The ingredients for a tastier, stronger tea could be in the soil Popular Science. Terroir!
Climate
Central Asian Ecosystems Are Rapidly Collapsing Central Asian Bureau for Analytical Reporting
The Paradox Holding Back the Clean Energy Revolution NYT
Climate Change Has Hit Home Insurance. Is Health Insurance Next? WSJ
Court to hear argument in appeals to halt “Good Neighbor” ozone regulation SCOTUSblog. On the shadow docket.
Water
Shared Air
The Hot New Luxury Good for the Rich: Air The New Republic. “You know the air is good, he told me, because the hydrangeas last. Typically, when cut at the stem and arranged in a vase, the delicate flowers wither and droop in a few days. In his apartment, the blooms will stay perky for nearly two weeks.” Perky. The observant have known that rich understand #CovidIsAirborne since Davos in 2023, when #DavosSafe was coined. NC readers have known since 2022: How Ashish Jha and Rochelle Walensky of Newton, MA Protect Their Children from Covid (But not Yours). Now the story reaches the liberal end of the mainstream.
Is it Possible? Is it Expensive? Is it Worth it? Cost & Feasibility of ASHRAE 241 — Part 9 Joey Fox, Medium
* * * Norovirus cases continue to climb in the US, especially in the Northeast, CDC data shows CNN. “In order to prevent illness, the CDC recommends washing your hands, rinsing fruits and vegetables and cooking shellfish thoroughly.” No doubt. But — hold onto your hats, here, folks —
Sources of Airborne Norovirus in Hospital Outbreaks Clinical Infectious Diseases. From the Abstract: “Norovirus RNA was found in 21 (24%) of 86 air samples from 10 different patients. Only air samples during outbreaks, or before a succeeding outbreak, tested positive for norovirus RNA…. The results suggest that recent vomiting is the major source of airborne norovirus and imply a connection between airborne norovirus and outbreaks. The presence of norovirus RNA in submicrometre particles indicates that airborne transmission can be an important transmission route.” Good thing that CDC’s HICPAC is fighting the good fight by trying to minimize respiratory protections for patients!
#COVID19
Protection of natural infection against reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 JN.1 variant (preprint) medRxiv. Data is from Qatar’s national healthcare database. As I read Figure S2, N = 79,630. From the Abstract: “This study investigated the effectiveness of natural infection in preventing reinfection with the JN.1 variant during a large JN.1 wave in Qatar, using a test-negative case-control study design. The overall effectiveness of previous infection in preventing reinfection with JN.1 was estimated at only 1.8% (95% CI: -9.3-12.6%). This effectiveness demonstrated a rapid decline over time since the previous infection, [reaching] a negligible level after one year. The findings show that the protection of natural infection against reinfection with JN.1 is strong only among those who were infected within the last 6 months, with variants such as XBB*. However, this protection wanes rapidly and is entirely lost one year after the previous infection. The findings support considerable immune evasion by JN.1.” Dudes, how’s that herd immunity project coming? All good?
Did we overcount COVID deaths News from Those Nerdy Girls
China?
China’s 1 trillion yuan EV, solar and battery exports face overcapacity concerns as US, EU anxieties grow South China Morning Post
Vietnam and the art of not choosing FT. Good. Couldn’t be better. For them, for us, even for China.
India
Farmers draw up fresh protest plans; plea filed in Supreme Court Business Standard
The G20 in the South Phenomenal World
The metropolitan elite has ignored farmers for too long FT
European Disunion
Tractor protests threaten to drive the EU’s green farming policies into a ditch AP
Syraqistan
U.S. officials warn: Gaza “is turning into Mogadishu” Axios. Idea: Let’s write Bibi a sternly-worded letter. But perhaps not:
Netanyahu’s Messianic Coalition Partners Want an All-out Regional War. Gaza Is Just a First Step Ehud Olmert, Haaretz. Yikes:
Gaza is just the introductory chapter, the platform this gang wants to build as the foundation upon which the real fight they are eyeing will be conducted: the battle for the West Bank and the Temple Mount.
The ultimate aim of this gang is “purging” the West Bank of its Palestinian inhabitants, cleansing the Temple Mount of its Muslim worshippers and annexing the territories to the state of Israel. The way to achieve this goal is blood-soaked. Israeli blood, in the state and in the territories it has been controlling for 57 years now, as well as Jewish blood in places elsewhere in the world. As well as a lot of Palestinian blood, of course, in the territories, in Jerusalem and if there is no alternative – also among Arab citizens of Israel.
This aim will not be achieved without extensive violent conflict. Armageddon. All-out war. In the south, in Jerusalem, in the territories of the West Bank and to the extent necessary also on the northern border. Such a war will bolster the impression that we are fighting for our lives, for our very existence. In a war for survival, it is permissible to do insufferable things, and the hilltop youth are proving daily that among them are many who are capable of precisely that.
This gang of pogromists has been successful in the first stage prior to the uproar and all-out war that they apparently hope will erupt here. They have taken control of the government of Israel and have made the man who heads it into their servant. The possibility that they will dismantle the government and kick the prime minister out of running the matters of state is not outlandish. It is a process that is taking place at this very moment, step by step.
Two-state solution, here we come!
Israeli War Cabinet to approve ‘operational plans’ on Rafah next week: Netanyahu Anadolu Agency
Israel appears to be in breach of ICJ orders on Gaza, senior UN official says Guardian
* * * Egypt announces $35bn deal with UAE to buy premium Mediterranean area Middle East Eye
Sheep wars in the West Bank: Israeli settlers target Bedouins’ flocks France24
Dear Old Blighty
People, ideas, machines VII: ‘The Wizard War’ – lessons on technology, intelligence & organisation from World War II Dominic Cummings substack.
New Not-So-Cold War
Two years into Russia’s invasion, exhausted Ukrainians refuse to give up BBC
So many sanctions on Russia. How much impact do they really have? AP
Big Fat Missiles To Take Down Big Fat Russian Planes. How Ukraine Brought Back Its Massive S-200s. Forbes
Freedom™ is cookies:
Victoria Nuland on more Ukraine spending: “We will do what we have always done, which is defend democracy & freedom around the world … And by the way, we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into the U.S., to make those weapons” pic.twitter.com/6P98dCLKqN
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 24, 2024
Global Elections
Indonesian President Jokowi makes power play to bolster Prabowo’s coalition – and wield political influence after stepping down Channel News Asia
How AI Bots Could Sabotage 2024 Elections around the World Scientific American
Biden Administration
FTC cracks down on H&R Block for deleting tax data when users want to downgrade The Verge
2024
Ahead of South Carolina primary, Trump says he strongly supports IVF after Alabama court ruling AP. Suburban women….
Trump beats Nikki Haley in South Carolina GOP primary NBC 59.8%/39.5%. Commentary:
Tonight’s results in South Carolina proved this is officially a three-way race.
A recent NBC poll showed that in a three-way dead heat, 34% of Americans could see themselves voting for me right now. I have the highest net favorability of any candidate and continue to gain…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 25, 2024
WATCH: Top Republicans showered with boos from Trump victory crowd, prompting jokes from former president FOX. Historically, American democracy is a lot more like this, as opposed to the preening civility and schooling behavior of liberal Democrats.
* * * Will Trump Become a Dictator? Harpers
The Bezzle
US energy data agency to temporarily suspend bitcoin miner survey after lawsuit Reuters
Jeff Bezos, Nvidia join OpenAI in funding humanoid robot startup Figure AI: Report Business Today
Digital Watch
X now rolling out audio and video calls to non-Premium subscribers 9to5 Mac
Bluesky opens up federation, letting anyone run their own server TechCrunch
* * * Vending machine error reveals secret face image database of college students Ars Technica
Boeing
Boeing Names New Human Resources Chief as Labor Talks Loom Bloomberg. “A fast-rising lawyer.” Just the kind of engineering talent Boeing needs! Commentary:
Who did Boeing just promote as chief strikebreaker?
"Uma Amuluru has DC experience, having served as a federal prosecutor, counselor to former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and associate WH counsel to President Obama."https://t.co/fgyA162UFR
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) February 23, 2024
Boeing touts 737 Max as ‘the safest airplane,’ says China’s C919 is similar to what’s on the market CNBC. They can’t help themselves, can they?
The Final Frontier
Astronomers observe the Radcliffe Wave oscillating Phys.org
Koons Landing! The Artist’s Mini-Sculptures Have Made It to the Moon Art News. Good call, Wukchumni.
Public Health
Want to Fix Public Health? Stop Thinking Like a Doctor. Eric Reinheart, The New Republic. “The rot in public health is structural: It cannot be cured by simply rotating the figureheads who preside over it.” Commentary:
You see, they've hamstrung themselves.
They've painted themselves into a corner.
They can't mount a strong, appropriate, and adequate response to Measles, because they've ruled it out for Covid.— tern (@1goodtern) February 24, 2024
We’re Letting a Public Health Disaster Unfold In Slow Motion Gregg Gonsalves, The Nation
Harassment in public health is real. Here’s how to respond Harvard Public Health
Guillotine Watch
San Jose bakery loses thousands of dollars after Tesla reportedly cancels large order NBC. Surely Musk could have thrown the peasants a few coins from his coach, as he passed?
Class Warfare
So-Called ‘Right-to-Work’ and Minimum Wage Bills Go Down in the House In Depth NH
Wealthier, urban Americans have access to more local news Nieman Labs
Technology is capital: Fifth Estate’s critique of the megamachine The Anarchist Library. Fifth Estate was a 1960s Detroit publication, circulation 15,000 (!) at its height. Forgotten history!
Just Your Handyman Plough
The Internet Archive Provides a Model of Free Knowledge for All Jacobin
What physicists get wrong about consciousness Institute of Art and Ideas. Oddly, there’s a recent “In Our Time” podcast on pan-psychism; I guess it’s a thing now?
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
209 comments
Comments are closed.
