Links 4/11/2023

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1. Louiedog14 April 11, 2023 at 7:25 am

   I for one consider visiting this site to be a Privilege, not a Right, and thus I am grateful for whatever gets posted here. Everyone needs time off to deal with life, including humble bloggers…so no apologies necessary.

   Best of luck!
   1. Randall Flagg April 11, 2023 at 8:04 am

      Could not agree more!
      I would rather you all take a few days off, completely, than have extra stress build up. I cannot imagine this crowd being anything other than 100%supportive.
      We will be fine. Having withdrawal pains, but fine. You have to take care of yourselves.
   2. The Rev Kev April 11, 2023 at 8:13 am

      Also agree here. It is tough to hear about all the problems stacking up like that for you and Lambert. From the extent and quality of the number of stories in Links today, you would never know about any background difficulties. Sometimes you just have to stop for a while to deal with problems that stack up and threaten to overwhelm you and I am sure that you know that your readers stand by you. Apologies here are never needed.
   3. Eclair April 11, 2023 at 8:47 am

      Louiedog14 says it, Yves! I have been marveling for the last couple of months over the absolute deluge of ‘must read’ posts that Yves (as well as Lambert and Connor and Nick) have been producing. As a veteran of many many house sales and moves over the decades, I know of all the awful, tedious, necessary tasks that must be completed. So, even though we now live ‘in interesting times,’ know that we understand.
   4. Amfortas the hippie April 11, 2023 at 8:55 am

      amen.
      withdrawals, indeed…but one thing i had to force myself to learn when i became disabled is that R&R is not optional, it’s essential.
      i can easily get my head around Yves’ problems…Lambert’s tech stuff, not so much.
      a few mushrooms and a tree in the woods in sunlight for a day would do y’all wonders.
      i think its safe to say that we’re all behind you.
      1. anahuna April 11, 2023 at 9:28 am

         Amén. Amin.

         No reproaches — ever. Not even self-reproach.

         Peace and blessings in whatever form you choose.
   5. Mark Gisleson April 11, 2023 at 9:34 am

      Very much agree. I feel guilty everytime our hosts apologize to us for their not meeting their very high standards (which always exceed my expectations).
      1. Paleobotanist April 11, 2023 at 9:48 am

         Take time off! A break will do you good. Also us to disconnect. ;^)
   6. WhoaMolly April 11, 2023 at 9:52 am

      Re Yves problems with workers:
      Exactly same problems here. Over past 5 years or so it’s become increasingly difficult to hire people to do routine fix up. I finally had to buy new saws and tools to do and re/do work on our house.

      At 78, I’m torn on whether to ride out last few years in California or move out. Our realtor says stay. Intuition says “at least check it out.” We are in good health and live Jin isolated rural semi-conservative, low income county.
      1. AndrewJ April 11, 2023 at 1:01 pm

         Where would you go?
      2. Nikkikat April 11, 2023 at 1:19 pm

         Had the same issues after my mother passed away. Selling cars, a house and dealing with creditors, courts. Papers and more papers. I had moved across country to take care of her. Then had to move again. All of the issues of dealing with a sick elderly person. I was exhausted. It’s also interesting that they keep everything for years. Selling all their belongings very very hard to do. One wants to keep everything. Seems so cruel and unfeeling to dispose of their things. Siblings no help, just want to complain and accuse you of things. Bringing up stuff that happened when you were 10 years old. Do not know how you manage all this plus the website. Thanks for all you do here.
   7. Daryl April 11, 2023 at 1:29 pm

      Moving is deeply stressful. I can only imagine the added stress from an out of country move.
   8. Susan the other April 11, 2023 at 2:12 pm

      Every time you say you are moving abroad I feel a twinge of abandonment. Really, but I’m a big girl and I know you’ll be on the internet. I don’t want you to get frazzled moving. It’s a good plan. Do this while you are still young. It’s much harder to adjust when you’re old – speaking from experience – and we didn’t even leave the country.
   9. Ben Gunn April 11, 2023 at 2:29 pm

      Yes, best of luck in your changes, Yves.

      I’m sorry if I missed it, but where did you decide to move? I’ve been looking into that huge life change as well, but think I don’t have the money or willpower to move away from family and friends.
      1. Yves Smith Post authorApril 11, 2023 at 9:35 pm

         I have to move because I am selling my mother’s house. I moved here in 2019 to take care of her. I could conceivably buy it but it is more house than I need (although RE taxes not high by US standards) but I have poured a ton of money into it give that it was undermaintained for many years and will still be dated. Plus dealing with a car is a huge hassle too. I much prefer apt. living where much of the maintenance is on building management.

         I thought I might come to find Alabama to be doable but despite this being a very nice and convenient pocket, people in the Deep South do not like post-reproductive age women, particularly ones who are direct. This is not just Yankee prejudice; IM Doc says his students who wound up in the Deep South also report a lack of interest institutionally in caring for middle age and older women. The medical system here treats them as dispensible.

         I don’t have any family to speak of. Friendships in NYC are generally shallow and revolve around your profession. I had lost status by going from being a big firm employee to an independent consultant, and them more by becoming a blogger.

         My other friends are in CA but scattered and I can’t justify the expense of going to CA.

         So I will be moving abroad.
         1. LilD April 13, 2023 at 7:08 am

            We are exploring Greece (Crete) and Malta…
            1. Yves Smith Post authorApril 13, 2023 at 7:43 am

               I don’t know anyone there and am a bit nervous about the future of Europe. Cyprus seems promising ex having no local contacts.
2. timbers April 11, 2023 at 7:49 am

   “Read the following quoted text” (of what Macron said about differing with US policy towards China)

   The Duran talked about Marcon’s alleged differences with US policy, and said he too once fell for that Marcon song and dance regarding Ukraine. He went on to emphasize never again will he believe what Marcon says regarding policy independent of the US because Marcon has show by his actions he is all talk and in the end always falls in line.
   1. The Rev Kev April 11, 2023 at 7:58 am

      When Marcio Rubio heard about what Macron said, he went on a rant and basically called out Europe as being ungrateful when the US has come in to help with a “European” war out of the goodness of their hearts-

      https://www.bitchute.com/video/4UlT0b9OtPHe/ (2:13 mins)
      1. britzklieg April 11, 2023 at 9:33 am

         Freedom Fries redux
      2. Carolinian April 11, 2023 at 10:11 am

         Marco and Lindsey sitting in a tree….

         The above is the second time recently I’ve seen one of our Lindsey’s ravings on Taiwan taken as an expression of US policy. Of course Biden can’t tell Graham to just shut up on Taiwan because he wants to stir the pot too.

         So maybe it’s Marco and Lindsey and Corn Pop Joe.
         1. Antifa April 11, 2023 at 5:22 pm

            Rubio and Lindsey sittin’ in a tree
            Gotta give China the third degree
            One cop mean and the other one tough
            Throw ’em raw meat they eat the stuff
            Threatening war with the utmost pique
            (Empty words per the latest leak)
            All on orders from President B
            O the little dogs love to bark,’ says Xi
            1. Alex Cox April 11, 2023 at 9:32 pm

               Classic Antifa! Well done!
            2. Gaianne April 12, 2023 at 1:19 am

               A gem!

               Children should be skipping rope to this like it were Mother Goose.

               –Gaianne
      3. timbers April 11, 2023 at 10:21 am

         Alexander’s account of how the Chinese had Vander laden stand in line at commercial airlines instead of VIP was a nice listen. No idea how accurate however.
         1. Bart Hansen April 11, 2023 at 6:27 pm

            There are photos of her standing in line (queue)
      4. Jonhoops April 11, 2023 at 1:29 pm

         Perhaps he can get the US to appoint him as the President of France. Kind of like a Juan Guido redux.
   2. OIFVet April 11, 2023 at 9:50 am

      Yeah, none were more triggered than German Greens and Marco Rubio. It’s particularly curious how US compradors in the EU are holding up frau[d] von der Leyen as a model for how Macron should have acted and what he should have said – bellicose and self-destructive empty threats to reconsider the EU’s relationship with China. It only affirms how little independence EU has.

      It just so happens that less than 10 days ago I had published a piece on how Europe ought to be an independent pole in the emerging multipolar world rather than an US vassal. That “vassal” part triggered some folks who obviously recognized themselves, but it was pure gold when Politico published Macron’s remarks and I used it to pull their tails some more by claiming that Macron obviously reads me. All the replies were boilerplate: values, rules-based, blah-blah. If you don’t have cake, eat values.
      1. The Rev Kev April 11, 2023 at 10:06 am

         Speaking of the German Greens, you might be pleased to know that German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is getting ready to head to China. This should be hilarious this and I already have the popcorn waiting to open. She’ll be lucky if the Chinese don’t make her wait to collect her baggage from the airport baggage carousel when she arrives. They made Ursula von der Leyen go through passport control and line up with the rest of us muppets when she left. I guess that they figured that she was in China as a tourist.
         1. OIFVet April 11, 2023 at 11:07 am

            If I were the Chinese officials in charge of planning the Baerbock welcoming ceremony, I would blast the Ride of the Valkyries as she deplanes.
            1. R.S. April 11, 2023 at 11:40 am

               They can always roll out a trampoline instead of a boarding ramp, and ask her to do some her famous 360 jumps.
               https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jBk_Omx0A4
         2. tevhatch April 11, 2023 at 11:17 am

            Baerbock should have a diplomatic passport, I don’t know what passport von der Lugen would have been using, but as an EU official, China should not recognize/allow her to use a German diplomatic passport. VIP treatment is the host nations’ prerogative.

