The Private Nuclear Market

“Robots can’t replace senior clerics, but they can be a trusted assistant that can help them issue a fatwa in five hours instead of 50 days,” said Mohammad Ghotbi, who heads a state-linked organization in Qom that encourages the growth of technology businesses.

***

"No region of the United States fared worse over the postwar period than the Rust Belt. This paper analyzes how much of its decline can be accounted for by the persistent labor market conflict that characterized Rust Belt union-management relations. We develop a multi-sector, multi-region, dynamic general equilibrium model in which labor market conflict leads to strikes, wage premia, lower investment, and lower productivity growth. These lead to shrinking Rust Belt industries and to workers moving out of the Rust Belt. Labor conflict accounts for half of the decline in the region’s share of manufacturing employment. Foreign competition plays a smaller role, and its effects are concentrated after most of the region’s decline had already occurred."--U of Chicago Journal

***


The Private Nuclear Market

Microsoft is plunging ahead on nuclear energy. They want a fleet of reactors powering new data centers. And now they're hiring people from the traditional nuclear industry to get it done.

Lack of stable long-term power, whether clean or dirty, is constraining Microsoft's growth. They need to build big data centers that consume electricity all the time and the old assumption that somebody else's reliable plants will always be around to firm up your wind and solar is falling apart.

Microsoft, like many companies, was held back by what we might consider "Enron-ism" infecting its energy thinking: renewable energy credits plus markets plus cute little lies to the public about how electricity works. Greenwashed fossil/hydro/nuclear with the ESG stamp of approval. The problem? Eventually, you run out of other people's cheap firm power. So Microsoft has recently become a leader in openly asserting that nuclear energy counts as clean energy, as opposed to the ongoing cowardice we see from the other big tech companies who lie to the public about being "100% renewable powered."

A world is coming where only the tech companies willing to become nuclear power developers may get to keep expanding their cloud businesses, and only countries open to new reactors get to host this expansion. A world where tech companies with 50% margins become the only survival hope for traditional industrial concerns with 5% margins who need someone else to bootstrap a proper electricity supply. Where diesel backup generators are replaced with microreactors reliable enough to be trusted to keep a cluster of facilities secure in the case of public grid failure.--Nelson

“Smash-and-Grab Politics”

It costs $734 more each month to buy the same goods and services as two years ago for households who earn the median income, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics.
Paying $734 more each month adds up to $8,808 more per year for the same stuff as two years ago.

But don't worry.
In the middle of this month, Paul Krugman tweeted, “In the past I’ve focused on a measure that excludes lagging shelter and used cars as well as food and energy. Just to note that it adds to the evidence that inflation has been largely defeated.”

Well, if you exclude the prices of most things, that actually makes sense.

***

Dr. Anthony Fauci secretly visited CIA headquarters to “influence” the agency’s investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to new allegations brought forward by the House coronavirus subcommittee.

***

“Smash-and-Grab Politics”

The WSJ had an article on a new twist on the democratic process: extortion. Leverage of a small vote on a small but crucial part of the whole.

Democrats this month passed legislation raising the minimum wage for healthcare workers to $25 an hour. The bill was fashioned as a compromise after the Service Employees International Union threatened to bankroll ballot initiatives that would impose costly regulations on kidney dialysis centers, such as minimum staffing requirements.

In the past three election cycles, the SEIU has spearheaded three unsuccessful ballot measures targeting dialysis centers. Defeating them cost the industry roughly $300 million. To avoid another costly ballot fight, the centers backed the minimum-wage proposal. In other words, the dialysis industry let itself be looted by Democrats and their union friends in return for not getting its windows smashed in.

Fast-food restaurants this month also dropped a ballot referendum to overturn a state wage-fixing council and endorsed a bill establishing a $ 20-an-hour minimum wage for their workers. The deal came after Mr. Newsom and Democrats threatened to enact legislation that would have allowed plaintiff attorneys and unions to shake down the restaurants.

Cartels

Simmons and his two colleagues are among a growing number of scientists in various fields around the world who moonlight as data detectives, sifting through studies published in scholarly journals for evidence of fraud.

At least 5,500 faulty papers were retracted in 2022, compared with 119 in 2002, according to Retraction Watch, a website that keeps a tally. The jump largely reflects the investigative work of the Data Colada scientists and many other academic volunteers, said Dr. Ivan Oransky, the site’s co-founder. Their discoveries have led to embarrassing retractions, upended careers, and retaliatory lawsuits.

***

American PXs accept Food Stamps.

***

Cartels

As of 2023, the Sinaloa Cartel remains Mexico's most dominant drug cartel. After the arrest of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and his son Ovidio Guzmán López, the cartel is now headed by old-school leader Ismael Zambada García (aka El Mayo) and Guzmán's other sons, Jesús Alfredo Guzmán and Ivan Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar.

The most dangerous is said to be Los Zetas (the "Zs').

The origins of Los Zetas date back to the late 1990s, when commandos of the Mexican Army deserted their ranks and began working as the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel. In February 2010, Los Zetas broke away and formed their own criminal organization, rivaling the Gulf Cartel.
The Zetas were formed by the police.

The cartels recruit heavily in Texas high schools for 'mules.'

175,000 people work for the Mexican cartels. This makes the cartels the fifth largest employer in Mexico. The ten-year death/incarceration rate among cartel members is 37%--so the recruitment rate must be terrific. And they must be very susceptible to infiltration.

