It’s not as difficult as you think to shout upwind (press release) NewsWise
Keeping beaches dark still priority through turtle nesting season Observer
The global economy’s slow-motion reset Axios
Schizophrenia at the IMF Project Syndicate
Climate
Supreme Court Rejects Big Oil’s Bid to Derail Climate Liability Lawsuits DeSmog
Suburbs are a climate disaster, but they can be redeemed Nature
Water
Lack of snow condemns Italy’s Po to a desperately dry summer AP
#COVID19
What’s Going On With Covid Right Now? NYT. The deck: “Cases, hospitalizations and deaths are lower than they’ve been in years. We asked experts how to think about personal risk….” In years, I’m tellin’ ya! Commentary:
Italy: Covid cases up by 28.5%, deaths up 48% in one week.https://t.co/pwSQOU451a
— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) April 24, 2023
Dr. Fauci Looks Back: ‘Something Clearly Went Wrong’ (interview) NYT. Interviewer: David Wallace-Wells. Fauci: “I mean, we tried. David, we’re playing a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking here. This is some really serious Monday-morning quarterbacking.” Fair. You move the goalposts on game day, not Monday.
Why long COVID could be a ticking time bomb for public health Salon
The enigma of the SARS-CoV-2 microcirculation dysfunction: evidence for modified endothelial junctions (preprint) bioRxiv. From the Discussion: “SARS-CoV-2 infection causes vascular inflammation in different organs. It is important to note that SARS-CoV-2 infects human cells mainly by binding to the protease called ACE2. Our central hypothesis is that ACE2 can lead to the cleavage of the extracellular domain of [Vascular endothelial (VE)-cadherin] at specific ACE2 target sequences, which then destabilizes the [Endothelial junctions (EJ)] and causes microcirculation dysfunction. This hypothesis has never been considered previously.” Sounds intriguing but above my paygrade. Readers?
China?
China urges jobless graduates to ‘roll up their sleeves’ and try manual work FT
AI developers must ‘learn to dance with shackles on’ as China makes new rules in a post-ChatGPT world South China Morning Post. That’s a damn shame.
Pentagon No. 2 says US is drawing lessons from Ukraine as it eyes possible China combat Bloomberg
European Policy Chief Advocates For Warship Patrols Of Taiwan Strait gCaptain
1MDB settlement: What’s threatening the multi-billion dollar deal between Malaysia and Goldman Sachs? Channel News Asia
Myanmar
Myanmar’s trade relations with China Observer Research Foundation
Dear Old Blighty
Researchers Find Hidden Markings on the Stone of Destiny, Sacred Slab Used in British Coronations Smithsonian
Britons ‘need to accept’ they’re poorer, says Bank of England economist Guardian
New Not-So-Cold War
Biden Prepares To Give Up On Ukraine Moon of Alabama
Is This Ukraine’s Last Chance to Defeat Russia? New York Magazine. “Ideally, what the Ukrainian general staff wants to do is create some form of paralysis in the Russian command and control and then paralysis of Russian military leadership, which creates panic among the rank and file of the Russian forces with the Russians skedaddling in the end.” Let me know how that works out.
Ukraine Plans for World War III The American Conservative
Russian official claims Poland intends to ‘absorb remnants’ of Ukraine Anadolu Agency
* * * Iran Ships Ammunition to Russia by Caspian Sea to Aid Invasion of Ukraine WSJ
Weapons Makers Can’t Hire Enough Workers as Ukraine War Drives Demand WSJ
Romanians Crowdfund ‘Mad Max’ Armored Vehicles For Ukraine Radio Free Europe
* * * New Defenses Show Russia On Defensive In Sevastopol As Ukraine Attacks Naval News
China benefits from prolonging the war in Ukraine, Czech president says New Voice of Ukraine
Biden Administration
The Biden White House Is Better Off Without Susan Rice Slate
Lawmakers Trade Bank Stocks While Working on U.S. Bank-Failure Fallout WSJ. From earlier this month, still germane.
Hunter Biden may be living at the White House to evade legal papers from his baby mama NY Post
The controversial article Matthew Kacsmaryk did not disclose to the Senate WaPo
The Supremes
Law firm head bought Gorsuch-owned property Politico. Greenberg Traurig.
Chief Justice Roberts declines to testify at Senate’s Supreme Court ethics hearing NBC
B-a-a-a-a-d Banks
Sharp sell-off in First Republic shares causes alarm in Washington FT
Senior Citi banker departs after report of Jeffrey Epstein meetings FT
Spook Country
Quite a salvo from Racket News. All must-reads:
Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex Matt Taibbi, Racket News
An Insider’s Guide to “Anti-Disinformation” Andrew Lowenthal, Racket News A new #TwitterFiles from Lowenthal:
2. My name is Andrew Lowenthal. For almost 18 years, I was Executive Director of @EngageMedia, an NGO devoted to protecting digital rights and freedoms. In recent years, I watched with concern and then despair as a dramatic change swept through my field.
— NetworkAffects (@NAffects) April 25, 2023
Eleven Minutes of Media Falsehoods, Just On One Subject, Just On One Station Matt Orfalea and Matt Taibbi, Racket News. A new #TwitterFiles from Orfalea:
1/ #TWITTERFILES 21
How to Find Russians AnywherePt.1 – PROJECT OSPREY –
After the 2016 election, the Senate Intel Committee asked Twitter to identify accounts from Russia's Internet Research Agency. But both Twitter and 3rd party researchers struggled to find Russian agents. pic.twitter.com/MZHGnIV157
— Matt Orfalea (@0rf) April 25, 2023
Interesting, Project Osprey was a genetic engineering project to breed super-soldiers in Richard Morgan’s Thirteen (2008).
Our Famously Free Press
Fox Has a Secret ‘Oppo File’ to Keep Tucker Carlson in Check, Sources Say Rolling Stone
‘Good riddance’: Pentagon officials cheer Tucker Carlson’s ouster Politico
Tech
On Artifice and Intelligence Shlomi Sher (Dave). Dave: “It’s just a complicated autocomplete…”
German magazine under fire for AI-generated Schumacher interview Anadolu Agency
Boeing
Paper Airplane Designed by Boeing Engineers Breaks World Record–Nearly Flying Length of Football Field Good News Network
Healthcare
Mexico’s allure for medical tourism Axios
Review suggests fecal transplant more effective than antibiotics for recurrent C diff Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
Gunz
Why do mass shooters kill? It’s about more than having a grievance Kentucky Lantern
Supply Chain
Splash Extra: Who’s to blame for shipping’s slow innovation towards decarbonisation? Splash 24/7
Class Warfare
Amazon Delivery Drivers in California Join Teamsters PortSide
An Interview with Michael A. Lebowitz on Capital, “Real Socialism,” and Venezuela Monthly Review
US rejects UFOs as breaking the rules of physics, cites ‘lack of evidence’ Interesting Engineering
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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LARVA PLEASE
(melody borrowed from Wouldn’t It Be Loverly? from My Fair Lady)
(Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and advocates of The Great Reset make a point of pushing the consumption of insects instead of mammals in our utopian future. Instead of chitlins, we’ll eat chitin. Well, here you are — out for Sunday brunch with friends in 2045 . . .)
Fungi tacos with soya flour
Silkworm sauerkraut that’s extra sour
Fresh feta fruit fly cheese ~
‘A side of extra larva, please’
Twenty years since I tasted meat
I feel empty and incomplete
Even a wraith must eat ~
‘A side of extra larva, please’
Just the odor of grilling steak it fills me with desire
I would drizzle it with sauce
While ~
Sitting beside the fire
Cows make methane and CO2
Sheep and chickens and porkers, too
Meat’s for the well-to-do ~
‘A side of extra larva, please’
Fritter fleas ~ baby bees ~ centipedes ~
‘Larva, please’
O Ye Gods I would kill for beef
Chicken soup as apéritif
But meat’s for Trillionaires ~
‘A side of extra larva, please’
Planet Earth mustn’t overheat
Eating bacon would spell defeat
Oh Lord, I want to cheat ~
‘A side of extra larva, please’
All nine vital amino acids in a bug paté
Lightly killed and chilled
It tastes like ~
Saliva n’ Slime Sorbét
Chewing is sensuality
Lamb chops strewn with some rosemary
But for now please bring me ~
‘A side of extra larva, please’
(larva, please)
‘Larva, please’ . . .
(larva, please)
‘Larva, please’ . . .
(Wild applause and cheering) ★★★★★ 5 out of 5 stars.
Well done! (which is also how I like my insect larva)
Nailed it!!
