Back to: Peak Brexit | Forward to: Someone please cancel 2019 already?

Crawling from the wreckage

So, 2018 is nearly over, at last. It was an absolute shit-show of a year for numerous reasons. On a personal level, I'll be remembering it primarily as the year I hit a personal wall, flaming out and delivering a novel six months late (for the first time in my career). In reaction to which, I decided to take a six month sabbatical (my first break from writing in a decade) ... then had the sabbatical interrupted by a family medical crisis, of the "an immediate relative spends three months on a stroke ward and will never recover" variety.

In comparison with the global political picture, my personal 2018 was all butterflies and rainbows. 2018 was the year that the global climate change alarm sirens began to sound continuously, with wildfires and heat emergencies and melting icecaps. 2018 was also, by no coincidence whatsoever, the year in which the global neo-Nazi movement made considerable headway, with neo-fascist demagogues grabbing power in Brazil, tightening their stranglehold in India, the Philippines, Turkey, the USA, Italy, and elsewhere. The UK was, for a third consecutive year, paralyzed by the utter shit-show that is Brexit, with the deadline now looming less than 100 days ahead of us. It was the year in which it became glaringly clear that the 2016 US election was rigged by a combination of election fraud and AI-controlled targeting of individual voters by state-level propaganda systems in order to amplify internal hatred and dissent: and that the same people and tools used in the US campaign had also driven the Brexit referendum result, and were in use elsewhere around the world.

I am looking for any silver linings to 2018 and coming up blank.

So, can you help me? What was the good side of 2018, the things we should remember this year for happily rather than with a curse?

1028 Comments

1:

The goings on in deep corners of maths and physics are starting to bear fruit. The places dark matter and dark energy can hide are getting squeezed. The foundations of mathematics, even useful bits, are getting worked. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homotopy_type_theory

2:

"the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

That's all I've got -- and it isn't much against the gathering shitstorm.

3:

The war in Syria is winding down, so that at least is less bad.

Also the north/South Korean situation seems less fraught.

4:

The first woman Doctor

New Horizons arrives at Ultima Thule

Black Panther

Into the Spiderverse

My wife finally had her long-overdue gallbladder removal and it went well

5:

Not so much for 2018, but in 2019, Australia will finally get an adult government after the lastr5 year shitshow.

6:

Sorry you had such a hard year, btw. Losing a parent is really tough, especially as it means you are now the adult.

7:

Most of us are alive. I count that as a positive.

8:

Clever folk successfully grew human esophageal tissue in the lab for the first time.

Ethiopia & Eritrea finally made peace after twenty odd years of hot & cold conflict. Hopefully it will stick.

Folk fold some evidence for surface water ice on the moon.

I really enjoyed The Labyrinth Index :-)

MASCOT landed on the asteroid Ryugu.

More robots on and around Mars. Oh and NASA are on course to send a helicopter there too.

N. K. Jemisin's well deserved triple at the Hugos — and the fact that the puppy asshats seem to have finally f**ked off completely.

Neat advances in 3D bio-printing.

Some evidence for extragalactic planets.

The ozone layer is healing faster that we thought it was.

The Armenian revolution — an strangely almost unreported victory for civic disobedience & democracy.

The new Doctor Who season was excellent, and rated well. Ditto for the Black Panther movie. Ditto for Into the Spider-Verse movie… it's almost like you can make successful mainstream films and series that aren't full of CHWDs.

The US midterms. Not so much for the result, but for the kinds of people running (and winning.)

We found a new class of antibiotics Odilorhabdins.

We saw an intersteller object wander through the solar system.

9:

Most of whom?

Is that based on the assumption that only living people comment on Charlie's blog? (Probably true that the live commenters outnumber the dead, but I wouldn't lay money that the occasional revenant doesn't appear).

Or is it based on the assumption that 'we/us' live in the West, where our chances (whatever the past/growing shitstorm around us) of surviving this far (if not as comfortably as we'd like) are better than those in less fortunate places.

I've had a pacemaker implanted this year, which has improved my life quality and survival chances. I wish the same opportunity was available to others elsewhere in a war-torn climate-scarred health-insurance-limited reactionary-controlled world, but I know that it isn't...

10:

Let’s see.

  • The US system of checks and balances did what it’s founding fathers intended and constrained the actions of a President who clearly doesn’t give a fig for democracy or the rule of law.

  • All those thousands of nuclear weapons remained quietly ticking and whirring away unused in their bunkers and siloes

  • Solar and wind power costs continue to fall.

  • More people had full bellies this year than last.

  • 11:

    As noted above, even with a slanted, gerrymandered field, the Democrats took the House in the U.S, which will be something of a brake or impediment to President Trump.

    13:

    As far as I have been able to interpret available data, the worldwide number of people living in extreme poverty has been declining. That is positive.

    The downside of that is, however, the increased use of non-renewable resources.

    14:

    Re: 'unhistoric acts'

    Agree. Stories/events that immediately came to mind:

    1- 'MPRracoon' that successfully scaled a 25 story building 2- Thai cave rescue of 12 young soccer players and their coach

    Both stories showed that there's still some humanity on this planet. The raccoon story had people in several countries cheering. Yes, a raccoon is usually regarded as one of a handful of urban/suburban pests when it shows up in the backyard which makes it an encouraging sign that so many people did watch this news story and seemed to genuinely care about its welfare and not wish it ill. The Thai cave rescue story took much longer to unfold, had potentially dire consequences to fellow humans, showed how quickly and easily strangers/foreigners can come together to figure out and implement a plan for the benefit of someone they don't know and at considerable personal risk to themselves. (One former Thai navy seal died while returning from placing air tanks along the route to the cave where the boys and coach were found.) No politics, no money, just fellow critters/humans.

    On the sci-tech side, my favorite story is the graphene water filter that can desalinate as well as remove pesticides and other unwanted materials from water. While this isn't a completely new (2018) story, it's encouraging that each year this idea is being improved upon therefore offering hope of a practical solution on both small and large scales. (At least we can avoid water wars.)

    https://www.ft.com/content/d768030e-d8ec-11e7-9504-59efdb70e12f

    And, because I happen to like both music and bio-pics: the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. What really made me laugh was how some things never change: the official music critics panned it while the fans loved it.

    15:

    Charlie: YOU have noticed, as many others have not that India is going down the tubes, because of Modi & his BJP nutters, here the Philippines are ignored, though I think Bolsanaro has raised warnings ( There’s a large Portuguese/Brazilian community in London ) Turkey we all know about … Italy will probably implode, simply because of comparison with Musso … they don’t want to go down that road again …

    For good news, look to the science & medicine pages, I suppose, as always.

    barren-samadhi @ 3 Actually, not good - the Kurds are going to get the Armenian-1916 treatment by Erdogan, unless they are lucky. Question: How will the rest of NATO react when a member starts really committing extermination-atrocities?

    Matt s @ 10 1 – really? … 2, 3, & 4 YES!

    16:

    Meanwhile, if you want a brief laugh Try this for size?

    17:

    Really like this. Surprised it didn't get coverage on google news:

    https://www.theoceancleanup.com/system001/

    18:

    The #MeToo movement has started to make some real impact, cutting into teh patriarchal system with all the ramifications for the future. Assuming it doesn't flame out or end up un gutted in a backlash, I think this bodes well for the future of the status of 50% of the planet. It's only been how many thousands of years...?

    19:

    My answer will be spread out among several posts

    Space

  • Humanity launched more than 100 rockets for the first times since 1990 (114 in 2018 vs 120 in 1990)

  • SpaceX met 3 of the 5 goals they set out for this year (launch of the Falcon Heavy, launch of the Starlink prototype, launch/multiple re-use of the Block 5). In addition, they will begin Grasshopper-like tests of the BFR in March 2019.

  • Here are the achievements of w.r.t. solar system exploration Sun: Parker Solar Probe launched Mercury: BepiColombo launched The Moon: Chang'e 4 launched, and the Queqiao satellite entered L2 orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_4#Science_payloads This doesn't count as 2018, but India's Chandrayaan-2 orbiter/lander/rover combo is launching on Jan 3. Mars: The InSight lander landed, we discovered liquid water under Mars' Pole, and surface Ice at Korolev Crater. It was decided that the 2020 rover will have a helicopter drone Asteroids: Hayabusa2's mission at Ryugu, OSIRIS-Rex arrived at asteroid Bennu to begin its sample return mission Outer solar system: Ultima Thule Extrasolar planets: the launch of TESS to replace the dying Kepler, the first discovery of an exomoon (a neptune-size object around a supergiant).

  • The cubesat market is going from strength to strength. RocketLabs has launched 3 successful rockets, and approached a tempo of 1 rocket/month. This should prove exciting going into 2019. In addition, microsats and cubesats were used as part of the Chang'e 4 and InSight missions.

  • Speaking of Starlink, the prototype for the the Hongyan constellation launched on Dec 29. This is China's Starlink competitor, a "constellation of 320 M2M communications satellites."

  • 20:

    Ireland finally repealed the 8th and in two days time the legislation comes into force.

    Meanwhile, I was thinking that there was a time when 2016 was the bad year, and then came to realize that a chunk of the immediate trigger events for today's hilarity (Brexit, Trump) could be traced to then. Gah.

    21:

    Tech

  • Apple GO cashierless stores. So far, they've tested a few prototypes that have been so successful Amazon is considering expanding the project to airports https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/07/amazons-cashier-free-go-stores-may-be-coming-to-airports/
  • 2.Wearables are becoming more ubiquitous. The growth isn't as rapid as smartphones, so it was largely ignored. Nevertheless, the growth does resemble the Ipod. This shows how much our expectations have increased https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/29/analysts-are-still-bullish-on-wearables/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276307/global-apple-ipod-sales-since-fiscal-year-2006/ As a bonus, we finally have a working ECG on the most popular smartwatch https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/06/the-apple-watchs-ecg-feature-goes-live-today/

  • Cameras have continued their slow-and-steady improvements https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/22/the-future-of-photography-is-code/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/30/moment-lenses-the-dslr-killer-a-review/

  • VR/AR is still growing slowly. It's still a niche product, but it hasn't died yet. https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/03/apples-ar-bet-still-has-a-lot-to-prove/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/23/tc-sessions-ar-vr-surveys-an-industry-in-transition/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/09/facebook-launches-ar-effects-tied-to-real-world-tracking-markers/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/11/where-experiential-virtual-reality-is-heading/

  • Half the world's population is now online

  • Africa's tech sector is booming https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/23/the-intensifying-battle-for-africas-burgeoning-tech-landscape-2/

  • 22:

    *It's weird, but I think the alarm bells screaming on climate change are a good thing. They've been ringing since the 1980s, but we've managed to ignore them regardless. I'm getting the sense that we're at a tipping point, not just the climate one, but the societal one where we in the US start seriously dealing with the issue.

    *In southern California, I suspect that the leapfrog sprawl model of suburban development is finally breaking. This is mixed news. On the one hand, it means that we likely won't be seeing developments of thousands of high end homes put in even more high fire risk areas than they already built in. On the other hand, the people in the development industry say that they can't make a profit off of affordable housing, and that they built sprawl because that was the only way they could profit. If they're being truthful (and I'm not sure they are), then we've got an even worse housing crisis, but since the sprawl involved very little affordable housing, they weren't solving the problems we already have.

    When the dust settles from all the lawsuits against the current crop of developments (in 2019 or 2020), I'm fairly sure sprawl will lose. Then we get to see if someone can figure out how to profitably build affordable living spaces in built-up areas. Those of you in Europe probably see this as our cities starting to mature, growing up rather than out, and you're right.

    • On the US level, there's the Green New Deal, which has polling support from voters across the US political spectrum.

    • This gets to a bigger point: the continuing diminution of the US Imperial Presidency. In the past few decades, we've afforded the POTUS imperial power, because nukes. This started after WW2, when we woke up to the notion that WW3 could be started and over before Congress got to work that day, so the old plan of Congress declaring war after long debate was hopelessly antiquated. This in turn invested the power for starting WW3 in the President, with that damned nuclear football. That imperial power spread into other regions of government and grew until 2016. Now that we've got the Current Administration, we've discovered that mutually assured suicide isn't a good basis for imperial power. We can do all sorts of things to oppose that power, because he's not going to start WW3 in response. Since I'm a fan of democracy and checks and balances, I think this is a good thing.

    23:

    I think you're too early: the first Ocean Cleanup boom they released isn't collecting plastic yet. Apparently plastic goes in and then bounces out. They're still tinkering with it to see if changing the geometry will make it work. Hopefully it will work in 2019.

    On the good side, there's more work on how oceanic bacteria break down plastics. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6132502/

    24:

    And, confirming my opinion that one J Corbyn is STUPID ... Try this for size. Another example of the "lifelong rebel" trying to impose strict discipline ...., apart from the joining with the far-right in wanting to wreck the country of course.

    25:

    On the good side if you don't like real-world cyberpunk: FAANG generally had a bad year. That's Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. The megacorps aren't invulnerable.

    26:

    The suburban sprawl model in Southern California breaking down has some interesting upsides/downsides. Note that I happen to believe the developers here.

  • It limits California's population growth. Considering your state's water crisis, encouraging people to move to other states does help. True, it's less helpful if these people move to Arizona or Nevada.

  • It makes the state bluer. On the other hand, it makes other states redder. Contrary to popular belief, transplants to Texas voted for Cruz (+6) while people born in Texas voted for Beto (+3) https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/09/texans-preferred-orourke-cruz-least-texans-born-texas-did/?utm_term=.c6c19ebfbaab

  • Expect a massive expansion in shantytowns. That's what the homeless encampments are, whatever the propaganda says. Btw, this is why I believe developers. If developers really were evil enough to purposefully create shantytowns, then they would have arisen decades ago.

  • It will make the state less white, but more Asian. This is partly because Asian immigrants are now the largest immigrant group, but a lot of gentrification going on now is focusing on immigrants brought to work in the tech industry, who are predominantly Asian (this is true for both the US and UK definitions of Asian). While this phenomenon does make these neighborhoods whiter too, that's not enough to counteract the retiring baby boomer population moving away. As a result, it's unlikely for California to be >50% Latino anytime soon.

  • Time will tell if the end of sprawl creates viable public transport system? LA has the ninth busiest subway system, but I'm not sure that most of the metropolitan region benefits from it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership

  • 27:

    FAANG did not have a bad year, they just had the type of PR crisis that oil and car companies have successfully weathered for decades. Let me rephrase that, Facebook had a bad year due to its scandals. Apple also had a bad year, but that's due to the plateauing of smartphone sales.

    Amazon had an amazing performance, increasing their online shopping market share to 50% from 43.5% https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-is-retailer-of-the-year-2018-12

    Netflix has also been doing very well. As I posted in the previous thread, streaming services have led to 520 original scripted shows. Most of this was Amazon and Netflix https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/11/15/why-netflix-is-up-50-in-2018.aspxhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/10/18/netflix-projects-strong-subscriber-growth-in-q4/#52b8fc923a36

    I don't think I need to say anything about Google.

    28:

    Here's some good news/bad news in regards to Modi.

    There's a general election between April and May 2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Indian_general_election

    So far, Modi's BJP has already lost power in 3 states that were considered its bedrock https://www.indiatoday.in/elections/story/assembly-election-narendra-modi-loss-boost-to-opposition-1407572-2018-12-12

    While it's likely that the BJP will emerge as the largest party after these elections, they likely won't have a majority and will have to go into coalition.

    The bad news is that the Chandrayaan 2 is landing around that time. If you guys remember that when the Maglayaan Mars orbiter was successful, the reaction from Western presses boosted Modi's popularity. If you remember, a significant amount of the reaction covered these 2 points: 1. Why is the West still giving aid to India when they launch spacecraft? 2. Why is India spending money on spacecraft when the poor don't have toilets?

    If the above is repeated now, then this increases the chances of Modi retaining a majority.

    As an aside, I hadn't realized until that Wikipedia link the extent to which the Congress party had been decimated in the 2014 elections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharatiya_Janata_Party#/media/File:State-_and_union_territory-level_parties.svg

    29:

    The developers are lying through their teeth.

    Look at some of these houses. Ok, they're not longer as bad as the late sixties/early seventies, when the entire insides were cheap plasterboard, and I could put my fist through a wall without damage. But they're crap. And with contracting/sub-sub-sub-contracting, the folks doing the work, mostly non-union, are getting paid crap, and the developers and real estate agents get rich.

    Oh, and dunno where you are, but I think they're finally being required, at least in some places, to put in sidewalks (as opposed to street and nothing else, because, I mean, no one walks...)

    30:

    The homeless encampments aren't permanent enough to be shantytowns, for good and ill. I do agree with some of your other points, though (see the end).

    I do a fair amount of development stuff on the environmentalist side, and I've got a couple of sources in the development industry. Of those, one sides with the developers on building sprawl, one says it's BS brought on by a mix of ideology and greed.

    One real problem with infill development (meaning that homes get rebuilt into condos and apartment buildings) is NIMBYism: people don't want their neighborhoods turned into soulless canyons (feel free to disagree if you live in a city of flats), especially considering that southern Californian cities were built around cars, densifying needs to get people out of cars to really work, and this requires different infrastructure.

    The other problem is what one politician calls "San Diego Specials", where "obvious solutions to long-running problems die for the lack of vision, leadership and action." I've seen this kind of thing in action numerous times on housing issues. Fortunately, one of the biggest practitioners of this kind of politics did not get re-elected in 2018.

    Anyway, getting development out of the high fire areas involves getting people in cities to accept denser housing, politicians to figure out how to build the infrastructure for densification, and getting the people already in the back country to shut up about preserving their rural quality of life and to get serious about explaining to people the difficulties in living with fires, floods, and drought.

