Subsidizing Error

Anthropic CEO Amodei said he was relatively confident that AI technology would surpass human intelligence in the next two or three years.

***

Gabbard, Trump’s national intelligence pick, was raised in a religious group tied to a firm suspected of running an international scam. A lot of smear/counter-smear at work in the hearings yesterday.

***

The CIA has concluded that the Covid-19 pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, joining the FBI and Energy Department in identifying a mishap in Wuhan, China, as the virus’s probable source.

***

Subsidizing Error

Some numbers from the alternative energy distortion dance.

For decades, the federal government has propped up energy sources and technologies through subsidies and tax credits. From 2010 to 2023, the cumulative cost of these policies was $76 billion and $65 billion for solar and wind power, respectively, and $33 billion for oil and gas. Nuclear energy, meanwhile, received about $26 billion.

Not only have these subsidies been costly for taxpayers, but they have also proven ineffective in changing the energy landscape. Despite receiving more than twice the amount of money as fossil fuels and nuclear power since 2010, wind and solar only generated 10.2 percent and 3.9 percent of the country's electricity in 2023, respectively.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) supercharged subsidies for wind and solar energy while introducing new technology-specific tax credits for green hydrogen, nuclear power, sustainable aviation fuel, and more. Additionally, it established a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles (E.V.s) assembled in North America. Households earning less than $300,000 and individuals earning less than $150,000 are also eligible for the one-time clean vehicle credit.

Initially projected at $369 billion over the next 10 years, these subsidies are now expected to add over $1 trillion to the federal deficit through 2032. And, with some provisions lacking an expiration date, this figure could feasibly reach $3 trillion.

Billions of dollars worth of solar and wind provisions have gone to companies like NextEra Energy—the world's largest utility company—and Chinese solar manufacturers.

Tax credits for EVs have been mostly cashed in by wealthy consumers who would have bought an electric vehicle without the credit anyway. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that every E.V. sold because of the IRA's credit costs taxpayers $32,000. $32,000.

Subsidies for wind and solar energy can cost up to $260 and $2,100, respectively, for every ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) reduced. For context, reforestation and tree planting cost about $10 per ton of CO2 reduced.

Just because a project is heartfelt and expensive does not mean it has value.

Questions

Questions

Netflix has a bio of Andy Warhol, very creepy but with a couple of interesting observations. Warhol seemed to be in a constant state of remaking, refashioning himself and what he saw. And his Greek Orthodox art background might explain his preoccupation with two-dimensional paintings.

***

Doug Burgum will be head of the Department of Interior and is Trump's proposed head of the newly created National Energy Council — a body that will oversee regulatory processes across government agencies where he'd have considerable power to push fossil fuel extraction.

***

Re Drones on the East Coast: Was anyone reassured by Mayorkis' reassurances? Is there any reason why Trump's simple and benign explanation was not issued earlier? Is alarming the electorate an objective?

***

The Thompson murder wasn't followed by a clamor for gun control. Rare.

***

17 states in the U.S. require physician participation in euthanasia, and 18 allow it.
Is it a good idea to have physicians involved? Should they participate in executions?

***

The COP29 climate change meeting debated giving 2.4.trillion dollars to undeveloped nations over 6 years as a sort of mea culpa tax because the developed countries had an accelerated growth out of poverty over the last 200 years fueled by petroleum and the poor nations, strangled by corruption and tyranny and locked in charcoal power, did not.

Would the U.S. with its 36 trillion dollar debt qualify for assistance?

***

The European tax rate is 34%. It is 17% in Africa.

***

There are 3.5 million Muslims in Europe. If 10% are radicalized, they would outnumber the entire European military.

***

When did illegal immigrants become "workers?"
What does their occupation have to do with their illegal entrance to the country?

***

On Thursday, Karoline Leavitt’s failed congressional campaign amended every FEC filing it had ever made to reveal that she failed to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in excessive contributions that she never paid back, in violation of the law.

Malice as Policy

A “disaster discount” may be creeping into the U.S. housing market. According to real-estate brokerage Redfin, homes in areas that are vulnerable to floods, wildfires, and extreme heat are rising in value at a slower rate than low-risk properties.

***

Trump has suggested that one way to reconstruct the Gaza enclave would be to move the Palestinians from Gaza to Jordan and Egypt. That resettlement “could be temporary or long term.”

That marks a dramatic shift in U.S. policy toward Palestinians. No recent White House has suggested the “long-term” departure of Palestinians from Gaza, which most U.S. presidents have seen as a part of an eventual Palestinian state.

Talking off the top of your head is not always refreshing.

***

Barstool's David Portnoy bet $1 million on the Bills to win the Super Bowl.

***

A few Biden programs under review: $50 million for contraceptives in Gaza, funding for a transgender opera in Columbia, and funding Peruvian transgender comic books.

***

Malice as Policy

Underwater cables are used mostly for internet connection. There are 597 cable systems and 1,712 landings currently active or under construction.  

Worldwide, about 200 undersea cables have been cut or disrupted annually as of 2024, due most frequently to unintentional damage from fishing equipment or the anchors of ships.

But the Europeans believe Russian and Chinese ships are purposefully disrupting underwater cables.

NATO reacted after another underwater data cable was severed in the Baltic Sea. In the alliance’s first coordinated response to the suspected sabotage campaign against critical infrastructure, NATO vessels raced to the site of a damaged fiber-optic cable in Swedish waters on Sunday morning, where a trio of ships carrying Russian cargo, including one recently sanctioned by the U.S., were nearby.

This raises significant questions about international relations. How should nations ostensibly at peace behave? All nations have wide-ranging interfaces, from trade to travel to economics, that overlap and blend, nation to nation. What is one to think about nations that gratuitously interfere with the normal, peaceful, behavior of other nations?

This is more than the usual sophomoric behavior common in American politics. This is equivalent to the well-poisoner, the malignant, destructive disrupter of benign life.

What is it that rewards these people for such behavior? And how should peaceful nations victimized by such economic mutilation respond? Most importantly, how do sensible people living their lives regard their potential relationship with a known well-poisoner? 