Lol!
>
>Mexico’s allure for medical tourism – Axios
estimates that more than 1 million Americans travel to Mexico for elective treatment every year
Wouldn’t it be nice if Bernie Sanders was on a public stage proclaiming that citizens from the most wealthy nation have to go South of the Border to afford medical treatment. I’m not sure that “elective” completely describes the situation. There is nothing “elective” about root canal infection that can spread to your brain and kill you, or removing a cist that can turn cancerous.
No Bernie is too busy telling us that in the upcoming 2024 election he is endorsing Biden, throwing away any diminishing popularity and leverage he may have remaing, as have the rest of the putative left-leaning “Squad.”
The Democrats want no debates, no M4A, rather they seek to ensure that upcoming elections will result in “nothing fundamentally changing.” Increasing censorship, removing popular pundits that challenge the neoliberal/neoconservative agenda is all they care about
Working for a startup pharma company, the antidotal stuff I hear regarding the cost of the medical supplies we use is nuts. Tubing costing thousands of dollars, tube cutter that is $80K and because blades needed for $80k cutter are $3K I’ve been told by co-workers some companies make 10 scratches in each blade to use it 10 times). A 100kg (220 lbs) floor weight goes for $8k. All antidotal mind you except the floor weight (because I was asked to contact supplier to expedite delivery). As my boss frequently says “we’re in the wrong business.”
Agreed that ‘elective’ is doing too much work. However, seems that ignoring M4A is bipartisan. Medical tourism is about cost, plus it’s probably much easier to get an appointment. Sign me up!
Oh, he wanted M4A…but not badly enough to risk hurting the democratic party in the slightest. Nope, totally not worth it.
RFK Jr, 2024?
I think that you will find that the media will deliberately disappear him in the same way that they did to Tulsi Gabbard back in 2020. It has been theorized that this was a major reason why Tucker Carlson was sacked. Because he would have had RFK Jr on his show – unlike the rest of the media.
Mexico’s allure for medical tourism
I know that nearly everyone is disappointed in Bernie after he was disappeared during his first run, then knifed in the back during his second run at the presidency. He and the squad have been sidelined by the ruling powers and have little hope of doing much more than fighting for or against the bills brought before them. I don’t diss Bernie too much. He’s an old man and he fought the good fight. For a bright shining moment, it looked like America would get a presidency that was labor and environment friendly, but that was hopium and most of us are too old to drink it anymore.
A decade ago I lived in Mexico for 1.5 years and had excellent and extensive dental work done at a fraction of the cost of an American dentist, while American dentists since have remarked that my Mexican dental surgeon had used only the highest quality of materials and done ‘wonderful work.’ This is what’s sending Americans living along the border to Mexico. For truly ‘elective’ surgery the rich fly to Argentina, Thailand, or Europe.
Working link for “German magazine under fire for AI-generated Schumacher interview”:
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/german-magazine-under-fire-for-ai-generated-schumacher-interview/2879833
Thank you, Lambert, especially for the link to what the Bank of England’s chief economist said.
What did Britons expect when a former employee of Goldman Sachs and the ECB and disciple of Ottmar Issing, also ECB and Goldman Sachs, was brought back from Frankfurt?
Insider sympathisers or the likes of Gary Stevenson, https://twitter.com/garyseconomics?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, warned of this appointment, but even the likes of centre left academics Richard Murphy and Simon Wren-Lewis failed to pay attention.
Ever since I met Pill’s boss, Andrew Bailey, in 2008, he has talked about internal devaluations to keep an economy competitive. Bailey, the only economics DPhil in his Bank of England intake, has long supported immiseration and, along with Mervyn King, sees Brexit as a means to hard wire this.
Unfortunately, the British left refuses to engage on such matters, ignores advice and insights from sympathisers, and, when Truss and Kwarteng proposed extending the Bank of England’s mandate from inflation target to include growth and employment, the British left did not even understand that this was an opportunity and to ally with the pair as a cynical convenience.
When was the last time an economist associated with the labour movement appointed to the monetary policy committee? I will tell you how useless and ignorant the British left is. When sell out Bill Morris was given a seat in the Lords and membership of the Marylebone Cricket Club, he was appointed to the Court of the Bank of England, the bank’s oversight body. Much of the British left thought that he had become a policymaker. We tried to explain that, some years later, to John MacDonnell, who Corbyn oddly thought was his right hand man, but MacDonnell didn’t understand, either. When Haldane was overlooked for governor by Johnson and Bailey ally Sajid Javid and left the bank, it was suggested that the Trades Union Congress support a candidate, if only to get a leftist economist into the public eye, but Frances O’Grady and Paul Nowak are only interested in sitting in the House of Lords.
This is why my money is on uber Blairite gangsta Wes Streeting to be a Labour PM, possibly the next one if Starmer does a Neil Kinnock, and Peter Rees-Mogg to bring back the Etonians mid-century, like Cameron in 2010.
Thank you, Colonel. John Authers seems to think his classmate Pill was taken out of context:
I guess we should all become lawyers or economists and then we’d have the proper context struggling to pay our bills.
The stories now about how Ukraine taught DoD that it needs ammunition to fight China are pretty funny. Did they previously think they wouldn’t need ammunition in vast quantities? But the gist of the statements is almost funnier: “as you know, we’re renowned for finding elegant and efficient solutions quickly, so no worries”.
Fun fact: Carnival has more cruise ships than the US Navy has fuel-ammo supply ships.
Having infinite ammo in Hawaii does no good if you can’t ship it over during wartime (and the US Navy doesn’t have enough ships to simultaneously protect those supply ships, and fight a war against China, and have ships left over to hang out inthe Mideast or Atlantic).
Further fun fact….US Navy ships can’t reload their missiles while at sea. So literally after one morning’s worth of fighting, Navy ships will have to turn around and go to Japan or Hawaii to reload.
As in, the USN is not fit for purpose. It is a toy navy geared for toy wars…
I noticed that in Whittier, Ca. that the city has replaced faded ‘Hometown Heroes’ military banners up on lamp posts which are sideways old glories that have the name of locals in the military below them. I doubt many are still enlisted as it has been the same names for over a decade.
These are quite ubiquitous all over these not so united states, and dead easy to make on a computer.
Its what we’re capable of on the home front, otherwise you’d almost never know any of our prolonged wars were even happening…
https://hometownheroesbanners.com/
So the Russians and the Chinese build a joint Pacific base…..Massive air defense, all sorts of missiles, plenty of hypersonic carrying Migs….etc. etc. for about 10 billion and the US Pacific fleet is basically rendered useless.
It’s all so silly. Peace.
I understand that’s at least partly by design – the reloading is done by civilian contractor$.
Reminds me of Grace Slick’s line in “Rejoyce,” a riff on Finnegan’s Wake:
They came out of 60+ years of fighting bush fire wars around the world, where the US losses were perhaps 1 to 1000 locals.
Keep in mind that after Vietnam Pentagon removed fully automatic fire from the M-16, replacing it with a 3 round burst in order to keep the ammo usage down.
Because during Vietnam, jumpy conscripts would hose down the jungle at any sudden sound.
Bin Laden’s greatest, unheralded victory…..Osama triggered events that turned the entire US-NATO military apparatus into a force dedicated to fighting radicalized goat herders at the expense of everything else.
The guy must have been laughing his ass off during his years in the Pakistan villa, seeing the great american satan slowly eat itself after a loss of 2-3 buildings and some 3000 civilians in a city of 8000000.
For that, Osama bin Laden may go down as the greatest strategist since Võ Nguyên Giáp. And he knew what he was doing. He once said that all he had to do was to send two guys waving a rag of a flag at the far ends of the earth and that would get the US to send a huge military force there.
Odd. It still had full automatic when I was in, and the 3 round burst was still achieved by training in short trigger pull. My niece’s rifle still had full auto as an option years later still, though I think they’d added a 3rd switch position for short bursts by then.
Seems there is an M16A2 “enhanced” that have all 3 modes in use elsewhere in the world, but the M16A2 with only semi and burst is supposedly standard issue for US marines and army.
Ah yes, but the locals then always get accused afterwards of not being sufficiently resolute when the helicopters come to evacuate the US troops after the inevitable defeat.
The 3 round burst mode also helps keep the barrel on target. In full auto you get barrel rise and drift, where as after the 3rd round in burst you can quickly bring the barrel back onto target.
Artillery may be the God of Battle but Logistics is the God of War.
