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Alert reader diptherio was the first to report a typo in the Naked Capitalism Songbook:
That means will we have to issue a new, corrected edition, which will turn to current edition into a collector’s item. So download your copy today!
Can We Talk to Whales? Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker. Interesting, but also a classic in a distinctively New Yorker genre: The writer, accompanied by a “native guide,” seeks an elusive animal in an untamed environment — but fails in the quest.
The oracle problem and the future of DeFi (PDF) Bank of International Settlements. “There is little clarity on legal recourse if a smart contract were triggered by false information (BIS (2022)), especially in jurisdictions where crypto activities are not regulated or forbidden.” Well, it’s not as if we have technology that generates false information at scale. Oh, wait….
Climate
The Race to Drill America’s Longest Oil and Gas Wells WSJ
Time to target fossil fuel demand, not supply Reuters
British Columbia’s fire crisis arrived decades earlier than forecast Wildfire Today
How Scientists Discovered the Staggering Complexity of Human Evolution Scientific American
Scientists say they have pinpointed the moment humanity almost went extinct CNN. “1,280 reproducing individuals” 900,000 years ago.
#COVID19
Quantity of SARS-CoV-2 RNA copies exhaled per minute during natural breathing over the course of COVID-19 infection (preprint). Important[1]. From the Abstract: “Here, we collected exhaled breath specimens from COVID-19 patients and used RTq-PCR to show that numbers[2] of exhaled SARS-CoV-2 RNA copies during COVID-19 infection do not decrease significantly until day 8[3] from symptom-onset. COVID-19-positive participants exhaled an average of 80[4] SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA copies per minute during the first 8 days of infection, with significant variability both between and within individuals, including spikes over 800[5] copies a minute in some patients.” And from the Discussion: “Levels of exhaled viral RNA did not differ across age, sex, time of day, vaccination status or viral variant[6].”
NOTES: [1] It’s telling that this study is from Northwestern, a fine school, but not Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, etc. [2] These numbers, bad as they are, seem conservative. [3] So the CDC’s 5-day isolation guidance promotes infection. [4] Do the math with X number of people in a 3-Cs space. I am not sure if an “RNA copy” is a virion (the complete, infective form of the virus). One estimate of the minimum quantity of virions needed for an infectious dose of SARS-CoV-2 is 300-2000. So again, do the math. [5] 800 sounds like a superspreader. [6] Therefore, non-pharmaceutical interventions work consistently over time, unlike vax and treatments, which must be tinkered with constantly (albeit profitably).
Performance of Rapid Antigen Tests to Detect Symptomatic and Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection : A Prospective Cohort Study Annals of Internal Medicine. From the Abstract: “The performance of Ag-RDTs [Rapid Antigen Tests, RATs] was optimized when asymptomatic participants tested 3 times at 48-hour intervals and when symptomatic participants tested 2 times separated by 48 hours.”
Cognitive ability, health policy, and the dynamics of COVID-19 vaccination Journal of Health Economics. From the Abstract: “We examine the relationship between cognitive ability and prompt COVID-19 vaccination using individual-level data on more than 700,000 individuals in Sweden. We find a strong positive association between cognitive ability and swift vaccination, which remains even after controlling for confounding variables with a twin-design. The results suggest that the complexity of the vaccination decision may make it difficult for individuals with lower cognitive abilities to understand the benefits of vaccination. Consistent with this, we show that simplifying the vaccination decision through pre-booked vaccination appointments alleviates almost all of the inequality in vaccination behavior.” PMCs do love their homework. On pre-booking:
Uppsala was the only health care region in Sweden to send out letters with pre-booked vaccination appointments to its residents aged 50 and above. Recipients could still choose not to take the vaccine by canceling the appointment or simply not showing up (both free of charge). The letter could thus be seen as a nudge turning the vaccination program from an opt-in into an opt-out program. Pre-booked appointments simplify the vaccination decision, as it signals that it is “good” to take the vaccine while also removing any barriers associated with booking an appointment.
So, not a mandate, a nudge.
More COVID-19 studies suggest BA.2.86 may be less immune-evasive than feared Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
Column: COVID lockdowns saved millions of lives — so of course Ron DeSantis is angry about them Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times. Good for Hiltzik, standing up to GBD nonsense.
Amid another rise in cases, Covid’s new normal has set in Helen Branswell, STAT. Note lack of agency.
‘Gross negligence’: Judge gives go-ahead to COVID-deaths lawsuit against Ontario National Post
China?
Commentary: Reading the chess move of Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro chip breakthrough in US-China tech war Channel News Asia
The China-Apple Cold War Heats Up Daring Fireball
Xi Jinping urges China’s northeastern breadbasket to step up efforts to overhaul agriculture and industry South China Morning Post
More Chinese seek bargains at Beijing market as confidence in economy wanes Reuters
Myanmar
Myanmar militia repatriates 1,200 China nationals allegedly involved in online scams Channel News Asia
G20
Inside the G20’s scramble to get consensus on the war in Ukraine Politico
Western nations accept ‘climbdown’ on Ukraine to salvage G20’s relevance FT
Biden finds himself on the defensive after G20 leaders fail to rally around Ukraine USA Today
G20 Summit: What India showed the world — and what it hid Al Jazeera
Israel ‘central junction’ in US-led transport corridor: Netanyahu Anadolu Agency. Yes, the stop before Chinese-owned Piraeus is Haifa.
Africa
Moroccans sleep in the streets for 3rd night following an earthquake that took more than 2,100 lives AP
European Disunion
Writing Like a Partisan The New Enquiry
Dear Old Blighty
‘Nothing works anymore’: Tories accused of having ‘broken Britain’ with public services ‘in crisis’ Sky News. That’s only the TUC. What does the PLP think?
New Not-So-Cold War
Senior US general believes weather leaves Ukraine 30-45 days for active offensive Ukrainska Pravda
Ukraine’s counter-offensive is stalling. The West must prepare for humiliation The Telegraph (!). We can’t say we weren’t warned:
The first one is George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy. As soon as 1998 he warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia". pic.twitter.com/ft0gdSZR2N
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) September 10, 2023
This is a very long thread.
Ukraine’s Defence Forces liberate 1.5 more square kilometres near Robotyne, Zaporizhzhia Oblast Ukrainska Pravda, Or 1.5e+10 centimeters. That’s a lot! Commentary:
The Russian withdrawals from Kharkov and right-bank Kherson last year – and make no mistake, they were deliberate and considered withdrawals – were clearly conducted to consolidate the Russian position and ensure that Zaporozhe could be defended as strongly as possible for the inevitable battle to come. Their chaotic aftermath (and the operational sideshow in Bakhmut) also provided a priceless opportunity to entrench in relative calm over a period of months. This was the ruthless implementation of basic military principle well-known from Clausewitz – be as strong as possible on the decisive point, because winning the battle is everything.
The Zaporozhe Corridor was that decisive point. Holding Kherson City and Izyum – or even Nikolaev and Kramatorsk – would have rapidly become profoundly irrelevant had the Ukrainians been allowed to break the Russian center and seize the Azov shore. Absent enough troops to overrun eastern Ukraine in 2022 and foreclose a Ukrainian counteroffensive, retrenchment was ultimately the correct decision – and has largely been proven as such – regardless of any short term damage to Russian prestige.
This battle has been a fiasco for Western arms. When it is over the Russians will be well-positioned to do that which they lacked the resources to do last year, and get back in the business of drawing big arrows on big maps.
I believe Clausewitz’s word for “the decisive point” is Schwerpunkt (a discussion).
Blinken: ‘Putin has already lost’ in attempting to ‘erase’ Ukraine The Hill. A neutral Ukrainian rump state would not be “erased.”
* * * Biden edges closer to decision on supplying Ukraine with long-range missiles FT. The ATACMS (cute) carries a 500-pound warhead.
Why Belgium is not sending F-16s to Ukraine Gilbert Doctorow
Lessons From Ukraine for Security Force Assistance Lawfare
* * * Blinken Says Musk’s Starlink Should Keep Giving Ukraine Full Use Bloomberg. Musk comments:
Much appreciated, Walter.
The onus is meaningfully different if I refused to act upon a request from Ukraine vs. made a deliberate change to Starlink to thwart Ukraine.
At no point did I or anyone at SpaceX promise coverage over Crimea.
Moreover, our terms of service clearly… https://t.co/jmNtScM5LY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 9, 2023
Elon Musk: Ukraine hero or villain? The Spectator
* * * In Ukraine, a U.S. Arms Dealer Is Making a Fortune and Testing Limits NYT
Emotional support OnlyFans model claims Ukraine tried to have her smuggle weapons Dexerto
The Supremes
‘Shady and Corrupt’: Add Barrett Real Estate Deal to List of Supreme Court Ethics Scandals Common Dreams
Healthcare
Digital Watch
Scientific sleuths spot dishonest ChatGPT use in papers Nature. Better rip ’em out of the training sets. Oh, wait…
Pipeline safety agency’s proposed pilot for ChatGPT in rulemaking raises questions Fedscoop
Eric Schmidt-led panel pushing for new defense experimentation unit to drive military adoption of generative AI Defense Scoop
* * * Here’s How To Get Robotaxi Rides in San Francisco—and What It Will Cost and San Franciscans Are Having Sex in Robotaxis, and Nobody Is Talking About It The San Francisco Standard. You can’t just hail them; you’ll need to set up an account. Presumably accounts will take care of the body fluids problem.