YET ANOTHER SIGN
(melody borrowed from Lazy Afternoon by The Kinks)
The hottest year we’ve ever known
This climate change is all homegrown
Earth is turning into planet Dune
The world is broiling hot
With forest fires and constant drought
Global warming’s coming on too soon
Waiting waiting waiting for a breeze
I’m hearing Greta Thunberg castigate me
As the atmosphere is trapping heat
The ice at both poles in retreat
January days that feel like June
Yet another sign . . .
Yet another sign . . .
Yet another sign . . .
We humans have some fatal flaws
Ignoring Mother Nature’s laws
The heat that’s coming on is not her cruelty
It’s becoming clear
We’ve wrecked our only biosphere
It’s not like we can go live on the moon
Empty empty empty taps today
When they can’t find water people walk away
We could hold them back with weaponry
But that won’t happen because we
Can’t go out there in the afternoon
Yet another sign . . .
Yet another sign . . .
Yet another sign . . .
A space umbrella might cause a deep freeze
Or we can all go vegan or plant a lot of trees
We will do some strange things urgently
Either us or the Chinese
We’ve hit One Point Five way way too soon
Yet another sign . . .
Yet another sign . . .
Yet another sign . . .
Yet another sign . . .
Yet another sign . . .
My favorite Kinks’ tune! Masterfully re-worded. And a Paul Revere and the Raiders song days before.
The End Times has a playlist of all the great songs from my youth!
I believe the correct title is “Sunny Afternoon” –
signed, master of musical trivia
When is the album of your oeuvres coming out?
Please for the NC, do it!
Biden and Jill private life: so Biden has squeezed every voter out of his dead son and now the wife is the lime for the election Margarita?
Good sex: on Ticker Carlsons telegram channel some time ago there was a video of a naked very much Biden-look-a-like person whipping a naked lady hanging from a tree.
So sex not necessarily with Jill but definitwly punishing and painful for the people.
I saw a Tucker Carlson video a few weeks back and he said that he knew all the people in Washington and none of them had what could be considered a normal sex life.
“normal sex life”
there are many ways to tickle your own sex enjoyment, as long as it’s consensual, it’s all good in my books.
one Man’s “normal” is a dumb standard. I’m sure the Pope has many things to say about how deviant Tucker Carlson’s sex life is.
Tucker Carlson was raised and remains an Episcopalian, part of the Anglican Church. I doubt he cares about what the Pope says.
Hmmmm. Jeffrey Epstein to the white courtesy phone please.
Indeed. Apparently LBJ used to boast about his sexual prowess as a “so there” to his rivals, the Kennedys. Seems Freud got it right when it came to the Viennese upper classes and now the American. When Max Ophuls made a movie about Freud era Vienna–La Ronde–it was really about syphilis.
So it’s hardly surprising that Epstein would have been using sex to control the powerful for whoever he was working for.
The joke I heard about LBJ’s sex life was that he was gave a tour of the White House to a group of journalists, ending up in his own bedroom, where he sat down and patted the bed saying “Gentlemen [this was back in the ’60s], I’ve had a hundred women on this bed, and none of them was as good as Lady Bird!”
Oh Rev! That’s “Jeffery E to the rainbow courtesy phone sweetie!”
Or, putting on my ‘Tinfoil Hat’ here, that should be “#JEpstein@Mossad.Gov.”
“Just speak aloud, wherever you are, and we’ll hear you.”
Do you teally think Biden or any of their ilk cares about the consensual clause?
> there are many ways to tickle your own sex enjoyment
I think dominance and submission is a little too on-the-nose for our political class, and I remember (it was along ago) that there are a lot of dungeons in suburban Virginia.
I mean, don’t they get enough of that at work?
What comes around goes around
Cosplay with diapers for Biden and the Babysitter?
Reptilian overlords like to Get It On…I will put on the Marvin Gaye tonight, and I can tell Martha it’s about to get wild up in here…
Speaking of staying healthy, he might have nothing on Ric Flair…WOO !! The wrestler estimated he had Biblical relations with perhaps 10,000 women from a 2017 documentary I recently watched.
Wilt Chamberlain will see that 10K and double it!
Being a fan of men’s college basketball and the history behind, Wilt is a giant and a legend when it comes to setting records! Not exclusive to just being on the basketball court for some iconic college and professional teams, of course.
Or, as claimed by Charles Mingus in his autobiography, twenty-seven prostitutes in one night… take yer pick: sprinter or marathoner?
Yes! So he claimed.
When he made his boast I calculated his daily rate starting when he was age 12 and it came out to about 3-4 per day, every day, IIRC.
A better, more nuanced “take” on this would be the “career average” of Georges Simeon, the French writer of the Inspector Maigret novels. (Another of the 10,000 Club who never cried out, “Thalassa! Thalassa!”, although they could have done so.)
See: http://www.ianthomson.info/blog/the-seamy-world-of-simenon/#:~:text=Simenon%20claimed%20to%20have%20slept,of%20it%2C%20very%20often).
Are really we sure he’s talking about Dr.Jill and not his dead drunk driving first wife? The man is evidently a talented medium after all.
I recall an interview Joey gave after his first wife died. He bragged about how he was always able to satisfy her. (I can’t find a link to the interview – it was a long time ago.) I thought what a vulgar way to publicly remember your deceased wife, the mother of your children. It was so crude.
That could just as easily mean she faked orgasms really really well.
Apologies for polluting the site with a groan-worthy acronym but…
LOL
That made me smile.
That was my first thought on reading that.
And in her situation, likely a matter of self defense.
I’m not even sure she (either Neilia or Jill) needed to fake anything. Joe Biden doesn’t strike me as a man who cares to look for material evidence of success. He probably just inflated a couple lukewarm assurances that he’s “doing great” into being a legendary lover.
But he evidently harbours hidden doubts, else why the fixation on pre pubescent girls?
If ‘we’ get the leaders ‘we’ deserve, then ‘we’ must have done something really, really bad in a previous time line.
Biden also claims to be great at foreign policy. The evidence for his self-deception is clear.
Seems that genocide works for old man Biden. Wonder how Hitler passed the time in his bunker?
He had a German Shepherd named Blondi at the end whom he loved to play with. Funny thing that. Adolf had German Shepherds for many years but never once have I read a historical account of them being notorious for attacking and biting people. Draw your own conclusions.
Hitler bit them first. He loved sweets, and that explains the lady fingers.
Hitler had a thing for German Sheperds after he tried giving his away (he didn’t think he had time for her) and she kept coming back.
He also had a dog with him in the trenches that he trained to climb ladders and do other tricks. That was his sole recreation, other than more combat. Hitler as a corporal received the Iron Cross, First Class, which normally went to officers, because he was considered too weird to be promoted.
Actually, they tried to promote him but he refused the promotion.
Never heard that one. Interesting.
He was quite brave under fire and volunteered for danger. He was an exposed messenger as I recall.
I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich when I was around 14, and I don’t remember any of these incredible details. Bravo, commenters.
The fact that Hitler liked dogs and was a vegetarian has regularly been cited as “Even monsters can have deceptive-seeming good character traits.” Given the tendency to want/need to demonize Hitler v. the tendency for people to fall for halo effect (needing to see people as all good or all bad) I am highly confident that any evidence that Hitler was mean to his dogs would have been widely touted.
“AI boom sparks concern over Big Tech’s water consumption”
Can’t wait until corporations like Microsoft, Google and Meta start suing townships for the right to get a bigger water allocation for their data centres over drinking water for those towns instead. Between the need for those data centers for AI, cryptocurrency, etc. to have higher and higher requirements for water something has got to give. And the way that local governments will sell public water for pennies on the dollar for soft-drink manufacturers alone may be a sign of how it will work out. Begun the water wars has.
That’s why we need to confront the Supremes with their toxic logic and stand it on it’s head – all laws have have Equal Rights Before The Law. It isn’t just corporate law that has a right to “personhood” and Constitutional Rights – ALL LAWS have equal personhood and Constitutional Rights. To deny non corporate laws the constitutional rights that corporate laws have, it a violation of The Constitution’s clause of Equal Protection and Equal Application of The Law.
That way, local communities could simply inform the Court that their laws have equal standing to Incorporated Personhood/Constitutional Rights, and the same Constitutional Rights they gave to corporations, and instruct the Courts to dismiss corporate law suits.
forgive me…tl/dr: make corporate personhood have consequences for behavior, similar to that of “natural personhood”.
i’d legislate old age and creeping dementia and eventual death for all those aging corps.
but then, thats how those charters were originally formulated, in my understanding.
immortality(*) should not be allowed.
(*every vampire or otherwise including immortals in their worlds—-film or story i can think of after say 1970, has included in its moral framework the downsides of such immortality….especially the correlated inverse relationship to morality.)
https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/02/24/2311221/what-happened-after-peter-thiel-paid-271-students-to-drop-out-of-college
This creep paid people to drop out of college and the success stories are:
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum (Blockchain Scammer)
Laura Deming, a key figure in venture investing in aging and longevity (Old Person Scammer)
Austin Russell, who runs self-driving technologies company Luminar Technologies (Self Driving Scammer)
Paul Gu, co-founder of consumer lending company Upstart (Consumer Scammer)
> People, ideas, machines VII: ‘The Wizard War’ – lessons on technology, intelligence & organisation from World War II
>> I’ve strongly recommended reading von Neumann’s essay Can We Survive Technology?
I have seen that phrase before and I quote-
‘Back in 1991, former US Air Force pilot and noted strategist John Boyd called for U.S. Military reforms after Operation Desert Storm. He noted that there were three basic elements that were necessary to win wars – “People, ideas, machines — in that order!” ‘
This was also the guy that formulated the OODA Loop.
There goes that phrasing again…Defend Democracy…Left unsaid perhaps by Nuland and her conceited cohorts at State and varied elite think tanks (CFR, to name one). Project Defeat Russia has been on their chessboard for the past 25 to 30 years. It mustn’t fail, it can’t fail.
