Humpback whale is free after swimming out of crocodile-infested river in Australia CNN
Scientists see signs of chimpanzees being able to adapt to climate change ABC
FinCEN Files Show Criminals Moved Billions As Banks Watched Buzzfeed (Carl).
Hundreds of US companies fight new rules on hedge fund disclosure FT
Why New York’s in a Depression and Texas Isn’t Bloomberg
#COVID19
SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Dynamics Should Inform Policy SSRN. Handy chart:
Lots of scope for variation here, at the national level all the way down to the individual neighborhood and even dwelling. That, I think, should be the takeaway, oft-misconceived, from the concept of “airborne”: Not that Covid is insanely infectious, but that it’s capricious. If the wearables crowd would stop focusing on magic glasses that augment reality with advertising, and help us visualize air currents instead, they would be doing a lot to help. Prove me wrong, techies!
Antibody Responses to SARS-CoV-2: Let’s Stick to Known Knowns (PDF) Journal of Immunology. From the Abstract: “In this article, which is part opinion piece and part review, we argue that the normal cadence by which we discuss science with our colleagues failed to properly convey likelihoods of the immune response to SARSCoV-2 to the public and the media. As a result, biologically implausible outcomes were given equal weight as the principles set by decades of viral immunology. Unsurprisingly, questionable results and alarmist news media articles have filled the void. We suggest an emphasis on setting expectations based on prior findings while avoiding the overused approach of assuming nothing. After reviewing Ab-mediated immunity after coronavirus and other acute viral infections, we posit that, with few exceptions, the development of protective humoral immunity of more than a year is the norm. Immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is likely to follow the same pattern.”
Low genetic diversity may be an Achilles heel of SARS-CoV-2 (PDF) PNAS. “SARS-CoV-2 genetic diversity is remarkably low, almost entirely the product of genetic drift, and should not be expected to impede development of a broadly protective vaccine.”
A Covid-19 Vaccine for Children May Not Arrive Before Fall 2021 NYT
Why misinformation about COVID-19’s origins keeps going viral National Geographic
Frozen Meat Against COVID-19 Misinformation: An Analysis of Steak-Umm and Positive Expectancy Violations Journal of Business and Technical Communication (dk).
California’s Deadliest Spring in 20 Years Suggests COVID Undercount KHN
L.A. Mayor Unveils Push To End Homelessness By Sending Around Some Pretty Reasonable Zillow Listings The Onion
California’s troubled unemployment agency needs immediate overhaul, report says Los Angeles Times
NBC 7 Retracting Story on Gloria and 101 Ash Street Investigation NBC
China?
Xi: No nation should act like boss of the world China Daily
‘You will be put into detention’: Former ABC bureau chief tells story of fleeing China for first time ABC Australia
Gangster capitalism and the American theft of Chinese innovation TechCrunch
Hong Kong domestic helper loses Court of Appeal challenge against ‘live-in’ rule South China Morning Post
China’s Epic Dash for PPE Left the World Short on Masks Bloomberg
Victoria premier’s department head ‘unaware’ who decided to use security guards in hotel quarantine Guardian
Rio Tinto expected to destroy 124 more Aboriginal sites Independent
India
Farm Bills and Labour Law Changes: Modi’s Big Gamble in the Middle of a Pandemic The Wire
Truckin:
On my recent trip to India (Trichy & Karaikudi in Tamil Nadu), I was *fascinated* by the trucks, lorries and buses on the roads. Going through my notes, I find myself wanting to look them up. The brand that stood out the most for me was Ashok Leyland: https://t.co/FoP4hvZkmL pic.twitter.com/5sXM09aiPb
— visa is cleaning out his notes (@visakanv) December 12, 2018
Gorgeous thread (albeit from 2018).
Climate imperialism and the US elections Africa Is a Country
A sample brand check on Plastics found in Lake Victoria exposes companies that are ignoring to #EndPlasticPollution. Climate Watch
UK/EU
FinCEN Files: Deutsche Bank tops list of suspicious transactions Deutsche Welle
Combustible insulation used on Grenfell Tower was sold at a heavy discount to building company WSWS (JZ). See NC Grenfell coverage here, here, here, and here.
Broadband: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months BBC
Facebook Says it Will Stop Operating in Europe If Regulators Don’t Back Down Vice. They’ll never miss it. I didn’t.
Assange
Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing Day 14 Craig Murray
Release WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, say current and former world leaders NBC
Guide To Journalists And Organizations Covering Assange Extradition Trial Shadowproof
Silence reigns on the US-backed coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia Guardian
Evo Morales’ candidate rides high in polls ahead of Bolivia vote Buenos Aires Times
The U.S. Needs To Abandon Its Dead-End Venezuela Policy The American Conservative
Exclusive: Secret cables reveal Britain interfered with elections in Chile Daily Maverick
Trump Transition
Full funding required for planned 2024 moon landing, NASA chief says CBS
2020
The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and covering the Republican push to replace her. Columbia Journalism Review
‘I want them to do it’: Donald Trump says he welcomes second impeachment over Supreme Court seat USA Today. They’ll let you know after brunch.
Facebook vows to restrict users if US election descends into chaos FT
Counting Presidential Dead Is a Distraction Foreign Policy
Health Care
Many Hospitals Charge More Than Twice What Medicare Pays for the Same Care NYT. “A public option, distinct from the more controversial ‘Medicare for all’ proposals that would do away with private insurance, has been embraced by Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential nominee.” Proposals already walked back (albeit by “anonymous Democratic congressional sources”, but who’s the party leader?). The Times just gets worse and worse.
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Companies can track your phone’s movements to target ads Ars Technica
Protests and Riots
DeSantis calls for tougher laws on Florida protesters: ‘We’ve seen disorder and tumult’ Tallahassee Democrat
Black Injustice Tipping Point
The Cop Who Quit Instead of Helping to Gentrify Atlanta Mother Jones. Another form of law enforcement for profit.
LMPD cancels days off while waiting on AG Daniel Cameron’s decision in Breonna Taylor case Courier-Journal
“more than half the racial gap in individual stock ownership has disappeared essentially overnight.” The Reformed Broker
Imperial Collapse Watch
Space Force deploys its first squadron outside of the U.S. CBS (Re Silc).
Boeing, Boeing…
Union for FAA’s safety engineers urges more changes to Boeing 737 MAX before it can fly again Seattle Times
Class Warfare
Gig Economy Company Launches Uber, But for Evicting People Vice (pete).
Inspiring: Local Uber Driver Makes $100k a Year Driving 84 Hours a Week Vice (Hubert Horan). The deck: “You can’t, you won’t, please don’t.” Horan comments: “Exact same dishonest PR scam Uber tried to pull in 2014 when it claimed NYC Uber drivers earned 90K a year.” Don’t ever change, Uber. Don’t ever change.
A new era of hunger has hit the US FT. Everything’s going according to plan!
What Is the Sound of Thought? MIT Technology Review
Watch Contractors Hypnotically Build an Entire Wind Turbine Farm Popular Mechanics (Re Silc). It’s the watching that’s hypnotic, not the building.
Antidote du Jour (via):
Bonus antidote:
Humpback mother and her newborn arrive?? pic.twitter.com/YKHla3CJAZ
— Nature And Animals ? (@animal0lovers) September 21, 2020
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
158 comments
Comments are closed.