Spook Country
In Missouri v. Biden Internet Censorship Case, a Win and a Loss Matt Taibbi, Racket News
Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel Al Jazeera
Supply Chain
Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found Chemistry World (KS). Excellent. Now we don’t have to invade other controls for our supply.
The Final Frontier
How mapping Mars could help us live there CNN
First cat in space: how a Parisian stray called Félicette was blasted far from Earth Guardian
Zeitgeist Watch
San Francisco hires tourism boss to battle ‘ongoing narrative’ about surging crime, rampant druge use NY Post. But no copy editors on the East Coast, apparently. So I’d call the rivalry a draw.
Imperial Collapse Watch
‘Woke’ military policies’ effect on recruitment overblown, other factor fueling crisis: expert FOX
Class Warfare
Why Are Archaeologists Unable to Find Evidence for a Ruling Class of the Indus Civilization? Grassroots Economic Organizing. “The Indus Valley was egalitarian not because it lacked complexity, but rather because a ruling class is not a prerequisite for social complexity.”
American workers are demanding almost $80,000 a year to take a new job CNN
Antidote du jour (
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
200 comments
Comments are closed.
>US 2023 Tennis Open Schadenfreude
Watched Novak Djokovic beat Daniil Sergeyevich Medvedev in three sets yesterday. It shows how crass the tournament’s owners are when the score graphic had a picture of Djokovic and his Serbian flag and Medvedev had a picture but a blacked out flag…gawd! Also, loved when the camera panned to Djokovic and in the background the US open sponsor, “Moderna” was clearly visible since Djokovic was banned in ’22 for not taking the “jab”.
They have ‘banned’ the Russian flag at the tennis tournaments since Feb 23 2022, the day the SMO started.
We are an unserious people ruled by unserious imbeciles.
Unserious is a polite euphemism for mindless or idiotic, foolish, bemused or brainwashed Take your pick. “freedom fries” hang your head in shame.
The guy that suggested the name “freedom fries” – North Carolina Representative Walter B. Jones – was later remorseful of that whole idea while the guy that implement that name in the Capital complex – Rep. Bob Ney – later had to resign over corruption charges and was sent to prison-
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/61086/did-americans-really-call-french-fries-freedom-fries
I like the way that the story starts-
‘I’m a high school student and my history teacher just told us about how the United States once called French fries “freedom fries” to spite France. Please tell me he’s joking.’
After America’s entry into WWI, part of the massive wave of anti-Germanitic persecution President Wilson unleashed all across America involved petty little things like renaming sauerkraut as ” liberty cabbage”.
I’d include racist in that list.
College has for ages been touted as some kind of culturing experience.
But more and more it seems to infantilize and perpetuate a schoolyard clique mentality.
The only thing that matters is how many likes and such they get on social media, the actual material outcome of their actions is not even a consideration.
It is all vapid to the extreme.
Also the flag of Belarus, where Aryna Sabalenka (runner-up in the women’s tournament) comes from, was blacked out.
Medvedev was gracious after beating Alcaraz Friday in a stadium 95% cheering against the Russian.
I didn’t watch the match. I hope they weren’t applauding his double faults. I did see the highlight clips. Anyways good for him. If he could have beaten Djokovic that would have been even better for him, but that is a Hercules task.
That made the men’s final all the sweeter. Two players, each previously banned and scorned, with the crowd obliged to cheer for one or the other. Djokovic in his speech again repeating his account of growing up in Serbia during the bombing (instigated and carried out by what-country-was-that), Medvedev praising his friend’s unfailing kindness and humanity. Neither one a particularly familiar topic to that crowd.
I noticed, too, the renditions of “America the Beautiful.” The first, for the women’s final, by a (black) woman singer, first name Celine, who placed a so often omitted line firmly in her first stanza: “God mend thy every flaw.”
For the men’s final a black male singer (apologies for not knowing names), who sang Ray Charles’ version. Closed captioning, unprepared, gave up entirely after the first two lines.
Must have been a nightmare for the guardian to report.
A serbian (ugh!), vaccine sceptic (double ugh!) versus a murderous representative of that putin (triple ugh!).
With 3 ughs each,if only both could have lost!
The flagless Russian names are ridiculous indeed, but keep in mind that Wimbledon didn’t even let the Russians play last year. Medvedev is one of my favorite players, on the strength of his intelligence and personality, but his game is really boring.
> Jens Stoltenberg remarks at a meeting of European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Was this linked already? I mostly took the weekend off from news. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_218172.htm
He then brags that NATO then added SE and FI as new NATO members on RF’s border.
As we pointed out in our Ukraine post today, in comments, Sweden has not joined and may never. This link is from August 21, well Erdogan made his July 10 commitment in Vilnius:
https://news.az/news/turkiyes-approval-of-swedens-nato-bid-depends-on-stockholm-erdogan
So Finland will not be in such a hot position if it is in NATO and its next-door neighbor is not. Perhaps Sweden will relent and prosecute the Koran-burners, but I have yet to see any willingness to do that. But then again, Sweden may simply become NATO-lite, although that model is not working out so well in Ukraine.
But it is instructive to see Stoltenberg, who clearly knows where things stand, telling flagrant lies about Sweden’s NATO status.
Yes. I also thought it interesting that Stoltenberg says that NATO provoked the war. This is no surprise to NC readers but it is still orthodox to talk of an Russia’s “unprovoked war of aggression” in the mainstream western news. Stoltenberg saying so is different.
As a future general in the British army said to me “You are one of those people who believe Honesty is the policy”
There are 10 billion square centimeters per square km.
It’s all a bit like Black Adder, isn’t it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZT-wVnFn60 (34 secs)
This is where you get jokes about American men discovering the metric system because it makes them feel huge!
It is all getting rather pathetic, isn’t it? 1.5 square kilometers… so, about 370 acres. The Ukrainians have managed to capture a piece of land the size of a small farm. Progress! Victory is just around the corner, I have no doubt…
Speaking of farms, the number of barns in that farm is 15 followed by 33 zeros.
True, if every barn was a bit smaller than hydrogen atom and sufficient pressure was applied to plaster them over 1 layer. easier to imagine is each barn being a molecule in air, and they would extend to about 300 feet from the ground.
That’s really a lot! My bad, over-hasty entry in Google calculator. Anyhow, it’s metric.
? it is also one and half trillion square milimeters. Still makes it a bit over half square mile.
No, the inference here is “So we’ll decide for them”.
Re: The oracle problem and the future of DeFi
Nice little paper from BIS on the topic. Even if you’re not interested in crypto, it’s worth a read, particularly for the more broadly applicable paragraphs on institutional trust and governance, which they break down into “trust in competence” and “trust in intentions”.
“…[DeFi] requires sacrificing trust in intentions (whether individuals or institutions are fair and ethical) that cannot be fully captured by consensus protocols. This restricts the scope of DeFi to communities that are willing to rely solely on trust in competence.“
‘Shady and Corrupt’: Add Barrett Real Estate Deal to List of Supreme Court Ethics Scandals Common Dreams
Ok, so one brand new Notre Dame professor moving to South Bend bought at a house from another Notre Dame professor leaving for a new job in D.C. South Bend has a population of around 100,000. No hint that the comps show the price was wrong. Tell me how this is shady and corrupt.
It’s an odd phrasing mid article…”purchased Barrett’s private home in October 2020…”. Something I thought about yesterday, real estate is worth the valuation of what the next moron in line is willing to pay for said real estate. I’m all for pointing out the hypocritical dealings of our elite leadership classes from both sides of the aisles, but there just isn’t much of substance to this real estate transaction. Perhaps there is more to uncover if someone pulls at the thread.
Now do the same for the Obama administration, and just for example where individuals like Eric Holder and Mary Jo White have rebounded into legal positions or law firms post their time in DOJ. It’ll never end, the door revolves at a fast pace.
Tony Rezko, ladies and gentlemen………
“real estate is worth the valuation of what the next moron in line is willing to pay for said real estate”
According to Michael Hudson, IIRC, the value of a house is ultimately based on the amount of the mortgage that a bank is willing to issue for its purchase.
As I see it, this makes the banks the key driver of changes in property valuations.
JZ – “…house is ultimately based on the amount of the mortgage that a bank is willing to issue for its purchase…” – there is truth to that statement but in a “hot” market folks will make up the difference between what the bank is willing to lend and what somebody wants for the property out of pocket – and although after ’08 RESPA enforcement became a bit stronger, lenders still found ways to get the appraisal they wanted in order to close the deal and book the mortgage – would have to say that appraisers have quite a bit of influence on property valuations too since bankers don’t go out and evaluate, they send appraisers – but as a real estate broker, for the most part would agree banks hold strong influence to determine value – but just as true is what someone is willing to pay regardless what the bank will loan –
Barrett could donate her South Bend residence for use as a battered women’s shelter and she and her family could live in a tent on the streets of DC, eating out of soup kitchens and scrounging through trash cans, and the MSM would insist that this must be shady and corrupt.
Because The Other Team
Lot of important cases look like they could be headed to the Court: a B impeachment if it comes, the recent ruling of govt sensor ship of social media, the Hunter Biden et al cases. It’s possible the outcome of next years election could hang on a SC decision, a la Gore v Bush. I’m not at all surprised the Dems in DC and the MSM are “working the refs”, that is, trying to imo harass the Justices to “get in line” just at this time. Because given the context, harassment is what this looks like to me.