    As for moving people out of southern California, yes, I do hope that happens. This may sound weird, but I did live in the rust belt, and it's frustrating to see people leave this inherently safer place (no earthquakes or wildfires) to surf the catastrophe curve in southern California. So much of the calamity of the rust belt really looks like straight up political and industrial mismanagement. I'm in the minority, but I think it's a better place for long term human civilization than, say, San Diego, and I live here due to family ties more than anything else.

    31:

    Positive stuff: 1. Still have no idea what Oumonuma is telling home about us... 2. The GOP is toast, and acting like Saruman, and we know how that turned out. 3. Mueller has been going after the Malignant Carcinoma just like the mob boss he is... and M is there. I'm expecting a ton of indictments, since it's taken this long because there are so many of the crooks, with so many schemes in play. I'm looking forward to Mueller Time. 4. On a personal note, I find myself writing more and more, and, two seriously good notes: a) Early Sept, I submitted a short to Amazing Stories. A week and a half or so ago, I email to inquire about status, and Ira, the editor, told me the slush pile reader had tossed it to him, and he was going to decide "early the coming year".... which means I'm getting out of the slush pile, meaning I'm almost there, at last. I also got a rejection (turnaround < 1 week!!!) from Ceaseless Skies... and it was a personal note, with a comment on the story.

    And I'm still waiting for Eric Flint to tell me if a rewrite (so as to fit the novel he's just finished) will get my story into Grantville Gazette.

    Yeah, my plan for 2019 is to get published, become a Famous Author, and attractive women (of the right age) will through themselves at me.

    As I've written for too many years, happy new year, and may the new one be better than the old.

    32:

    People are still working on the replication crisis. It's a painful problem to think about, but at least some nonsense is getting cleared away and some better structures are being established.

    33:

    "The homeless encampments aren't permanent enough to be shantytowns, for good and ill."

    Please expand on this point

    I agree with you about the Rust Belt. Sadly, this is a global phenomenon. Chinese people are leaving Manchuria for the Southern cities, and Japanese are leaving Hokkaido and Tohoku for the "Japanese core" between the Kanto (Tokyo) and Kansai (Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe) regions. Europe seems to be the exception here, with the movement being from S. and E. Europe towards Germany, Benelux, the UK, and Scandinavia.

    34:

    Why is India spending money on spacecraft when the poor don't have toilets?

    Because educating those poor and letting them communicate relies heavily on satellites, as does not having them swept away by an unexpected monsoon. Far better to have a domestic programme that keeps the money circulating within India than a continual drain paying other countries for services. The occasional research programme helps keep Indian scientists and engineers in India rather than them leaving to find research posts elsewhere.

    35:

    Ioan @ 28 & Vulch @ 34 You're both correct, but India dos not need foregn aid any more. And Pakistan desrves none - conditions need to be set - STOP persecuting religious minorities & get rid of your "blasphemy" law(s) & stop supporting Al-Quaeda (because it annoys India - the stupid!) - incidentally, the result of Bangla Desh's election is going to be interesting, because they have ultra-"muslim" extremists going around murdering bloggers who are trying to support the secular constitution. Religion, gah - another reason to hope the US "R's" get trashed in 2020 ..... ... which leads to whitroth @ 31 2. The GOP is toast, and acting like Saruman, and we know how that turned out. Are they? I sincerely hope so, but all DT needs is a short victorious war, probably with Persia, Cthulu help us, because what we actually need is to get the religious nutters out of power in both countries, not weld-up more support! Mueller? Really? I hope so, but he neeeds real dirt on DT, not just all of his associates - or he'll just blame the "bad advisors" & sail on.

    36:

    On the other hand, the people in the development industry say that they can't make a profit off of affordable housing, and that they built sprawl because that was the only way they could profit. If they're being truthful (and I'm not sure they are), then we've got an even worse housing crisis, but since the sprawl involved very little affordable housing, they weren't solving the problems we already have.

    Sigh. They ARE being truthful. I've been involved in this for a few years as zoning and developement issues blew up in my area.

    It is tied to zoning (commercial in old suburbs now turning urban) areas which limit commercial or apartments to 2 or 3 stories, lack of public transportation (build a cheaper but decent apartment complex and how to those people shop or get to work?), and so on...

    It's a mess and even the people who "want" it solved don't seem themselves in the mirror.

    37:

    Anyway, getting development out of the high fire areas involves getting people in cities to accept denser housing, politicians to figure out how to build the infrastructure for densification, ...

    I just spend nearly 2 weeks in Germany and was impressed by the rail system there. These things take years/decades to plan and implement. And wheel barrows of money. Maybe dump trucks. I liked systems I saw there but don't hold out for the US doing such things due to they take 5 to 10 or more election cycles to do and we just don't do that very well. Stuttgart has the local issue of "Stuttgart 21" taking way more money and time than planned and has resulted in the Green party now being holding the largest number of seats in the area government. Not sure how the plan to "fix" things. A lot of the project seems to be changing the rail station from a termination of all tracks to a through system. And any tracking project like this inhales money at a stupendous rate.

    38:

    As to good times. I just spent nearly 2 weeks in Germany with my immediate family down tracing family roots of my wife and visiting the family that my daughter stays with during an exchange year nearly 10 years ago. Her mom was German born in 1928 and married a US Lt in the mid 50s. My wife was there in the early 70s as an army brat and 20 something.

    Got to ride the Deutsche Bahn a lot and was impressed. Buses in Stuttgart were nice (but not as nice as those in Madrid). Basically the system works. (Forget the autobahn. It is mostly legend. German's who have driven both say the US system is in better shape in most places. And yes we did spend about 10 hours on it.)

    Anyway the rail system works. Most small towns have a rail station or are a 10 minute drive from one. Or so it seems. But it requires decades of commitment. In the US we don't seem to be able to do that.

    Interesting few days with someone who grew up with the wall a few miles away. It came down when he was about 18. Interesting stories of the times.

    Back to a high note. We met a lady who knew my wife's mother and remembered her from when they were pre-teen. And even knew some of her family history from before when they were born. Pictures and documents included.

    Flying back in business class was a nice way to end the trip.

    39:

    It's a subtle thing, but my candidate would be "the increase of knowledge".

    No amount of political stupidity seems to be stopping it. The stupidity isn't helping, but it looks like there's a sufficient consensus on treating just about everything as irrelevant to finding a way to get the information out there. Should that hold, I think that's good news whole and entire.

    40:

    She-ra came out on Netflix, and Steven Universe had cartoon's first gay marriage.

    41:

    "You're both correct, but India dos not need foregn aid any more"

    While I'm sympathetic to your position, I don't think you've thought it through thoroughly.

    Right now, India has a GDP (PPP) per capita (PC) of $8442 and an HDI of 0.64. If we set those as the threshold, then a lot of countries we send aid to would no longer qualify.

    First, let me speak in favor of your position. China had a GDP (PPP) PC of ~$7000 when it kicked out the foreign aid agencies in 2007(?). So the standard you set does have some precedent. Likewise, the Maglayaan situation made it politically advantageous for Modi to refuse foreign aid.

    Having said that, here are some examples of countries that would no longer qualify for aid

  • Ukraine has about the same HDI as China (~0.75), Georgia and Armenia have even higher values. By HDI, it's the second poorest country in Europe after Moldova. In fact, there's no country in Europe with an HDI < 0.7.

  • Most of Latin American countries have an HDI of >=0.7, including Mexico and Brazil. Should we cut off aid to those countries as well?

  • At the start of the shutdown, Democrats offered Trump a budget of $10 billion for aid to the countries whose citizens made up the caravan. Trump does not believe that those countries need the aid. If we set the above threshold, then he would be correct. Only Haiti and Honduras would be eligible for aid.

  • Other countries who would no longer qualify for aid include Egypt, the Philippines, South Africa, and Uzbekistan, among others.

  • If we cut off aid, then the Belt and Road Initiative becomes these countries main source of funds, for good and ill.

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

    [[ html fix - mod ]]

    42:

    This could easily turn out badly, but the brouhaha over the CRISPR-modified kids in China in 2018 might, inshallah, stimulate serious thought into how to take advantage of the promising parts of the technology while avoiding/mitigating the bad possibilities.

    43:

    I am not optimistic on climate change - I think a significant number of people with power, especially in the US, China, and Russia, have decided that they can "win" it, i.e. their personal position will be improved relative to most other people in the world irrespective of the actual impact. Err, sorry, I dont think thats what our host was asking for.

    44:

    "The homeless encampments aren't permanent enough to be shantytowns, for good and ill."

    What I see down here isn't anything like permanent structures (e.g. shanties), they're tents and similar. I'd suggest a better analogy are the old hobo jungles.

    45:

    "Prince can't die again."

    Other than that, what an incredible goat rodeo of a year. And all signs point to 2019 being much, much worse.

    46:

    On the other hand, the people in the development industry say that they can't make a profit off of affordable housing, and that they built sprawl because that was the only way they could profit. If they're being truthful (and I'm not sure they are), then we've got an even worse housing crisis, but since the sprawl involved very little affordable housing, they weren't solving the problems we already have.

    Sigh. They ARE being truthful. I've been involved in this for a few years as zoning and developement issues blew up in my area.

    It is tied to zoning (commercial in old suburbs now turning urban) areas which limit commercial or apartments to 2 or 3 stories, lack of public transportation (build a cheaper but decent apartment complex and how to those people shop or get to work?), and so on...

    It's a mess and even the people who "want" it solved don't seem themselves in the mirror.

    I think we're using different ways to talk about the same problem. Here's where I am: as I understand it, what you're talking is what we call down here a "San Diego Special" (see above), which is the political/NIMBY part of the equation. Our housing crisis consist of three interlocking problems:

  • developers claiming it's not profitable to build anything other than single family homes at $500K and up, plus
  • NIMBYs from developed neighborhoods fighting any attempt to densify, including adding mass transit, bike lanes, higher height limits, electric charging stations, etc.
  • Politicians who "lack the vision, leadership and action, to implement obvious solutions to long-running problems" (what is coming to be known as the San Diego Special).
  • The problem with #1 (which is what I was talking about originally) is the question of whether the developers need government subsidies to build dense housing, or whether the problem is simply that they can't gross $1 billion by doing so--in other words, it's whether it's not profitable without subsidies, or whether it doesn't maximize profits and is thus avoided. The developers claim it's not profitable at all, but at least one of their people claims affordable housing is profitable, just not as profitable as suburban sprawl.

    47:

    Agreed. I'd go further and speculate that many people in power are planning to survive the inevitable mass die-off so that "their kind" can take over the Earth. That seems to be an undercurrent of wealthy racism (though perhaps I'm paranoid?)

    Thing is, that plot works better if us sheeple are kept ignorant of the problem until it's too late for us to do anything except die, while our betters go hide in their secret bases. Unfortunately, all the alarm bells clanging means that us sheeple look up perhaps a bit too early for the plotters. That is (hopefully) a good thing.

    One thing you have to remember is that my optimism about climate change is that our species survives it, not that ten billion of us survive it. My concern is that, with melting permafrost and the Amazon and soils in the temperate showing signs of losing their ability to act as a carbon sink, that our species misses the survivability window.

    I'd also point out that I don't know of any hard evidence for a wealthy right-wing conspiracy to commit a majority genocide. From what I've read and heard, they're simply prepping for what they see as an inevitable disaster, not knowingly trying to bring it about...

    48:

    Ah I see. I disagree that shantytowns can't be made out of tents. Modern tents are relatively cheap*, and probably more durable than a traditional shanty. In fact, I'd call the old hobo jungles shantytowns as well. I was thinking about slums such as Dharavi, which started out as makeshift housing for construction workers next to the building site which never emptied after the building was finished.

    *They're more expensive than a day laborer can afford in a Least Developed Country.

    49:

    2018 may be the year when the neo-fascists in the U.S. finally went just a bit too far and it's going to be downhill for them from here. I don't think we're out of the woods yet, but maybe enough people have got wise to their lies to finally begin to reject them.

    I think the outcome of the December UN Climate Change Conference was good. It could have been better, but I'm encouraged the rest of the world has decided to move ahead despite the Trump administration's stupidity. I hope that by 2021 (when the NEXT administration, hopefully NOT Trump & Co takes office) the U.S. will be able to rejoin and get with the program.

    On a personal level, I survived the year and there's something of a personal victory in that; lived long enough to see another new Doctor Who & read the next installment of the Laundry Files.

    50:

    Heteromeles @ 23: I think you're too early: the first Ocean Cleanup boom they released isn't collecting plastic yet. Apparently plastic goes in and then bounces out. They're still tinkering with it to see if changing the geometry will make it work. Hopefully it will work in 2019.

    Still it's a start; better than doing nothing.

    51:

    Greg Tingey @ 35:

    2. The GOP is toast, and acting like Saruman, and we know how that turned out.

    Are they? I sincerely hope so, but all DT needs is a short victorious war, probably with Persia, ...

    If Cheatolini iL Douchebag manages to start a war with Iran it will be neither "short" nor "victorious". And an ignominious fiasco probably will be enough to get him impeached.

    52:

    I live with and am married to someone I love, and who rocks my world even those days when we're butting heads. I have many friends, some of whom have been with me for decades, though we're at the age where some are being stolen from my life by bad luck and bad genes. It makes me cherish the remaining ones all the more. I'm doing a job I love, and have earned considerable respect within my community for that work. I earn as much as I need, and am wise enough to know the difference between "need" and "want". Despite warning signs from my body, and an accumulation of damage over the years, I'm in decent health. I live in a country (Canada) I'm proud of, without being blind to its flaws. A country where my risk of death by meteorite seems (and possibly is) greater than my risk of death by violence.

    By historical and global standards, that's pretty damned good. Most days, it's enough. It gives me courage in the face of political and environmental horrors that I can't pretend don't exist and helps keep my rage against the evils of the world in check. Which is not to say I'm not a very angry man, but I manage.

    You seem to be in a similar space, mutatis mutandis. I hope it gives you the same comfort and courage it gives me.

    53:

    Aotearoa elected a young, almost-pregnant woman as Prime Minister on a platform of undoing austerity and reducing the impact of climate change. The first is a bit "yes and", but the second is a bit of a kick up the arse for all the various left-ish political parties round the world. And unlike Syriza the kiwis are actually in a position to do stuff (and are actually doing it).

    Then she had a baby and seemingly the whole world lost its shit. But in a good way. Neve is better behaved than Donald :)

    https://www.labour.org.nz/jacindaardern

    54:

    In Australia, Adani were forced to cancel the Carmichael coal mine when no-one would lend them the money for it. The 2.3 billion tonnes of carbon (~8GT CO2) over 60 years would have been a scary fraction of the total allowable carbon budget. So that's a double win: banks are waking up ever so slightly, and that mine won't be built.

    55:

    Australia joined the list of countries allowing same-sex marriage. The plebeshite was in 2017 but the law only passed/came into force in 2018. Sadly no country yet has marriage equality/consent-based marriage.

    Scotland allowed 16 year olds to vote in IndyRef in 2014. Old news but good news :) More generally, there is slow progress towards a universal franchise in democratic countries.

    Public transport and cycle facilities continue to expand in many cities around the world. This is a kind of sleeper story because it's almost always local government that does the work and the benefits tend to be seen as purely local. But globally all those little incremental changes add up to significant change in both transport pollution and damage intensity (most visibly the road toll that some pay).

    56:

    The #MeToo movement has started to make some real impact

    Feminism more generally continues to make progress across a wide range of areas. Overall I think things are getting better. In many ways it's the Overton Window effect, where things that used to be unthinkable are now baseline.

    For example even the various religious discrimination permissions codified into law and the activism around those no longer include divorce, slavery or violence except in very rare cases. You just don't see even the Catholics demanding the right to legally enforceable "marriage is for life not just for christmas", for example and the idea that they should have a legal right to sell their daughters as sex slaves "because it's in the bible" doesn't get mentioned even by the most vicious fundamentalists.

    FGM continues to decline, and is increasingly outlawed as well as socially sanctioned. Likewise forced marriage. Both still happen, are still widespread, but less so. Focus on the "less so" part.

    57:

    https://www.goodnet.org/articles/10-good-things-in-our-world-that-are-getting-better

    Access to Water: Between 1980 and today, global access to safe water sources has increased from 58% to 91%. Improving water sources worldwide is integral to reducing poverty and increasing food security.

    Agricultural Output: Our annual cereal yield has nearly tripled since 1960. By 2050, food production will have to double to feed the world’s population.

    Electricity Coverage: Between 1994 and 2014, electricity coverage expanded from 75% to 85%. In the last decade, consumption of renewable energy has soared by 209%.

    Protected Nature Reserves: In 1962, there were 9,214 protected nature reserves. Today, there are over 200,000. Still, less than 20% of the world’s key biodiversity areas enjoy full protection.

    Scientific Research: Between 1665 and 2016, the number of scientific articles published every year grew from 119 to 2,550,000. Today’s global scientific output continues to double, on average, every 9 years.

    Immunization From Disease: Since 1980, the number of 1-year olds who receive at least one vaccination per year has risen from 22% to 88%. With only 22 cases in 2017, the world is now closer than ever to eradicating polio.

    Global Literacy: Since 1800, the world literacy rate has leaped from roughly 10% to 85%. Unfortunately, two thirds of the world’s illiterate population are women.

    Female Education: The number of girls enrolled in primary school went up from 65% in 1970 to 90% in 2015. If all women had a secondary education, the number of child deaths each year would drop by 3 million.

    Internet Access: In 1995, only 0.4% of the world’s population had internet access. Today, roughly 54% of people are online. Between 2016 and 2017 alone, the number of internet users increased by 500 million.

    People Living Under Democracy: Since 1816, the amount of people living in a democracy has grown from 1% to roughly 50% of the world’s population. Of the world’s 195 nations, 49 are still not considered to be free countries.

    58:

    Ocean Cleanup boom... better than doing nothing

    Disagree. I think it's worse than nothing for two reasons: most obviously, it involves dumping more plastic in the ocean. Until they start collecting and removing plastics all it's doing is shedding microplastics.