Working link for “Scientists see signs of chimpanzees being able to adapt to climate change” article at-
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/scientists-signs-chimpanzees-adapt-climate-change/story?id=73102339
Isn’t this how Planet of the Apes started?
Thanks for the correction, and the Planet of the Apes reference is apropos.
Here’s what caught my eye:
The evolutionary anthropologist is talking not about us but our cousins, the chimps. Sadly, we lost the ability for this kind of cultural evolution and adaptation when we left the wild and settled into agriculture. From then on, our go-to response to changes in our environment was technological beginning with huts and “progressing” to central air. If technology is unable to provide an answer to climate change that doesn’t destroy the Earth to save it, then it may turn out that calling this epoch the Anthropocene may prove quite ironic.
Fixed the link. Thanks. BTW, for readers who are interested in a deeper dive on the effects of climate change (and other factors) on chimps and other primates, you might check out a Coursera course that is live now: Primate conservation
this is the correct link for the chimpanzee article
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/scientists-signs-chimpanzees-adapt-climate-change/story?id=73102339
Fixed it. Thanks!
Microsoft buying Bethesda and Zenimax for $7.5bn
Analysis: Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda is all about Game Pass
(the Game Pass is a monthly subscription service to download lots of games from Microsoft’s game library – they’re not the first game publisher to do this but it seems to me that they’re the first to use it as a big loss leader in order to sell hardware)
2020 keeps getting worse. Though Microsoft’s game library was always suspect. I guess this means Elder Scrolls VI is closer to reality.
I understand Bethesda, once mighty and proud, has fallen on tough times. Now they have fallen through the floor…
Fallout 76 was a disaster much like Nvidia’s rollout of RTX 3080 was a scam by Nvidi.
A lot of people were angry that Bethesda made a lot of marketing promises and then published a game repleat with bugs that had been solved by modders in prior games. Turns out, Bethesda did not even use the B-Team on a flagship title, only one of the most successful franchises in gaming history. The improvements in the graphics engine were practically non-existent.
Fallout 76 is the equivalent of the 737 MAX.
As for Nvidia? The 3080 launch was a paper launch with introductory teaser rates. Supply was practically non-existent. Bots bought up most of what few 3080’s existed with websites out of product in seconds. Ebay turned out to be the largest “seller”.
Nvidia planned to use the excuse of “demand” to expire the teaser rates and charge higher prices while blaming 3rd party manufacturers for sharp rises in prices. Marketing wanted what few cards actually existed in the hands of consumers for a word of mouth marketing campaign.
The bots destroyed that. Cards went up on Ebay within the hour.
The backlash was swift and rather vocal against Nvidia.
Now, limited orders of 3080s are be taken with delivery stretched out into late November. Expect further delays.
Many are now vowing to buy AMD. AMD has a great marketing provided by Nvidia’s chicanery to seize market share.
“Look, we have cards that exist for gamers to buy.”
I moved on after Fallout:New Vegas but there was no excuse for 76 to not have the improvements modders made. Without mods, FO3 and Vegas were mostly empty maps. The mods brought those games to life! I was playing Vegas with the motorcycle mod and the maximum number of monsters I could generate. Driving through them with guns blazing, good times!
interesting about the 3080 – is there any reporting on this?
I think hardware reviews play an important part in the system you describe: from what I’ve read, it’s an amazing card. So much so that I went to check the prices at the stockists here – unsurprisingly, they were sold out everywhere!
Bethesda has a tradition for releasing hilariously buggy games so they are a good fit for Microsoft in that respect.
Wild prediction for this morning: I think McConnell will get the SCOTUS appointment to a vote and the vote will fail. Democrats will celebrate in the streets. Then, during the inevitable challenges, the deadlocked 4-4 Supreme Court have to hand down the decision to a lower court, where Trump/McConnell judges will decide in their favor.
What drives me nuts about the Democrat reaction to this appointment debacle is this: why would they think that stacking the Supreme Court would work out in their favor long term? Because eliminating the filibuster did not.
Trump nominates a person for the Supreme Court on Friday. Monday the Senate Judiciary Committee votes its approval without hearings based on previous record. Tuesday McConnell, if he has the votes nailed down, calls the question and we have a newly minted justice. Entirely irregular and without precedent and I believe quite legal.
Before or soon after the election there will be confirmation.
Fantasy outcome: Defeated Republican Senators finally take the opportunity to stick it to McConnell and to Trump by defeating the nomination. That would be a delicious surprise.
Not irregular at all. Supreme Court appointments were rarely controversial until the 60s. President Lincoln’s nomination of Salmon Chase sailed through the Senate in one day.
Wow great historical comparison. Measure that vs passing ACA, the parameters of which probably solidified when Obama completed his secret meetings w/Big Pharma & Insurance Corps, yet it took 2 yrs that seemed like an eternity to actually pass it.
A bunch of White Men in a country of 30-something million people. Everybody of importance had had dinner together at some point – ok, that maybe an exaggeration but not by much.
“The past is a different country” is rarely so dead on as in this.
Don’t forget that all the Southern members of the Senate being gone helped Lincoln achieve that very quick confirmation. Still, you’re right that this was not a thing really before Abe Fortas in the 1960s.
I don’t understand why the Dems don’t just refuse unanimous consent like Sirota says to. Of course, assuming they _want_ to win, which — well, you know what they say about assumptions.
I don’t understand why the Dems don’t just refuse unanimous consent like Sirota says to.
I like to use the term “Team Blue” not only because so much of politics has descended into team sports but because so many elected Democrats aren’t so much Democrats as local self funders with no real core values. They might complain about potholes, but it ends there. The idea of work to accomplish something that won’t directly benefit them doesn’t enter the equation. By and large, they are there for the pomp and circumstances. The idea of power politics, though they are at the epicenter of it, is something they simply have no interest in.
They have no plan for the death of Ginsburg. Let that sink in. Obama encouraged her to resign because she had cancer. As bad as Ginsburg was, she was holding the line on the deranged GOP Justices on many cases. Team Blue simply has no plan for this.
The last few years have honed my cynicism to a fine point.
Why should they, any thought ended with “It’s going to be a fund raising windfall!”
I started a long winded diatribe response to a Ginsberg and Scalia post. But it also applies to this idea that Democrats should do more than complain or show boat about certain issues.
IF the Democrats cared about the judiciary in the manner all this is supposed to indicate, they should have been slowing or blocking most of Trump’s nominees for the past few years. Yes the Supreme Court is important but so is every appeals and district court. But this is all for show. They agree with the Republicans on most subjects. Fair treatment, privacy, due process, for them but the rest of us can stamp our feet and make demands all we want. Their jobs aren’t going anywhere, they have health care, their kids have opportunities and don’t have to play a form of Russian roulette on the possibility of death or major damage by joining the military just to be able to possibly have a roof and food. No none of these decisions affect them except to keep the grift and “presents” coming in.
Even for the judges it is all an intellectual exercise. Or battle for the better speaker “fees” quote.
A plan would mean both work and annoying their owners, cannot have that. Pretending powerlessness is so much easier.
“Pretending powerlessness is so much easier.”
I hate to say it but that is the reason to get Biden in. The Democrats can no longer play the “Trump bad” card and once in power can be held responsible for their actions. No more excuses. The key is people willing to actively fight neo-liberalism. Democracy requires work, the powerful don’t give up power without a fight.