 


 

 

Interesting Graph

“Depression treatment does not significantly increase earnings, consumption, or human capital investment in children.”--a paper

***

Nordhaus finds that in general that innovations reap only a small share of the gains that they create. In 2014, for example, we got Harvoni, a new treatment that offered a complete cure for hepatitis C (HCV) infection. In 2014, Harvoni cost over $1000 a pill and between $60,000 and $100,000 for a full treatment. In 2015 Medicaid spent more on Harvoni than on any other drug and there were calls for regulation and price controls. Studies showed, however, that even at that high price, Harvoni was value/cost-effective. Today, with more competition, there are equivalent versions of Harvoni available from Amazon for $12,869 (and 64 cents) which is still expensive but cheap for a cure for an often debilitating and sometimes life-threatening disease (and the price is less for a private insurance buyer or Medicare/Medicaid). In 2030, Harvoni will go generic and prices will fall much more.

***

Interesting Graph

Percentage of 12th graders who have a driver’s license, who’ve ever tried alcohol, who ever go on dates, and who worked for pay at any point during the last school year. https://researchgate.net/publication/340562787_Students%27_Cognitive_and_Emotional_Development_during_the_Transition_from_High_School_to_Design_School…

 

Gangs

How do you get a gold bar through customs?

***

THe lower 80% of income earners have less in liquidity in June of this year than they did before the pandemic.

***

This is incredible.

In the spring of 2014, senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials initiated a quiet effort to bolster Tehran’s image and positions on global security issues — particularly its nuclear program — by building ties with a network of influential overseas academics and researchers. They called it the Iran Experts Initiative. At least three of the people on the Foreign Ministry’s list were, or became, top aides to Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy on Iran, who was placed on leave this June following the suspension of his security clearance.
A Ms.Tabatabai currently serves in the Pentagon as the chief of staff for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, a position that requires a U.S. government security clearance. She previously served as a diplomat on Malley’s Iran nuclear negotiating team after the Biden administration took office in 2021. Esfandiary is a senior advisor on the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, a think tank that Malley headed from 2018-2021.

***

Gangs

Crime is one solution to problems in a subset of society. However, organized crime is more efficient and creative. See mob smash-and-grab store theft.

Sweden’s center-right government has been tightening laws to tackle gang-related crime, while the head of Sweden’s police said earlier this month that warring gangs had brought an “unprecedented” wave of violence to the Scandinavian country.

"Several boys aged between 13 and 15 have been killed, the mother of a criminal was executed at home, and a young man in Uppsala was shot dead on his way to work,” police chief Anders Thornberg told a news conference on Sept. 13. He estimated that some 13,000 people are linked to Sweden’s criminal underworld.

Sweden? Is this gang stuff catching on?

Mystery Numbers

We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may also prevent its use for desirable purposes.--Hayek

***

450,000 Venualzations have just received temporary work visas. They then get a social security number. You can get a license to drive.
Can people with those IDs vote?

***

Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan are closing gender gaps in pay, seniority and parliamentary representation. Japan and South Korea, meanwhile, have the largest gender pay gaps in the OECD. Management remains 85% male. Female graduates are treated like secretaries, expected to pour the tea and run errands.

***

Mystery Numbers

The largest study on homosexuality ever done interviewed tens of thousands of men and women. Homosexual involvement was defined as 'romantic physical contact.' The results were, male homosexual activity: 1.4%, female 0.7%

The sexual orientation of 18-25 yr old college students, from @TheFIREorg (The Fire states it is a nonpartisan free speech advocacy group but is supported by Schaiff, Tempelton, and the Kochs.)

85% of Muslims ID as straight. 84% of Protestants. 83% of Catholics. Then the numbers get really strange. Latter-day Saints: 78% say they are straight! It's 55% of atheists. 53% of agnostics. 65% Jewish???

Aside from Reality...

The Biden administration offered to mediate the UAW car strike. Biden plans to walk the picket line. Does that sound like a guy who should mediate the conflict? What are these people thinking?

***

The federal government more than doubled its estimate in stolen pandemic unemployment payments to as much as $135 billion.

***

Aside from Reality...

Our times have become so strange. Here Charles Cooke writes about Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner’s defense of his magazine’s completely fabricated “report” in 2014 of a fictional gang rape at the University of Virginia.

"The “factual errors that sank that story” were that it wasn’t true in any way. There is no “other than this one key fact” here, because the “one key fact” was the rape, and, as Wenner concedes, “the rape described actually was a fabrication of this woman.” This being so, it is not possible that “the rest of the story was bulletproof,” because the “rest of the story” flowed from the central claim, which was false. “Other than that”? Is Wenner on drugs?

Wenner’s broader claim is also absurd. He says that the issue was “really about the issue of rape and how it affects women on campus.” But the main victim here was a woman — the associate dean to whom Rolling Stone was obliged to pay $3 million."

What could Wenner have been thinking? The story was accurate aside from the lie it was based on? Is this sort of 'creative non-fiction' where 'truth is greater than the facts?'

What are we poor slobs supposed to do? How can we evaluate anything? And, worse, how can any of our so-called elites be relied upon or respected?

Some Math and Reason

American Revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine said in Common Sense (1776), government is at best “a necessary evil.”

***

Thirteen Baltimore City high schools don’t have a single student who has achieved grade-level proficiency in math.

***



Some Math and Reason

Here is "the bat and ball problem:"

A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total.
The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost? ____ cents.

