Links 1/20/2024

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1. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 7:05 am

   “Kamala Enjoys Finally Being Smartest Person In The Room”

   This article definitely wins the Internet for today.
   1. Benny Profane January 20, 2024 at 7:58 am

      I don’t know. She has had to sit there up above the House listening to those dolts force her to vote a lot. The ladies on the View have to look like geniuses compared to most of that.
   2. Mark Gisleson January 20, 2024 at 8:12 am

      I demand a recount!

      I didn’t find the German political story all that humorous but you might like to hear about the time I saved the life of the Attorney General of Iowa.

      It was 1980 and Tom Miller, the AG of Iowa, was the highest ranking state official (other than Senator John Culver) to support Ted Kennedy’s challenge to Jimmy Carter for the party nomination. I drove Tom to Iowa City for an event then drove him back to Des Moines afterwards. He was working both ways but halfway back to Des Moines he stopped reading and started telling me about Bob Woodward’s new book, “The Brethren.”

      Tom is not an exciting speaker. Speaks in a monotone at a steady pace. In no time at all I fell asleep. Luckily they’d put warning strips on the interstates by then and the zipper sound woke me up and I got us back on the interstate before we went into the ditch at 70mph.

      The Attorney General never did thank me for saving his life, btw.
      1. Wukchumni January 20, 2024 at 9:11 am

         Thanks for saving Iowatha~
         1. ambrit January 21, 2024 at 12:39 am

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXrpFxHfppI
      2. JohnA January 20, 2024 at 9:19 am

         Well as the saying goes, a German joke is no laughing matter.
         1. rudi from butte January 20, 2024 at 11:29 am

            “Where would we be without a sense of Humor? (slight pause) Germany.” Willie Rushton
   3. Pat January 20, 2024 at 8:13 am

      I can’t decide if the Behar gushing is funnier if you know or if you don’t know that Sudeikis and Hunt outed her as a liar. (She claimed to have turned down a big role in Ted Lasso, they said it never happened.)
   4. Screwball January 20, 2024 at 11:38 am

      To bad it wasn’t an audition – she would fit right in. It would be a twofer. She would no longer be in a position of power and nobody would hear her. Well, I guess some would as The View averaged 2.5 million viewers November 6-10, 2023. That’s amazing really. I don’t get it.
   5. Roger Boyd January 20, 2024 at 12:46 pm

      After seeing her husband’s ridiculous performance at the WEF “its feels so lonely being a Zionist multi-millionaire in America”, she may very well be the smartest person in her marriage,
2. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 7:49 am

   “The Wrong Stuff”

   Excellent post this and I would like to add a bit more if I could. Aurelain says-

   ‘After all, there’s nothing unusual about soldiers being in poor physical condition: when Britain introduced conscription in 1916, the authorities were horrified at the poor physical state of many of the recruits. Anecdotally, many of the private soldiers who fought were barely 1,50 metres in height, and officers often stood at least a head taller than the men they were commanding.’

   The same was true in WW2. The American journalist William L. Shirrer reported seeing during the Battle of France a column of British prisoners escorted by men of the Wehrmacht. The British were all short and pasty-faced and with hollow chests while the German soldiers were both hale and hearty & suntanned. So the reality is that the UK government neglected for generations their youth of the nation and in both wars this was what they got as recruits. You can parallel that with young recruits in modern day nations like America right now as the youth of many nations have been just neglected and abandoned because of neoliberal values.

   Aurelian also asks ‘I never did find out what the single Regiment of tanks in the Australian Army was actually for, for example.’ It might surprise him that we are also buying 75 M1A2 Abrams SEPv3 main battle tanks as well. The real reason is not to increase our defence capability but to keep the US establishment onside by giving out lucrative contracts to the MIC. I have seen in the past outrageous cases where we buy second-hand junk for top dollar but it keeps the Mandarins in DC happy and so we go along with it – or else.
   1. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 20, 2024 at 8:19 am

      Oh, don’t be so fast to hold up the robustness of American draftees, even in our better days. It was a key plot point in the fantastic first half of the Stanley Kubrick film, Full Metal Jacket. If you have not seen it, rent it and do NOT read any reviews because you will get spoilers.
      1. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 8:35 am

         Seen that film but was never really impressed by it. The reality was dark enough. I was reading how when a FNG arrived in a unit, the vets wanted to have nothing to do with him, gave him no tips or what to avoid. It was only if the guy managed to survive a few months and not end up in a body bag or evacuated out that they though to associate with him as he had survived. Helluva way to run an army. And of course there was McNamara’s Morons at the time-

         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000

         Minor note. The young girl who played the Viet Cong sniper was not allowed to see that film when it was released. She was too young for it because of it classification.
         1. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 20, 2024 at 8:44 am

            The big problem was it was very uneven. I thought the way Kubrick built tension in the first half was superbly well done. The second half came off like a flabby add on.
            1. katiebird January 20, 2024 at 8:50 am

               The first half really felt like a complete movie to me. Maybe he should have made 2 stand alone movies. … He could have spent the time between releases tightening the 2nd half.
            2. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 8:55 am

               Agreed. You have films like this where the first part is of the soldiers undergoing their basic training followed by when they go into actual combat. This includes films such as “Sands of Iwo Jima”, “Battle Cry” and “Glory.” Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” just felt like two different films jammed together.
               1. Deschain January 20, 2024 at 9:12 am

                  Don’t forget Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers!
               2. Wukchumni January 20, 2024 at 9:15 am

                  You can’t take your eyes off of R. Lee Ermey in the first half and when he gets it, the film peters out into just another war film.
                  1. Wukchumni January 20, 2024 at 9:39 am

                     p.s.

                     To see R. Lee Ermey in battle, The Siege of Firebase Gloria is a pretty decent film.
                  2. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 9:39 am

                     It must have been easier for him in that role in that the guy was actually once a US Marine Corps drill instructor. He had a helluva career-

                     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Lee_Ermey
                     1. rowlf January 20, 2024 at 1:52 pm

                        The Duffel Blog gave Ermey a roasting. Ermey’s live appearances in Iraq were also cringe-worthy.
                  3. Carolinian January 20, 2024 at 10:33 am

                     Apparently Ermey improvised much of his dialogue and, yes, steals the film. Kubrick was always best when he gave his actors lots of leash. Kubrick started out as a Look photographer and was always a photo man above all else. Content was more the scaffolding (although antiwar was a consistent theme).

                     For that reason Pauline Kael didn’t like him much but as a director he was brilliant. Has there ever been a better sci fi movie than 2001, whatever it was about?
                     1. Jeff W January 20, 2024 at 1:26 pm

                        “For that reason Pauline Kael didn’t like him much but as a director…”

                        In her review of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Pauline Kael called Kubrick “a director with an arctic spirit” and referred to his “martinet control.” She liked “messiness” and a kind of lush sensuality in films—and Kubrick’s films were not that.

                        And I think of 2001: A Space Odyssey as an dazzling technical achievement but each time I see it, I have no desire to see it again (aside from a few scenes with visual effects). Once you get past the Big Question of alien-directed human evolution and a computer over-zealously committed to its mission, there isn’t much to say.
                        1. Carolinian January 20, 2024 at 2:01 pm

                           Oh I’ve seen 2001 many times. It’s movie making sirloin steak. Who cares if it makes sense?
                        2. Acacia January 21, 2024 at 3:37 am

                           Well, a lot has been written about 2001, because there’s quite a lot to say about it. Maybe start with the collection of essays edited by Robert Kolker?

                           Very interesting to compare 2001 and Solaris, for example, as totally different views on why we’re exploring space and our place in the universe.
                     2. elissa3 January 20, 2024 at 1:36 pm

                        And has there ever been a better black comedy than Dr. Strangelove? Co-genius credit goes to Peter Sellers, of course. I could watch it every year and still laugh out loud and shake my head in disbelief at the depth of human folly.
                        1. Bsn January 20, 2024 at 2:27 pm

                           No, nothing better. As a young girl I thought it was a “cool” war movie. I had many older relatives in the military and they never gave it away. Fun being dooped. Fun being American.
               3. Polar Socialist January 20, 2024 at 9:27 am

                  I’ve always thought “The Boys in Company C” tells the same story as Full Metal Jacket, but in a more down-to-earth way and yet managing to reach the Good Soldier Svejk level of absurdity of war.

                  Hasford’s The Short-Timers is much tougher on the reader than the movie (Full Metal Jacket) is, me thinks. Even Kubrick couldn’t make Hollywood to palate Joker killing Cowboy to save what was left of the platoon.
                  1. rowlf January 20, 2024 at 1:36 pm

                     The Short Timers was followed by The Phantom Blooper, where Joker is captured by the Vietcong, then rescued and repatriated. Hasford supposedly planned a third book.
               4. Nordberg January 20, 2024 at 12:24 pm

                  Right. There are two parts of the movie. Building a machine, then the machine breaking down.
               5. CCG January 20, 2024 at 1:30 pm

                  I saw it in a large theater opening weekend. I was third seat from the aisle about 10 rows back from the screen, and in the two seats on the aisle was a man about my age (I’m a Vietnam veteran) and a woman. During the opening half he said to her three times “That’s exactly what it was like.”
                  They didn’t return after the intermission.
               6. digi_owl January 20, 2024 at 6:44 pm

                  Supposedly the Drill Sargent Nasty trope has become a bit of a headache in nations that do not follow US training doctrine.
               7. JTMcPhee January 20, 2024 at 7:51 pm

                  Did that transition, started Army basic training in late 1966, Zap! in Vietnam in mid-1967.

                  Most war movies strike me as unavoidably and disgustingly “Hollywood.” There’s good reasons why the transition-covering films seem unreal — for me, at least, it was surreal. Glad my memory is fading.

                  Is it a good sign that fewer people offer that perfunctory “thank you for your service” anodyne-ism any more? My hope is maybe there’s a growing awareness that John Wayne sat out WW II in Hollywood and what the imperial troopers do is “service” only to the kakikleptocrats. Or maybe it’s just that people don’t much care about the obviously phony shibboleths any more.