How did that work out for the simple, obvious, wildly popular, timely, globally-accepted, and hugely beneficial policy Bernie, with his millions of dedicated supporters, brought to the table? They wouldn’t even consider mentioning it in the aspirational document known as “the party platform”, let alone consider pursuing it in any way. Your man said “I would veto it if it reached my desk…but it won’t reach my desk”. And that was *before* they were in power.
I think you may have it backwards.
Pol: Vote for me
Plebe: Why?
Pol: Because I won’t do anything for you. In fact, we will actively work against every one of your interests. But we’ll have nice brown people and women doing it.
Plebe: Oh, OK then
F. Douglas: “Power concedes nothing without a demand”. But the key is *when* the demand is made.
I only wish the neoliberals had followed your agenda. Sit back and wait. Unfortunately after the Goldwater loss they became busy and set the table for the Reagan Revolution through actions such as setting up a plethora of think tanks and the Powell Memorandum. They didn’t wait for the “when”, they created it.
Obviously you have forgotten the last time Biden was in a Presidential administration. The Democrats were powerless while holding both houses of Congress and the Presidency.
I think even the Republicans’ plans may be changing. What will merely reversing Roe really do for them? Abortion has been made all but prohibited in the red states already.
The one thing that would really accomplish their goals is an expansion of “person” in the Fifth Amendment. That’s impossible, of course. Who could imagine Strict Constructionists expanding such a fundamental concept? (sarc)
“ They have no plan for the death of Ginsburg. Let that sink in”
Mind opener of the day, thanks.
There is no tactical advantage with getting this done so soon. It drives from the media other stories that could be used to attack Trump such as the disastrous pandemic response. The more the Democrats rail against this happening, the more Republicans will be outraged and say that the law allows them to do this. For Trump, it might be better to spin this saga out to the middle of next month.
My thoughts exactly. Focus all media attention on the Supreme Court, because our press is only able to talk about one thing, and ignore Trump’s real liabilities. No senator has to go on record supporting a particular nominee. No senator loses their seat over a politically unpopular vote. Confirm during the lame duck session and no one will be held accountable. Of course, only fools make predictions nowadays, but that’s mine.
IMO confirming before the election takes the wind out of dem sails. People stirring themselves to stop the appointment won’t stir to vote if it’s a done deal. But I agree the press, as usual, is distracted from harping on trumps poor Covid performance. So by all means deliberate, but they’ll get it done about two weeks before the election.
It’s all theater, and trump controls the clock.
Indeed, if Trump nominates cleverly, he will want to give the dems time to tear themselves apart. OTOH, it seems RBG also got that whiff of 2016 deja vu that was going around, and made a timely exit, giving her life to revive the dying Democratic enthusiasm, as it were.
I probably agree with most of RBGs decisions and she was definitely a titan for women.
But SC justices should *not* talk about their work to the media and outside groups
Dems might repeat the good’ole days and bring back the filibuster if they win the Senate. And if Biden wins too, they could do another 2 to 8 years repeat of explaining they can’t pass anything meaningful because Republicans are mean and will filibuster.
DailyKos could then cut/paste all their old Obama era posts, refresh dates/names, and say how mean Republicans are and that we need more and better Dems to replace them.
Repeat every 12 years…at which point a new generation will be readers with no idea this all happened before.
I laughed at this, especially the DailyKos bit. Thank you.
Yes, LOL
Republicans practice solidarity more so than Liberals do. Even at their own expense.
Liberals vastly underestimate Republican solidarity. Liberals consistently fail to recognize that fact, ending up impaling themselves on Republican swords. Democratic Leadership lives in a dementia riddled Fantasyland that all they need to do is make the court case and the jury will agree with them.
Not a surprise since the majority of Dem Leadership are lawyers. Their training and lifelong pursuit resulted in hidebound rituals that have Dem Leadership spouting pap such as “bipartisanship” & “pragmatism”. Dem Leadership suffers from groupthink and inability to recognize that times have changed.
Reagan Republicanism which relied on Reagan Democrats? Is a thing of the past that Dem Leadership still pines for.
Ridiculous. Now, Dem Leadership is praying that enough suburban Republicans vote for them, to win. Which means Dem Leadership will have to appease Republucan voters or be defeated next election.
Harry S. Truman: “Now the time has rolled around again when you folks have the problem of trying to pick and choose a candidate to support. You are not the only ones who have that problem, and I assure you I am fully aware that it can be a very perplexing problem indeed. The people don’t want a phony Democrat. If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time”.
Bad news for neoliberals. Pretty much means caring about people is what helps predict COVID.
BCG vaccination in infancy does not protect against COVID-19, Swedish data indicate
Thats really interesting, but having a look at the countries that do and don’t have mandatory BCG vaccination makes the alternative hypotheses look a bit questionable. There is so much about vaccination we don’t know (as discussed in the link yesterday about greatly reduced mortality in African children with vaccinations which can’t be explained by the direct impacts of the vaccine itself).
But what they are suggesting is that the link may no be the vaccine, but a vaccine is part of a larger aspect of greater social care. Like maybe better nutrition or education for example. This could be true in Africa. Even though it is poor their might be other social factors that have a link to what happened in Sweden.
BCG + Vitamin D?????
Maybe, check for sun exposure?
IMO you don’t want to be low in either vit d or zinc when you catch the virus. The seniors might miss the former bc of hiding from the sun like me, and be low in the latter on account of diet… beef has zinc, but many seniors avoid eating much of that, either fearing cholesterol or affordability. And anyway, what was the cow eating? Some soils are depleted of zinc. Vegetarians are particularly at risk unless they take supplements.
Interesting fact. Around 4.5% of the world’s population is immune to HIV. Concentrated in Africa and Scandinavia. They can be carriers though.
Modern science has no way to account for genetic variables that help or hinder those infected by disease, other than after the fact.
There may have been a bug that circulated in those areas a number of years that was similar enough to Covid-19 to give the immune system a running start, so that it is more like the common cold or flu than a novel virus. Epedimiologists think something like that happened with the 1918 flu where a flu circulated around 1880 that was similar enough that people over 60 had some immunity to the 1918 variant and didn’t get very sick and die.
Also, there is evidence that viral load has a lot to do with severity of the disease and outcomes of it. So if people live and work in a way that exposure is low, instead of the high concentration for living and working indoors with poor ventialltion and high density, they may have much more ventilation (e.g. open windows instead of AC) and simply get exposed more. Similarly, if they are outside quite a bit, then exposure is lower and they will self-generate more Vitamin D. A younger population with less obesity would also likely have better outcomes.
Many, many variables need to be considered in a non-political context. The CDC used to be able to do that, but not anymore.
I remember the HIV lockdowns, boy they were severe. Good thing they didn’t open up until there was a vaccine
I don’t recall HIV being spread through the breathing of seemingly healthy individuals.
Excellent point. But mankind is subjected to a continuous onslaught of new viruses and has been for tens of thousands of years. I just find the fixation on this particular pathogen, and the decision to absolutely destroy the economy trying to mitigate it, to be curious. Why not the 4,500 daily deaths from TB? With *2* companies working on a vaccine, not 102? Could the main reason be mostly related to money? Or politics?