Tell us more…our money also supports their economic infrastructure (healthcare systems, et al) but not going to hear that from this Administration. I guess diplomacy is too high the goal to attain here.
ive seen lots of twitter memes about how we’re paying for ukranian and naz…errr…israeli healthcare…but i havent had the time to chase it down…and the memes so far havent had links.
but if its true…or even sortakinda true…seems like a great thing for RFK….or trump, for that matter…to run on.
weird that i havent seen anything like that.
maybe i missed it(been covered up, here lately)
Vicky Nuland:
“We will do what we have always done, which is defend democracy & freedom around the world … And by the way, we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into the U.S., to make those weapons”
As in:
1). Congress passes $60 (or $95) billion for Ukraine
2). Raytheon/Lockheed/McDonald Douglas/Boeing/General Dynamics and other MIC corporations add weapons deliveries to their miles and years long backlogs of weapons orders.
3). Raytheon/Lockheed/McDonald Douglas/Boeing/General Dynamics and other MIC corporations announce additional $40 (or $65) billion in stock buybacks.
4). Remaining $20 (or $30) billions is given to Ukraine or something like that and spent on various Ukraine needs that are really really hard to quantify or audit and funding needs that nobody in Washington asks about or wants to know about with emphasis on funding local distributors who can “make things happen” – like relations of Congress or important officials like Presidents or such – in US and Ukraine.
5). Raytheon/Lockheed/McDonald Douglas/Boeing/General Dynamics and other MIC corporations donate money to congresspeople who will always vote for more weapons thus helping to ensure their re-election.
That then double dip as part of the stock buyback as shareholders in MIC companies.
The only punishment for congressional insider trading is a $3000 fee for late reporting of trades.
Interested to see if a detailed breakdown exists and found the below linked report. Reads a lot like inside baseball….or inside the Beltway agency speak. Added thought, what was the Pelosi speech from mid year 2022, when she was quoting the book of Matthew I believe…
The poor and the hungry in america could use some attention as well, but Nancy is busy counting her earnings on Nvidia option trading of course.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040
Victoria Nuland on more Ukraine spending: “We will do what we have always done, which is defend democracy & freedom around the world … And by the way, we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into the U.S., to make those weapons”
Remember kids–freedom isn’t free
More on this self-licking Ice Cream cone::https://truthout.org/articles/tlaib-unveils-bill-aimed-at-stopping-congress-members-from-war-profiteering/
Victoria Nuland has those eyebrows and large oval face much like Dr. Evil.
Coinkydink?
Well, the one real take away from the South Carolina primary to me is that Democrats are either staying home…
2016 # of voters Presidential Primary
Republican 740,881
Democratic 370,904
2020 # of voters Presidential Primary
Republican cancelled
Democratic 539,263
2024 # of voters Presidential Primary
Republican 755,800
Democratic 131,472
…Or decided to play in the Republican primary.
Oh and that was some gift Joe Biden gave Clyburn for a really meaningless but largely accurate win in SC. I say accurate because The percentages of Republican to Democratic voters was a more accurate representation of the usual final Presidential election results although it was much closer in 2020 than usual.
As in New Hampshire Haley may have built up her feeble score via Democrats. Polls before the vote showed Trump 30, not 20 points ahead.
Considering where her biggest turn out was I think it is highly likely.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/24/us/elections/results-south-carolina-republican-primary.html
Charleston, Columbia and Beaufort actually went for Haley. Meanwhile my country was 70 percent for Trump. Guess the vote I didn’t make would have been moot indeed.
Nikki playing the long game?
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/nikki-haleys-favor-to-joe-biden/
My take is that Haley is positioning herself for multiple possible lucrative future careers, and many board seats. And I think the dissatisfaction of the kind of donors you are talking about is a big part of it.
Or, Trump names Haley as his VP, which she of course will take, and then Trump has a woman of color on his ticket, someone who can bring her votes along with Trump. Trump’s best move to broaden his base going in to the election and best chance and hope to gather a few female votes from the suburbs. Remember Haley is just as right wing as Trump, worked for him before, and all this lather about Trump picking Green or Stefanik or Vivek is a sideshow to alarm and lather up the Democrats, which is working by the way….
Trump the egotist believes in loyalty. He will never ever pick Haley and likely didn’t know anything about her when he picked her the first time.
Plus as she’s proving right now she has no power to bring in votes for a Trump ticket and that’s always the reason for any VP choice.
Trump has said his first term nickname for Haley was “birdbrain.” It doesn’t exactly suggest he will do a one eighty.
Naming Nikki pretty much assured that he will be impeached or killed within 18 months. Besides, Nikki is a haggard has-been and known cheater, whereas Tulsi is hotter, younger, better speaker, align with him on most issues including crazy Zionism, and has crossover appeal.
i disagree with Tulsi about a whole bunch of stuff…but i resolved a long while ago to vote for her if she got that far(and all the pseudoleftians had been erased)…simply because i think she’s hot.
i’d rather look at her telling me(in the smoky voice, no less)that…well…nothing changes, except for the worse…and “our democracy”/”our republic”, or whatever yadayada bs.
ie: if i see no substantial difference between the 2 that “our democracy” has deemed suitable, i’m voting for the hawt one, or not at all.
of course, im likely done with voting…save locally, where it matters…and even then,lol…
i recently got my voting license(Ha!) in the mail…and was sort of surprised to see that i’m still on the rolls..havent bothered since march of 2020…and pretty much gave up on all that.
i said “hmmph” and folded it up and stuck in my wallet.
idk how long the dern things are good for…and have really just stopped thinking about it…just like ive long ago stopped giving any mind at all to my credit report(btw, spread this far and wide, if you want to hurt the machine,lol—debt is the whip…but whips can be used against the whipper)
Well she is, er, attractive. Plus on her time off she’ll be surfing off Waikiki rather than shooting somebody in the face like Dick Cheney.
As Gore Vidal said about JFK, he brought sex into mainstream politics (literally as it seems). Jowly Lyndon and five o’clock shadow Nixon had a hard time competing.
Donors pulling out
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/25/koch-afp-nikki-haley-00143212
Hurrah! Good news even if the gods do not love me enough for her to fade into obscurity never to return.
I never like to give anything and anyone Koch related credit but that spokesperson gave a decent statement that didn’t outright bad mouth or insult Haley (there was no avoiding an implied “ loser” label) but gave reasonable understandable justifications for shifting focus and funding.
> Just Your Handyman Plough (archived)
>> I have a decent education in theology and literature, but zero official qualifications for building a deck or plumbing a kitchen sink or adding lights to an entryway.
>> My kids get regular doses of “No limits!” and “You can be whatever you want!” in school, and I resent it because it simply isn’t true.
Both these quotes put me in mind of the Identity and the Professional Managerial Class post from the other day. Both essays are worth the reading.
“Koons Landing! The Artist’s Mini-Sculptures Have Made It to the Moon ”
If you get to the Moon and want to see Koon’s work, you will have to tip your head on its side. The lander came in faster than expected, caught something on the surface and is now laying on its side. Fortunately the solar panels are still getting enough sunlight to keep everything powered-
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/intuitive-machines-odysseus-lander-tipped-over-at-touchdown-but-its-still-kicking-174541034.html
Moon inhabitants are revolting against the invasion of their planet, has to be, because someone has to be kicking all these landers sideways!
Here’s Scott Manley’s report on the landing:
Why NASA’s First Landing On The Moon in 50 Years Matters – It’s Commercial, Cryogenic & Confused
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wynBeg7BYr0
Given that these are NASA funded projects from private companies, I’d be interested in knowing just exactly what data ends up being owned by NASA, and what data is retained by the companies involved in the project.
I know there is a tremendous emphasis on mega corporate IP, and how we were all repeatedly told that America would be the “science and engineering” hub and places like China would be the factory. This completely ignores the reality of how $hit gets done and progress is made, but fits well into the MBA induced nightmare of maximizing mega corporate “profits”.
The reality of how the 50’s to 80’s Silicon Valley worked was somewhat different. There was actually a rather free flow of information occurring at all levels. The goal was to advance the art:
Historic Silicon Valley Bar and Restaurant Review
https://invention.si.edu/historic-silicon-valley-bar-and-restaurant-review
For every large commercial success we have with us today, there were maybe 50 to 100 or more start ups that did not make it.
Today’s environment is quite different. Massive mergers which would have been blocked in the past have created techno TBTF mega corporations. Mega corporations that use IP to prevent innovation, and crush competition. But these same mega corporations that off shored manufacturing have unknowingly created many new Silicon Valleys where manufacturing product and advancing the art is the goal rather than maximizing profit.
America has lost one of the key aspects of capitalism – failure. America is now the home of the TBTF mega corporations from Wall St to Silly Con Valley; lovingly supported by an aging and incompetent Too Rich To Fail DC elite willing to endlessly bail out and prop up TBTF corporations (and CEOs). (And increasingly staffed with Slave To Evil Megacorporation workers.) They will continue to strip mine America’s people and infrastructure in some inane attempt to pretend it’s still a unipolar world in their control rather than that it’s their own actions of gutting America, destroying it’s industrial base, wrecking it’s education system, crushing it’s middle class that has destroyed their empire.
STEM, which usually stands for “science, tech, engineering, math,” can mean “slave to evil megacorporations” as well (or instead).
I do rather like that coinage.
Imagine if there were life on the Moon, and they came across Koon’s balloon animal nonsense some dare call art?
Re the UAE land deal with Egypt. I wonder if this is tied to Egypt accepting some of Israel’s Palestinian ‘prisoners’ into the new outdoor prison Egypt is building in the Sinai desert. The timing certainly seems suspicious.
From what I have read, Egypt is losing so much revenue due to diminshed shipping through the canal, they better find some money somewhere quick. I guess they have?
A few quick summary bullets from Dima’s latest video:
(1) The Russian Forces have taken back 1/2 of Robetyne, which was the last tangible gain from the UAF counteroffensive in South Donetsk. The remainder of the village should be mopped up today. This means the complete failure of the UAF to hold any gains from last summer’s ballyhooed offensive (by usual suspects.)
(2) Russia destroyed another Patriot system – drone video geolocated.
(3) Ukraine used HIMARS to shell civilians in Donestk. This is self-defeating, because wasting those systems which are Ukraine’s last artillery remaining, means they are not hitting military targets.
