"Foot on the Ground," Head in the Clouds

On this day:

1558
Mary, Queen of Scots, marries the Dauphin of France, François, at Notre Dame de Paris.
1915
The arrest of 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Istanbul marks the beginning of the Armenian Genocide.
1916
Easter Rising: The Irish Republican Brotherhood led by nationalists Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, and Joseph Plunkett starts a rebellion in Ireland.
1916
Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to organise a rescue for the ice-trapped ship ship .
1918
First tank-to-tank combat, at Villers-Bretonneux, France, when three British Mark IVs met three German A7Vs.
1967
Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when its parachute fails to open. He is the first human to die during a space mission.
1967
Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland says in a news conference that the enemy had “gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily.”
1980
Eight U.S. servicemen die in Operation Eagle Claw as they attempt to end the Iran hostage crisis.
1990
STS-31: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

***

Hackers discovered they could use poetry in their prompts to confound LLMs and their safeguards. This is known as an adversarial attack on AI using poetry.
From a recent investigation, “These findings demonstrate that stylistic variation alone can circumvent contemporary safety mechanisms, suggesting fundamental limitations in current alignment methods and evaluation protocols.”

***

Trump says he is considering having the government buy Spirit Air. Mamdani's grocery store could serve food.

***

The Steelers called receiver Makai Lemon without realizing the Eagles had moved up with a trade to get him. The Eagles weren’t able to reach Lemon because he was on the phone with the Steelers.
So the Steelers entered a world of Pittsburgh foolishness previously dominated by the Pirates and their first-round picks, and the Penguins, with their silly responses to Flyers' WWE tactics.

***

The architects of the Afghan withdrawal have problems with how Trump plans to withdraw from Iran. 

***


"Foot on the Ground," Head in the Clouds

The NYC's so-called “pied-à-terre” tax, announced last week by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, would impose an annual surtax on non-primary residential real estate valued at more than $5 million.
To declare victory--the intention is the point to Progressives--Mamdani stood in front of Ken Griffin’s penthouse and grinned, “Today we’re taxing the rich.”

Griffin is the CEO of the Citadel hedge fund and Citadel Securities, and the mayor of the city stands outside Griffin’s home to name and villainize a man who employs thousands, pays an enormous local tax bill, and has donated billions to causes benefiting New Yorkers.

The socialist debate has always been about feasibility: Can these targeted, hierarchical tax plans work? But this notion is beginning to reveal itself as something much more important. Mamdani was bypassing the shallow economics of his 'plan' and making it personal.

Envy. The disparaging of success. Central and abstract government power. These are the antithesis of the thinking that led to this country's creation. These are the elements of class warfare: ugly, anti-individual, and pro-oligarchy. That does not mean it won't work, but it does mean it is, essentially, anti-American. 

It may be that America needs a philosophical infusion from the old, tribal, failed cultures of Europe and Asia, but why people come to a country they dislike and try to recreate a culture they left deserves some thought. It may be that this event, foolish and revealing, is a display of an overconfidence that might stimulate such a reevaluation.

An Economy Filtered

On this day:

1815
The Second Serbian Uprising – a second phase of the national revolution of the Serbs against the Ottoman Empire, erupts shortly after the annexation of the country to the Ottoman Empire.
1940
The Rhythm Night Club fire at a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi, kills 198 people.
1942
World War II: Baedeker Blitz – German bombers hit Exeter, Bath, and York in retaliation for the British raid on Lübeck.
1967
Soviet space program: Soyuz 1 (Russian: Союз 1, Union 1), a manned spaceflight, is launched into orbit carrying cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Komarov.
1968
Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.

***

"As I said the other day, I promised my family, this organization and this team that I was going to give them the best version of me that I can possibly give them. In order to do so, I have committed to seeking counseling, starting this weekend," Vrabel said Wednesday night. "This is something that I have given a lot of thought to and is something I would advise a player to do if I was counseling them.
"I have always wanted to lead by example, and I believe this is what I have to do to be the best husband, father and coach that I possibly can be. This is not an easy thing for me to admit, but it is one that I know will make me a better person. I appreciate the support that everyone has given me and promise a stronger resolve as a result."