TB is predictable. “Novel” isn’t in this virus’ name just for kicks.
And for tens of thousands of years one way some cultures dealt with new viruses was for 90% of their populace to die. Not sure why you seem to pine for those times… oh, “the economy”. “money”. “politics”. What’s a possible near-extinction event like a new virus, or climate change, or an asteroid compared to those more important things.
re: FINCEN
It is a sure thing that those big banks work hand-in-glove with the security and espionage services of their countries — always have, always will.
So … most likely the banks were acting with the permission and/or under the orders of those entities. I expect that this was profitable for the banks, and the sources of the money might have been fully aware of all of this, and managed to take advantage of it.
Yup. Gotta fund those black-ops, donchaknow? I found this response from the Feds pretty telling:
Reporting on crimes being covered up is a crime.
I am the acting AML officer for my company and it doesn’t work like that. If we detect any “suspicious activity” we are required to file a Suspicious Matter Report. Believe me, all companies err on the side of caution, so file these at the drop of a hat. Then: it is against the law for us to reveal the filing of the SAR to the subject. That is so
The Keystone Copsthe regulators can attempt to catch them.Following the printed SAR guidelines can be fun. “Does the subject appear sweaty or fidgety?” (we’re a 100% online company).
Banks and especially those in
World Money Laundering CapitolLondon are a cesspit of ML violations. But the mere existence of SARs, and the fact they are not disclosed, does not prove much.Probably goes back to Operation Paperclip and using the mafia to establish order in Italy in 1944 and keep Communist subversives in check after the war. A marriage of conveniences between intelligence services and the criminal underworld.
In Capitalism, the criminals become the Capitalists. If anyone thinks the mob does not control Las Vegas still? They are out of their gord. They went corporate and still control the criminal activities there. The US Govt wanted the mob to pay sufficient taxes. After that? Back to business.
Brings to mind a certain funder of DT…
Like a tenacious venereal disease, Russiagate is the forever gift. The latest drama from Josh Rogin at WaPo (in the OpEd section, no less):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/22/secret-cia-assessment-putin-probably-directing-influence-operation-denigrate-biden/
In other news, Jimmy Dore is discovered to be actually Vladimir Putin but with a pair of glasses on. VVP is quoted as saying that ‘Hey, it worked for Clark Kent!’ This explains all those videos railing against Joe Biden on ‘Dore’s’ channel with which he hoped to tilt the election. Only afterwards is it remembered that Jimmy Dore and Vladimir Putin are never seen to be in the same room together at the same time which the DNC calls proof positive-
https://www.youtube.com/thejimmydoreshow/search?query=biden
How can he be Vlad Putin? I’m Valdimir Putin! I only want that idiot Trump to fill in until I have a little time on my schedule to rule the US pr, the same properly, the same as I do Russia.
And, by the way, I’m neither US-ite, nor USSR-ite. But I was, at one time, a Paris-ite.
“We’re ALL Vladimir Putin!” /Tony Curtis
Yep, a secret assessment by an unnamed source said there is probably a chance of Russia is again playing in the election in Amerika.
The Amerikan propaganda machine stops;-)
I vote for Time Person of the Year: Unamed Source
I like it.
Yeah. The cover can be a Smokey Mirror, like the time Time named all of us as “Creature of the Year” and used a regular mirror as the cover.
And we have “The Comey Rule” airing Sunday night starring Jeff Daniels as Jim Comey.
Ent Weeklyreview
And WaPo WaPo Review
I read a story in “The Wrap” about how the director did extensive research and it was sooooo clear that those pesky Russians were up to no good. So Mr. Higher Loyalty had to do something.
Is there nothing we can do to stop this stupidity? Jimmy Dore, Matt Taibbi, Kyle Kulinski and Aaron Mate. just can’t get the airtime to debunk this stuff. Tucker Carlson has had Jimmy Dore on a couple times and the late Stephen Cohen, but Dems don’t watch the show. Sad.
Impeachment as a tactic to delay confirmation of a new Supreme Court Justice is one of the most brain dead ideas from either party in recent years. What was the Speaker thinking? Was the Speaker thinking?
Just when you think our politics can’t get any stupider, right? The Senate would need to approve any court nominee and would also need to vote to remove Trump. Does Pelosi even remember which house of Congress she presides over?
But the impeachment that went nowhere was just so much fun the first time, why not do a reboot? It’s not like our economy is tanking and people are out of work and out of money, so why not put on another dog and pony show while people suffer?
We are truly governed by idiots on all sides. DC is the place competence goes to die.
I consider new articles of impeachment to be a really bad idea, but it seems plausible to me that in principle these could interfere with the scheduling of Senate business and impact the timing of the next SC justice hearings/confirmation vote.
Assuming that the Rs in the Senate prefer that DJT not be tried again, and if tried, not tried in a D-controlled chamber that would examine more evidence, they would be motivated to give priority to promptly dealing with new articles of impeachment. It is a not-unreasonable possibility that DJT is re-elected but the Ds gain control of the Senate. Protecting the president (and by “protecting”, I mean “avoiding or limiting the presentation of evidence”; conviction is impossible under any conceivable circumstances) might be a higher priority than confirming his SC nominee.
Of course, I suspect that they could find ways to do both. They are in a situation in which “you can do whatever you want.”
D employment of delaying tactics such as MM would surely employ were roles reversed, such as withdrawal of unanimous consent, looks much more sensible.
Impeachment worked precisely as planned for the Dems, it created the illusion that they were opposing Trump and his policies. Nancy and Chuck solemnly marched the document along the hallowed halls, then later that day cast their votes to give Trump $132 billion more than he asked for the Pentagon.
Especially considering there’s a clear means of leverage–increasing the debt limit–that its at Pelosi’s fingertips, but she decided days ago to sacrifice unilaterally that advantage–something that could have been used to get some help for us plebes as well as block a quickie confirmation.
And there is this budget thingie that is leading to a government shutdown……and a stimulus thingie…..
The US government has completely collapsed. McConnell and the GOP can only function to approve judges and have given up on all other government functions other than voter suppresion. The Democrats don’t take advantage of opportunities when they have them and then position things that make it difficult for the GOP to rationally negotate, which they are nearly incapable of anyway. Meanwhile Trump makes it impossible for Congress to do deals because he won’t actually make a real commitment to anything and can be swayed on a multi-week negotiation outcome by the latest burblings of a FoxNews host.
She was thinking that she had plenty of ice cream in the freezer so all is good.
Shut’er down and go eat ice cream for a while!
She might be right, if only from a Robert’s Rules perspective. If the House were to impeach, that becomes a privileged motion which the Senate would have to take up before other business (presumably pushing a nomination until later).
But as a political tactic it’s brain-dead stupid. Not to mention pointless, empty, and performative, since the conservatives gained their outright Supreme Court majority *years* ago, and as readers have pointed out, Democrats have fast-tracked and green-lighted all of Trump’s judicial appointments to the lower courts from which Supreme Court nominees come.
Re: App Gig Work for Evicting People Vice
The link for the Craigslist job description lists this detail related to the job of junk hauler and eviction agent: “True Flexible Schedule: Choose your own days to work- no caps or scheduled hours.”