(4) No updates from Kupiansk. Dima opines that if Russia takes this area, Kharhov is next.
Not just Dima, but several Ukrainians officers in western media, too. And apparently real estate values have dropped 50% in Kharkov in a few days. Simplicius claims Russia is silently evacuating certain villages on the border with the Sumy region.
Long Covid…Or Vitamin C deficiency?
I recently experienced some puzzling maladies, which abruptly disappeared. Each morning, I awoke with sore back and shoulder muscles, sore knee and hip joint/muscles. The pain would diminish thru the day. Then my rear knee joint swelled. The internet calls it a “bakers cyst.” Even this was not debilitating as I could still function and work. I set up a Doc appt but the knee suddenly healed in full. After a doc appt, he told me: “I know what you have. Lyme disease. My wife had it.” This sounded very logical as I frequently get ticks because my Labrador gets lots of ticks in wooded park hikes and his ticks move onto me because he is protected by tick repellant. Test results came back negative. Long Covid was a possibility but somehow I didn’t think that was it. I did internet research on Vitamin C deficiency. That looked like a possible fit but Long Covid seemed a closer fit. Vitamin deficiency was something easily addressed so that was my next target, even though I take bare bones multivitamin with Vitamin C (to avoid Iron bad for men, insanely high does of Zinc or B vitamins, etc).
My diet is very healthy but low-ish in Vitamin C – avocadoes, tomatoes, red onions, organic apples, steamed broccoli.
Despite regularly appearing on the Dirty Dozen list of having lots of pesticides, I decided to add Bell Peppers – yellow, orange, red – to my diet because they contain lots of anti-oxidants especially for the eyes and enormous amounts of Vitamin C. I also added peas and diced carrots liberally to my organic rice, and stuffed these into the Peppers and backed them lightly and then smoother them with olive oil and shredded cheese (baking them helps release anti-oxidants which are fat soluble so you also need fat to absorb them but too much baking will reduce Vitamin C).
My symptoms, all of them, completely disappeared within 2 days. A good ending, but now I am worried about the multi vitamin I take. My opinion is that it does not contain the Vitamin C it claims, and wonder what else it does not contain? Meanwhile I am absolutely hooked on the baked stuffed bell peppers. Look forward to eating them almost everyday.
I also added peas and diced carrots liberally to my organic rice, and stuffed these into the Peppers and backed them lightly and then smoother them with olive oil and shredded cheese We’re all coming over for dinner. I hope you have enough peppers.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202311/07/WS654a33daa31090682a5ecf35.html
November 7, 2023
Vitamin C may help elderly people stay active longer, Chinese researchers find
By Liang Shuang
Chinese scientists have discovered that vitamin C may help combat the degeneration of motor functions in elderly individuals by targeting a newly identified subtype of cells found in the spinal cords of older primates.
In a study * published in the journal Nature on Oct 31, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Zoology and the CAS’ Beijing Institute of Genomics identified a subtype of cell called AIMoN-CPM that accumulates in the spinal cords of aged primates and produces a protein called chitotriosidase, or CHIT-1. They found that CHIT-1 triggers the aging process of motor neurons nearby.
To test their hypothesis, researchers injected high-density CHIT-1 into the cerebral fluids of lab monkeys, causing them to exhibit signs of aging and dysfunction in the transmission of motor signals.
They also established a modeling system of human neuron activities outside the human body using differentiated stem cells to mimic the interactions between motor neurons and the environment. They found that neutralizing antibodies against CHIT-1 can effectively block its activity in triggering the motor neurons’ aging process….
* https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06783-1
Most animals create their own vitamin C, except for humans and (I think) goats. Everyone else creates their own, especially if they are injured or sick – they just create more because it fights infection and other difficulties. Humans can take quite a bit of C with no problems other than soft stools. Also, regarding peas, obviously depending on where you are on the planet, but last night was a full moon, perfect time to put peas in the ground. Last night’s was the “Snow Moon” for obvious northern hemisphere reasons, and the next one, March 25 will be the “Worm Moon”, another perfect time to put in seed – again, depending on where you are north/south.
Vitamin C in supplement form is not very bioavailabile compared to the form found in fresh fruits and veggies. Anyone attempting to meet their daily needs for Vitamin C via supplements, beware. My dog can make his own, lucky guy. We humans, being descended from monkeys, cannot, and need daily doses.
I have found that four ounces of orange juice every day does the trick for me. That’s twice the old Royal Navy ration for sailors.
I had a lot of joint pain and knee issues in my early-mid thirties before I figured this out – basically, years of low-level scurvy. It intersected with an intolerance to salicylates that made me experience more pain the “healthier” I ate. I’m glad I figured all that out.
I take chewable Vitamin C tablets, several every day. I still believe that Dr. Linus Pauling was more right than wrong since I have seen so many indications that Big Pharma is deviously talented in demonizing non-pharmaceutical solutions to human health.
I may be wrong but I don’t care. Significant Vitamin C dosage for 40+ years has done me no harm. I will be 77 this summer. I play tennis 3-4 times a week. I swim almost every day, often for an hour. I walk 2 miles to my favorite swim pool when it’s open. My driving philosophy is that every day the car stays in the garage is a good day. More walking and biking when weather allows.
Last comment – read the book “How to Do Nothing, Resisting the Attention Economy” by Jenny Odell. This is the prescription for avoiding corporate swindles as much as possible in spite of manufactured social pressures.
Buy a bag of oranges??
At ~75 the human body starts losing muscle mass. I’m a swimmer, too. Still need to do strength/balance training for the legs as the ‘flutter kick’ in the pool isn’t enough. Slow down on the Vit C and speed up with whey protein. Walking and biking are better than sitting but neither builds the large muscles (glutes and quads, specifically). Lunges and bodyweight squats are the minimum for those muscles.
Swimming is essential for the Zen experience, as well.
Or wear a backpack while walking. My old pack contains 6 bags of flour from Aldi @$1.59/ea. Perform many squats by picking up litter (my usual route passes two schools, kids being kids are messy).
You might look into whole food vitamins.
only vitamin i like is that old timey liquid geritol,lol.
reckon its the b-complex in it that makes my body miss it when i forget to buy some.
but i do a lot of leafy greens, carrots and radishes(all winter, more or less, here in nw central texas hill country).
easily done on a patio of a tiny apartment, if its facing south and/or east.
and that, plus various of the stranger squashes, have all the vitamins you require.(squashes require more room…some, like spaghetti squash or kushaw, you can let hang down to the neighbors, and they can pick squash(and have shade), too,lol….i use those heirloom indeterminate(not bush) squashes for shade every year.—loaded with vitamins)
I just found out not to take iodine and VitC together. They tie each other up apparently.
Even tho my labs were “normal” iodine supplementation vastly increased my energy levels, and lowered depression.
I have suspected that high dose C has helped my LC..can’t prove it
i just listened to old men
“Warren Buffett’s son Howard has given $500M to Ukraine — he warns the US is making a historic mistake by pulling its support”
So this billionaire’s son gives $520 million to Ukraine in humanitarian aid and next year will give another $300 million because Zelenski is such a great guy. And he wants everybody to keep throwing money into the black hole known as the Ukraine. Buffett even gifted Zelenskyy his old badge from his tenure as sheriff of Macon County, Illinois. When I got to that part this is what occurred to me-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyPbLqK1un4 (11 secs)
My first thought was of this scene from “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqomZQMZQCQ
Four thousand mini pies! It seems like Musk is going to make good. “Elon Musk steps in after California bakery jolted by cancelled Tesla order”, Guardian. Oh wait…As of Thursday, the company did not pay Rasetarinera for the pies but offered her a tour of the factory. heh heh.
I’ve got a golden ticket….
‘Matt Stoller
@matthewstoller
Who did Boeing just promote as chief strikebreaker?
“Uma Amuluru has DC experience, having served as a federal prosecutor, counselor to former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and associate WH counsel to President Obama.” ‘
I wonder if Uma Amuluru was present with her boss Loretta Lynch when Lynch had that completely accidental meeting with Bill Clinton on the tarmac of Phoenix airport – just before the Justice Department ‘opted to not pursue charges against (Hillary) Clinton and would close the probe into her private email server.’ She probably got a good view on how the justice system actually works-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_Lynch#Hillary_Clinton_email_investigation
It’s not what you know but who you know.
>It’s not what you know but who you know.
Or who you bl.. never mind
Yeah, we gots to watch out for those ‘in’ er, ‘felationary’ forces in the Socio-Political Market.
Go long “Little Blue Dresses.”
and with biden apparently(i didnt want all that in my mind, today) talking about sex….
One should not be surprised. Boeing, thanks to multiple mergers, have become a to big to fail MIC member.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Defense%2C_Space_%26_Security
Re will Trump become a dictator
Author MacArthur pooh poohs the claims of this latest example of the Paranoid Style but perhaps we could go further and suggest the Dems want to make Trump himself their Reichstag Fire. Certainly they seem to know quite a lot about Hitler’s regime change scenario of the 1920s and 30s. They also spend quite a lot of time denouncing the wrong kind of voters while going on about Democracy.
But that too would be paranoid right?….
Meanwhile, they continue to echo the Weimar depravity.
Next, will they wish for hyperinflation and wheelbarrows full of cash?
Fani apparently keeps wheelbarrows full of cash in her home. She’ll be ok. / heh
those cheap and shallow wheelbarrows full of cash are ok for sex-furniture in a pinch…but the deeper, heavy duty wheelbarrows full of cash will hurt either partners’ back.
based on wife and i’s experience, i’d recommend one of those late 80’s really thick “bedcovers”/”comforters”, entirely acrylic, resistant to rot and sunlight(20 years), and foldable.
dump yer ill gotten cash on that and go at it.
…or or we not in that thread anymore?
lol.
joe biden and jill and the sexlife of the gerontocracy are on my mind, despite my avoidance efforts(ugh)
lol.
T? Will Letitia James become a dictator? / heh
An awful lot of contingencies and “ifs”.