And as i understand it, these days US soldiers need as much batteries as they need ammo and food. And the battery of choice is the 18650 lithium cell…
An army travels on its stomach, and the stomachs of the greatest military in the world require Big Macs and baby back ribs. Back during Iraq, I watched a documentary online about how a plague of trucks overwhelmed Iraq after the invasion, running over Iraqis right and left. What were they hauling? A lot of fast food.
And Coca Cola. As seen during WW2, when the US army was provided with mobile bottling plants and a steady supply of ingredients.
I recall a critique of the Stupid Imperial Onslaught as little more than a branding exercise, for the war machine, Coke, and outfits like Evian — lots of product placement images, GIs crushing Fallujah while carrying 2-liter bottles of Evian, delivered by the cargo-aircraft load at great expense/profit, instead of or maybe in addition to the GI-issued canteen.
One comment was that these callow GIs and jarheads maybe did not register that Evian is “naive” spelled backwards.
Yay, America!
Gotta keep the troops focused on what they’re fighting for.
Not just US troops. Saw mention of them being dropped to Russian troops along with food and ammo-
https://www.bitchute.com/video/2mKjw9YvDBad/ (25 secs)
‘Unique footage: special forces in the ruins send help to their own using the Mavic drone
During the fighting, the fighters at the firing point were blocked by the enemy and their comrades sent them food, batteries and cartridges using drones. After a multi-day operation, the scouts safely left this position.’
Maybe Taiwan has also learned the even more obvious lesson that being a US kamikaze proxy regime is a bad idea.
Ukraine is a continental land war and China has no land border with Taiwan or the US. It is hard to see how relevant the so called lessons are either. Other then at the most obvious level that fighting a war requires supplies and logistics. But it says very little about what weapons systems will be useful in such a war. If the Pentagon has really just learned that logistics matters then they really are 100% incompetent. Perhaps they really will produce more HIMARS and then wonder why the “targets” are too far away. After all, the MIC would still get income, think tanks get their donations and congress critters their campaign money. Everyone would still win.
If this was 1903, its as if the Taiwanese were backed by the Russian Navy.
Headline above, that Britons should accept their poverty. Move aside, Larry Summers, you have company in the class of economist idiot espousing to the lower classes and little people from on high in your lofty role. Eat your mush and don’t dare ask for seconds!
Damn you and your economist ideology, I’ll ask for a raise or I can search for a better wage.
Well in all fairness, that economist did not say that all Britons had to accept their poverty and get used to a lower standard of living. People like Boris Johnson will make out just fine thank you very much.
Thank you, Griffen.
It may not surprise you that Summers advised the Brown as chancellor and PM and is back, advising Starmer.
Brown’s party trick at meetings of EU finance ministers, ECOFIN, was to harangue attendees, including a quip from Summers, about how well the UK and US were doing and what the feckless continentals (to the Protestant work ethic obsessed Calvinist Scot) had to do and then do some work, ignore other ministers and not use his headphones for translations. He was that obnoxious. At least and unlike Brown, Dominic Raab did not thrown things at civil servants.
Jon Stewart interview Summers recently about inflation. Stewart came pretty well armed to dispute Summers’s oft-repeated dictum that giving money to poor people causes inflation. Not surprisingly, Summers obfuscated, lied and talked over Stewart constantly. What struck me is that either Summers is very unused to ever being challenged or he’s losing it. How many time you had Covid, Larry?
Thank you for the link, that was quite entertaining. I should get in a better habit of watching these interviews by Stewart, and others, on such topics.
Some don’t interest me, but the one he did with a DoD official focused on the Pentagon’s failure to pass audits and how that ought to affect the budget. The DoD PR person was not some general but a PMC Deluxe who thought condescension was her best tactic.
Stewart should have pushed back on the logic of the claim that people are poor because of the stimulus. You can’t make people poor by giving them money, at worst it will have no effect when producers raise prices to hoover up any excess money. But they are not going to stop factories just because people have suddenly more money to spend.
I once saw Summers speak in person, at an INET conference.
Never before or since have I seen anyone fill a large room with his arrogance.
I did also see him speak at an Atlantic Economy conference, in Washington, DC, but then he was on his best behavior because he was lobbying to become head of the World Bank.
They got nothing on Charlie “suck it in and cope” Munger. Re the Obama bailouts:
“You should thank God” for the bank bailouts. Without George W., Obama and Bernanke, civilization as we know it would have gone down the drain…
“Hit the economy with enough misery and enough disruption, destroy the currency, and God knows what happens,” Munger said. “So I think when you have troubles like that you shouldn’t be bitching about a little bailout. You should have been thinking it should have been bigger.”
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Circle-Bastiat/2010/0930/Warren-Buffett-s-partner-Bank-bailouts-saved-civilization-so-those-struggling-should-suck-it-in-and-cope
“Ease up on Wells Fargo” for mistakes it made in treating its customers: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-dailyjournal-munger-idUKKCN1FY314
and that making the rich richer and the poor poorer is good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L1EJ0_BTbU
“I thinks those bailouts were absolutely required to save your civilization and to give you the best chance to solving the housing and student loan and other problems.”
…solving?
I forgot one. Munger goes full Pinker: “Stop complaining, says billionaire investor Charlie Munger: ‘Everybody’s five times better off than they used to be’”
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/27/charlie-munger-stop-complaining-about-wealth-inequality-life-quality.html
Munger: “Wells Fargo will end up better off for having made those mistakes,” he added. “I think it’s time for regulators to let up on Wells Fargo. They’ve learned.”
“Mistake” has become an oft-repeated euphemism, no?
Makes me think about The Sopranos and why it was so popular. We would tune in every Sunday night to watch Tony and company making all of those mistakes.
I don’t have any response that isn’t some version of: “Off with their heads!”
“We Don’t Know What Kind Of Ammo Ukraine Is Getting for Its Leopard 1 And M-55S Tanks. It Matters A Lot.”
There might be more to it than this. I heard on the Duran that not all those Leopard 2 tanks fire the same shells and that while the later models can fire the shells for the earlier tanks, the earlier tanks can’t fire the shells from that later models.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinmetall_Rh-120
The L55 and L55 A1 are longer than the original L44, allowing for more energy transferred to the round. Also the A1, introduced as recently as 2018, allow for higher pressure. I suspect the barrel length may be the main issue, but that seem to mainly affect the effectiveness of armor penetration (SABOT) rounds.
Coincidence regarding “Why long COVID could be a ticking time bomb for public health”!
My science friend sent me this article as well cause a mutual friend has Long Covid. He wanted me to know that zinc breaks down or prevents alpha-synuclein from building up?
He sent this paper along with it:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36252622/
Can anyone comment on that paper? It’s over my head but the guy is getting his PhD at a very good school.
The Fauch touted zinc. He seems to know precisely what he is doing.
Many people touted zinc in spring of 2020, and got promptly ignored and ‘labelled’. I just retrospection.
Why not for short burst, but too much zinc for too long causes anemia first, and then liver toxicity and other issues long run.
Can you provide how much zinc is too much and for how long?
Thanks
The is no clear cut answer about how much is too much, but you can get some information on safe levels here. EU will have differing guidelines but not by a large amount.
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc-HealthProfessional/
Climate lawsuits against Big Oil–
It’s bit of good news that lawsuits based on states’ common law of fraud and other causes of action can proceed without being removed to federal court. Reading through the article gives you a feel for how complicated our federalist system of law is given conflicts of law and federal preemption. At least citizens have a way of making the oil companies pay for their lies over the years.
This little victory is not going to mean much in terms of keeping the temperature rise below 2 degrees C (1.5 is already in the rear view mirror). Resilience.org has a sobering article today about what it would actually take to keep from heading further into the experiment in heating unprecedented since humans began agriculture. Here’s what the article, “It’s getting to look a lot like degrowth: Part 2.” has to say about a realistic program to prevent even worse disaster:
There’s the starting point. Degrowth is coming. Either we can discuss it, plan for it and implement it, or it can be imposed on us by the reality of planetary degradation and systems breaking down as a result. But it would take a 70% reduction in resource use in those rich countries? That’s a hell of a lot. How could we ever get there? Here’s the first steps:
Easy peasy. I’ll bet most NC readers are in favor of those proposals already. But there’s a second list of changes required to keep from going to temperatures where no humans have gone before, at least since the rise of civilization. Here’s some radical conservation for you:
Ouch. I don’t think Joe Biden is going to be running on that platform, nor do I think any politician will level with the American people (or French or German) about what is required. Jimmy Carter learned that asking people to wear a sweater and keep the speed under 55 will outrage the well-trained consumers of the American republic.