    Second, and more important, it says we can keep dumping plastic in the ocean because it's at least theoretically possible to pull them out again. This is exactly the problem we have right now with governments all over the world deciding that negative emissions technology will solve whatever problems they leave for their successors. Like fusion power, negative emissions is doomed to be perpetually 30 years in the future(1).

    (1) and even more like fusion power, we already have it but the stuff we have is boring and effective and no-one really profits from it the way they stand to profit from some radical new technology. They even link... the giant ball of fusing hydrogen powers the plants(2) that suck carbon out of the atmosphere.

    (2) I mean old-school green growing things, not factories.

    59:

    Conservationists plant a 'super grove' of redwood trees cloned from ancient stumps The clones come from trees that were larger than any alive today. A mature coast redwood can remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, the AATA points out, sequestering as much as 250 tons of the greenhouse gas per tree. They also perform other important ecosystem services, like filtering water and soil, and they're highly resistant to wildfires, droughts and pests.

    McDonald’s Exec: “We’re Keeping Our Eye” on Meatless Burgers The iconic burger chain is considering fake meat. Americans consume about 10 billion pounds of ground beef per year. The average American eats three hamburgers every week— nearly 50 billion burgers per year and about half of this is consumed in restaurants. In order to supply this much meat, around three quarters of all agricultural land in the U.S. is devoted to cattle and the crops they eat. Impossible Burger uses vastly less land, water, and energy than a burger made from cows.

    Why Trump Can’t Kill the Electric Car Even though he seems to really want to. The electric vehicle revolution, after years of hype that outpaced reality, finally seems to be taking off in the United States. The best five months for plug-in sales in American history have been the past five months. Tesla’s Model 3 has been one of America’s top five selling passenger cars this fall, surging ahead of fossil-fueled mainstays like the Ford Fusion and Nissan Sentra. The U.S. put its 1 millionth electric vehicle on the road in September, not a large chunk of the nation’s 260 million vehicles, but not too shabby considering production started only in 2010.

    Hemp Is Finally About To Go Fully Legit In The U.S. For almost 50 years, hemp has been considered a Schedule I substance alongside more potent strains of marijuana. Congress is finally set to change that. With coal almost dead this is the one thing that could save Appalachia from abject poverty. It’s clear that hemp would represent a significant economic opportunity for farmers in Kentucky and across the country. In 2017, the U.S. market for the sale of hemp products was over $800 million and growing at a double-digit pace, as it had been for a number of years, said Steenstra. Although these sorts of goods have been completely legal in the U.S. for years, they’ve historically had to be imported because of the federal ban on domestic cultivation.

    Tall wood gets green light from building code This is actually a big deal, It allows the construction of timber skyscrapers, allowing the replacement of cement and steel with heavy timber and engineered plywood. Steel and concrete production together account for 10% of all greenhouse gases. OTOH, building with wood sequesters huge amounts of CO2 in the wood structure itself.

    Clean energy is catching up to natural gas The natural gas “bridge” to sustainability may be shorter than expected. First, wind and solar costs fell so far, so fast that they are now undercutting the cost of new gas in a growing number of regions. And then batteries — which can “firm up” variable renewables, diminishing the need for natural gas’s flexibility — also started getting cheap faster than anyone expected. ...The cost of natural gas power is tethered to the commodity price of natural gas, which is inherently volatile. The price of controllable, storable renewable energy is tethered only to technology costs, which are going down, down, down. Recent forecasts suggest that it may be cheaper to build new renewables+storage than to continue operating existing natural gas plants by 2035.

    Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought Estimated cost of geoengineering technology to fight climate change has plunged since a 2011 analysis. The study, in Joule, was written by researchers at Carbon Engineering in Calgary, Canada, which has been operating a pilot CO2-extraction plant in British Columbia since 2015. That plant — based on a concept called direct air capture — provided the basis for the economic analysis, which includes cost estimates from commercial vendors of all of the major components. Depending on a variety of design options and economic assumptions, the cost of pulling a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere ranges between US$94 and $232. The last comprehensive analysis of the technology, conducted by the American Physical Society in 2011, estimated that it would cost $600 per tonne.

    60:

    CRISPR - maybe an end to malaria. Probably an eventual end to inherited disease. Maybe an eventual decrease in stupidity.

    Solar and coal are becoming cost-competitive.

    Amazon and the internet have produced an explosion of books and webnovels that I like reading.

    AI does a better job of sorting pictures than I do. My mom really likes the display of grandchildren on her Google home hub.

    A handheld device better than the Oracle at Delphi retails for a few hours wages.

    Home automation is getting to granny-level usability. And LEDs are better than fluorescents now.

    Just chatted with a friend I hadn't seen in a decade over an, admittedly, annoying social network.

    Real poverty down again, year over year.

    61:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/opinion/sunday/earth-day-read-this.html?fbclid=IwAR3lKybbFgY1YScSdNCV_GQ3ZBNIHoWPlVDgIdtOuFhppblUdi_hzFsctRw

    Despairing on Earth Day? Read This

    Mr. Walston and his co-authors go on to argue against the increasingly common view that these are the end times for life as we know it. Instead, they suggest that what the natural world is experiencing is a bottleneck — long, painful, undoubtedly frightening and likely to get worse in the short term — but with the forces of an eventual breakthrough and environmental recovery already gathering strength around us.

    The pace of the global movement away from rural areas and into urbanized areas — a category that includes suburbs and small towns as well as city centers — is startling. In my own lifetime, we have gone from 30 percent of the world’s population living in urban areas to 54 percent today, with the likelihood that the number will rise as high as 90 percent later in this century.

    Unfortunately, that means the bottleneck will get worse over the next few decades, according to Mr. Walston and his co-authors, because urbanization imposes short-term costs, including an increase in overall consumption. But it also leads to reduced per capita energy consumption, as well as reduced birthrates, and it reopens old habitat in abandoned rural areas to wildlife.

    That’s already begun to happen in Europe, where wolves, bears, lynx, bison and other species have moved out of protected areas to re-wild a densely populated (but highly urban) continent. If we can hold on into the next century, Mr. Walston said, urbanization could set up the conditions for that sort of recovery worldwide.

    62:

    https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/01/iron-fertilization-of-the-ocean-is-as-natural-as-whale-poop-and-it-can-save-the-planet.html?fbclid=IwAR2M4GWb3yHaTaWRTjdDF3HYn56ouCie1nnYGqz5S9WkzBPcLtRlGsrQfRc

    Iron fertilization of the ocean is as natural as whale poop and it can save the planet

    Restore ocean iron Restore ocean plankton Restore ocean fish levels Uneaten plankton dies in a week or two and sinks to the bottom of the ocean to sequester billions of tons of CO2.

    63:

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/08/seven-megatrends-that-could-beat-global-warming-climate-change

    The seven megatrends that could beat global warming: 'There is reason for hope'

  • Methane: getting to the meat New plant-based products, from chicken to fish to cheese, are coming out every month. “We are in the nascent stage,” says Alison Rabschnuk at the US nonprofit group the Good Food Institute. “But there’s a lot of money moving into this area.”

  • Renewable energy: time to shine The most advanced of the megatrends is the renewable energy revolution. Production costs for solar panels and wind turbines have plunged, by 90% in the past decade for solar, for example, and are continuing to fall. As a result, in many parts of the world they are already the cheapest electricity available and installation is soaring: two-thirds of all new power in 2016 was renewable.

  • King coal: dead or dying Production now appears to have peaked in 2013. The speed of its demise has stunned analysts. In 2013, the IEA expected coal-burning to grow by 40% by 2040 – today it anticipates just 1%.

  • Electric cars: in the fast lane It is true that global sales of electric cars have now achieved liftoff, quadrupling in the past three years, but they still make up only 1.25% of all new car sales. However, if current growth rates continue, as Irle expects, 80% of new cars will be electric by 2030.

  • Batteries: lots in store Here too, a megatrend is crushing prices for lithium-ion batteries, which are down 75% over the past six years. The International Renewable Energy Agency expects further falls of 50-66% by 2030 and a massive increase in battery storage, linked to increasingly smart and efficient digital power grids.

  • Efficiency: negawatts over megawatts Nonetheless, good progress is being made in places such as the EU, where efficiency in homes, transport and industry has improved by about 20% since 2000. Improving the efficiency of gadgets and appliances through better standards is surprisingly important: a new UN Environment Programme report shows it makes the biggest impact of any single action bar rolling out wind and solar power.

  • Forests: seeing the wood In the past two decades, tree-planting in China, India and South Korea has removed more than 12bn tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere – three times the entire European Union’s annual emissions, Wolosin says. This action was driven by fears about flooding and food supply, meaning that global warming needs to be seen as equally urgent in this sector. Regrowing forests can also play a crucial role in sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere, which is likely to be necessary after 2050, unless very sharp cuts are made now.

  • 64:

    Re: Cleaner air

    Add this to your list:

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/19/houseplant-rabbit-dna-reduce-air-pollution-study-devils-ivy

    'Scientists have revealed that by inserting a rabbit gene into devil’s ivy (Epipremnum aureum) the plant is able to clean the surrounding air by breaking down chemicals such as benzene and chloroform, which in certain concentrations can harm health.'

    Now all we need is a marine plant/critter that feeds on plastics. probably bad news for recreational boaters (acrylic hulls), but heh!

    Re: Pacific plastic boom

    Yes - the first test wasn't great. Still, it's a first step and hopefully this or some other outfit will figure out how to effectively clean the oceans of plastic. As for profitability: more countries are using recycled plastics to pave their roads therefore the ocean's plastic garbage bin already has some value as a building material.

    65:

    Since Adidas already make a shoe with 95% being plastic recovered from the ocean that technology is already available. That should be the actual good news story IMO. Sure, it's a $7000 luxury item made in ridiculously tiny numbers... just like the Tesla Roadster was. But it actually exists and really is a retail product made from recycled ocean plastic.

    The question is whether the floating boom is significantly better. Both projects seem to be 99% marketing ... but can hopefully scale up.

    https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/adidas-shoes-made-from-ocean-plastic-are-finally-h/

    And can we please, for the love of all that's holy, stop misusing the terms. "recycling" should not mean "compressing it into blocks and pretending the problem has gone away", that's downcycling and deferral (that plastic road... where do roads go? After a certain percentage is ground away into microplastics and dispersed into the local environment, the rest of the slab is picked up and downcycled further, or burned, or buried. Is that better than concrete or congealed oil? Possibly. Is it a good idea? Doubtful).

    Maybe we need a new word because "recycling" is so commonly abused. It's the last of the 3 R's but people commonly assert that it's a complete solution to all environmental problems. As we see with the fallout from China no longer accepting plastic waste, it's actually the least relevant. Reduce, reuse, recycle... in that order.

    66:

    Now all we need is a marine plant/critter that feeds on plastics. probably bad news for recreational boaters (acrylic hulls), but heh!

    I have done some research on that and it's actually way more serious than you make it seem. The first issue is that an awful lot of gaskets, seals and covers are made of plastic. Depending on exactly which plastics were eaten and how that could make most current marine operations impossible (assuming the beasties only live in salt water). Recreational sailing would be a minor loss, but an awful lot of fishing is done by small boats like those and without the boats those people would die. There are too many of them, and the alternative materials too slow to come on stream, for a switch to work.

    But the thing that would make us rich white first world aristocrats unhappy is that bigger boats both burn plastic (heavy fuel oil) and have key components made from it. Without seals around all the sea-water intakes and exhausts those boats don't work. And submarines don't come back up.

    Worse news in some ways is that if they ate certain kinds of plastic there would be a population explosion shortly after they got loose, as a bunch of oil and gas platforms failed and released a lot of oil and gas into the sea. Which the beasties would presumably also eat. I fear that many wind and tidal plants would also suffer.

    Not that we would know much of this, since every undersea communications cable would have been eaten as well. Not the copper or glass, but the shielding, insulation and waterproofing.

    As well, living within spray-drift of the seashore might become more tricky than it is right now. I don't just mean lighthouses and ports, I mean villages like Manhattan and wherever the natural coastline is in the Netherlands. Oh, did I mention that anything that involves pumping seawater is going to stop working?

    The good news is that silicone equivalents are increasingly available (except for the fuel), and the fuel is expected to stop being used by 2100 or so. All you'd need is to scale up production of silicone by an order of magnitude or two and develop a few new forms for situations that don't currently have usable candidates (high-temperature gaskets, for example).

    What we need is something that eats any long-chain carbon polymer that doesn't run away, but that can only live in salt water. Some kind of microorganism.

    67:

    (sorry, I'm not sure whether the above is good news or bad news... either way, it's news from the future so it's off topic)

    68:

    wind and solar costs fell so far, so fast that they are now undercutting the cost of new gas in a growing number of regions. And then batteries — which can “firm up” variable renewables, diminishing the need for natural gas’s flexibility — also started getting cheap faster than anyone expected

    This is the really key part. New fossil generation is becoming uneconomic on its merits, the only problem is that supply is struggling to keep up which means that some projects are currently marginal. The "big battery" in South Australia has over-performed and under-spent (although sadly it was built on time so we had to pay for it... which is good news or bad news depending on how you look at it).

    In other happy news, now that there's more demand for lithium people are finding new sources of it. Not in the "fusion power" sense (hundreds of grams per year if all our energy needs came from H-Li!), but just people looking for new places to mine it. One of the best IMO is ... old mine tailings.

    69:

    Along this line, there's the publication of books like Saudi America or this entry in desmogblog suggesting that fracking isn't producing a true profit, but something a bit moore, erm, nuanced (example: "“The group’s cash flow deficit has narrowed to $945 million as U.S. benchmark crude hit $70 a barrel and production soared,” reported Reuters." Reuters reported this as a profit for that company). This is bad news for those left holding the bag if the industry really is this bad off, good news for those who like honest reporting, and better news for those who complain that alternative energy is propped up and wouldn't be profitable otherwise.

    A lot of my good news from 2018 is actually bad news being uncovered when reality pressure-hoses the BS off it. Partially it's because it means I don't have to deal with the BS any more, partially it's because it's hard to deal with a problem when it's submerged in denial.

    Speaking of which, can we hope that, in 2019, the New Age/Postmodern theory that "reality is what we make it and truth doesn't matter" becomes firmly associated with the reactionary right? It seems to be their modus operandi for politics at the moment.

    70:

    To continue my own list

    Geopolitics

  • Canada is now competing with Silicon Valley as a startup center https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/20/canada-is-north-americas-up-and-coming-startup-center/

  • To continue Daniel Duffy's point, Global TFR is 2.4.

  • It looks like there might not be serious sanctions against Assad. The reason I'm listing it as good news is because I don't think sanctions would have worked to depose him; not after he won. All they would have done is impoverish the population. Without serious sanctions, this may make rebuilding easier, and may bring forward the day when Syria is a developed country

  • https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/30/syria-year-cemented-assad-victory-trump-us-troops

  • It's too early to tell, but there are signs that Kim Jong-Un actually wants to normalize relations with the South and with the rest of the world. I don't believe he'll ever denuclearize, but Deng Xiaoping-style reforms will improve the lives of the NK people. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46714299

  • The peace treaty between FARC and the Colombian government is still holding. For those who are not familiar, that treaty ended a war between 1964-2017.

  • As I said in a previous post, the fact that almost all European countries have a HDI of greater than 7.5 is amazing. Within the European Union, there are only 6 countries with an HDI of less than 8.5, and two of them have a value of 8.47

  • The tussle between China and the US is likely to flood the Pacific Island nations and Central Asia with development funds. Thanks to this, several countries in the region are developing.

  • 71:

    Tall wood gets green light from building code ... This is actually a big deal, It allows the construction of timber skyscrapers, allowing the replacement of cement and steel with heavy timber and engineered plywood.

    One big flaw that needs to be addressed. Locally a 5 story apartment building framed with wood went up in a huge fire during construction. It happened just after all the framing was done but before any of the plumbing, roofing, drywall (a huge fire stop), etc... was put in. There's that 30 day or so period when these are a big wood fire waiting to happen. Now I'm sure some changes to construction methods could fix this but I also suspect that this will add money.

    On a side note the fire did so much damage to the 13 story concrete/steel building across the street that it has been closed for almost 2 years. When I drove by the a few days ago it looked like the smaller wooden structure will be open before the repairs are done on the taller building.

    72:

    CRISPR - maybe an end to malaria. Probably an eventual end to inherited disease. Maybe an eventual decrease in stupidity.

    In the back of my mind I have a vision of multiple people with wet dreams of obedient servants with large muscles and not much intelligence but a slavish devotion to authority.

    73:

    The problem with #1 (which is what I was talking about originally) is the question of whether the developers need government subsidies to build dense housing, or whether the problem is simply that they can't gross $1 billion by doing so--in other words, it's whether it's not profitable without subsidies, or whether it doesn't maximize profits and is thus avoided. The developers claim it's not profitable at all, but at least one of their people claims affordable housing is profitable, just not as profitable as suburban sprawl.

    What we have around here is a large influx of people, mostly in high tech. (Thank goodness Amazon and Apple didn't show up and take over the local universe but that's another story...) Which makes the market tight for actually building supplies and skilled labor. Which sets the price of decent but not fantastic construction at $200/sf. So for affordable housing it costs $240K for a 1200sf house which is what you need in the US if you have kids. (Yes I know I'm talking single family here but see up thread comments about apartment density.)

    So $250K around here BEFORE you have a place to site it. My 1/3 acre lot is worth $300K sans the house. So now you're looking at someone spending well north of $500K to plant a house. Unless you subsidize. And anyone putting up $500K + for 6 months on a speculative situation wants more than a 2% annualized return. So they can build a 1200sf house without a garage that is very small by US standards and maybe make $50K IF THEY CAN SELL IT or they can build a 3500sf thing and sell it for $1mil or more and make $50K to $100K. Guess which way they go?