                  Just stupid effing humans, all down the timeline.
         2. LifelongLib January 20, 2024 at 3:29 pm

            I’ve read about the “FNG” thing more in connection with WW2 than Vietnam. At the end of WW2 U.S. Army replacements were being sent to Europe with as little as two weeks training. Many were killed the same day they arrived at their units, hence the reluctance of the other soldiers to have anything to do with them. FWIW my dad could have ended up in that situation (graduated from high school in June 1944) but was able to join the Navy and was still in training when the war ended. A few of his classmates weren’t as lucky.
            1. Robert Gray January 20, 2024 at 4:06 pm

               > At the end of WW2 U.S. Army replacements were being sent to Europe
               > with as little as two weeks training. [emphasis added]

               Sorry, but you’re going to need to document that preposterous assertion.
               1. ambrit January 21, 2024 at 12:30 am

                  The phenomenon of the “Ninety Day Wonder,” a reference to rushed through officer training Second Lieutenants in the US Navy comes to mind.
                  Mailer in “The Quick and the Dead,” about the war in the Pacific, mentions the phenomenon of the superstition about new replacements having short life expectancies.
                  The two weeks training story is news to me, but sounds reasonable for the end of the war. America was preparing to invade the Japanese Home Islands all the way up until the Atomic Bombs were dropped. Manpower was the issue in that situation.
                  1. Robert Gray January 21, 2024 at 6:52 am

                     The US Navy doesn’t have Second Lieutenants.

                     New replacements always and everywhere have / have had short life expectancies.

                     Sorry, but I can’t agree that two weeks’ training — what is that supposed to be, anyway? From induction to facing fire at the front? That is the implication. — ‘sounds reasonable’. Maybe that’s what is happening just now in the Ukrainian army but those ghastly reports are remarkable particularly because such a practice is so unreasonable.
                     1. Procopius January 23, 2024 at 2:30 am

                        In Vietnam at one point my boss was a Warrant Officer who fought in Korea. He had something like six weeks basic training and was shipped to the front. He said that in six months he was his company’s First Sergeant and he had a Korean kid (?) carrying his weapons (apparently several kinds of guns).He also said that after a while, Congress passed a law requiring every service member to be given at least 13 weeks of training before being sent overseas. I haven’t been able to find anything about such a law with Duck Duck Go, but there are other requirements out there that amount to pretty much the same thing.
                        1. Belisarius January 23, 2024 at 6:18 am

                           At Camp Pendleton at one point my boss was a Master Sergeant who had won the Navy Cross in Korea. He had something like 19 years in and was hanging on by his fingernails. Problem was, he had a huge beer gut. Somehow, every year when the PFT came around he managed to get a medical waiver and the higher-ups looked the other way because of his decorations. But he was always worried that a new broom would come in and slip him the green weenie. He was a great boss, actually; hell of a nice guy, for a lifer. :-)
                     2. Polar Socialist January 23, 2024 at 4:13 am

                        From Marine Corps Boot Camp (usmcu.edu):

                        In the last week of December 1944, two replacement drafts joined the division whose training status consisted of only two to four weeks of recruit training

                        It seems that for the Marine Corps replacement training was problematic throughout the war. And even the better trained troops had prepared for the wrong battlefield – not much jungle fighting on Iwo Jima.
               2. LifelongLib January 21, 2024 at 1:28 am

                  Preposterous it may be, but I didn’t invent it. I’m quite sure I read it in a history or saw it in a documentary.

                  However it may be based on a misunderstanding. According to the link below, the army would sometimes take soldiers in other specialties (not new recruits) and designate them as infantry replacements after as little as two weeks of infantry training (see at about 48 minutes in):

                  https://www.c-span.org/video/?404889-1/world-war-ii-army-replacement-program
      2. rowlf January 20, 2024 at 1:45 pm

         If I remember correctly from the discussions on Universal Service in the US that federal nutrition and education programs were intended to avoid undernourished and illiterate draftees.
         1. Lefty Godot January 20, 2024 at 5:46 pm

            And the interstate highway system was born out of Ike’s frustration getting materiel moved around to ship overseas in WWII. Physical education (calisthenics) in public schools was also supposedly pushed on us by the military.
            1. digi_owl January 20, 2024 at 6:34 pm

               Not just his experience with logistics during WW2. He also took part in an army coast to coast convoy between the wars, and was appalled by the trouble they had.
            2. rowlf January 20, 2024 at 7:09 pm

               Ike had also gone through an earlier military exercise using overland transportation.

               In 1919 … Eisenhower was assigned as an observer to an unprecedented military experiment: the First Transcontinental Motor Convoy. The operation was a road test for military vehicles and was used to identify the challenges of moving troops from coast to coast on the existing infrastructure. The excursion covered 3,200 miles from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. It included 79 vehicles of all sizes and 297
               personnel.

               Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Birth of the Interstate Highway System

               I am a fan of what David Hackworth called “The Brown Shoe Army”, a professional corps with a strong nationalist streak, versus the later managerial military mentality that was less effective in military actions and more concerned with careers. I like the between war mentality of having possibly embarrassing military maneuvers and war-games to make as many mistakes occur stateside and learn from them before sending troops overseas to do it for real. It is doubtful the US will ever have another person like George C. Marshall in a leadership position ever again.
            3. Robert Gray January 21, 2024 at 7:04 am

               Re: Ike and the interstate highway system

               Yet another version has it (perhaps this is the same as digi_owl‘s) that it was specifically his experience as a staff officer working for MacArthur during the operation to suppress the Bonus March in ’32.
      3. Michael Fiorillo January 20, 2024 at 6:02 pm

         It goes back well before that: the free school lunch program in the US started as a direct result of the poor health and physical condition of WWll draftees who’d grown up during the Depression.
   2. lyman alpha blob January 20, 2024 at 10:21 am

      I enjoyed that post too, especially the part about military budgets vs military programs. He notes that in recent decades the budget has become more important than the viability of the overall program, resulting in gross unpreparedness.

      I did notice though that he concentrated on European militaries, not the US. We roll a little differently in the US, not that it produces any better results of course. Back in the late 80s/ early 90s, don’t remember the exact year, there was a big scandal about $400 toilet seats and $800 hammers in the military budget, and the wastefulness of overpaying for routine items. Years later I remember watching a 60 Minutes episode on that scandal, back when 60 Minutes still had some credibility left. The military brass being interviewed said that the military did not pay anybody $800 for a hammer – they paid $10 (or whatever the going rate was) and the remaining $790 went for other things he wasn’t about to tell 60 Minutes about. The military budget never goes down in the US and there are routinely trillions of dollars that go missing on a regular basis as the Pentagon fails one audit after another with no consequences whatsoever. Pallets of cash flown around the world, offloaded from military cargo planes, and nobody knows what happens to it all.

      To paraphrase the famous lines from Treasure of the Sierra Madre – “Budgets? We ain’t got no budgets. We don’t need no budgets. I don’t have to show you any stinking budgets!”
      1. Jason Boxman January 20, 2024 at 1:00 pm

         So it is certainly demonstrable that when the Establishment thinks it necessary, even Republicans and liberal Democrats are MMTers. Cash, spent into existence. It’s only when social programs are on the block does offsetting key strokes become mandatory.
      2. rowlf January 20, 2024 at 1:58 pm

         Ah for another Truman Committee to appear in Washington DC…

         Harry Truman and the Investigation of
         Waste, Fraud, & Abuse in World War II

         Spending less than $1 million on its investigations over seven years, it is believed that the Truman Committee:

         – Saved the government $10 – 15 billion;
         – Saved thousands of lives by uncovering defective equipment and materials that were to be used by troops, and unsafe conditions at plants where wartime materials were being manufactured; and
         – Shortened WWII by streamlining federal contracting practices.[
         1. marku52 January 20, 2024 at 3:54 pm

            There was one contractor in WWII that got so efficient at making .50Cal machine guns that they sent ‘Excess Profits” back to the Pentagon.

            Try that one today….
            1. rowlf January 20, 2024 at 4:20 pm

               A realistic depiction from one of the funner corners of the internet of an F-35 VTOL model taking off: F-35
         2. Morincotto January 20, 2024 at 7:28 pm

            Seeing as resolving all these problems could potentially make the US (once more) into a ten times more lethal empire than it is today, I sincerely hope that waste, fraud and abuse will continue to thrive and just keep growing and growing.
      3. Randall Flagg January 21, 2024 at 8:09 am

         >I did notice though that he concentrated on European militaries, not the US. We roll a little differently in the US, not that it produces any better results of course. Back in the late 80s/ early 90s, don’t remember the exact year, there was a big scandal about $400 toilet seats and $800 hammers in the military budget, and the wastefulness of overpaying for routine items. Years later I remember watching a 60 Minutes episode on that scandal, back when 60 Minutes still had some credibility left. The military brass being interviewed said that the military did not pay anybody $800 for a hammer – they paid $10 (or whatever the going rate was) and the remaining $790 went for other things he wasn’t about to tell 60 Minutes about. The military budget never goes down in the US and there are routinely trillions of dollars that go missing on a regular basis as the Pentagon fails one audit after another with no consequences whatsoever. Pallets of cash flown around the world, offloaded from military cargo planes, and nobody knows what happens to it all.

         The movie Independence Day addressed this….
         A minute 16 sec long

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdmH47VNiS4&pp=ygUYaW5kZXBlbmRlbmNlIGRheSBoYW1tZXIg
   3. Glen January 20, 2024 at 3:52 pm

      I complete agree with Aurelain’s article, but I think that Western capitalism is working exactly as it is supposed to work. Plus, western elites will certainly go all out to raise an army despite the fact that is is both doomed to failure, and will accelerate the decline of the west. This is because the reason for western civilization’s existence has devolved to making the oligarchs more rich and powerful, and until that changes, nothing else can change.

      Few seem to remember what it took for America to be “the Arsenal of Democracy”. America had a President that had spent a decade essentially taking control of the economy. All of the at the time oligarchs were not in control. The complete manufacturing base of America was centrally managed and controlled. Profits were tightly regulated and government was more than ready to publicly deride war profiteers. (That’s how Truman first gained public attention.) The public was behind the war effort; whether this was due to manipulation by FDR, or just the fact that the public was behind FDR for making their lives better was immaterial.

      Biden has called himself the new FDR. Nothing, quite obviously, is further from the truth. He is to the right of Ronald Reagan on most issues. He has engaged America in losing proxy or allied wars which under close examination should never have happen if America (and the west) were even semi-competent at managing world affairs. He somehow thinks being “the war President” will save his Presidency, but this would be more like Hoover deciding to end the Great Depression by invading Canada and Mexico. The nation is divide (mostly because one of the big goals of the uniparty is to divide the nation), and failing in many critical areas.