Pardon the ignorance, but does not this civil matter of forcing people out carries with it the burden that a court has approved an order of eviction, and then the sheriff’s office makes a round to the site to be vacated and notice is delivered? If indeed these are “process servers” as the job description posits, then the company’s lawyers have to ensure that HR’s orientation to the gig workers make them aware that it ain’t just about showing up somewhere and hauling junk just because a landlord has deemed it so without judicial sanction.
The “no scheduled hours” bit, though, makes me wonder if some seedy-rent-a-bounty-hunter proxy sheriff isn’t thinking of getting his rocks off and arriving to a property at 3:00 a.m.
So pass the popcorn and tune in to another episode of the “Let the poor fight among themselves”.
Do they, though? If the company is getting paid by the landlord, pays the workers pennies, and then says, “We’re not the authorities and we just did what the landlord hired us to do,” are they liable? Im not a lawyer, but we can probably dispense with the idea that we actually have a functioning justice system for non asset holders at this point, hah!
It’s a scam to sell $35 application kits to suckers.
The article is the usual poorly written crap that never gets around to describing the legal process, but repeats itself, so there’s space for lots of online ads.
If the sucker actually gets “work” and violates Trump’s eviction moratorium, they run the risk of getting the shit beat out of them by the outraged tenant without the sheriff being present.
It’s another MLM scam,
“Misery Level Marketing.”
Reading Craig Murray’s accounts of the tactics used against Julian Assange by the US government causes me to cringe in shame. The complicity of the British government in this travesty of a trial is a blot on the reputation of justice in the UK.
Imagine if he was treated like that in Russia? I wonder if MSM would even then regard Assange as champion of opposing the powers that be…
What really irks me is that he’s kept in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison for breaching bail. Which he did because he believed UK judicial system would not treat him fairly and would extradite him to USA. What a silly thought…
This horrific man-in-a-glass-box image puts me in mind of public hangings, beheadings & etc. of days of yore. The only thing missing is a fawning U.S. media. Could they, in their smug “access” to the halls of power, suspect that they are next?
No. They’re part of the power. Deep and msm have been joined for years.
Exactly. Don’t wreck the narrative they spent billions to build and trillions to implement, and everything’s jake and they can use their right to call people’s managers for all time.
Since when is there or has there been “justice” in the UK? Hasn’t been for a long time, if ever, much less than in the US.
After a few days of reading the extradition hearing coverage from Murray and Consortium News, I foolishly wandered over to Emptywheel, which would once upon a time have been a source of useful information about such a thing.
Oh my God. Her coverage of everything Assange or Snowden related is just one hit piece and smear after another. With copious use of innuendo and what-if beyond the Maddow/Blitzer level. Russigate has turned Emptywheel into a near-opposite of 5 or 6 years ago.
There’s nothing there I’d recommend for information, but her “expose” on Credico is worth reading for its window into her methodology and psychology. Because she posts screenshots of her whole twitter exchange with Credico in the course of her “investigation” and seems to believe it makes her point (it doesn’t) and that she has the better of it. (not so)
Pathetic hackery.
indeed. she is going after aaron maté on twitter in her delusion. needless to say, it is not going well for her. but just like any conspiracy theory, like glenn greenwald says, any setback is used to just reinforce the conspiracy theory. it’s a shame when once good commentators lose the plot like she did.
Yes. She’s sadly well into thumb sucking territory.
It is stunning just how drastic the change at Emptywheel has been. What was once an informative site now gives the impression of being the rantings of a poorly medicated person suffering from paranoia/schizophrenia.
While Louisville is waiting for the news about whether anyone will be prosecuted for Breonna Taylor’s murder, something to chew on:
Breonna Taylor Deal Promises Reform LMPD Said They Did Years Ago [WFPL]
LMPD sounds like one of those unfixable, out of control government programs small government types
are always warning us about.
This was the big revelation to me this year that came out of BLM. All of these cities and states kept saying they had solved the problems that led to the Ferguson era protests. This year proved that they had not and they were all just lying or so incompetent that they simply didn’t understand that they had not fixed anything.I think this is one reason why white people were getting engaged this year, essentially to try to force government to do what they said they did 5 years ago. The institutionalization of qualified immunity, police union rules, arbitration boards that leave a dysfunctional police system intact became the highlight issue instead of just some rogue cops thumping on people.
The ongoing late night protests and burning things down are going to cause this realization to lose ground and get drowned out by the law and order rantings.
> All of these cities and states kept saying they had solved the problems that led to the Ferguson era protests
Follow the money. Ferguson was law enforcement for profit through fines. Breonna was law enforcement for profit through gentrification (as was a similar case I just linked to… whose location I cannot recall).
None of these cities are any better off financially now then they were then.
‘Humpback whale is free after swimming out of crocodile-infested river in Australia”
This is a good news story. In other news that is not so good, a pod of some 270 whales have stranded themselves on sandbars in Tasmania. A team is already down there to free them but a few dozen have already died. Fortunately it is raining there which will help the whales survive-
https://www.9news.com.au/national/whales-stranded-in-macquarie-harbour-tasmania/c06a50d0-f39f-4038-a457-f5095bd146e7
That is good news. Sad about the stranded pod, will we ever figure out why they do it?
BTW, I must mention yet again that a small fleet of salt-water crocodiles would cause a humpback whale to barely raise an eyebrow….but I guess it’s good clickbait.
I have an image of the whale headed out to sea with crocodiles jammed into its blubber like clothes pegs.
I’ve noticed humorous/sarcastic references to ‘brunch’ (see above “get to it after brunch”) and ‘missing brunch’ on this site. What is the reference?
https://live.staticflickr.com/4808/46093924524_442376fd53_b.jpg
That photo reminds me of something. Hmmm, what could it be?
Oh, I know. I haven’t seen one of those pink [family blog] hats in a while.
Oh man, that is tone-deaf out of touch PMC at its finest! Thanks for the explanation.
Shouldn’t it read “If Hillary were…..”
My guess is, brunch is an institution cherished by the PMC class.
I think AOC was on top of the brunch meme.
—“After we work to command victory in November, I need folks to realize that there’s no going back to brunch,” Ocasio-Cortez said
https://nypost.com/2020/09/20/aoc-warns-dems-theres-no-going-back-to-brunch-even-if-biden-wins/
It’s a big class marker in NYC and also a ritualized drinking bought where PMC’s finally take a stand and get drunk before noon after driving a virtual desk all week and then those darned emails on Saturday. On the other side of the counter are the kitchen staff who heartily hate brunch.
Why do kitchen staff heartily hate brunch? What makes brunch more uniquely hateful in particular for kitchen staff than “working in a kitchen” in general?
NBC 7 Retracting Story on Gloria and 101 Ash Street Investigation NBC:
The story of purchase of the 101 Ash Street Building, which appears after the official retraction, was fascinating. A $60 million dollar building needing remediation gets pawned off to city taxpayers for $120 mill.
My city also tried to purchase a new downtown city hall during this time-frame and, like San Diego, ultimately ended up at an overpriced rent-to-own deal, before some FBI agents came around last-second sniffing into illegal campaign donations and squelched the deal. I wonder how much property inflation has occurred across the US when General Fund-rich city governments overpay private urban landowners for civic buildings? Does anyone know how much of a cut the financial institutions generally get on these deals? Managing a $120 million rent-to-own deal for 20 years can’t come cheap, nor does going the other route–bond sales.