More to the point, Trump is so authoritarian, he couldn’t get a Team R Congress to repeat Obamaccare. Or one can also look at the shambolic 2016 transition, which also blows up the russiagate conspiracy theory.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/27/this-guy-doesnt-know-anything-the-inside-story-of-trumps-shambolic-transition-team
The man is, frankly, too incompetent to be a dictator.
I’m not too sure about that. America is one place where incompetence is the coin of the realm. People who have the ambition to serve the ruling class will be lifted up by them regardless of their abilities. Incompetence will be called ‘new directions,’ or ‘a radical departure,’ but will always return to the interests of the elite class. And since the two preeminent political parties serve those narrow, vested interests, the elites will always be able to rig the political system in their favor. Corporate propaganda happily exhausts itself papering over a candidate’s weaknesses. The repetition of this propaganda becomes the ‘packaging’ of a candidate. And as is often the case, for instance, in selecting diet choices, the American citizen, either through ignorance or lack on money, will often make the only poor choice he’s given. Competency, or dealing with real problems that affect the entire population, hardly matters: strictly speaking, competency means serving the greedy interests of the ruling class. In that way, the US is already a dictatorship, but not of any proletariat, but of a ruling class that persistently denies basic needs like health care, and a living wage, from being met. And us, our democracy? Every four years we get to pick either a quarter-pounder, or a whopper. And we don’t even get to eat them. They go to feed the war/genocide machine that is feasting on all the world.
The elite class may not be smart but they do have the best mafia-like muscle backing them for pay. Is that the key? / heh
Re; 2024
A fairie tale:
…
One of the Two Names of the One Party, the Democrats, sent forth a dreadful creature called Hillary to fight in single combat with the Trump Monster. Her very visage turned men to stone, it was said. She was held to be of one blood with Boadicea, Jeanne d’Arc, Lucretia Borgia, and Bonnie Parker.
The Three Kingdoms were at one with her, as she was corrupt, mendacious, criminal, and ugly, as well as suffering coughing fits and dizzy spells. Surely, said the scribes and oracles, any monster must fly screaming from her mere presence.
Yet it seemed that the Trump was no common monster…
https://fredoneverything.org/it-cometh-from-the-pit-and-it-hath-a-knout/#more-2583
bicephalous party is excellent
General Schleicher?
The quoted article appears to leave out the crucial Reichstag Fire Decree that abolished civil liberties. With this and because the previous conservative government had couped the social democratic state government in Prussia, the Nazis had a free hand to terrorise and lock up Communist MPs and Social Democratic MPs until they had a two thirds majority and could vote through the enabling law.
If there was a US government that actually wanted to prevent authoritarianism at home, it would restore civil liberties and for a start abolish the patriot act. Instead I understand that the border bill the White House offered would have opened the door to do away with due process at the border (but hasn’t much of USA been defined as close to a border?). Not a tool one would want to introduce if one worries about authoritarianism.
RE: Netanyahu’s Messianic Coalition Partners Want an All-out Regional War. Gaza Is Just a First Step Ehud Olmert, Haaretz. Yikes:
Yeah I thought this was the obvious part; for a century US foreign policy has been predicated on the Christian Book of Revelation in the Bible. Apparently Chapter 21, though like many times I investigate Bible Scholarship (where exactly does it say “homosexuality is evil”?) finding an exact quote in The Good Book is a diversion down the futility hole.
There’s some concept “the King will not return until Jews return to the Temple Mount”, apparently called The Third Temple, interpreted as literal Jewish ownership (no Muslims/Christians/Coptics etc) of that place currently not in Israel, a precondition for the Rapture / End Times / End of the World / Armageddon / Gotterdamerung whatevs.
Insanely, US foreign policy is hard-wired to create conditions for the End of the World. The obsession with Apocalyptic nuclear weapons is a Feature, not a Flaw; genocide of Palestinians also is a Feature.
Sykes-Picot set the ball, Winston Churchill rolled it, then the creation of the Nation State of Israel (interestingly voted on by the United Nations, a “world government” verboten to Fundamentalist Christians) sealed the deal; ever since, Christians who read the Book of Revelation as if it were fact have steered the world straight toward the crazy.
I have never understood how Revelations made it into a holy book, it’s completely different than anything else in the Bible, the writing style is different, the ideas are loony … I guess it fills a need for a religion to scare and validate people, but wow is it bonkers crazy, and somehow it is an important part of many religious beliefs, at least among Christians in the United States.
Somehow the crazy took over. The Social Security Act was supposed to have a national ID card, but Fundamentalists didn’t want numbers because Number of the Beast; that was the 1930s, so the crazy has been here for a long time. The fact that the Israeli government is “fulfilling prophecy” bringing on The End Times means the US Government will not slow or stop any of it. Ukraine funding may stop because Ukraine ain’t in the Bible, but Israel funding will increase, because The Good Book Says.
Harry Shearer on Le Show mentions the unspoken part that the domestic political opposition to abortion is almost entirely predicated on that one tiny phrase in the Bible “be fruitful and multiply”; opposition to homosexuality is based on the Sodom and Gomorrah story; the phrase “Jews return to the Temple Mount” has fueled foreign policy similarly.
small, old minority…in tacit, but conditional, fealty to one uniparty faction…that is itself in decline as far as True Believers go.(i dont know a hard core gopteaer under 65)
“Tractor protests threaten to drive the EU’s green farming policies into a ditch”
Not hard to understand why the protests. The EU figured that they could ride roughshod over those farmers and even put a lot of them out of business. No negotiations but just edicts from Brussels. The writer of this article was saying ‘Farmers were demanding the reversal of some of the most progressive measures in the world to counter climate change and protect biodiversity, arguing that the rules were harming their livelihoods and strangling them with red tape.’ Sure, farming practices have to be revamped but farmers saw how that worked out in the Netherlands under Mark Rutte.
And when the EU opened the floodgates for cheap grain to come from the Ukraine which would undercut local farmers and put them out of business, they could see that it was a political decision. Lots of that grain was contaminated with chemicals banned in the EU and they did not have to pay tariffs or anything. That was pure politics but it put the farmers on the chopping block. That is why Polish farmers have blockaded the border with the Ukraine. So much for Green policies here and when the farmers pushed back against the EU and could not be simply arrested, the EU started to flounder as they are not used to people fighting back.
It reeks of corporate agro getting all this passed because their army of lawyers etc can deal with the red tape. And when the family farmers go belly up, the corporations move in to pick up the land cheap.
And i am unsure how much farming can be revised as long as city people demand their burgers and smoothies stay cheap. The current “abundance” comes from massive use of fertilizer etc after all. Remove those and the yields start dropping fast.
Fertilizer made using hydrogren extracted from natgas, the same kind of hydrogen they are now trying to market as “blue” hydrogen to sell it as somehow cleaner than just burning the natgas directly.
On a sane timeline the primary food production would be the last one to be the target of “most progressive measures”. Like right after the last private jet has been turned to plows and food waste has been reduced 100-fold. Then we can start looking if biodiesel is good for tractors or something.
Sadly it happens because the urban intelligenstia/PMC/whatever is completely ignorant to logistics.
They wave their card/phone/watch over some device and magic happens behind the counter.
and that they have a full produce aisle year long.
lol.
aye this is all agrobidness manipulation.
and nonfarm folks are too harried and harassed to even attempt to understand the nuances involved.
when i (rarely these days) have such conversations regarding broad farm policy/how things are currently arranged…beef farmers have no idea about vegetable farming and how similar are the outrages.(my local cattlemen all hate the packers and feedlots).the divide and conquer neoliberalism had its first effects in agriculture…long before it was even a coherent ideology.
I think it’s as old as the enclosures, really, Amfortas.
re: Climate Change Has Hit Home Insurance. Is Health Insurance Next? – WSJ
In the Home Insurance market: Is it climate change or is it inflation? Housing prices chart. Look at the dramatic jump in prices starting in 2020.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS
Then look at the inflation in building materials costs over the last 4-5 years. There was a point where a single 2×4 cost over $40. It was insane. Supply chain issues, inflation issues. Now it’s merely crazy. / ;)
Of course, per the White House there is no inflation. Inflation is under control. The rapid increase in interest rates isn’t a problem. So the WSJ can’t possibly consider inflation as the culprit in rising home insurance rates. / ;)
Any excuse will do for insurers. When the number of providers shrinks enough then as sure as night follows day there will be price increases, just because. :(
My home insurance went up 20% this year after having gone up 20% last year, making a mockery of the official inflation numbers, but its worse than that.
I’ve talked to around 6 or 7 friends/family who are homeowners in different parts of Cali, and everybody is telling the same story, albeit with a twist, in that a number of them went shopping around for lower rates and discovered nobody other than their current insurance carrier, will cover them.
From I Allegedly Dan:
Can You Still Afford Your Home?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGhtypDVYc
I kinda like this guy. He’s a good data point to consider, imo.
~Technology is capital: Fifth Estate’s critique of the megamachine
Wow, I remember them! I’m still working on the Gaza fare but I did skim the piece, will dig in presently. Libertarian communism, but not -isms. I suspect the Tao said something about this?
~Fifth Estate was a 1960s Detroit publication, circulation 15,000 (!) at its height. Forgotten history!
Actually they have presently have a page here.
I remember being in their office on Grand Blvd in Detroit in maybe 1968/69? Well, there is the old canard about the sixties and memories of being there. I am quite sure sufficient efforts were made at the time to not remember much of anything.
So, I’m about half way through.
Half way through and not one mention of energy, specifically fossil fuels. This is a critique Steve Keen and Nate Hagens make that they find absent in Marxian tendencies.
Keen’s maxim: Labour without energy is a corpse; capital without energy is a sculpture.
Well, for Marx, capital was not necessarily a thing, but a set of social relations. The social relations may not have changed with the advance of technology and the efficiency of energy use, but fewer people were required for the same production. And finally, perhaps with AI, humans might be let out of the production equation altogether. What that means for social relations is beyond me, presently.