The Young Men’s Lyceum

 

China controls 40% of the world’s commercial shipbuilding capacity. The US has just 0.5%.

***

An Indiana man who was just recently pardoned by President Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 Capitol riot was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop on Sunday.

***

More people use Marijuana daily or nearly daily than those who drink alcohol.

***

Is it true that the president of Columbia, where the prison system is world famous for its cruelty, objects to the plane trip of Columbia's illegals as inhumane?

***

The Young Men’s Lyceum

On this day in 1838, Abraham Lincoln delivered an address to the Young Men’s Lyceum, a debating society in Springfield, Illinois, that had originated in Massachusetts and grown spontaneously over the years as a national forum of discussion and debate on interesting topics. Lincoln's speech--when he was a member of the Illinois House of Representatives but still only 28-- was given in the wake of growing mob violence, including the 1837 killing of abolitionist printer Elijah Lovejoy by a pro-slavery mob.

It remains a staunch support of the rule of law--even in the face of bad law--and the threat that individual passion holds for the stability of the state, particularly when the individual feels estranged from his government.

It also contains a very curious insight into the nature of ambition, in the particular American circumstance. The ambitious men, he says, seeing that the great American democracy has been conceived and established, will seek fame along the only other path available to him: destroying it. "Towering genius distains a beaten path."

Here is an excerpt:

As a subject for the remarks of the evening, the perpetuation of our political institutions, is selected. . . . We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them—they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Their’s was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ‘tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader . . . This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

How then shall we perform it?—At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?—Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!—All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts . . . . Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana . . . . Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country. . . .

But you are, perhaps, ready to ask, “What has this to do with the perpetuation of our political institutions?” . . . When men take it in their heads to day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn someone who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of tomorrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. . . . [A]nd thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded. But all this even, is not the full extent of the evil. By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained. Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed—I mean the attachment of the People. . . .

The question recurs, “how shall we fortify against it?” The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;—let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;—let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars. . . .

When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for the redress of which, no legal provisions have been made.—I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. If such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least possible delay; but, till then, let them, if not too intolerable, be borne with.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. . . .

But, it may be asked, why suppose danger to our political institutions? Have we not preserved them for more than fifty years? And why may we not for fifty times as long? . . .

That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now, is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed, and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all, to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.—Then, all that sought celebrity and fame, and distinction, expected to find them in the success of that experiment. . . . If they succeeded, they were to be immortalized . . . . If they failed, they were to be called knaves and fools, and fanatics for a fleeting hour; then to sink and be forgotten. They succeeded. The experiment is successful; and thousands have won their deathless names in making it so. But the game is caught; and I believe it is true, that with the catching, end the pleasures of the chase. This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they, too, will seek a field. It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?—Never! Towering genius distains a beaten path. . . . Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down. . . .

Another reason which once was; but which, to the same extent, is now no more, has done much in maintaining our institutions thus far. I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. . . .

I do not mean to say, that the scenes of the revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten; but that like every thing else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. . . .

They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.—Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

The Ambitions of a Majority

Bianca Censori has a master's in architecture?

***

The prospect of AI automating administrative tasks is attracting venture capitalists to mundane businesses like accounting and property management.

***

If Washington did not have the turnovers, would they have won?

***

The Ambitions of a Majority

Minnesota governor Tim Walz reiterated his support for abolishing the Electoral College and switching to a national popular vote as the sole means of electing presidents and their running mates.

While campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris on the West Coast, Walz suggested at two different fundraisers that he would prefer to focus on winning votes across the country rather than concentrate on key battleground states that could sway the upcoming presidential election as they have done in the past.

“I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go. We need, we need national popular vote, but that’s not the world we live in,” the Democratic vice-presidential nominee told donors in California governor Gavin Newsom’s Sacramento home.

Last year, the governor signed legislation that added Minnesota as the seventeenth state to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The initiative commits participating states to award their electoral votes to presidential candidates who win the popular vote and takes effect once states representing 270 electoral votes have joined the compact.

The Harris campaign said Walz’s call for abolishing the Electoral College is not an official campaign position.

Despite the campaign’s statement, Harris has said she’s “open to the discussion” of abolishing the Electoral College.

“There’s no question that the popular vote has been diminished in terms of making the final decision about who’s the president of the United States and we need to deal with that, so I’m open to the discussion,” she told late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel in 2019 when she was running for president.

Though it appears a radical position, a recent Pew Research Center survey found 63 percent of Americans supporting the move away from the Electoral College toward a popular vote system. By contrast, 35 percent said they would favor retaining the Electoral College.

The issue is further divided along partisan lines. Eighty percent of Democrats prefer to see the Electoral College changed, while Republicans are more closely divided on the issue: 46 percent say it should be changed compared to 53 percent backing the current electoral system.

Neither Waltz nor Harris seem to be incisive political thinkers. As such, they may well represent the electorate they hope to lead. One might argue that such a shift in opinion betrays a growing misunderstanding of the very basics of the country's republic nature, with all the anti-democracy caution it implies. But it may not mean it can be corrected by education; it may mean the electorate is changing. As is the electorate's vision of the nation.

Sunday/Luke's First

Nearly one in nine U.S. employees is directly employed by the government.

***

"String theory is fashion, quantum physics is faith, and cosmic inflation is fantasy."--Roger Penrose

***


Sunday/Luke's First

After mentioning that many descriptions of the life of Christ have been circulated, Luke writes to the "most excellent Theophilus" and explains his plans:

Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events
that have been fulfilled among us,
just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning
and ministers of the word have handed them down to us,
I too have decided,
after investigating everything accurately anew,
to write it down in an orderly sequence for you,
most excellent Theophilus,
so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings
you have received.

His first story is the famous speech in the temple in which Christ reads a prophecy by Isiah predicting God's sending a minister to man, ending in the electrifying "Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing."

Christ's claims caused a riot in the temple. But his claims did not create the gospel, the actions of his followers did. The lynchpin of Christ's life is not what he did or said but his disciples' belief in what he did and said. Christ's supernatural claims became significant not in his followers' hearts but in their acts. Christ created impossible milestones for his earthly life. His followers would have stayed with him--even died, as they all did--only if those impossible milestones were reached.