Here in Tucson, the wet noodle floggings aren’t working. The University of Arizona is threatening moves toward legal action. Could double-secret probation be next?
Link: https://tucson.com/news/local/university-of-arizona-says-legal-action-possible-if-coronavirus-cases-continue-to-surge/article_7d386ca7-1e6e-5a6e-baea-c255f4154430.html
The students should be modeling themselves after the adult leadership of this country. Oh wait ….
“‘You will be put into detention’: Former ABC bureau chief tells story of fleeing China for first time” ABC Australia
OK, a brief note. The ABC is a commercial company in the US but the ABC in Oz is a government funded media organization ‘but is expressly independent of government and partisan politics.’ Yeah, right. This article makes for very dramatic reading and leaves the reader asking why the Chinese do stuff like this. But what is left unsaid is the fact that in Australia ASIO – our spook organization – raided the homes of Chinese journalists here and seized laptops, cellphones, and a child’s toy tablet. And then the journalists were told to shut up about the whole thing-
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/09/china-accuses-australia-of-raiding-chinese-journalists-homes-in-serious-political-incident
Said it before that yes, China is an authoritarian government but this sort of bs propaganda stories serve no one’s interests. Except spook organizations wanting a bigger budget that is. It will all end in tears.
but what does that have to do with the experience Carney relates? You say it’s left unsaid, but why on earth would Carney mention it in his piece when he is relating his own lived experience? And what about the ASIO raid makes Carney’s report ‘bs propaganda’?
I don’t know know that it serves my interests, but I was interested to read it, and glad to be able to.
If the Chinese wanted him arrested, then he’d be locked up. I find the “threat” with time to flee to Embassy, unwatched and unhidered by the usually 24/7 watchers of the PSB odd to say the least, and a reporter who by his very employment is likely a paid NED paid agent has every incentive to lie.
What Rev Kev is saying is that the Australian ABC news organization is just as state controlled as the Chinese one is, and therefore the Chinese actions are the equivalent of the Australian police actions. If the same press had reported a first person account from one of the Chinese journalists who were raided I would respect them. Otherwise the story serves as propaganda by omission, a modus operandi used many times. Like reporting on Xianjiang and Hong King (which is highly questionable anyway) while not reporting on Australia’s treatment of the aboriginal population, its lack of support for its own citizen (Assange), or its disgusting actions with respect to East Timor. “The Chinese are acting just like us” doesn’t quite work as war mongering propaganda.
Perhaps to at least two nations with great faith in the divine right of white privilege ““The Chinese are acting just like us.” might be THE casus belli.
Uppity Chinks(I can say that according to one theory on racial epitaphs) fits right in with Uppity N*, Uppity Ab*/Dar*ie, and Uppity Sp*cks. None fit to enter the kingdom of Southern Baptist or Mormon after life, though their money is always clean enough for the later.
I understand the hypocrisy charge, but that doesn’t ipso facto negate or invalidate Carney’s report, to my mind. Maybe I’m not cynical enough but I can’t just assume that he’s lying right off the bat, though it’s hardly implausible. (I also think the argument that the ABC is just as state controlled as Chinese media is debatable. there are differences of degree in these things). Not to mention it would be a bit… incongruous for Carney to write “that’s when the official mentioned that my 14 year old daughter could be imprisoned as an adult under Chinese law and by the way, don’t you think it’s terrible how Australia has systematically abused its indigenous population?”
I also think it’s a bit naïve to expect the ABC to publish a first person report of a Chinese journalist who doesn’t work for them, whether they should or not. I’m not sure government supported/state media has ever worked like that, and I’m not sure anyone expects it to. Again, does that warrant dismissing a story like Carney’s out of hand? I’m not convinced
Propaganda by omission, I mean, I guess? But I can read that piece and understand that our government behaves lamentably in many respects without necessarily having to
prejudicially dismiss Carney’s report out of hand. I understand that not all readers approach the news in a critical way, but what’s the alternative? To not write about or publish these experiences? What’s the ol cui bono? calculus on that one?
I see that the Great Han Lebensraum CommuNazi ChinaGov Regime’s little hasbarists in the field are alert and active.
Maybe instead of having Facebook censor political content in the face of a contested election, we could just shut it down entirely for a month or three until the situation resolved.
Throw in Twitter and then we’re really talking!
Apparently all ten of the the top ten links (most shared) on FB right now are pro-Trump. Interesting strategy by Biden, no rallies, no events, no door knocking, and apparently no trying to win FB. Like Lambert I am also undecided whether this is pure genius or pure idiocy. Given the candidate and his inability to speak, think, or read numbers I believe it is probably the former.
Re Old TV takes out village broadband
Sounds like an aging flyback transformer. On a related note, just about every rural city, town, village, crossroads in the US has electricity delivered over power lines. Rural broadband internet could be provided over these existing power lines (Broadband over Power Lines, or BoPL) but for one wee problem. The thick uninsulated lines make great radiators, trampling all over the frequency spectrum used by amateur radio. Notching the spectrum (dropping the signal level over a given frequency range) didn’t help much in trials in rural Tennessee. Also, HAM radio guys don’t hesitate to voice their displeasure!
I sincerely doubt that power lines can transmit Gigabit RF.
Got an examples of this?
Better to string fiber.
I agree that fiber is better.
Here’s an article that discusses the issues:
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2013/10/whatever-happened-to-broadband-over-power-line/
The guys at [one of the companies named in the article] were engineers here in Huntsville, had worked with them through the years at various telecom companies. Helped set up one of their incubator demos to a possible investor using a pair of run-of-the-mill Motorola cable modems over a 6 foot strand of cable mounted on a plywood and 2×4 affair. PITA, an overnight effort fueled by cheap coffee, but i got a video signal reliably across in time for the 9am show. I didn’t think at the time that the data rates would be high enough to sell as broadband, but argued that power companies would find it as a good way to monitor remote facilities, hence the video demo. Gots to sell one before you can sell a thousand or millions. They ended up going after bigger fish. Shrug.
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/09/19/asset-class-of-vintage-cars-during-the-pandemic-sales-at-high-end-on-ice-after-steep-price-drops-earlier-in-the-year/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Collectibles & cars in particular have a long way to fall in price across the board, if you value them more than the monetary value-keep on keeping on-as I ogle your ride slowing it down a bit to enjoy the fleeting moment, but the likely owners of such classics are next to go on unemployment, and the same with all other collectibles, which would be the first thing to go, resulting in a rush to the exits for manual transmission labor, et al.
The high end art market is really the bubbliest of them all, the captains of the high seize all duking it out to be in on a sure winner (who’d disagree, something by the right artist that brought $250k in the 40’s now might fetch $100 million) and gain prestige by holding it hostage for a spell, a Certificate of Dukedom.
being a sort of UrLuddite(in the a-historical, anti-high tech sense), and averse to driving a vehicle that : 1. can be bricked from space, 2. phones home overmuch, 3. talks to me when i’m driving , 4. attempts to take the wheel at random moments or 5. cannot be repaired by me, or anyone within 100 miles…I hang on to vehicles for as long as i can.
one day, my 2004 dodge ram pickup will cease to function…and i dread that day.
so i’ve entertained getting a 30’s or 40’s or even 50’s era pickup(like Lou Diamond Phillips in Longmire(https://i.pinimg.com/600×315/3e/38/21/3e38212c34e96f5d7ec2eb6a8321b042.jpg ))…and maybe even a store of parts to keep in the barn…but damned if they ain’t high dollar!