I’m way ahead of myself here. I’ll get to the second half of the piece.
damn, hon…are you married?
wanna live on a farm?
lol.
i wanna speak thus while i pull weeds, and such.
Well, Amfortas, I’m just an old hippie chick myself and long in the tooth. I was married once but, since I was already married to my violin, quickly decided it wasn’t such a good idea to be double booked. And I’m still a terrible house keeper, I never got the hang of a broom, though now-a-days I maybe look somewhat like I should be riding one!
Anyway, speaking of long teeth, do you have any horses? ;-)
no horses.
i grew up with donkeys and find them much more resilient and self-maintaining.
eventually, i’ll get into burros…smaller, easier to handle, and producing the same relative amount of decent manure…and piling it in a corner, no less.
these things are important to me.
equine shit is gold, so long as you dont feed them hay contaminated with the persistent herbicides.
i need somebody on the other end of the board.
and who will tolerate my weirdness/erudition….as well as the detritus of a life lived hard, and mostly under the radar.
Lambert had my number, i hereby authorise its release to this woman.
and i’m 54..but my skeleton has been diagnosed as age 80 or so,lol.
but, my whole side of the place, including my house, is a monument to stubbornness.
i cannot leave…i’m too integral.
come see me.
things are greening and blooming already.
if youre skinny, ill put you on a ladder…if not, ill put yer foot on th bottom rung of it.
function over form, out here.
main thing is tolerance of my idiosyncrasies.
(cant blieve i splled that right,lol)
That’s so kind, I don’t talk on the phone much, I’m nearly deaf. Not a good thing for a musician.
its real quiet out here
mileaway highway offends my ears
when i go up to what we call the top of the Mountain,
i hear only the foam in my beer.
loudest sound up there.
I never hear quiet. I have extreme tinnitus, there is always a roar, it’s worse in my right ear, but bad enough in the left. The condition for some people drives them off the rails, even to the point of suicide. For me, I can sort of filter it out, but that is only an effect, it is always there. When I have my computer read to me or play music, or watch a youtube thing, it is blasting. So my neighbors tell me. When I listen to music on my phone I start to turn the volume up, immediately it alerts me that turning it up is dangerous for my hearing, but that is only half way and I turn it up all the way. It isn’t very loud to me and the roar is still there. My violin sounds very soft and I really have no confidence in what it would really sound like to the unimpaired which is why I never play for anyone anymore. I wouldn’t hear the foam in your beer, and probably not the mileaway higher, though it all sounds lovely, so to speak. I probably could benefit from hearing aids but I don’t have them. Oh, and I’m a skinny 74.
> Fifth Estate
I’m not a fan of anarchy, but they are a tradition that deserves more respect and visibility than they get, so I am happy to have The Anarchist’s Library as a(n occasional) source.
Amazing that you remember them. Truly the NC commentariat is the best commentariat
bookchin…and his real world experiment, Rojalva/Occolan(both sp-2)….are worth studying.
as far as potential government structures that we eventually form, post-jackpot.
mix that with some kind of distributed(small town) city-state formulation, and folks might make a go of it.
post-collapse, the focus will be on the local…and i expect to be very busy.
I think that anarchism is somewhat misunderstood. To me, the essence is the absence of hierarchy in social relations. But the term social relations is quite a trap. For Marx, borrowing from the FE piece: By social relation – or more specifically, social relation of production – Marx meant ‘the way people organise in order to produce’.
I don’t think that is alien to anarchist thought, but the focus in anarchism is that organization arrives from unanimity. What I’m try to get at is just out of my reach, linguistically. What I am certain of, is that humanity is not advanced enough to get there.
And somehow, to further clutter the mind, I’ve just listened to a podcast on Hegel’s Master – Slave Dialectic. Hoo-boy – I’m going for a walk, the sun is out and it is 50° F in SE Michigan, IN FEBRUARY. Everyday I look, fearing my Tulips are going to come up, far too early.
“….humanity is not advanced enough to get there…”
r
remembering numerous post-disaster studies, its not that simple.’but i have eaten a 5mg gummie, from colorado
may we give away our surplus to our neighbors?
because thats the very foundation of that thing we call society
and fuck margie thatcher, and the horse she rode in on/..and reagan and volker, too
fuck them..
I don’t think it’s a matter of advancement. It’s not like the purpose of evolution, biological or social, is to create perfect anarchists who can live like this.
Unanimity is something that can often occur in groups of people but does not seem sustainable in the long run (groups fall apart, consensus breaks down, and new or altered situations produce different wedges anyhow). It falls apart too easily to make for a sound foundation. Do you know of any society today in which everyone agrees on any consequential political issue?
“I don’t believe in anarchy!” – Yegor Letov, anarchist.
I used to buy that paper when I was young. Harvey Ovshinsky was running it I believe. He also had a radio program in Detroit. One Father’s Day he had his dad on the program. His dad was a physicist of some fame working on amorphous semiconductors. I called in and got to talk to both of them. Good times.
> His dad was a physicist of some fame working on amorphous semiconductors
Stanford R. Ovshinsky and his company, Energy Conversion Devices.
https://www.qwant.com/?q=stanford+ovshinsky+energy+conversion+devices&t=web
Regarding COVID and measles and other public health disasters we’re currently treating as “things we all have to live with”… which I guess rhymes with TINA. ASHRAE 241 is supposed to help with all of that. The intent of the standard, based on my conversations with the authors, is that everyone is supposed to be able to apply it, everyone from home owners and landlords to people operating businesses. Consider asking about it as a reference or how to apply the recommendations from it from any HVAC professionals you deal with. A lot of the recommendations have been discussed on NC in the past.
Did you see the link recently that described that, at least in the NJ commercial market, few HVAC people seem to have any competency at all?
This leaves me with little hope that, even with good standards in hand, that anyone can effectuate them.
Of course I can’t find the post, and Google is useless in this. This country seems to be in terminal decline.
I very much doubt that anyone can tell Genocide Joe what he doesn’t want to hear, and I also doubt that anyone inclined to do so will be let within 100 Feet of the “New FDR”.
This looks very much like a “controlled flight into terrain” to me, a few years ago a flight of “Blue Angels” did just that, in perfect formation.
I expect that the current “Get in line or get hurt” approach as exemplified by Assange and the Trump lawfare will become much more widespread and overt because that’s all that the blob has left now that they have lost the “Mandate of Heaven”.
When “Trust me, I’m a Realtor” is the only message you have…
Biden updating to Rapid Unplanned Disassembly Event.
A comment was made at IanWelsh.net providing a link to a very interesting letter written by W T Stace in 1947. The letter was titled “The Zionist Illusion”.
https://www.princeton.edu/~paw/web_exclusives/more/more_letters/letters_stace.html
Thank you! Strong reasoning on what was wrong with the Zionist arguments viewed from February 1947.
Michael Tracey has started posting again with the latest being myth vs reality re Trump and Russia.
https://www.mtracey.net/p/inside-the-mythical-nato-sabotaging
However one should point out that Trump was under the influence of people like Haley and most especially Pompeo who would be unlikely to appear in Trump2. So any prediction of whither Trump should closely monitor Trump influencers starting with a possibly soon VP pick. Will it be Tulsi or a neoconnish Tim Scott? Other possibilities are less involved with foreign policy.
I think Tracey’s error is to assume Trump foreign policy part one was anything other than making it up as he went along with some of his minions openly defying him. Naturally the neoconnsih want a sure thing.
People are misinterpreting Trump.
As Vijay Prashad says:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocFAm4QQhpA
He is likely more dangerous than the Dems at this point.
The Dems have gone through the learning curve that people like J. Sullivan i think has gone through.
If you listen to cons on the interwebs they clearly do not.
Trump and the cons still believe that US military power is supreme.
Presumably Trump’s big influence was Pat Buchanan and that’s the libertarians, not the neocons. He became aggressive on the Middle East to placate the now deceased Sheldon Adelson. As for Russia and Ukraine, perhaps all that Russiagate hysteria pushed him into it. Wasn’t that the whole purpose of the Russiagate hysteria from people like Hillary who really are neocons?
Trump is a real estate/entertainment guy, not a MIC guy. Once elected what does he get out of more war with Russia? Whereas making peace with Russia could serve his international image.
> Presumably Trump’s big influence
I remember three events with Trump
1) He trashed the Iraq War in South Carolina (!). The Beltway clutched their pearls. The voters loved it.
2) His reaction to the war in IIRC Syria was horror at the buildings destroyed (I know, the lives, but at least he got the destructive angle, if only as real estate investor would see it)
3) The Blob cajoled Trump into attacking Iran and he called it off while the planes were in the air
He’s no angel (he whacked Qasem Soleimani, after all) and certainly no peacenik, but I don’t get the impression he wakes up in morning thinking of ways to start the next war, very much unlike the Blob (and Clinton (and, as we discovered, Biden)).
That said, much will depend on his staff….
What I thought best about Trump was he completely derailed TPP. That in itself was a huge plus regardless of whether you like or hate the man.
Bingo, a much over-looked accomplishment.
He also cancelled the JCPOA with Iran, one of Obama’s positive achievements, out of pure spite over Obama having achieved it. That is worth remembering too.
The Dems have gone through the learning curve…
[ I have no sense that prominent Democrats or Republicans have gone through a learning curve either on Ukraine or Gaza or on China. I find the lack of such a sense quite frightening.
Look for instance to the “daily” articles on China in the New York Times, and notice how fearsome they are and how the fearsome nature is reflected by the comments. ]
“The Dems have gone through the learning curve…”
Darn. I find prominent Democrats entirely frightening, entirely unlearned. From the time of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Democrats became increasingly fearsome militarists:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clinton.html
July 5, 2014
The Next Act of the Neocons
Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton?
By JACOB HEILBRUNN
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clinton-became-a-hawk.html
April 23, 2016
How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk
Throughout her career she has displayed instincts on foreign policy that are more aggressive than those of President Obama — and most Democrats.
By MARK LANDLER
> The Dems have gone through the learning curve
If so, shallowest, most flat-lined curve ever.
The new Bourbons.