I appreciate that someone sat down with a slide rule and figured out just what kinds of changes would bring us within range of avoiding catastrophe. Perhaps if the proposal to restrict advertising (“but it’s free speech!”) had been adopted a few decades back and replaced with education about planetary limits and the folly of conspicuous consumption, we might be able to consider these changes calmly and rationally without yelling about wanting our Maypo, but that was not the route taken. Instead, the effects of our trashing of the Earth will come at us with increasing intensity and frequency. Those with resources will try to buy their way out of the problems (“Buy a bigger air conditioner!”), often exacerbating and accelerating the problems. The poor, especially those in the Global South, will die first, but before long, system breakdowns (“the power is off!”) will subject even the affluent to these disasters.
And that 70% reduction in resource use will be upon us, just as the Limits to Growth curves showed the downturns in food and other production beginning in the period in which we are living.
So basically roll back the whole post WW2 “dividend” for western world?
Levittown turned out to be the gateway to Hades.
‘Reduce living space per person by 25%’
Might want to be careful there as I can see the burden falling on those with minimal space already. I forget the details but a few decades ago the UK changed the land rates so that a granny living in a caravan paid the same as a guy in a mansion. It might be better where each person can have x amount of space if they desire. But if they want more space, then there will be a tax to pay. The more the space, the more the tax at a progressive rate. So Bill Gates may have a 66,000-square-foot house but he will have to pay for the privilege for doing so. Money raised from that could even go to public housing.
That kind of thinking is exactly what we need to be engaging in. If you reach the decision to make the kind of changes on that list, then there are a ton of details to work out. Maybe the thing to do is first make some commitments to principles like fairness, providing everyone with essentials, etc., then apply those principles to the myriad of issues in the details involved in a list like that.
As to the reduction of space, we live in a two-decker built in the 1880s. Except that it wasn’t just a two decker. There were rooms and a bathroom in the cellar along with a pretty creepy barred interior window. There were probably more than a dozen people living here a century ago. We were pretty proud just to get it up to 6 with 5 dogs at one point.
The stand-up attic in this old house with a gable catching the lake breeze is all rigged out with clotheslines. It must have been something of a challenge to take wet laundry up the stairway-around-a-corner, but that’s what they did. We have gotten ridiculously lazy using all this fossil fuel and filling the air with carbon, and with very grandiose ideas of what we “deserved” based on the pretty pictures of “happiness” the Madmen put in front of our noses. It’s sad to think that those harsh numbers would not have been nearly so bad 30 years ago when those in the know began to understand the problem.
Peggy Noonan naming technology in the form of Apple’s logo as the deadly apple of the second Genesis myth really surprised me. Maybe it’s becoming apparent how disastrous it is to have The Invisible Hand rule over technology and Science, including the science of psychology that’s being exploited by the social media companies.
Is it time for the UFO people to conduct an intervention? Calling Klaatu.
>”Is it time for the UFO people to conduct an intervention? Calling Klaatu.”
No need for them to get personal or endanger themselves by close interaction with our barely-evolved species. Just do a flyover and drop a few physics equations revealing, for instance, the secrets to cold fusion or anti-gravity.
But perhaps they know better than to enlighten us apes.
Climate goals will be easier to reach with 1/2 or 1/3 of the current population, which is likely where we’ll be well before 2050.
We already have 15MM with Long Covid and that figure will continue to grow rapidly for the forseeable future.
Given the reduced efficacy of antibiotics and a large populace with significantly impaired immune systems I expect we’ll see some impressive waves of death in the near future.
3MM dead in one ‘Flu season wouldn’t surprise me and it would put a LOT of strain on already weakened systems which could lead to cascading failures.
Another excellent post. Thank you!
Totally agree with your comments about ‘trashing the earth’, but what exactly has that to do with the radiation physics of the atmosphere?
On a related topic, replacing low entropy energy sources with high energy ones will have only one consequence, and its not a good one. But then people with a malthusian bent will no doubt applaud that.
Second time (I think) you or another physicist has made this comment. Me, I know nothing about radiation physics, whether in the atmosphere or not. Could you please explain, preferably with links to sources I could use for education? With thanks
Lift up the lowly, seriously downsize the privileged.
– Pay a livable wage so that only one household member needs to travel to work.
– Subsidize light-weight intra and inter-city mass transit.
– …
All good ideas — too bad those who rule have other plans.
I think the evidence so far is that all sides have been very reluctant to use their best equipment and ammo for fear it falls into their opponents hands. The Russians previously got their hands on the best Israeli armor piercing sabot rounds via Syria and used it in designing their latest tanks. From what I’ve seen, they’ve been content to focus on using older stock and keeping their latest equipment in reserve. I think this is also a reason why they like the cheap and simple Iranian drones – there is less for Nato to learn if they lose one.
But it all seems a bit irrelevant anyway – there have been only a handful of tank on tank battles witnessed – so neither side has needed to use its best ammo. Out of date rounds or high explosive (even for 105mm guns) are perfectly effective against troops, crude defenses and lighter vehicles. The big problem for Ukraine is that it seems that Nato is very short of this type of simple, effective round, having as usual spent too much money on the latest high tech versions.
Agree here, which the author should have gone into detail on. I note that the US has gotten their hands on an older Russian T-90 tank which appeared at a Louisiana rest-stop on it’s way to a testing range so the Russian will not want to have their best gear being captured and sent to the US. The author talked a lot about tank on tank battles but for some reason neglected to mention the Russian Lancet drones which have been taking out tanks and all sorts of other gear. Certainly those Lancet drones will turn Leopard 1 tanks to ash.
Two minds, one thought there, Kev.
On a different note, easy chair generals had some fun recently when a broken down truck left a T-90 sitting somewhere in USA for the locals to oogle and post about on social media.
It quickly became a point of ridicule directed at the Russian army, given the state of observed neglect.
What it brought to mind was how the venerable WW2 Sherman had a higher profile than its German or Soviet counterparts, thus being harder to hide and easier to hit, supposedly because US designers had to make sure the soldiers could sit comfortably inside it.
Here is a long article on that T-90 for any interested-
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/maestro-the-story-of-how-a-russian
Thanks.
And i forgot to mention that the interior shot reminded me of many a farm tractor i encountered growing up. Basically the priority was that the engine and such worked. How clean the cabin was after years of active use out in the field was of much lower importance.
That captured Russian T-90 was used by Ukraine for 6 months as evidenced by UA social media photos of the exact same tank (identified by the graffiti) over the past months.
Allegedly.
This is the sort of thing that concerns me about Simplicius….he ran a piece on US ISR capabilities that was clearly planted.
Germans derisively called Sherman tanks ‘Ronsons’ as per their slogan ‘Lights every time’.
The Shermans get a bad rap, but ultimately they were a very successful design and admired by the non-US soldiers who got to use them. Like most 1930’s designs, they were outgunned by the end of the war, but it didn’t really matter. They were cheap and simple, reliable and very effective when used correctly.
I think a lot of the idolization of the (very flawed) German tanks by the Anglosphere and equivalent talking down of the Sherman is the desire to talk up the dangers the soldiers faced every time a Panther or Tiger showed up. In reality, those were very flawed designs and nowhere near as useful in real combat situations as the Soviet equivalents, and the British tanks also proved very effective. The Shermans were the equal or better of the Panzer III and IVs that formed the majority of the German tank force. The strength of Panzer divisions was in their organisation and tactics, not their equipment.
They weren’t even that badly outgunned (potentially): the Sherman had plenty of space for upgrades and Sherman’s with 90mm or even 105mm tank guns (the latter a modified version of the gun mounted on French AMX30) stayed in service with armies around the world for decades after the war. The decision to stick mostly to the medium 75mm during the war was intentional and not necessarily too misguided. It was the better general purpose gun and German tank threat was relatively limited when US was at war in full force as there weren’t that many of them by then.
The British have admitted to already shipping depleted uranium shells to Ukraine for their challenger tanks. And added the rider that as the Ukrainians have free rein to use them as they see fit, Britain washes its hands of any liability for longer term consequences.
Seems to me the anglo saxons have already accepted the permanent loss of erstwhile Ukraine territories in the east and are happy for them to become a radioactive wasteland for generations to come.
I’m curious and more worried about the Striker and Bradley, their chain guns use DU to defeat armour, and I can just see the UKI_NAZI’s spraying the country side with them just to contaminate the soil of the Russian speakers. They were the worst sources of contamination, followed by the A10, in Iraq.