            Baerbock will get the cold shoulder/short cut meetings, but they will allow her to have flunkies from the German Embassy walk her through the airport. The Chinese are sticklers for protocol and proper ceremony, and will only dish out to Baerbock any bad treatment that the German Immigration might have given to China FM or equivalent level in the recent past.
   3. Mikel April 11, 2023 at 12:07 pm

      But just think of Xi-Chy France…
3. DJG, Reality Czar April 11, 2023 at 8:07 am

   Macron. Here is a transcript of the interview from Les Echos:

   https://www.lesechos.fr/monde/enjeux-internationaux/emmanuel-macron-lautonomie-strategique-doit-etre-le-combat-de-leurope-1933493

   Politico uses the word “follower,” which isn’t the word used by Macron. Admittedly, Politico finally trots out the word vassals late in the article.

   Vassals. In European culture, this harkens back to the Middle Ages, serfs, and feudal subordination to the ruler. Macron didn’t just stumble on the word “vassaux.” It is a choice.

   The Italian papers are using the word “vassalli.” Some Italian critics have been calling for the three largest of the original ECC / EU countries, France, Germany, and Italy, to re-direct the course of the EU out of being a satrapy.

   What many writers here have been discussing for months is that the U.S. of A. has interests that diverge from Europe. The proxy war in Ukraine doesn’t serve European interests–nor do the elites in Washington, DC, mean for it to do so. And from Les Echos, what Macron noted, “[Biden] il s’inscrit dans une logique transpartisane américaine qui définit l’intérêt américain comme la priorité n° 1 et la Chine comme la priorité n° 2. Le reste est moins important. Est-ce critiquable ? Non. Mais nous devons l’intégrer.”
   1. DJG, Reality Czar April 11, 2023 at 8:36 am

      A clarification: By “here,” I mean “qua,” in Italy.
   2. OIFVet April 11, 2023 at 10:00 am

      Good on Macron to use vassals, it’s the correct word to describe Europe’s status vis-a-vis the US. But where the heck was he to state the obvious about not being dragged into American wars when he had the chance to speak up re Ukraine? France was one of the guarantors of Minsk 2, after all. And even now, he didn’t say anything about Ukraine and its effects on Europe. Seems to me that Europe has painted itself into a hopeless corner on Ukraine and Macron doesn’t have the spine to make the first move by speaking up about the urgent need for Europe to decouple itself from the US on Ukraine. Who knows, perhaps he’s afraid of Polish plumbers joining the street riots in Paris. Regardless, all I expect from Macron is talk and no action at this point.
      1. Carolinian April 11, 2023 at 10:23 am

         You must be feeling frustrated at having our MIC tentacles follow you into Middle Europe. Gilbert Doctorow has been writing columns demanding peace talks on the basis that he lives in Belgium and doesn’t want to get blown up by nukes via accident or design.

         We here in Middle America scratch our heads about the whole thing. Wasn’t there something about “going abroad in search of monsters to destroy”? America was supposed to be the anti-Old Country. Now we run their culture and they run our foreign policy. Make it stop.
         1. OIFVet April 11, 2023 at 10:56 am

            Yeah, I do feel rather frustrated. It seems to me that the elites on both sides of the Atlantic are blind and stupid, but it is us regular people who bear the costs of their hubris. It’s tough to be a dual citizen since it gives me twice as many elite idjiots to despise, hence my recent venom :)
   3. Mikel April 11, 2023 at 10:41 am

      I was reading the article about the French in China and the Airbus passenger plane deals. Airbus is major competition for Boeing.
      After what happened with Nordstream, should nerves be working over flying on an Airbus plane?
   4. Aurelien April 11, 2023 at 11:10 am

      The idea of a European defence and security construct separate from, but ready to work with the US has been a staple of political discourse in France for thirty-five years now, and little of what Macron said is new. He’s in a difficult position as a globalist who despises France but doesn’t want a Europe dominated by the US. I suspect he also realises – because the French can be brutally realistic about this kind of thing – that the US is a wasting asset, and that the West’s Ukraine policy has failed. (His Generals will have told him that anyway.) He’s looking to some kind of future statesman role, and he’s putting some of the bricks in place now.

      Le Monde, by the way, is often critical of Macron, and is hysterically anti-Russian, so I would allow for that.
   5. Karl April 11, 2023 at 9:11 pm

      …the U.S. of A. has interests that diverge from Europe. The proxy war in Ukraine doesn’t serve European interests–nor do the elites in Washington, DC, mean for it to do so.

      The elites in Washington DC have interests that diverge from the U.S.national interest as well.

      I think, with the passage of time, the people of the US of A will realize that its interests don’t diverge from those of the people of Europe at all. All have an interest in peace and in resumption of normal trade relations with the growing list of sanctioned countries. And an end to futile, expensive and bloody foreign interventions by the U.S.
4. VT Digger April 11, 2023 at 8:10 am

   I’ve been triggered by the EV article so bear with me while I vent…

   1.”…which has helped stoke demand for electric vehicles by providing up to $7,500 in tax incentives for car buyers” NO. It ENDED most subsidies and forces car buyers to purchase inferior american made EVs. Chevy Bolt has extremely poor quality batteries, F150 EV they have had to shut down production multiple times because of QC, cold weather performance is an absolute joke, VW ID4 has one of the lowest Consumer Protection reliability ratings.

   2. If you live in a state that uses the gas tax to fund roads (that would be all states I believe) you will pay an equivalent tax on your EV (VT is passing this as we speak, hybrid owners get screwed completely since they both use gas AND have to pay the same tax as elite EV owners)

   3. The batteries DO NOT hold up in the cold. Full stop. Range decreases by at least 25%, and you are told by the manufacturer that you must store the vehicle in a garage to avoid terminal battery damage.

   4. No one wants to wait 30 minutes (absolute best case, assuming the chargers aren’t broken/taken) to refuel. You are severely limited on what you can do in a rural state. Current EV technology is designed by numbskulls who think the California 1 is ‘normal driving conditions’.

   5. Charging infrastructure is an absolute joke and there is nowhere near enough power generation to support converting even half of pumps at gas stations to EV chargers. Each L3 charger pulls 125 amps which is more than an entire house. So that’s what, 10-15 houses worth of peak power at all times per gas station?

   6. “Mr. Biden, a self-described “car guy” who campaigned as “the most pro-union guy you’ve ever seen,” Mr. Biden has worked to ensure that only American-made electric vehicles would qualify for tax incentives provided by the Inflation Reduction Act — although a requirement that they be assembled by union workers was dropped. AAAAA it burns!!
   1. Grumpy Engineer April 11, 2023 at 10:19 am

      Plus a couple more:

      7. Vehicle fires with EVs are exceptionally difficult to extinguish, as they are essentially electrical fires where you cannot cut the power. The normal rule of “fire = heat + oxygen + combustible material” does not apply, as uncontrolled battery discharge can pour so much energy into a short that it will burn off the layer of water or foam that would normally extinguish a fire and re-ignite it. The best course of action with an EV fire is to drag it into the middle of an empty field and let it burn. If it happens in your garage, you’ll probably lose the house.

      8. EVs can be particularly dangerous in snowstorms. If you’re stuck in snowy traffic with kids in the back seat, you’ll soon discover that the cabin heater pulls more power than the drivetrain does. Driving range in this low-speed cold-weather circumstance will be severely compromised.

      But if it’s any consolation, the plan to have 50+% of new vehicles sold in the US be EVs by 2032 will almost certainly fail. In addition to the numerous issues you’ve listed, there simply isn’t enough battery to go around. Current worldwide battery manufacturing is about 600 GWh per year, with about 60% of that going into EVs. This is enough for 5 million EVs per year worldwide. New car sales in the US alone add up to 16 million per year.

      If US citizens buy 8 million EVs per year by 2032, EU citizens buy 16 million EVs per year by 2035 (which is the current plan), and Chinese citizens buy 9 million EVs per year by 2030 (per the current plan)… Well, we’ve exceeded global battery capacity by nearly a factor of seven. And we haven’t accounted for EVs that citizens from other parts of the Americas, Africa, and Asia might buy, or the grid storage facilities that might also be manufactured from those same batteries. Resource constraints will dominate here.
   2. TimH April 11, 2023 at 10:44 am

      https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g40605495/cheapest-electric-cars/

      Cheapest is Chevrolet Bolt EV at $27,500 plus sales tax plus registration plus the cost of the 240V charger. So, well into the mid $30s.

      My last new car, 2017 model, does over 40 MPG on any run over 25 miles and cost $22k after registration (expensive in CA). Range anxiety? ROFL…
   3. TimmyB April 11, 2023 at 12:26 pm

      Power generation is a huge issue. Currently, electricity in the US mainly comes from natural gas (38%), coal (22%), renewables, (20%) and nuclear (19%).

      In other words, one out of every five electric cars on the road today in the US is powered by coal! Or nuclear power!