In a paper in "Cognition," Meyer and Fredrick test multiple versions of the bat and ball and related problems to try to uncover where people’s intuitions go wrong. The most remarkable two versions of which are shown below:

1.   A bat and a ball cost $110 in total.
The bat costs $100 more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?
Before responding, consider whether the answer could be $5.
$_____

2.   A bat and a ball cost $110 in total.
The bat costs $100 more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?
The answer is $5.
Please enter the number 5 in the blank below.
$_____

Remarkably, even when told to consider $5, most people continue to answer $10. Even more shockingly, most people get the answer right when they are explicitly told the answer and instructed to enter it, yet 23% still get the answer wrong!  

The authors conclude:


"…this “hinted” procedure serves to partition respondents into three groups: the reflective (who reject the common intuitive error and solve the problem on the first try), the careless (who answer 10, but revise to 5 when told they are wrong), and the hopeless (who are unable or unwilling to compute the correct response, even after being told that 10 is incorrect)

…many respondents maintain the erroneous response in the face of facts that plainly falsify it, even after their attention has been directed to those facts….the remarkable durability of that error paints a more pessimistic picture of human reasoning than we were expecting."

One element that is not addressed is, of course, participant insincere orneriness.

Take a Guy to Lunch

The story about the WashPo reporter who called the Barstool founder's advertisers to undermine him is a serious problem. The reporter is a food columnist and somehow thought it her job to wreck this guy. Don't know the guy at all but he turned out to be too big a bite. But the reporter's idea of her job and her approved methods should be a real alarm.

***

Millions of immigrants have crossed the southern border from many rugged countries. Will they bring their country's politics with them as did so many immigrants from Eastern Europe in the late 1800s?

***

The United States is home to the largest number of immigrants in the world. An estimated 50.6 million people in the United States—a bit more than 15% of the total population of 331.4 million—were born in a foreign country. The number of immigrants in the U.S. has increased by at least 400% since 1965.

***


Take a Guy to Lunch

A large study tried to measure bias according to reactions to diverse photos of diverse people by diverse observers. The participants were quicker to associate negative attributes with people in scruffier clothes, but that bias was fairly small. Only one strong and consistent bias emerged. Participants in every category—men and women of all races, ages, and social classes—were quicker to associate positive attributes with women and negative attributes with men.

Now expand that idea. The study doesn't distinguish the cause for the negative feelings--whether males are seen as husband-foolish TV characters, or criminal, or violent, or just untrustworthy romantic partners. But men are demonstrably worse at academics and have cornered the market in criminality. Men in this culture have problems. Have they been left behind?

So, should the nation work on this obvious bias against almost 50% of the population? Should outreach be initiated and programs started?

What kind of future does a culture have when almost 50% of its population is held in bigoted disregard?

Equality by Fiat

Jose Altuve recently hit a home run in each of the first three innings of a game. The logistics are amazing. But it has happened three times before.

***

I've been watching a lot of Netflix recently. I think the writer's strike has been going on longer than they say.

***

Equality by Fiat

The elimination of the Senate dress code is more important than it appears. The highest-profile legislative body in the Free World has decided to broaden its standards--e.g. lower its criteria--to accommodate Fetterman's unconventional clothing choices.

It is a virtual symbol of the problematic preoccupation in the West, the inclusion of the outlier under the umbrella of the bell curve. The need the culture has to normalize the peripheral. 

Apparently, the ideal in America is a bell curve that is not a curve, it is a narrow, straight, vertical line. It is an ideal without criteria or quality.

Bad Win

The auto strikers have just turned down a 21% pay increase. What could that mean? And how will the eventual increased overhead in U.S. manufacturing influence U.S. competition in the international auto manufacturing market?

***

President Biden delivered remarks at the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York City. The speech was skipped by Russia and China. And France and the U.K.

***

Life and liberty are “rights” in the Declaration of Independence. Happiness is not. For Jefferson, with terrible realism, only proposed its pursuit. (George Mason had referred to a “natural right … of pursuing and obtaining happiness.” But, after all, any right to obtain happiness can only be enforced by a deity, not a Declaration.)--Lebergott

***

Some video games are rated 'M' for 'Mature.'

***

Bad Win

The generality is that we people, especially Americans, are devoted to winning--and at any cost. Yet the Steelers-Browns game, a dramatic, 1970s defensive win for Pittsburgh, was astonishingly unsatisfying for their fans. Perhaps it revealed the team to be less a contender than expected but, nonetheless, it showed that winning was not everything. And maybe quality itself was a factor in a game's reward.

So, why is winning a badly played game unfulfilling?

The Difficulties of Science

Credit card debt is over $1 trillion with a 7.5 default rate.

***

There is evidence that, during the so-called Holocene Optimum around 8,000 years ago, British summers were 2C warmer than today, the treeline in Siberia was far further north, Alpine glaciers were smaller, the Arctic Ocean was regularly ice-free in late summer and the Sahara was wetter than today.

***


The Difficulties of Science

The government says Sudafed and similar alpha-adrenergics and anticholinergics do not work. A bit hard to understand as they originally approved them. And the truth did seem long in coming.

Now you might be forgiven if you are a bit cynical about the government's scientific pronouncements. But the world of science involves more mystery than stupidity.

The Open Science Collaboration once tried to duplicate one hundred important published psychological studies and could reproduce only one-third of them. Bayer tried to reproduce sixty-seven famous drug discovery projects and failed in seventy-five percent of them.

These are foundational studies that led to significant therapeutic highways. What should we do?

What do we bring to Truth that makes it so hard to reveal?

EVs and Labor

Mike Babcock resigned as coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets on Sunday after just two months on the job, less than a week after his requests for personal photos from players in a bonding effort drew criticism as too invasive.