It is man's belief that creates the truth of Christ's story. Christ's story depends upon man.

Preconceived Science

80% of military volunteers have a family member who served. Between 2019 and 2024, the percentage of conservative veterans who would advise a young family member to join the military declined from 88% to 53%.

***

Trump has repeatedly re-upped the idea that broadcast licenses should be contingent on whether they are used to air content that offends him. Last November, for instance, he complained that MSNBC “uses FREE government approved airwaves” to execute “a 24-hour hit job on Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party for purposes of ELECTION INTERFERENCE.” He declared that “our so-called ‘government’ should come down hard on them and make them pay for their illegal political activity.”--Sullum

***

Did anyone hear anything from Harris about climate change?

***

The European Union’s plan to tax imports based on emissions is key to its climate strategy. But the bloc’s biggest party now wants to delay the tax, citing the economic impact, OPIS reports. The threat of U.S. tariffs adds to the uncertainty.


***

Preconceived Science

A sizable study shows there is little to no evidence that experimental gender procedures improve the mental health of gender-dysphoric children and teens.

The lead researcher of the government-funded study that began in 2015 admitted this week in an interview with the Times that the study did not support the claims of gender activists and explained that she had not released the data out of fear that opponents of gender medicalization would “weaponize” it. 

That is, the study's head did not release the results because the results displeased her.

The study, led by Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the Center for Transyouth Health and Development medical director at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, is now under investigation. But it is difficult to imagine what more is to be learned. The principals of the study did not like the study's conclusions so they suppressed it. What more than the realization of the insincerity and dishonesty of researchers do we need?

Sat Stats

‘I don’t know if that’s a good president, but that right there, I am sure, is a great man.'--Dave Chappell on Jimmy Carter

***"

Madison Keys upset two-time defending champion Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus 6-3, 2-6, 7-5 in the Australian Open final on Saturday night

***

America produces energy cleaner, smarter, and safer than anywhere in the world. When energy production is restricted in America, it doesn't reduce demand, it just shifts production to countries like Russia, Venezuela, and Iran – whose autocratic leaders don't care about the environment."--Burgum

***

Sat Stats

A fifth of adults account for an estimated 90% of alcohol sales volumes in the U.S.

*

Of the 20 countries with the highest murder rates, 12 are Caribbean islands. Only one country is more dangerous than Haiti. Puerto Rico.

*

Former Georgia Bulldogs quarterback Carson Beck has transferred to the Miami Hurricanes and will earn $4 million in 2025. Beck opted to transfer after initially planning to enter the NFL draft. He will earn more than Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix next fall 

*

Jannik Sinner (93.6%, 44-3) has surpassed Bjorn Borg (91.9%) with the highest win percentage at ATP level while ranked ATP #1 since the rankings were first published in 1973.

*

The average number of days off taken by people who work for companies with unlimited paid time off is 16. A typical worker with finite vacation time takes 14 days off.

*

From a WSJ editorial: If hard-line diplomacy doesn’t work, Trump will likely need to let Israel bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities

*

China makes up 60% of the world's electric car sales.

*

Research suggests there has been a 50-fold rise in children who think they are the wrong gender in just 10 years. Analysis of GP records suggests there were 10,000 diagnoses of gender dysphoria in England in 2021 – up from fewer than 200 cases in 2011. The University of York study shows a sharp rise in the number of girls with such concerns, with twice as many cases as in boys.

*

Streaming giant Netflix added a record 18.9 million new subscribers during the fourth quarter. That was nearly double the number Wall Street expected

*

Regulation costs over the Biden years were estimated at 1.9 TRILLION dollars.

*

Fertility worldwide:

“Falling fertility rates are propelling major economies toward population collapse in this century,” McKinsey predicted.

Some of those economies are on track to see 20%-50% population declines by 2100, requiring big changes to societies and governments operate.

But if the demographic trends continue, younger people will endure slower economic growth while supporting bigger cohorts of retirees, eroding the historic flows of generational wealth, the study warned.

China’s population is projected to crash 55% by the turn of the next century. Italy’s will sink 41%, and Brazil’s will drop 23%.

However, with the help of immigration, the U.S. should see an increase of 23%.

The study noted that the world’s support ratio was 9.4 in 1997, or more than nine working-age people supporting one older person. The ratio is down to 6.5 today and will drop to just 3.9 by 2050.

Questions

'Did they suspect that Covid spawned from US taxpayer-funded research, or an adjacent Chinese military programme?
Why did we fund the work of EcoHealth Alliance, which sent researchers into remote Chinese caves to extract novel coronaviruses? Is “gain of function” research a byword for a bioweapons programme? And how did our government stop the spread of such questions on social media?'-questions raised by Thiel in a highly criticized FT op-ed.

***

Colorado’s highest court on Tuesday ruled that five elderly elephants don’t have legal standing to sue to leave a local zoo because they’re not human.

***

Holy Philadelphia Elgses:
During defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth's confirmation hearing, a senator questioning Hegseth employed a prop sign that misspelled the word military as "miltary."

***
  

Questions

John Locke, argued that every human life had its own rationale, none being created for the use of another. David Hume, wrote that all men are nearly equal “in their mental power and faculties, till cultivated by education.”

***

The amount of land owned by the National Park Service alone is larger than Italy. The land owned by the Fish and Wildlife Service is larger than Germany. The land owned by the Forest Service is larger than Britain and Spain combined. The land owned by the Bureau of Land Management is larger than Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and the Philippines combined.

Why?

***

In July Mr. Biden told us that “extreme heat is the number one weather-related killer in the United States.” Data actually show that cold kills far more.

***

South Koreans now overwhelmingly support developing nuclear weapons, with 73% in favor

***

Can the condition of man be resolved by force or circumstance?