      But competently managing world affairs is no longer even the point. Western oligarchs are now fully engaged in very vulture like feasting on the accumulated wealth of western civilization. Ramping up the war machine even for wars they win, lose, or should never have at fought at all is very profitable.

      Western civilization, despite it’s many flaws (colonization and wars) has much going for it, but any reasonable future requires that the neoliberal economy and those who run it be reformed and replaced. Whether western civilization can do this is the struggle ahead.
   4. Peerke January 20, 2024 at 9:42 pm

      Rev, I’d just like to leave this here – Dick Gaughn singing “workers song” at Harvard I think of all places (oh the irony) – those working class lads from Britain were small and stunted for a reason –
      
      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r6tGpyay0D4&pp=ygUcRGljayBnYXVnaG4gaGFuZGZ1bCBvZiBlYXJ0aA%3D%3D
   5. zach January 21, 2024 at 12:53 am

      -The Wrong Stuff-

      “So when you see videos of Ukrainian soldiers attacking in platoon-size units and even below, what you’re really seeing is a vision of warfare learned in Afghanistan, passed on to young officers and NCOs who were not actually there, and now taught to Ukrainian soldiers as the Truth about War.”

      Plenty of commentators have remarked that the use of the small unit tactics is a function of the ISR environment in the theatre of operations. Russia employs similar tactics when fighting in open terrain. Any type of large assembled force, Russian or Ukrainian, is quickly identified by spotter drones or satellite surveillance, and dealt with promptly. I failed philosophy 101, the prof was an a-hole, but on this point “Aurelien” appears to be “begging the question.”

      “Obesity, other health problems, lack of technical qualifications, drug use, criminal convictions and similar impediments mean that a large proportion of the target population (in the US it’s up to 75%) are simply ineligible for service anyway.”

      I read something similar at Moon of Alabama a few months ago, although the data cited in that article put the percentage of fit-for-service people somewhere in the range of 10%. A google search (“what is population of USA 18-35”) returns a figure of 76.8 million. 25% percent of that is 19.2 million, according to my computer’s calculator; Bernhard’s bleaker assessment still returns 7.6 million.

      I’m no military expert, but seems like even the lower of the two figures still yields a considerable force. Whether or not a force that size could be adequately equipped, or sustained, by the western logistics web is another story, but these are lazy observations.
      1. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 21, 2024 at 1:19 am

         HUH? Did you miss the US has a volunteer army, and only the poor sign up? That cohort is more afflicted with obesity and poor health.

         The US has CONSISTENTLY fallen short of its low recruitment goals, by 41,000 in 2023 (https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3616786/dod-addresses-recruiting-shortfall-challenges/). This is after relaxing many requirements, such as fitness, education, and even being tattoo free. These shortfalls are significant in percentage terms. NPR reported that the Army fell 25% short of 2022 goals.

         Regarding lowered standards, from January 2023:

         Gen. James McConville, the Army’s chief of staff, said the challenges to increase recruiting numbers are formidable. By the end of 2022, the Army was hoping to have 473,000 troops, but ended up with about 465,000 after lowering its goal twice.

         It’s not just the Army. The other service branches are also having difficulty finding recruits who can meet physical and academic requirements. “Here’s what we do know. We have a lot of young men and women who want to serve — and they can’t pass the academic requirements or they can’t pass the physical requirements,” said McConville, who became the Army’s chief of staff in 2019.

         To join the Army, a recruit must be between the ages of 17 and 35, medically and physically fit, and in good moral standing. Further, they must be a high school graduate, or the equivalent, and pass the Army’s placement exam known as the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test. According to Pentagon data, 23% of Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 meet all eligibility requirements.

         https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/2023-01-18/army-soldiers-recruiting-requirements-8809987.html

         Note this articles shows you and Moon are looking at the wrong cohort. It’s younger and a narrower age group. It is not uncommon for active duty troops to carry 70 lb packs for considerable distances.

         By contrast, the Russia-unfriendly Moscow Times reported that Russia had a target of increasing its contract soldiers by 400,000 in 2023 and got 490,000. Russia pays soldiers very well.

         This article describes how the bigger services all fell well short of their 2023 goals despite gimmickry. I didn’t bother adding up the targets across services, but even on an eyeball basis, you can see the goals were below those of smaller Russia: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/10/13/big-bonuses-relaxed-policies-new-slogan-none-of-it-saved-military-recruiting-crisis-2023.html
         1. zach January 21, 2024 at 7:36 pm

            I am aware the US military is an all volunteer force. From November of 2023

            https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4289645-bring-back-the-draft-a-divisive-battle-may-loom-over-any-major-war/

            For an all volunteer force to work, you need volunteers. If you run out of volunteers, you make volunteering compulsory. Uncle Sam still has “escalation dominance” over his native population.

            From Annie E. Casey foundation, the adult population of US 18-24 is 31.3 million (I assume they don’t count 17 year olds as adults in their surveys). 23% is in the range of 7+ million. The military has remedial programs for the overweight, ignorant, or the overweight and ignorant to prepare them for basic training. Should service become compulsory, it would be easy enough to fill the manpower gap. Equipping, transporting, and sustaining a force that size during active hostilities across two oceans is another story altogether. Considering “we” keep crashing our newest and most expensive warships and warplanes…

            I don’t disagree with “Aurelien” overall; the combined military capabilities of the US and the nations in its orbit/thrall would not be well disposed to fight a war with Russia in Russia. The idea that they would is fantastical, especially when their good friends the Ukrainians are doing that work for them. The idea that Russia would take the fight to the US/Europe is equally fantastical – logistics, manpower, hostile natives and war-weariness at home.

            Didn’t mean to step on any toes, but I thought it worth mentioning.
            1. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 22, 2024 at 12:34 am

               1. The draft is not coming back.

               2. The candidates are not just deficient health wise but education-wise. The US has a third-world level literacy rates. Over 20% cannot read and that is level is sure to be worse among younger cohorts (the reason US educational attainment still looks OK is we have high educational attainment among older groups and a collapse among the young). If you think someone who cannot read can be trained to read in any reasonable amount of time, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.

               3. It isn’t just overweight. Over 4% of young adults are diabetic and that level is projected to rise. You can count them out. Ditto the 10% of women and 5% of men with scoliosis (you will worsen the condition if you carry loads on your upper back).

               4. As a formerly fat kid who then became a fitness enthusiast as an adult, I can tell you starting to exercise late cannot compensate for not exercising when young. Coordination will be poor compared to people who were active (mine is surprisingly pretty good per my many trainers, apparently due to having taken a bit of ballet). My trainers reported that it routinely takes months to get an exercise-naive person to do simple moves in proper form. And this was not a function of being overweight but of not having played a sport.
               1. zach January 22, 2024 at 1:18 am

                  Henri the Pigeon reminds us to never say never, but I agree, the reinstatement of a draft in the US is unlikely.

                  How literate does a person need to be to take verbal orders? How literate does someone need to be to pilot an fpv drone? If you strip it down, an operator only needs to be able to discern shapes and colors. I don’t mean to belabor the point, but the military is all about efficiency – they can figure out what level of functional literacy is needed to perform basic soldiering and work with that. Adapt and overcome, say the marines.

                  The bad health, yes, no clear workaround there. Although I heard that Elizabeth Holmes is partnering up with Wilford Brimley, working on something for the diabeetus from her cell.
                  1. skippy January 22, 2024 at 2:38 am

                     “How literate does a person need to be to take verbal orders? How literate does someone need to be to pilot an fpv drone? If you strip it down, an operator only needs to be able to discern shapes and colors. I don’t mean to belabor the point, but the military is all about efficiency – they can figure out what level of functional literacy is needed to perform basic soldiering and work with that. Adapt and overcome, say the marines.” – I’m no military expert.

                     Not at you here zach, but your analysis reads like something a MBA would proffer.

                     In the military the first thing asked when handed weapons is what do you do first = read the instructions. For things without them there is repetitive training = over and over again. Even then fail rates for complex activities is still high for training, combat is another story all together.

                     Military is all about efficiency = oxymoron. The military is all about compliance and obedience so the O class get a good report card and advancement in rank.

                     Gezz I remember in the late 70s early 80s tech manuals were more like cartoon books than technical manuals. Good luck finding many reading books for any reason. On that note considering the falling HS standards good luck with finding many with an IQ suitable/functional for higher ED.

                     As far as physical training goes have fun finding many that hump a proper Ruck [over 70lbs+ webgear/weapon/other goodies] Basic/AIT grads hitting more advanced schools have high fail rates of 40%+. In these schools instructors first job is to make people quit and good at it.

                     Now after endless silly ME wars heaps of younger sorts have watched how that all works down the road and the other options are all better.
               2. Acacia January 22, 2024 at 2:56 am

                  Re: education of new recruits

                  I once heard that part of the reason DARPA began shoveling so much money into research on robotics and high tech weapons was that military planners saw that they were never going to get more educated recruits (and if anything, it would be the opposite), so their solution was to try and “make the weapons smarter”… and here we are.
                  1. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 22, 2024 at 7:58 am

                     As we can see from Ukraine, smarter weapons are if anything more difficult to operate, certainly supply-chain wise.
3. Jackiebass January 20, 2024 at 7:58 am

   I’ll probably be criticized for what I’m going to say. Most of today’s problems in the ME and with Israel stem from giving Israel the land to establish their own state. It in effect was stolen from others.We are seeing the effect of this through the constant turmoil happening today.
   1. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 8:26 am

      The Israelis should have paid more attention to that bit from Exodus-

      ‘You shall not oppress or afflict strangers or foreigners in your land, for you were once foreigners residing in the land of Egypt. You shall not oppress or deprive any widow or orphan. If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me, I will surely listen to their cry. My wrath will rise up, and I will visit you with destruction. Then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans.’

      -Exodus 22:21-23
      1. Jabura Basaidai January 20, 2024 at 10:37 am

         looked in the family bible, which is a Catholic bible from 1871 – the same vein, not as wordy – 21-24
         21 Thou shall not molest a stranger, nor afflict him: for yourselves also were strangers in the land of Egypt:
         22 You shall not hurt a widow or orphan.
         23 If you hurt them, they will cry out to me, and I will hear their cry.
         24 And my rage shall be rekindled; and I will strike you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.