***

There is a surprising number of articles on liberal TV about Sen. Tim Scott's secret girlfriend. Is this a subtle effort to raise the 'gay' question about him without appearing to do so?

***

EVs and Labor

The traditional internal combustion engine has more than 1,000 parts. New electric engines have about 50. That means fewer jobs because EVs are much simpler and therefore easier to make and assemble.

In late 2022, Ford CEO Jim Farley told the Financial Times that manufacturing EVs requires about 40% less labor than making the same number of internal combustion vehicles. VW's CEO in 2019 estimated that building EVs involves about 30% less effort than making gas-powered cars.

So a political group claiming to support 'workers' would take what position on EVs?

CarFax and Life

 

SpaceX has successfully launched 5,000 satellites.--Isaacson

***

CarFax and Life

The only CarFax I've ever seen was fraudulently modified. My point is not that the product is untrustworthy, it is that all products are untrustworthy on some level. Certainly, Enron had honest, even earnest, employees. Ditto the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But we humans bring a corruptibility to the most abstract--even transcendental--philosophies and projects. And you cannot stress test for insincerity.

PTSD

Netflix has a new documentary on Blue Zones, regions in the world such as Okinawa Prefecture, Japan; Nuoro Province, Sardinia, Italy; the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; Icaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California, where people appear to live “extraordinarily long and vibrant lives.” What are the secrets of such blue zones and how can you live to be 100?
One explanation is that remarkable age records result, not from better health or greater longevity, but from the historical accumulation of illiteracy-driven errors and the modern dynamics of poverty-driven fraud.


***

Will on China's Leninism.

Such a state has, however, two incurable defects: All policies are subordinate to the primary objective of maintaining the party’s dominance. And the party incubates society’s elites, who insinuate themselves everywhere into allocating wealth and opportunity. Absent market signals, this produces cascading inefficiencies in the allocation of society’s human and material resources.

***

Public restrooms are being added Downtown as part of what officials are calling the Pittsburgh Potty Initiative. They are also calling outhouses 'restrooms.' 

***

PTSD

From the NIMH.

"Anyone can develop PTSD at any age. This includes combat veterans and people who have experienced or witnessed a physical or sexual assault, abuse, an accident, a disaster, a terror attack, or other serious events. People who have PTSD may feel stressed or frightened, even when they are no longer in danger.

Not everyone with PTSD has been through a dangerous event. Sometimes, learning that a relative or close friend experienced trauma can cause PTSD.

About 6 of every 100 people will experience PTSD at some point in their lifetime, according to the National Center for PTSD, a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs program. Women are more likely than men to develop PTSD. Certain aspects of the traumatic event and biological factors (such as genes) may make some people more likely to develop PTSD.
What are the symptoms of PTSD?

Symptoms of PTSD usually begin within 3 months of the traumatic event, but they sometimes emerge later. To meet the criteria for PTSD, a person must have symptoms for longer than 1 month, and the symptoms must be severe enough to interfere with aspects of daily life, such as relationships or work. The symptoms also must be unrelated to medication, substance use, or other illness.

The course of the disorder varies. Although some people recover within 6 months, others have symptoms that last for 1 year or longer. People with PTSD often have co-occurring conditions, such as depression, substance use, or one or more anxiety disorders.

After a dangerous event, it is natural to have some symptoms. For example, some people may feel detached from the experience, as though they are observing things as an outsider rather than experiencing them. A mental health professional—such as a psychiatrist, psychologist, or clinical social worker—can determine whether symptoms meet the criteria for PTSD.

To be diagnosed with PTSD, an adult must have all of the following for at least 1 month:At least one re-experiencing symptom
At least one avoidance symptom
At least two arousal and reactivity symptoms
At least two cognition and mood symptoms
Re-experiencing symptomsFlashbacks—reliving the traumatic event, including physical symptoms, such as a racing heart or sweating
Recurring memories or dreams related to the event
Distressing thoughts
Physical signs of stress

Thoughts and feelings can trigger these symptoms, as can words, objects, or situations that are reminders of the event.

Avoidance symptoms:

Staying away from places, events, or objects that are reminders of the experience
Avoiding thoughts or feelings related to the traumatic event

Avoidance symptoms may cause people to change their routines. For example, some people may avoid driving or riding in a car after a serious car accident.

Arousal and reactivity symptoms:

Being easily startled
Feeling tense, on guard, or on edge
Having difficulty concentrating
Having difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
Feeling irritable and having angry or aggressive outbursts
Engaging in risky, reckless, or destructive behavior

Arousal symptoms are often constant. They can lead to feelings of stress and anger and may interfere with parts of daily life, such as sleeping, eating, or concentrating.
Cognition and mood symptomsTrouble remembering key features of the traumatic event
Negative thoughts about oneself or the world
Exaggerated feelings of blame directed toward oneself or others
Ongoing negative emotions, such as fear, anger, guilt, or shame
Loss of interest in previous activities
Feelings of social isolation
Difficulty feeling positive emotions, such as happiness or satisfaction

Cognition and mood symptoms can begin or worsen after the traumatic event. They can lead people to feel detached from friends or family members."

Now the question: Does this look familiar? Does the U.S. have PTSD?

She Don't Lie

The latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis show that less than 11 percent of all U.S. trade — imports and exports, goods and services — was with China in 2022.

***

A thought: According to the WSJ, …top Chinese leader Xi Jinping has deep-rooted philosophical objections to Western-style consumption-driven growth.