~Trump and the cons still believe that US military power is supreme.
By cons I’m guessing you mean Neo-Cons, but they have largely migrated to the Dems, though I’m sure they still hold some fellowship with the Establishment Reptiles, certainly Nikki Haley.
Trump is a poor excuse for a human being and there are numerous reasons to loathe him, but being in league with the Neo-Cons isn’t one of them.
The only learning curve the Dems have gone through is learning that having a moral code that doesn’t involved aggressive actions toward resource heavy countries who think the riches should remain with their people or defensive aggression towards countries that have equal or better resources is not a political or financial winner. That the sociopaths with money will fund their campaigns and arrange the lucrative retirements or arrange for them to disappear depending on their willingness to kiss the ring. That the corrupt among the Party have succeeded and the principled have not.
Carolinian.
aye. i dont think trump is a neocon…in fact, near as i can tell…having never met the man, nor been to new york….i think he’s exactly what he seems to be…over 40 or so years of him being in various limelights: an opportunist, concerned mostly with how he is perceived by the greatest number of people.
(note: overt narcissists are much, much easier to deal with than the covert kind,lol)
ie: he doesnt have an ideology…save self preservation and self aggrandisement.
but one cannot reform the swamp…especially while residing in the heart of it.
so the best i hope for is that he breaks a lot of dishes and upsets the applecart enough to expose further the rot at the heart of our global empire.
even then, we’ll hafta endure days (years?) of rage and Burning Times in order to settle down enough to try to figger out whats next(get started on whats next now, and talk about it to all and sundry)
I agree entirely with this characterization, and to be honest, this is the strongest argument in favor of Trump, I believe. Of course he’s problematic for all sorts of reasons, but he is not part of the policymaking machinery that perpetuates the rot in Washington and, with luck, he will throw enough sand into the gears that the machine will be forced to reform, in course of which those who are not part of the machinery get to have a meaningful input–hopefully. To think that there’s some sort of “right person” (or persons) who can singlehandedly “reform” the system is crazy–even if such a person/persons exist. It’ll be a struggle that will take a generation or two and you have to break things down a bit to get at the inside: even if you have to use a hammer to crack the shell, you won’t be fixing the insides with a hammer. But without a hammer or some other blunt tool to get inside, you never get to fix the insides.
indeed.
my hope is that he so thoroughly breaks things…
i want Kali.
please kill all that oppresses us.
“This study investigated the effectiveness of natural infection in preventing reinfection with the JN.1 variant during a large JN.1 wave in Qatar, using a test-negative case-control study design. The overall effectiveness of previous infection in preventing reinfection with JN.1 was estimated at only 1.8% (95% CI: -9.3-12.6%). This effectiveness demonstrated a rapid decline over time since the previous infection, [reaching] a negligible level after one year.”
I’m going to write something that will not be popular here, but it is based on my personal experience, which I hope has some value in helping to define the reality that we’re living in. I have had Covid three times…that I know of. The first time was in May of 2020. That was the worst. It felt like the hand of God had reached down and smashed me like a bug. I’ve had influensa a couple of times in the past, and this was way worse. The subsequent two times, roughly a year a part, were milder, The last time was more similar to a mild cold.
I chose not to get vaccinated. I must admit that this choice was driven much more by instinct than knowledge. I’m saying all of this to report that my wife became VERY sick with Covid in November. Neither of us mask or take any ventilation precautions because in our country (Sweden), it is “taboo” to take any precautions against Covid.Covid is “just a cold” in Sweden. It had been more than a year since my last bought of Covid and I fully expected to fall ill with Covid again. Due to my wife’s symptoms (dangerously falling oxygen levels and severe weakness), I expected the worst. Strangely, I didn’t experience any symptoms at all. In contrast to me, my wife had experienced Covid only once and then she took two Moderna shots. Equally strangely, the one time my wife had Covid wasn’t the first time I had it. When I succombed to the original Covid strain, she had no symptoms at all. We live in a 400 foot house, so there is no way of escaping exposure. Her first bought with Covid occured after she was vaccinated. So, even though my wife has experienced Covid twice and I have had Covid three times, each time I have had Covid the symptoms have decreased and each time for her, the symptoms have increased. I take D3 & K2 (5000mg), Zinc, B-12, Quecetin and Bromelain plus Omega 3 and a multi-vitamin. My wife takes nothing. So, at this point, I have no idea why my wife has increasing severity of symptoms while I have decreasing or no symptoms. Is it that she was “immune” to the original virus? Is it that she was “vaccinated?” Is it that I take all of these vitamins and she doesn’t?
Unfortunately, because no real research had been done on any of these options, I continue to have no understanding of what exactly it is that I do, or what my wife does or doesn’t do, in order to understand what has made a difference between the two of us. Nor what either of us should do going forward. I have no idea what the long term effects of having had Covid three times will be for me, nor what the two times of my wife experiencing Covid, plus being vaccinated, will have for her. Four years on, these questions shouldn’t be necessary. So, when I see research studies such as the one I’ve quoted; I have no idea what to believe. 1.8% isn’t my experience…But, then again, I have no idea if what my wife had was JN.1 or some other type of Covid that Sweden never informs us about. I’m reduced to superstition in my ways while my wife “trusts the science”. How the f***k a society can expect to function in this intentional disorder, I have no idea…
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=14KBC
January 15, 2018
Life Expectancy at Birth for United States, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, 2017-2021
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=14KCN
January 15, 2018
Infant Mortality for United States, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, 2017-2021
Nice post, thank you. One way to “function in this intentional disorder” is to keep an open mind, learn from others (friends/family) and take with a grain of salt what the CDC, WHO and other corrupt entities suggest or mandate. A tip from a fellow commentator, keep some Ivermectin handy.
Would your wife be open to an experiment and take the vitamin regimen for, say, six months and see if it makes a difference for her?
I feel bad that we are reduced to performing “citizen science” because the “proper authorities” have abandoned their responsibilities.
Ignorance is not bliss, it is self harm.
Oh, and I also suggest obtaining some of “the substance that dare not speak it’s name aloud.”
Well if it helps, I am seeing the pattern you describe with your spouse all the time. It is becoming the norm and not the exception. Colleagues I talk to all over the USA are reporting similar issues.
I only wish there was vigorous evaluation and research being done. Sadly, there is not.
I am seeing the pattern you describe with your spouse all the time. It is becoming the norm and not the exception…
[ This strikes me, as well, as quite important to examine. ]
Sadly, this is an example of “Institutional Thinking.” If something is not searched for, then there are no “signs” of that thing. Thus, the “thing” under consideration is not a problem; it does not ‘exist’ because there are no ‘signs’ of it. Classic circular logic in service to the “Logic of Empire.”
Stay safe.
It seems to me that a very similar article could have been written 20 years ago titled something like “Pure Insanity: Pesticide-Free Food Is The Hot New Luxury For The Rich”
While I agree that, at a systemic level, commercially available air filtration for the not-poor is not a solution to the “pyrocene” (and organic food does not help people too poor to afford it, nor those in food deserts unable to reach a store where they can purchase it) I don’t consider the availability of either good air filtratin or good food a grotesque luxury, but rather a basic right.
Incidentally, the article makes it sound like these high end passivehaus homes cost 50% more than standard homes, and I think that is misleading.
For one thing, choosing more natural materials that won’t offgas as much doesn’t cost +50%, it costs maybe +5-10%. Same for more sustainable materials (ie using wood fiber insulation instead of spray foam). And in some cases these goals are either in sync or at odds, meaning that it is unlikely you will tack on +10% cost in both categories unless you really splurge–in which case +10% may not remotely be the cost ceiling anyhow.
But beyond that, there is only one improvement that helps reduce pollution from human activity in a home, and that is the air filter (air sealing helps a little, but all new homes are supposed to be properly air sealed, and anyhow, even a poorly sealed home would benefit from an air filter for wildfire smoke). So when it comes to “rich people don’t breath air polluted by global warming” we’re maybe talking about a $3,000 unit that serves a $700,000 home. The rest of that 50% premium is something else.
Yes, we live in a dystopian time, and maybe Spaceballs’ PerriAir wasn’t so far off the mark. But I have a great deal of sympathy for any human who does what they can to retain some portion of the health which should be their birthright.
I do not believe that good quality housing need be the luxury the author seemingly believes it to be.
Given elite sociopathy, I thought this entertaining to share: What It’s Like to Be a Sociopath
I think reports of elite sociopathy – in the precise sense used in that interview – are wildly exaggerated. You don’t need to be a sociopath to do profoundly evil things, and many sociopaths don’t do them. Being a sociopath helps advance in elite circles, sure, but then again it’s perfectly within human ability to throttle a normal sense of empathy when it’s really getting in the way. Based on some of the things I’ve read about them (particularly, some of their personal relationships and their occasional fits of irrational self-justification), I tend to doubt that Hitler or Stalin were sociopaths, though some among their entourage probably were.
yeah…see Arendt.
however, and only anecdotally(what ive seen with my eyes)…everybody i have encountered of high status have been obviously amoral(i was the kid of a contractor, then the help)..in how they speak to their wife and kids(mere ornaments), etc
and whatever…the System selects for psychopathy…if you aint one, you better act like one, or never get ahead.
this, of course, damages/compromises you morally….even if noone knows what youve done.
so then its come clean and speak out and expose oneself…and lose everything…or stay silent and play along and keep ones head down.
i think the elite…and this is in reference to the thread the other day that i missed out on,lol….misunderstand just how much discontent there is within their PMC enablers….let alone the cops and soldiery.
I imagine you’re familiar with this documentary but it’s a good thing of which to remind people: The Corporation
https://thecorporation.com/film/
” and whatever…the System selects for psychopathy…if you aint one, you better act like one, or never get ahead.”
Yes. My thinking is that “acting like one” is easier and more common than we sometimes like to think. And I imagine it gets easier to do so once you cross enough lines internally, unless you are not merely “normal”/”neurotypical” but one of those overtly conscientious types, who are contraindicated for advancement.