***

What would happen if your mind "would chew through everything — through our usual self-justifications, through the conceit of inevitability that attaches to our habits and customs, through the thin scaffolding of reason that holds life together. Such a mind would become, as Ulrich once describes himself, “a machine for the relentless devaluation of life”. The only way to avoid this result is to give the mind a task worthy of its powers, by presenting it with the sorts of questions one can, without shyness, think hard about. But that entails some hope of arriving at answers. This is one way to think about writing on philosophy: a safe space for the unfettered operation of mind."--Agnes Callard writing on The Man Without Qualities

***

The James Beard Award semifinalists have been announced, with three Pittsburgh chefs — all with numerous past nods — and one Pittsburgh restaurant contender in this edition.
In Pittsburgh, the Nordic seafood restaurant Fet-Fisk is a semifinalist in the best new restaurant category.
Apteka, in Bloomfield, and Chengdu Gourmet, in Squirrel Hill, are entrees for the best chef, Mid-Atlantic award.

A Titanic Problem

Software used by British submariners was subcontracted to developers in Belarus.

***

Pope Francis has branded Donald Trump's plans to impose mass deportation of immigrants as 'a disgrace' and urged the incoming president to lead a society with 'no room for hatred'.

Francis, who nearly a decade ago called Trump 'not Christian' for wanting to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, was asked about Trump's deportation pledges during a Sunday appearance on the popular Italian talk show, Che Tempo Che Fa.

'If true, this will be a disgrace, because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill' for the problem, the Pope said. 'This won't do! This is not the way to solve things. That's not how things are resolved.'

***

A Titanic Problem

Britain now has the highest industrial energy prices in the world, has fallen out of the world’s top ten manufacturers, faces power rationing, and is spending over £3bn a year to import electricity.

Last month, the country’s last big coal-fired power station closed and nuclear generation remains in consistent decline. The bill for these imports runs at £250m a month and regularly represents 20 percent of the total electricity supply. Forecasts show imports could soon supply up to a third of British needs by 2030 and beyond.

Ministers boast of Britain’s falling emissions from the energy sector; they won’t tell you about the overseas emissions connected with the electricity we now import but don’t appear on UK statistics; they claim they cannot measure it, so they ignore it. Britain is offshoring its emissions, hiding them, and hoping people won’t notice.

The consequences are stark, ranging from the loss of British competitiveness, rising fuel poverty, chronic economic underperformance, and becoming dangerously vulnerable to future energy crises.

Between 2004 and 2020, before the war in Ukraine, the industrial price of energy in Britain tripled in nominal terms (153%) or doubled relative to consumer prices. Electricity prices have doubled since 2019. This has led to a huge slice of Britain’s manufacturing base already choosing to relocate overseas in search of lower costs. Since 2010 over 200,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost; as a share of GDP, manufacturing has been cut in half since the 1990s.

Per capita electricity generation in the UK is now just two-thirds of what it is in France and barely over a third of the US. Britain now mirrors developing countries like South Africa (which endures rolling blackouts) more than key competitors like Germany. British businesses pay almost four times as much as American firms for each unit of power and households pay three times as much.

Sixty years ago Britain had 21 nuclear reactors, compared to 19 combined in the rest of the world. France picked up global leadership in this sector, which now generates 70 percent of its power from its nuclear stations and decarbonizes while retaining competitive power prices. France built no less than 40 nuclear plants between 1965 and 1985 and is now refurbishing and replacing older ones. Today, British firms pay on average sixty percent more for electricity than French ones.

All this is a microcosm of decline.

Early Man in the Americas

Maybe every other American movie shouldn't be based on a comic book. Other countries will think Americans live in an infantile fantasy land where reality is whatever we say it is and every problem can be solved with violence. -Bill Maher, comedian, actor, and writer

***

A bird dog that can't point birds will point flies. So Biden restlessly searches for significant acts. 

Biden has pardoned Leonard Peltier who was convicted of murdering two FBI agents.
"This last-second, disgraceful act by then-President Biden, which does not change Peltier's guilt but does release him from prison, is cowardly and lacks accountability," Natalie Bara, president of the FBI Agents Association, said in a statement Monday. "It is a cruel betrayal to the families and colleagues of these fallen Agents and is a slap in the face of law enforcement."

***

Underwood underscored it: there were serious women at the Trump thing.

***

Early Man in the Americas

Clovis is a site in New Mexico, where archaeologists in the 1920s and 1930s found distinctive projectile points and other artifacts between 11,000 and 13,000 years ago.

This date coincides with the end of the last Ice Age, a time when an ice-free corridor likely emerged in North America — giving rise to the theory of how early humans moved into the continent after crossing the Bering land bridge from Asia.

And because the fossil record shows the widespread decline of American megafauna starting around the same time — with North America losing 70% of its large mammals, and South America losing more than 80% — many researchers surmised that humans' arrival led to mass extinctions.

J'accuse.

But evidence from older sites keeps coming to light.

The first site, widely accepted as older than Clovis, was in Monte Verde, Chile.

Buried beneath a peat bog,14,500-year-old stone tools, pieces of preserved animal hides, and various edible and medicinal plants were discovered.

Among the oldest sites is Arroyo del Vizcaíno in Uruguay, where researchers are studying apparent human-made “cut marks” on animal bones dated to around 30,000 years ago.

At New Mexico’s White Sands, researchers have uncovered human footprints dating between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, but no evidence of tools.

So man came to North America earlier than the Great Extinction, too early to be blamed for it. However, the superficial information fits the superficial narrative, the preconception of man as a destructive force in nature. So they keep it. 

James Burnham

New paper in Science: A single mutation in bovine influenza H5N1 hemagglutinin switches specificity to human receptors.

***

More capital doesn’t flow towards high-leverage ideas in Europe because the price of failure is too high.

Coste estimates that, for a large enterprise, doing a significant restructuring in the US costs a company roughly two to four months of pay per worker. In France, that cost averages around 24 months of pay. In Germany, 30 months. In total, Coste and Coatanlem estimate restructuring costs are approximately ten times greater in Western Europe than in the United States…

***

According to reports, the Trump administration will issue over 200 executive orders today, including orders to declare a national emergency at the border; end all DEI programs across the federal government; a withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord; and a return-to-office directive for federal workers.

***

On the other hand, imagine how a politician who issues 'pre-emptive' pardons thinks.

***

James Burnham 

Inauguration Day, a day to contemplate the old and the new.

The recent Biden administration should bring to mind James Burnham.