The Barrett home sale story broke back in June. I think if Barrett received more than fair market value in the transaction, we should have heard about it. Occasionally Common Dreams has good stories. This wasn’t one.
https://accountable.us/new-revelations-involving-justices-alito-barrett-deepen-scotus-crisis/
LOL. In grand NC style, If your war depends on a platform…
Musk drops the boom on his critics-
‘Elon Musk
@elonmusk
I am a citizen of the United States and have only that passport. No matter what happens, I will fight for and die in America.
The United States Congress has not declared war on Russia. If anyone is treasonous, it is those who call me such.
Please tell them that very clearly.’
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1701166410137837612
“Scientists say they have pinpointed the moment humanity almost went extinct”
That is at least twice that we humans almost went out. The other time was the Mt. Toba explosion 90,000 years ago which reduced humanity’s population to about 10,000 individuals. That was also a “Matrix”-level bullet dodge. Just this week I saw mention of these two events in an amateur scifi story where a Galactic Union has commented that because of these two events, that as a species humans are shockingly inbred. They’re not wrong.
“…as a species humans are shockingly inbred…” – now that would explain a lot, now wouldn’t it –
I wonder if the reduced gene pool is one of the reasons sociopaths seem rise to the top…
Gruber of Daring Fireball ends his piece with:
The blindspot here is the belief that China cannot live without the US, just like sanctions would ruin Russia. (Never mind that China does not need to “tout”.) Accepting sacrifices to disarm one’s adversary is an old and honored choice of nations. The graveyard of empires is full of indispensable ones.
Gruber might as well be paid by Apple. He’s their biggest fan and he’s having a very hard day.
Don’t stock buyback announcements usually come along to ease any disappointment?
It’s a fair point. Maybe not for the “prestige” of assembling iPhones, but certainly for the jobs. China already has problems feeding its population a huge fraction of youth don’t have work. A war with Taiwan would cost them millions of jobs and access to food supplies. I can’t guess how Xi makes that calculation, but it would be extremely costly for China to attempt to got to war with Taiwan.
On the other hand, China could try to retake it’s old territory around Vladivostok and I doubt the world would bat an eye.
Who’s the world?
China has zero interest in invading Taiwan and much better options instead of outright Invasion even if it had.
The Taiwan situation has very little to do with territory, the Chinese would have been perfectly happy to retain the status quo (quite likely more or less forever).
The US arming Taiwan and using it as an unsinkeable aircraft carrier is the only way the US could get the Chinese to actually invade, in which case the job question would indeed not stop them.
Russia of course is the only country China knows it will ever be able to truly rely on to provide them with the good they need, and the most reliable ally the could Hope for in many other ways.
Thus also the last country on the planet they’ll ever risk getting one the bad side of.
It’s the breadbasket of China and increasingly “the world”.
The actual world being highly dependent (if anything ever increasingly so) on Russia would almost certainly be very upset and deeply worried about any hypothetical disturbances between Russia and China, thankfully there is no reason to expect any such thing.
China’s historic beef with Taiwan before the current crazy attempts by the US to weaponize it we’re not about territory and more related to the fact that was a goverment there that for a long time upheld a claim of being the sole goverment of all China (and at one point basically was), a situation no government and country would be happy to be in.
But without US involvement China probably would much more likely be in conflict with Japan than with Taiwan.
Ah, but the Outer Mongolia, or Green Ukraine was populated by Ukrainians in the 19th century! And to top that, there’s also the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, the first Jewish state since biblical times.
Now, there’s some cause for a total confusion, eh?
New Mexico’s guv. “Temporary.” Remember when the Patriot Act was passed as “temporary”? Or when Bush’s tax cuts were passed as “temorary”? All these “temporary measures” keep getting renewed. / oy
‘After suspending the right to carry firearms, New Mexico’s Governor just said her duty to uphold her oath to the constitution is “not absolute” ‘
https://twitter.com/SonofHas/status/1700309986251784560
Turley:
New Mexico Governor Suspends Gun Rights in Albuquerque for “Public Health Emergency”
https://jonathanturley.org/2023/09/09/new-mexico-governor-suspends-gun-rights-in-albuquerque-for-public-health-emergency/
The governor is not legislating. She is, in provocative way, advocating for a constitutional amendment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=360k-MCJbfE” rel=”nofollow ugc
Here is a news report of one of the cases to which she refers: https://www.taosnews.com/news/witnesses-describe-questa-girls-death-as-result-of-playing-with-gun/article_7fd698ae-429e-11ee-9a58-57eadaa3abb5.html Let’s start with a strong case. This is not a gang affiliated city child, he is a country boy, insufficiently trained in firearm safety, gone blood-simple after an unintended shooting while showing off.
I lived in ‘burque’ on three different occasions. Almost 30 years ago some guy took a pot shot at me from the top of a rural mesa about 200 yards away. The bee buzzed my left ear by a few inches. He put the rifle down and he and his buddy drove off in their car. I hustled up to the road on the bluff and they were just passing, but I got their plate number.
I called the cops and told them two guys in this car just randomly shot at me. The woman answering the phone told me that the cops typically don’t pursue these cases…I guess she’s talkin’ about near-misses or they’re too busy going for cruellers…or something. The people in the valley must have all developed their expertise in the interim.
The governor needs a law that defines “a well-regulated militia” as being one that is regulated in exactly the same way as the state’s National Guard. Then she can disarm those who are not members of a “well-regulated militia,” and hence not entitled to bear arms.
adding:
The Bernalilllo County Sheriff on Governor MLG Gun Ban: It’s unconstitutional and we will not enforce it
https://twitter.com/beauhightowerdn/status/1701288668554731646
adding:
Albuquerque DA Refusing to Enforce Governor’s Suspension of 2nd Amendment Rights: ‘Clearly Unconstitutional’
https://www.westernjournal.com/albuquerque-da-refusing-enforce-governors-suspension-2nd-amendment-rights-clearly-unconstitutional/
It’s a shame that Hiltzik is a sloppy writer (or has no editor):
“Unfortunately for the cause of intelligent discourse, his statement was erected upon a pediment of lies.”
Particularly since he says in the next paragraph “…Lies that undergirded his administration’s gruesome failure.”
So, no. A pediment is the top of the architectural pile. You erect things on foundations, or since he’s throwing around terms of classical architecture, the stylobate or stereobate. These are the things that undergird everything else.
The give-away newspaper in Mammoth was 24 pages long, just a couple pages shorter than the LA Times in dead tree format.
The newspaper of my youth and young adulthood was once a viable source of information, but has fallen on hard times and editing costs money, man.
And then the LA Times does a great story on backpacking in the Sierra Nevada, redeeming themselves if only for the day.
https://www.latimes.com/travel/story/2023-09-11/high-sierra-mt-whitney-pacific-crest-hiking-backpacking
SARS-CoV-2 in exhaled breath, from the Abstract:
“Levels of exhaled viral RNA did not differ across age, sex, time of day, vaccination status or viral variant.”
Jha et al.: Nothing to see here, move along.
Biden on the defensive after the G20 summit. Further into the article, you reach the point to guard your American wallets, there are plans afoot to request or allocate $20.6 billion in relief and assistance funds to the Ukraine, by the end of the year. Let’s keep this rolling turd going downhill. It’ll be sweeter to the senses by the spring, trust us.
I heard Justin Trudeau offered his full support for further Ukraine funding in exchange for a lift back to the western hemisphere.
What is Hunter’s percentage of the funds?
“How Scientists Discovered the Staggering Complexity of Human Evolution”
A good article but I really do think that mention should have been made of the development of persistence hunting and which may have given us the edge over the other human species. So you might have Gronk chuck his spear at an animal and if he misses, then that is it. But then you have his cousin that chases after that animal until it eventually collapses due to exhaustion, heat illness, injury, etc. Man, we were the Terminators of the ancient world – ‘It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop… ever, until you are dead!’ But there must have been other physiological effects. Maybe bigger and deeper lungs, more oxygen for the brain, better and stronger legs, much less hair on the body to facilitate sweat to cool our bodies down which those animals couldn’t. So those who adopted persistence hunting must have had an edge over those who did not – or could not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting
All evidence points to the fact that we are still the terminators!
Communication and groups communicating also had an effect. However I believe the real prize passes to Human females, for the invention of group solidarity, communication, and the creation of of farming.
The men just chucked spears, and I suspect it was the females who suggested pitting points on the spears.
The Masai are, or were; a good example of these behaviors.
The China-Apple Cold War Heats Up
“iPhones aren’t just the nicest phones in the world — they’re arguably the nicest and most complex mass-produced consumer products in any category.”
No, they’re not. They have really shitty camera lens and software effects you cannot switch off without an external app. They are barely better than mid-range Xiaomi or Oppo, and nowhere as impressive as Huawei with Leica lenses. Even Panasonic managed to make better camera phones, with full f-stop/shutter speed control and no stupid HDR effects. As someone who works in the creative industry it’s such a huge disappointment, especially when Apple products used to be touted as the go-to hardware when I was in design school. My iphone 13 pro max hangs every few hours for no reason, its touchscreen refuses to cooperate and iOS has the worst file-extractions system known to mankind. Androids provide so much more flexibility. The only reason why I’m still in the apple universe is because I’m stuck in their cloud system and to move to Android is a huge learning curve. One of my good friends is a product developer in Apple who hears me lament about his company every time he’s in town to check up on one of their Shanghai factories. He said that the software department considers their userbase as idiots and do not take their opinions into consideration.