      Simply put, electric cars aren’t going to fix anything. Their use is merely performative bullshit.
      1. Mikel April 11, 2023 at 12:40 pm

         They don’t want to sell alot of individual cars in the future…not really.
         This is about being able to charge for rides (to infinity) with much more going on to privatize public infrastructure.
   4. heresy101 April 11, 2023 at 1:36 pm

      VT & GE

      To answer all your comments would take a large article, so will only address some items and data is from Cleantechnica.com and https://fullycharged.show/about-fully-charged/.

      As the transition from dinosaur fueled cars to electric cars goes forward, we are in a situation of change from horses to gasoline cars of the last century or Kodak/Nokia phones to the modern cell phone.
      1. Norway – The full year 2022 shares were 79.3% for BEVs, and 8.5% for PHEVs, combining to 87.8%
      2. World – Year to date, the market share is now at 8.7% BEV
      3. Europe – the BEV share starting at 10% of sales and projected to be 20% at end of 2023.
      4. China – 22% Of New Car Sales In China Were 100% Electric In 2022

      Points made:
      1. Yes the IRA rewards low quality American cars and keeps out BYD, MG4 and other great Chinese cars.
      3. The batteries currently don’t hold up in the cold but CATL and BYD are introducing (this year) sodium batteries that don’t have cold problems.
      4. Charging time is long but newer versions of batteries will charge at higher voltage and shorter times due to new silicon anodes.
      5. That jerk Musk is putting together a charging network with his 3MWh batteries, and maybe solar, to buy electricity during the afternoon when prices are negative and sell it any other time.
      7. EV fires are mostly from LG and lithium iron phosphate batteries (most Teslas and BYD) are not flammable. BYD has a video of a nail being driven through one.
      8. The heating energy usage is real. Our 2014 Toyota RAV4 EV (Tesla batteries) only gets 80% of the range when the heat is on. Tesla, and others, are now using heat pumps to reduce energy usage.

      Even in the US, BEVs will be about 80% of car sales by 2030, especially if Tesla introduces its $30,000 small EV or we can get BYD cars or MG4 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2022/08/27/mg4-ev-2022-review-game-changing-electric-car-value/?sh=7fff1dda6557).

      Electricity will come from solar and wind because they are so much cheaper to build and have zero marginal cost of electricity. Coal plants are closing (especially in Australia) because they are too expensive to run and need a 71% capacity factor to make a profit.
      1. Grumpy Engineer April 11, 2023 at 3:00 pm

         3. Sodium batteries require more mass per kWh stored, which means vehicles using them will be even heavier than before. And reading I’ve done indicates that sodium batteries can withstand fewer charge/discharge cycles (at least at present) before wearing out. These reasons are probably why lithium is preferred at present.

         5. Energy storage on the grid is required for higher levels of wind & solar penetration. There’s no getting around it, whether Elon Musk is a jerk or not. This means we’d be using batteries to charge batteries during periods of unfavorable weather, which is hardly a recipe for minimizing battery usage. This makes the battery raw material supply crunch even worse.

         7. Batteries don’t have to be flammable to contribute to dangerous fires. All they have to do is feed a short-circuit that generates enough heat elsewhere to trigger a fire. That’s what happened at the Kahuku battery station in Hawaii in 2012. The actual malfunction was in an inverter (built from “non-flammable” materials), but an entire bank of lead-acid batteries (also “non-flammable”) fed uncontrolled electrical energy into the fault and triggered a fire that burned the entire station to the ground.

         Why did these “non-flammable” materials burn? Because damned near anything will burn if you get it hot enough. This includes steel walls, fire-retardant plastics, and all sorts of things that are normally very difficult to burn. I’ve personally witnessed stainless steel burning due to excess heat from electricity. “Flammable” is not a boolean, but is instead a spectrum. “How flammable?” is a better way of looking at it. And because batteries contain so much stored energy, the risk of uncontrolled energy release is always a concern regardless of battery chemistry.

         8. Heat pumps in cars can definitely help, but they significantly increase cost and complexity, and like most air-source heat pumps, they work poorly in extreme cold. In 45 degree weather they’re great. But in zero degree weather they basically don’t work, and you have to fall back to the incredibly thirsty resistive heaters.

         And as for all of our electricity coming from solar and wind because they’re so much cheaper? I’ll believe it when I see it. When viewed as stand-alone systems in favorable weather, they look great. But when you account for the need to keep the grid up during windless nights and add in backup and energy storage systems, the total system costs explode. Denmark and Germany are world leaders when it comes to embracing wind and solar, but their electricity is not cheap. It is instead the most expensive on the planet: https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/.
         1. heresey101 April 11, 2023 at 9:53 pm

            GE

            7. Sodium batteries may only be one battery for Evs, but at a 1st generation cost of 30% below lithium, they will probably be the goto source for grid scale storage because weight isn’t an issue there. With the likely need for more water, desalinization will provide plenty of low cost sodium to build batteries.

            5. Battery storage for the grid will (is) replacing combustion turbines for peak power generation. Calpine has shut down one or two peakers and even PG&E/CAISO is realizing batteries not only provide instantaneous power, but can help with voltage and frequency regulation.

            7. Fires happen without batteries. PG&E has had about four fires in recent years due to lack of maintenance and system upgrades. They killed 85 people in Paradise, CA a few years ago.

            Prices of solar and wind have come down so far they are driving coal and gas out of business. The IEA says solar and wind will overtake coal and gas in 2024 – https://www.carbonbrief.org/iea-wind-and-solar-capacity-will-overtake-both-gas-and-coal-globally-by-2024/ I can’t find a source now, but read that a couple CCA energy providers in the Bay Area signed a solar and storage contract last fall for about $38/MWh IIRC. The main CCA is Peninsula Clean Energy.

            Solar in South Australia province has provided 100% of the electricity for about
            four days last month and a coal plant has shuttered. They are looking to build a transmission line to provide other provinces as well as adding more batteries.

            20 years ago when we did our renewable RFP, we selected wind and landfill gas power (at coal prices), but didn’t select solar because it was $185/MWh!! By 2020, we had taken a small municipal utility to 100 GHG neutral (large hydro isn’t renewable in Calif) at 15% below PG&E with additional renewable contracts. Solar wasn’t a large part of the portfolio because we were a winter peaking utility.

            The Electric Viking reports that we would save $11 trillion by switching to wind and solar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jhnCvlrc0c&list=PLEmTPQdwS4s9gjyO-IrbBch8qaZ4bYLQs&index=20
5. DJG, Reality Czar April 11, 2023 at 8:33 am

   Big Serge Thought is definitely worth a read. The scope of the purloined materials is described well. Big Serge links ideas and causes and effects together well.

   And there is this set of sentences: “The American military increasingly seems to be a hollowed out simulacrum of its past glories, decaying behind a façade of shiny machines and bloated budgets – a trillion dollar technobureaucratic jobs program coasting on the residual patriotic fumes of red state American boys.

   “It has long been apparent that the Kiev regime has no real plan, no firm path to victory, and only a tenuous and unfriendly relationship with reality. Far more terrifying is the thought that the Pentagon is much the same.”

   I’m not sure about “red state”–although Big Serge or Big Sergina does make it clear that the writer is an American, all the way down to using “actionable” incorrectly in way common among younger speakers of U.S. biz-English. (“Actionable” is a legal term, not an action item.)

   I quibble–but I don’t want to think of Big Serge as a major mystery. Big Serge is making a critique from inside U.S. culture–pointing out that the crunching sound one is hearing is the ceiling starting to fall down.

   Big Serge points out that someone took possession of pieces of paper: “an American citizen seems to have simply walked out with highly classified documents”

   Whoever posted the screenshots may be two or three degrees of separation from the staffer who purloined the various printouts from the conference room…

   Probably put the documents in the obligatory carton of Munchkin doughnut holes. Lo-tech. And fatal.
   1. JohnA April 11, 2023 at 9:36 am

      Something else that Big Serge wrote caught my eye:
      “American leadership seemingly has to contend with Ukraine as a black hole which sucks in money and munitions and gives nothing back”

      I thought, according to Hunter’s laptop, that the giving back was 10 percent for the Big Guy.
      1. ambrit April 11, 2023 at 10:31 am

         Yes to the RICO thought. I seem to remember someone in the American Government asking that the money being sent to the Ukraine be audited and fully accounted for. That idea was shot down quicker than a Himars missile in the Donbass.
         The stench of corruption emanating from Washington, DC is almost terminal at this point.
         1. jsn April 11, 2023 at 11:05 am

            I would really like to see how much of the billions for “Ukraine” have actually even made it that far before looting.