James Burnham was a political scientist, philosopher, and one of the most astute observers of twentieth-century American politics. He was a full-bore communist revolutionary activist and a personal friend of Leon Trotsky in the 1920s and ’30s. Then he broke from communism in the ’40s and went hard to the right. He helped found the National Review with William F. Buckley.

He wrote two books in the 1940s while the big three-way battle between communism, fascism, and liberalism was trying to destroy the world. One is called The Managerial Revolution. It says, that while these movements have real differences, they have something in common; he called it “managerialism,” which is the establishment of an expert class. These expert technocrats are assumed to be able to steer society in healthy and beneficial ways, and then often lead you inadvertantly in terrible directions.

He wrote another book called The Machiavellians which looks at politics structurally rather than ideologically. One of the basic ideas is what he calls the “iron law of oligarchy” which says: Democracy is never actually real. There’s no true system of democracy because you always end up with a small minority in charge of a large majority in basically every society in human history. The reason is that small elites can organize and large majorities cannot--a simple and profound observation. (Madison would be thrilled.)

It doesn’t matter what you think democracy should be. Any form of democracy is going to have an elite class that is going to be running things. (Madison would not be thrilled.) And that elite class is either going to be good and beneficial and have the best interests of the population in mind, or it’s not. (Whether or not those aspirations are achievable is a different, profound question.) But to pretend that they’re voted in and out, that the voters are in charge, is just a myth.

We poor Americans have no idea what the new administration will bring, what wars started, what youth sacrificed, what economic dreams maimed. But we can all agree that it couldn't be much worse than the one that is stumbling off into the dusk.

Hopefully, Biden and his cabel will be put behind us. But Burnham should never be forgotten.

Sunday/Cana

The Biden cover-up is beginning to come apart. House Speaker Johnson told The Free Press that he asked Biden why he did an executive order limiting LNG exports to Europe: 'Sir, why did you pause LNG exports to Europe? Liquefied natural gas is in great demand by our allies. Why would you do that?'
Biden was surprised and said he didn't, leaving Johnson stunned.
'He genuinely didn’t know what he had signed and I walked out of that meeting with fear and loathing because I thought, ‘We are in serious trouble - who is running the country?’ Like, I don’t know who put the paper in front of him, but he didn’t know.'

***

What explains TV simultaneous sign language in a world of closed captioning?

***

Sunday/Cana

Today's gospel is The Marriage at Cana, a truly funny story. Christ is at a wedding where they run out of wine. His mother prods him to intervene. He says 'My time has not yet come,' and she ignores him, telling the servants to do what he says.

We don't know much about Christ's young life but, after the Annunciation, Mary certainly knew something really big was going on. Did he cut onions from across the room? Did neighbors bring him wounds and fractures? Was he impossible to wrestle with? You get the impression that Christ is having moments with his mother saying, "Aw, mom, I can't do that. Not yet."

The subtlety here is there is a plan, a blueprint laid out for Christ to follow and develop. Divine plans, for the religious, at least, should be very reassuring. But it also is true that the plan is not written in stone. People count.

The next point is that his mother ignored his protests. And she knew he would accommodate her, and the family. I have little knowledge of comparative religions but I'll bet human beings rewarded for ignoring the Godhead in religious literature is rare. What are we to make of this? The power of intercession? A wry, beleaguered God? Maybe a more tender and intimate God than expected? It certainly puts Mary in a different light.

The third point is the wine was good. Quality was emphasized. In the vast cosmos, that's a human element. It always seems that at this moment in the gospel, Christ steps away from humanity to do a 'trick' when most of the event really is as human as Christ gets.

Sat Stats

A word processor for DNA may have been discovered, whereas before we had newspaper clippings and scissors.

***

Biden declared on X that “the Equal Rights Amendment is now the law of the land.”

***

Sat Stats



Consumption of red wine in France has fallen by about 90 per cent since the 1970s, according to Conseil Interprofessionnel du vin de Bordeaux (CIVB), an industry association. Total wine consumption, spanning reds, whites and rosés, is down more than 80 per cent in France since 1945, according to survey data from Nielsen, and the decline is accelerating, with Generation Z purchasing half the volume bought by older millennials.

***

Transsion Holdings is the world’s fifth-largest mobile phone maker, but commands 40% of Africa’s market.

***

Owning a major US sports team in the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL has handily outperformed the S&P 500.

***

Africa is now experiencing more conflicts than at any point since at least 1946, according to data collected by Uppsala University in Sweden and analyzed by Norway’s Peace Research Institute Oslo. This year alone, experts at the two institutes have identified 28 state-based conflicts across 16 of the continent’s 54 countries, more than in any other region in the world and double the count just a decade and a half ago. That tally doesn’t include conflicts that don’t involve government forces, for instance between different communities, and whose number has also doubled since 2010…

The continent is now home to nearly half of the world’s internally displaced people, some 32.5 million at the end of 2023. That figure has tripled in just 15 years.

***

In 2022, undocumented immigrant households paid $46.8 billion in federal taxes and $29.3 billion in state and local taxes, according to an October report by the American Immigration Council. They also contributed $22.6 billion to Social Security and $5.7 billion to Medicare.

Additionally, undocumented immigrants make up about a quarter of U.S. farm workers, one-fifth of maintenance workers, and 17 percent of construction workers, according to Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

***

EU Fertility studies:

Official statistics show Germany’s birth rate fell to 1.35 children per woman in 2023, below the UN’s “ultra-low” threshold of 1.4 — characterising a scenario where falling birth rates become tough to reverse.

Estonia and Austria also passed under the 1.4 threshold, joining the nine EU countries — including Spain, Greece and Italy — that in 2022 had fertility rates below 1.4 children per woman.

With young people reaching milestones, such as buying a house, later in life, the average age of EU women at childbirth rose to 31.1 years in 2023, a year later than a decade ago.

Austria reported a fall to 1.32 children per woman in 2023, down from 1.41 in the previous year. In Estonia, the rate hit 1.31 in 2023, down from 1.41 in the previous year.