Don’t get me started on the shitty keyboard on their macbooks and the lack of ports.
When my iphone finally sputters and dies I will be jumping ship to Huawei.
I’ve had two Huawei smart phones – never a problem with them – beyond my tendency to butterfingers and dropping them from great heights onto concrete. I did keep one of those going for another year or two notwithstanding the artfully spiderweb-cracked screen. Moved on to TCL now – another Chinese brand – which has also been entirely trouble-free and only cost me 250 bucks for a model with 256 GB of internal memory.
I don’t want to get into an Apple fanboi debate, but having used both extensively, although Android is more advanced technology, it often doesn’t work, breaks constantly via updates and requires shorter new purchase intervals to make it work. Google’s software practices are horrid compared to Apple. I went back to Apple after over 10 years on Android, and it is a far better user experience, like not even close. YMMV.
Kinda speaks to a preference for wanting Apple to just ‘do everything’ (and by extension, it’s the Apple way or the highway), vs wanting a computer that does what *I* want.
I used to be a Mac fan, back in the system 7 days, back before they turned their back on their own human interface guidelines. Not anymore. The straightjacket that is ios really does feel like the product of developers designing for idiots. No thank you. But if it works for you, have at it.
My wife often complains about the iphone’s insistence on “helping” her with her photos.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Photography-on-the-go is important for my livelihood, for the price I’m paying I shouldn’t have to carry another Sony camera just for casual photos.
I dear say much of the Apple appeal in the creative industries come down to the first Mac being the “birthplace” of desktop publishing and Adobe’s Photoshop.
Since the iPod, Apple has been more about fashion. And it in turn was largely a success because someone convinced Jobs to make it compatible with Windows.
iPhone piggy backed on that by being a drop in upgrade for existing iPod owners, and then the iPad piggybacked on the iPhone ecosystem in turn.
“I dear say much of the Apple appeal in the creative industries come down to the first Mac being the “birthplace” of desktop publishing and Adobe’s Photoshop.”
Very much so. Luckily for us Adobe is now facing strong competiton from companies who don’t offer subscription models, especially with AI-assisted editing programs. Noone needs to be tied down to Mac machines anymore
Arnaud Betrand: “All the top strategic thinkers had their advice ignored (which begs the question: why?)”
Because arrogant psychopath Yale-educated Kagans, Applebaum et al. who no one elected and who know nothing about the military or foreign policy have been allowed to bounce from one administration to the next and have never been held accountable for their long history of failures. Elites have long made stupid decisions but the modern version are even more suck-tastic.
Yup! Katrina Vanden Heuvel finally came around on this:
Thanks to Biden, the War Party is back
The president’s policies reflect his appointments: ideologues who should have retired after previous foreign policy debacles.
Shocking that this woman was married to Stephen F. Cohen for years. Separate beds for sure.
“Or 150,000 centimeters” — um, actually, 1.5e10 or 15,000,000,000 square centimeters ()1.5.x 1000 x 100 x 1000 x 100)
Re the wonderful volcanic lithium source, no mention of the indigenous resistance in this article. I think NC linked to it a couple of months ago?
And of course nothing could go wrong as the battheads start digging deep, like Tolkien’s dwarves, in their insatiable quest for “white gold…” There be Balrogs down there, and who knows how much removal of overburden is “safe” when there’s a volcanic magma mass in the mix?
Do we mopes get to vote on the geoengineering activities, other than by “participation in the (rigged) marketplace, where the elite present the latest Hobson’s Choice?
I think the answer is “Hell no!,” JTMcPhee. I ran across this little breadcrumb trail that ran on Yahoo News this morning:
They do admit some possible problems:
So given that we’re still excreting carbon into the atmosphere in increasing amounts, “somebody” thought it would be a good idea to explore what we might do if we don’t meet the goals associated with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C:
So now we have a Climate Overshoot Commission, hosted by the Paris Peace Forum. Wonderful. I’m sure they’re all just as grassroots and representative of us plebes as their chair, Mr. Lamy of the WTO, is.
So who’s behind the Paris Peace Forum that serves as “host” and provided us with Mr. Lamy. This page list the various “partners,” and here’s a sampling:
Microsoft; Open Society Foundation (Soros); Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Breakthrough Energy (Gates); Amazon; The Rockefeller Foundation; Bloomberg.
Now we see Gates connections a couple of times. I’m sure he’s behind The Overshoot Commission just to make sure everything is nice and safe before any serious steps are taken. But wait. Is Mr. Gates himself advocating for this solar geoengineering and funding it at Harvard? Why yes he is.
So we shouldn’t worry about that long list of terrible consequences that might come from solar geoengineering ranging from acid rain to depletion of the ozone to the end of blue skies. Nor should we be concerned that hundreds of scientists and international relations experts, mainly European, signed an open letter calling for an international ban on solar geoengineering. No one should lose sleep over the fact that solar geoengineering, once begun, can never be halted without a huge bump in the built-up temperature increase.
It’s all OK now. Gates, Soros, Bezos, Bloomberg and Rockefeller have hired some real smart folks to make sure everything goes just fine.
I just finished reading and highly recommend The Venomous Lumpsucker, a satire set in the near future when corporations can invest in extinction credits in case they’re planning to accidentally wipe out a protected species or two. Funny not funny but a good read.
Best SF novel so far this year.
Just a little history on that WB-57 Canberra:
A Brief History of the B-57 Canberra
https://www.nasa.gov/specials/jsc-aircraft-ops/wb57-history.html
I’m surprised there are still three flying for NASA. Those are old birds.
As to the rest of it. Nice to know we’ve got billionaires beavering away with solar geoengineering, and a crack neocon foreign policy team working on more forever wars.
Funny how none of this got mentioned during the last Presidential election campaign.
They’re old, but not “old.” The NASA WB-57s were essentially completely rebuilt Ship of Theseus style. New engines, airframes, wings, avionics, the works. Their high altitude performance is put to work doing some interesting stuff like racing a solar eclipse or watching rockets on takeoff and capsules on re-entry.
Nice! Thanks for the link!
I once visited NAS Jax and saw all the work done to keep the P-3s flying back in the day. Practically took them completely apart and put back together – expensive! But like you say – almost a new airplane.
It is almost like they are preparing the planet to host a different specie… Lizard people?
Yes that’s a very old story indeed despite the article date. I had assumed some new discovery was the subject.
Here’s a more newsy article that says the project is now under construction.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/sep/6/thacker-pass-lithium-processing-plant-construction/
Yes, the article on the fecundity of the Lithium site ignores many tangents, the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation being just one. The other is that the lithium component is within a clay rock complex. The processing of the clay will require agua fresca. The volcanic caldera where the mineral is geographically located is the Thacker Pass (~miles north of Black Rock Desert—Burning Man); water (agua fresca) is not abundant and likely will need to be drawn from underground sources (if available at all).
Are all these “studies” supposed to make me think a lot of the worst problems are being solved?
Better PR is right out of the neoliberal playbook.
Even before this era of one click access to news, I was a weekly newsstand browser. I doubt I’m the only one here to make that claim.
Is the deja vu not overwhelming to others as well with alot of these studies?
50 years since the first 9/11. And Kissinger is still at large.
This is Salvadore Allende’s 1972 appearance before the U.N. General Assembly in which he spoke against the increasing power of the transnational corporations. It is brief but with the applause and a standing ovation nearly as long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbZHXHOMOz0
This is Allende’s final address to the Chilean Nation on 9/11/73, text and audio:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/allende/1973/september/11.htm
Beat me to it. We knew a young couple who lived through the coup while in Chile. He was/is Chilean while she was/is Irish. She remembers seeing American helicopters, with the markings painted over, flying in and out of Santiago all through that day. An American aircraft carrier task force was sitting just off of the coast.
They said that the film “Missing” underplayed the brutality of the situation.
I occasionally re-read Sinclair Lewis’ book “It Can’t Happen Here” as a political palate cleanser.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here
Americans as a group don’t know just how close we are and have been to sliding into full on Authoritarianism. Lest people pick that up as an anti-Rightest screed, do remember that people are people and either political flavour can go fascist. Mussolini started out as a socialist. Lenin started out as a Communist. Stalin turned that into a classic Oriental Despotism. Cincinnatus was a Military Dictator and then went back to his farm.
As someone wiser than me said; “Character is destiny.”
Stay safe.
Heraclitus – though I prefer the version that says ‘A man’s character is his fate.’
“Missing” could probably be listed as a large piece of what pierced my naïveté about my country and led to me finding out and recognizing how little we respected others self governance and how brutal we could be when democracy threatened capitalism and corporate dominance.
Intellectually I know it didn’t show it all, but considering how it affected me, I don’t know that I could have handled the reality. My respect for survivors is profound.
“Character is destiny” – made me think of this old chestnut –
Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become words
Be careful of your words, for your words become actions
Be careful of your actions, for your actions become habits
Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character
Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny
I teared up as I always do watching President Allende’s UN speech.