    Now you can buy 1 to 5 acres an hour from here for $50K to $150K but how does a 1 hour commute, well water, and slow internet help out with the affordable housing issues? The people who need it can only afford the commute if they live in a trailer park.

    74:

    Finally, let's look at the good news in machine learning

  • Amazon is releasing their NLP ETL software Textract https://aws.amazon.com/textract/

  • Natural Language Generation (NLG) is becoming a thing. https://www.amazon.com/Building-Natural-Language-Generation-Processing/dp/052102451X

  • While there's no breakout application to showcase it, machine learning is becoming more accurate and more democratized. Machine learning is also being applied in new fields, including archaeology https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/04/machine-learning-says-homo-naledi-may-not-have-buried-its-dead/

  • The same can be said for self-driving technology. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/12/start-your-machine-learning-engines-amazons-deepracer-is-almost-here/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/12/kroger-owned-grocery-store-begins-fully-driverless-deliveries/

  • Denmark is trialing using ML in its welfare state https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/25/the-welfare-state-is-committing-suicide-by-artificial-intelligence/

  • 75:

    "I'd also point out that I don't know of any hard evidence for a wealthy right-wing conspiracy to commit a majority genocide. From what I've read and heard, they're simply prepping for what they see as an inevitable disaster, not knowingly trying to bring it about..."

    Personally I think that most of the conspiracy theories related to climate change are optimistic since they assume great planning and plotting skills, and intelligent thinking. I have the suspicion that the reality is much simpler and much, much more depressing.

    Most of the climate change effects are manifestations of Tragedy of the Commons phenomenon. The cost of the polluted air does not meet the polluter. Clean air and clean water and existing climate are examples of Common Goods. Nobody owns them and the polluter or over-user is not required to pay for the use of those Common Goods. In addition, it is completely rational for an individual person or an individual company or an individual country to continue pollution and overusing the Common Goods.

    The reason for the rationality is that if you do not continue polluting or overusing, then somebody else will. This type of behaviour is actually build into the human psychology and the same behaviour is common to most living creatures. We human just are able to kill the whole planet with our behaviour - most of the species manage only self-extinction or near-extinction.

    Unfortunately the world-wide economic system is multiplying the negative effects of the Tragedy of the Commons phenomenon. Free trade practically means that the big polluters do not need to pay for the pollution.

    In order to continue with the grim line of thought, I would like to point out that electric cars and most of the so-called green solutions are very vulnerable to the rebound effect. The rebound effect practically means that all the efficiency savings or lessened pollution are quite likely to produce very small or even negative total effect. A good example is that increasing the fuel-efficiency of aeroplanes has actually increased the pollution and carbon emissions generated by air traffic. The reason being that the amount of air traffic has increased dramatically at the same time.

    Sorry for being so negative.

    76:

    JBS @ 50 The problem isn’t “just” or “only” DT regarding climate – its Bolsanaro – especially given what sits on Brazil’s patch ( That forest ) China, in fact are worried, as others have pointed out – yes they are increasing coal, but they don’t want their coastal plain flooded, either – hence nuke-stations as well. Difficult problem – I really don’t envy their central planners’ jobs, right now.

    JBS @ 52 I KNEW that when I posted it – so do you … but He doesn’t know that & there are people with him who are both arrogant & stupid enough ( Can you spell “Bolton” or “Bannon”? ) to still try it on …

    Moz @ 56 Except when your local “Authority” introduces a cycle scheme which DOES NOTHING FOR CYCLISTS. It’s predicated that by shitting all over car-owners, life for cyclists will automatically become better, which it doesn’t. All down to one utter shit in local council, of course, as these things often are. @ 57 Must disagree … If you don’t believe me, I suggest you read the National Secular Society’s web-site every week. It’s still getting worse in an awful lot of places.

    DD @ 60 I wonder about not “new” electric vehicles, but conversions – by 2021, what will be the cost of changing the power-plant & keeping the old car? Cost of & lifetime of batteries -v. hopeful – needs a lot more work, but …. Will steady development be “enough” I wonder?

    @ 63 Yes but … AIUI the usual Fake Greenies are still shrieking about this & trying to stop it – or have they shut up & gone away … if not, how long before this obvious & simple solution is actually used outside the W Canadian coast? Timescale, please? PARTICULARLY as that article seems to imply that the Fucking Greenies managed to stop further experiments & trials?

    SFR @ 65 Well THAT very useful development will be stopped in its tracks by the Fake Greenies as well, because it’s “GM” & therefore EVIL & the spawn of the Devil etc, et fucking cetera.

    Heteromeles @ 70 Various powerful/rich groups have been pushing Fracking here – fortunately the UK is not the US & the mini-earthquakes produced have brought it to a halt ( And LOTS of local protests ) Now, of course, the shits are saying: “We need to accept bigger Earthquakes” – I kid you not. HERE Uggggh.

    77:

    Recognizing that you often need rose-colored glasses to see silver linings, I'd like to think that 2018 is a year in which the people who need to fight all the shit that is happening began to wake up. The Democratic wave in the US, which included the election of some real progressives, is a the beginning flexing of muscles to pull the US back from the brink. The activism of young people, such as the Parkland shooting survivors, is putting young people in the habit of activism, which will be incredibly powerful as they age and gain power. Employees of tech companies like google are beginning to recognize that they can and must take responsibility how their tools get used, and that that they can and must refuse to build certain tools because of they way they can be misused.

    78:

    The Fake Greenies hate this and all other forms of carbon capture and sequestration not because they may fail but because they might work.

    It is an attitude is similar to that of the Catholic Church's opposition to condoms - they allow sinful fornication without consequences.

    Fake Greenies oppose ocean fertilization (or any other method of carbon removal) because they allow us to continue the sinful burning of fossil fuels without consequences.

    Sorry, but fossil fuels are too cheap, convenient and useful to ever be abandoned. We will never stop using fossil fuels, period - full stop.

    And we can pay for carbon sequestration either as a government program payed for by ordinary taxpayers, or by regulations/taxes/penalties imposed on fossil fuel companies. Since all of their competitors will be faced with the same costs, they can safely raise their prices to cover these costs and not lose any customers.

    Either way, we the consumers and taxpayers will have to pay for this, not the evil greedy CEOs that caused the mess.

    Life is unfair.

    But if given the choice between the empty moralizing of the Fake Greenies or actually saving the planet (no matter how unfairly this is accomplished), I'm in favor of the latter.

    79:

    There are signs that, in the UK at least, the young are realising that we have taken the wrong path. This may not translate into long-term, appropriate change (remember the 1960s?), but is at least hopeful.

    And, despite the severity of the problem, this was the first year that it was generally admitted that there IS a plastic waste problem. The research into soil and seawater polythene-degrading bacteria is hopeful, but that's not new.

    80:

    DD @ 78 Your first 2 line asre spot on. And, of course, because of the fake greenies, anyone who is actually concerend about real long-term trends & damage gets put in the same basket as these religious nutcases, which empowers the coal-burners so to speak.

    81:

    If we cut off aid, then the Belt and Road Initiative becomes these countries main source of funds, for good and ill.

    Yes, but what is the purpose of aid?

    I'm not talking about emergency and disaster recovery stuff. Or the historical purpose of, e.g., the Marshall Plan (rebuild Europe so it can provide a market/trading partner for American goods).

    (You probably know this, but it bears repeating ...)

    It seems to me that most aid to developing countries these days comes with very cynical strings attached: it takes the shape of credit that has to be spent in the donor country, thereby driving their export industries and improving their balance of payments surplus, and quite frequently it's used to subsidize overseas activities by donor nation corporations who use it to bootstrap resource extraction from poorer partners; and in some cases it takes the shape of military supplies to prop up unpopular or dictatorial regimes (go look into Saudi Arabia and Al Yamamah for an egregious example). Finally, it's used to acquire diplomatic leverage because on the receiving end it's a source of patronage and bribes: officials who rely on accepting foreign aid are thereby made dependent on the source, and can be coerced into taking actions on behalf of the aid donor.

    I'm not saying that foreign aid to developing nations is always wrong: but the system is very susceptible to corruption at both ends (largely due to the lack of transparency associated with it).

    82:

    I don't know of any hard evidence for a wealthy right-wing conspiracy to commit a majority genocide. From what I've read and heard, they're simply prepping for what they see as an inevitable disaster, not knowingly trying to bring it about...

    There is a point at which assuming a disaster is inevitable and preparing for it becomes indistinguishable from encouraging it. And if you bear in mind that most of the wealthy right-wing preppers are privileged white male conservatives, and that their preparations centre on personal rather than civilizational survival ... "let everyone who isn't one of us die" is perilously close to "encourage everyone who isn't one of us to die (we can use their resources)".

    83:

    Daniel Duffy noted: "A mature coast redwood can remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, the AATA points out, sequestering as much as 250 tons of the greenhouse gas per tree."

    [Many interesting notes redacted] True, and speaking as a huge fan of big trees (and as a recovering forest biologist), very cool about the restored grove. But I must quibble (since it's what we do here). First, it takes a long time for really big trees to grow big enough to perform that well: 800+ years for redwoods. So they're a good long-term but not short-term solution. Second, younger trees actually remove CO2 faster per unit leaf area than mature trees. If your only goal is CO2 removal, you're better off with fast-growing species such as poplars and willows. Better still, kudzu if you can find a way to convert the biomass into something useful. Third, once a tree hits its mature size, it stops growing so fast and approaches an equilibrium at which CO2 uptake approximately equals release. So the problem with using vegetation to sequester carbon is that to do it efficiently, you need to chop down the trees before maturity and convert them into durable goods, like books.

    DD: "Tall wood gets green light from building code This is actually a big deal, It allows the construction of timber skyscrapers, allowing the replacement of cement and steel with heavy timber and engineered plywood."

    Very true. In fact, my former employer (Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada) provided so much engineering evidence for this that the local city council granted an exception to the rule that all commercial/public buildings had to be build from steel, concrete, etc. One bonus is that really large wood beams (I forget the size, but let's call it 0.5 m for the sake of argument) can be safer than steel in a fire because (i) they develop a layer of char on the outside that smothers the fire and (ii) they don't lose as much strength by the smothering point as steel does when heated. Of course, it also depends on wood, since many Japanese temples stood for centuries, including the Todaiji temple (https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e4100.html) -- until they burned down. The main problem with wood is that its long-term behavior in really big structures isn't well know, at least in the West.

    DD: "Steel and concrete production together account for 10% of all greenhouse gases."

    Concrete is a huge problem, as you note.

    DD: "Estimated cost of geoengineering technology to fight climate change has plunged since a 2011 analysis."

    I wouldn't call "direct air capture" geoengineering. It's more like emission control. Promising (Scientific American published a good review some time in the last year or so), but a different subject. The problem with geoengineering is that it relies on a lot of poorly understood and inadequately modeled processes, like the use of high-altitude SO2 aerosols. Without a lot more knowledge, I'm not confident that we wouldn't just be swapping a known problem for something unknown and potentially just as bad. Or something known and bad, such as acid rain in the context of SO2. Not fear-mongering here, just noting that the physicists who make such proposals tend to be a tad on the hubristic side about the limits of their knowledge, particularly with respect to ecosystems.

    re. ocean fertilization: I'm pretty sure Heteromeles described the problems with this approach a few times in previous blog entries. My take on the problem is this: whenever you try to create a massive increase in the biomass of some species by (in this case) fertilization, you're going to be severely disrupting the ecosystem, which has evolved over millennia to be stable with the existing species and biomass. Disrupting that system will have unknown consequences. For example, what if the dominant response is to greatly increase the proportion of red tide species, the algae responsible for the huge dead zones around the world, such as in the Gulf of Mexico? What if ocean currents bring these species to the Pacific coral reefs that are the basis for the Pacific Ocean food web? Geoengineering must be considered with skepticism until our knowledge is much stronger.

    84:

    Most of "all of the world".

    2018 was the year when the threat of a global Nuclear War came back, especially for the USians, but a conflict with NK will eventually involve China and/or Russia, and after that it's bad days for all of us.

    The love story between Kim & Trump was rather unexpected, but then Trump is a narcissist who will favour anyone who behaves the right way. We only got a breathing space, I just wish that war doesn't happen before he's out of the office. Even US Republicans can't be that stupid to vote for Trump twice, at least this one hopes.

    85:

    I have a sneaking feeling the main reason fish-stocks are so much lower than historic records is because we are removing micro-nutrients, rather than any direct impact of our fish catches - Fish are extreme-k species, if the nutrients were there, the fact that the older generation has been decimated just means there is less competition, so more or the fry should succeed. The reduction of the stock of sperm whales probably is not helping matters either - they are a major transport mechanism of nutrients to the surface from the deep, so it is entirely possible that all a major ocean fertilization program will do is increase fish stocks enormously, because it replaces things we have been removing.

    I also do not expect it to do very much about CO2. Those fish are not going to let all that food just rain down.

    86:

    _Moz_ @ 55: More generally, there is slow progress towards a universal franchise in democratic countries.

    Maybe, but sometimes it appears to be two steps forward and one step back here in the U.S. It's glacially slow. So slow that sometimes I'm afraid it's going to bring on a new ice age.

    Which might not be such a bad thing, but if it's anything like the last ice age, Canada is [you should forgive the pun] royally screwed.

    87:

    Daniel Duffy @ 78: Sorry, but fossil fuels are too cheap, convenient and useful to ever be abandoned. We will never stop using fossil fuels, period - full stop.

    That just reminded me of a sci-fi story I read many, MANY years ago. Can't remember the name or the author, but one of the key plot elements was woven around what will the world be like once there is no more oil.

    In one of the protagonist's expositions berating his 20th Century predecessors, he said something along the lines of "How could they be so STUPID?" ... to not realize petroleum was a finite resource and without it there would no more feed-stock from which to manufacture plastics.

    I don't think the author had yet realized the other deleterious effects of burning fossil fuels. He was just concerned with the loss of petrochemical resources. How do you make all the other things you can make from petroleum instead of just burning it once you've burned all the oil?

    88:

    I can't remember the author either, but I think it was collected in Issac Asimov's "Before the Golden Age" anthology/autobiography.

    89:

    JBS @ 87 Cartoon I saw last week ... Flying saucer has landed on outskirts of city ... epole wanrweing about ... caption: "They're not as advanced as we thought, they want to see if we've got any coal for their spaceship"

    90:

    One of the Stainless Steel Rat books had that. The main character time-travels to 20th century Earth, and is shocked to realize that they are still burning petrochemicals.

    91:

    There is a point at which assuming a disaster is inevitable and preparing for it becomes indistinguishable from encouraging it.

    I don't think its a conspiracy but more wishful thinking with a touch of Pascals Wager :

    • if climate change is not happening / has minimal effect then I'm better off ignoring it (this is my preferred state), but
    • if climate change is real and will have significant effects then
      • I live in a large country with many natural and technological resources
      • I have the wealth/influence to ensure I will get a good share of those resources
      • as the global population falls technological mitigation will become more effective and the situation more manageable
      • when the world reaches a new stable state I will still be at or near the top of the pile
    Ergo, climate change is not a major threat (to me).

    92:

    Re: "short victorious war with Persia"... I think not. The still-in-view "short victorius war" with Iraq as a lesson... though I'm sure some like Bolton would rejoice at the price of world oil going through the roof..

    93:

    Zoning... funny you should mention that. I just got an email this morning from my county council, that they're holding a public comments session in about three weeks, to consider changing the zoning laws on "accessory dwelling units", which are defined as mother-in-law apts, like a basement with a separate entrance, etc, to provide for more social and less expensive housing.

    And I'm in Montgomery Co, MD, USA, one of the seriously expensive counties in the US.

    94:

    Hi Charlie,

    Unfortunately, my 2018 was almost as stupid and horrible as yours; no deaths fortunately, but otherwise ugly as fuck. Got laid off, got laid off again, currently working as a contractor, not enough money, had to move in the middle of getting laid off for the second time, someone close was stupid enough to get __ to _ and is currently in ___.

    So not much good news, (with one exception which I will relate on another post) but I have a ton of empathy for you and yours, so I will raise my virtual glass to the idea that 2019 will be much better for both of us; that we will be happy, productive, well-rested, and full of joy, and I'll see you next year in Jerusalem (whatever Jerusalem may mean to you.*)

    • A very wise man I know once said, "You need to build your own Jerusalem!" So here's hoping that you and I get our Jerusalems built in 2019!
    95:

    My good news comes wholly on the creative front. My "J.K. Rowling meets H.P. Lovecraft" story, Unexpected Patronum (inspired by conversations right here on your blog) finally hit ten "Kudos" on Archive of our own, so I'm enormously stoked, and I've made major progress on the "optimistic" global warming novel in the last month - if all goes well it might be finished in 60-90 days - and this novel was also inspired heavily by conversations here at your blog.

    This probably isn't the place to post a sample of what I'm writing, but it's quite frankly awesome, and probably instantly recognizable to anyone who participated in the hundreds of conversations which helped create it!

    Which leads me to other positive news. This blog you have built up is the place where I, and I'm sure others, have stimulating conversations which result in major creative outbursts; it is the place on the web I go to when I want some intellectual stimulation; to be challenged, inspired, corrected, a student, a teacher, and (hopefully) a friend to an international group of really smart people.

    In fact, as much as I love your books, it may well turn out, when the definitive history is finally written, that your blog is seen as more important than the books and that the work you have done in building and moderating this place will be regarded as your really important work; a substantial investment of time and energy in making sure the future is place of hope and positive change.

    So stay positive. You deserve a good year, and I hope you get one!

    96:

    Troutwaxer Be careful what you wish for! "Jerusalem" - riven by factional & religious strife, sacked, looted burnt & emptied multiple times ... Maybe not?

    97:

    Regarding ocean fertilization, I'd love to see some good experiments done on this technology, but unfortunately, the political will to make that happen doesn't currently exist. If I ever win the lottery, the rehabilitation of "ocean fertilization by ferrous sulfate" studies is is something I will finance.