***




She Don't Lie

Bordeaux writes "George Will was a recent guest on Jay Nordlinger’s podcast, Q&A. The discussion briefly turned to the legalization of cocaine. After expressing his dissent from the pro-legalization stance taken by men whom he deeply admires – men such as Milton Friedman, George Schultz, and William F. Buckley, Jr. – Nordlinger asked Mr. Will’s opinion about legalizing cocaine. Mr. Will agrees with Nordlinger that cocaine should not be legalized.

Mr. Will correctly points out that cocaine is dangerous – deranging, even – to persons who take it. Because legalizing this harmful substance would, in Mr. Will’s view, create for society additional problems, legalization is inadvisable.

Bordeaux argues that freedom is inherently valuable and adults should be free to harm themselves. Prohibition makes this substance more potent, impure, and dangerous than it would be otherwise. And prohibition corrupts law enforcement."

This is a big question. Cocaine, and other destructive meds and behaviors, are not a threat to the culture because it is inaccessible, it is so because it is seductive. People well understand its risks; they just don't care. The neurologic changes are worth the destruction. And the libertarian position probably hasn't had any new positive or negative breakthroughs. But...

Legalization has a small lab on the West Coast with the big city tolerance of public drug use. It has been a nightmare.

Drug use is infective; it is increased by availability and proximity. It's like rubella in an obstetrician's office. And the young are most susceptible.

While it corrupts and enfeebles the culture if legal, if illegal it also corrupts the law enforcement and administration. This may be the crucial point. It implies the wishes of the society are unenforceable. And there's only one response to that: cruelty.

Cassandra

Surveillance video caught TSA agents at Miami International Airport stealing from passengers as they went through security.

***

Is the inquiry into the impeachment of Biden as justified as the one(s) into Trump?

***

The Packers' first-round pick in the Rodger's trade was contingent on his playing 65% of snaps.

***

Cassandra

Arundhati Roy was interviewed recently about the G20 meeting in India. She's still furious after all these years. (You wonder if the brilliant Keung is on this path.) She talks about the divisions in India--rich-poor, Muslim-Hindi--and its growing anger and episodes of savagery and injustice. It's long (and depressing) but here is a summary of her overview.

"It would be foolhardy for you to think that a process in which a country of 1.4 billion people that used to be a flawed democracy – and is now falling into a kind of, well, I can only use the word fascism – is not going to affect the rest of the world, you’re extremely wrong. What I say wouldn’t be a cry for help. It would be to say, “Look around at what you are, what you are actually helping to create.” There was a moment in time in 2002 after the anti-Muslim Gujarat massacre – in which intelligence reports by countries like the UK actually held Modi responsible for what they called ethnic cleansing. Modi was banned from travelling to the US, but all of that is forgotten now. But he’s the same man. And every time somebody allows him this kind of oxygen and this kind of space to pirouette and claim that only he could have brought these powerful people to India, that message magnified a thousand-fold by our servile new channels, it feeds into a kind of collective national insecurity, sense of inferiority and false vanity. It’s blown up into something else that’s extremely dangerous and that people should understand is not going to just be a problem for India.

...

The state of India is very precarious, very contested. We have a situation in which the Constitution has been effectively set aside. We have a situation in which the BJP is now one of the richest political parties in the world. And all the election machinery is more or less compromised. And yet – not just because of the violence against minorities, which of course causes a kind of majoritarianism and may not cause them to lose elections – but because of unemployment and because we live in one of the most unequal societies in the world, we have an opposition that is building up. This government is seeking to crush it because it does not believe that there should be an opposition. We are in a situation of great flux and we don’t expect, I don’t think anybody expects, anybody outside of India to stand up and take notice because all their eyes have dollar signs in them, and they are looking at this huge market of a billion people. But, you know, there won’t be a market when this country slides into chaos and war, as it already has in places like Manipur. What they don’t realise is that this market won’t exist when this grand country falls into chaos as it is. The beauty and the grandeur of India are being reduced to something small and snarling and petty and violent. And when that explodes, I think there’ll be nothing like it."

Roy is a wonderful writer and a wearying activist but this is a scary warning.

Last year Swiss Environmental Minister Simonetta Sommaruga suggested that residents “shower together” to save energy.
OK, now we’re getting somewhere.

***

The data center cluster in Northern Virginia is three times the size of the next-largest data center area in the world, Singapore. The industry saw a major boost during the pandemic, as more work and social life shifted online. Those boom times are expected to continue, with new artificial intelligence technology driving even more demand for server space. That’s significant for local governments increasingly dependent on the industry for tax revenue.

Northern Virginia’s data centers had a 2% vacancy rate in the first half of 2023, and prices for companies looking to lease that space jumped by 15-20%, both signs of remarkably high demand for square footage in the massive complexes.

***

Beijing’s release of a new “official” map of China has infuriated New Delhi—and a large part of the rest of Asia—by including contentious territorial claims in the South China Sea, the entire Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, other disputed lands on the Indian-Chinese border, and an island that the Chinese had previously agreed to share with Russia.
The map controversy suggests that Xi’s nationalist pursuit of global power could undermine his push to lead a new bloc against the West.

***

Brits and  Government Confidence/Arrogance                                        

Property owners who fail to comply with new energy British efficiency rules could face prison under government plans that have sparked a backlash from Tory MPs. The Telegraph reports:

"Ministers want to grant themselves powers to create new criminal offences and increase civil penalties as part of efforts to hit net zero targets. Under the proposals, people who fall foul of regulations to reduce their energy consumption could face up to a year in prison and fines of up to £15,000.

Tory backbenchers are set to rebel against the plans, which they fear would lead to the criminalisation of homeowners, landlords and businesses.