A note to uninformed commentariat; on 9/11/73 unmarked, white-painted fighter jets bombed the Presidential Palace killing two of Allende’s grandchildren. There is video documentary of the Pinochet military coup by independent journalists embedded with the socialist coalition.
https://www.bam.org/film/2023/the-battle-of-chile
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Chile
Chicago Boys will be boys.
Milton Friedman …. I only educated [indoctrinated] them … never forced[tm] them too do anything … no agency or intent on my personal behalf …
Always as such these people are never ever anywhere near where their thoughts [ideology] is applied to other humans and if the outcome/s don’t square with the utopia sold it due to faulty implantation, faulty human generations, or ev’bal forces of human altruism/communalism/or any other anti market notion …
Moon of Alabama highlights Zelensky’s latest interview with the Economist. Apparently he says the following in regards to the possibility that some European countries are becoming reluctant to continue the aid to Ukraine :
“There is no way of predicting how the millions of Ukrainian refugees in European countries would react to their country being abandoned. Ukrainians have generally “behaved well” and are “very grateful” to those who sheltered them. They will not forget that generosity. But it would not be a “good story” for Europe if it were to “drive these people into a corner”.
Anyone else picturing Tony Soprano : “Nice little European garden you have here, be a shame if anything happened to it.”
The title of the article says it all – ‘Zelensky Threatens To Terrorize Europe.’ And I can believe that. The whole attitude of the Ukrainians since the war started is that the whole world owes us. And if they lose, you can bet that those very same people will blame western countries for not doing enough by not declaring war on Russia or something. As an example, even though Poland is the Ukraine’s biggest supporter, the Zelensky regime keeps on threatening them and they do the same to other countries like the UK-
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/09/zelensky-threatens-to-terrorize-europe.html
I notice that MoA gives a call out to Yves’s new post ‘Has the West Closed All Its Project Ukraine Exits?’ near the end.
The Biden Administration convinced Zelensky not to make peace with the Russians by guaranteed “whatever it takes” to win the war. Hence the attitude…
As we said before, “Whatever it takes….to kill every adult Ukrainian man.”
You’ll notice no one every finishes the ritual inculcation. That’s the tell.
Are the millions of males who’ve scrammed to the West included in that prospective butcher’s bill? Will Russia maybe reduce their fifth or sixth column exposure by sending back every Banderite that’s gotten into Russ?
Note to WEF: this is not an efficient or even eugenically effective way to cull the herd.
It’s not terrorism when it’s our team doing it. Ukraine could use toddlers to clear minefields and MSM would fall all over themselves to praise Zelenskii for his hard-headed realism.
There’s also likely an element of getting Europe on board with the deportations.
That Uk attitude smacks strongly of the attitude of another set of people. Ze already has said that Uk is another Israel and deserving of the same obeisance. Who knew the Imperial dog has two tails to wag it?
Good thing Ukr does not have nuclear weapons. But they’ve already used chemical weapons on Russian troops, and apparently partnered with Imperial death dealers in developing biological weapons. EU open borders leak a lot more than “redirected” Western weapons from the billions sent to Ukr, and millions of “entitled” and disaffected Ukrainians.
One has troubled dreams of what the end game could very well be.
I hope Putin, Lavrov et al. have plans for the various contingencies, beyond just pulling up the ladders and slamming the portcullises…
There was a story that Ukrainian refugees in Berlin decided to stuff dog poo in mailboxes of Russian speakers there. Sadly for them, they mixed up addresses and ended up fouling the mailboxes of Germans. They are an incredibly ungrateful bunch, to say the least. And whatever gets sent to Ukraine be it funds or materiel, Zelensky always cries ‘not enough’.
Except that Zelensky’s regime might be considered the one that drove them into that corner and now is asking European countries to bring them back as meat for the grinder. I guess most of them don’t want to.
Not that it matters much, but I think EU defines the Ukrainians in EU as “displaced persons” and not “refugees” precisely to avoid the very idea that Ukrainians wouldn’t like, or heaven forbid accept, the Kiev regime.
“There is no way of predicting how the millions of Ukrainian draft dodgers in European countries would react to their country being abandoned.” There, fixed it!
Yeah, does anyone remember all the MANPADS disappearing in the Ukr “black market” at the beginning of the war almost 18 months ago? Right, coming back at any european airport near to you… /s
Blowback …
Good article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/11/g20-summit-what-india-showed-the-world-and-what-it?traffic_source=rss
I noticed the old name of the convention center.
Pragati Maidan – which means “field of progress” in Hindi
Ukraine – Maidan Protests.
Just as the Boston Commons once had cows so to Kiev’s Maidan must have once been a field.
I admire the direct tracing of linguistics of the Indo-European language.
> Schwerpunkt
: Christopher Alexander – The Nature of Order – Book 1: The Phenomenon of Life
There is a mathematical reason for thinking of the coherent entities in the world as centers not as wholes. If I want to be accurate about a whole it is natural for me to ask where that whole starts and stops. Suppose, for example, I am talking about a fishpond, and want to call it a whole. To be accurate about it in a mathematical theory, I want to be able to draw a precious boundary around this whole, and say for each point in space whether it is part of this set of points or not. But this is very hard to do. Obviously the water is part of the fishpond. What about the concrete it is made of? .. the air which is just about the pond? … the pipes bringing in the water? These are uncomfortable questions … The pond does exist. Our trouble is that we don’t know how to define it exactly. But the trouble comes from referring to it as a ‘whole.’ That kind of terminology seems to make it necessary for me to draw an exact boundary … That is the mistake.
When I call a pond a center, the situation changes … the fuzziness of edges becomes less problematic. The reason is that the pond, as an entity, is focused towards its center. It creates a field of centeredness. But, obviously, this effect falls off … the organization of the pond is caused by a field effect in which the various elements work together to produce this phenomenon of a center. This is true physically … and it is also true mentally in my perception of that pond … The same is true for window, door, walls, or arch. None of them can be exactly bounded. They are all entities which have a fuzzy edge, and whose existence lies in the fact that they exist as centers in the portion of the world which they inhabit.
… if I call it a center, it already tells me something extra … it makes me aware of the larger pattern of things, and the way this particular element … fits into that pattern.“
in re: Musk, Starlink, and Crimea
Why exactly was it assumed that Musk wished to become a party to war against Russia, but then it was David Ignatius questioning him, or was that carrying water for unnamed others?
The Dc Bubble and Echo Chamber was deranged before and becomes ever more so as the days pass.
Maybe Russia told Musk in their own indubitable way – ‘Nice Starlink platform system that you have there. It would be a shame if the whole thing was sabotaged across the whole world.’
Indeed. And they can do it too.
How? Are you claiming they can break into the network and disable it? That’s the only action that would have global effect. Do you have a source?
Jam the network over Europe, sure. Shoot down a handful of satellites, maybe. But either would likely be considered an act of war, and both sides have avoided crossing that line so far. But even then, it wouldn’t bring down the whole network, there’s too many satellites.
You are correct. They are not geostationary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=starlink
Simple celestial mechanics. Send up satellite full of autonomous shotgun shells. Launch shells against Starlink satellites one after the other in a line. Do it from the direction the satellites are moving toward and you add together the delta v’s. Instant wreckage. Act of war? Isn’t the NATO side using the commercial satellite system to perform military tasks also an act of war? By using the ostensibly ‘commercial’ space hardware for military purposes, NATO has legally defined said hardware as legitimate military targets. Musk’s lawyers had to have figured that out and told him so.
Also, there is a term for such an intertangling of Business and the State.
Cornell West just brought on Peter Daou as campaign manager. I’m not sure what to make of that, but since Daou has been doing well calling balls and strikes on D failings, hopefully this leads to West being more vocal in his criticism. I’d link but it’s from his Instagram and I’ve rarely had great luck with that.
Daou was an online communications adviser to the John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign. In 2006, when he was hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign… During the 2020 primaries, Daou penned an op-ed for The Nation in which he implored Democrats, progressives, and leftists to move past their 2016 battles over the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, uniting behind a shared goal of defeating Trump…Daou and James Boyce claimed to have performed a founding role in the Huffington Post
I also saw a Tweet/X by Max Blumenthal this morning and it wasn’t encouraging. After the epic Jimmy Dore/Cornel West interview, I’ve come to despair of a viable 3’d party challenge to prowar uniparty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Daou
So far it looks like West is trying to straddle a fence that can’t be straddled.
I wasn’t familiar with Daou other than the couple of times he’s been linked here, which were generally good; I think it was only a week or two ago when he was linked and I saw comments questioning his history. But you’re right, his history is why I’m uncertain. It’s possible he’s come around, or maybe he’s playing the long con to shank any possibly viable candidate on the left.
He was a Clinton attack dog who supposedly saw the error of his ways in recent years, but I still don’t completely trust his Damascene conversion.
I had been really been looking forward to voting for Brother Cornell, but he seems to be going wishy washy.
“…don’t completely trust his Damascene conversion…” – ya think? a snake is a snake – and like you it is disappointing to see the wavering of Brother West – will still probably vote for him to just provide standing for a third party –
Peter Daou does not know how to run a national political campaign. Yes, he ran Marianne Williamson’s just long enough to get the office coffee machine working back in April but that’s not really what most folks would consider “experience.”