         Guess we can hope there’s truth in Exodus
      2. Ellery O'Farrell January 20, 2024 at 2:02 pm

         Also Leviticus 19:33-34:
         “When strangers reside with you in your land, you shall not wrong them.
         The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Lord am your God.”
         (Sefaria, JPS Contemporary Torah)

         Just a few verses on from “Love your fellow as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18b), it completes the picture.
   2. Betty January 20, 2024 at 12:42 pm

      I have been thinking the same thing. It’s so obvious, yet never mentioned. I thought, well maybe it’s because I was trained as an historian… I guess we’re in the “now” period.
   3. Mikel January 20, 2024 at 1:08 pm

      Hold my beer.

      The world is depending a world full of nations run by right-wingers, authoritarians, and assorted lovers of austerity (who basically are in various stages of dispute with each other) to care about poor Palestenians.
   4. CA January 20, 2024 at 2:11 pm

      https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1748204699214573734

      Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

      This might sound innocuous and inconsequential but it actually matters, a lot.

      https://scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3248981/israel-gaza-war-palestinian-envoy-un-thanks-china-true-friend-its-support *

      The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations calls China “a true friend ready to do everything they can to help the Palestinian people” and says “we know the position of China very well. It is a principled position. We work very closely with them in the United Nations Security Council. They support every effort and every resolution that calls for immediate ceasefire and for providing humanitarian assistance.”

      Why does it matter? Because it essentially signs the death kneel of a long-time effort by the U.S. to turn the Muslim world against China, trying to spread the false notion that China was anti-Muslim. The result – which when you think about it is actually pretty hilarious – is that they managed to propagandize themselves into believing it, but not the Muslim world!

      So you end up in the pretty ironical situation where you now have Western countries completely deluded about reality – believing China is some sort of enemy of Islam – and the actual reality of Muslim countries, illustrated by what the Palestinians are saying, stating “nope, actually China is pretty much our best friend!”

      And it’s not just the Palestinians. We know that China has gotten very close to both Saudi Arabia and Iran, which is why they recently managed to broker the historic detente between both countries. And you can find scores of pro-China statements by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – which gathers all of the world’s Muslim states – such as this one where it “commends the efforts of the People’s Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens”:

      https://oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250

      * Israel-Gaza war: Palestinian UN envoy thanks ‘true friend’ China for its support

      11:44 PM · Jan 18, 2024
      1. digi_owl January 20, 2024 at 2:27 pm

         China, like Russia, seem to value stability above all. Thus they are not so much against Islam as against extremists of all stripes. Never mind that CIA by now has a long history of using extremists as destabilizing elements in nations where the leadership do not agree with Wall Street neoliberal colonialism.
   5. Valerie in Australia January 21, 2024 at 12:25 am

      I think this daily!
4. Wukchumni January 20, 2024 at 8:19 am

   Firefighters Used to Bet on Wildfires Easing at Night. Not Anymore. Wall Street Journal
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   A year after the 2017 Pier Fire we were at Saline hot springs and I got up at dark thirty to take a soak-as is my penchant, and spent a couple hours talking to the incident commander for the conflagration, and he’d been a firefighter for 35 years, and it was a great conversation, the kind that could only occur in that sort of setting, hell it was so dark I never saw his face until an hour in…

   The Pier Fire was a 36k+ acre blaze to the south of us along the Tule River drainage, pretty much smack dab where the events take place in Lucifer’s Hammer.

   I knew enough about firefighting to ask the right questions of the incident commander and I could tell he appreciated that, and one thing he kept coming back to was that in all his years of fighting fires like this he’d never seen one that didn’t go to bed at night, until the Pier Fire.

   Since then, it has become really common for fires in this aegis to not behave like they used to, the new normal.

   …and the WSJ is only figuring this out now?
   1. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 9:47 am

      I bet that another factor is how long fire season extends for. Here in Oz it was not that long so you often had groups of Aussie firefighters fly from winter-time Oz – when bushfire season was over – to summer-time America to help fight fires there. But here fire season is getting longer and longer so it may end up putting a stop to our firefighters giving a hand. I suppose that it is a similar story in North America.
      1. Wukchumni January 20, 2024 at 11:04 am

         We had virtually no fire season in the lower half of the state from SF on down this past year.

         The total acreage burned in Cali was around 350k acres, versus 43 million acres in Canada…

         …you just never know
         1. JBird4049 January 20, 2024 at 7:14 pm

            California is three winter months of solid rain, followed by nine months of nothing, interspersed with years of nothing with the occasional flooding, on which close to forty million Californians depend on.

            Say whatever you want about the state government, but during the twentieth century, it built big and it built well.
      2. skippy January 20, 2024 at 4:12 pm

         See you in late February …
5. IM Doc January 20, 2024 at 8:21 am

   With regard to the doctor/administrator in health care tweet and graph.

   As someone who has lived on hospital wards for decades, it is absolutely staggering now to interact with the number of employees in the hospital who have absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with patient care. What is laughable is the fact check on the tweet. That “debunking” is not even remotely based in the world I live in every day. It is obvious that the writers spend zero time in actual care giving to patients.

   What happened around 1990-1995 that started the exponential blowout in non health care workers in the system? That is very easy for someone who lived right through that.

   That was the exact moment when the medical record no longer was a message system between physicians. At that moment in time, the medical records and medical billing were changed into a cash register. The more you could cram into the documents the more you could change. In essence, each patient note became the equivalent to an IRS form. The number of people required to police these documents and keep up with the billing became staggering.

   So for example, at my clinic we have 11 eleven! People sitting around all day doing nothing but going through these documents finding ways to upcode them usually by adding more bloat. These 11 are for the entire organization. Yet in my office alone, there are 2 FTEs sitting around all day doing nothing but insurance pre auths. In 1995, there were precisely zero employees doing this. I do not recall a single person in my office back then who was not directly involved in care.

   I do occasionally see old paper charts from the 1990s. The notes were one or two paragraphs. As a physician, I could instantly tell what happened at that visit, what the MDs thoughts were and what the plan was. Today, when I get a note from a specialist, it is usually 15 pages long, disjointed, disorganized, cut and pasted, and I literally have not a clue what happened until I speak with the patient.

   Americans, your health care system, the “best in the world” is actually a very cruel joke.
   1. Jack January 20, 2024 at 9:19 am

      Thank you for hiring pre-auth techs. In 2001 the nursing staff was assigned pre-auth, totally slowing and degrading nursing care. One would call the insurer, be put on hold for 15 minutes, get the call picked up and dropped in 2 seconds if no instant response. It became difficult to get away from the desk, even to room patients. If one were holding, one would be given other lines to hold as well.
   2. Deacon Blues January 20, 2024 at 9:37 am

      I’m sure there is a similar relationship between full-time faculty and administrators in higher education (my “industry”), though the starting date might differ. Unfortunately, your conclusion (most likely) also applies…
   3. Neutrino January 20, 2024 at 10:55 am

      The very word debunking needs to be euthanized. All to often phrases containing that word indicate that the opposite is more likely true. It became another rhetorical spin tool to stifle any rational dialog or review of verifiable facts.
      1. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 20, 2024 at 11:08 am

         How DARE you tell other people how to write. You are treading on VERY thin ice.

         On top of that, I disagree with your assertion.
         1. Neutrino January 20, 2024 at 11:32 pm

            No disrespect intended toward IM Doc, and I was attempting, unsuccessfully, to agree with his point about how “debunking” use has changed over the past several years.
      2. Bsn January 20, 2024 at 2:34 pm

         Maybe everyone could use a thesaurus more often. There are many available (funny short tweet/pic).
   4. flora January 20, 2024 at 11:57 am

      Thanks for this background info, invisible to patients.
   5. antidlc January 20, 2024 at 12:16 pm

      “Americans, your health care system, the “best in the world” is actually a very cruel joke.”

      fwiw,

      The panelists at the HELP committee hearing on long COVID mentioned the trials and tribulations of getting pre-auths for treatments. One of the panelists mentioned the time commitment required by her doctor’s office trying to get the necessary pre-auths.

      Latest development in Obamacare hell:
      After a long battle, family member got necessary referrals for specialist visits. Referral was valid until spring.
      One problem: family member had to switch Obamacare plans at the beginning of the year and it looks like the referrals were gone with the new plan.

      Can I just scream?
   6. Jason Boxman January 20, 2024 at 1:12 pm

      Reminds me of going to an American Health Information Management Association conference in Atlanta in 2013; It was overwhelmingly medical coding vendors out on the floor. These are the ICD9/10 codes and the Medicare billing codes. “Upcoding”. All of these systems were about billing code capture, to maximize your revenue, or commit the largest amount of billing fraud possible while maintaining plausible deniability. Fun times.

      The larger conference for health tech is HIMSS. When I was there in Orlando in 2014, Hilary Clinton spoke, lol. I missed that keynote. I assume she was grifting for something or other. Granted, some of the health tech stuff does look interesting, but a lot of it was EHR systems (billing capture!) or expensive medical devices.

      Oh, other other big deal was ePrescribe systems. The big selling point was that you can’t read a physician’s handwriting, and this fixes that. On the one hand, it doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable. But I’m not in that space, and I’m not familiar with whatever the fallout has been from widespread adoption of ePrescribe systems.

      Another thing which seemed promising, was FHIR. This was integration with an open API, of disparate Health IT systems. They had great success with this (integrations — not FHIR which is much newer than what they did decades ago with integration in Europe) in Europe, I know in Germany and in Italy specifically as I recall, but their systems weren’t setup for billing capture specifically like our EHR systems are. Instead we have the EHR duopoly, with Cerner and Epic, with AllScripts a distant third. (I’ve used AllScripts, briefly, absolute garbage, not written by physicians unlike the VA in-house system.)

      So our best research comes out of the VA system, with its physician-inspired-and-written EHR system. Which is being destroyed. (VistaA) It’s written in Mumps, of all things.