I found the shell of one in a pasture for $1k, but it would cost a fortune to get it road ready….and that’s if i do all the work.
does this story mean that such things will become cheaper?
otherwise, my next vehicle is a buckboard and a mule.(except for taking wife to chemo, 250 miles round trip, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing for me)
This should become more expensive!
Sorghum.
https://bittersoutherner.com/2020/this-last-earthy-sweetness-how-to-make-molasses-sorghum?utm_source=The+Bitter+News&utm_campaign=3098fad3fe-2020_09_22_SORGHUM&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8269ec3593-3098fad3fe-92359773&goal=0_8269ec3593-3098fad3fe-92359773&mc_cid=3098fad3fe&mc_eid=6e87741714
Longmire! Great show. Also loved Red Road; don’t know why it was canceled. :/
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2505072/
Yes, Longmire highly recommended. Thanks for reminding me of Henry driving his old pickup.
how is the most recent season?
Uh, the series ended in 2017 after 6 seasons. I have the DVD set on my holiday to-buy list, runs US$50-70 depending on where you buy and new-or-used.
one sees the occasional “Longmire for Sheriff” bumperstciker out here.
i think it says a lot.
and here’s this, because it’s cool:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NuZxUxHN0o
“Look What Has Been Taken From Black Americans”
In any honest teaching of history, the material in this article should be mentioned. The trouble starts when you start editing your own history to remove the ugly bits. It is not only black history that gets edited but poor people’s history and worker’s history. I see the same with the history taught in Oz. With such gaps in the history that is taught in school, that is how you get a 1619 Project to fill the gaps which is an even worse solution. Having mentioned that sorry project, I note that the New York Times has now dropped its claim that US history began with slavery which was a central claim and some people are not happy-
https://www.rt.com/usa/501310-nytimes-1619-project-slavery-backlash/
@The Rev Kev
September 22, 2020 at 10:32 am
——-
And see this:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/22/1619-s22.html
I think the biggest editing job in that article is the passive voice in the headline. It merely says “what has been taken”, no agency at all. So…who took it?
Bloomberg wouldn’t want to even ask that question, much less answer it.
Thank you for only having a few articles this morning about the 2020 election, it’s a pleasant change. Now if only the commentators could follow suit. Must reading is Article about the Florida governor’s Plan for protestors: No bond or bail, it’s ok to drive a car through a protest crowd if you feel threatened (a la “stand your ground”), and more. Horrific stuff, potentially deadly and seemingly unconstitutional. He wants to pass a law legalizing this.
Oregon and Washington wildfires originating not a result of AGW. “this summer was not one of significant drought or very unusual. Until the September 7-8 fire initiation by the strong winds, the area encompassing fire was below normal in both Oregon and Washington.
Thus, considering observations and modeling, both strongly supporting each other, the major fire/smoke outbreak this month was the result of very, very unusually strong easterly winds, NOT global warming or climate change.” https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/09/did-global-warming-play-significant.html
Cliff Mass does this science better than anyone, with advanced modeling and deep experience with PNW weather and climate.
That’s simply not true:
from the post “Clearly, precipitation in this region does not appear to be changing much with global warming. Climate models suggests a small decline in summer precipitation (and an increase in overall precipitation) by the end of the century if we continue burning fossil fuels with abandon.” charts, history all in the extensive blog
>>>this month was the result of very, very unusually strong easterly winds,
Well why was that? The word unusually leads me to think it was….
>NOT global warming or climate change.”
Oh, ok then. Silly me expecting to put two plus two together.
The growing theory about melting arctic ice causing jet stream irregularities which lead to more high wind events, more drought and floods in areas like Oregon has been mentioned as a larger scale cause. This suggests the wind event and similar ones are global warming influenced.
https://www.opb.org/article/2020/09/21/oregon-wildfires-climate-change-role/
Also, his analysis mentions :normal” climate conditions in the Western Cascade slopes. However, the fire danger was from sever-extreme for almost 80% of the state, including that area.
The now nearly 300k and only 30% contained Creek Fire started on a Friday, and on Saturday I hiked to White Chief Canyon in Mineral King-about 100 miles away, and had to hitch up the chin strap on my headgear, lest it end up hundreds of feet away.
I’m no stranger to strong winds, but what made this circumstance different was the schizo nature of them, coming from all directions, as if going through the numbers on a clock in my 30 minutes exposed to its whims.
A fire would go hog crazy under those conditions, and did.
Okay, let’s call them rich people fires. The ones we couldn’t set small and controllable because of the fetishism of property and the decadence of the ruling class.
1. It was a summer where many temperature records were broken.
2. Unusually strong easterly winds.
How does one come to a conclusion, with proof, that Global Warming is not a factor?
Breaking Temperature records provides an Indication that it was Global Warming.
Lemme get this straight. “(v)ery, very unusually strong easterly winds” have nothing to do with climate change?
I was going to ask the same thing. Lots of willful ignorance in those conclusions.
I second the cry of “that’s not true”.
My area of far northern California used to get more than 80″ a year of precipitation per year.
Over the last 10-15 years, we were lucky to get 60.
The rains start later (sometimes months later) and the season starts earlier, by as much as a month but on average 2 weeks. (Fruit trees/lilacs etc)
The plants have changed…the days of clear sky have markedly increase. I watched in person live the plant species march down the hill toward the creek looking for moisture–and being replaced by more drought tolerant natives.
farmerboy has an agenda perhaps
My friend is the dean of the backcountry, worked on Sequoia NP trail crew from the early 70’s to retirement in 2013. He knows everything about the surroundings, ask him anything and a story will emerge that eventually leads to another, in a nice sort of way, you just have to get him wound up and out the vignettes of half a century flow, as you try and remember the details of that one spot he spoke so highly of in such a locale.
I asked him a few years ago what he’d seen in climate change in the Sierra Nevada, and he pondered it for 30 seconds, and said: “Meadows. high country meadows used to stay wet until August, now they’re dry by July, sometimes June.”
That’s a big change in just 50 years…
I think the key linkages are that high temperatures and drought are becoming more common with climate change. Long-term suppression of wildfires means that fuel builds up that would have burned in other, less dry years. the combination of more frequent and longer droughts with fuel build-up due to unnatural fire suppression sets up an ecosystem ready to explode. In the absence of frequent past wildfires, people built lots of structures in potential wildfire areas, so the consequences go up dramatically.
the latter is what Florida learned during Hurricane Andrew. The isurance companies were caught totally flat-footed because they had not added up the value of new construction in hurricane prone areas and had completely under-priced risk. The same thing is going on in wildfire areas today.
As if previous drought conditions didn’t factor in? I suspect anything this declarative, especially concerning Global Warming. Also, are you qualified to know whether his/her analysis is up to snuff?
Dealbreaker had the best headline for the money-laundering scandal:
“China’s Epic Dash for PPE Left the World Short on Masks”
Old news this really. At the time these people were running around trying to grab as much PPE as possible, China was being crushed by the virus. Sending all that PPE there was vital to putting a lid on it and which as a consequence, gave the rest of the countries in the world at least several weeks notice to get ready for when the virus hit their own shores. To be fair, it is not China’s fault that most countries blew off all these warnings and ignored the implications of what they saw happening in China. People saw what was happening in northern Italy and still ignored the fact that it was out of control, and heading our way.