Let me put this another way: I have as much blogging time in as Peter Daou, and that’s spotting him all his Salon years in the ’90s. [Weirdly, Daou’s Wikipedia page does not mention Salon at all.] No aspect of blogging speaks to running a political campaign. Srsly, there is virtually no overlap except in the minds of the bloggers who process the information fed to them by campaign operatives (just like the real media).
Running a campaign is not a figurehead position. It’s a real job that requires real experience. Experience Daou only has on paper but not in substance. Social media doesn’t win campaigns unless the opposition is equally befuddled. Democrats think they can steal all the votes they need (anyone else notice that when the neocons began switching parties they brought the keys to the voting machines with them?) while Republicans run ruthless ground campaigns to control legislatures and apportionment. Vote stealers and gerrymanderes run our duopoly.
Cornel West is doomed.
Btw, I’m assuming American University in Beirut is connected to American University in D.C. (search engines aren’t just bad lately, they’re aggressively hiding basic information like American University’s ties to the CIA). When I de-Daoued myself during his Hillary years, I read plenty that made me think he fit the profile of a CIA recruit. And yes, this is trash talk, but it is informed trash talk.
I’m no Peter Daou defender – but his dance music (as a producer) with his ex-wife in the 90s was amazing.
Ah, the 90s:
Vanessa Daou – Near the Black Forest
Vanessa Daou – Sunday Afternoons
The Daou – Surrender Yourself (Ballroom Mix)
I’ll always have a soft-spot for the erstwhile producer of 90s dance music…
Daou is not a campaign manager, and West is not a politician, he’s a public intellectual. It tells us what this campaign is for, basically speaking out against the duopoly and for the issues that will never seriously be addressed by them. Bernie’s not in this one and I’m glad West stepped forward.
I know there will be GP members who are not happy about this. The party wanted to hire Daou a while back to do media and the idea was quickly defeated due to his past loyalties.
AUB has no connection to American University in DC.
Thank you. There are other branches of the one in D.C. but google defeated me at every turn when I tried to figure out where they were.
And maybe I’m being a dinosaur when I say Daou can’t run a winning campaign. Social media comes first, got it. I assume there will also be boots on the ground and whoever’s in charge of that will be more in line with my idea of a campaign manager.
C. J. Hopkins latest. Consent Factory.
https://consentfactory.org/2023/09/10/the-criminalization-of-dissent-continued/
You probably linked this but I though the most recent Taibbi/Kirn was especially good. They talk about the late night talk shows.
https://www.racket.news/p/america-this-week-september-8-2023
Thanks for the link.
Israel ‘central junction’ in US-led transport corridor: Netanyahu Anadolu Agency. Yes, the stop before Chinese-owned Piraeus is Haifa.
Haifa is also a Chinese operated port.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-opens-chinese-operated-port-haifa-boost-regional-trade-links-2021-09-02/
That transport corridor may also be a trap for Saudi Arabia. Biden has been pushing for that country to sign up for the Abraham Accords but they have refused because why should they? Perhaps by having Israel as the entry port for the Mediterranean, that it would force the Saudis to sign up as their transport networks would be connected. Another factor is that as it goes to Israel, that country would be able to have a choke-hold on all that trade so they would refuse all Iranian goods for a start and any other country they want or the US wants. Not a confidence builder that.
Perhaps a choke hold,but only so long as Saudi puts its throat in their hands. There re alternatives and that proposed corridor sounds overly complex to me, both for the ship to train to ship to train requirements and for the poloitics of the nations involved.
> Why Are Archaeologists Unable to Find Evidence for a Ruling Class of the Indus Civilization?
>> In its heyday, from about BC 2600 to BC 1900, the Indus Valley Civilization created what may have been the world’s most egalitarian early complex society, defying long-held presumptions about the relationship between urbanization and inequality in the past.
Just fyi, that ends right on the cusp of the Bronze Age.
>> Heterarchy asserts that complex political organization, including cities, can emerge through the interaction of many different, unranked social groups, rather than from top-down decisions by an elite: that cooperation, not domination, can produce collective action. It’s now widely argued that multiple social groups contributed to the construction of Indus cities and the economic activities that took place in them, and that none seemed to dominate the others.
Just musing that the difference of power that bronze over stone… tools would enable an elite to control resources concentrated by heterarchy. Or is this a Golden Age story?
The whole article seems suspect somehow and perhaps it is because we are trying to see these ancient elites like more modern ones. So what if – stay with me here – what if they were ‘working elites? Ones that did not sit in a palace but one who got their hands dirty. ‘Who worked side by side with those workers. Who ate mostly the same food & drink that their workers ate and lived not far from where their workers lived. Ones who provided the engineering know-how and who were in charge of organizing people and resources. So a functional elite. It could very well be.
Like the Meistersingers of Nuremberg in the eponymous opera by Wagner? Where the local governing elite appears to consist mostly of guild-certified master tradesmen/craftsmen (the villain and butt-monkey of the piece, the town clerk named Beckmesser, being an exception)? And the leading citizen, Hans Sachs, is also the town shoemaker?
Or like the cooperative, reputation based social organization of the Americans. (as described in Dawn of Everything )
You’re echoing Graeber and Wengrow’s main point – just because we’re stuck in an oligarchical hierarchy, doesn’t mean that’s the only system humans have ever operated under.
It being the 50th anniversary of 9-11, thought I’d share a couple of links I ran across on the website of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-68-the-coup-against-the-third-world-chile-1973/
https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/chile-1973-coup/
They try to situate the coup within a broader perspective, for example:
“If there had been no coup in Chile, there might not have been coups in Peru (1975) and Argentina (1976). Without these coups, perhaps the military dictatorships in Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay would have withdrawn in the face of popular agitation, inspired by Chile’s example. Perhaps, in this context, the close relationship between Chile’s Salvador Allende and Cuba’s Fidel Castro would have broken Washington’s illegal blockade of revolutionary Cuba. Perhaps the promises made at the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting in Santiago in 1972 might have been realised, among them the enactment of a robust New International Economic Order (NIEO) in 1974 that would have set aside the imperial privileges of the Dollar-Wall Street complex and its attendant agencies, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Perhaps the just economic order that was being put in place in Chile would have been expanded to the world.”
“But the coup did happen. The military dictatorship killed, disappeared, and sent into exile hundreds of thousands of people, setting in motion a dynamic of repression that has been difficult for Chile to reverse despite the return to democracy in 1990. From being a laboratory for socialism, Chile – under the tight grip of the military – became a laboratory for neoliberalism. Despite its relatively small population of roughly ten million (a tenth of the size of Brazil’s population), the coup in Chile in 1973 had a global impact. At that time, the coup was not just seen as a coup against the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, but as a coup against the Third World.”
I had somehow managed not to run into Tricontinental’s work before, perhaps because their interventions aren’t as frequent as many other sites, but their perspective is interesting.
Gooooooooooooood Mooooooooooorning Fiatnam!
While he wasn’t zackly a helmeted Jane Fonda on an ack ack gun, Hanoi Joe embraced our old foe enthusiastically, a latter-day version of the Vietnam Wall if you will.
Fiatnamization was proceeding as planned, what could go wrong?
I wonder if this part made the evening news back home-
https://twitter.com/DontWalkRUN/status/1700886354966573388 (55 secs)
I don’t want to make hey of the situation, but apparently when his handlers told him to get ready for the G20, he yelled:
Bingo! and held up his winning card.
wow.
i’m torn between pity, outrage and digging a bunker to further remove myself from the body politic.
this is the best that we can do?
We could do better but that would screw up the narrative(s).
No, but it’s the best the Dem estab can do. / ;)
Wait until you see what they have in store for us next.
I’m surprised that no one has yet wished the Commenteriat a “Happy 9/11: The End of Freedom Day.”
Alice X above mentions the previous 9/11, fifty years ago when America overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Allende in Chile.
Kurosawa Sama did a film of related plot lines to this phenomenon: “The Bad Sleep Well.”
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bad_Sleep_Well
The Forces of Reaction are not playing silly buggers. Neither should we.
Mock existential versus real existential could sum up our whole foreign policy. Americans are like Fitzgerald’s version of the rich in The Great Gatsby. We go around breaking things and stay blithely unaware of the consequences. Or at least our jet setting elites remain unaware. Ordinary people may get tired of the inflation and the body bags and dispatch our own weak regime. Can’t happen soon enough.
Thanks for the Crooke link btw. They seem to have changed their URL or maybe it’s a mirror.
Meant for today’s Ukraine post. Sorry for the coffee deprived confusion,.
That Gatsby quote fits all too many people and situations with which we are fated to co-exist. One of my favorites.
“American workers are demanding almost $80,000 a year to take a new job” CNN
For full-time jobs. Ask to your heart’s content. Part-time jobs and “gig” jobs are the main things growing.
Cost of living is making people demand this money. This is driven by inflation in living expenses.
“Emotional support OnlyFans model claims Ukraine tried to have her smuggle weapons”
Nice word play in this article. They supposedly give the facts but they do not come out and say the important part. That they wanted that girl to smuggle weapons out of the country. That was the important part but I doubt that it was the Ukrainian mafia. More likely Ukrainian officers on the make.
“San Franciscans Are Having Sex in Robotaxis, and Nobody Is Talking About It” The San Francisco Standard.
Robotaxis seem more shady than an unattended restaurant buffet.
It’s in the paper, but no one’s talking about it?
Is it like Fight Club?