      It’s weird, that technology certainly could aid in patient care, but that’s not what we’re doing in America.

      https://digital.va.gov/ehr-modernization/about/
      1. lambert strether January 20, 2024 at 2:30 pm

         > MUMPS

         No “of all things” about it; MUMPS was developed at Mass General for laboratory systems, and used for documents like case notes from the beginning. The VA made a good decision. The language has many interesting features but its syntax is not, shall we say, modern.
         1. Lefty Godot January 20, 2024 at 6:05 pm

            Its syntax was terse to the extreme, like APL. Similarly powerful. One letter commands. And you could knock out a program of 15 lines or so that did as much as a COBOL programmer’s 50 page program. But coming back any appreciable amount of time later and trying to remember what this program you wrote was actually doing could be rather…challenging, shall we say? Good old MUMPS.
         2. Jason Boxman January 20, 2024 at 6:17 pm

            Oh it wasn’t a slight on the language itself. It’s just surprising it’s a language few have heard of. I’d never have guessed when I learned of it ten years ago. Makes programmers hard to find though. You never get fired for choosing C or Java. But if you pick say Ocaml good luck finding developers. Or guile. Or TCL.
         3. Janie January 21, 2024 at 12:13 am

            SmithKline Laboratories used MUMPS. It was my introduction to computers in, what, the mid to late seventies when we converted from a manual system (typewriters).
      2. digi_owl January 20, 2024 at 2:36 pm

         Ah yes, Epic. That is the vendor of the software that Norway is trying to ram into place as its national health platform. It is turning into a mess, and one that everyone should have seen coming as Denmark still struggle with the same problem.

         But it seems it has to be done, thanks to agreements made almost 2 decades ago when the then minister of health went to California to get wooed.
   7. redleg January 20, 2024 at 1:26 pm

      “Best in the world” is certainly true in terms of dollars.
   8. Glen January 20, 2024 at 9:26 pm

      I remember over a decade ago reading about a group of visiting American doctors touring a brand new Canadian hospital. It was a big hospital in a major city. At the end of the tour the guide asked if there was anything else they wanted to see. They asked to see the whole wing of the hospital that had been left off the tour to which the guide had a surprised exclamation, “What wing would that be?” Why the wing devoted to billing they said. A hospital this size in America would have at least 100 people for that. The tour guide smiled and said, well, we have one person, I can take you over to her desk and introduce you.

      But remember, in America, all those people devoted to “billing” count towards our GDP. So yeah, it’s a growing economy! Bidenomics be praised!
   9. Valerie Now in Australia January 21, 2024 at 12:36 am

      I took my four year old daughter into the emergency room (Tacoma WA) for a bladder infection on a Sunday morning fifteen years ago. (It got too bad to wait until Monday to see the paediatrician). What my husband and I noticed was how many people coming in and out of the various rooms we were assigned, either repeating the same questions on history or symptoms or just loitering around – mind you the waiting room was full. I kept racing back and forth to the toilet with my daughter as she screamed and cried. I kept asking, “Can’t she just pee in a cup?” They wanted a doctor to check her for abuse – OK, fair enough – but it shouldn’t have take 5 hours! The system struck us as very inefficient and overly paper laden. We put it down to fear of lawsuits. The cost – then it seemed prohibitive – was around $600. We had good insurance but I felt for the people who weren’t so lucky.
      1. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 21, 2024 at 1:27 am

         I hate to second guess you….but did you try calling an urgent care center to see if they could run a urine test the same day? In a triage, a bladder infection goes to the back of the line, behind auto accident victims, stokes, heart attacks, broken bones, severe allergic reactions….You were lucky it was only 5 hours. You could easily have been there for >20 hours. No one is going to be moved by a toddler screaming in that setting.

         Alternatively, the urgent care center might have prescribed antibiotics while waiting to get test results. American MDs hand out antibiotics like candy.

         In Birmingham (population of 200,000, so slightly lower than Tacoma), there are urgent care centers that open at 9 AM on Sundays.

         I don’t mean to offend you but am making this point for the benefit of other readers.
         1. Valerie Now in Australia January 21, 2024 at 5:11 am

            No offence taken. To be honest, it didn’t occur to us 15 years ago. Wish we had known!
            1. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 21, 2024 at 8:27 am

               Oh, 15 years ago, urgent care centers were less prevalent.
               1. Old Jake January 21, 2024 at 7:54 pm

                  Our urgent care (OK walk-in clinic) facility is open 8 – 5 weekdays and 8 – noon Saturday. That’s all. Else it’s the ED 20 miles away. Sequim WA.
6. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 8:47 am

   “What happened to thousands of voters? Registrations suddenly drop in Broward, Palm Beach counties”

   It is almost like a viral disease went through these areas repeatedly and took these people out one after another. So maybe it was the flu or something or even a statistical anomaly. Who knows? Just one of these unanswered equations which is one of Nature’s mysteries.
   1. Wukchumni January 20, 2024 at 8:53 am

      Deceased X
      1. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 9:00 am

         Not Diseased X? Pretty sure that all these people can be found on this website-

         https://www.findagrave.com/
         1. Wukchumni January 20, 2024 at 9:06 am

            Project X teetotalitarian President taking out present teetotalitarian President, a situation without precedent.

            Somebody get Dr. Robert Stadler, stat!
            1. Jabura Basaidai January 20, 2024 at 11:09 am

               ferget the Ayn Rand chump Wuk, get me Dr Benway –
               https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmYbMs27fcg
               1. ambrit January 21, 2024 at 12:38 am

                  How about Dr. Milt Towne, from a Loony tune facility?
         2. Benny Profane January 20, 2024 at 9:12 am

            Florida is Heaven’s waiting room, I’ve heard.
            1. griffen January 20, 2024 at 11:24 am

               Making a move to the Villages would indicate that is likely correct, perhaps the decision making follows (just my point of view); “I’m gonna choose to live among the citrus farms and be near Disney in the hopes of grandchildren want to visit the Magic Kingdom or perhaps they will be hugely into the Harry Potter park…”

               And anyone can still drive and blend with the overall crazy behavior on the interstates and the Florida Turnpike.
               1. Screwball January 20, 2024 at 12:11 pm

                  I took a vacation to Clearwater Beach back in March 2019. We went to Lakeland to see a spring training baseball game on of our ventures. Great time, loved the area around CB, but my oh my the traffic.

                  It should have taken about an hour and a quarter from CB to Lakeland. Not! It was almost 3 hours to get back. The traffic and drivers were horrid. Rt. 4 I think it was.
   2. marym January 20, 2024 at 11:18 am

      The post says FL rolls are down 996,676 since 1/2023 “mostly reflect[ing] people who haven’t voted since before the 2020 presidential election.” There’s no indication one way or the other if anyone is finding some substantial proportion of those being deceased.

      If the number of deaths reported in the first link below (92,586) is correct it’s less than 10% of the statewide drop in the rolls. Even doubling* that for data shenanigans and inexplicable “flu” etc. wouldn’t account for the most of the drop.

      * just for the sake of argument – FL total deaths were in the 100-187K range greater for 2020 and 2021.

      https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/state/2023/12/18/florida-covid-deaths-since-2020-department-of-health/71963037007/
      https://www.flhealthcharts.gov/ChartsDashboards/rdPage.aspx?rdReport=Death.Dataviewer
7. KD January 20, 2024 at 8:51 am

   ‘Dream team’: How all the EU’s top jobs could be held by women Politico (Kevin W). It’s well known that putting a woman in charge is a sign an institution is in terminal decline. Women are left holding the bag. Of course, that does not change the fact that women like Annelina Baerbock and Ursuala von der Leyen are aggressively accelerating that trajectory.

   Terminal decline is evident when concerns of form completely displace any concerns about substance, which in the current era expresses itself in craven tokenism. When a figure like Annelina Baerbock exists only as an ideal form “woman,” and everything else about her as human being is erased, so that the only question is whether you are sexist or not in supporting the emergence of this ideal, abstracted and objectified form bearing the authority of leadership, how could an institution be anything other than completely corrupt and worthless?

   Its similar to the pre-Reformation when any degenerate with juice could buy themselves a Bishopric, and expect everyone to kowtow to them as a holy man of God. The Bishop has the form of Godliness, and so it is no matter that the actual Bishop is in fact a crooked, debauched degenerate, and the problem is the impious pointing this out.

   We live in a pre-Reformation present it seems, where corruption is touted as a virtue, and practices like the sale of offices (privatization) is supposedly a means of better governance and economic efficiency.
   1. digi_owl January 20, 2024 at 12:42 pm

      Hypernormalization comes to mind…

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Yurchak#%22Hypernormalization%22
   2. Feral Finster January 20, 2024 at 1:28 pm

      Concerns of form or of politics, which is more or less the same thing.

      Well put.
      1. digi_owl January 20, 2024 at 2:55 pm

         One thing to ponder is that before the reformation, the bible and mass was in Latin. Even non-church education was heavily focused on Latin.

         Just as big a deal as Luther’s theses was the translation of the bible into other languages and the wide distribution of same thanks to the printing press. This allowed anyone to sit down and check the claims of the priesthood for themselves.

         These days we are seeing a continual euphemism treadmill coming out of academia and spread via social media. What was considered proper speech one day is deeply uncouth and offensive the next.

         I just hope this will not lead to another thirty year war, as given the hardware available these days such an event could get ugly fast.
8. Vit5o January 20, 2024 at 8:52 am

   The video about the “war” in Rio de Janeiro is pure copaganda. Yes, there are dangerous factions dominating most neighborhoods in the city. Some are “bandits” and many are “militias” (formed by ex-cops and active cops – worse than regular bandits). The right-wing politicians in Brazil benefit from this so-called war against the factions, since killing poor people earns many votes. The amount of innocent bystanders that get killed during police raids is huge, but our media does not care much, neither does the youtuber. It’s obviously yet another iteration of the failed war on drugs, but it’s so profitable to those in charge that it will probably go on for decades. There are also documented connections between Brazilian police forces and the United States/Israel.
   1. JohnnyGL January 20, 2024 at 10:13 am

      I agree. I like HistoryLegends, he’s got a lot of great analysis videos. But, yes, he met the cops, toured around the place and naturally gave their side of the story.

      He leans conservative, normally, which is fine, but this was more like a CNN ’embedding’ level of perspective.
9. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 9:29 am

   ‘Kit Klarenberg
   @KitKlarenberg
   HMS Chiddingfold and HMS Bangor collide off the docks of Bahrain, 18.01.24.’