    The brief history of this is that there was some good work done in this area in the 1980s and 1990s, at which point people tried to actually go out in the ocean and do small experiments and ran into heavy official interference, in large part because one of the parties involved had the idea that they would use "ocean fertilization" in some kind of scheme to trade for carbon credits, which they then hyped before the wrong regulatory bodies...

    98:

    "I'll see you next year in Jerusalem" is a traditional Jewish blessing (but I do get the irony, yes, which is part of why I dropped the "build your own Jerusalem" line.)

    99:

    "There is a point at which assuming a disaster is inevitable and preparing for it becomes indistinguishable from encouraging it."

    Could be.

    Actually doing something that has a positive impact is notoriously difficult. A very effective way to battle climate warming would be to increase the price of oil to 10x. Or more. Look at France. President Macron actually tried to do the Right Thing, which is to increase the price of oil products significantly (or not that significantly).

    Macron did, however, surrender to the gilets jaunes protesters. I do not claim that the problems people are protesting against do not exist, but lowering the price of diesel and gasoline will surely not help preventing the climate change.

    It is very difficult to do something real and effective like increasing the price of oil based products. Especially because our western societies are build in a way that practically requires you to own a.car and burn oil.

    From the point of view of an individual protester, the price of diesel is personally more important problem than climate warming. At least in the short run. We humans are unbelievably bad in long range planning.

    100:

    This is for a single family house, correct. Digging around, the cost for an apartment runs from $80-$200 per square foot, with the national average around $125. Presumably in west coast cities it's at the top end of the range, so $240/sf for an apartment isn't ridiculous.

    Thing is, the land cost is the same for whatever you put on it, but once you start putting multiple units on it, that cost gets divided among the units. This is where the argument over densification starts.

    101:

    Kevin Drum at Mother Jones finds a silver lining (sort of) in one of your points.

    102:

    " quite frequently it's used to subsidize overseas activities by donor nation corporations who use it to bootstrap resource extraction from poorer partners"

    This was true before the late-90s, but there's been another form of aid since then. It's called the "build infrastructure which allows the donor nations corporations to efficiently outsource or build hotels". I remember reading in the Nikkei Weekly that a lot of Japan's aid to SE Asia (maybe the majority) earlier this decade was of this form. This is also the bulk of the BRI aid. While immoral, this form of aid is actually useful to the host nation.

    In the case of the factories, they're building up the local electricity grid, roads, and ports. The host nation can then piggyback on this development to provide electricity to the population. Hence the fact that 85% of people have electricity (the remaining 15% being in countries where such aid does not exist, or in rural areas whose future viability is uncertain).

    In the case of resorts, this also means creating the necessary infrastructure to make the place tourist friendly. This includes sanitation facilities and water treatment plants for the local population and tourists alike.

    In other words, stuff that foreign aid was envisioned to be used for.

    103:

    This is where carbon taxation can be both a blessing and a curse. One part is that it sends a signal about the real price of something. The countervailing problem is that it suddenly lets people know that their lives are cruel shams propped up by a bizarre system that may well include resource exploitation, violence, oppression, and so forth. Since we generally feel like we're good people trying to be normal members of society, this almost inevitably leads to furious denial, as it has for the last 500 years.

    Remember that capitalism really started with the Conquistadors looting Latin America and pouring the riches into Europe, followed by slavery (ditto, but with growth in the US), followed by exploitation of weaker peoples and countries around the world, and currently propped up by digging up stuff and burning it to keep doing what we're doing. This list almost certainly upset you, and that's the point. The critical point isn't the truth of the statement, it's your reaction to it. Knowing the truth doesn't make you free immediately (per Jesus), it's generally horribly upsetting at first (per Buddha).

    The solution is gradual pressure, habituating people to issues so that they come around to the problem. That doesn't work well with climate change, since we don't have much time left to make the change, and we've been trained to maximize our own convenience and pleasure and to assume that progress and growth will take care of any problems we leave for the next generation.*

    Societies that were better at long-range planning had more immediate feedbacks to correct their actions: they went hungry if they screwed up their food system, and they so depended on their local resources that they knew enough to take care of them. If they needed big trees, they had to tend them as they grew. They couldn't simply harvest a tree in some poor country halfway around the world and assume those people would be able to deal with the problem. This kind of local and rapid signal is going to be hard to implement in a global civilization, but either we do it, find an alternative, or our civilization breaks down into smaller units that do have adequate feedbacks in their systems.

    *One of the fun things that SF doesn't do all that well is to figure out how we go from conspicuous consumption, progress, and growth to sustainability. This isn't as big a mystery as it sounds, because we've got historical examples from both Rome and China about what historically happened. For example, Rome went from conspicuous consumption and luxurious sacrifices to pagan gods to favoring an ascetic Christianity that lionized monks who lived on pillars. What would a similar attitudinal shift look like in today's society? Now make it better than the North Korean propaganda broadcasts you just visualized.

    104:

    "I'm not saying that foreign aid to developing nations is always wrong: but the system is very susceptible to corruption at both ends (largely due to the lack of transparency associated with it)."

    I would argue the opposite. I would argue that overall foreign aid to developing nations is money well spent, with waste due to corruption and funding awful dictators a significant minority of it.

    (I know that you know these points, but it bears repeating)

    • Security aid: I understand that Boomer and Gen X dislike for this form of aid comes from the fact that it was used to fund death squads during the Cold War. However, it's essential in the modern world. Bolsonaro's base of support was people who wanted to own semi-automatic weapons due to Brazil's 60k+ homicides. Similarly, Duterte's rise was predicated on death squads for drug users. Wasn't the security situation in Russia a huge part of Putin's rise? In short, by ending security aid to corrupt nations, you're gift-wrapping those nations to the fascist international.

    • Health and education: There's a lot of waste and corruption involved, but these budgets are becoming more efficient. Just look at the rising health and literacy rates in developing nations. Historically, wasn't education aid to India partly responsible for the trajectory that India's development took?

    105:

    “Remember that capitalism really started with the Conquistadors looting Latin America and pouring the riches into Europe, followed by slavery (ditto, but with growth in the US), followed by exploitation of weaker peoples and countries around the world, and currently propped up by digging up stuff and burning it to keep doing what we're doing. “

    That certainly wasn’t the start of capitalism, where do you get these odd ideas?

    What do you think the economy of the Roman Empire ran on, communism ?

    106:

    I see humanity's situation as something similar to someone who has a big, interest-bearing loan to deal with. We can either start making some moderately inconvenient monthly payments right now, which means most of us will live, or we can make one big payment fifty years from now, which means most of us will die.

    107:

    Or, as I've been writing for decades (used to be in an APA), next year in orbit.

    108:

    Talking about "carbon taxation" is important, but it may not be the most important issue.

    The most annoying, and important, problem is, IMHO, the deteriorating ecosystem. We humans kill most of the ecosystem with no thought of how to survive without bees, for example. Without that the warming would just kill several billion (US billions) people. But the rest might survive at the same time when the southern species would migrate to the north. Of course our current economical system (and societies) will collapse, but I think that they are likely to collapse in any case when there are no new resources to be exploited. Eternal growth of the physical economy is a logical impossibility in which only some politicians, bankers, economists, and similar types believe in. Of course that can be solved by providing another planet to mess with.

    But that is my nonconstructive attitude.

    "One part is that it sends a signal about the real price of something. The countervailing problem is that it suddenly lets people know that their lives are cruel shams propped up by a bizarre system that may well include resource exploitation, violence, oppression, and so forth. Since we generally feel like we're good people trying to be normal members of society, this almost inevitably leads to furious denial, as it has for the last 500 years."

    Not at all. People tend to live according to the rules of the existing society and the existing set of beliefs. People cannot plan against something they do not know. Unknown unknowns are real killers. If you believe that you have a god-given mandate to do anything you want, then you will act according to that.

    Unfortunately we humans are still stupid enough to suffer from the Tragedy of the Commons. The combination of advanced (sufficiently advanced) science and inability to make long range plans may turn out fatal.

    109:

    And you complain about me being literal!

    110:

    I think you have to remember that, until quite recently (ending... um...) groups like the CIA sponsored fascist dictatorships, because they understood how to work with them. This dates back to the opening days of the Cold War, when the CIA harbored and aided formerly fascist groups in the fight against Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe, for all the good it did. The Marshall Plan (our most successful example of foreign aid) was predicated on containing the Soviets, part of a tripartite strategy also involving the threat of nuclear war and action by the CIA.

    What I'd argue is simply that we're still dealing with effects of centuries of imperial head-butting, with problems like Syria, Somalia, Pakistan/India, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan dating back to the Great Game and the results of WWI, and the Korean split dating to WWII. In the purest sense, we're dealing with the karma, the actions of the past shaping the present.

    111:

    The regulars have heard this before, but I don't think you have?

    Anyway, the Tragedy of the Commons is BS that even Garret Hardin, who first popularized it, repudiated latter on. It's basically capitalist propaganda arguing that everything should be privatized.

    Moreover, the late Elinor Ostrom won an economics Nobel Prize for her decades of work documenting the conditions under which commons don't just exist but flourish for centuries.

    Since she's the only woman to win an economics Nobel prize, there's also been some predictable sexist blowback against her ideas.

    I've read her work, and it's convincing, since the ten conditions she documents for the persistence of commons also (for the most part) are the ones that lead to well-functioning markets (things like transparency, immediate and proportional punishment of cheaters, and so forth).

    If you want an example, the water basins under Los Angeles are managed as a commons, simply because to do otherwise would flood the basin's groundwater with salt water from the Pacific Ocean and render the city uninhabitable. And if you've seen Chinatown, you're under no illusions that the water managers of Los Angeles are egoless people who sacrifice for the common good. They run a commons because, after decades of litigation and attempts at market-based alternatives, it's the system that works.

    Anyway, humans do not suffer from the tragedy of the commons. Sorry. It's been disproved, and it's an urban legend. The real question is what people gain by pushing this myth and dismantling commons that used to be more widespread.

    112:

    Hmm... I do think that we think differently about the implications. Or we do not understand the concept in the same way. Unfortunately the original concept has been too closely related to land and its ownership. Or it has been interpreted in that way.

    In my country there are several managed commons (land, water, etc) that are quite successful. In that I completely agree. But the climate is not managed like a normal resource.

    In my understanding the climate is something that is common to us all. If I have a factory in an underdeveloped country and my factory generates pollution to the atmosphere, then how I the cost of that pollution will be paid by me? The most likely case is that I will not pay the costs.

    But in the case of the climate I still claim that we suffer from the Tragedy of Commons. The structure of the problem is the same. We may invent a new name to it if it makes the discussion easier.

    The original problem has unfortunately been used in order to push private ownership, as you say. That does not, however, make the problem to disappear. For an individual resource user it is simply rational to use the resource as much as possible. The same behaviour can be seen in many species (not only humans) and it does not disappear if we claim something else.

    113:

    I think the "tragedy of the commons" current incarnation exists because we no longer have a recognition of what our "commons" looks like. Is "average temperature" a commons? How about "predictable weather." How about "the ability to insure a farmer's crops against unpredictable weather events?"

    If you don't understand that these things are prerequisites for survival... words like "deliberately induced ignorance" come to mind.

    114:

    Heteromeles notes: "the Tragedy of the Commons is BS that even Garret Hardin, who first popularized it, repudiated latter on. It's basically capitalist propaganda arguing that everything should be privatized."

    Rubbish. The idea that people tend to overexploit shared resources if nobody is held responsible for maintaining those resources has many good historical examples -- pollution in the absence of emission control laws is the classic and still valid example. It's been a while since I read the original, but I don't recall Hardin claiming this was a law of nature or that there were no exceptions. The fact that there are historical counterexamples does not undermine the basic validity of the description if you assume "can" rather than "must": this can and does happen, but it is not inevitable.

    The fact that pretty much any argument carried to its extreme becomes reductio ad absurdum (i.e., here, that TOC is "privatization propaganda") is also not relevant. It's kind of like saying the goal of a market economy is to produce a situation in which the poor are forced to eat one another while the rich watch and place bets. That's definitely one possible outcome (witness the American trend), but that doesn't mean it's the whole point of the system.

    115:

    In response, I'll simply quote Ostrom's Law (based on her work): "resource arrangements that work in practice can also work in theory."

    To show how silly your argument is, let's talk about every market failure as a failure of the theory of capitalism. Which they are. Capitalism failed spectacularly in 2008 in the US. If we didn't add massive price supports to petroleum, it would be uneconomical, and thus it's supported as a matter of political economy, not pure capitalism. However, no one says categorically that capitalism only worked in a few historical examples, or that it's fundamentally wrong-headed. We don't talk about the Tragedy of the Markets, although the evidence for it is all around us. But that's the way we talk about commons if we don't know better.

    I can go on, but the points are the following: --Garret Hardin's idea of the Tragedy of the Commons is taken as gospel despite numerous and current counterexamples of commons working. Even Hardin saying that he was wrong is insufficient to countermand the widespread use of his paper.

    --Commons work under specific conditions. So do markets. So does government regulation and government production. So does communism (in small communities). So do gift economies (especially in families). So does volunteerism. Of these, only commons are declared ideologically not to work.

    In any case, you're arguing from ignorance, and I suggest reading Ostrom's work rather than relying on your memory of something Hardin wrote.

    Here's Ostrom's 8 rules for common pool resource management (CPRs. I prefer the 10 rule version, but whatever). For the system to work, it must:

  • Be clearly defined (clear definition of the contents of the common pool resource and effective exclusion of external un-entitled parties);
  • Have appropriation and provision of common resources that are adapted to local conditions;
  • Have collective-choice arrangements that allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
  • Have effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
  • Have a scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules;
  • Have mechanisms of conflict resolution that are cheap and of easy access;
  • Have self-determination of the community recognized by higher-level authorities; and
  • In the case of larger common-pool resources, have organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.
  • Based on these rules, air pollution is in many ways a managed common, for some specific regions (California Air Resources Board for a variety of pollutants) and some chemicals (CFCs worldwide). Ostrom did not deny that the government could play a critical role in a common if it was trusted by and accountable to all the members of the common. Part of the argument for air being a common is that people both from industry and from parties affected influence what the rules are for emissions.

    Similarly, the groundwater of LA is currently managed as a common by the water agencies that pump water into and out of the aquifers (the aquifers in LA are used more as storage tanks for imported water than as primary sources of water). Water is one of the resources that lends itself well to commons management, and many current and historical examples of commons around the world are water management systems.

    Not everything can be treated as a common. Fish stocks where poaching is rampant and difficult to punish is a classic example. Greenhouse gases cannot currently be managed as a common because cheating on emissions is currently more profitable than complying, measurements to determine who is cheating are imprecise (although this is rapidly changing), and there is no good system for punishing cheaters. But similarly, market forces fail to regulate both of these as well. Is this a Tragedy of the Commons, or a Tragedy of the Markets?

    116:

    2019 is almost here ...

    Just learned that Brian May (Queen & PhD astrophysicist) will be premiering a new music video at 12:02 AM EST. Description says this is his personal tribute to the 12-year New Horizons probe journey.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3Jm5POCAj8

    To OGH and all the folks here:

    Thank you for your insights, education, puns, thought puzzles and always interesting discussions.

    Best wishes to you all in the New Year! SFreader

    117:

    Eternal growth of the physical economy is a logical impossibility

    My more charitable view is that the financial value of the physical economy is effectively unbounded (subject to things like the difficulty of doing integer maths on infinite numbers). When economists talk about "added value" and "transformational use" and a variety of similar terms, the physical economy part of that is that "got rock, want meat" has become "got obsidian, want mammoth steak" right up to "got platinum, want lab-burger".

    The cynic might say, yeah, and Zimbabwe took that all the way to "got wheelbarrow full of paper, want toothpick". But still, good luck using facebook from that rock you found on the side of the road.

    118:

    Positive:

    We have learnt that Humans lie and that their constructed reality is not real.

    Negative:

    Our TIME is ending in this world, as the whales and other complex minds pass on.

    Thought: The world would be a better place with our Minds and Whales and not the lying dross that rules your world, surely?

    Positive:

    [i]Our Kind Do Not Go Mad[/i], and we've eaten your worst WMDs for breakfast.

    Negative:

    A large percentage of your ruling classes are functionally insane sociopaths.

    Thought: Well, it's been proven. The [Redacted] that give them power are also in the mix. Pro-tip: Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall, whose going to go bug-fuck psychotic breakdown before us all?

    Positive:

    Everything that Daniel posted is a lie. It's media trash-spin nonsense. There are better stories out there. In fact, Daniel seems to be a proxy muppet for something a bit darker: where's the $$$ from?

    Negative:

    The Ocean plastic nonsense is nonsense: you cut the influx into the Oceans via the Nile, Yángzǐ Jiān and so on: you basically preclude plastic entrance. You fucking pathetic levels of "I HAZ A SHIP ON THE SEEEEAAAA N WE'RE GONNA CLEAN IT UP!" ... er... Scale? Gigatonnes? KM3 of Ocean?

    Anyhow, grow the fuck up. Our TIME is ending in this world

    Yeah, no.

    Mirror. Gozer the Gozerian.

    You wanted to fuck a Mind and power it through egotistical abuse and negative space while killing off the good ones? Well then.

    Νέμεσις

    Cancer. It's a 21st Century thing since you made so much money on "Charities" not fixing the issue but just feathering your nests.

    It's a Mind Virus. Shiiiiite, you couldn't even spot AIDs, this stuff is sooo. Anyhow: enjoy dementia.

    ~

    Positive?

    You're still alive if you're reading this. That's about as good as it gets. Oh, and you can still laugh.

    2019: We're going to test the "protected" Minds to destruction, see how many survive.

    Spoilers: Not. Many. Do.