Striker and Bradley do not have DU rounds. I don’t think their muzzle velocity is high enough for it to make a difference so they just have API. Plus Bradley has TOW Missiles.
Sorry, but their chain guns did and still do use them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Fighting_Vehicle
Yes, I thought the article was very superficial, obsessed as it is with the arithmetic of whether certain APDS rounds can penetrate certain frontal armours. But not only, as you say, are tank vs. tank duels very rare in this conflict (and the Russians clearly want to keep it that way): even those duels depend on many other factors, such as target acquisition, accuracy of fire and general level of crew training to decide the outcome.
The Russian media claimed yesterday that T-14 Armata has recently seen combat in Ukraine. As in they have visited the front line and shot at the Ukrainian positions, they have not participated in attacks yet.
As far as I understand, the main “force multiplier” that comes with T-14 is it’s AESA ground surveillance radar and the data network it can form with T-90Ms and T-72B3Ms – it can detect and assign targets to these “lesser” tanks.
The T-14 crews have been training in the Donbass for four months now. Should we compare that to the few weeks in Poland the Ukranians are allowed to train?
We can probably assume that should a T-14 be stranded somewhere the Ukrainians could perhaps capture it, there will be a Su-34 carrying a couple of FAB-500 MPK to render it less than usable for intelligence purposes.
The running hypothesis is that, while T-14s will be rotated and get used (as command tanks) along with T-90Ms, the vast bulk of the T-14 will be held in reserve to deter/respond any hypothetical NATO intervention.
that T-90 that got shipped to Maryland is allegedly the pre-upgrade T-90 from circa 2004-5, not the latest T-90M.
So I was reflecting, this morning, as I often do at times throughout the day, of the disingenuous nature of liberal Democrats and why I came to despise them; Many reasons, but on the Pandemic, I realized this morning that we no longer “have the tools” and there is no longer any data for “personal risk assessment”, yet liberal Democrats made a big dog and pony show about how much the immunocompromised matter, you know, cancer survivors, citizens with genetic disorders, our elders, that sort of thing, and how we don’t hear anything about vulnerable people anymore.
Once the tools stopped working, we stopped hearing about tools, risk assessments, or any of it. Instead Biden gleefully declares the Pandemic over by ending the legal national emergency without protest.
These people are scum. Truly.
(Oh, and they rescinded life saving food aid for millions of Americans, including a ton of children, with nary a word said. We could all go on at length, no doubt, about other liberal Democrat transgressions.)
Conservatives think people can go F themselves; At least they’re honest. I can respect that, even if it’s evil. Liberal Democrats are a whole other level of sickness.
Happy Wednesday!
Not that you are being too harsh, but Party B, the other side of that same single alloy-filled tin coin, have not suggested or brought forth programs or policies that would be of, by, and for the people(tm).
Remember, Trump and the R congress (Team McConnell gave the Pentagon $55 Billion more than they requested. And ‘they’ are constantly looking to cut taxes and cut social spending.
We really need a New Direction Party . RFK Jr. runs as a Dem. Pragmatic?
The Bernie Trap? Night of the long knives? Iowa Redux?
I won’t contest your statement that party “B” has historically been relentless in its effort to cut benefits for the poor and Trump’s pre-pandemic budgets were more of the same but…
McConnell gave the Pentagon more than Trump asked for, not more than “they” asked for: https://www.ky3.com/content/news/Congress-military-budget-is-even-bigger-than-Trump-asked—434740203.html
And Trump’s Cares Act reduced poverty levels: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/poverty-america-2021-covid-pandemic/
Biden rescinded the child tax credit and cut 32 million from SNAP benefits.
Something I could really get excited about would be Kennedy running as a Democrat only until such time as he can build a dossier on the myriad ways they have RF’ed him. At which point he makes a dirty break and runs against the Party, itself. He would barely have to mention Trump at all until the primaries are over.
That could be a really thrilling campaign.
Jason,
DemRats removed eligibility for the child tax credit for 17-year olds just this past year. Now they owe me $2600.
Sharp sell-off in First Republic shares causes alarm in Washington FT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like the beat, beat, beat of Signature & Silicon
When the shadowy banks fall
Like the tick, tick-tock of the stately clock
As it stands up against the wall
Like the beat, beat, beat of Signature & Silicon
When the shadowy banks fall
Like the tick, tick-tock of the stately clock
As it stands up against the wall
Like the drip, drip, drip of how their money drops
When the online withdrawals go through
So a voice within me keeps repeating what should I do?
Night and day, you are the one
Only you beneath the moon and under the sun
Whether near to me or far
It’s no matter money where you are
I think of you
Night and day, day and night, why is it so
That this longing for you follows wherever I go?
In the roaring bubble’s boom
In the silence of my lonely room
I think of you
Night and day, night and day
Under the hide of me
There’s an oh, such a hungry yearning, burning inside of me
And its torment won’t be through
‘Til you let me spend my life thinking of what to do with you
Day and night, night and day
This torment would never be through
‘Til you let me stop spending my life chasing after you
Day and night, night and day
Day and night, night and day
Day and night, night and day
Day and night, day and night
Day and night, night and day
Night and Day, performed by Frank Sinatra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TppblXy_JGM
But, I thought it was “contained?”
…only contained to 60/60/24/7/12
Given that the average PE ratio for the S&P 500 is currently 22, First Republic’s PE of 1—yes, 1—looks like a once-in-a-lifetime bargain. If I were Jim Cramer I’d be saying, “It’s a screaming BUY!” /sarc
I also hear that Bed, Bath, and Beyond’d PE is quite low as well.
Just make sure you do your own diligence … /s
Adding a bonus market data highlight, the dividend yield is also a screaming signal of something horribly gone wrong. That dividend per share of $1.08 is more of a memory of their recent, high living past.
Look out below for the FRC shareholder lawsuits to come!! \sarc
So, it sounds like Zelensky finally got his phone call from Xi, the waiting is the hardest part, as Tom Petty said:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/26/ukraine-war-live-updates-latest-news-on-russia-and-the-war-in-ukraine.html
Notably, Xi is not going to debase himself by visiting Kiev, he only said he would send some “special representative” to talk peace with all parties; my readout of that is it was a not-so-subtle diss of the big Z.
So far this seems underreported; I found the story almost by accident when looking up bond yields on CNBC’s website. No coverage that I can tell in the usual propaganda mouthpiece sites- WaPo, NYT, nor the usual assortment of pro-Ukrainian propaganda sites like Business Insider or the Ukrainian Pravda.
Hopefully, Yves will lend her analysis here. Not to mention the talents like Mercouris, Big Serge, and Simplicius the Thinker.
Readout from the Rybar Telegram channel:
Ve-ry in-ter-est-ing.
Peanut gallery nutshell: The revanchist neocon imperial wet dream will not end with the breakup of Russia into feuding, compliantly neoliberal Baltic-size states, and Ukraine and Poland will not emerge as swaggering warlords of a Rumsfeldian New Europe. The U.S. gambit failed; bleeding Russia is a second-best sub-in. When that runs its course, Ukraine will be left a smoking, depopulated ruin, a tar baby the West will want no part of. Other arrangements will need to be made. In what in the U.S. is the dead language of diplomacy, Xi the deep-pocketed rich uncle suggests a way out the Ukrainians can understand: money, money, and more money. Make nice and avert the fate at the terminus of the West’s primrose path.
Quite a carrot. Will the West, which quashed a quick settlement in Istanbul, beat down, Punch style, any Judy impertinent enough to reach for it? Surely not! But the number of backs Zelensky will have to watch would multiply as if in facing dressing room mirrors.
Ukraine is also a nifty transit point for Belt and Road getting to Europe.
I wonder if the U.S. Intel was eavesdropping on the call…just kidding.
A good point … might be why Xi punted on it for 400 days.
Most of the usual suspects are now reporting on the call. They don’t seem to know what to do about it; on the one hand, the fact that the unrequited love affair has finally been consummated seems to be spun as “good” news for team Europe, on the other hand, it is clear that Xi gave big Z a message – peace talks now, or go take a hike.
I doubt a follow-up date is happening.
The use of the words “all parties” is fascinating. So there will be several delegates, and they will be meeting others, not just the government. Logically, the other interlocutors would be the leaders of the Russophone oblasts. The Chinese are super-careful with the nuances of their messaging, and there’s a clear hint of future Chinese policy here.
There is a readout from the Chinese side on MoA. Seems very much like a diplomatic beatdown of Europe and the US.