   I’ve watched that video a coupla times now and can’t work out why this accident happened. Was Chiddingfold stuck in reverse gear and couldn’t get out? I saw no sign of it furiously trying to do an emergency stop. Did everybody just keep on looking at display screens on the bridge and nobody thought to look out the window? But both these ships were minesweepers which is bad news. They have been neglecting this class of ship for years so if two are out of action, that can make things more dodgy in the Red Sea. They only have a total of nine of these types of ships
   1. Neutrino January 20, 2024 at 10:58 am

      Is there a British equivalent to DEI at play in the Admiralty and elsewhere?
   2. Steve H. January 20, 2024 at 11:43 am

      Likely gunna blame it on a beer bottle in the gearing…
   3. digi_owl January 20, 2024 at 2:58 pm

      Decision paralysis because the commanding officer was on the head?

      Seems to be a thing in all NATO navies these days.
   4. Well Worn January 20, 2024 at 4:28 pm

      The HMS Bangor was scheduled to be decommissioned next year. The Royal Navy has since chosen to move up the decommissioning date.

      https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68040614
      1. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 5:59 pm

         And yet HMS Chiddingfold is over forty years old while HMS Bangor is only about 25 years old.
         1. Well Worn January 20, 2024 at 6:57 pm

            My bad. I meant to say that what did appear to be a poor job of berthing was, instead, the intentional, and apparently successful, formal decommissioning. (“All going according to plan, Captain!”)
   5. Not Qualified to Comment January 20, 2024 at 6:10 pm

      I understand the RN has been recruiting women for a while. Perhaps they finally let one drive.
      1. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 7:17 pm

         More likely a guy not willing to take directions.
10. Lovell January 20, 2024 at 9:50 am

    Antidote du jour.

    Football or hornball?

    Guess it’s still football with a header.
11. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 9:56 am

    “British life-style: Space minister (!) Andrew Griffith mixed up Mars and the Sun”

    When you read the guy’s Wikipedia entry, you can see that he is not really stupid-

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Griffith

    It’s just that he couldn’t be bothered reading up on the subject of what he is supposed to be in charge of. Not even a child’s primer or a trip to a planetarium.
    1. Trees&Trunks January 20, 2024 at 10:21 am

       Somehow Truss could become prime minister aching to bomb Russia but could not bother to read up on what is Russian or Ukrainian territory.

       https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sergei-lavrov-liz-truss-russia-ukraine-b2012528.html

       No need to know anything about what you are about to do. If that’s not stupidity, then what is?
       1. John January 20, 2024 at 12:34 pm

          You are the science minister and you cannot identify the planets? That could not be more elementary. Were he a bit hazy on quantum mechanics, I could give him a pass had he sense enough to defer to physicists. But this? This gives Truss a run for her money. I want to be pejorative, but fear the moderation elf.
    2. Bsn January 20, 2024 at 2:37 pm

       Not to offend, but anyone who reads Wikipedia is ….. stupid. They are the National Enquirer of the internet.
12. Wukchumni January 20, 2024 at 9:59 am

    Just got the bill for our home insurance and it went up 20%, on top of last year’s 20% raise. so the only thing I can do is deep knee bends and repeat the mantra of 2% inflation tops, as per the statistics that prove it.
    1. Wukchumni January 20, 2024 at 10:12 am

       (clicks sequined heels together 3 times and exclaims…)

       ‘There’s no place like home for inflation, Toto’
    2. griffen January 20, 2024 at 10:20 am

       Now come on, I have it from good authority that inflation has been falling and will continue to gradually shift still towards that 2 to 2.5% bogey ( Sarc). Best time ever, thanks to the most awesome administration.

       Hard to fathom, yet again not that hard. News from the TV late this week said that Traveler’s insurance reported a strong Q4 for their earnings report, attributed to such increases. Your personal economic inflation mileage may indeed vary, of course.
       1. Wukchumni January 20, 2024 at 10:39 am

          In the ongoing Bizarro World chronicles of the collapse of the USSR & the USA, they actually held elections in the Soviet Union and it wasn’t uncommon for the victor to garner 98% of the vote, kind of the flip side to our inflation target being 2%, utter bullshit.
    3. Carolinian January 20, 2024 at 10:50 am

       My most recent car insurance bill caused me to look up the Blue Book on my car which it turns out is worth several thousand dollars more than when I bought it. But the biggest increase was for liability meaning cars in general, and it seems repair costs, are way up as well.

       So it’s not just you if that helps.
       1. MaryLand January 20, 2024 at 12:16 pm

          Our recent car insurance bill went up by 80%. They said it was because of increased car accidents in general! We haven’t had an accident or claim in 30 years and drive less than 3,000 miles a year. Doesn’t matter. Currently shopping for a better deal, but am not optimistic. Not saying there is collusion between insurance companies, but it does have a smell.
          1. skippy January 20, 2024 at 4:20 pm

             They spread the premium around thingy …
          2. ArvidMartensen January 20, 2024 at 4:31 pm

             Perhaps there are increased car accidents and deaths across the western world all of a sudden. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-19/after-years-of-decline-australia-road-toll-is-rising-730/103230110

             And why would that be? What has changed in the past few years? Hmmm…anything that affects the brain and reaction times and risk assessment at 50 mph?
             I might go and look up AJ Leonardi for some insights
       2. juno mas January 20, 2024 at 1:56 pm

          A few days past, my auto insurance agent suggested I up my coverage for “Uninsured Motorist” collisions. He stated that over 40% of California drivers don’t have any, or sufficient, coverage for medical injury or collision damages.
13. CoffinJoe January 20, 2024 at 10:00 am

    The Brazil issue is rather simple to explain: a violent combination of racism and drug trafficking money, tons and tons of it. What people often don’t understand about “Favelas” is that those slums were allowed to grow in big cities by political design.

    At their core they are the result of unresolved issues left from the abolishment of slavery, but also combined with a lack of public housing policy by the American-back military regime that run the country from 1964 through 1988. Millions of Brazilians left the interior and other parts of the country to work in factories in cities such as Rio and São Paulo that were experiencing a short-lived economic boom during those years. As a result several of them were forced to build their houses on the peripheries or “Morros” (hills) of big cities, where the descends of former slaves lived – as it was in Rio. The police forces throughout the country were militarized under the dictatorship, and they remained so after democratization. They were modeled on French colonial militias and designed to be solely a force of repression.

    The increase in inequality under the military administration was accompanied by a bombastic explosion on drug consumption throughout the 1970s and thus the consequences are easy to see it resulted in waves of urban violence. To tackle the issue successive administrations both on federal and state level choose to rely on tough-on-crime policies that prove themselves failures. Today’s Brazil has the third or second biggest incarcerated population in the world and that didn’t resolve anything. But to shortening this already big post let’s jump to the particular case of Rio.

    There are two big issues with the city the first one is that the city is geographically cut by the several hills (morros) so effectively each crime faction had their own little kingdom that they governed as they please once they took power. Sometimes they act with surprisingly more efficiency than the Rio’s state government, but also it means that they can’t create an all big cartel. They often turn on each other and on the police in their drug wars. The police for their part are also corrupt. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s they merge with drug-dealers to create their own gangs in a way not so different from the alliance among criminals and state officials in late Gorbachev-era USSR. These are call “Milicias” (Militias) and they operate more like a mafia than anything. Their strongholds in some areas of the city means for some politicians (Bolsonaro is of them) the guarantee of elections, so there is a political component here deep in Rio’s politics that add another layer of complexity to the issue.

    The other point is that Rio is a former Brazilian capital. It was the capital of the country from 1822 to 1960 and also was a federal territory not formally merged with the State of Rio de Janeiro as it is today. This came after Brasília was built, and some political scientists argue that this fusion with the former capital with the State never work out properly. Anyway Rio remains somewhat the heartland of Brazilian soul and all things that happening in the city are naturally emphasized in the media. Statistically violence is not as great in there as is other particular regions, but the perception of the contrary is what gets a hold in every Brazilian mind.

    What you see in that video of Historylegends is the political response to the situation. It is publicly emphasized that there is a war and thus the policy shall be armed to the teeth to fight crime. In reality drug money is stronger than bullets.

    In meanwhile the population in Rio’s favelas are criminalized for being poor and black. Those policing operations sometimes assumes all the manner of modern day Krypteia, because they don’t solve the core issue, but provide a “therapeutic” display of power for the police or some weak governor. What frustrate me the most is that there are no political will nor solution for the Favela problem in the minds of politicians either from the left or from the right. It is not discussed at all. It is actually perceived as something that should not be bother with it in the first place.

    Anyway thank you who patiently read all this in this mangle english of mine. There is so much I didn’t explain, like the link between the 2016 color revolution, a military intervention in Rio, the election of Bolsonaro in 2018 and the resurgence of military and army elements in our national politics. If you are interested in that and can read in Portuguese there are a couple of good books that explains this better than I can.
    1. Neutrino January 20, 2024 at 11:14 am

       Thank you for that look at favelas.

       In Africa, the more benign analogue in economic development terms is the bidonville (oil drum city, tin can city, shanty town, unplanned development).

       In America, there is lately the Bidenville on streets, sidewalks, parks and industrial areas in urban environments.
       Visualize encampments with occasional derelict recreational vehicles and generators aside tents and scavenged furniture. The once-functioning vehicles and generators provide one type of modernization from the Depression-era Hooverville.
    2. Expat2uruguay January 20, 2024 at 11:22 am

       Obrigado por escrever suas observações!!
       1. Cisco Kid January 20, 2024 at 8:25 pm

          In English: “Thank you for writing your comments!”.