            My operating assumption is it’s at least half domestic stimulus money inside the Beltway.
      2. Ignacio April 11, 2023 at 12:36 pm

         The phrase you quoted identifies Big Serge as American expecting returns from expenses. When i read things like that “gives nutting back” i feel some revolt. It looks as if Big Serge is asking there for due diligence on a several hundred pages long proxy war contract signed by the parties. I don’t find it surprising at all that the US is “limited to contend with Ukraine as a black hole”. Expecting the opposite, Ukraine doing their best to keep up with timely and accurate information or allowing the US setting internal auditors in all its operations, would be too much to ask for. I believe that in the Pentagon they are well aware that asking for a “yes bwana” attitude by Ukraine is not part of the agreements reached. As a matter of fact, it is the US the part that has faltered on her obligations here, not Ukraine. I am almost certain Zelensky was promised that Russia would kneel down in a question of days or weeks on the sanctions and the “black hole” thing was the proviso Ukraine asked for in case the results failed to materialise as fast as promised. The second and third would be “as far and as long as it takes” and these will almost certainly be the second and third broken promises coming soon.
   2. jsn April 11, 2023 at 11:02 am

      FWIW Serge’s usage is the second definition of “actionable” in four dictionaries I just consulted, one of which is an old unabridged Webster’s I inherited.
   3. Aurelien April 11, 2023 at 11:20 am

      Serge’s discussion nails down something that I had assumed to be true ever since I saw the figures in the leaked documents. Briefly, Ukrainian casualties since the start of the war have been massively greater than admitted, and the US knows this. Why? well in February 2022 Ukraine had something like 200,000 active troops plus reserves, with 18-20 Brigades, thousands of tanks, AFVs and artillery pieces. So here they are planning an attack with twelve “Brigades,” which look more like Regiments to me, using the dregs of Soviet equipment and bits and pieces from the West. If this is really the last chance, those units from last year would be in this battle. They are not, therefore they were all destroyed, therefore Ukraine did indeed lose its Army last year, and its replacement units soon after. If the US can count, they must know this.
      1. jsn April 11, 2023 at 11:37 am

         Again from Big Serge, apparently the US can’t count,

         “In contrast, Ukrainian units are not given combat capability designations, their locations are more generally indicated, and there are huge ranges on the assessed manpower (10,000 to 20,000 men on the Donetsk axis – an enormous margin of error!) This, incidentally, is another reason why I think the documents are genuine. If the intent was to put forth disinformation to confuse or deceive the Russians, one would expect actionable (but fake) intelligence about Ukrainian deployments – yet there is no such thing here. Ukrainian strengths and dispositions are presented vaguely and inconclusively, so the only thing the Russian army might extrapolate from this report is that the Americans don’t really know what’s going on with Ukrainian forces.”

         Which last point dovetails with all outward appearances and policies. I hold open the possibility of some secret Dick Cheney master-planning a stunning surprise for the Ruskies out of all of this, but the probability seems vanishingly small when the general competence of the Late Empire is factored in.
         1. Daniil Adamov April 11, 2023 at 9:45 pm

            Indeed. I dislike to assume incompetence, but this lines up all too well with how Americans managed things in Afghanistan.
         2. Steve H. April 12, 2023 at 4:51 am

            Dick Cheney went to John Boyd for the master plan, and he ain’t around no more.
      2. Michaelmas April 12, 2023 at 6:28 am

         Aurelien: They are not, therefore they were all destroyed, therefore Ukraine did indeed lose its Army last year, and its replacement units soon after. If the US can count, they must know this.

         Interestingly, the US knows it and doesn’t know it. Because my other big takeaway from Serge’s analysis is the remarkably poor quality of US intelligence and the extent to which its information collection is relying — as in Viet Nam, as in Iraq, as in Afghanistan — on English-speaking natives telling the US what they choose to tell the US.

         Thus, the contradiction between the KIA figures in the leaked documents, on the one hand — which clearly are just repeating the figures the Ukrainians gave — and, on the other hand, the dichotomy you point out between the proposed structure of Ukrainian forces now for the spring offensive and the Ukrainian force structure as it existed last year.

         Additionally, signs are that some of the US intel community is getting restive about what they’re getting from Kiev. For instance, there was a brouhaha last week when at a Bank of America conference one of the bank’s vice presidents, Daniel Sheehan, said Langley saw Zelensky as a con man, and various customers went crying to BofA about Sheehan’s remarks.

         Well, Sheehan is in a position to know what’s going on at Langley. He was a major dude at CIA —

         https://www.meridian.org/profile/daniel-f-sheehan/

         And of course there’s also whoever was willing to stick their heads above the parapets and be Seymour Hersh’s source. So if elements of CIA are getting unhappy, you know that DIA and elsewhere are.
   4. Louis Fyne April 11, 2023 at 4:14 pm

      My personal conclusion is that this leak didn’t come from a Pentagon peacenik, but a Pentagon anti-PRC hawk—-who is anti-Ukraine War but for all the wrong reasons.

      ie, The West needs those Ukraine-bound weapons to point at China.
   5. Kouros April 11, 2023 at 4:52 pm

      There was a plan:

      “The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I’m using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield,” said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”

      There was very much hoping in the said plan…
6. The Rev Kev April 11, 2023 at 8:38 am

   “US Warship Sails Near Chinese-Controlled Reef in South China Sea”

   Gotta keep on poking that Bear, errr, Dragon. It really gets bizarre when you realize that current American diplomacy typically consists of threats, warnings, provocations, sanctions and colour revolutions. If you had a team of diplomats that were professionals that could talk to and relate to different countries like Lavrov does, you wouldn’t have the present situation where the US and its major vassals are being more and more isolated on the world stage. Right now it is like watching Sideshow Bob and the rakes-

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w6L93kD3xw (34 secs)
7. Jeff Stantz April 11, 2023 at 8:46 am

   Regarding “White House launching $5 billion program to speed coronavirus vaccines”

   Maybe they should speed up the clinical trails before making more new vaccines because I have a friend who was vaccine injured and not one cares about her at all.
   1. flora April 11, 2023 at 7:31 pm

      Yep. And Switzerland is mostly dropping them and the UK is pulling back. Both of those countries have a public health system that works, and keeps pretty good records and data. They can see what’s happened by looking at their data.
8. Stephen April 11, 2023 at 8:54 am

   I had not noticed any issues on this site. It continues to be excellent and I hope that all the house / move related and other technical challenges go well and get resolved.
9. mrsyk April 11, 2023 at 8:57 am

   “Washington has threatened Beijing with blocking oil supplies from the Middle East.
   “We will need to block all ships from the Middle East to China. Let them know that if you block Taiwan, we will cut [supplies] of oil,” US Senator Lindsey Graham said on April 9 in an interview with Fox News.”

   This tweet frightens me. How very quickly things might spin out of control if the US tries to do this.
   1. Bugs April 11, 2023 at 10:05 am

      It’s exactly how the US ended up at war with Japan. And if you read Japanese histories of the conflict, they always point to the oil embargo as the point the line was crossed.
   2. The Rev Kev April 11, 2023 at 10:12 am

      Why does Lindsey Graham always say stupid stuff like this? China is getting more and more of their oil direct from Russia but if all ships were blocked from the Middle east to China, what then and how would they do it? Fire warning shots at ships headed to China? Board those vessels with armed parties? Steal that oil and send it to the US like they have done elsewhere? Of course Graham never said anything about blocking any ships from China to the US because he knows that the US depends on those shipments. China could then go all Soup Nazi on Washington and say ‘No spare parts for you!’ – and wait.
      1. NotTimothyGeithner April 11, 2023 at 11:37 am

         Yeah, I suspect Graham had a dose of reality when Trump made fun of him. Graham is just in a “the lady doth protest too much” situation using right wing perceptions of manliness. Rufio was dunked on for his height and has a whiny voice. Trump put him in his place too. They kind of hide in the relative anonymity of the GOP clown show, but when their cartoonishness gets pointed out, they need to get ahead.

         Virginia has Glenn Youngkin as governor. The key to his electoral success besides the opponent was he’s not obviously a clown. Those dolts are a dime a dozen. Rufio and Graham can’t be ousted if a GOP sugar daddy donor wants either Graham without baggage or a Margerie Taylor Greene type.
      2. paddy April 11, 2023 at 12:14 pm

         belt road initiative had plans for pipelines in parallel to bipass U.S. navy blockaids in Malay straits.

         idk how far along or routing.

         Russia gas link finished
   3. digi_owl April 11, 2023 at 5:25 pm

      And this is why China is working overtime on its belt and road plan, both towards Russia (where they sent a freight train from Beijing to Moscow right before the Xi visit as a demonstration of capability) and middle east.

      Containers filled with consumer goods one way, rows upon rows of oil and NG tankers the other. And nothing the US Navy can do about it.
10. The Rev Kev April 11, 2023 at 9:03 am

    “Two Nations Are Challenging Russia’s Arctic Shipping Dominance”

    This article sounded strange but then I saw that it was written by the Jamestown Foundation, a DC based conservative think tank with CIA links. I should point out to the authors that the name is Türkiye and not Turkey. Certainly Türkiye has shipbuilding capabilities but likely no experience with Arctic waters which you won’t pick up in the Black Sea. You have to have the experience to sail safely in Arctic waters. As for China, I could see them eventually with a modern fleet of icebreakers to open up a new route to Europe. But nearly all the way they will be sailing next to the Russian coastline with their Arctic bases. The following sections shows the depth of experience that China and Russia have with icebreakers while Türkiye has yet to appear on that list-

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_icebreakers#China

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_icebreakers#Russia

    In short, this article is just making s*** up.
    1. NarrativeMassagerInc April 11, 2023 at 9:17 am

       The entire MSM consists of making stuff up these days. Even Bloomberg can’t or won’t report honestly on financial issues. Sad and pathetic delusions of former glory and denial of weakness, something like that. Wonder what happens when the world wakes up and realizes real/productive US GDP is at best half what we report as our nominal GDP and decides we’re no longer a solid investment. Fun times ahead.
       1. The Rev Kev April 11, 2023 at 9:23 am

          ‘Even Bloomberg can’t or won’t report honestly on financial issues.’