I think about what Uber drivers report people doing in their vehicles when there’s a human driver present. I can’t imagine how awful people will be in a robo taxi.
Eons ago I did my Infantry School at beautiful Ft. Polk, La. The nearby town of Leesville, parasitic on the base, claimed well over a hundred cab companies. Some of them even had cabs. All of them had girls. Most of them had pot.
I think the reporter should have visited the people who have to clean the robotaxis.
Far more impressive would be doing the nasty while driving. Not sure why anyone would be impressed by essentially fooling around on a couch – anyone can do that.
Standards are falling everywhere you look.
The dubiousness of many scientific studies, either accidental or otherwise, is a topic of discussion here. So I wanted to highlight this study in the accidental camp:
Challenges and recommendations to improve the installability and archival stability of omics computational tools (Serghei Mangul, et al. PLOS Bio (2019)). Key findings:
(bold in original)
Another study I can’t find the citation for showed that the output of the same genomics sequencing pipeline produced slightly different output depending on which public cloud provider it was run on!
Fun times, eh?
It’s more important that they identified common traits about the software that has stuck around, and offered a best practice: namely, standard utilities for code/data hosting, (un)installation, and dependency hosting. Those are the same qualities that have made casual experimentation with generative AI so abundantly fruitful lately.
Computers, like humans, are restricted to approximating transcendental functions, and different architectures will use different approximation methods, etc. With cloud computing installations trending toward bespoke in-house architectures, diagnosis and attribution of such errors will be difficult.
Ah well. Reality is stochastic.
Arkansas hospital sued thousands of patients over medical bills during the pandemic, including hundreds of its own employees
Running out the clock isn’t an option.
Mother, mother playa, I have heard you call
Wanted to ride upon your alkali since I was three feet tall
You’ve seen it all, you’ve seen it all
Watched burners who rode you, switch from beach to desert scene
And in your belly, you hold the treasures few have ever seen
Most of ’em dream, most of ’em dream
Yes, I am a 60’s hippie, 60 years too late
Height-Ashbury don’t thunder, there’s no sense of wonder
I’m an over-sixty victim of fate
Arriving too late, arriving too late
I’ve done a bit of snuggling, and I’ve run my share of grasp
I made enough money to buy a ticket, but it all went away so fast
Never meant to last, never meant to last
And I have been gone now for over two weeks
I passed out and I rallied and the heavens sprung a few leaks
But I got to stop splishin’, got to go missing
Down to the default world again
Just a few friends, just a feast of friends
I go for the art, hung out with several a while
Though i’m now away, i’ll come back one day
Still could manage to smile
Just takes a while, just takes a while
Mother, mother playa, after all the years I’ve found
My occupational hazard being dust just not around
I feel like I’m grounded, gonna head uptown
I feel like I’m grounded, gonna head uptown
A Pirate Looks at 40, by Jimmy Buffett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7ptF2zqCNM
I was humming along thinking this was a song from The Wall and it worked just fine.
Missed the cutoff for hippies and grew up a freak. We see the politics in everything whether it’s there or not!
Climate Addition:
Lambert will like it. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-09-11/baby-beaver-sighting-inspires-hope-for-california-comeback
Amazing. This sounds promising. Good points about making offending TNCs and rich nations accountable to the public in those countries. And finally – end biased dispute resolutions by effective dispute prevention. Eliminating tax dodging might just make it ultra-dodgy but there has gotta be a sense that all this piracy is over. Because it has achieved a level of civil dysfunction approaching extinction at this point.
If only we could convict and force the pirates to walk the plank. The ultimate “perp walk”!
I was at Fort Knox the other day, or should I say Fort Rocks.
Obsidian Dome is a few miles off of Hwy 395 north of Mammoth, and it isn’t all obsidian, but there is a 40 foot high band in the 100 foot high ridge where the eruption of Mammoth and environs happened 750,000 years ago, which created the largess.
It’s the craziest scree field below with shiny black boulders weighing thousands of pounds all over, interspersed with the usual granite boulders one sees normally in such a setting.
Obsidian is pretty rare on the western flank of the Sierra Nevada and points westward-making it more desirable the further you went, while on the ocean, the Chumash tribe had a near monopoly on the shell game, a useful go-between as ersatz money for all of the tribes, and whose value went up the further you got away from the ocean.
Those 2 items were the most valuable things a tribe such as the Wukchumni could hope to possess, one for hunting and the other for commerce.
None of the Native American tribes seemed to give a fig in regards to all that glitters, though.
I’ve been mulling the half-baked idea that one reason metallurgy wasn’t as big a deal in the America’s was that all the good rocks hadn’t been picked over by 3 million years of tool-using ancestors.
Posting this as a follow up to prior discussions. Here is an industry trend piece discussing the appeal of microgrids for sustainability and reliability in expensive communities.
I really do worry about what will happen when gated communities put what used to be common utilities behind the gates. Are we creating new city states? 15 minute walkable paradises with broadband, reliable electricity, community pool, and a high fence patrolled by armed guards to the keep the desperate proles on the other side…
a microgrid*, essentially, is number one on the list for when mom shuffles off….assuming she hasnt spent too much on fancy pet food and re-covering furniture,lol.
aside from the still ongoing infrastructure projects i’m slaving away at right now(and for which i have almost all the materials on site and paid for), energy is the last piece of the autarky puzzle left.
all that will be left to import/pay for is property taxes, internet, and milk products.
(* microgrid, because the 4 houses are 100 or so feet apart, and trees and existing structures make independent…or even rooftop…systems problematic. having 4 smaller systems would also entail what i consider unnecessary expenditure on the most high dollar components…battery banks and inverters…and yes, big enough wire aint exactly cheap,lol.
my buddy who does solar for a living agrees that while i’ll need to factor in more generating capacity to account for loss in transmission…and finding someone with the requisite skills to help me will be a challenge(everybody he knows is essentially plug and play…not problem solvers)…i’ll end up better off being my own utility company,lol)
re: American workers are demanding almost $80,000 a year to take a new job – CNN
Which Americans for what jobs where? Not around here. This CNN story reads like a lobbying effort.
From NYPost:
Mayor Adams demands Biden fast-track work permits for NYC migrants at rally
https://nypost.com/2023/08/31/adams-leads-protest-demanding-that-biden-gives-work-permits-to-migrants/
(I’ve thought from the beginning the de facto ‘open border’ policy is about importing cheaper labor and increasing competition for low end jobs and lowering wages. I could be wrong. / ;)
While FBI data shows that San Francisco has a relatively low violent crime rate, it has a considerably high overall crime rate…
“Low crime rate” because most people in my home city no longer bother to report crime. In one year, 36,000 car break ins, SIX arrests, for “property crime.” Assaults and violent acts are so common now as to be like leaves in the gutter.
The cops show up an hour later, rarely make an arrest, the criminal is let out on their own recognizanse, since cash bail is ‘racist’, and the judges let them off. If “children”, free to go on with basically zero consequences.
As of July 30, 2022 the police department had logged 1,550 robberies; 3,284 burglaries and 18,307 thefts.
The lick your finger, windsock mayor, hoping to replicate the rise of mediocrity Kamala Harris or Newsom career, is useless.
The real problem is drug tourism, 95% of drug arrests are people with out of town addresses, quoting the police chief imported from Atlanta. “Homelessness” is a billion dollar feeding opportunity for non profits that donate to local politicians who perpetuate the disaster, as highlighted in this article from a great independent local newspaper:
“why they came to San Francisco to be homeless and got the same answers I’ve gotten for years: It’s easy. Easy to get drugs, do drugs, put up a tent, steal to support your habit — and San Francisco will pay you more than $600 a month for the pleasure. It may not come as a surprise, but cities that offer general assistance payments have more than twice the rate of homelessness as cities that don’t. ”
https://www.marinatimes.com/fraudenbach-how-the-coalition-on-homelessness-is-holding-san-francisco-hostage?
I knew a couple several years ago who lived in a gated community in SF. Somehow burglars could still occasionally get past the “gate” and rob houses or cars. When said couple’s house was burgled they called the police to file a report. The police would not take the report because it would make the city’s crime rate go up if they took reports on all robberies and burlaries, make the city’s crime rate look too high for – I forget what – city insurance rates? Business interest in locating into the city? The police told them this directly as the reason they wouldn’t take the report. It was all about making the stats look good, making SF look a lot better than it actually was/is. Stats vs reality. This was decades ago. Sounds like it’s only gotten worse.
Drug usage and crime have a close connection to homeless, which has been a rising problem for over forty years, but let us not solve that. We should hire a professional liar instead, which is ever so much cheaper.
Not to pick on the city, mind you, as this is the same, albeit to a lesser degree, in the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area. Really, I could say the same for the rest of the state especially in the “liberal” metro areas of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and just from reading, San Diego. In this state, governing is performative or theatrical, not something done in a real or serious way; however, there is more profit in such fakery and much less so in doing the actual work of governing.
It is painful, really, to realize that my whole state is a giant grift with the government being a façade, the ruling elites pretend to work while getting a goldmine, but the people who do the work, they get the shaft, while everyone else gets the street; often enough the workers go to the streets as well, eventually.
The Golden State is made of fool’s gold.
Re the Lawfare article: “Lessons From Ukraine for Security Force Assistance”
“Why did security force assistance work in Ukraine but fail in Afghanistan?”