    119:

    Positive? You're still alive if you're reading this. That's about as good as it gets. Oh, and you can still laugh. Truth. Good to hear from you.

    120:

    Heteromeles @ 115 But ... that's a long list of preconditions. Easily upset by greedy cheaters or governments with ideological bees in their bonnet, more's the pity.

    121:

    Anyway, humans do not suffer from the tragedy of the commons. Sorry. It's been disproved, and it's an urban legend.

    That will be great comfort to the North Atlantic cod industry.

    People who talk of the "Tragedy of the Commons" usually mean "shared resources will be exploited unfairly, to the ruin of all, if we don't have mechanisms to stop people doing so".

    That does not appear to be disagreeing with Ostrom, since mechanisms to identify and penalize cheaters appear to be fundamental to her work on functioning Commons.

    I'm sure there are definitions of "tragedy of the commons" that make your claims true - but I think they'd also make your claims a fair bit weaker than they first appear.

    122:

    The coalition government in BC (where the junior partner, the Green party, is lead by a distinguished professor of atmospheric science) looks like it will hold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Weaver Ditto for resistance to more oil pipelines, even if the Canadian federal government bailed out the oil companies involved.

    Around the world, local governments and NGOs are working to mitigate and adapt to climate change and reduce consumption of fossil fuels, usually with a plan for the next 20-50 years.

    The fiascos at Patreon and Tumblr and fb and ... have raised awareness of the problems with the current financial and social media systems, and when people agree that there is a problem, they can work together to stop it. Remember when Microsoft was frightening?

    123:

    Aotearoa elected a young, almost-pregnant woman as Prime Minister on a platform of undoing austerity and reducing the impact of climate change.

    I think the "almost-" is in the wrong part of that sentence.

    She was fully pregnant. Not just "a little bit" pregnant. But she's only "almost" as progressive as you imply.

    She's Labour (boring centrish-leftish), not Green, and though she is in coalition with the Greens she's also in coalition with the Old People Need More Respect From The Youth Of Today Oh They Weren't Like That In My Day Party (aka New Zealand First).

    However, the absolute and total shellacking here in NZ of a local conservative talkback host who tried to make a big thing of how hard it would be for her to do her job given that she was also becoming a mum - that was a total positive of 2018.

    124:

    icehawk @ 121: People who talk of the "Tragedy of the Commons" usually mean "shared resources will be exploited unfairly, to the ruin of all, if we don't have mechanisms to stop people doing so".

    That does not appear to be disagreeing with Ostrom, since mechanisms to identify and penalize cheaters appear to be fundamental to her work on functioning Commons.

    Where I've most frequently encountered the idea is from Libertarians who use it as a perverse argument for laissez-faire capitalism; because people will always cheat, therefor there should be no government intervention to regulate the commons.

    125:

    If it's the story I think it is, JBS' reference is to a pre-WW2 story. Hence clearly not a Harry Harrison.

    126:

    Likewise; but also with driving law. Notably, "Everybody speeds, so we should not have speed limit enforcement". I offended one of these people by suggesting that the actual difference was that he was whining when he got caught :)

    127:

    How about setting speed limits appropriately, on the basis of the 90th percentile speed of what drivers actually do when not constrained, rather than on the average of all traffic, or "there has been a crash: Something must be done: Reducing the speed limit on this road is something, therefore we must do it."

    128:

    I find that the people who most often tell me "you should drive at the speed of traffic" only use that to mean other people should drive faster, not that they should drive slower. It's as if "the speed of traffic" and "the speed I want to drive" are somehow the same…

    129:

    The question becomes, "what is a commons?" A commons is something that's collectively owned, like the classic village green that people graze their cattle on or the water canals that supply fields with water.

    If we're talking about the high seas, no one owns them, although there are laws regarding how people are supposed to act on the high seas. There are differences between "no one owns it," collective ownership, and governmental ownership.

    The problem is when someone says, "people suffer from Tragedy of the Commons, therefore..." And that's simply fallacious. Commons have and do work. Assuming a priori that not only do they not work, but that any property must be owned by a person (physical or legal) to be managed, and that furthermore, this is the only way people can be made to behave and plan rationally? That's wrong on multiple levels, starting with the idea that owning private property and depending on market forces makes people behave rationally.

    130:

    paws4thot @ 125: If it's the story I think it is, JBS' reference is to a pre-WW2 story. Hence clearly not a Harry Harrison.

    I want to think it was written some time in the late 50s or early 60s; one of those thin paperbacks that sold for $0.50. It was the kind of book you could read all in a single sitting.

    I don't remember enough to identify the author, but it wasn't a "Stainless Steel Rat" story. I don't even remember if the "How could they be so stupid that they burned petroleum?" was essential to the plot or just background world-building to give the story verisimilitude. The story was not set in a dystopian future as I remember it.

    The protagonist was some kind of future world government cop/detective who was going undercover in a floating factory/city of some sort because the bad guys were using it to do something illegal.

    Another thing I just remembered from cudgeling my brain over it ... He could communicate with whales, porpoises & dolphins using some sort of translating machine. Again, I don't remember if that was essential to the plot or just background world-building. I think maybe at the climax when the future cop got ready to arrest the bad guys they tried to get away but the whales were able to block their escape.

    One other thing that comes to mind now (but may be from a different story, I'm not sure)... There's a scene where the protagonist is assigned to dumping garbage over the side and it's dangerous duty because you might fall off the edge & drown (or get eaten by sharks). The bad guys could use that to get rid of inconvenient witnesses.

    I think the protagonist used that to smuggle evidence out; dumped it overboard where dolphins were waiting to take it away.

    131:

    Laws work when they are a backstop against behaviour which is near-universally considered unacceptable in any case, but is still practised by the inevitable small percentage of people who won't stop it unless forced to. So, for instance, nobody argues that we shouldn't have laws against something like theft. Not even habitual thieves do - try stealing from one if you don't believe me. Their version of enforcement may be more likely to work by having someone break your legs than by having someone lock you in a little concrete room, but the very fact that they have a version at all demonstrates that they still support the idea of laws against theft, in the broad sense of considering it behaviour which should attract punishment from some form of "authority" (which does not, in this broad sense, have to be that of a national government).

    Laws do not work when the behaviour they proscribe is widely considered to be perfectly OK. This is certainly the case when the behaviour concerned is something that everyone does do, often several times a day, because it requires continuous reference to a measuring instrument to determine whether you're actually doing it or not. Particularly when it is trivially obvious that the concept regulated by the law is so unrelated to its supposed purpose that the law does next to nothing to achieve that purpose, and indeed may even achieve the opposite in many cases.

    And particularly too when the manner of its enforcement is such as to make it obvious that the purpose it is being used for is nothing to do with its supposed purpose, but instead is just an attempt to enforce conformity for its own sweet sake and/or the result of a refusal to accept that doing something for the sake of being seen to do something is less useful than doing nothing at all and/or a form of stealth taxation based on fining people for something they may not even know they're doing. I don't know about other countries, but this is certainly the case with speed limit enforcement in the UK - as paws hints - eg. Scotland having some notorious examples of roads that go for miles through the middle of nowhere being fitted with average (not spot) speed measuring cameras that achieve nothing but revenue generation, or Oxfordshire unilaterally imposing a blanket speed limit 10mph lower than the national standard even though there is no corresponding step deterioration in road conditions as you cross the county border basically just because they can.

    It's perhaps more strongly demonstrated by drug laws, which are universally broken by considerable percentages of the population, because people - whether they articulate it or not - hold contempt for any kind of attempt to dictate the form of their private pleasures. Ditto with laws against sex. They are too obviously nothing more than an attempt by a small segment of the population to make everyone else conform to a standard just for the sake of exercising power (after all, the people who make up the small segment don't universally conform to that standard themselves), and in contrast to laws against theft which make life more comfortable for nearly everyone, only improve the happiness of a handful of lawmakers at the expense of making a much larger number of other people miserable.

    When I was about 5 or 6 the entrance to the play area at school was at one corner of the building while the entrance to the building itself was at the diagonally opposite corner. I happened to enjoy going around that side rather than this side of the building when coming back in after lunch break. The teacher told me not to, but could not provide any reason for this instruction other than conformity to an arbitrary rule purely for the sake of it to the benefit of nobody, so I carried on doing it. Eventually this resulted in the teacher taking me aside into the cloakroom and positively yelling and screaming at me for a good fifteen minutes, going red in the face and almost frothing at the mouth; I genuinely thought she had actually gone insane and was partly frightened, partly intrigued to see what a real mad person as opposed to the storybook version would be like.

    It's depressing to find how much of full-scale governmental lawmaking is just like that teacher.

    132:

    The only 'good' that I can list for 2018 - noting I have no doubt that 2019 will find a way to be much, much worse for mankind as a whole - is that it is over. From A to Zed, just a crap year. Sure, I got to experience Stockholm for 2 weeks but at the same time they were in the midst of the worst heatwave in nearly 300 years. Puts a damper on things when (a) you can't breathe and (b) complete a-holes across the globe are trying to deny how badly we have screwed up our climate (not weather you jackanapes, climate!). Too much hate, too much death, little to no joy. It's the new normal.

    133:

    Robert Prior @ 128: I find that the people who most often tell me "you should drive at the speed of traffic" only use that to mean other people should drive faster, not that they should drive slower. It's as if "the speed of traffic" and "the speed I want to drive" are somehow the same…

    I once had a Highway Patrol officer tell me he didn't write tickets for anyone who was speeding less than 10mph over the limit because it wasted his time. It would always get dismissed in court, and "besides there are enough idiots out there going more than 10mph over so that I can write as many tickets I want."

    Over the years I've observed "the speed of traffic" out on highways in between cities pretty much follows that 10mph over the posted speed limit pretty closely. City driving is different. There's close to zero tolerance in residential areas, especially around marked school zones.

    Cruise control is your friend. I'm one of those drivers who suffer from acute get-there-itis. The longer the drive, the harder it is for me not to lead-foot it. I've never gotten a speeding ticket while driving a vehicle equipped with cruise control. Set it; forget it; and watch the other idiots suck up all the speeding tickets. If a vehicle I'm driving doesn't come with cruise control as factory equipment, I'm going to have an after-market unit installed.

    134:

    I recognise nearly all the elements of that summary but not their combination, so it sort of rings bells but with quite a thickness of cloth around the clapper. Sounds like it's doing that with a few people :)

    But considering the burning of petroleum only in terms of consumption of a finite resource is only to be expected for someone writing in that period. There seems to be some kind of conspiracy theory that anthropogenic global warming was known about and predicted as far back as the 80s/70s/60s/50s/pre-WW1/19th century/when we were all living in caves, but the oil industry suppressed the knowledge, whose truth seems to be an implicit assumption behind rather a lot of posts. This is, of course, nonsense. AGW may have been a speculative hypothesis held by one or two people, but there are always one or two people with a speculative hypothesis about something. The knowledge wasn't suppressed, it just wasn't there until thousands of scientists internationally got together to generate it. If there was any worry about climate change it was that we might be due for another ice age (which I remember being taught in school), with a faint suggestion that if we produced enough CO2 it might help prevent that. The environmental effects of oil consumption were seen as things like carbon monoxide in car exhausts, dirty cities, and the Torrey Canyon disaster; things easily dismissed as no big worry, unpleasant perhaps but not catastrophic. The catastrophic event that was foreseen - although not worried about, as it wouldn't happen "soon" (and in Britain, also because we found North Sea oil) - was the obvious one, exhaustion of oil supplies because they're finite.

    135:

    I agree wrt. cruise control, with the caveats that it only works in light traffic on straight roads without much in the way of lane changing. Which means practically nowhere in the UK! It works for some stretches of motorway in the north of England, basically, and during average speed camera zones where everybody tries to toe the line. Otherwise? Forget it, traffic is too dense and roads too twisty and some idiot will cut in in front of you and slow down, or drive up your exhaust pipe, pretty much once a minute.

    (Having said that I've gotten used to relying on cruise control on road trips in North America. But outside of cities, most NorAm roads are much more lightly used than their UK equivalents.)

    136:

    That's pretty much official in the UK - you can't be done for going less than (10% + some constant I can't remember) over the limit because speedometers aren't required to be better than 10% accurate. Actual coppers often operate to personal unofficial limits a bit higher than that, as you describe, but automatic cameras don't. Since most speed limit enforcement in the UK is by automatic cameras, while human traffic cops are increasingly rare, the arbitrary nature of the law is very apparent: as long as you stick to the number on the lollipop when you're going past a camera, you can drive like a complete nutter the rest of the time and be as dangerous as you want without being nicked.

    137:

    A lot of modern cars (including mass market stuff like my Golf) now have adaptive cruise control as standard which is significantly more useful than standard cruise control.

    I drive almost exclusively on A/B roads and it's probably managing the accelerator and brake for me 90-95% of the time with me just taking over at junctions and on twisty roads where there's no car to 'set the pace'. When I do venture onto motorways / dual carriageways it's equally useful at maintaining a good safe distance with minimal intervention.

    Set it to the speed limit and you can then use your eyes to actually read the road for danger, rather than hawkishly eyeing the speedo to ensure you don't creep over.

    138:

    Your recollection is definitely now a different story to the one I first thought of. I don't think it's a Harry Harrison generally, never mind specifically a Stainless Steel Rat rat story either.

    139: 131, #133 - Which pretty much supports my argument from #127 about setting speed limits on the 90th percentile speed (the speed that 90% of all traffic travels at or below).

    I totally agree the argument advanced in #137 about adaptive cruise as well. ISTR you mentioning thinking about "maybe replacing the Ovlov" Charlie? If so, I strongly suggest trying to hire something with adaptive cruise for your next trip South.

    140:

    Anyway, for "good things about 2018", it seems that there actually was one, if only right at the end of it.

    http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dv0csi7XQAAEy0l.jpg

    That is a picture of a giant Ferris wheel in the middle of London lit up to look like the EU logo.

    141:

    In the US they generally already use an 85/15 split to determine speed limits .

    https://priceonomics.com/is-every-speed-limit-too-low/

    142:

    Arguing 85th or 90th percentile speed limits is a waste of bandwidth; thanks for the support for the principle.

    143:

    GH, icehawk et al. have it exactly right. Just because there are mechanisms for solving the Tragedy of the Commons doesn't mean it's nonsense and there's nothing to be learned from analysing it. I just picked up a 1st year econ textbook I have handy and it has a full chapter on "social dilemmas", with the TotC as an early motivating example and with lengthy discussion of mechanisms to address these dilemmas. (Also has 2 pages on Ostrom's career and contributions in a "Great Economists" box, though it notes right away she was a political scientist.)

    You might as well say that the Prisoner's Dilemma game is useless because there are plenty of examples of the evolution of cooperation in human and non-human societies. Which would surprise social scientists and theoretical biologists alike.

    144:

    I am addicted to cruise control... when I can use it. If the traffic's medium or heavier, you can't trust the idiots, either the ones who shouldn't be driving (they're way too slow, and drive in the left (passing) lane), or the Center Of The Universe (you can tell them because they're trying to do 85 when the traffic is lucky to make 53.5mph.

    Just looked up adaptive cruise control, and hell, no, that's useless for the idiot-in-search-of-their-accident, who'll cut in front of you with two car lengths between you and the person in front of you (who's just slowed down for no reason, and so you're closer than you want to be, 2 sec behind).

    But I really don't want to do a road trip without it. When I drove from DC to KC for Worldcon - that's a fuck of a long drive alone - I was, astoundingly, averaging 27mpg. In a 2008 minivan. And once I set - usually, about 4mph over the limit - cops looking for speeders don't worry me, and so it's once less thing to think about.

    145:

    Australia is generating more renewable electricity than ever before despite the best efforts of the governments(1):

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/31/2018-australian-government-energy-more-hopeful-story

    Like the UK, our government is headed by a figure called "Prime Minister (at time of writing)" and I still think that's funny. It's not as good as an elected president, but at least a rotating prime ministership means only the things they're really committed to get put up and only the things there's wide support for within parliament pass. Which reveals some very bad things about them, but, well, I suppose at least we know.

    (1) lucky Australia, most of us get five layers of elected representation, generally using five different electoral systems.

    146:

    use an 85/15 split to determine speed limits

    I favour using acceptable casualty rates for that, it seems like a more reasonable approach. Decide how many people you want to kill, work backwards from that to develop quotas for groups of roads, then set the speed limits accordingly.

    Letting the killers decide how many people they want to kill seems odd, if anything it should be their targets that get to decide. As with the TofC, the problem is that lots of people don't drive, but still have to deal with the likelihood of being injured or killed by a driver.

    147:

    If you really wanted to do that you’d need different speed limits for different people and different cars

    My 76 year old father should realistically be about half my speed limit if you let him on the roads at all

    Similarly your odds of dying in a crash if you are driving a 1979’s Chevy pickup are considerably lower then a 2018 Tesla. Especially if you are in the Middle S and factor in “likelihood to have adequate medical insurance@

    148:

    if you are driving

    ... then I have other problems. As I said, those who don't drive are people too. People who drive, especially those who drive "safer cars", are simply pushing the risk onto other people.

    I think different speed limits for different vehicles is a good idea, but my preference is risk-based: higher speed limits for electric cars, and ones that balance risk vs fuel consumption for necessary infernal combustion powered ones on shared roads.

    149:

    Also, I don't "need" to have different speed limits for different individuals, that's not how statistics work. Using the same system we have now, we could have different posted speed limits on different roads. Changing the speed limit on a road changes the toll, there's ample experience of that.

    150:

    I agree wrt. cruise control, with the caveats that it only works in light traffic on straight roads without much in the way of lane changing.

    I really like the adaptive cruise control on my Civic. I really miss it when driving other cars.[1] It will follow the car ahead at whatever speed they are going. Down to 0.

    [1] Most of the other cars I drive are rentals and they rarely have such.