          Alexander Mercouris of the Duran was also saying that not long ago. That Bloomberg was the source of solid analysis in the past but now they have thrown away that reputation and are just making stuff up. I don’t think that Bloomberg has worked out that you just can’t buy or download a ‘reputation’. It doesn’t work that way.
    2. Polar Socialist April 11, 2023 at 10:04 am

       Oddly enough Russia had constructed the three biggest icebreakers in the world in the last three years. Two more are under construction and two more was just ordered.

       Apparently the new Arctic Strategy requires more of the project 22220 icebreakers than the project 10510 (which is ridiculously huge ship!) until 2035.

       The oddest thing I came across checking this was the claim that project 10510 (“Leader”) has been delayed because part of it’s hull were supposed to be cast by Energomashspetsstal in Kramatorsk, Ukraine (source: Kommersant). From what I can gather the current company tasked with the casting, Uralmash, won the tender already in 2021 and was already making kit model castings of all parts when the war started.

       Also, it seems that Russian companies are the ones ordering icebreakers from Turkish shipyards, so Russia may still retain “control” of it’s northern passage, even if some of the icebreakers come from other countries.
       1. indices April 11, 2023 at 3:08 pm

          It would seem, in light of continuing global warming and Arctic ice melt, that controlling the northern coast of Russia and access to Arctic shipping lanes would be as valuable as anything else USA would seize as prize once it has destroyed the undeserving Russians.
    3. jrkrideau April 11, 2023 at 6:07 pm

       I was almost halfway through the first paragraph before I realized the article was complete nonsense. Then, like you I realised the source. Just for fun, I checked one of the Kommercant articles.

       Yep, Russia is over budget and behind schedule. First time the shipyard is building its first icebreaker, they seem to have underestimated the learning curve and then, as Polar Socialist points out, having a main supplier in Ukraine does mess things up.

       The last I heard was that Russia is so short of nuclear icebreakers that 50 Years of Victory was doing tourist cruises to the North Pole but I think that was pre-Covid.

       Does OilPrice not do any fackchecking on its own?
11. mrsyk April 11, 2023 at 9:04 am

    Woly, what an excellent cat you must have been. Thanks for sharing, Thom.
    1. nycTerrierist April 11, 2023 at 9:29 am

       Lovely pic! what a distinguished tabby gentleman
12. Stephen April 11, 2023 at 9:11 am

    “You can see the immense expansion effort going on at this graveyard and how they aren’t done yet either. With many additional plots already dug ready to be filled.”

    Brings home the sheer personal tragedy created by this war in a way that dry documents such as the recently leaked ones never do. They are instead like a sanitized PMC techno bureaucratic interpretation of war. Read by people who are totally safe and see this as a career enhancement opportunity.

    I guess that one day these cemeteries may resemble the sad Commonwealth War Graves that exist in so many places around the world and their equally sad epitaphs such as that at Kohima to the men of British and Indian nationality who fell there: “When you go home tell them of us and say for your tomorrow we gave our today”. My guess would be that if Russia captures the territory where these bodies are buried then they will also honour those who fell, except for the groups they regard as war criminals.

    Are these causes worth so many deaths though? Why are western leaders doing zero to stop this but instead seem to be enjoying and reveling in war? Rhetorical questions I know but ultimately the answers are a test of whether we really are an advanced civilization.
    1. Not Again April 11, 2023 at 11:07 am

       The Ukrainians have finally had enough. They looked at those ever-growing cemeteries and decided to do something about it. Peace talks? Hell, no. A Ukrainian MP in the Rada just introduced a bill to make it a felony to videotape cemeteries. Problem solved!
       1. Pookah Harvey April 11, 2023 at 1:36 pm

          The Ukrainian MP is just following an example already enforced in Idaho. The animal rights group Mercy for Animals released videos showing workers at Bettencourt Dairy beating, stomping, dragging and sexually abusing cows in 2012.
          Idaho’s response:
          Increased enforcement of current animal cruelty laws?
          New better animal abuse laws?
          CBS reported: ‘Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter signed a bill Friday that imposes jail time and fines against people who secretly film animal abuse at Idaho’s agricultural facilities.’
       2. digi_owl April 11, 2023 at 5:30 pm

          I’m surprised they bother at all, as i would have thought most of the buried were “half-orcs” press-ganged into service on the front line.
          1. Polar Socialist April 12, 2023 at 2:53 am

             Not making any statements here, but there are “death cults” where martyrdom “purifies” your blood from orchisness.

             And frim what I’ve read, this is most prevalent in ethno-nationalist circles.
13. zagonostra April 11, 2023 at 9:26 am

    >How Obamacare Created Big Medicine Matt Stoller.

    I was hopeful decades ago when the Clintons ran on fixing a broken healthcare system. Not anymore. I think that Stoller’s concluding paragraph is way too optimistic. And, I certainly would have used a stronger adjective than “ugly.” Lastly, “too many people dying” has never been a concern for the power/political elites, it’s who is dying that counts.

    Still, looking at American health care is an exercise in despair, with health conglomerates engaged in killing people for profit, with endless 10-15% increases in annual premiums… we’ve now moved beyond the progressive frame of thinking the problem is merely access to insurance, and have come to realize that the underlying ability to deliver care is falling apart. It’s only a matter of time before we start to reimpose some sort of structural prohibitions on the industry. It’s too ugly a system, and there are too many people dying not to try.
    1. Nikkikat April 11, 2023 at 1:45 pm

       Did this guy Stoller wake up yesterday. The whole point of Obama destroying healthcare was to destroy any hope of ever getting single payer. I just love going to see a doctor that doesn’t seem to know anything and just comes in and stands in front of a computer, typing away. Never actually looks at you or lays a hand on you. They just want to hand out whatever pills the salesman pushed this week. I don’t trust them at all. Unless they have an MRI. There is no chance you will get help from them. Then the way they all went along with all the lies about Covid and the vaccine. Who would trust these people?
       1. Kouros April 11, 2023 at 5:17 pm

          It is required to be accepted in the antechamber of MSM and had his opinions retweeted.

          Otherwise you end up like professor Hudson… known only on NC and fringe channels…
       2. Martin Oline April 12, 2023 at 4:10 am

          You knocked it out of the park Nikkikat, Even when ab X-ray tells them all they need to know, an MRI is always required for treatment/
    2. Cassandra April 11, 2023 at 6:26 pm

       >there are too many people dying

       That’s a feature, not a bug.
    3. Lambert Strether April 12, 2023 at 3:35 am

       Stoller: But we’ve now moved beyond the progressive frame of thinking the problem is merely access to insurance.

       Nice erasure of single payer advocacy, I must say (and a fine clarification of what “progressive” means in operational terms).

       In fact, one could argue that the single payer advocates have been the only clear-eyed analysts throughout: See ObamaCare Rollout: Will the All the State Exchanges Launch on Time? A Secretive Project Out of Control (July 17, 2013) where Katiebird and I called the ObamaCare exchange launch debacle, three months early (alone among all venues, mainstream or blogosphere, I might add. NC ObamaCare posts here.)

       I don’t blame Stoller, so don’t trash him. He’s navigating the roughest, uglies, most polluted waters there are: The Beltway. (It occurs to me that Stoller and Stolypin have much in common, beyond the first four letters of their names.)
14. petal April 11, 2023 at 9:28 am

    Day 2 of no masks in hospital: Cancer center waiting area was about 90% no masks, 10 % masked. None of check-in staff were wearing a mask again today. I saw one nurse(diff from yesterday) and she had a surgical mask down around her chin.
    And I agree with everyone’s comments up at the top- do what you need to do! We will survive. Take care of yourself. I hope things turn around.
    1. petal April 11, 2023 at 12:15 pm

       The College just killed the covid vaccine requirement.
       1. Lambert Strether April 12, 2023 at 3:20 am

          > The College just killed the covid vaccine requirement.

          And that’s not all they killed.

          (For the record, I don’t support Covid vaccine mandates. I do support NPI mandates.)
15. Craig H. April 11, 2023 at 9:29 am

    A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century

    That is subjective. I nominate the September 11 2001 lollapalooza + aftermath.
    1. jsn April 11, 2023 at 11:26 am

       It goes back to WWII. A well footnoted with primary sources bibliography:

       “Drawing the Line: the American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949”, Carolyn Eisenberg.
       “Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between The Vatican, the CIA and The Mafia”, Paul Williams.
       “The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government”,
       David Talbot
       “Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years”, Russ Baker
16. Alice X April 11, 2023 at 9:32 am

    Last night (4/10) Glenn Greenwald expressed skepticism over the severity of the Pentagon leaks, and that they could have been intentional. He certainly has some expertise in that area.
    1. Carolinian April 11, 2023 at 10:28 am

       Big Serge thinks they are real (and gives his reasons in the Link) and says it’s evidence the deep state is ready to bail on Ukraine. Others have suggested Biden will not let this drag into election season. That last I believe. Biden is only about Biden.
       1. Jeff H April 11, 2023 at 3:21 pm

          “Biden is only about Biden”

          Too true, I made a comment during the primary to a non political friend who asked about Biden and said as much but he is also lazy and a rigid consensus thinker. If you follow Howie Klein at Down With Tyranny, he commented that a former staff member said that he’s only ever interested in working on something he truly believes in. Any performative policy issue he will assign to a subordinate and ignore from that point forward.
          1. Lambert Strether April 12, 2023 at 3:18 am

             > a former staff member said that [Biden’s] only ever interested in working on something he truly believes in.