The proposals are contained in the Government’s controversial Energy Bill, which is set to come before the Commons for the first time when MPs return from their summer break on Tuesday.

It provides for “the creation of criminal offences” where there is “non-compliance with a requirement imposed by or under energy performance regulations”. People could also be prosecuted for “provision of false information” about energy efficiency or the “obstruction of… an enforcement authority”.

The Bill will replace and strengthen the rules on energy performance certificates (EPCs), which were previously based on now repealed EU law."

The righteous never sleep.

 

WOD. Etymology: career (n.)

1530s, "a running (usually at full speed), a course" (especially of the sun, etc., across the sky), from French carriere "road, racecourse" (16c.), from Old Provençal or Italian carriera, from Vulgar Latin *(via) cararia "carriage (road), track for wheeled vehicles," from Latin carrus "chariot" (see car). The sense of "general course of action or movement" is from 1590s, hence "course of one's public or professional life" (1803).

See Car and Careen.

***

Those most immediately interested in a particular issue are not necessarily the best judges of the interests of society as a whole.

***
The author commissioned a survey on the image of capitalism in 34 countries. In only six of these countries – led by Poland and the United States – do pro-capitalist attitudes dominate. Although approval of capitalism increases when the word ‘capitalism’ is omitted (and instead only described), even then a positive attitude dominates in only seven of 34 countries. The most frequently mentioned criticisms of capitalism are that capitalism is dominated by the rich and that capitalism leads to growing inequality. Respondents with higher incomes and higher levels of education, men, and those who classified themselves as being on the right of the political spectrum are less anti-capitalist or are more pro-capitalist than the population at large in most countries. In 33 countries, anti-capitalists tend to be more conspiracy-minded than pro-capitalists.

That is from a new paper by Rainer Zitelman.

***

An arrest warrant has been issued for a man charged with trafficking $1.6 million in fentanyl after he didn't show up to court Monday. He was released after arrest without bond.

The Stargate Project
 
"The Stargate Project was a long-running program, funded under various names, by the CIA, Army, and Defense Intelligence Agency to investigate and use psychic powers to defeat enemies of the United States, foreign and domestic. The program can be dated back to the end of World War II but it picked up in the 1970s with rumors that the Russians had a lead in ESP and with the popularity of the “psychic” Uri Geller.

Geller in fact consulted for the program and his powers were investigated under a DIA grant by the Stanford Research Institute. SRI concluded that Geller had “demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner.” The CIA agreed concluding in 1975 that:

“A large body of reliable experimental evidence points to the inescapable conclusion that extrasensory perception does exist as a real phenomenon….the work at SRI, using gifted individuals, has achieved some convincing and striking demonstrations of the existence of paranormal perception, and has demonstrated perhaps less convincingly the possible existence of psychokinetic influences upon sophisticated physical instrumentation.

In fact, as late as 2017 the physicist running the SRI program thinks Geller was “clearly gifted when it came to doing certain psychic tasks.”

Need I tell you that Johnny Carson did a much better job than the DIA of showing Geller was a fraud or that a later investigation suggested that “Geller was allowed to peek through a hole in the laboratory wall separating him from the drawings he was being invited to reproduce.”

Nevertheless, the Stargate Project continued for decades and not just investigations. So-called “remote viewers” were recruited and paid to try to locate hostages, missiles and other locations of military and domestic intelligence secrets:

As he later told the Washington Post, McMoneagle was involved in some 450 missions between 1978 to 1984, including helping the Army locate hostages in Iran and pointing CIA agents to the shortwave radio concealed in the pocket calculator of a suspected KGB agent captured in South Africa.

Another remote viewer, Angela Dellafiora Ford, was asked in 1989 to help track down a former customs agent who had gone on the run, she recounted recently on the CBS News program 48 Hours. She was able to pinpoint the man’s location as “Lowell, Wyoming,” even as U.S. Customs was apprehending him 100 miles west of a Wyoming town called Lovell.

Publicly, the Pentagon continued to deny it was spending money on any kind of psychic research, even as reports leaked out in the 1980s of the details of the government’s experiments. Finally, in 1995, the CIA released a report conducted by the independent American Institutes for Research, which acknowledged the U.S. government’s long-rumored work with remote viewing for military and intelligence purposes.

In other words, don’t believe in star gates."

(Tabarrok December 7, 2020 in Current Affairs)

The Life of Riley

Biden opened his press conference in Vietnam on the G20 with a quote from a Vietnam War movie. They announced the conference over while he was speaking.

***

"After 500 years of 3% inflation, $100,000 will be worth 4 cents. If you're not a socialist when you're 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative when you're 40, you have no head. "--Churchill. 

I've never heard that context before.

***

Last year “Big Pharma” spent over $373 million on lobbying.

***

The Life of Riley

Scholars, journalists, politicians, and activists will lavish attention on a small, badly flawed study if it purports to find bias against women, but they’ll ignore—or work to suppress—the wealth of solid research showing the opposite. Three decades ago, psychologists identified the “women-are-wonderful effect,” based on research showing that both sexes tended to rate women more positively than men. This effect has been confirmed repeatedly—women get higher ratings than men for intelligence as well as competence—and it’s obvious in popular culture.

“Toxic masculinity” and “testosterone poisoning” are widely blamed for many problems, but you don’t hear much about “toxic femininity” or “estrogen poisoning.” Who criticizes “femsplaining” or pretends to “believe all men”? If the patriarchy really did rule our society, the stock father character in television sitcoms would not be a “doofus dad” like Homer Simpson, and commercials wouldn’t keep showing wives outsmarting their husbands. (When’s the last time you saw a TV husband get something right?) Smug misandry has been box-office gold for Barbie, which delights in writing off men as hapless romantic partners, leering jerks, violent buffoons, and dimwitted tyrants who ought to let women run the world.