Yup, letting stockpiles of PPE fall or expire, offshoring production, defunding public health services, politicizing government health and science agencies .. . who could have foreseen?
Thank you, Lambert, for the “What Is the Sound of Thought?” link to the MIT Tech Review. Fascinating!
Rural Hospitals Teeter On Financial Cliff As COVID-19 Medicare Loans Come Due [NPR]
Weaponizing Medicare to push back-row kid hospitals into the arms of large chains, PE or oblivion.
People tell me, sir, no one’s ever seen anything like it.
If you like the twitter thread on Indian Truck art, you can find a documentary about same here: http://www.projecthornplease.com/portfolio-post/horn-please-documentary/
They do this in Nepal too. One of my favorite quirks of their motifs is painting Slow Drive = Long Life on their rear bumpers.
Saw some of the most colourful trucks in Pakistan, too. Safety may be secondary, but hey… as long as we have lots of colour!
Antibody Responses to SARS-CoV-2: Let’s Stick to Known Knowns (PDF) Journal of Immunology.
This is very good. I don’t know about potential copyright issues but the graph that illustrates the humoral responses (Antibody production, Ab) and the potential and most probable scenarios after infection is very good and it would be good to post the graph at NC. Yes, Ab levels wane and after several months and frequently below detection levels by some of the antibody assays commonly used but this does not mean Ab absence. In case of new infection (or vaccination) Ab levels will rise much more rapidly than after the primary infection for yet an undetermined period that could be around 2 years.
>Biden: “I beat the Socialist.”
“Number two, I beat the socialist. That’s how I got elected. That’s how I got the nomination,” Biden added, referencing his overwhelming defeat of Sanders following a strong showing by Sanders in several early states.”
https://www.mediaite.com/news/joe-biden-torpedoes-bernie-sanders-in-pitch-to-wisconsin-voters-worried-about-socialism-i-beat-the-socialist/
Can someone remind me why NASA insists on dragging us back to the moon? Or why anyone wants to go to Mars? Have these people no imagination, no spirit?
There’s nothing much in this solar system worth exploring. What we should be doing, I humbly suggest, is building a cosmic telescope using the sun’s gravitational bending of light as a lens, allowing us to view in minute detail genuinely Earth-like planets many light years distant. This is now feasible.
Then we should ditch rockets and start looking into the science and tech that could take us to the most promising star systems in realistic time frames. This isn’t feasible yet, but mounting evidence indicates it could be. And while we’re waiting for that, we could be entertained by the view of mountains, oceans and perhaps cities and the activities of intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy.
We might even learn something more than we can with ever more minute inspections of dead rocks in this solar system.
I think the prospects of life in the solar system provide a pretty good reason to explore it, no? And I think establishing a moon colony would be a good step towards some kind of interstellar project. I read somewhere it would be easier and ultimately cheaper to build and launch large payloads from the moon than Earth. Also, the theorized existence of enormous lava tubes there would be a boon to colonization as they would provide shelter from the radiation above. Some of those tubes could hold whole cities. Mars is a pipe dream for children.
Hawking wasn’t wrong, we do have to get off the planet and fast. We are going to get obliterated sooner or later by some kind of impact. The Big Reset. We are overdue and we can’t count on the Others to step in.
Although that would be epic.
No, they don’t, especially when they are simply an excuse to not only avoid fixing conditions on Earth, but to continue to exacerbate them.
Colonization is the problem, not the solution. It’s a disease that needs to be quarantined, not broadcast.
I agree it would only be a horror show of some kind but I was speaking a bit more generally, as in “In a better world…” I think discovering life in the solar system would be a wonderful thing…in a better world. I think new pharmaceutical development is a wonderful thing…in a better world. There are lots of things that should be and seeking knowledge for it’s own sake is one of them…in a better world.
But interestingly you didn’t mention the whole “planet being turned into a magma ocean” scenario I alluded to. Does that not count as exacerbating conditions? What does the astro-ethicist do in such a situation? Is it better to not try to colonize the dead moon than stoically face annihilation? And as hideous as we are towards the life on the planet, and that is something I feel very poignantly, we are also the only things capable of saving it. As in taking it with us.
Because something will, for certain, no doubt about it, smash into the Earth at some point in the relatively near future. We are long overdue. So we need to try to be able to spot them early on and destroy or deflect them. And try to establish an off world colony, a chance to begin again. This would be easier from the moon. There are no alternatives. The conditions you noted are exactly why I don’t think this will happen.
Mars and Venus are bigger and more hospitable than the moon, although farther. I’m not very opposed to a moon base, but I think the other planets are more promising. And the colonization being bad generally is a result of harm to indigenous life, I acknowledge no value in the natural state of dead rocks in space. A thriving colony on a previously dead planet is solid progress, unless you just hate life in general, which is fair, maybe, but I like life and people. Interstellar travel and colonization is a good goal in my opinion, but colonization of the rest of the solar system is a step towards it, rather than a distraction from it in my opinion. Building interstellar airships in the Venetian atmosphere would be my dream.
If we did as you suggest and built ships to travel to new star systems, those ships would be much easier to build and launch outside of earth’s gravity well. The moon has a fraction of earth’s gravity, so it would be much easier to build and launch a ship from the moon, especially if the raw materials were found there too or brought in from an asteroid.
Of course it would be even easier to launch from a space station with hardly any gravity at all than from the moon.
Regarding Mars, I read a good book about scrapping plans for Mars missions mainly because we haven’t found much of interest there (at least nothing that can be easily exploited for profit), and sending missions to Saturn’s moon Titan instead. Titan is strongly suspected to have oceans of liquid methane, among other useful hydrocarbons.
I think you’re assuming rockets. I’m assuming something like anti-gravity, so it wouldn’t matter where we set out from.
As for retrieving hydrocarbons or other useful things from the moon or beyond, how cost effective would that be? I’m guessing not very.
It’s a total waste of money and it’s a way for funelling $$$$$$$$ to the MIC and private industry. Spend the money on the people.
Money is an infinite resource, costing nothing to produce, it cannot ever be wasted. It’s “slave thinking” to believe things like that Money can “run out” or that a lump of Money somehow represent a limited slice of a fixed pie. If elites want something to happen, it will happen. If they don’t, they pretend that Money is limited and encourage their slaves to fight for a sliver of it, which is both entertaining and passes the time.
and the activities of intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy.
Using the Sun as a huge lens is a great idea but I read it’ll take 25-30 years for an observatory to reach a focal point.
But my bet is that we are alone in the Universe as far as intelligent life is concerned. The reasoning is theological but so far backed up by the evidence and by non-theological reasoning too (the book “Rare Earth”).
But yeah, let’s find out as much as we can. Not that I expect I’ll have to change my mind but it’d be good if people could abandon false hope so they can focus on real hope.
Question, why can’t the banks loan all these retiree burdened state local govts the money they need to fund their pensions with balloon loans that balloon when all these savings magically appear from cutting all future workers from the pension & retiree health care programs? It’s not like the govts are going to default & disappear.