             That sheds some light on that miserably inadequate $5 billion for “Warp Speed 2.0”, or whatever obfuscation it was that they decided to use.

             Got a link on that DwT comment?
       2. Kouros April 11, 2023 at 5:20 pm

          The hope is that Biden will not be able to support Biden due to failings of physical and mental nature…
          1. Bart Hansen April 11, 2023 at 6:57 pm

             We should be very worried about Biden. He does not want to ‘lose’ Ukraine nor lose any war. Let’s hope the Generals have a kill switch on him using nukes.
17. Louis Fyne April 11, 2023 at 9:33 am

    — And yes, he had local references from people in the ‘hood, meaning at least upscale wannabes—

    In my opinion, NPR + upper-income types (including realtors) are the absolute worst for getting home work referrals—you can sell those people “Johnson Rods” for your cars, no problem.

    While away on spring break, my brother’s <10 y.o. house in an A+ neighborhood had a major sewer-plumbing issue….the clean-up plumbing crew wore hazmat suits and set up 2 containment units (like in the film "ET") and due to a backlog of parts, the house has two industrial-strength exhaust fans running 24/7—while both of them are working from home.

    One would have better luck using one of those internet rating services, or talking to someone at the Mega-Hardware Mart parking lots while he's loading his truck with the day's supplies.
18. The Rev Kev April 11, 2023 at 9:49 am

    “Bud Light sales plunge as distributors in the Heartland and the South are ‘spooked’ by the Dylan Mulvaney backlash – as ‘Anheuser-Busch rep’ fears he won’t be able to feed his family”

    Not to be missed is the VP video giving her opinion of why this was a good idea, even though it will be effecting the livelihood of thousands of ordinary workers. One conservative commenter said that it was a case of a fake beer being advertised by a fake woman but whatever. I find it hard to picture a lot of guys going into a store and and asking for a case of Bud Lite right now. Why would you? And of course all this served as rocket fuel for conservatives across the country. Having done such a great job for Bud Lite, Dylan Mulvaney is now helping Nike sell their wares-

    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Sdh-GtzkVXs
    1. Lexx April 11, 2023 at 10:15 am

       Yesterday I went to the drugstore to pick up a prescription, and moving toward me very slowly was guy who looked to be about my age (mid-60’s) pushing one of those walkers with a seat in the middle, and on the seat was a case of Bud Light, from the liquor store next to the pharmacy… and he was wearing a mask. I would have thought that he could have phoned that order in and someone inside would have run that case out to his car… but maybe it was an impulse purchase… and he’s not ‘woke’.

       I saw on the map that sales of Bud Light are still strong on Colorado, but then we do have one of their breweries just north of our town.

       https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/04/10/viral-video-of-bud-light-cases-being-steamrolled-actually-from-february/?sh=1979b9447ce2
    2. Insouciant Iowan April 11, 2023 at 2:54 pm

       Wait! Bud Light is beer? Who knew? Don’t Pepsi has more kick, is less filling, and tastes better.
       1. Lambert Strether April 12, 2023 at 3:08 am

          “Bud Light” v. “Bud Lite.” I had to check.
19. Bugs April 11, 2023 at 9:51 am

    Really interesting interview with AOC by David Sirota in Jacobin. Thought it would be of interest.

    https://jacobin.com/2023/04/aoc-biden-trump-clarence-thomas-impeachment-climate/
    1. caucus99percenter April 11, 2023 at 6:52 pm

       Very disappointed to see AOC catapulting Mehdi Hasan’s feeble flailings, trying to discredit Matt Taibbi and distract from the real issue, namely government-imposed censorship hiding behind a Big-Tech corporate front.

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keC9gVnnelI
    2. The Rev Kev April 11, 2023 at 7:31 pm

       Saw a tweet indicating that AOC was dragging down David Sirota in popularity with her-

       https://twitter.com/SocialistMMA/status/1645808031589081092
    3. Lambert Strether April 12, 2023 at 3:06 am

       Not a word about public health. By her silence, I infer that’s the most important issue for Democrats.
20. CanCyn April 11, 2023 at 9:57 am

    Re the brain fog article posted under COVID. It addresses brain fog due to sleep deprivation caused by sleep apnea. Nevertheless as a once chronically poor sleeper I learned a few things. I didn’t know there was a ‘neurological’ sleep apnea, thought it was only a physical co diction. I had a bout in my early 30s where I was sleeping under 4 hours most nights for several years. As the article’s author said, it is amazing how well you learn to cope when you have to. I missed no work and more or less managed to do my job competently enough. As I got older a job change lessened the sleep deprivation but age made the low hours of sleep harder to cope with and I turned to meds. Also could write a sleep hygiene book, I know all the tricks. Funnily enough retirement solved most of my sleep woes, doc says “well clearly it was stress related”. After several years to reflect and self assessment, I am putting it down to the cognitive dissonance of trying to do good work in a very bad system full of a-hole PMC administrators.
    My last sleep issue has been a snore, not quite sleep apnea but bad enough to drive spouse to a different room. A few months ago, I discovered mouth taping and have been sleeping quietly and even dreaming again (or at least dreaming vividly enough that I remember them when I awake) for the first time in years. What is mouth taping you ask? You gently seal your lips with some first aid tape in order to force nose breathing. If you can,t open your mouth, you can’t snore. There are expensive tapes available specifically for the purposes but I haven’t felt the need to to try them. I know of a fellow who was able to give up his CPAP machine! It is also good for your dental hygiene, less plaque/tartar build up if your mouth doesn’t dry out at night. Google will lead you to all kinds of articles, but here is one to get you started if you’re curious: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/snoring/mouth-taping-for-sleep
    1. Lambert Strether April 12, 2023 at 3:04 am

       > What is mouth taping you ask? You gently seal your lips with some first aid tape in order to force nose breathing. If you can’t open your mouth, you can’t snore.

       News you can use!
21. Lexx April 11, 2023 at 10:00 am

    ‘Honey, I sold the kids’

    Something about this while women lose the right, state by state, to determine whether they’ll chose to reproduce or not. I was wondering if polled how many of these influencers (in the U.S.) are Republicans and where they land on abortion issues… pro-choice, ya think? While they’re faking it, saying and doing what’s expected, does the sponsor’s politics become the influencer’s politics? What’s the effect, when millions of dollars are determining the tune being played online, on tribalism? The propaganda arm of fascism has a lot of tentacles wrapping around our most private lives. Literally a couple’s privates and their offspring.

    It was actually the ‘unregulated’ part of that story that was most interesting. Regulations cost corporations money, so they’ve outsourced their advertising needs to parties where regulation is lax to non-existent, so they get the imagery they want cheaper? And government is loath to step up to address the exploitation because that’s a political can of worms and it may cost them taxes (surely the income is taxed!), campaign contributions (influencers and politicians are working in the interests of the same overlords), and votes?

    We’ve watched some of the RV influencer channels on Youtube. It’s an expensive lifestyle. The fuel, the constant upkeep to one’s home on wheels, rent, insurances, storage when not in use, food, entrance fees… like projecting the perfect family to the public, it’s not for the middle and lower classes, without corporate sponsorship. The video’d couples we’ve watched have hundreds of thousands of followers and fans. They’ll talk about every aspect of RV-ing and list products (that they got for free) ‘in the content below’. Every link the viewer uses for purchase (usually Amazon) earns them more money. We stopped watching when we figured out the score. There was no real insight to spending hours there.
    1. The Rev Kev April 11, 2023 at 10:18 am

       Personally I got hung up on the very first sentence of this article where it said ‘We have laws to protect children from factory work.’ where we know for a fact that State after State is carving out ways to get children into the workforce and circumvent those laws. How did she miss that?
    2. Henry Moon Pie April 11, 2023 at 12:16 pm

       Pre social media influencer: meat-world influencers–

       “The Joneses” with David Duchovney and Demi Moore (2009) trailer
    3. CanCyn April 11, 2023 at 12:57 pm

       It was the bit about regulations for school and trust funds for child actors that are non-existent for these influencer families that caught my eye. What must life be like for these children? What will life be like for them when their basic lessons from childhood are about how to commodify everything they do? I shudder to think of them as adults.
       I guess I am not a particularly trusting person but I’ve long ignored product reviews on websites and have never spent much time at all on Instagram. There are a couple of dog trainers that I’ve learned some things from on YouTube, they don’t do a lot of product promotion but I pretty much ignore that stuff too. Really, the only website where I click on the adds is this one because I am happy to put a few coins in our hosts’ pockets. (And mess with the algos as the ads are all over the map)
22. Jade Bones April 11, 2023 at 10:07 am

    Re: the Matt Stoller report: I have come to suspect that the health exploitation industry in this country has become a money laundering conspiracy.
    As I am nearly a total non-participant in the former and fairly ignorant as to the mechanisms of the latter… Does this hold water?
    1. Tim April 11, 2023 at 6:38 pm

       Well, when I ask where the money goes when a hospital charges $2,000 per hour of admittance time, NOBODY KNOWS.
       Not even the volunteer at the front desk (I can’t believe they charge $2k per hour and still have a volunteer ten feet from where I cut the check).
23. tevhatch April 11, 2023 at 10:41 am

    An eyewitness reveals how China is brainwashing the Uyghurs Washington Post (furzy)

    I gave up reading when this showed up in the 3rd paragraph.