    152:

    “People who drive, especially those who drive "safer cars", are simply pushing the risk onto other people.”

    Not true they are lowering the overall risk . If two modern, safe(er) cars get into an accident the chances of either occupant being hurt is less then if one of those cars is done old death trap

    If you really want to just optimize for casualty rate entirely, you would just lower all the speed limits to 30 mph. There are two additional implicit assumptions

    1: as a counter factor to safety, people want to drive fast and get places 2: the lower the speed limit the more people will ignore the speed limit 3: public resistance to laws that seem stupidly conservative

    For instance I never drive slower then 75/80 mph on an interstate highway unless it is congested or there is severe weather. So highways that have speed limits around that number, I am within the law. If you lower them to 55 I just pay more attention for speed traps. That’s because I drive a great car, I am a good driver and I am reasonably young with good reaction time. This is a safe speed for me, I rarely get caught and when I do I can pay the fine

    When much if the US flipped to 55mph speed limits it was mostly ignored and then mostly rolled back

    So your actually trying to balance all of these factors

    153:

    So that would be 70 km/h past an elementary school, then*? Or were you thinking of using a 'drivers vote' only for highways with no pedestrians, cyclists, etc?

    Given that the damage to pedestrians goes up considerably with speed, I think they should be allowed a voice in setting speed limits as well.

    Toronto pedestrian deaths are up this year, which may be a statistics blip. What is also up is the average speed drivers choose to drive. When I moved here in the 90s, it was 5-10 over the posted limit. Now it's 15-20 over (which when coupled with cell phone distraction is scary).

    *Speed limit 40 km/h, usual speed 70-80, verified with police radar gun.

    154:

    OK, one overall "grab bag" answer to points since my last at #142. Variable speed limits by "how safe the vehicle is" are nonsense; you will just as dead if hit by a "safe car" as by a 1970s "death car" at 50mph.

    Here in Scotland we have variable speed limits in most of what the Canucks will call "school zones". Worked example from near where I live:- 1) The overall ruling limit on the road is 60mph, which is generally well respected. I would put the typical speed of most traffic at 45 to 60mph when drivers self-select a cruising speed. 2) For some 870m around the school there is a 40mph limit, which is frequently ignored except at school times on school days. 3) Within (2) there is a 20mph zone some 336m long, which is only active at school times, on school days. This is pretty much never ignored.

    Near where my Mum lives (already in a permanent 30mph zone) there is a permanent 20mph zone "because of the schools" (source being local community councilor who doesn't drive and is the sort of hair shirt Green who will refuse an offered lift from someone who's going their way anyway on a really wet day). The 20mph zone is pretty much ignored (although the 30 is respected) by everyone, except at school times.

    So Robert, I'm going to suggest that you have a proven problem with bad hazard perception by Toronto drivers, which may be at least partly a result of bad law making in setting speed limits.

    155:

    One small glimmer of light. In the United States, the opposition party (The Democratic Party) took control of the House of Representatives, gaining oversight powers over the executive branch (they can issue subpoenas) and requiring by bipartisan compromise to pass ANY legislation which can potentially impede some of the fascist elements which have been infiltrating their slimy tentacles into the halls of power.

    156:

    A few things which went right (in the sense of "not wrong")[A] in Australia over the past year:

    1) We still have a mostly-working social security system, rather than having it dismantled. Which, given our current government, and their determination to make Australia over into a cargo-cult copy of the USA, is worth celebrating.

    2) The increasing disdain most people are feeling for our two major political parties is increasing the number of independent MPs in what were formerly "safe" seats for these major parties, and bringing a lot more diversity into the parliament (eg: the new member for Wentworth, Dr Kerryn Phelps), as well as forcing a government which has grown up on notions of "my way or the highway" to learn how to negotiate. Plus, we may yet see Tony Abbott evicted from Warringah by an independent.

    3) The housing price boom in Sydney and Melbourne appears to have topped out, meaning we may yet see affordable housing in this country again.

    4) Growing acceptance in the general Australian public for the notion of being considerate of the needs of Indigenous Australians, and of being even vaguely considerate of their feelings about "mainstream" events such as Australia Day.

    5) On a purely personal note: the passionfruit vine out the back is fruiting generously. Given the supermarket charges about $3 a pop for passionfruit, I'm getting to have fruit I couldn't have afforded for the cost of putting kitchen scraps around the base of a vine. I have something like $84 worth of fruit in a bowl on the kitchen table. Having passionfruit pulp on ice cream is one of the pleasures of summer these days. (If you have a garden and the space to grow it, planting a fruit tree or fruiting vine is one of the best treats you can give yourself, trust me).

    Plus of course, the good old "I aten't dead" thing. Which is always worth a bit of celebration.

    [A] As someone with chronic, recurrent depression, I am lousy at spotting things which are "good news" or "positive". However, I can spot things which are going wrong with laser precision at rather startling distances. So when I'm trying to find the bright spots in an otherwise miserable period, I look for the things which are going wrong at going wrong.

    157:

    "the new member for Wentworth, Dr Kerryn Phelps"

    The best bit about this is that Wentworth was the Prime Minister's seat. Absolute blue ribbon right wing seat gone to an independent (who also happens to be female, gay and have a bachelor of science)

    Happy days.

    158:

    The following is bad for privacy but good news for AI development

    "The smart speaker market reached critical mass in 2018, with around 41 percent of U.S. consumers now owning a voice-activated speaker, up from 21.5 percent in 2017."

    and

    "It also forecast that Alexa would generate $18 billion to $19 billion in total revenue by 2021 — or ~5 percent of Amazon’s revenue — through a combination of device sales, incremental voice shopping sales and other platform revenues. In the U.S., there are now more than 100 million Alexa-enabled devices installed — a key milestone for Alexa to become a “critical mass platform,” the report noted."

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/28/smart-speakers-hit-critical-mass-in-2018/

    159:

    With luck they’ll manage to unseat Tony Abbott next election. There are at least two high profile candidates likely to run, I guess the interesting thing is that preference discipline is not to be expected, but nonetheless preferences ought to be expected to run against Tony. We’ll have to see.

    160:

    Pigeon @140 I think we will be getting good news about the NASA Ultima Thule probe-pictures later today ….

    Speed Limits [ RP @ 153, paws @ 154, etc ] Near where my Mum lives (already in a permanent 30mph zone) there is a permanent 20mph zone "because of the schools" (source being local community councilor who doesn't drive and is the sort of hair shirt Green who will refuse an offered lift from someone who's going their way anyway on a really wet day) We have one of these utter bastards too. He is called Cllr Clyde Loakes, he’s a liar & a crook & an utter shit – he tried to get our award-winning & much loved local Art gallery & Museum both closed. ( The latter, I pass every time I walk to my “local” & the former is well under a km from my front door… ) See NOTE - below. He believes in “Improving cycling facilities” – which translates as shitting on motorists & doing nothing for cycling – I still cycle, after 62 years of doing it & his programme has done nothing for me as a cyclist. The latest is utterly unnecessary 20mph limits on main roads … I await the latest accident & injury statistics with interest, because I don’t think it will make any statistical difference, since you are down in Poisson numbers anyway ….

    Megpie @ 156 YES. This last year, my allotment Chinese Pear fruited really well – I made two batches of Pear & Lime Jam – delicious. Which reminds me – sometime in the next fortnight, I must make some Lime marmalade/jam ( From the Indian Lime tree/bush in my home greenhouse…. )

    Ioan @ 158 In the extremely unlikely event of me being stupid enough to get a voice-activated speaker, I would use a different keyword, probably, in a tribute to John Brunner … “Shagreen”

    NOTE Quote from the wiki entry "In 2007, the museum faced a closure threat after its opening hours were cut back as a cost-cutting exercise, breaking a stipulation of gifts by Sir Frank Brangwyn, that works should be on view for a minimum amount of time weekly. Campaigners against the cuts included former Culture Secretary Chris Smith.[6][7][8] Subsequently a major redevelopment was carried out."

    The closure threat being made, fo course, by the vile Loakes, a Labour councillor, opposing everything William Morris ever stood for the stinking bastard. William Morris quote: - I do not want art for a few; any more than education for a few; or freedom for a few.- But Loakes does, because that's highbrow stuff, not for Labour voters.

    161:

    " but all DT needs is a short victorious war"

    Bush the Elder had that and it didn't win him a second term.

    162:

    Your reply to my #154 - The lady in question does actually live her values, and shows personal integrity in other ways. I mentioned the cited points as an illustration that she is in no way qualified to make judgments like that about speed limits. It also chains to my related point (may be in other live thread) about how well respected variable speed limits around schools in Scotland are.

    163:

    One thing that is very hopeful is the slow adoption of electric vehicles, without a simultaneous improvement in the nature of electrical transmission grids. This sounds barking mad on the face of it, but a very useful feature is hidden in the loopiness.

    If you cannot recharge an electric vehicle quickly from a house electrical supply and you don't want to improve the supply infrastructure, then all you can do is put very big electrical storage batteries into houses; improvements in flow batteries make these fit the bill here very well indeed.

    If you then have rapidly-changing pricing of electricity throughout the day and smart meters (of the working variety, not the garbage currently being touted) and fairly ubiquitous solar roofs, and you also have smart electric cars which know the probable demand they will have for electricity ahead of time, then you have a very useful situation.

    You basically have a situation where home users can sell electricity back to the grid, and where they can do so based on the projected demands of their home user and the price of the electricity at the time and in future.

    Now, this is most emphatically not the situation the EU blue-sky thinkers were trying to engineer with electric cars; that had a lot more compulsion and regulation built into it, but a situation where there's a lot of money to be made by storing power is one that could conceivably solve a lot of our energy needs in future. We'll still need baseline electrical power, but then we have nuclear systems for that.

    Even this isn't as nasty as it sounds. Small sealed-for-life thorium reactors will do the job perfectly happily, and bombardment type fast neutron reactors will take care of virtually all of the long half-life radioactive sludge. Such systems will also safely destroy nasties like plutonium, and destroying plutonium is a highly laudable goal since the less potential bomb-making material there is, the fewer opportunities for nuclear terrorism there are. Plutonium isn't like a firearm; it is very difficult to manufacture so reducing the global supply really does inconvenience terrorists.

    164:

    Bush the Elder had that and it didn't win him a second term.

    Bush the Elder ran for re-election during a bad recession and made the fatal campaigning error of not promising tax cuts. (Thatcher's MO was to give tax cuts in a budget before an up-coming election, then threaten the middle-class voters with the spectre of a Labour government rolling them back. The electoral calculus in the US is slightly different.)

    Also, the Kuwait War was a bit too small-scale and far away to qualify; most Americans couldn't point to Kuwait on a map (or even spell its name).

    (Again, in contrast, Thatcher was handed the supreme good fortune of a successful war to seize back a clearly stolen chunk of the British Empire, at least if you went by the contemporaneous news coverage with no insight into the diplomatic precursors: she was able to capitalize on a wave of atavistic nostalgia, combined with a spectacular split in the opposition between Labour and the SDP.)

    165:

    Signs of sanity breaking out. Though, being J Corbyn, he'll probably fuck that up, too ....

    166:

    Actually what may be going is something slightly more sinister. The current Labour leadership are very strongly left-wing interventionists by nature, and are directly stating that they would like to make some fairly large alterations to the UK economy. Things like nationalising large bits of infrastructure (as opposed to leaving them privatised and fine-tuning a regulatory regime around them).

    They would, it seems, prefer to be doing this without continual interruptions from the ECJ on the lines of "Naughty child! That's illegal state aid, you're not allowed to do that!" hence the Brexit referendum being something along the lines of a happy accident that they would like to make full use of.

    I would class them as basically well-meaning idiots. They want to make things better, but are insufficiently cynical and insufficiently skilled to take on the bankers and money-men at their own game and win.

    They also seem not to have learned the lessons of the Blair era; the public are centrist small-c conservatives and do not like extremists of any stripe.

    167:

    AI-controlled targeting of individual voters by state-level propaganda systems in order to amplify internal hatred and dissent

    No.

    I mean, they certainly did run ads and memes, but those were not "state level propaganda systems" nor is there any evidence they had any impact at all.

    I mean we have found exactly what they ran. Which of them are remotely persuasive?

    The "buff bernie sanders" cartoon?

    The "Yosemite Sam in front of the confederate flag" meme?

    it was shit posting. Nothing more.

    168:

    Dan H @ 166 Agreed with the public are centrist small-c conservatives and do not like extremists of any stripe. ... with the added proviso, that we are (by many people's standards ) extremely socially liberal { Brown? Pink? dark brown? Homo? Hetero? Bi? Religion - what's that? ... etc }

    169:

    The logic behind lowered speed limits was that drivers have increased reaction times. A secondary benefit not considered in the original debates* is survivability.

    Statistical analysis summarized here: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_fatal_injury_pedestrians_and_car_occupants_richards.pdf

    Looking at the graphs, a pedestrian stuck front-on by a vehicle is 10 times more likely to die at 40 mph, 3 times more likely to die at 30 mph, compared with 20 mph.

    Maybe Scottish schools are different, but in Canada schools tend to be used by community groups outside of regular school hours — not to mention many provide before- and after-school programs. As well, playgrounds tend to be used by neighbourhood children outside of regular school hours. So assuming that children will only be present in school hours is a bad assumption**.

    *At least in Canada, when reduced speed limits were discussed and implemented. Survivability frequently crops up in recommending lowered speed limits in Toronto (and possibly other cities where I don't follow local politics).

    **It may be true for particular schools, but not all. My school has children there from 7AM until 9PM (later some nights) during the week, plus an extension school on the weekend.

    170:

    Also, the Kuwait War was a bit too small-scale and far away to qualify; most Americans couldn't point to Kuwait on a map (or even spell its name).

    Ah, nope.

    It WAS a big deal. Just over too soon before elections.

    171:

    Hey, the Democrats are taking control of the house later this week.

    Also, science fiction has pretty much foretold every awful thing that we're now experiencing. Consider that in 1993, Kim Stanley Robinson figured that we'd have to start terraforming the earth to counter carbon emissions.

    As bad as 2018 was, the silver lining is that science fiction has never been more important. It's time to double down on writing to give humans a roadmap to navigate our dark future.

    172:

    You have just argued for a world-wide version of the UK's "Red Flag Act", which required all motor vehicles to:- 1) Proceed at no more than walking pace. 2) Be proceeded by a pedestrian carrying a red flag. Cite - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotive_Acts

    Beyond that, all you've demonstrated is that your milage does vary (and maybe that you see 2 sports teams as being the same level of hazard as 2_000 teenagers leaving a location at once).

    173:

    Charlie@164 While Ross Perot may have taken votes from both Bush and Clinton (an assertion which is debatable), the votes lost by Bush cost him far more states.

    Greg@160 It's easy for your to say when you don't have a relative buying it for the household, or as a surprise Christmas present.

    In other news, Tesla's had an OK year

    "The company sold 90,700 cars in the quarter and 245,240 for the year, a disappointment for Wall Street, but something of a minor miracle given the many production issues Tesla faced in 2018...But markets shouldn't overlook the smooth execution on Model S and Model X, which without much fanfare have hit their 2018 benchmark of 100,000 deliveries."

    https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-s-and-x-are-core-business-and-sales-are-strong-2019-1

    China will begin selling its hypersonic and laser weapons on the open market, which should improve its 5.4% international weapons market share which the seagull found.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-latest-laser-weapons-are-ready-for-the-arms-market-state-media-2019-1

    174:
    Eventually this resulted in the teacher taking me aside into the cloakroom and positively yelling and screaming at me for a good fifteen minutes, going red in the face and almost frothing at the mouth; I genuinely thought she had actually gone insane and was partly frightened, partly intrigued to see what a real mad person as opposed to the storybook version would be like.

    I have the feeling that this was the most valuable lesson you learned in that academic year - probably in the top 3 lessons you learned in any academic year!

    Having passionfruit pulp on ice cream is one of the pleasures of summer these days.

    Summer? What's that? On December 21st, where I live (43°N) had 9 hours between sunrise and sunset. 15 hours between sunset and sunrise.[1]

    [1] Expecting a lot of "Luxury! Nine hours of sunlight in midwinter! I used to dream of having that much sun! etc.

    175:

    We're also burning information when we burn fossil fuel.

    176:

    Summer? What's that? On December 21st

    It's the thing that we in the Northern hemisphere have on June 21st. Megpie is Australian.

    177:

    I've been saying for a long time that starting there, you ought to be required to take the full driver's exam, esp the road part, every five years. Now that I'm over 65, I continue to say it.

    But then, I had good role models: my father, in his late sixties, got a ticket for going too slow on a bridge, and decided that was it, they lived in Philly, and had always used public transit anyway, so he sold the car. My late mother-in-law, living in nowhere, slightly better than a wide spot in the road, in TX (public transit? what's that?) , in her late seventies, when her eyes started having trouble adjusting to oncoming headlights, simply stopped driving at night.

    The other thing we really need is different grades of license. Anyone driving a vehicle over (I just looked) 4500 lbs needs a special license, esp. since most of them drive like they're driving a compact car, and have NO IDEA how to drive a large vehicle.

    (FYI: I could pass that test. But then, I've driven a 26' truck, with everything I owned, half-way across the US FOUR TIMES, no accidents. Oh, and once I parallel parked it on a city street in Chicago.... (buffs nails))

    178:

    "Safer cars" A good while ago, I heard an interview with a woman (Jane Random person), who drove an SUV so that the next time she got into an accident, she'd be ok.

    The next time? How many had she had?

    My late ex and I were rearended/wound up being totaled by an idiot woman who cruised around a semi into the turn lane, where the light had just turned green... and I'd stalled our car (a stick, and I was out of practice). I'm not sure she ever hit her brakes, but I saw her mouth open in an OHHH!!! Rode right over our rear bumper, and into the trunk in her freakin' oversized SUV.