Well, that should make America feel better.

***

This day, in 1564, is the birthday of William Shakespeare, English writer and actor (d. 1616) (traditional approximate birth date in Julian calendar based on April 26 baptism)

***

The Penguins, the third-highest scoring team in the NHL during the regular season, have four goals in three games during this series. One came at even strength, two came on the power play, and one came with the goaltender pulled in Game 1.

***

Berkshire's Abel has more than $43 billion of his company's assets invested in Japanese stocks as of the April 17 closing bell.
Whereas many of Wall Street's leading public companies trade at premium valuations, Japan's trading houses have consistently traded at high-single-digit to low-double-digit price-to-earnings ratios. The companies are paying dividends to shareholders, and their management teams are receiving modest pay packages compared to those of most large- and mega-cap U.S. public companies.

***

An Economy Filtered

California cannot permit the construction of a smartphone factory, an electric car plant, or a Navy destroyer shipyard. Not won’t — can’t. The regulatory environment makes it effectively impossible to build new semiconductor fabs, automotive paint shops, battery gigafactories, or steel foundries.

Tesla didn’t put its Gigafactory in Nevada out of affection for Reno. General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego can build destroyers only because it’s been grandfathered in since 1960. If it closed tomorrow, it could not be rebuilt.--Tabarrok

So we can't build businesses but complain there are no jobs? We can't drill and sell oil, but complain about the cost of importing it?

I know a man who owns a coffee shop and was told by local regulators that his floor space required that he build a second bathroom. So, he made the shop smaller. I know a farmer whose kids wanted to set up a roadside vegetable stand to sell produce from their garden and were told they needed a $40,000 investment in air conditioning to meet regulations.

China may be a problem, but a suicidal culture does not need enemies to be rewarded.

 

Gerrymander Redux

On this day:

1529
The Treaty of Saragossa divides the eastern hemisphere between Spain and Portugal along a line 297.5 leagues or 17° east of the Moluccas.
1836
Texas Revolution: A day after the Battle of San Jacinto, forces under Texas General Sam Houston capture Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna.
1889
At high noon, thousands rush to claim land in the Land Run of 1889. Within hours the cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie are formed with populations of at least 10,000.
1898
Spanish-American War: The United States Navy begins a blockade of Cuban ports and the USS Nashville captures a Spanish merchant ship.
1915
The use of poison gas in World War I escalates when chlorine gas is released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres.
2000
In a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives’ home in Miami, Florida.

***

“The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.”--Elbridge Gerry

***

John Mearsheimer is a political scientist at the University of Chicago. He has a body of work encompassing international affairs, particularly Israel's relationship with its neighbors and America. One book, Why Leaders Lie (Oxford University Press, 2011), analyzes lying in international politics. His two main findings are that leaders actually do not lie very much to other countries and that democratic leaders are actually more likely than autocrats to lie to their own people.

***

Elián González was rescued from America by the American government.

***

The Blue Origin explosion last weekend was significant for the Artemis program. The New Glenn rocket was designed to launch Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander, one of two options the space agency is tapping to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface as part of its Artemis program. The other company NASA is contracting is SpaceX, whose Starship rocket also has yet to successfully deliver functional payloads into space and has repeatedly exploded during launch attempts.

***

China has built a massive $1.2 trillion trade surplus and dominates key future-facing industries such as electric vehicles, solar panels, shipbuilding, and robotics. Yet its share of the global economy has slipped, from a peak of about 18.5% in 2021 to roughly 16.5% by the end of 2025, according to data from the International Monetary Fund, said a WSJ report.

***

Government works on its own script, works around the law, and, when caught, forgives itself.

***

Gerrymander Redux

Gerrymandering restructures voting districts for partisan purposes. The new gerrymandering of Virginia will take a state that voted for Trump in the last election and has a breakdown in the House of Representatives of 6 to 5 in favor of Democrats and change it to 10 to 1, Democrats. This will essentially disenfranchise rural voters.

