott Ritter interview from around early January, can’t remember the exact venue, either Nima, Judge or Haiphong where he states this peace initiative to anyone listening from the Trump camp. I took a deep dive this morning in the archives of their shows and failed to find it.
The peace plan being that the US should lift all sanctions, turn swift back on, and allow Russia back into the western system . This would have a 3 part win for the US, Ukraine peace within 90 days, lower oil prices, and the big win being the slowing down of BRICS and their alternate payments planning.
Seems that someone from the Trump camp was listening.
The spanner throwing by the EU and Ukraine will be amazing to watch.
Mercouris and others have said Russia does not value getting back into Swift. They’ve adapted. The US likely way overvalues that as a concession.
If you read the TASS article, the Russian Duma member made clear he thought this was something the US wanted, not Russia.
The Russians have calculated that the US has lost some $300 billion by leaving the Russian market. I think that with so much money on the table, that Trump wants back in but like Trump’s offer of letting Russia back into the G7, for the Russians some of what he offers has no value whatsoever. The Russians are not going to abandon BRICS either on the basis of American promises for example nor will they care about SWIFT so much-
https://www.rt.com/russia/612889-us-firms-losses-russia/
The Generative AI Con – Ed Zitron
The desperation is showing in the techbros (especially the fintech bros) hijacking of the Federal govt. Attached themselves right to the spigot.
They latch onto Federal systems and force people to have to engage with the enshittification they control.
Regarding health-care and academic DOGE swingeing cuts, Sabine has just put up a video decrying this.
I have sensed her increasing despair in recent years that (ironically) we’ve moved from a world where economics has “physics-envy” to one where branches of physics seem to have “economics-envy” via stuff that is not even wrong.
As is often the case, there is nobody (outside a site like this) taking a birdseye view to explain why these things are going on. Lots of YT channels seem to think Nebula is the platform to “escape the shackles of YT”. Well, I cancelled my subscription last year when I began to see weird shenanigans going on regarding their bundling with Curiosity Stream (it was ended and got no proper explanation why) and got hints that further changes were afoot. One channel (which I don’t subscribe to but have watched the odd video from when the algorithm suggested it) which is anti-capitalist and although I don’t regard as top notch, got booted out of the so-called co-operative structure of Nebula. (The channel is called second thought). I don’t want to just quote stuff from comments on YT videos but unfortunately I’m not surprised by this kind of thing and it simply reminds me why an informed commentary like on here beats all.
>>>Regarding health-care and academic DOGE swingeing cuts, Sabine has just put up a video decrying this.
Her video on how she was forced from her dream career as an academic/scientist to making YouTube videos was informative and depressing. It seems that in modern science doing research is often not the goal, but making money is.
Yeah I saw that and a lot of things chimed with my own experience (unfortunately).
MAGA my dear
Though I spend my days in conversation online
Please don’t remember me
MAGA my loathe
Please forget me
MAGA how dear?
Hold your head up
You silly Illionaire
Look what you’ve done
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you, silly Musk
Take a good look around you
Take a good look, you’re bound to see
That you and your team
Were meant to be
Surveilling others, silly DOGE
Hold your hand out
You silly illionaire
See what you’ve done
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you, silly DOGE
MAGA how dear?
You have always caused me perspiration
Please be good to me
MAGA my loathe
Please forget me
MAGA how dear?
Martha My Dear, by the Beatles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXawa90YU2s
Assume a Debt Crisis working link (extra L was at end)
https://stephaniekelton.substack.com/p/assume-a-debt-crisis
Talked to a friend who was a backcountry ranger in Sequoia NP for about 15 years and has been a ranger @ Denali NP (how much longer before Trump demands it be called McKinley NP?) the past decade or so, always a seasonal position-and yet requiring pretty mad skills such as law enforcement, EMT skills and more, all costing the Federal Government around $20 an hour without much in the way of benefits.
She is one of many of the seasonal workers for NPS without a job now.
I believe employees who are not seasonal or probationary (recent hires) are entitled to a hearing where a cause must be shown in a dismissal. This is undoubtedly why they are encouraging many to quit on their own with severance. Unclear whether failure to return to an office is really such a valid reason–particularly as many, by management design, no longer have offices to return to.
The above does seem a particular problem for Park jobs which are often inherently seasonal due to the weather. Does your friend have other employment for the rest of the year?
Yes, she works in a library in the ‘off season’.
Not being a permanent NPS employee, I don’t think there is any severance pay possibilities, but I did offer to buy her a ticket to Burning Man-which she always wanted to go to, but never could pull it off as she was working.
I attended a protest rally at Santa Rosa’s Courthouse Square yesterday morning from 11AM until a little before noon, when my back started screaming at me.
I have been to a LOT of marches and protests over the last half Century and I am pretty good at estimating their size.
This one was about 1,000 strong and growing when I left.
There is no coverage in Today’s Santa Rosa Press Democrat or in Today’s SF Chronicle.
Which is curious, but not surprising.
re: Israel
This is I assume the limit of what an entertainment industry outlet as VARIETY is allowed to say:
A review about the documentary “‘No Other Land’” –
‘No Other Land’ Review: A Frank, Devastating Protest Against Israel’s West Bank Occupation
Young Palestinian activist Basel Adra teams with Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham to chronicle the despair of the displaced in his home territory — the resulting film could open eyes and change minds.
by Guy Lodge
https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/no-other-land-review-1235919336/
I don´t know about the US, in Germany there were cinemas – indies! – boycotting it.
p.s. I have not seen the movie as I don´t watch documentaries any more. But considering it was a Berlinale winner – which means, it is more mainstream than not and which with documentaries I do not consider a treat, usually – the review makes me believe VARIETY has little experience with the genre “documentary” – since when it really comes to its senses documentary is an art form in its own right, comparable to painting, dance, architecture, poetry, much less novels or your average motion picture in a theatre near you.
Berlinale has little space for that kind of thing in the winner slots. But: I can be wrong. The limited scope of the narrative might open up a certain integrity of ethics on par with aesthetics. After all there are no laws with art. The public seems to forget that sometimes. Which on the other hand makes art often a very bad companion for such issues as political activism. But that is a fringe, elitist view.
Just watching that elephant’s ears is calming. 🥰
Is anyone else unable to see the linked twitter posts now? I used to be able to read them but now X is asking me to sign up…
Try the following: copy the URL, paste it in a new tab of your browser, then replace x.com, resp. twitter.com, by xcancel.com or nitter.poast.org, and finally press the “Return” key.
Japanese scientists have created a hydrogel that reverts cancer cells back to cancer stem cells in 24 hours
pic.twitter.com/tfw77dYFGv
The gel in the short video looks very much like DMSO in the 100% strength version.
Thanks for the Hudson link, great discussion. Sad to think Russia cb and China might have neolib leanings. I hoped ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics would imply state control of natural monopolies. The fight to avoid west resource and rent extraction looks to be tougher than I realized.