This seems significant, and a subtle diss of the Europeans:
“Now that rational thinking and voices are increasing, all parties should seize the opportunity to accumulate favorable conditions for a political solution to the crisis. We hope that all parties will reflect deeply on the crisis in Ukraine and, through dialogue, seek a common way for the long-term stability of Europe. China will insist on urging peace and promoting talks, and make its own efforts to stop the war and ceasefire and restore peace as soon as possible”
Aside – I’m listening to Mercouris from yesterday, and he makes the observation that most of the latest rounds of equipment sent to Ukraine are duds, re-treads, or outright garbage that is just being sent for virtue-signaling. The MiGs from Slovakia may have been shipped in pieces!
This seems to be the full GT version. Some fascinating nuances here. China is sending one of (not several as in earlier translations) its top people to Ukraine and other countries. So this is the kind of regional tour that we are used to the US doing, with calls for dialogue and a political settlement. The “other countries” would presumably include the UK, France and Germany, and it will be interesting to see who receives the delegate and who says what. I get the slight impression that the US is not on the list of countries to be visited, but that will be fascinating to see. This is China with some deft political footwork carving out a new place for itself in the world.
Another big clue is how the call happened abruptly, with no pre-call theatrics from the big Z.
If Xi had agreed to talk in advance, surely the Big Z would have been boasting about it like he’d just won a dream date with Taylor Swift. All the usual suspects would have been running it as a headline – “Xi to meet Z!!! ”
Instead, we got tight OpSec and no lead-in from the Mighty Wurlitzer, in fact, they had to scurry to cover it after the fact, getting scooped by the CNBC crowd.
This was an ultimatum delivered by Xi, I suspect.
In the end, Europe needs to remember that it is land locked to both Russia and China while USA is off beyond the Atlantic.
It is quite possible for the Eurasian continent to develop sustainable communications and trade networks that do not depend on petroleum resources with enough effort. But that requires thinking beyond Pax Americana.
I wonder how this fits in with what was seen as a faux pas (or was it?) by Ambassador Lu Shaye about the status of the post Soviet republics?
I think my previous comment got eaten by the Internetz, this seems significant:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/26/ukraine-war-live-updates-latest-news-on-russia-and-the-war-in-ukraine.html
Sure, he did … sounds like XI gave him nothing but a “special representative” to visit Kiev at some future date to talk peace.
Never mind; cloudflare probably caching. I apologize for the double post.
This week John Oliver did a nice program about the current state of cryptocurrencies, it’s worth watching for a few laughs – https://youtu.be/o7zazuy_UfI
Nothing will surprise NC readers, but it’s an entertaining synthesis of this clusterf— industry
I saw it…good for many laughs
Ah, numismatricks!
…and yet somehow Bitcoin is just under $30k now
yes, and FTX may re-open while its FTT token doubles in price: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/ftx-crypto-exchange-reboot-sam-bankman-fried-reopen-collapse-ftt-2023-4
Norfolk Southern reports $387 million charge for the first quarter after East Palestine derailment
$387M is real money. I wonder what is bundled into that amount?
Norfolk Southern still reported income in Q1 2023 of $711 million (after accounting for that charge).
And in the prior quarter, they reported $1.2 billion of income (on revenues of $3.2 billion). So it’s not like they’re searching between the sofa cushions to pay for the charge (and it’s only a projection of their expenses, not actual cash out the door).
While $327m is real money to most of us, I’d suggest it’s almost a rounding error to them, and probably insufficient to properly compensate the affected people of East Palestine, let alone design and implement solutions to prevent future problems.
‘Review suggests fecal transplant more effective than antibiotics for recurrent C diff’
I’d like to point out here, since it isn’t stated in the article, that C diff is always present in our gut microbiota (and several other bad actors)… it’s a matter of percentage. When conditions favor an overgrowth of C diff, you’re in trouble. Interesting that the patient’s ages ranged from 52 to 73.
Prepare yourselves, I’m about to overshare (again)… yesterday I invited Husband into the bathroom post-BM for a courtesy sniff. He obliged. I’d asked him if he could smell anything, reasonably sure of his answer and I was right, he couldn’t smell anything. It had occurred to me finally these last two weeks that something was up, my BM’s no long stunk. (No, I’m not bragging or pulling your leg.) My first thought was ‘Covid?!’, but no, I can smell everything else. I’ve spent the last two years trying to change the balance of bacteria in my gut and it seems I’ve arrived… somewhere… but I can find nothing to confirm where that is… so I asked Google.
Naturally, I was hardly the first to ask ‘what does it mean if your poop doesn’t stink?’. Google completed the question before I stopped typing. Instead Google offered dozens of articles on poop analysis useful to those trying to self-diagnose a health problem. Internet reams of info on possible pathology, silence on wellness or maybe just some sort of bacterial balance (fingers crossed!) and whatever that may portend.
What I’m wondering is how they’re determining ‘healthy donor bacteria’ for those procedures? The absence and/or presence of what? There’s a lot of suffering, death, and money riding on getting the balance right. Who are the ideal candidates for donation? (No, I don’t think it’s me, too old.) Is there another study or studies where they’re gathering information on those folks and how we might achieve the same ‘healthy donor’ state without being at death’s door and the invasive, expensive procedure? ‘Not sick’, as I’ve pointed out here several times, is not the same as ‘healthy’, it’s just ‘sub-clinical’.
Pretty sure in a healthy gut, poop is supposed to stink no matter who you are, where you live, or what you eat. Next medical appointment is in June. I’m going to put this story on the agenda just to watch her response when I tell her my poop no long stinks. That should be fun. Extra points if she manages to maintain her professional composure.
When I gave up processed foods, the smells changed radically. Without grain in my diet, flatulence disappeared almost entirely but the most stunning change was that when I poop, the smells now range from floral to fruity, as if a Catholic saint had just died.
I think my new diet is slowly rapturing me…
Funny! BM’s like a warm hug from above and over way too soon. Have you tried sharing that personal tidbit with others in RL?
I’m passing up on processed foods to keep my blood glucose down. This has been so effective I’m almost within the ‘normal range‘… that I think is a little unreasonable for someone over 60 but I have nothing to back that up with other than we’re not that ideal control group on which values are set, especially for women.
You realize of course that Bill Clinton is also in this ‘poo don’t stink’ club, all the more so when he went from vegetarian to vegan. Ewww, maybe Hitler too… that just doesn’t seem fair.
I am not a vegetarian!
You should know that I found through my experience that getting almost all the processed food out of your diet is not even close to being the same as getting it all out of your system. Within a couple months of going 100% nonprocessed I started seeing startling improvements in my health. Anecdotal but all my anecdotes consistently revolve around improvements to my health achieved by eliminating crap from my diet.
Much can be learned from poop issues……
Does it float ( good ) – Does it sink ( bad)?
Are you constantly having to unstop your toilet ( very bad)?
Are your stools painful to pass?
Are they very dark but not black ( excellent) or are they much lighter ( bad)….
Do they have a smell that takes a while to clear ( excellent) – not smell much at all ( not a good sign).
Do you have accidents a lot? How often do you have smearing of your underwear ( yet another bad sign)?
I know it sounds very gross – but these questions are actually very important – and are prognostic in so many ways.
The great underappreciated and very misunderstood aspect of our health is the gut microflora. These quick questions above are a very easy way to get a quick snapshot. I can figure out health pretty easily just by asking the above…..no need for thousands of dollars of testing.
It is astounding the affect that so many of our drugs have on this entire system. And not just drugs. Things like artificial sweeteners of any kind are just a disaster for this entire elaborate ecosystem.
We are learning more and more every day how important this is for all kinds of things going on in our bodies. C diff is just one example. It is present in every one of us. But it is maintained in check by the ecological environment of the thousands of other organisms until something disrupts it. Then all hell breaks loose – and the best answer may NOT be to introduce more antibiotics to kill more bacteria.
We have so much to learn.
It possibly says more about the nature of my memory than anything else, but I’ve a clear memory of seeing a TV show as a child about Jonathon Swift, and how it was discovered that he had anonymously published what may have been one of the first scientific papers on poop. The paper had noted the physical difference between poop of the rich, with their diets of meat and fancy goods, and the poor, with their grain and root veg gruels – the latter being much healthier, as noted by Swift (who of course also noted the potential nutritional value of babies for the rich).
I’ve searched online and in biographies of Swift and I’ve never found any mention of this again, which makes me think that somehow my brain has mixed up two different stories, or that somehow this is deemed something not worth writing about whenever Swift is the topic – he became more famous for his work on mental illnesses (the hospital he founded is still active).