Only a complete sociopath would consider assistance “working,” considering that there are 400,000 dead Ukrainians.
Putin has already lost in attempting to ‘erase’ Ukraine?
If the RussiaGov is only able to turn Central Ukraine into a depopulated Free Fire and Exclusion Zone and is able to turn a rump Galiciakraine into a low-population country as poor as Albania for the next several decades, perhaps that is a loss that Putin will live with. And if the Banderazovi Government of Galiciakraine with its capitol in Lvoviv launches terror attacks all over EUrope to get revenge against EUrope for not having supported Ukraine hard enough, I suppose the schadenfreude of it all might help Putin laugh a little through his tears of defeat.
Starlink? We don’t need no stinkin’ Starlink. We got the BOYKO TOWERS!
Why the Return of Boyko Towers to Ukrainian Control Matters So Much
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/21513
Includes a hint for why Crimea really matters.
Maybe related, maybe not: Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned gas company, has been in contract negotiations for several months with Exxon, Chevron, and Halliburton, almost certainly for fracking.* Meanwhile, I’m detecting a pattern of anti-corruption “success stories” in which seized corporate assets include natural gas. Coincidence? Not to mention that Naftogaz itself deeply corrupt and no doubt would be far more efficient if privatized (/s). BlackRock surely is on it.
Starlink? We don’t need no stinkin’ Starlink. We got the BOYKO TOWERS!
Why the Return of Boyko Towers to Ukrainian Control Matters So Much
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/21513
Includes a hint for why Crimea really matters.
Maybe related, maybe not: Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned gas company, has been in contract negotiations for several months with Exxon, Chevron, and Halliburton, almost certainly for fracking.* Meanwhile, I’m detecting a pattern of anti-corruption “success stories” in which seized corporate assets include natural gas. Coincidence? Not to mention that Naftogaz itself deeply corrupt and no doubt would be far more efficient if privatized (/s). BlackRock surely is on it.
OK, that’s it, no more NC for me.
The above comment is a truncated version of a longer one that contained info on nat gas development in Ukraine and some additional observations. Vaporized, YET AGAIN!
As much as I’ve enjoyed the commentariat over the past decade and indeed needed the “island of sanity,” being effectively blocked from meaningful engagement is taking a toll on my mental health. I can’t justify wasting hours upon hours researching and writing comments that apparently are offending a machine algorithm programmed to shoot on sight, without benefit of judge or jury — ironic and more than a little depressing, given that NC prides itself on being a bulwark against that very sort of system in the material world.
I am very sorry and very much appreciated your comments. But I wrote you privately advising against what you had been doing, which was posting long comments and then posting them repeatedly. I found a recent case where you had tried posting the same comment four times. That is what spammers do.
We have this warning in our site Policies:
We have to have Akismet, or something similar, otherwise comment would quickly be overwhelmed by spam garbage.
I advised you in my e-mail against trying to post long comments, since our system was seeing those from you as a spammer. I again am sorry this happened but our Policies and my e-mail advised you what not to do, but you apparently were not willing to post shorter comments.
Yves, I never received any email from you. I’ve checked my spam folder, nada.
Normally, a comment containing words or phrases on your suspect list goes to moderation, and it shows up on the screen with a message saying it’s gone to moderation, along with the same editing countdown clock that appears on comments that have posted. My comments have been vanishing instantly, with no indication they ever went to moderation. I didn’t know what to think — was it just me? Did I hit a “cancel” instead of “post?” In the past, I did wait to post again, hoping the comment would eventually show up. Some did — hours or days later, long past the shelf life of the post. Many didn’t. So yes, I tried reposting. The 4x was due to extreme frustration, sorry. But what am I supposed to do when I just spent so much time writing, and my work is vaporized?
As for the length — yes, I write long, often due to the amount of material I’ve found. But in fact, I do spend a lot of time trying to tighten up my writing (as you know, it actually takes more time to write shorter). I even started splitting up comments into segments. But then I ran into the problem that a vital part got vaporized, and without it, the rest made little sense. I waited more than 24 hours, and it still didn’t show up. By then, the discussion was over. In any case, I don’t think it’s fair to be singled out for writing too long, when many others (not talking about the brain trust) write far longer than I.
Links: I’ve had comments disappeared that had only one link. In a couple of cases, I reposted without the link, and they went through. I rarely post even two links anymore.
Thank you for replying. I sent the message from my auroradvisors.com account. It explained as follows:
I don’t have anyone else reporting as not having gotten a message. It went out with the subject line “Re; Vaporized comments” as a reply to the message you sent Sept 8. The message went out at 12:40 PM on Sept 8, mere hours after you e-mailed me.
Checked my spam folder several times over the weekend, looking specifically for email from you or delegate, and there was nothing. After replying above, I checked it again for the heck of it, and of course it’s there now. Although it doesn’t happen often, this isn’t the first time I’ve had delayed Gmail.
Just so you know, I have read NC comment policy. I had a website at one time and used it as a model to discourage virtually guaranteed trolling, given the theme. But whatever. Bottom line appears to be that I’m permanently flagged.
Since your email did turn up, I’ll send a few more observations privately, but need to get some sleep first. In the meantime, sincere thanks for taking the time to reply.
* Although there are extensive deposits of shale gas in the Donbas (short for Donets Basin), there’s still a lot in other parts of the country. If anyone is interested, I’ll see if I can dig up a USGS study floating around in 2014.
Wow, there wasn’t a whole lot there in that New Yorker piece “Can We Talk to the Whales?”—the dek about summed it up: “Researchers believe that artificial intelligence may allow us to speak to other species.” The scientists are trying to gather the data from these whales, which isn’t easy to do, and…what? There’s next to nothing about how artificial intelligence might work to decode whale clicks—how, for example, very different human languages map to the same “geometric space” with close correspondences with the use of AI. (See this video on YouTube with Aza Raskin of the Earth Species Project for more about that.)
Doctorow on F-16 to Ukraine
Subject countries are not in line for Fire Control Radar upgrade, which means air to air combat will be problematic.
Close air support puts the F-16 no better than late Soviet aircraft, and use of guide munitions is similarly 1980’ vintage.
I had not expected the EU F-16 to be nearing 8000 hours “fatigue” limit.
Some F-16 wing boxes have shown issues at 4000 hours when the engineers took a deep look not done in usual cycle maintenance.
For 60 aircraft a dozen odd the older Pratt and Whitney spare engines would need to be sent unless they use airframes as warehousing for parts.
Sustaining a sortie rate for these would require a large stock of parts, and hundreds of expert technicians.
USAF has not met budgeted readiness in the last 10 years.
if > what the Western response should be and why Ukrainian victory is the only way to secure Europe’s future. https://twitter.com/ChathamHouse/status/1700125044066664639
and > Senior US general believes weather leaves Ukraine 30-45 days for active offensive
How does the West ensure a Ukrainian victory within the time constraints of US Presidential election & Ukraine running out of manpower? With mud season starting and then winter which is to Russia’s advantage, you’d have to think tactical nukes are the only option left? Would Pentagon be willing to go there if overriding concern is to end Ukraine conflict as quickly as possible so that focus can pivot to China conflict? All hope & sanity rests with Biden’s cognitive capacity not to go there.
Ray McGovern talking about 9/11.
9/11 Remembered – What We’ve Never Been Told w/Ray McGovern
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzqHc_unkA0
I had to listen to this a couple of times. It’s [family blogging] crazy. I’ll have to go back and check what Ray was saying back then because this is new to me. I had always assumed an incompetent W just ignored the warnings, but Ray thinks Cheney essentially let it happen. This is pretty much the same gang of neocons that has us messed up in Ukraine now.
Here is a video of WTC building number 7 falling down. It had caught some fire from neighboring events but had not been hit by any plane. And yet it falls down very neatly and cleanly. One wonders why.
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StrangeEarth/comments/16g81on/so_wtc_building_7_was_not_hit_by_anything_it_was/
this day killed my Cafe,22 years ago…”Freedom Fries”…and everybody stopped wanting my eclectic jibberjabber of foreign inspired Real Food.(i did manage, with a couple of better capitalised others, to utterly change the menu way out here)
and 5 years ago, at 5am, i was looking over the ER doctor’s shoulder as the MRI image rendered and revealed the giant tumor in Tam’s belly.
“oh, shit”, i said.
“oh, shit, is right” the ER dr said…and thus our lives changed utterly.
that’s what 911 means to me.
We bought a house in February of 2001, and 9/11 was really the kickoff of the first round of the nationwide housing bubble, our abode in the City of Angles doubling in value by the time we sold it in 2005, adios Big Smoke.
‘We’ll never forget’–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUy0lhr7V7g (29 secs)
From Taibbi. no paywall.
A Day that Never Ended
America thought it left the War on Terror behind, but the emergency never stopped expanding
https://www.racket.news/p/a-day-that-never-ended
About sex in robotaxis: JC Decaux developed “self-cleaning” public toilets and they’ve been on the street in San Francisco for decades. They were coin-op, probably QR/app now. (I don’t know if they’re still there and still working.)
https://www.jcdecaux.com/press-releases/world-toilet-day-over-40-years-jcdecaux-has-been-committed-facilitating-universal
Now, hear me out: self-cleaning robotaxis! After the trysters exit, jets clean out the backseat like a dishwasher.