    The satellite photos and government documents, including the pathbreaking work of scholar Adrian Zenz, portrayed an expanding chain of bleak prisons surrounded by barbed wire. A few eyewitnesses also came forward with disturbing accounts. China initially denied the camps existed, then said the facilities were for vocational education, which was untrue.

    As Rev Kev said earlier, “In short, this article is just making s*** up.”
    1. jrkrideau April 11, 2023 at 6:43 pm

       What I found extremely interesting was that the article is not behind a paywall. I occasionally click on a link to the WP and I am blocked by a paywall. Well, except for Uyghur and Ukraine articles. Strange.

       I think it was one of Zenz’ organizations that had a report out about the situation in Xinjiang’ probably about the forced labour in picking cotton that had a picture of a (female?) figure picking cotton. Sun hat, long-sleeved sweatshirt, long pants and white gloves. Not a bit of skin to be seen. I began to get suspicious when I noticed that the writing on the sweatshirt appeared to read, “Mandela gave me this”.

       A major reason to doubt the stories is that there are no refugee camps. Xinjiang has borders with six or seven countries and none are reporting masses of refugees fleeing genocide.
    2. Walter April 11, 2023 at 11:37 pm

       I don’t know how you can so strongly criticize the co-author of “Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation!” It provides so much scholarly information about what will take place during the Second Coming of Christ, which, based on recent events, should be happening any minute now—Wait! They wouldn’t shoot him down would they? You know, like a Chinese balloon?

       Not sure what to say about Gulbahar Haitiwaji, the woman in the article. She has been in the news occasionally the past few years, and recently testified before Congress. It’s possible that some skepticism may be in order. My favorite source on Xinjiang is Daniel Dumbrill’s Youtube—he went there a couple years back, saw plenty of Uyghurs, but had trouble finding much genocide.
       1. digi_owl April 12, 2023 at 12:36 am

          I dunno if testifying before congress is worth much:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
          1. Walter April 12, 2023 at 8:40 am

             Ah, pitchforking the babies outta the incubators—those were the days!

             Haitiwaji’s testimony may be serving the same purpose. I read about a different Uyghur woman that had timing and story-change issues that contradicted her narrative, and other accounts that seem to be amped up in weird ways to create maximum outrage. Haitiwaji may be better at the messaging part, or better prepared. I leave open the possibility that some of the people testifying may be telling the—or some—truth, but it will require a huge and HONEST effort to determine that. Not likely to happen here.
             1. tevhatch April 12, 2023 at 10:19 am

                My nose pinching disgust was aimed at the Washington Post, the article’s author, and Adrian Zenz. I know nothing about the particular woman, she may have had a horrible experience. That would make her just like so many people who’ve interfaced with the USA justice system. The USA is now jailing women for having an abortion, and threatening to use the death penalty on them. Perhaps her experience may be similar to so many Black Americans or 1st Nations people, much less the Puerto Rican people. However one data point does not a trend make, certainly not a trend like the USA. I know Congress has very little control over what China does, but it can have a significant effect on the injustice inside the USA but not only does nothing, but heaps on the harm. Not that it was emplied, but this is why it isn’t what-about-ism.
24. Wukchumni April 11, 2023 at 10:42 am

    Gooooooood Moooooooorning Fiatnam!

    As usual the focus was on the kill-ratio back in the world and if you snuffed out 5 before becoming the 6th with an asterisk, that made the nightly news, in particular on Massacre Mondays®, where if the shooter goes into double digits, there’s a buy one round-get another free promotion at participating gun & ammo stores.

    In committing the heinous deed no Derringer I daresay or even a rugged Ruger was warranted… nah you know the story by now, it was a semi-ejaculating Steely Dan with clip and accessory strap-completing the ensemble that done shot em’ down.
25. TimH April 11, 2023 at 10:52 am

    “Senate passes ban on assault weapons.”

    It’s just WA, by the way.

    And it’s not a ban. Just a restriction on new purchases. Oh, and assault weapons can still be inherited!
26. The Rev Kev April 11, 2023 at 10:53 am

    ‘Waiting for the Democrats to show up to do literally anything for abortion rights’ tweet

    Sitting here and trying to remember when the last time I read a story about Roe Wade was. The topic seems to have disappeared from the news. Funny that.

    As for that ‘What is wrong with this picture?’ tweet, I can imagine what the conversation between those birds would be like-

    ‘So I turned away for a minute and when I looked back, Larry was gone! I tell you, something is going on here.’
27. Mikel April 11, 2023 at 10:56 am

    “Fed’s Williams says there are no clear signs of credit crunch MarketWatch. Huh? Bloomberg on April 7: US Bank Lending Slumps by Most on Record in Final Weeks of March. Is the way to square this circle that loan demand dropped sharply? Or is this this Fed’s “Subprime is contained” moment?

    It never crosses the mind of the financial overlords that the economy could be better managed if the people stats are being gathered on had accurate information instead of manipulative propaganda to navigate.
    They are too fascinated with the concept of the “confidence fairy” to tackle serious problems that need to be addressed directly.
28. Mikel April 11, 2023 at 11:01 am

    “Chicago Will Host 2024 Democratic Convention as Party Returns to Midwest” NY TIMES

    Since all the culture wars take the tone of a relitigation of the 60s, I’m not surprised.
    1. Henry Moon Pie April 11, 2023 at 12:22 pm

       Chants might change.

       “The whole world is retching. The whole world is retching.” (Video)
    2. Insouciant Iowan April 11, 2023 at 3:02 pm

       Returning to the scene of so many crimes. Where elections go to die, be stolen, auctioned the highest bidder, smother in smoke-filled backrooms, farmed out to local PD. Let’s where this rounds roulette wheel stops.
    3. Yves Smith Post authorApril 11, 2023 at 10:13 pm

       I predicted to Lambert it would be in Chicago! Because Pritzkers and Obama.
29. Wukchumni April 11, 2023 at 11:04 am

    Students set to land first US rover on the moon — before NASA Live Science
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Was it just me, or did anybody else get a Capricorn One vibe when they paraded the new astronaut outfits, and by the way, the woke crew too?
30. Jason Boxman April 11, 2023 at 11:49 am

    On I literally lost my biggest and best client to ChatGPT today.,

    So this is marketing copy, so this isn’t surprising. There’s no reason a large language model couldn’t do this, given enough data. The web is filled with the content necessary to write these kinds of things, why employ a human to do it? See:

    This client is my main source of income, he’s a marketer who outsources the majority of his copy and content writing to me. Today he emailed saying that although he knows AI’s work isn’t nearly as good as mine, he can’t ignore the profit margin.

    (bold mine)

    So, yeah.

    I started with him at my normal rate of $50/hour which he has voluntarily increased to $80/hour after I’ve been consistently providing good work for him.

    That’s a good rate for this kind of work; actual technical writing that requires deep experience with software, systems, or APIs, generally doesn’t pay anymore, sometimes less. So if you could jettison this and use a large language model instead, why not?

    This won’t apply, today, to technical documentation for a specific product, as its evolving, because none of this is on the Internet. But set one of these large language models loose on internal documentation, Slack, emails, GitHub internal repos, ect, and you could probably eliminate most technical writers as well. We’ll see. Maybe most writing becomes a thing of the past, even if it is of worse quality.

    Someone else commented:

    I’ve also lost several of my biggest clients to ChatGPT. That includes my biggest one (addiction treatment). I feel your pain. But I’m pressing on. I’m determined to find the clients who want human writers.

    This is all marcom writing. I’ve always found it mostly vacuous, designed to pull in search engine traffic. I’m not surprised clients that want this stuff want to pay as little as possible for it. It’s just an expense.
    1. Geo April 11, 2023 at 3:05 pm

       “How we got hired to create an AI-generated feature film screenplay”

       https://stephenfollows.com/how-we-got-hired-to-create-an-ai-generated-feature-film-screenplay/
    2. Geo April 11, 2023 at 3:15 pm

       “A major TV production company approached me to help them develop prompts & workflows for story development using GPT4.”

       https://twitter.com/tristwolff/status/1639738652891676675?s=21&t=nBlfw0i3MdZYoeFPt2n8yQ
    3. Geo April 11, 2023 at 3:18 pm

       “ChatGPT launches boom in AI-written e-books on Amazon”

       https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-launches-boom-ai-written-e-books-amazon-2023-02-21/
    4. Geo April 11, 2023 at 3:25 pm

       One more from a personal interaction. This person was saying much the same as you are about how for complex writing humans are still valued. Then, in the next line stated they hire fanfic writers because they’re cheaper. So, how quickly do you they will switch to AI since they obviously don’t value professional writers?