‘The potential nutritional value of babies for the rich’.. was that ‘meat’, ‘fancy foods’ or both? ;-)
It was a Modest Proposal.
Ah, you weren’t being ironic, Swift was. Interesting read, thank you.
I thought that only their blood is valuable…
He has quite a few scatological jokes in Gulliver’s Travels, one entirely defining a country to which he travels. I think it was the Houyhnhnm, the half human, half horse people who determined one’s character from the texture and quality of their BMs.
I think it was definitely a hyper focus, as they say in modern neurodiverse parlance.
>Does it float ( good ) – Does it sink ( bad)?
I was told the opposite – floating was bad and sinking was good. Is there a lot of debate about this topic? Probably not, but I agree that poop issues are important and the older I get the more I’ve paid attention to it.
This is very important actually. If you are eating enough fiber in your diet – especially soluble fiber found in berries, some grain, nuts, avocados, your flora will make some gas out of this that will become entwined in the stool. Also, since many kinds of fiber tend to float, just the fiber alone will tend to make your stool float. Thus, it will become buoyant in the water and float. This is in general a good thing.
If however, you are eating a lot of grease and processed food, or are nuking your beneficial flora with chemicals, this process will not occur and the gas will not be there and the stool will sink. Sinking stool is also a sign that you are not eating enough fiber of any kind.
This must be contrasted with another phenomenon – that gets mixed up all the time. If you are seeing fat rings or fat particles floating – or what appears to be vegetable oil – that is never good – this is a concerning sign that something is happening for you not to absorb fat – usually the pancreas. This particular kind of floating is not good at all.
Wouldn’t floating or sinking depend on the kind of toilet, it’s shape, and the amount of water in it, as well as the shape and size of the stool itself? How does modern plumbing figure in to ‘normal’?
Trial by ordeal for poo.
Thanks for the response. I am definitely not eating a lot of grease and processed food and I am eating a lot of fiber, so I have no explanation for what would probably be too TMI for this audience.
Cheers!
Indeed, how and with whom one is pooh compatible is a question that needs to be asked and answered before such implants proceed. Pooh compatibility matters!
My attempt at scatological humor is not meant to undermine your important comment and I appreciate your insightful questions.
Musical Interlude: “House At Pooh Corner”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKNMZ6GIVDU
The Circle is unbroken.
>”…poop is supposed to stink…”
Thanks for that (I think). But you did remind me that, as far as that goes, I was ahead of my time or at least in accordance with biological and medical truth. Many years ago my father would excoriate me (with some profanity) for the “fragrance” of my “effluvia”. I would just remind him that they if they smelled like roses I would see a doctor.
A slightly-related question but something I’ve occasionally wondered about: Why? Why does our poop stink? What is the evolutionary advantage of that? How does that encourage reproduction? Wouldn’t the scent of roses be better?
I was being facetious, Mildred, but read Mark’s comment. There is a club out there; the membership is small and there’s little conversation around how to get in and what the benefits are to ‘paying your dues’, at least not in poo terms. I’m hoping to avoid things like using insulin, and another MRSA infection. I don’t want to live forever, just spend less of it sick and home bound.
We’re assuming of course that poop has always stunk. What we think of as normal may be only within our own lifetimes. (Mark’s comment again.)
Did your Dad actually use the word “effluvia”?
Answers to questions: https://www.everydayhealth.com/digestive-health/abnormal-stool.aspx
I read Mark’s comment but I’m not so sure about his olfactory sense. “Floral to fruity”…hmm. Might smell like that to him but to others? Maybe he’s one of those people who thinks his sh*t doesn’t stink. ;) I will not comment on my own, except to say that I eat a healthy, high-fiber, low-protein, low-fat diet yet never have noticed aromas of fruits or flowers.
Sorry I missed your facetiousness but what I wrote stands nonetheless. And no, my father did not use the word “effluvia”. He always inclined to simple profanity but in the interest of decency I decided to translate his outbursts into euphemisms.
All the best to you!
I am a recovering plumber and I am here to testify that everyone’s effluvia stinks. There are good reasons why commercial code requires exhaust fans in public “facilities.”
At home we tend to keep the bathroom window open. It promotes domestic tranquility, just like in the Preamble to the Constitution of those traitorous American Colonists.
Preamble of Declaration of Independence: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/Preamble%20to%20The%20Declaration%20of%20Independence.pdf
Preamble to Constitution: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/preamble
A little late in following up but I was being facetious, however only mildly. What you will notice when you clean up your diet is that your poop will smell more like what you eat so if you have raisins in your diet…
As for how it smells to others, the worst stinks aren’t the awful ones (imo). The worst smells are the ones that almost smell good.
Re Covid and ACE2
Back in the spring of 2020 several peer reviewed papers emerged, mainly from Italy, about linkage between Statins and incidence of covid. They were rapidly squashed, and generally ignored except by some people who rapidly became ‘conspiracy theorists’.
Now the link re-emerges, no doubt to get ignored again. Far too much money in ramming statins down everyone’s throats.
” An alarming retraction rate for scientific publications on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) “.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/08989621.2020.1782203
Published online: 23 Jun 2020
I’ll suggest a lot has happened since then. Not enough time for long-Covid to to be very significant at the time of publication.
NY Post
What’s the expression? Can’t make this sh*t up?
Clearly we are all living in an alternative universe which will end when we, as in one of those movie sequences, wake up and realize it was all a bad dream.
Such a lovely family those bidens. We, here in america, are so lucky to have the paterfamilias of a family with such a strong moral compass as our supreme leader.
Vote blue, no matter who. And they do mean no matter.
MICHAEL: How long do you think it’ll be before I can come back?
SONNY: At least a year, Mike.
Nice reference!
“…and their 3-year-old son, Beau, …”
What a cruel and strange thing to do to your own kid! Name him after someone who was best known for having died of brain cancer (sob!)? I guess one could always just tell him to stay away from burn pits, but the need to do so could have been so easily averted.
That is one very odd family.
“Fox Has a Secret ‘Oppo File’ to Keep Tucker Carlson in Check, Sources Say”
In the old days, they called this a ‘dirt file’. But if Fox used it, could Carlson not then sue Fox and say that they encouraged a hostile workplace – and site the use of such a file a proof? Would Fox really want this Irena Briganti on the stand under oath and have former employees give proof about her actions?
Or as the chattering ones on social media like to call it, kompromat.
“Pentagon No. 2 says US is drawing lessons from Ukraine as it eyes possible China combat”
Yeah, I can guess what some of those lessons will be like-
Lesson 1: Pump in as many weapons as possible without any accountability. Congress will provide cover.
Lesson 2: Sign as many MIC contracts from your future employers as possible for more weapons.
Lesson 3: Prepare as many sanctions as possible – unless it is something that effects the US economy.
Lesson 4: If things blow up in your face, then double or even triple down.
Lesson 5: No negotiations. Keep on provoking your adversary and cross their red lines.
Lesson 6: Never have a reverse gear.
Lesson 7: Fail. Spectacularly.
MIC-IMATT considers it a success, a quick ending to the war their worst out come.
Julian Assange speaking in 2011: “The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war”
Lesson 1: profit hugely from gun running to whoever can pay, use Ukr as the middle man. / ;)
re: Interesting, Project Osprey was a genetic engineering project to breed super-soldiers in Richard Morgan’s Thirteen (2008).
Are the current military and spooks leadership the kind of kids who grew up watching and reading dark sci-fi fiction and identify with the bad guys, thinking “oooh, that would be soooo cool!” ? From “The Terminator” movies in the 1980’s to now?
The spill mention elsewhere on NC got me thinking about the Resident Evil series of games…
I always expected TH1RTE3N (aka Blackman) to be picked up as a movie project, especially with the success of Altered Carbon. It is a great introduction to Richard K. Morgan as it is a stand alone novel. One and done. Plug – Just starting the Adam Sternbergh Spademan series Shovelready and Near Enemy. A blurb on the cover of Shovelready said it reminded the reviewer of Snowcrash. A little more noir I think.
Paper Airplane Designed by Boeing Engineers Breaks World Record–Nearly Flying Length of Football Field Good News Network
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My mom bought me a book on paper airplanes by Ninomiya in the late 60’s, and I went to town building em’.
I later made the much bigger step to balsa wood gliders with a rubber band powered propeller, so elegant of an engine and once upon a time at Dodger Stadium one of my fleet almost made it to first base from Uecker seats
Given your many wisdoms, I am complimented to have shared youthful enthusiasm for toy airplanes and coins. Real planes, on the other hand, scare the hell out of me and the only reason my coin collection has any numismatic value is that it is very old.