          The breadth of the NC commentariat never fails to amaze
    3. CA January 20, 2024 at 11:34 am

       “There is so much I didn’t explain, like the link between the 2016 color revolution, a military intervention in Rio, the election of Bolsonaro in 2018 and the resurgence of military and army elements in our national politics…”

       All wonderfully explained, but referring to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff as a color revolution is an especially wonderful explanation in a mere expression. Rousseff is now president of the BRICS New Development Bank and can assist Brazilian development from Beijing.
    4. CA January 20, 2024 at 12:07 pm

       Brazil needs the BRICS development model from here, as does Mexico:

       https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17COl

       August 4, 2014

       Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, 1977-2022

       (Percent change)

       https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17COn

       August 4, 2014

       Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, 1977-2022

       (Indexed to 1977)
14. TomDority January 20, 2024 at 10:01 am

    “Steward Health Care’s financial issues could spell catastrophe for the state”
    It the old RE hokey-pokey
    The financial issues are caused by the real estate set up where they sold and operate a lease back so the profits can be syphoned to the RE side of operation with tax breaks and other juicy money making bits like depreciation – meanwhile – it looks to the outsider – John Q Public – like they just can’t make enough money in providing health care — please increase our remittance and give us more public money to bail us out, look at us poor folks just trying to do good for the community sob sob cry cry
    1. jhallc January 20, 2024 at 11:14 am

       One wonders where the money from the sale of the properties went? Into improving the public’s health care and wages of the staff I’m sure. /s
       1. TomDority January 20, 2024 at 1:30 pm

          Pretty sure the capital gains from the sale (taxed at lower rate) went into either, other investment deals like even the property buyers portfolio for its’ returns, the sellers (private equity investors) pockets to purchase other systems or provide dividends to themselves – One thing can be sure, the private equity investors have devised the most tax efficient means to self-enrich at the direct expense of providing health care – maximizing profits in the most tax efficient and least regulatory path possible — All of course completely legal and much easier than providing actual service for the public.
          The bonus is that to the State and it’s residents…. it looks like the provisioning of health care is to expensive instead of the fact that the imposition of the tax favored parasitic financial overhead imposed upon the edifice is the true culprit – it is just the shell game – only the public is the one putting the cash on the table but ain’t allowed to look nor allowed to ever pick the right shell.
          Just another reason the corrupting influence in politics and policy must be chased out, citizens united overturned and repealed and a bunch of special interest taxation needs repeal.
          We should be un-taxing labor and physical industry and imposing that upon speculative and rentier finance (FIRE sector)
    2. antidlc January 20, 2024 at 11:17 am

       How much have the leadershp team and board members been paid?
       https://www.steward.org/about/leadership
15. Steve H. January 20, 2024 at 10:10 am

    > Understanding Growing Inequality, Part 2: How the Rich Got that Way Douglad Lamont (Micael T)

    >> In his indispensable book on engineering, “The New Science of Strong Materials” the engineer and professor J.E. Gordon

    Serendipity, I was just referencing this book yesterday.

    A decent article, though more elucidating symptoms than causes. I’ve too much to say, so I’ll limit it to:

    : Demand destruction, inflation as ZIM cutouts send drones at COSCO in the Red Sea, an ROI mentality includes suppressing viable alternatives.

    : Tangential to Aurelian and some other discussions yesterday, I hadn’t seen a link to this by the Archdruid:

    > Surviving Catabolic Collapse: A Case Study

    >> So over time, the capital stock of any society becomes increasingly ramshackle, jerry-rigged, and expensive to maintain. Growth becomes harder and harder to pay for because maintenance costs eat up so much of the society’s economic product.

    Urban renewal ala Aleppo and more recent examples.
    1. jefemt January 20, 2024 at 11:06 am

       … late-stage capitalism?

       From a friend, horoscope —it appears the sayer of sooth is Georgia Nichols. I have no idea, simply sharing…

       All Signs
       This week Pluto enters Aquarius. Last year, Pluto was in Aquarius for three months. (A teaser.) This year it will be in Aquarius for nine months. (A firm introduction.) By 2025, it will remain there until 2043. No one alive today has ever experienced this phenomenon because it last occurred in 1777-1798. It will herald a radical “power to the people” movement. First, we’ll see the rise of unions. (They’re already organized.) Think Amazon, Walmart and the hospitality industry. Next, the concentration of wealth, in its “top down” power structure will be challenged. Meanwhile, technological advancements will soar! (AI was just a preview of coming attractions.) Pluto’ s last visit to Aquarius brought the French Revolution, the American revolution, the American Constitution and the abolishment of slavery in Canada. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her famous manifesto for women’s right s. I think ecology and saving the planet will be THE issue because Aquarius sees the world as a global village – and if it takes a village to raise a child… it will take a village to save this planet.
       1. Steve H. January 20, 2024 at 11:31 am

          I recently ran into our own friendly neighborhood astrologer, after a discussion over the qualities of our particular choices in heavy whipping cream, I asked his forecast. ‘Sh*t-show in the spring, calmer summer, sh*t-show in the fall.’

          I see nothing in your friends prognostics that much differ from mine, tho my astro-lens is more Robin Hanson‘s response to the Fermi Paradox.
       2. Bsn January 20, 2024 at 2:41 pm

          Former middle school teacher “I’ve been hearing that Pluto is entering Uranus, class, CLASS!”. A direct quote from Sister Mary Elephant.
    2. Mikel January 20, 2024 at 3:25 pm

       “All those hollowed-out companies turn into a lot of hollowed out towns and a hollowed-out middle class.”

       How many monopolies will be looted out of existence?
16. Verifyfirst January 20, 2024 at 11:05 am

    Re: EcoHealth’s just released (FOIA) 2018 grant proposal and the origins of SARS cov2, Leonardi says:

    “This is a smoking gun and a slam dunk rolled into one.

    SARS cov 2 has seemingly artificial sequences that would allow for assembly with a single protein out of many candidates.

    That specific protein is on the grant proposals

    Brace for impact as this is explained to lawmakers”

    https://twitter.com/fitterhappierAJ/status/1747898909026857166
    1. sleeplessintokyo January 20, 2024 at 5:40 pm

       Brace for impact? Hardly. Nothing will come of this. Except a lot of faux hand-wringing.
17. antidlc January 20, 2024 at 11:13 am

    RE: Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly’s testimony before the Senate HELP Committee

    I watched the whole hearing and Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly was the only panelist who brought up ventilation and air filtration to prevent COVID.

    Chris Cuomo had him on his show last night:
    https://twitter.com/ChrisCuomo/status/1748541531298902207

    (I am not a fan of Cuomo, but he has been covering long COVID on his show. He has had COVID four times, according to his x-feed.)

    The HIll had a summary of the hearing:
    https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4417576-senators-more-investment-long-covid-research/

    One of the most interesting comments came from Sen. Braun, Republican from Indiana:

    Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said situations like Vázquez’s highlight significant issues within the current health care system.

    “No one should go broke in this country because they get sick or have a bad accident,” Braun said.

    .
    Another Republican on the committee, Roger Marshall, M.D. from Kansas, mentioned he had a family member suffering from long COVID and he blasted the CDC for its focus on vaccines and not treatments:

    https://www.marshall.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-marshall-discusses-severity-of-long-covid-at-help-committee-hearing/

    “This is personal for me. One of my loved ones is one of those 16 million people who suffer from Long COVID, incapacitated for some two years. People often ask me, well, what’s Long COVID? And I think that we have some loose definitions, but I tell people, it’s like if you had Mono that never goes away. There’s brain fog, there’s aches and pains, and sometimes the pains follow nerve tracks, the vagus nerve, the femoral nerve, and maybe it’s a venous process, and there’s micro blood clots.”

    “I am frustrated that our CDC [and NIH] seems to be more focused on just vaccines than they are treatment for Long COVID. I mean, simple questions still have not been answered.”

    I would hope this hearing would lead to a bipartisan willingness to attack the problem, but Senators Kaine, Young, and Inhofe, all suffering from long COVID, have tried, unsuccessfully, to convince their colleagues to do something:
    https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/4181662-after-the-pandemic-ends-long-covid-still-needs-congressional-attention/

    Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly gives me hope.
    1. Ghost in the Machine January 20, 2024 at 12:17 pm

       Something seemed to go wrong with the mic/recording as the uncomfortable facts started piling up.:) I agreed with everything he said except the part about the US being the ‘best country.’ I guess everyone feel’s compelled to say that, or maybe he was trying to embarrass people into action. How come the ‘best country’ is not tackling this?
       1. antidlc January 20, 2024 at 2:08 pm

          Yes, I thought that was weird that of all times for the sound system to malfunction, it was during his time at the microphone.
18. ricky rosenberg January 20, 2024 at 11:38 am

    Your posting of the Babylon Bee excretions is sad. The articles are not funny as intended, and the usual right-wing anger simmers in every one. Your posting of them, Yves, degrades Naked Capitalism.
    1. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 20, 2024 at 3:44 pm

       Rev Kev disagreed right at the top of Comments. And Kamala deserves to be ridiculed early and often. She is a complete disgrace. This has nothing to do with winger-dom. Another reader linked to leftie Jimmy Dore savaging her.

       Daily Kos is over there.
19. Lee January 20, 2024 at 12:10 pm

    “Trump’s lawyers warn of nationwide ‘chaos’ RT. While true, not a good legal argument.”

    Was not this a rationale put forth in Re Griffin (1869)? See The Non-Originalist Decision That May Save Trump

    “Chase held that the disqualification embodied in Section 3 is not “self-executing,” legal parlance meaning that Congress must first implement the disqualification by appropriate legislation under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment. If Griffin’s Case is correct in this regard, then the case for disqualifying Trump immediately collapses, as no proceeding conducted under congressional legislation has found Trump to have participated in or aided “insurrrection.”

    “The point of interest here is Chase’s rationale for this conclusion, which rested on a modality of argument that today’s originalists profess to reject altogether. Chase argued, in essence, that the consequences to the constitutional order from holding Section 3 to be self-executing would be intolerable, creating a kind of political-legal chaos and inflicting forms of targeted injustice inconsistent with the “general spirit of the Constitution.” Avoiding such consequences was itself a good legal reason to weight the scales of interpretation against self-execution. Wrote Chase, “in the examination of questions of this sort, great attention is properly paid to the argument from inconvenience. This argument, it is true, cannot prevail over plain words or clear reason. But, on the other hand, a construction, which must necessarily occasion great public and private mischief, must never be preferred to a construction which will occasion neither, or neither in so great degree, unless the terms of the instrument absolutely require such preference. Let it then be considered what consequences would spring from the literal interpretation contended for…”1”
    1. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 20, 2024 at 3:39 pm

       I took the Trump lawyers’ chaos remark to be more about political violence. I don’t see it as chaotic to selectively kick Trump off the ballot. The states who are trying to do so have presumably figured out how to print ballots late in the game w/o Trump. It’s a major middle finger to his voters and they will not toke it lying down.
       1. neutrino23 January 20, 2024 at 4:29 pm

          “ It’s a major middle finger to his voters and they will not toke it lying down.”