In democracies, voters choose political leaders; in gerrymandering the leaders choose the voters.

           Subverting Democracy in the Name of Democracy

Voting is but a part of democracy. The Russians have a national vote, too.

The good Mr. Gerry, for whom this disgraceful process is named, was no hack. Born into a wealthy merchant family, Gerry vocally opposed British colonial policy in the 1760s and played an active role in organizing the resistance during the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. Elected to the Second Continental Congress, Gerry signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. He was one of three men who attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787 but refused to sign the Constitution because it initially did not include a Bill of Rights. After its ratification, he was elected to the first United States Congress, where he actively participated in drafting and passing the Bill of Rights, advocating for individual and state liberties. Gerry was at first opposed to the idea of political parties(wiki). He was the Governor of Massachusetts and was elected Vice President under Madison in 1812. He died in office.

Nor was this practice new. Manipulating voting districts to secure political power existed even before the nation. In 18th-century England, political operatives created “rotten boroughs” with only a few eligible voters, making it easy for politicians to buy votes and win seats. 

After English colonists founded the United States, gerrymandering “began almost immediately,” says Thomas Hunter, a political science professor at the University of West Georgia.

Gerrymandering is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise certain voters and distort elections. Its intent is to benefit the political class and to spite the voter. Amazingly, it is illegal to do this based on race, but only on race. What honest citizen would want this? And why?

It can only be that the disenfranchised voter is thought to deserve to be.

Voting is a contest of beliefs. One votes to express a belief, with the many beliefs available, you will vote for the superior one. But inherent to the democracy is the belief that you will accept the result of the vote, that the majority may not see your way as the best.

The Americans have a structural advantage; they have a Constitution that limits the power of the state, carefully considered guidelines that channel votes within a confining framework. The American vote is a nuance within that structure.

With gerrymandering, like voting fraud, a thief attempts to distort the system for his own benefit. He always disguises the motive as a need to defeat an evil opponent or philosophy--the 'no effort is too much' argument--but the objective is to benefit the politician and his organization. The voting box is no longer a contest, it is a command.

So, gerrymandering, voter fraud, and court manipulation are all means to subvert the letter and the spirit of America's founding documents for the betterment of a political few. Any abuse is allowed to advance the kingdom of the righteous. And the righteous thief.

And in modern America, it is brandished proudly.

A Zero-Sum

On this day:

1653
Oliver Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament.
1775
American Revolutionary War: the Siege of Boston begins, following the battles at Lexington and Concord.
1862
Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard complete the first pasteurization tests.
1902
Pierre and Marie Curie refine radium chloride.
1918
Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims, his final victories before his death the following day.
1961
Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed troops against Cuba.

1972
Apollo 16, commanded by John Young, lands on the moon.
1978
Korean Air Flight 902 is shot down by the Soviet Union.
1980
Climax of Berber Spring in Algeria as hundreds of Berber political activists are arrested.
1999
Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado.
2008
Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300, becoming the first female driver in history to win an Indy car race.

***

[Foreign aid is] “an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.” ― Lord Peter Bauer

***

Ke'Bryan Hayes' glove remains elite. The two-time Gold Glove Award-winner has already contributed 4 defensive runs saved — the most among any third baseman.
The problem: through his first 17 games, he's hitting just .064 with a .137 on-base percentage. He only has three hits on the young season — all singles — and was replaced in the starting lineup by Eugenio Suárez for the Reds' series opener against the Minnesota Twins on Friday night.

***

The gerrymandering of Virginia is not simply a maneuver to influence national politics for the benefit of one political establishment; it does so by depriving the local state citizens of representation.

***

California paid $9 billion in health care for illegal immigrants last year.

***

A Zero-Sum

As the debt grows, so will its interest in both absolute dollars and proportion of spending. That is to say, the debt financing will increase at the expense of social spending. So there will be a true zero-sum relationship between debt financing and social funding. And also between one social spending area and another.