Birth rates have fallen across Europe — even in countries such as Finland, Sweden and France, where family-friendly policies and greater gender equality had previously helped boost the number of babies. In Finland, the birth rate was above the EU average until 2010, but it dropped to 1.26 in 2023, the lowest since the record began in 1776, according to official data.

France had the highest birth rate at 1.79 children per woman in 2022, but the national figures showed it dropped to 1.67 last year, the lowest on record.

***

We estimate productivity growth in England from 1250 to 1870. Real wages over this period were heavily influenced by plague-induced swings in the population. Our estimates account for these Malthusian dynamics. We find that productivity growth was zero prior to 1600. Productivity growth began in 1600—almost a century before the Glorious Revolution. Thus, the onset of productivity growth preceded the bourgeois institutional reforms of 17th century England. We estimate productivity growth of 2% per decade between 1600 and 1800, increasing to 5% per decade between 1810 and 1860. Much of the increase in output growth during the Industrial Revolution is explained by structural change—the falling importance of land in production—rather than faster productivity growth. Stagnant real wages in the 18th and early 19th centuries—“Engel’s Pause”—is explained by rapid population growth putting downward pressure on real wages. Yet, feedback from population growth to real wages is sufficiently weak to permit sustained deviations from the “iron law of wages” prior to the Industrial Revolution.--a paper

***

The Department of Health and Human Services has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds carrying out President Biden’s DEI initiatives, according to a new nonprofit government watchdog report released Tuesday.

Healthcare Costs

SpaceX launched its huge Super Heavy-Starship mega rocket on its seventh test flight Thursday, successfully "catching" the first stage booster back at its firing stand but losing its new-generation Starship upper stage spacecraft, which apparently broke up as it was reaching space. Falling debris from the destroyed Starship briefly delayed airline traffic out of Miami, Florida, federal officials said.

***

Donald Trump wants to create 'Freedom Cities.' The Federal Government owns more than half of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, and Alaska and  nearly half of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming.
The vast majority of this land is NOT parks.

Why would the federal government own so much land?
There is plenty of land to build new cities that could be adapted to new technologies such as driverless cars and drones.

***

80% of the top 100 Lowell Putnam Math Competition scores are from MIT.

***

Our industrial civilization has lasted roughly 300 years (dating, for example, from the beginning of mass production methods and power sources). This is a small fraction of the time we have existed as a species, and a tiny fraction of the time that complex life has existed on the Earth's land surface. 

Amazingly, economists, historians, sociologists, and philosophers can look at that tiny sliver and generalize.

***

Healthcare Costs

An interesting article on health costs after the strange murder of the United CEO:

Insurance companies just don’t make that much profit. UnitedHealth Group, the company of which Brian Thompson’s UnitedHealthcare is a subsidiary, is the most valuable private health insurer in the country in terms of market capitalization, and the one with the largest market share. Its net profit margin is just 6.11%:

That’s only about half of the average profit margin of companies in the S&P 500. And other big insurers are even less profitable. Elevance Health, the second-biggest, has a margin of between 2% and 4%. Centene’s margin is usually around 1% to 2%. Cigna Group’s margin is usually around 2% to 3%. And so on. These companies are just making very little profit at all.

if UnitedHealth Group decided to donate every single dollar of its profit to buying Americans more health care, it would only be able to pay for about 9.3% more health care than it’s already paying for. If it donated all of its executives’ salaries to the effort, it would not be much more than that.

Americans’ much-hated private health insurers are paying a higher percentage of the cost of Americans’ health care than the government insurance systems of Sweden, Denmark, and the UK are paying. The only reason Americans’ bills are higher is that U.S. health care provision costs so much more in the first place.

Elizabeth Warren has claimed that switching to national health insurance would save huge amounts of money by reducing administrative costs. But when we look at United Health Group’s operating costs, they’re only 22.6% of the actual cost of medical care.

In fact, the Kaiser Family Foundation does detailed comparisons between U.S. healthcare spending and spending in other developed countries. And it has been concluded that most of this excess spending comes from providers — from hospitals, pharma companies, doctors, nurses, tech suppliers, and so on.

This means that eliminating all administrative waste and inefficiency in the entire U.S. health care system — not just at insurance companies, but administration of government insurance programs — could save Americans at most about $680 per person every year, and probably not anywhere close to that amount. A few hundred bucks a year is not nothing, but it’s only a small fraction of the $5683 more that we pay relative to other countries.

So the fundamental reason your health care costs so much is not that the health insurance companies are lining their pockets. And it’s not that insurers are an inefficient mess. It’s that the actual provision of America’s health care itself just costs way too much in the first place.

The actual people charging you an arm and a leg for your care, and putting you at risk of medical bankruptcy, are the providers themselves.

So the way to make our health care system affordable is not to browbeat insurers, in the hope that they will be able to reduce their profits and pay for us to have cheap health care. Insurance companies simply do not have the power to do that, even if you threaten to shoot them. What we need is to reduce costs within the actual medical system itself. One idea is to have the government insurance system play hardball with providers; negotiating lower prices is what the Biden administration had Medicare do with some drug companies. There are some risks to this approach — if it’s executed clumsily it can suppress innovation — but it’s basically what every other rich country does, so the track record is decent. There are probably other ways to foster competition and increase efficiency in the medical care system.

But focusing all our anger on the middlemen of the U.S.’ bloated health care system is just a way of shooting the messenger.--Noah Smith

Oh, Canada

The guy who has vanished from elected public office while other, unknown people--a small, anonymous cabal---stepped in to run this country in his stead and hid their power assumption and his debilities has just given a national farewell address warning of rising, dark, power-hungry oligarchies opposed to democratic principles.

The bad news is that, while mendacity and hypocrisy are disfiguring, they are not fatal.

***

A SpaceX Falcon 9 launched carrying two Japanese moon landers.
Blue Origin's massive New Glenn orbiter launched early today and achieved orbit. Apparently, its boosters were not immediately recovered.
It is designed to conduct regular flights using reusable boosters, lifting commercial and national-security satellites into orbit. The rocket is eventually meant to launch astronaut crews.

***

Oh, Canada

A lot of fuss about Canada.

If Canada were to become a state, it would be the third poorest in the country, right behind Alabama.