Numerous studies have shown that both sexes care more about harms to women than to men. Men get punished more severely than women for the same crime, and crimes against women are punished more severely than crimes against men. Institutions openly discriminate against men in hiring and promotion policies—and a majority of men as well as women favor affirmative-action programs for women.

The education establishment has obsessed for decades about the shortage of women in some science and tech disciplines, but few worry about males badly trailing by just about every other academic measure from kindergarten through graduate school. By the time boys finish high school (if they do), they’re so far behind that many colleges lower admissions standards for males—a rare instance of pro-male discrimination, though it’s not motivated by a desire to help men. Admissions directors do it because many women are loath to attend a college if the gender ratio is too skewed.

Gender disparities generally matter only if they work against women. In computing its Global Gender Gap, the much-quoted annual report, the World Economic Forum has explicitly ignored male disadvantages: if men fare worse on a particular dimension, a country still gets a perfect score for equality on that measure. Prodded by the federal Title IX law banning sexual discrimination in schools, educators have concentrated on eliminating disparities in athletics but not in other extracurricular programs, which mostly skew female. The fact that there are now three female college students for every two males is of no concern to the White House Gender Policy Council. Its “National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality” doesn’t even mention boys’ struggles in school, instead focusing exclusively on new ways to help female students get further ahead.--Thierney

The Business of UFOs

On April 30, 2020, Trump tweeted, “Sweden is paying heavily for its decision not to lockdown.”

***

Since 1999, more than 600,000 people have died from opioid overdoses in the U.S. and Canada alone.

***

Chicago spends $27,000 a year on each public school student.

***


The Business of UFOs

It isn't always mendacity. Sometimes it's just graft and marketing.

Erik Hoel writes that “the UFO craze was created by government nepotism and incompetent journalism.” Here’s a key bit:

"To sum up the story as far as I understand its convoluted depths: diehard paranormal believers scored 22 million in Defense spending via what looks like nepotism from Harry Reid by submitting a grant to do bland general “aerospace research” and being the “sole bidder” for the contract. They then reportedly used that grant, according to Lacatski himself, the head of the program, to study a myriad of paranormal phenomenon at Skinwalker Ranch including—you may have guessed it by now—dino-beavers. Viola! That’s how there was a “government-funded program to study UFOs.”

Our current journalistic class, unwilling or unable to do the research I can do in my boxers in about five hours, instead did a big media oopsie in The New York Times, running the story and lending credibility to the idea the Pentagon did create a real serious task force to investigate UFO claims. The fervor in response to these “revelations” memed into existence a real agency at the DoD that now does actually study UFOs, simply because everyone “demanded answers”—which is totally understandable, given the journalistic coverage. However, the current UFO task force is staffed by, well, the people willing to be on a UFO task force. According to the Post:

'And who was in charge, during the Trump administration, when the Pentagon created a UFO Task Force to investigate incursions of unknown objects over America?

Stratton—who believes the ghosts and creatures of Skinwalker Ranch are real—officially headed up these Pentagon investigations for years.

The “chief scientist” of this Pentagon task force was Travis Taylor, who is and was a co-star of “Ancient Aliens” on the History Channel. He currently stars on “The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch” on the same network.'

This official embedding makes it difficult to break the veneer of legitimacy unless you know the whole story, simply because there’s likely a lot of coordination by professional UFO enthusiasts behind the scenes, which is why you’ll occasionally read stuff about how anonymous sources from other insiders confirm the accounts."


This atmosphere of insincerity at some point will become toxic to the culture--unless we run out of money first.

Stuff

Stuff

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.--Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, “General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century,” first published in French 1851; translated by John Beverly Robinson (1923), pp. 293-294.
(Proudhon was an anarchist, perhaps the first.)

****

On Nicaragua: 

Freedom of thought and expression also had to go. In September 2022, the online news outlet Confidencial reported that Mr. Ortega had “closed 54 national and local media in 13 departments, there are 11 media workers in jail, and more than 140 journalists in exile.” Mr. Ortega has closed or seized at least 26 private universities, according to an Aug. 17 report from CBS News in Miami.--O'Grady

****

As a group, immigrants had lower incarceration rates than the US-born for the last 150 years. Moreover, relative to the U.S.-born, immigrants’ incarceration rates have declined since 1960: Immigrants today are 60% less likely to be incarcerated (30% relative to U.S.-born whites). This relative decline occurred among immigrants from all regions and cannot be explained by changes in immigrants’ observable characteristics or immigration policy. Instead, the decline likely reflects immigrants’ resilience to economic shocks.
...
We interpret these results as evidence that immigrants’ attitudes toward other immigrants respond to the lack of a selective immigration policy: namely, if successful immigrants run the risk of being perceived as related to undocumented or uncontrolled immigration, they respond by embracing an immigrants’ anti-immigration view.---2 papers

****

The ARC classifies 27.2 percent of North Appalachian counties as distressed but only 9.6 percent of South Appalachian counties that way. Over 70 percent of counties in South Appalachia have grown in population since the 2020 Census. North Appalachia lost 17,131 people in total, while South Appalachia gained 127,585. The difference in net in-migration is even more stark. While the North posted positive net domestic in-migration of 22,563, the South tallied almost 300,000—13 times as high. The story is similar for jobs, with the North losing 227,049 positions since the pre-pandemic year of 2019, while the South actually exceeded its pre-Covid levels by 66,377. In other words, much of South Appalachia is seeing a population inflow and is growing in both population and employment.