These are, superficially, very serious-looking social dynamics but seem not to be worthy of discussion.

 

Sunday/Emmaus

On this day:

1529
The Second Diet of Speyer bans Lutheranism; a group of rulers (German: Fürst) and independent cities (German: Reichsstadt) protests the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms, beginning the Protestant Reformation.
1587
Francis Drake’s expedition sinks the Spanish fleet in Cádiz harbor
1775
American Revolutionary War: The war begins with an American victory in Concord during the battles of Lexington and Concord.
1961
The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba ends in success for the defenders.
1971
Charles Manson is sentenced to death for conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders.
1993
The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.
1995
Oklahoma City bombing: The A Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168. That same day convicted murderer Richard Wayne Snell, who had ties to one of the bombers, Timothy McVeigh, is executed in Arkansas.

***

Flyers did not look like the team that played into the playoffs. The Pens were overwhelmed with speed and intensity, and they tried hard.


***


Sunday/Emmaus

Today's gospel is the brilliant Road to Emmaus gospel, where two of Christ's apostles are discussing Christ's death on their way to the town of Emmaus. They are joined by Christ, whom they do not recognize. He joins the conversation, explains the life and death of Christ, particularly in the context of prophecy.

The travelers reach a point in the road where it seems the new man who joined them is going to go his own way. The men encourage him to continue with them to Emmaus. They eventually recognize him at the breaking of the bread at dinner.

This story is especially interesting in its connection to the Eucharist but what is fascinating is the journey of men, met by Christ whom they do not recognize and the moment where they, the travelers, must initiate the true development and enhancement of their understanding.

Without their positive efforts, Christ will move on alone.

Satstats

On this day:

1897
The Greco-Turkish War is declared between Greece and the Ottoman Empire.
1906
An earthquake and fire destroy much of San Francisco, California.
1930
BBC Radio announces that there is no news on that day.
1942
World War II: The Doolittle Raid on Japan. Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya are bombed.
1943
World War II: Operation Vengeance, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is killed when his aircraft is shot down by U.S. fighters over Bougainville Island.
1988
The United States launches Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest naval battle since World War II.

*** 

If the Democrats came up with a plan for all Americans to jump off a thousand-foot cliff tomorrow, some Republicans would come up with an 'alternative’ plan in which we would all jump off a 500-foot cliff next week.--Sowell

***

The Iroquois Confederacy — or the Haudenosaunee Confederacy — was a league made up of six distinct Native American Indian nations that spoke the same language. The Confederacy is most well-known for its role in the Fur Trade and the major wars that shaped the American Colonies.

***

Many reports act as if Iran--or the U.S.--never considered the posibility of taking advantage of the chokepoint in the Persian Gulf. They must not remember the Iran-Iraq War and its spillover when Iran incidentally mined a U.S. ship, resulting in Operation Praying Mantis.

By 1988, Iran and Iraq had been locked in a brutal war for nearly eight years. Hundreds of thousands had died in grinding trench warfare reminiscent of World War I. Both nations sought to strangle the other's economy by attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps laid mines in international shipping lanes and used small speedboats to harass and attack merchant vessels. The conflict became known as the Tanker War.

***

Braden “Clavicular” Peters was rushed to the hospital earlier this week after suffering a suspected drug overdose.

The 20-year-old is a so-called “looksmaxxing” influencer who attempts to “maximize” his physical appearance through often ill-advised practices, which range from treating facial acne to plastic surgery and “bonesmashing,” a bizarre phenomenon that involves striking one’s own face with a hammer.

***


Satstats

According to Bilmes, a policy lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, the cost of the ongoing Iran war is likely to exceed $1 trillion.

*

In 2015 coal generated 69% of China’s primary energy, and by 2024 it was down to 56% — much higher than the US at 8%. But the actual volume of coal consumed was greater than ever, simply because China’s electricity demand continues to grow. Despite its efforts to reduce coal use, four years after Xi’s pledge, China was consuming 40% more coal than the rest of the world combined.