Everybody talks about the American debt issue, but Canadian households bear more debt relative to their income than any other G7 country. The average Canadian now spends 15% of their income on debt servicing.

This is a stark shift from 2008 when Canada emerged from the global financial crisis with a healthier balance sheet than any other G7 nation.

Every year, businesses invest in growth – new technology, new projects, new employees or products. If you take the total number that businesses invest during a calendar year, and divide that by the number of active workers in the country, you get the corporate investment per worker.
In the U.S., businesses invest about $28,000 per worker. In Canada, that number is only $15,000—nearly half.
Corporate investment is what drives future productivity, economic growth, and opportunity. The higher the number, the brighter the future.

What is Canada’s comparative advantage?

They have vast natural resources, with easy-to-navigate geography, the world’s longest coastline that spans three oceans – allowing direct access to every global market, and the largest shared international land border, on the other side of which is the worlds wealthiest, hungriest customer.

They have product. And a direct line to the consumer.

Canada is not capitalizing on these advantages because they have been sold a narrative discouraging investment in the industries where they could outperform the world.

The narrative that Canada should abandon its resource sector to pursue conceptual industries like hydrogen power or electric vehicle production is both misguided and damaging. These are fields where Canada has little experience or infrastructure, where they are not competitive, and the evidence is in their economic data.

Epic Fail

Nearly one and a half million women in this country are currently selling their bodies on the platform OnlyFans.

***

EV sales in 2024 (1,301,411) were higher by 7.3% and accounted for 8.1% of total sales, up from 7.8% share in 2023. While the rate of growth has slowed, volume continues to expand. In the second half of 2024, more than 700,000 EVs were sold, accounting for 8.7% of total new vehicle sales.

***

Epic Fail

The unfortunate FBI spokesperson, Aletha Duncan, speaking at the New Orleans atrocity, declared that the event was not an act of terrorism and made several syntax errors. Then she made a request of the audiance: "This is my ask..."

Nominalization is the nouning of a verb. Appeared as a verb preceeded the noun "request," borrowed from the French, a few times 1000-1200, then did not reappear until 1700. Still, it is rare, appearing in three specialized uses: in card-playing, finance, and fund-raising. More common in Australia and, lesser, in the UK. particularly denoting size, as in "a big ask."

“Do you have a solve for this problem?” "Enclosed is the invite." “Let’s all focus on the build.” “That’s the takeaway from today’s seminar.” Or, from a No. 1 hit in Britain, “Would you let me see beneath your beautiful?”

Each of these jarring sentences contains an example of nominalization, where a verb or adjective has been transmuted into a noun. There are two types of nominalization. Type A involves a morphological change, namely suffixation: the verb “to investigate” produces the noun “investigation,” and “to nominalize” yields “nominalization.” Type B is known as “zero derivation” — or, more straightforwardly, “conversion.” This occurs when a word has been switched from a verb or adjective into a noun without adding a suffix.

They are associated with bureaucracy and general carelessness.

"Their boosters see them as marvels of concision, but one person’s idea of streamlining is another’s idea of a specious and ethically doubtful simplicity." (Hitchens)

In the case of the unfortunate Ms. Duncan, it's the latter.

Disaster Equity

Do men negatively respond when women first enter an occupation? We find that integrating women into previously all-male units does not negatively affect men’s performance or behavioral outcomes, including retention, promotions, demotions, separations for misconduct, criminal charges, and medical conditions. Most of our results are precise enough to rule out small, detrimental effects. However, there is a wedge between men’s perceptions and performance. The integration of women causes a negative shift in male soldiers’ perceptions of workplace quality, with the effects driven by units integrated with a woman in a position of authority. We discuss how these findings shed light on the roots of occupational segregation by gender.--Kyle Greenberg, Melanie Wasserman & E. Anna Weber.

***

The strongest argument for socialism is that it sounds good. The strongest argument against socialism is that it doesn’t work. But those who live by words will always have a soft spot in their hearts for socialism because it sounds so good.--Sowell

***

The leader of diversity, equity and inclusion at the Los Angeles Fire Department addressed concerns that female firefighters may not be strong enough to carry a man out of a burning building, responding: 'He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.'

***

Disaster Equity

A startling 2023 FEMA webinar features federal health and disaster personnel trumpeting the urgent need to move away from policies that benefit the greatest number of people and instead turn focus toward “disaster equity” where aid is distributed based on innate characteristics like sexual orientation and gender identity.

The roundtable discussion, recorded in March of last year, was entitled “Helping LGBTQIA+ Survivors Before Disasters,” included panelists like Maggie Jarry of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and was moderated by Tyler Atkins, an Emergency Management Specialist at FEMA who uses he/they pronouns.

The panelists covered a range of topics around the notion that disaster services are short-changing marginalized groups when it comes to relief efforts.

“LGBTQIA people, and people who have been disadvantaged already, are struggling. They already have their own things to deal with. So when you add a disaster on top of that it’s just compounding on itself,” Atkins mused to the group.

“I think that is maybe the ‘why’ of why we’re having these discussions, because it isn’t being talked about, it isn’t being socialized, we’re not paying attention to this community,” he claimed.

As the remaining panelists nodded in enthusiastic agreement, Jarry made a startling revelation that federal agencies ostensibly tasked with saving as many lives as possible in a disaster should be focusing their attention elsewhere.

“The shift we’re seeing right now is a shift in emergency services from utilitarian principles — where everything is designed for the greatest good for the greatest amount of people — to disaster equity. But we have to do more,” she urged.
She then suggested existing disaster management agency policies may have been deliberately engineered to leave out vulnerable communities.
She was not referring to the policy to withhold help from Trump supporters after the hurricaine as that occurred later.

“The topic at hand here is, are the policies that have been developed actually biased in benign neglect or intentional erasure of the specific communities that are probably most in need of those services, and does the aid then bias toward people with assets or other types of situations that weren’t part of the norm of this industry in the past.”

Atkins, visibly moved by her oratory, capped off her words with a DEI word salad.“The topic of preparedness and preparedness resources and the intersectionalities within equities and discrimination and hate — it’s a real thing that needs to be discussed, needs to be vocalized, and we need to start looking at how we can find solutions to this.” 