I tend to think of this as the flaw of meritocratic as opposed to aristocratic systems. The one genuine advantage of the latter is that it doesn’t really select for amorality as much; the elite it produces has many, many vices, but it tends to be less cutthroat and ambitious as a whole. Meritocratic or semi-meritocratic systems (like the Confucian bureaucracy, the Catholic Church, Communist parties, mainstream Western parties and corporations) actively select for ideological conformity and ruthless careerism, or the ability to fake either or both of these things. This selection principle often has disastrous consequences that can exceed even the arrogant complacency that typifies aristocracies.
From the interview: “I enjoy living in this society. I understand that there are rules. I choose to follow those rules because I understand the benefits of this world, this house where I get to live, this relationship I get to have.”
Probably not a ringing endorsement of our society.
I think if anything it is; it means that she has rationally (as in cerebrally, not necessarily correctly) evaluated it and decided that the benefits are worth the effort of participation. By contrast to people who just do many of the same things without any need to think about it.
From The Paradox Holding Back the Clean Energy Revolution
What paradox? Capitalists gotta capitalist. Why wouldn’t it go up? If efficiency goes up, you can keep doing more of the same and make even more money. Why wouldn’t you exploit this? The author also likes to say we a lot. As citizens, we have essentially no say whatsoever about what the rules of the capitalist game are in America. There’s no “we” in this insatiable appetite for consuming stuff. That’s the system foisted upon us. Just look at planned obsolescence, or disposable convenience containers. Without any laws of the road banning this stuff or ensuring it costs the capitalists the whole long tail of externalities, what do you expect?
Who is this we?
Like, huh. People have to drive further because housing is expensive, vehicles are bigger because everyone wants a death rider for safety.
What new stuff? If it breaks, you gotta replace it. They don’t make stuff of quality anymore.
This whole article is muddled, focused on blaming consumerism; In a consumer society, you’re a consumer. It’s by design.
The beatings must continue until moral improves.
About the Internet Archive as a model of Free Knowledge for All . . .
as an old analog refugee in this new digital world, I may be ignorant of the existence of the feature whose absence I am about to decry, and if so . . . hopefully others can tell me how this feature actually exists and how to find it and use it.
Until then, and otherwise, I decry the lack of an index of titles to the Internet Archive. I can’t go there and type in the words Deconsumption Blog by Steve Lagavulin. I have to have the exact legacy url which used to exist for that blog when it used to exist. If I don’t have that exact url to type into the “search” field, then I will never ever find it.
Until a total index of the verbal (written) name of every url-site which exists within the Internet Archive is printed so that every single verbal (written) site title/ blog title can be read and searched for by name, the Internet Archive is a closed book to people like me, sealed within a huge block of transparent Carolina Biological Supply resin.
like this . . .
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=biological+supply+clear+resin+block+image&fr=sfp&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsc01.alicdn.com%2Fkf%2FHTB1dxWEKXXXXXbQXFXXq6xXFXXXc%2F221914625%2FHTB1dxWEKXXXXXbQXFXXq6xXFXXXc.jpg#id=21&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsc01.alicdn.com%2Fkf%2FHTB1dxWEKXXXXXbQXFXXq6xXFXXXc%2F221914625%2FHTB1dxWEKXXXXXbQXFXXq6xXFXXXc.jpg&action=click
You should try using the Wayback machine part of the Internet archive. Searching using deconsumption.typepad.com did get a hit.
Well, I believe that’s the part I have been using, or at least clicking-on when on search engine. But I could be wrong and will look again.
Your advice has opened up a possible avenue of searching. If one knows for sure that one remembers correctly the name of a blog, one can type ” blog.typepad.com” or “blog.blogger.com” or “bog.EveryPossibleChoiceOfBlogPossibilities.com” one by one by one.
It would still be nice if someone would give the Internet Archive people the money to create a total ” by-name” index of every site they have . . . . if they would take the money and create such a total “by-name” index.
Yes, that would be a word-to-web-page index, like Google, except it would have to index not just a snapshot of part of the Internet of today, like Google, but the entire historical record of the Internet that is saved in the archive, so that’s a much larger task.
Of course, they could do something simpler like index only the titles of every unique page, and give you corresponding URLs. It would still be a yuge index, though.
I typed in deconsumption, and the web site auto-completed the rest of the url so I went with it. So, I got lucky. It can be very hard to find what you want in the Internet Archive, but it’s crazy what you can find when you’re just poking around in it.
thats why i have a frelling library,lol
its been in chaotic disarray since cousin sheltered here for the panic phase of the pandemic.
3rd on the list for rehab after i get done with the infrastructure.
(after the shop, which the chickens, and especially the goats, have strewn around and otherwise chaoticised)
materials for all of it are on hand and protected, just need the labor.
I also have a frelling library, or rather . . . a frelling pile of books. But the internets and bloggynets and etc. will have more material than all the books a lone individual can hope to amass.
That’s why I hope that internet and bloggynet hobbyists all set up desktop printers and get acid-free paper for them and copy off all their personal “best of the webnet” picks . . . so that material is preserved after the internets all go dark for good.
I agree, that sounds wonderful. OTOH, I hope we have (or quickly develop) the wisdom to avoid situations like this one described by Hal Draper in 1947.
https://jayrothermel.substack.com/p/the-speed-of-reversion-to-barbarism-ms
Make no mistake, it is America’s undeclared war against Russia.
The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin (NY Times 19 minute read cover story)
…and the US is aghast that Russia would fight back?!
“…and the US is aghast that Russia would fight back?!”
This is the ensuing tragedy Princeton and NYU Russian Studies Professor Stephen F. Cohen tried to explain in 2014, only to be called a “dissenting villain” in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/opinion/a-russia-scholars-views.html
A Russia Scholar’s Views
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/opinion/a-russia-scholars-views.html
A Russia Scholar’s Views
To the Editor:
For more than 40 years, I have taught thousands of undergraduates and trained scores of future Russia specialists at Princeton University and New York University. My many scholarly books, articles and media commentaries have been published in diverse mainstream places, including The New York Times many years ago. And my views are based on my years of study, not on what President Vladimir V. Putin or anyone else thinks.
Indeed, my current perspective is similar to what Henry A. Kissinger wrote ** in The Washington Post this month: “The demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.”
I would go farther: The Ukrainian crisis, the worst and most fateful of the 21st century, is the outcome of Washington’s 20-year bipartisan policy toward post-Soviet Russia, spearheaded by NATO’s eastward expansion. I have been arguing this since the early 1990s…
* https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/world/europe/american-experts-on-russia.html
** https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/henry-kissinger-to-settle-the-ukraine-crisis-start-at-the-end/2014/03/05/46dad868-a496-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html
STEPHEN F. COHEN
New York, March 7, 2014
“Make no mistake, it is America’s undeclared war against Russia…”
Surely and tragically and beyond all morality or ethics so. A betrayal of American principles.
Meanwhile, up north:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLOBUS
On panpsychism.
I think panpsychism must be true because the alternative of dualism, including its’ offspring materialism and idealism, is logically impossible. The problem is to make the connection between psychism and physics, which is a scientific inference we have not yet achieved. But at least it’s conceivable. Physicists tend to believe in materialism which is to take consciousness as inexistent: an obvious paradox one would have thought.
My take is panpsychism describes a living universe, where everything down to the smallest particle is alive and conscious. I’m still working on this in deep processing- reconciling this concept with the idea the fundamental characteristic of living entities is that they reproduce is a hard nut. Awaiting revelation over the ether- perhaps the living ether?
Animals and plants are alive and have a higher degree of mind than particles and humans have a third degree of consciousness. We are conscious of our consciousness, so I think we need 3 categories of mind, with hard nuts at the bottom, then life, then intelligence.
Thanks! “Hard nuts at the bottom” lol.
It isn’t about belief. It’s about how there’s zero evidence for panpsychism, or any other form of dualism (and panpsychism is just the soul repackaged. If anything, it’s a variant of the Japanese kami concept).
Riddle me this: if the mind isn’t a process running on the brain, why then does doing things to the brain directly impact the mind? No model other than a strict materialist one can begin to explain this. All the others can muster is to poke fun at how neuroscience is still at the relatively crude stage of figuring out which parts of the brain control which aspects of the mind, that it can’t really begin to offer a detailed description of how consciousness, if it even actually exists at all, functions, and so therefor magic. They assert that neuroscience and physics will never be able to offer a viable explanation. That conceptually they can’t. Why? Er, because the critics say so.
It’s god of the gaps. And it’ll end just as embarrassingly as every previous god of the gaps critique has before.
What I find frustrating in claiming that materialism is an offspring of dualism is that it simply isn’t true. A materialist explanation of the mind is an outright rejection of any notion of a ghost in the machine. The mind itself emerges holistically from the functions of the organs of the brain, and likely the wider body as well, in the materialist model. The ‘reductionist’ materialist argument is actually the deep, beautiful, nuanced holistic position. It’s all the others that amount to reductionism: either a magical soul that is using the body as a neat puppet, or consciousness is some fundamental material attribute that everything has (and neither of those positions have any actual evidence to support them, which, call me petty, but that seems kind of important. You wouldn’t apply this level of credulity to much of anything else, surely).
Except we never run out of gaps.
Because knowledge actually advances; answers some questions and opens up new ones, which are frequently in turn answered.
“The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”
Thomas Berry
Good to know panpsychism is a thing. I have followed something much like that path for around 60 years though never having heard the name. This stemmed from immersion via the Jesuits in French Catholic existentialists Gabriel Marcel and Jacques Maritain. “The universe lives” makes the need for an additional Prime Mover pretty much moot. Marcel and Maritain seemed to think one was necessary; at the moment, I don’t.
Re: H&R Block cheating their customers
H&R Block offers very high interest loans to its poorest customers- “would you like your refund today?”, and charges interest rates of upwards of 400% on an essentially zero risk loan. They are usurers. Not surprising that they also maximize their profits by cheating their customers also.
Interesting how the number of dead Gazans according to the Israelis is eerily similar to the number of dead Ukrainian troops, by Zelensky…
Both figures seem awfully dubious~