*

A full 29% of the city’s budget, an astounding $39 billion, goes to a school system where enrollment is down, truancy is up, and achievement is stagnant.

*

There are over 4400 hit and runs a year in Pittsburgh

*

The defense budget is just 13 percent of total federal spending.

*

Last year, we paid $970 billion in interest costs; this year, we will surpass $1 trillion. Interest costs so far this year “have been the second-largest spending category for the federal government — outpacing outlays for all budget categories except for Social Security.”

*

Almost a quarter-billion calls are placed to 911 each year in the United States. A large share of them involve social problems, not crimes or emergencies—yet police are always dispatched.

*

Physician incomes are extraordinarily high in the United States. A new NBER paper finds that U.S. physicians earn roughly two to four times as much as their counterparts in Canada, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

*

Though roughly the size of California, Paraguay’s $47 billion economy is about 1% of California’s.

*

By one metric, all ten of the most influential science papers of the last decade came from the United States.

A Copy, Sort Of

On this day:

1397
Geoffrey Chaucer tells the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II. Chaucer scholars have also identified this date (in 1387) the start of the book’s pilgrimage to Canterbury.
1897
The Aurora, Texas UFO incident
1912
Russian troops open fire on striking goldfield workers in northeast Siberia, killing at least 150.
1946
Syria obtains its Independence from the French occupation.
1961
Bay of Pigs Invasion: A group of CIA-financed and trained Cuban exiles lands at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, intending to oust Fidel Castro.
1969
Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy.
1970
Apollo program: The ill-fated Apollo 13 spacecraft returns to Earth safely.
1986
The Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years’ War between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly ends. Ah, Europe.

***

Racial equity plans don’t build generational wealth—they redistribute resentment. They don’t heal historical wounds—they reopen them for political profit.--Chin

***

In 1897, in Arora, Texas, a flying metal craft crashed into a local windmill. The debris was unlike anything the townspeople had ever encountered—pieces of a strange, lightweight metal that was both strong and heat-resistant. As they sifted through the wreckage, they discovered something even more shocking: the body of a small humanoid figure, mangled and lifeless, lying among the twisted remnants of the craft.

Or so it is said.


***

An Obama-era loophole later expanded under Biden allows Chinese nationals to travel visa-free to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory. Pregnant women have exploited this policy to give birth on U.S. soil and secure American citizenship for their children.


***

Ukraine’s defenders have invented an entirely new way of war that’s costing Russia massively in blood and treasure to advance even a few yards at a time — and Kyiv’s “robot” forces are getting ever better.
Zelensky says autonomous systems have participated in over 22,000 frontline missions — sparing human casualties — these last three months, a period that’s seen Moscow driven back on multiple fronts.

For the first time in the history of this war, Ukrainian warriors captured an enemy position using exclusively unmanned platforms,” President Volodymyr Zelensky boasted to defense workers the other day.

Actually, it was the first time in history, period, that entirely remote-controlled robotic systems captured an enemy position, with no help from human infantry. (nypost)

***

A Copy, Sort Of

Current thinking is that studies show cloning is not what we thought. It is not the predictable, reproducible carbon-copy of a genetically identical precursor.

There are simply many more mutations in clones than in normally produced individuals. It could just be that the adult body cells being cloned accumulate more mutations than egg or sperm cells do. But Teruhiko Wakayama at Yamanashi University in Japan thinks the cloning process itself could be causing at least some of them.

A clone is meant to be a genetically identical copy, but a 20-year study has shown that this isn’t, in fact, the case. It reveals that clones have many extra mutations and, if you keep cloning clones, these build up to fatal levels. The findings have implications for the use of cloning in farming and for saving endangered animals, including efforts to recreate extinct species, as well as for the potential use of cloning technology in people.

“Unfortunately, however, while clones were once thought to be identical to the original, it has become clear that this is not the case, suggesting that there may be issues with their use,” Wakayama says. “Going forward, we need to demonstrate that mutations arising from cloning do not pose problems.”

Or, put another way, what are we doing?