The initiatives raised at the panel discussion echo many of those on FEMA’s own website, which proudly proclaims instilling “equity as a foundation of emergency management” as goal 1.“Underserved communities, as well as specific identity groups, often suffer disproportionately from disasters. As a result, disasters worsen inequities already present in society,” the declaration reads in part.“This cycle compounds the challenges faced by these communities and increases their risk to future disasters. By instilling equity as a foundation of emergency management and striving to meet the unique needs of underserved communities, the emergency management community can work to break this cycle and build a more resilient nation.”

FEMA has come under fire after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted to reporters that the agency “does not have the funds” to safeguard Americans through the remainder of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, its coffers depleted in part by the more than $1.4 billion it has spent addressing the migrant crisis since fall 2022.

FEMA did not respond to a request for comment by The Post inquiring whether the sentiments expressed by the panelists are reflective of the agency as a whole. But this may explain the strange FEMA directive in the hurricane to avoid homes with Trump signs.

Self-inflicted Wounds of the Righteous

... among corruptible human beings, the power to weaponize a vision of justice and impose it on a world of alternative visions is toxic.--Schmidtz

***

Roger Federer said, “In the 1526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches. Now, I have a question for you. What percentage of points do you think I won in those matches? Only 54%.”

***

Blue Origin is preparing to step into a new chapter of rocketry, by debuting its first orbital class rocket, New Glenn, Bezos' entry into the spaace race. It will also attempt to recover the first stage booster on landing platform the Atlantic Ocean. Its launch was planned for today but cancelled early this morning.

***

A gymnist pauses for a glass of wine:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DD-crSMSNoz/?igsh=MTM1b2JiOGc3eWVjeg%3D%3D

***

Self-inflicted Wounds of the Righteous

Global warming beliefs have created dangerous waters.

The Germans have a word for periods of simultaneous low wind and sun. Literally. It's Dunkelflaute, meaning "flat, dark calm." The word elsewhere is "winter."

Dependence on unreliable energy sources (wind, solar), combined with the hasty phase-out of nuclear power, has made Germany's electricity the most expensive in Europe and compromises the country's -- and ultimately the continent's -- energy autonomy.
On December 12 of this year, for example, German electricity production from wind and solar power was thirty times lower than the demand for it.

To make up for energy shortfalls they have increased reliance on coal and lignite. This raises their carbon footprint. More importantly, they have to compete for energy on the open market.

Germany's high electricity prices are leading to the relocation of its industry, as companies look for sites where energy costs are more affordable. In Germany, industry pays up to three times more for electricity than itscompetitors.

Whole swathes of Germany's proud industry are collapsing. Not just the big names -- VW, BASF, Mercedes-Benz -- but every big company that disappears or downsizes takes with it a myriad of small and medium-sized affiliated enterprises that end up collapsing along with it.

None of this is accidental. None is the result of weather whimsy. This is administrative, the consequence of government decisions from faith-based "conceptual frameworks." Most importantly, these decisions, made by a small group of idealogues, summate to swamp the average working guy in changes that may not be shared by the law-making elite.

That is Germany's, and Europe's, true rising tide.

Sunday/Some Religious Bits

"You are the children and we are the mother." Nortth--or maybe Townsend--in an interview with Franklin, the Colonies' ambassador to the Court of St. James to smooth relationships between Britain and the Colonies.

"There will be war." Franklin's letter home after the interview.

***

"Ships are damaging major undersea cables in the Baltic Sea almost every month," German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the Funke media group.
 
***


Sunday/Some Religious Bits

Pelagianism: a 5th-century Christian heresy taught by Pelagius and his followers that stressed the essential goodness of human nature and the freedom of the human will. Pelagius was concerned about the slack moral standards among Christians, and he hoped to improve their conduct by his teachings. Rejecting the arguments of those who claimed that they sinned because of human weakness, he insisted that God made human beings free to choose between good and evil and that sin is a voluntary act committed by a person against God’s law. Celestius, a disciple of Pelagius, denied the church’s doctrine of original sin and the necessity of infant baptism.

*

Marcionite: any member of a gnostic sect that flourished in the 2nd century AD. The name derives from Marcion of Pontus (an ancient district in northeastern Anatolia), who, sometime after his arrival in Rome, fell under the influence of Cerdo, a gnostic Christian, and went on to expand upon his theology. Cerdo’s stormy relations with the church of Rome were the consequence of his belief that the God of the Old Testament could be distinguished from the God of the New Testament—the one embodying justice, the other goodness. For accepting, developing, and propagating such ideas, Marcion was expelled from the church in 144 as a heretic, but the movement he headed became both widespread and powerful.

The basis of Marcionite theology was that there were two cosmic gods. A vain and angry creator god who demanded and ruthlessly exacted justice had created the material world of which humanity, body and soul, was a part—a striking departure from the usual gnostic thesis that only the human body is part of creation, that the soul is a spark from the true but unknown superior God, and that the world creator is a demonic power. The other god, according to Marcion, was completely ineffable and bore no intrinsic relation to the created universe at all. Out of sheer goodness, he had sent his son Jesus Christ to save humankind from the material world and bring about a new home.

Marcion is perhaps best known for his treatment of Scripture. Though he rejected the Old Testament as the work of the creator God, he did not deny its efficacy for those who did not believe in Christ. He rejected attempts to harmonize Jewish biblical traditions with Christian ones as impossible. He accepted as authentic all of the Pauline Letters and the Gospel According to Luke (after he had expurgated them of Judaizing elements). His treatment of Christian literature was significant because it forced the early church to fix an approved canon of theologically acceptable texts out of the mass of available but unorganized material.

The Marcionites were considered the most dangerous of the gnostics by the established church.

*

“England, which at the beginning of the sixteenth century seems to have been one of the most Catholic countries in Europe, became, by the seventeenth century, the most virulently anti-Catholic, and the almost dominant ideology of anti-Catholicism fueled the civil wars that engulfed all parts of the British Isles in mid-century and later provoked the Bloodless Revolution, from which what passes for a British constitution derives” (Collinson, 2004, )