       “We tested AI written scenes for our upcoming game and when we did a blind test, all testers rated the scenes written by human writers significantly higher and we hired our writers from fanfic communities and only the cheapest ones as we have small budget.”

       https://twitter.com/reefraf64/status/1645689664219541505?s=21&t=OVJjMkcqvrWUr5oNck6rjg
       1. Jason Boxman April 11, 2023 at 5:05 pm

          Complex wasn’t exactly what I was getting at, but rather you can’t write documentation for systems or software without access to a variety of inputs, which aren’t generally exposed to the Internet for proprietary products or systems. But if there is ever an “on-site” version of these large language models that suck up data from inside an organization, this barrier vanishes.

          Whether the output is good enough to disemploy, remains to be seen.
          1. jrkrideau April 11, 2023 at 6:50 pm

             Given that I have seen reports from the history and classics area that AI’s have invented references in non-existent journals I hate to think of what it could put in a user’s manual.
31. Wukchumni April 11, 2023 at 12:28 pm

    Davy Jones Financial Locker news:

    Royal Caribbean has quietly converted its jazz clubs into casinos

    Since the start of the year, Royal Caribbean has quietly begun converting over its Jazz on 4 venues into a non-smoking casino room.

    Jazz on 4 was a dedicated room for jazz music, where a band would perform most nights of the cruise. During the day time, Jazz on 4 would mostly remain unused, but it was sometimes used for private events as well.

    There’s been no formal announcement from the cruise line, but cruise fans were alerted to the change when the jazz club was closed on recent sailings.

    https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2023/03/31/royal-caribbean-has-quietly-converted-its-jazz-clubs-casinos
32. Wukchumni April 11, 2023 at 12:53 pm

    My Kevin (since ’07) cast blame on a couple of palookas in the Pachyderm Party in the NYT, which had the rest of them thinking…

    ‘What am I, chopped liver?’

    It took Kev 15 tries to become SpeHou, he could be gone after 15 weeks as he fumbles the debt ceiling… just you watch, what a goof-my goof.
33. Mikel April 11, 2023 at 1:43 pm

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/globalization-isnt-dead-its-regrouping-to-confront-threats-from-china-and-russia-d1bdc745?mod=mw_latestnews/
    Opinion: Globalization isn’t dead — it’s regrouping to confront threats from China and Russia

    I’m left aghast. Trigger warning ahead…intense wartime games being played:

    “…Like 1930s dictators, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping invested in armies and not enough on economic resilience and social infrastructure. A shortage of hospital beds and medicines to confront COVID bear witness to Xi’s obsessions…”

    Lack of reflection is an understatement.
    The projection is so strong that it is derangement.
34. JustTheFacts April 11, 2023 at 2:29 pm

    I think the Dalai Lama is probably saying the truth when he says he was teasing the boy (who had asked to come up and hug him). It is not clear to me that his actions would be considered wrong in Tibet. It’s a very different, quite Medieval culture. It’s also the size of Europe and each valley has its own little kingdom, monastic overlord, or whatever, since they are separated from the other valleys by snow 9 months of the year. It’s not surprising that one would find all sorts of very different practices develop in some of those valleys. For instance, in one part of Tibet there are polyandrous families, which is pretty rare (polygamy is common as is monogamy).

    China has historically viewed Tibet as the Western Treasure Vase, and took it over militarily. They destroyed most of the culture there (as well a hell of a lot of damage to their own culture during the Cultural revolution). 20% of the male population became monks, but most monasteries were destroyed. Only recently have the Tibetans been able to recover and reprint most of the Buddhist works that had become scattered. China correctly points to the human hardships in various areas from which they freed the people. But we should not forget that slavery was common in most human societies (including China until 1910). So there’s definitely some truth here, but also an aspect of propaganda to it. China doesn’t point out the destruction they caused, doesn’t point out the political repression it still applies to the monks in monastery, and celebrates its forced settling of nomadic people, who weren’t asked whether they wanted to become sedentary.

    It’s very easy to have opinions about other cultures without knowing anything about them, something Caitlin Johnson demonstrates in her article. It’s very easy to criticize penniless people who crossed the Himalayas with nothing and were thrown into refugee camps for accepting help and money. No doubt, the CIA wanted to use them for their own purposes. Surely they are the ones who should be criticized, not the people who probably knew very little about the West and its machinations.
    1. KD April 11, 2023 at 5:46 pm

       I remember the freak out when there was a herpes outbreak or something in the Orthodox Jewish community in New York because the rabbi kisses the penis of the boy after the circumcision ritual and it was spreading a venereal disease. Kind of strange as an outsider to have a grown man kissing young boys on the penis, but its a custom, nothing sexual.

       As far as the Dalai Lama, he seems to be making the best of a poor hand. I think Deng Xiaoping and the Dalai Lama tried to hash out an understanding, but they could never close a deal because of the militants on both sides. Yes, there are extremists and separatists funded by the CIA. At the same time, Tibet is the homeland of a distinct ethnic group with its own religion and customs, and it was promised autonomy by Mao, and a good case can be made that the Chinese have not respected that agreement. I can understand the Chinese not wanting to open the door to some violent ethnic separatist movement, but I can also understand Tibetans wanting to preserve their traditional identities and culture. Obviously, the US is just interested in throwing gasoline and making chaos out of it, but it seems some kind of compromise could be constructed which respects Tibetan autonomy without fueling the fires of separatism. [But not sure the current Chinese leadership cares.] There has never been anything like a Minsk accord attempted to my knowledge, that was what Deng and the Dalai Lama were trying to achieve. I suppose it may just turn out to be another one of those tragedies, like the Armenians, and the Assyrians, and the Kurds, and the Ukrainians.
    2. The Rev Kev April 11, 2023 at 7:40 pm

       You did read those tweets on what Tibet was like before the Chinese knocked the place down, didn’t you? And I mean all of it. Slavery, mutilations, skinning and all the rest of it? That culture of the 10% deserved to be destroyed. Being under the Chinese has its own problems but there is no way that people in Tibet want to go back to the old ways. Even the Taliban at their worse would have nothing on how the previous regime did things. Maybe that old slogan of Free Tibet is not what you think it is or what it means. Most likely, that slogan’s origins was in DC rather than by Tibeten refugees.
       1. JustTheFacts April 12, 2023 at 2:49 pm

          Yes I did, and I strongly disagree with your premise. “The culture of the 10%” is always the culture of a country. Would you destroy the culture of Europe because only 5% of Europeans were literate, and those nobles were beastly to their population? That way lays madness and barbarism.

          I’d also like to remind you what we, so called civilized Europeans, were doing in the 1940s. Germany, one of the most civilized European nations, the place where physics was flourishing, suddenly devoted itself to the industrial mass slaughter of human beings. Their conversion into soap and lamp shades. They exterminating people because they believed them to be so unworthy of life, that they couldn’t even keep them as beasts of burden? Who exactly between Europeans and Tibetans was displaying true insanity?

          Perhaps you’d also like to remember the absolute charnel ground that China was during the 20th century? Around 60 million victims, similar to the number of deaths during world war 2.

          Context matters. Thankfully, humankind seems to have become a lot less violent in the last 50 years. The counterfactual you are proposing is to assume that Tibetans would have continued being beastly to each other had the Chinese not intervened. I doubt it, since that has not been the overall trend worldwide.
    3. JustTheFacts April 12, 2023 at 6:21 pm

       Here is some context from a Tibetan. Apparently “Eat my tongue” is something Tibetan grandparents say to their grand-children when teasing and playing with them. This is a month old video. It may have been promoted recently by the Chinese government to punish the Dalai Lama for enthroning a Mongolian monk as the 10th spiritual leader of Mongolia.
35. Susan the other April 11, 2023 at 2:42 pm

    Thanks for reposting Yakov Feygin on the Kindleberger Dilemma. About how to integrate industrial policy into an advanced capitalist system that relies on a central bank to provide global liquidity by running trade deficits and exporting deposits. Interesting. The impression I am left with is that an industrial policy cannot be conceived in this economy because apples and oranges. But the paragraph on creating viable micro economies by funding small farms which create demand for supplies is instructive. It is probably the answer because the idea definitely adapts itself to starting small local “farms” dedicated to environmental repair and sustainability, which proliferate by industrial policies, creating demand in a new industry. There’s no reason why industrial policy must be attached to the old economy. It can be started in parallel to it. I’m pretty sure there’s no law against it nor is it against our constitution ;-).
36. Willow April 11, 2023 at 6:09 pm

    Pentagon’s masterful use of the Streisand Effect even though leak not from itself. Asymmetries in information quality about Ukraine highlight that its the State Dept’s shit show (low quality data) and not the Pentagon’s (high quality Russian data). Leaks also show State having a much greater presence on the ground than Defense. Pentagon clearly wanting to distance itself from the debacle and finger (various) the State.

    Comes across as a curated meta-leak from various older leaks. Either trying to bring things to a head (helped by Streisand Effects) or to hide in plan sight a much more interesting & important non-Ukraine titbit.
37. spud April 11, 2023 at 6:42 pm

    this has been going on since the late 1980’s, its about time the plug gets pulled and restores gravity.

    https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/fed-far-saved-stock-market-232437195.html

    good luck with the real estate market.

    https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/housing-unaffordable-banks-losing-money-014524600.html

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