Never combined the 2 hobbies though, ha ha
I popped into a friend’s coin store in LA to chat about goings on, and he showed me a tray that had the latest purchases he’d made from the public, and today’s senior citizens don’t really have much-he was relating, compared to 65 year olds 25 years ago.
Maybe everything on the tray was worth $45, but then again why would a present-day 65 year old have anything to sell?
Silver went away in coinage when they were 6 and nothing since then is worth anything over face value for the most part.
When I was in school there was a regulation setting the standard for election posters on lamposts – from memory they had to be a particular type of stiff card, around 4 by 2 feet. We 12 years olds realized quickly that they made amazing paper airplanes – just thin enough that they could be folded, but rigid enough to have excellent aerodynamic qualities. We cut down plenty of them and launched them from the upper floor of our school, and I’m sure many went far more than a football field length – many exited the school grounds entirely. In true apolitical style we didn’t discriminate between candidates, they all suffered the same fate.
Like the Wright Brothers, you had help (upper floor launching as opposed to same level launching) so doesn’t really count for validation purposes.
I knew the US Navy was lying about their aircraft being capable of flight. ;-)
The first Wright Flier was severely underpowered and probably could not have flow anywhere else and only on the barometric points of that day, but the 2nd Wright Flier not only could, but did make un-assisted take-off. It just was smart not to do so as take-off even today is the most hazardous time of any flight. However, I understand the appeal to non-professional pilots, it’s sort of like comradery of belonging to the Moon Landings Were Faked community.
I couldn’t find a decent Youtube of the Hardy Kruger/James Stewart version, so this will have to do: Video.
Finally, some “good news” for Boeing. Even if it had to come from a site called “Good News Network” and is therefore immediately suspect.
Pardon my cynicism. How can setting a record for flying a paper airplane possibly be called Good News? Aren’t paper airplanes old “technology”, going back to most readers’ high-school days, if not centuries or millennia? What a waste of the talents of all those youthful engineers.
I despair when I see Boeing’s youngest and brightest devoting their time to flying paper airplanes and attempting to break records with them. Boeing is having trouble enough producing safe planes on time without assembly-line glitches.
Yet its wunderkind, raised on video games, internet likes and dislikes, and the instant gratification thereof, would waste its time building planes out of paper rather than laboring long hours to design an aluminum one that can actually fly.
I will apologize for and retract this comment if we all end up flying in paper planes.
Bolton arrived for a weeklong visit in Taiwan today. Saw Bolton arrival footage (with lots of well dressed young Taiwanese guys around him) when wife was watching Taiwan news tonight. Hmmm…..
(Blood pressure rising … must remember to breathe)
Assuming you’re referring to John Bolton, he’s a civilian now, what business does he have there other than stirring up trouble? For goodness sake, I sure hope the Biden admin hasn’t brought him onboard, with a dotted-line connection or some other devilry.
Victoria Nuland is over subscribed and needed an assistant?
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
Trouble is his middle name.
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Bolton was invited by two pro-Taiwanese independence non-governmental organizations, the World Taiwanese Congress (WTC) and Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA), to speak at the WTC’s annual meeting on Saturday and FAPA’s 40th anniversary banquet on Monday.
Bolton is to deliver a speech titled “Maintaining long-term peace and security for Taiwan” at the WTC’s Global Taiwan National Affairs Symposium, an annual meeting focused on discussing Taiwan’s future…
At the FAPA banquet, Bolton is expected to meet with President Tsai Ing-wen, Vice President William Lai, and Robert Tsao, founder of contract chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp, the association’s office in Taipei said.
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https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/04/26/2003798641
US MIC-IMATT is therefore indirectly funding his trip. Those two organs are firewalls against any Lockhead Scandal type affair.
Yes, sure: John Bolton, “mustache”. Sweetheart (Taiwanese) asked who is that guy ? Took some effort to find at (online) English language newspapers about it. Going to give two speeches……….and behind the curtain, NC readers will suspect and know. Thanks Yves, Lambert, Connor et al for the best site on the web !
Apologies. Congress-person, Marco Rubio. Not Senator.
“Fecal transplant” sounds, well, icky
Any candidates for a better name?
Seems to be a major tool for restoring microbiome health however marketing could use improvement
“microbiome massage”?
Thanks for the Taibbi links today.
5th gen warfare? Seems like it.
The line in Lowenthal’s piece about turning this around requiring a change in the current economic models makes sense. That reminds me of this 6 year old Philip Mirowski lecture. The “free” market worship now controls far too much. it’s winners are determined that nothing changes. Speech must be silenced to save the “free” market. My 2 cents.
Philip Mirowski: Hell is Truth Seen Too Late
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBB4POvcH18
“A Ukrainian kamikaze drone that crashed northeast of Moscow was apparently aimed at none other than Russian dictator Vladimir Putin himself. This emerges from the letter of confession of a Ukrainian activist group, which coincides with BILD research on the possible planned crime process.”
https://www.bild.de/video/clip/politik/bild-lagezentrum-ukraine-wollte-putin-mit-17-kilo-sprengstoff-toeten-83697878.bild.html?t_ref=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F
Das Bild is a tabloid, so take it with a grain. Nonetheless, it may be time for those decision-making centers….
Text link:
https://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/politik-ausland/attentat-auf-kreml-diktator-scheitert-knapp-17-kilo-sprengstoff-sollten-putin-to-83699094.bild.html
In my opinion, the usual FUD/OSINT stuff. Someone was told something by some anonymous sources (voices in their head?), someone wrote on Twitter, yada-yada. The part about “painting lawns green” is just hilariously boring. (It’s a hoary urban legend I’ve heard from some Russians.)
Focus has added up some spice by throwing in Putin’s body doubles. The stuff they’re smoking, is it even legal? /s
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Zuletzt mehrten sich Gerüchte, dass Putin mittlerweile vor allem Doppelgänger zu seinen Auswärtsterminen schickt.
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https://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/ukraine-update-am-27-april-neue-details-zu-angeblichem-anschlag-auf-putin-kommen-ans-licht_id_72885571.html
don’t know if this has been posted yet, but it looks like bill clintons crack economics team is calling for a serious recession. since we are basically in a slow motion depression, the results of the economic policies of these towering mental midgets will be a 1929 scenario all over again.
https://www.barrons.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-042623/card/larry-summers-economic-downturn-needed-to-break-inflation-AN4gG2Y6Z2JregVZLeqi?siteid=yhoof2
Initial thoughts on the paper that is looking at the mechanism of vascular damage as a result of SARS-Covid-19. This paper is trying to get a handle on the biochemical mechanism that leads microvascular pathology. It requires the binding of the spike protein to the ACE2 receptor. Of course the spike protein’s infectivity was greatly enhanced with the insertion of the furin cleavage site to enhance the virulence of the virus.
This information should be combined with the results of histological studies of human tissues of both living and diseased patients. He documented the novel vascular pathologies in the tissues of both living and deceased patient with long covid and showed that it was caused by the vaccine and not ongoing viral infection. In these patients, spike protein is found circulating in the blood. The area where the tissues with the pathology were areas where an accumulation of spike proteins was observed. All organs in the bodies of these individuals were programed to make spike protein. The mRNA vaccine was designed to use muscle cells in the area of the injection site to make the spike protein which then results in an immune response. Then after a short time, the spike protein would disappear. However in these unfortunate individuals, the endothelia layer of blood vessels of all their organs have been programed to continually make spike protein. Now it is being shown that the binding of the spike protein to the ACE2 receptor, shown to be present on the epithelia cells of blood vessels, initiates a biochemical pathway that causes the observed pathology. It should be emphasized that the vaccine, is solely responsible for these novel pathologies. Interestingly enough, Dr. Campbell, thought that adverse affects were caused when the vaccine is injected into a blood vessel which he assumed would cause the endothelia layer to be programed to make the spike protein resulting in vascular damage. However, it now appears that injection into a blood vessels is not the only requirement for these catastrophic outcomes.
Fox Has a Secret ‘Oppo File’ to Keep Tucker Carlson in Check, Sources Say
The lawsuit details repeated instances of misogynist behavior at the network, including frequent lewd and sexual discussions of female guests and public figures. Grossberg “continued to endure a work environment that subjugates women based on vile sexist stereotypes, typecasts religious minorities and belittles their traditions, and demonstrates little to no regard for those suffering from mental illness.”
OMG, if Carlson tries to turn on FOX, it will be publicly revealed that he is secretly an aging Dartmouth frat boy. It will completely destroy him.