****

This is astounding.
Humankind struggled to survive during a 100,000 year period during the early Pleistocene, according to researchers who used a computer model to discover a severe population bottleneck in our species’ ancient past.

The bottleneck occurred between 813,000 years ago and 930,000 years ago, and reduced an ancestral human species to less than 1,300 breeding individuals. The issue persisted for 117,000 years, and aligns with a chronological gap in the African and Eurasian human fossil records in that period. The team’s research on the bottleneck was published in Science.

Populations

CNN is showing Biden polls for the first time. Why?

***

So there is a debate over whether schools should inform parents of their children's gender 'choice.' What other things should employees withhold from parents?

***

Does anyone believe that Biden is making national and international decisions? If 'no,' who is?

***


Populations

From Twitter:
France used to be the "China of Europe"—1 in 25 people globally was French and 1 in 5 Europeans was French. Now, France is smaller than Germany and virtually identical in population to Britain Why? Thanks to some wonderful new work, we probably know the answer! 

3:38 PM · Sep 1, 2023

·

636.5K

Views

Marx and Lincoln

It sounds as if the government and the Department of Justice are bowing to public pressure and seem to be ready to indict Hunter Biden. That's a good thing, right? That's how justice works, right?

***

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss, at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. -Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850)

***

Casual restaurant chains, like Olive Garden and Applebee’s, have the largest positive impact on cross-class encounters through both scale and their diversity of visitors. Dollar stores and local pharmacies like CVS deepen isolation. Among publicly-funded spaces, libraries and parks are more redistributive than museums and historical sites. And, despite prominent restrictions on chain stores in some large US cities, chains are more class-diverse than independent stores. The mix of establishments in a neighborhood is strongly associated with cross-class Facebook friendships (Chetty et al., 2022).

***

Marx and Lincoln

Marx is having another zombie resurrection, staggering around campuses, feeding on the young. It is accompanied by some false history, to modify how horrible the ideas are. One is a supposed relationship Marx had with Lincoln. But it's hard to get a successful graft onto the dead.

From Magness:

In the past several years, a number of academics and journalists on the political left have advanced various claims of an intellectual kinship between Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. Some versions of this story – including a widely-circulated article in the Washington Post – allege similarities between Marx and Lincoln’s respective writings about the relationship between labor and capital. Others claim that Lincoln regularly read Marx’s journalism in the New York Tribune, and point to an exchange of letters in 1864 after Marx wrote to congratulate Lincoln on his reelection. Politics usually motivates these historical claims as well. By depicting Marx and Lincoln as 19th century pen-pals, they seek to legitimize the platforms of modern-day “Democratic Socialist” politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If Lincoln truly maintained a transatlantic friendship with Marx, then Democratic Socialism must be as American as the Gettysburg Address!

In reality, Lincoln did not have the slightest clue who Karl Marx was, and certainly did not draw from the socialist philosopher for his economic theories. Lincoln’s writings on capital and labor arose primarily from his reading of other 19th century economic works, most notably Francis Wayland and John Stuart Mill. He never encountered Marx’s Capital, which was not even published until two years after Lincoln’s assassination. Marx’s writings for the New York Tribune consisted of second-hand news summaries from the European continent, and the vast majority were published anonymously. If Lincoln encountered them by chance while reading the Tribune, it is extremely unlikely he would have recognized the author or picked up any ideas about economic theory from Marx’s journalistic contributions.

Indeed, Lincoln’s economic assessments of socialism were highly critical. In 1864, the President wrote a letter to a New York City labor organization after the left-leaning group granted him an honorary membership. While Lincoln thanked the organization for the recognition, he strongly disputed their economic doctrines. As Lincoln wrote:

'Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor –property is desirable — is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.'

What about the exchange of letters between Marx and Lincoln? It is true that Marx drafted a letter to Lincoln, congratulating him on his 1864 election victory. The letter was not presented under Marx’s name though. It came from the London-based International Workingmen’s Association, and was delivered under the name of the organization’s secretary, W. Randal Cremer. The response, also addressed to Cremer, did not even come from Lincoln’s desk. Charles Francis Adams, Lincoln’s diplomat to the United Kingdom, issued the letter from the American legation in London. It is little more than a 19th century form letter, a courtesy statement acknowledging that Cremer’s congratulatory note had been received and forwarded to Lincoln through the State Department along with thousands of other notes from well-wishers after the election.

Industrial policy

McConnell's physician has announced that there is no evidence of neurologic disease or seizure disorder.
They think we believe anything.

***

In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul. -Mary Renault, novelist (4 Sep 1905-1983)

***

The burnout rate for female urologists increased from 35.3% in 2016, to 49.2%.

***


Industrial policy

A harsh, clear-eyed assessment of government industrial policy by Kling.

"Industrial policy is plagued by two forms of corruption that detract from achieving desired goals. Ideological corruption consists of prioritizing some quasi-religious belief. Rent-seeking corruption means prioritizing special interests.

…..

Remember that whatever the theoretical rationale for government economic intervention, the political impetus is to subsidize demand and restrict supply. That is the combination of policies that rewards the interests of domestic producers, even if it detracts from achieving the stated objective of the policy.

…..

Industrial policy is never made in a vacuum, fine-tuned to achieve some theoretical optimum. It contends with legacy policies, special interests, and irrational quasi-religious believers."

The point here is that an industrial policy is like all policies: the child of multiple fathers, none of whom are reality or idealism.