          LOL. Are you implying the MAGA-hats are a bunch of pot-heads? I thought Oxy was their drug of choice.
    2. lambert strether January 20, 2024 at 4:38 pm

       > Was not this a rationale put forth in Re Griffin (1869

       Yes. See Strategy to Kick Trump Off the Ballot Under the Fourteenth Amendment Already Causing Chaos (So In Re Griffin Was Correctly Decided) at NC, January 1.

       Quoting Justice Chase in Griffin:

       [A] construction, which must necessarily occasion great public and private mischief, must never be preferred to a construction which will occasion neither, or neither in so great degree, unless the terms of the instrument absolutely require such preference.

       The word “chaos” does not appear in Griffin, but I think we can take “mischief” as a synonym.
       1. Lee January 20, 2024 at 5:45 pm

          The author of the article I linked to states that Chase’s ruling was “consequentialist” rather than “originalist”. I can’t tell if Democrats and never Trump Republicans are ignoring possible consequences of Trump’s disqualification absent due process, or do they mean to provoke the pro-Trumpers to engage in political violence. Things could get dicey.
          1. Pat January 20, 2024 at 11:54 pm

             Both. I think these are the same great strategists that thought the Ukraine adventure was going result in Putin’s ouster and a Russia ripe for western looting. They have a blinkered and deeply flawed view of things that allows them to easily ignore things they wrongly consider unimportant.

             While there may be violent reactions, I would lay odds that there will be responses that are not violent but are unwanted. It wouldn’t surprise me if this could become the political decision equivalent of releasing a rapid breeding invasive species into an ecosystem.
20. CA January 20, 2024 at 12:13 pm

    https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1748546370498351466

    Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

    Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro: “The motto Liberty, Equality, Fraternity that was created by the French Revolution no longer has its place in Paris but in South Africa. That is the new reality.” *

    He isn’t wrong… It’s been the case for a while but if this war achieves anything, it is to sound the death knell of the West’s credibility when it comes to respecting human values… and showcases the fact that global South countries are in fact the credible ones.

    And I think there’s no recovering from this – at least for a very long time – which is why this conflict is so important: it introduces a new era where the West won’t manage to speak from a position of strength, at least morally speaking.

    * https://twitter.com/i/status/1748546370498351466

    10:21 PM · Jan 19, 2024
    1. Roger Boyd January 20, 2024 at 1:31 pm

       South Africa is a neoliberal disaster. The financiers co-opted some of the ANC leaders while they were in exile in the UK and other nations. As soon as the ANC got into power it dumped socialism for neoliberalism. The biggest co-option was of Mbeki, who was South African President from 1999 to 2008, and Deputy President from 1994 to 1999. Next came Mbeki’s deputy, Jacob Zuma who was more progressive but he did not make that much of a difference to the neoliberalised SA economy. After that is the current President, Ramaphosa, who is a rich business man (about $450 million). He has generally been “business friendly” and has acted against unions.

       The net result is that South Africa has a few rich Black men, but the rest of the Black population has not seen any real improvement in their lives. Same for the poor white population. SA went form a mono colour elite to a mixed colour one, for the rest of the population not much changed. In fact, things may have become worse.
       1. digi_owl January 20, 2024 at 3:02 pm

          Why oh why do that sound so oddly familiar?
21. flora January 20, 2024 at 12:15 pm

    Good news. NYSE pulls its NAC proposal back from the SEC. from From Reuters:

    NYSE pulls plan for environmentally sustainable asset class.

    https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/nyse-pulls-plan-environmentally-sustainable-asset-class-2024-01-17/

    Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
    1. flora January 20, 2024 at 4:42 pm

       adding for those new to the questions about Natural Asset Companies (NAC): Reuters puts the best gloss possible on the idea. Common Dreams puts a more realistic description of the idea, imo.

       Conservation or Land Grab? The Financialization of Nature

       https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/11/06/conservation-or-land-grab-financialization-nature

       “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
       -Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
22. Joe Well January 20, 2024 at 12:18 pm

    I’ve never seen such a beautiful picture of a pigeon. Thank you.
    1. Bsn January 20, 2024 at 2:49 pm

       I lived on the 8th floor overlooking Pere Lachaise Cemetary in Paris. in the winter it would be grey and gloomy with all of the concrete and stone, no leaves on the trees. Then……. beginning in February the trees would begin to sprout, insects would hatch followed by the birds. Most of the early birds were wood pigeons. Such beautiful birds and nearly twice as big as a city (scavenger) pigeon. Very colourful memories. RIP Sister Piaf.
       1. Yves Smith Post authorJanuary 20, 2024 at 4:11 pm

          Weirdly I have come to like the scavenger pigeons. I am on the 12th floor now, so nothing to eat up here and they don’t need to fly this high to escape predators. Yet they come in onesies, perch on the balcony railing. and seem to be enjoying at the view. Some get very animated, bob their heads while looking. I think they are sight-seeing.
23. LY January 20, 2024 at 12:22 pm

    Beginning lyrics from Blues Traveler “Hook”:

    It doesn’t matter what I say
    So long as I sing with inflection
    That makes you feel I’ll convey
    Some inner truth or vast reflection
    But I’ve said nothing so far
    And I can keep it up for as long as it takes
    And it don’t matter who you are
    If I’m doing my job, it’s your resolve that breaks
    […]
    There is something amiss
    I am being insincere
    In fact I don’t mean any of this
    Still my confession draws you near
    To confuse the issue I’ll refer
    To familiar heroes from long ago
    No matter how much Peter loved her
    What made the Pan refuse to grow
    […]

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdz5kCaCRFM&t=0s
24. Feral Finster January 20, 2024 at 1:32 pm

    https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/ufos-are-bombing-in-yemen?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=7677&post_id=140855974&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1cc3o&utm_medium=email

    Most instructive. In particular, it shows the cravnenness of middle eastern leaders, in that they allow the United States to use airbases on their territory to attack Yemen, but cannot admit to this in public.

    It also testifies to the utterly cucked state of the MSM, in that nobody bothers to ask which countries and which bases.
    1. Screwball January 20, 2024 at 2:26 pm

       I got a kick out of the last line;

       There you have it: unidentified flying objects carrying out a non-existent war.

       Seems apt in today’s world. Donald Trump has dementia (and Melania won’t let him ride in the same car), Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation, Russia got Hamas to attack Israel, the economy is great, inflation has been tamed, the ACA is the best thing since sliced bread, Rachel Maddow is a top-notch journalist, Biden has started 40,000 infrastructure projects, and the democrats are saving democracy.

       Paul Harvey is rolling over in his grave.
25. Jason Boxman January 20, 2024 at 1:37 pm

    On What is going on with ChatGPT?

    I’ve seen these complaints on Twitter as well, but I’ve recently used it to generate and iterate on Python code, not knowing any Python myself, and whatever it provides runs immediately, without error. Granted, I know JavaScript, so I know what I want and how to express it, but the stuff works. It would have taken me a week of reading documentation and searching Google to derive similar code on my own. It probably saved me 24-48 hours of work.

    And if it doesn’t respond or times out, I just hope over to Bing AI, which is the same thing basically, and get the answer there. I’ve used both recently for programming assistance. No issues so far.

    It’s worth noting that this works so well in part because of an expansive group of low wage third party contractors that (re)train the model based on feedback about specific questions asked. So much like Google Maps, none of this would work that well without the army of workers behind the curtain. (For Google Maps, they draw and redraw the coordinates of where roads are from satellite photos, so it can actually provide navigation directions.)
    1. flora January 20, 2024 at 2:36 pm

       ChatGPT is an “upgraded” version of an older, satirical closed topic (postmodern academic) recursive language aggregator and random phrase generator used to satirically “write” academic postmodern essays that have no meaning. It’s hilarious. Clicking this link will produce and display said postmodern, fake, academic-ish essay.

       https://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
    2. digi_owl January 20, 2024 at 3:08 pm

       It may well be that what you got served was lifted wholesale from a Stackexchange response, or some open Git repo.

       Because it seems that if one can make the query specific enough, the LLMs will barf out a verbatim section of their learning material.
       1. ChrisPacific January 20, 2024 at 5:26 pm

          You need to be careful with AI for code generation. As you say, it can and will do things like lift big chunks out of open source repositories while stripping out the licensing, so you could be in breach of GPL or something like that without knowing about it. Also any input data you give it for context can become part of its data set for training or fine tuning, which means it’s subject to leaking for the same reason. There have been some high profile incidents (Samsung) along these lines already.

          For personal use with non-sensitive data or source code it’s generally OK, but it should be used with caution for anything sensitive or commercial.
26. Carolinian January 20, 2024 at 1:59 pm

    New Big Serge

    https://bigserge.substack.com/p/downfall-the-conquest-of-germany
    1. Mikel January 20, 2024 at 2:49 pm

       “Even a dying German army could turn these obstacles into dangerous defensive positions, and the Ruhr region in particularly threatened to become (as one historian has put it) a “Super Stalingrad”, obliging the allies to take tremendous casualties digging out the Germans in a sprawling urban battle…”

       The article is about much more, but that stood out. It’s always been part of the reasoning for dropping the bombs on Japan.
27. farmboy January 20, 2024 at 4:21 pm

    Extreme heat is already harming crop yields, but a new report quantifies just how much that warming is cutting into farmers’ financial security. For every 1 degree Celsius of warming, yields of major crops like corn, soybeans and wheat fall by 16% to 20%, gross farm income falls by 7% and net farm income plummets 66%. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-warmer-planet-trigger-farm-losses.html#google_vignette
    Breeding programs both private and public will respond even if farmers don’t believe the premise
    1. The Rev Kev January 20, 2024 at 6:06 pm

       That’s a pretty ugly picture that you paint. And yet we know that temperatures will only continue to rise. Maybe time to look what crops are grown in very hot countries and what varieties they are exactly.
28. flora January 20, 2024 at 6:41 pm

    Taibbi and Kirn. America this Week. Public 30 minute excerpt.

    https://www.racket.news/p/america-this-week-january-19-2024

    “Maybe the idea is to condition people to sit there and listen to gibberish and think it makes sense.” -Tiabbi
29. Steve H. January 21, 2024 at 5:30 am

    Kirn: “feared it into existence.”
30. ISL January 21, 2024 at 12:06 pm

    I would like to propose a change to the comment on the interview by Alastair Crooke.

    from
    Important
    to
    Very Important.

    (after hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, description of earth).
31. SRL January 21, 2024 at 1:58 pm

    I think AI should be filed under Bezzle since that’s what it is.

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