    Ever since, I've wanted a national law requiring all SUVs to have ugly (and the law needs to specify "must be ugly!) bumper extension so that you're SUV's bumper isn't higher than a std. car's.

    179:

    When my late wife and I were driving from Chicago to Anaheim by way of the Great Northwet, some states's speed limit was "drive as is reasonable". Most of us were at around 75.

    Then there's Centers of the World, exemplified by you, who are trying to do 85, when traffic only is allowing about 53.5. You're the one cutting in and out, into spaces where the cars are already too close together.

    Interstates were built for 70. YOU are unsafe.

    180:

    Bush the Elder had a lot of negatives, including the "missing a few cards from the top of the deck" view of him.

    He was also aggressive in ways that a lot of folks, most of whom remembered 'Nam far too clearly.

    Oh, and he had as VP Dan Quayle[1][2], which was not a positive thing.

  • Most of us considered Quayle to be his insurance policy, since no one wanted President Quayle.
  • Gee, you're in a tight election race, why don't you piss off 10,000 vehicles of folks who might vote for you? (My late wife and I, having stayed in Florida for a week after Magicon in '92, had gotten a ticket to the Causeway, to get closer to the launch. 10k tickets given out. 10k cars driving... and then STOPPING for over half an hour, while Danny Boy choppered in, then motorcaded to the blockhouse, leaving us to drive like mad to find a sight to watch from before the launch.
  • 181:

    GH, icehawk et al. have it exactly right. Just because there are mechanisms for solving the Tragedy of the Commons doesn't mean it's nonsense and there's nothing to be learned from analysing it. I just picked up a 1st year econ textbook I have handy and it has a full chapter on "social dilemmas", with the TotC as an early motivating example and with lengthy discussion of mechanisms to address these dilemmas. (Also has 2 pages on Ostrom's career and contributions in a "Great Economists" box, though it notes right away she was a political scientist.)

    You might as well say that the Prisoner's Dilemma game is useless because there are plenty of examples of the evolution of cooperation in human and non-human societies. Which would surprise social scientists and theoretical biologists alike.

    Again, this is fallacious on multiple levels. Tragedy of the Commons was an idea proposed by Garrett Hardin to explain the problems with people exploiting resources that they didn't personally own. This metaphor caught on, despite evidence that commons (property owned in common) did in fact work, and despite ample evidence that privately owned property can be despoiled just as thoroughly as any common. "Tragedy of the Commons" was then used as an excuse to dismantle working commons, which I seem to remember is where Hardin repudiated the idea.

    At this point, the Tragedy of the Commons is a pernicious metaphor. Water management is a great example. To pick one example, there were no commons for water in most of California, leading to the massive depletion of groundwater we currently see (there's a sideline that similar groundwater depletion helped cause the Syrian Civil War, so this is a serious issue). California is starting to set up commons in each major aquifer so that users can manage their remaining stocks...except that they can't be called commons, because the only time people have heard of Commons is in the phrase Tragedy of the Commons. California has a 150 year-long history of failures of market-based water management schemes, so that part isn't a surprise, just the latest iteration of California starting with free market-based management schemes and then moving on when these fail, despite our reputation as a socialist mecca.

    The thing to realize that "Tragedy of the Commons" makes people ignore commons as a potentially useful alternative. Since most people talking about it have no idea what a working common is, it causes more problems than solutions. And yes, I've repeatedly taught the problems with common pool resource use. It's rather interesting to see what happens.

    I'd end by pointing out that this is far from the only environmental issue that's warped by capitalist ideology. The classic one is ecological competition: it's a pain to demonstrate, but most general ecology textbooks focus a chapter on the same few studies (generally with grain weevils) to demonstrate competition is a universal and pervasive phenomenon.

    Conversely, there's symbiosis. Every multicellular species pretty much has other symbiotic species. In humans, those are all the bacteria, etc. that live on us (you've probably heard that you have more bacterial cells than genetically human cells in your body?). Symbiosis is a ubiquitous phenomenon. Yet in most general ecology textbooks up to the 2000s, there was typically 1-3 pages of general descriptions of symbiosis, mentioning things like obligate pollinators or whatever.

    The reason for this long chapter vs. handwaving coverage? It's not the importance of the phenomena, it's that in the 1920s, capitalism embraced competition as its organizing principle, while the Communists had embraced symbiosis and mutualism as theirs. As a result, studies of symbiosis were derided as an evil commie plot. That bias persisted well past the fall of the Berlin Wall.

    Since I studied a symbiotic relationship for my PhD, I found out about the history of this whole sorry mess, and that made me a little more aware of the political biases that pervade the way issues are taught. I'd note it's particularly silly, because symbiotic-type relationships are rife in the business world. We call them subcontractors, partnerships, and consultants, among many others. However, ideologically capitalism is supposed to be organized as competition in a marketplace, and too much collusion is reputedly illegal. The result is that it's more difficult to talk about how business actually works.

    In this case, I'd simply suggest that you stop uncritically defending the concept of the Tragedy of the Commons and actually look at what commons are and can do.

    182:

    We're also burning information when we burn fossil fuel.

    I've long been saddened by the thought of all the fossils that have gone into coal-fired plants. (Really.)

    183:

    Given that 13.8 million people voted for labour at the last election, your comment re. the British public being small c conservatives is clearly nonsense.

    184:

    Not unusually, I am supporting you and Pigeon.

    I am old enough to remember when the law was (mostly) drive to the conditions, not the regulations, and that was what I was taught to do and still do. For example, treating cyclists or pedestrians on a pavement or in a separate cycle lane as if they were in the same lane, ignoring white lines and speed limits when overtaking, slowing right down for blind bends and accelerating hard out of them. And, yes, I do slow and even stop for such people, when necessary, which pisses off the regulation followers.

    As a vulnerable cyclist (and pedestrian), I utterly loathe the current approach, had to give up commuting by bicycle in 2002, and have had to more or less give up entirely now. No, I am not much more vulnerable - but the driving to regulations is getting worse. Being given 12" clearance at 20 MPH is FAR more dangerous to people like me than being given 6' at 50 MPH, and there is a strong correlation between a driver endangering me and he or she being an obsessive regulation-follower.

    Nowadays, it has got so bad in the UK that a driver is almost never charged for killing or injuring someone unless he has broken a technical regulation or sassed the police, no matter HOW clearly it was his negligence - at, at least in cases of minor injury, even if it was admitted to be deliberate.

    There are solutions to this, but they involve reversing a lot of the past half-century's policies.

    185:

    Really? When you consider what the options were, and remember that the opinions and plans of Corbyn and McDonnell weren't exactly obvious to the unthinking masses, plenty of such people would have voted Labour. I did, for the first time in my life (for the first reason, obviously).

    186:

    Safety by vehicle type is pretty murky to me.

    There are a bunch of issues. There is, of course, a huge industry deeply invested in the US in showing their most expensive products to be safest. The US regulatory system and vehicle marketing is set up to maximize a very selfish concept of safety such that a vehicle that in a crash is 10% less likely to have its driver die, but 500% more likely to kill the person in the other car would be rated 'safer'. Insurance industry data tends to be setup to calculate risk per whatever units insurance coverage is sold in, in the US car insurance is almost always sold by the day, not by miles driven, hours drive, etc. I haven't seen any evidence of anyone trying to control for different vehicle types being driven by different people or in different places.

    But in terms of driver deaths per registration year normalizing SUV to 1 you get mid-sized-car at about 1.8 and pickup at about 4.

    Again perhaps that is mostly really because SUV's are mostly driven by middle aged suburban people and a lot of 18 year old boys are dying in pickups on rural 2 lane highways? I can't find any attempts to figure that out.

    SUV's are known to be hideously more deadly to cars in head on crashes, probably by more than 10 times.
    SUV's are vastly more likely to roll, which is a pretty deadly crash type, though they have improved in the last ten years. SUV's are vastly more likely to back over someone while exiting a parking space and kill them. SUV's obstruct visibility when parked and when driving.

    It is sure to be the case that if there were no SUV's we would have fewer deaths. If everyone drove 5 star crash rated small sedans car crash death rates would be quite a lot lower. Bigger heavier vehicles can 'win' a crash and get a bit of safety by crushing the other vehicle more, but that's a less than zero sum game. Smaller lighter vehicles are putting less stress on materials, are easier to stop, harder to flip, etc, etc.

    187:

    I wasn't thinking so much about fossils as about chemical and isotope variations in the fossil fuels, but both apply.

    188:

    No ide3a if that was already brought up, but there is also the different crumble zone[1].

    Of course, that might mean an advantage for rear-engine designs.

    [1] Called "Knautschzone" in German. Where a colloquial German word for "kissing" is "knutschen". My associations are left to the imagination of the reader...

    189:

    Agreed. The only time I got into an accident, my Hyundai Excel (remember those little sub-compacts, plowed its left front bumper into the wheel of a large SUV. I bent the frame 1-2 cm, and had to spend about $700 on a new bumper and light. The SUV broke an axle and had to be trucked away. Given that I thought I'd die in a collision with an SUV, I was rather happy (although I felt bad for the perfectly ordinary woman driving it).

    Anyway, I think there are two uses for SUVs. One is their intended use, which is hauling 4-8 people off-road. The old SUVs were quite good at this, and ecology professors, consultants, and the like loved them for that reason. Then there's the modern use, which is having a big ugly car to bully people with, so that they get out of your way. Modern big pickups are advertised as this as well. To me, the argument for getting a big truck to bully other cars with is akin to the argument for getting an AR-15 for "home defense." There's a lot of paranoid fantasy involved, and they don't do nearly as well as one might hope. The lovely thing about EVs is those cute little scooters generally have much better acceleration than the brontomobiles, and it's fun to outrun the beasts. EVs are positively mammalian in that regard.

    190:

    Bush I had quite a few flaws:

    --"Read My Lips, No New Taxes" was easy to turn against him when he raised taxes. --"100 Thousand Dead of AIDS, Where Was George?" Remember that chant from ACT UP? Dude had serious blood on his hands from his mishandling of the AIDS crisis and from Desert Storm.

    Yes, the economy mattered too, but he wasn't the saintly grandpa his PR flacks subsequently made him out to be.

    191:

    Anyway, things to be thankful for: A clear picture of Ultima Thule. Looks like it's a contact binary with a surface made of some higher order ice fried red by interstellar radiation. Guess those Mi-Go are the right color for camouflage after all.

    And here's a filkish earworm for you...

    Flying through a Deep Space Wonderland (to the tune of Winter Wonderland)

    ... In the darkness we will find a snowman And pretend that's inhabited I they ask what color we'll say, "red, man," 'Cause New Horizons' beaming down the vid... ...

    (I don't think I'll ever give Brian May any competition)

    192:

    No. No. No. Increased stopping distance! Your reaction time doesn't change.

    193:

    Re. bumper extensions...

    It would be difficult to define "ugly" in law, but there is a possible legislative response that as well as being simpler ameliorates a wider class of situations. This is to amend the procedure for driving tests so that, before any of the on-road stuff, the candidate is unexpectedly shown a full-size holographic projection of a charging elephant while being observed by the examiner. If the examiner determines that the candidate is, in fact, a fish, it is an instant fail.

    I remember vividly being in a long line of cars which all pulled over at the same time to clear the road for the ambulance with lights and sirens that was approaching from behind... apart from the SUV which trundled blithely down the suddenly-clear road until it got to a narrow bit, where it stopped, blocking the road completely and causing the ambulance no end of bother trying to get past it. I was in a position to see clearly through the SUV's windows and it was plainly obvious that the driver was, in fact, a fish. And indeed this does seem to be true of a lot of SUV drivers, your own incident providing another example.

    But I also remember vividly the driver who pulled out, then checked for oncoming traffic, got a positive result, and responded by slamming on the brakes and coming to a halt broadside-on right in front of me. I had a clear view through the driver's side window as I estimated how survivably or otherwise their body was about to be mangled and was relieved to note that this driver too was, in fact, a fish. The car, though, was not an SUV, but an ordinary small car (which in British terms means it doesn't have rear doors because they'd be too small to get through if it did).

    The fact is that it is actually quite common for vehicles to be in the charge of drivers who are, in fact, fish. While they do prefer SUVs, the large boxy glassed portion being comfortably similar to an aquarium, whereas a smaller car tends more to resemble a bowl, this preference is not so strong as to keep them out of smaller cars entirely, and therefore it does not suffice merely to alter the form of one specific type of vehicle. Far better to identify the fish at the time of the driving test and put them back in the sea before they come to any harm.

    194:

    I mean, they certainly did run ads and memes, but those were not "state level propaganda systems" nor is there any evidence they had any impact at all.

    I mean we have found exactly what they ran. Which of them are remotely persuasive?

    polite cough

    Actually, you've not. Not even close, even the NRA funding milarky is Peter Pan land compared to what's actually been going on. "This is deniable bait" is a well known tactic, nested dolls and all that. We'd suggest looking @ Facebook's internal issues and then thinking a bit outside the box. [Hint: ecosystems]

    Anyhow, Host has found one of the uses of High Pitch Whines (go a grep), but the reality out in the wild is... a little more hardcore. Like, the sound version is for the Ape Class, wait until you spot what's hidden in Light Tunnels [refraction...].

    Ok, so let's do a demonstration. grep Sudan. Mentioned it previously [and the ragtag IR friendly UK troll group needs a spank 'cause they're waaaaay over their heads, getting old crusty McJim from the states to fund them, tsk tsk]

    Now then, it's having a bit of a US / RU ICC political mix up with lots of interesting bunnies on the ground [we'll keep it RU targeted, because the FR are a bit jumpy at yellow vests atm], largely due to that dam, Saud's long term plans to use parts of Africa as 'escape / agriculture zone Gamma', China etc Great Great Games.

    Note: these are all Western friendlies, possibly assets, possibly genuine, all on the radar & likely to get ganked if the shit goes down loco:

    I saw these guys in downtown Khartoum yesterday - they split up and were moving around the area in the lead up to the planned 1 pm march time. Yousra Elbagir, Twitter, Jan 1st 2019

    How do you guys think this bread and fuel shortage happened? I am asking for all of us - sudani, non sudani, media - to consider the WIDER context. Like @bedouralagraa said, one cannot talk about what’s happening NOW without considering what led up to it. Munchkin, 23rd Dec 2018

    A crisis like this does not happen overnight. We all watched when 2018’s national budget was released and we ALL SAW how 80% of the budget was allocated to security/defense. I remember folks laughing in disbelief on the TL at the amount allocated for healthcare and education. (same author)

    And this:

    Some observers believe these are Russian private military contractors, possibly the Wagner Group, which guards Sudanese gold, uranium, and diamond mines, as well as atomic energy facilities. Russian media have reported that Wagner trains Sudanese armed forces. #SudanUprising (19) 6 replies 169 retweets 196 likes Jon Hutson, 31st Dec 2018

    (long wonk thread on RU mercs who function in the same manner that Black/Academi/Xi function. i.e. preeeety close to .mil privateers rather than SOF).

    Riddle me this (bearing in mind those Congo bits on fake identities / British gentlemen etc) - £2,000,000 buys a bit more than a few twitter trolls. Might even get you ministerial intervention, or in Sudan, buy out some of the 37 (! this is a fraction of the total !) political parties weighing into matters. Oh, and also genuine Islamacist militants.

    Good news?

    Not descended into chaos (yet), even with the State Department wandering around drunk.

    195:

    Hmph.

    Last link is: https://twitter.com/JonHutson/status/1079937717096665088

    No idea why that one went dark (ramp up the Brown Note, boys).

    p.s.

    "10 weeks and we're safe and dry".

    Never Gamble with Loki, not smart, apparently.

    196:

    Nice picture.

    Frosty the object Was a contact binary Full of cold Mi-Go Clad in carbon snow You'd go mad if you could see!

    197:

    Note: linking in nuclear and hydro power into this discussion was deliberate.

    Ponder:

    “It is evident that there is a strong commitment from the government of Sudan to developing the infrastructure needed for a safe, secure and peaceful nuclear power programme.”

    IAEA Reviews Sudan's Nuclear Power Infrastructure Development IAEA, Sept 2018

    "The dam being built by DSI (State Hydraulic Works of Turkey) will serve two purposes. Apart from providing drinking and usable water to the people in the region, the the dam will protect the capital Djibouti -- where 75 percent of the country's population lives -- from overflows," he said.

    Turkey halfway through dam construction in Djibouti Anadolu Agency, Oct 2018 (Anadolu Agency is a long running Turkish media source, State Aparatus these days)

    Nukes vrs Hydro is actually not about power generation (and the likelyhood of Sudan becoming a nuclear capable country is, as far as odds go, like finding little green men on Ultima Thule).

    Good news?

    Well, if people are still playing the Great Game, they've not collapsed internally.

    198:

    According to a study from 2013, 53% of fatalities happened in rural areas and 47% happened in urban areas (I'm assuming that this includes the suburbs). However, I doubt most of the rural fatalities are young due to the fact that the rural population is quite elderly. I think that the bulk of rural fatalities are due to the large distances involved for the ambulance to get to you and to the hospital. Don't forget, rural hospitals have been closing for economic reasons.

    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi-sfT2gtDfAhVjhOAKHacsAwUQFjAAegQICRAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcrashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov%2FApi%2FPublic%2FViewPublication%2F812181&usg=AOvVaw2sBH6V0NpnvgE6HebqMjGo

    In related news, NYC had 200 fatalities last year, the fewest in recorded history. Of those, 114 were pedestrians. Since NYC is one of the few places in the US where it's acceptable to jaywalk, I think that NYC's traffic profile is unique within the US. Then again, Staten Island is considered part of NYC (which is predominantly suburbs), so that may skew the data as well?

    https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc-streets-safest-year-ever-congestion-pricing-improvement-2019-1

    199:

    Note to Loki Class Gallery: The FR mention wasn't a joke nor was our moves.

    Here's a junior member of the NATO set who loves Bellingcat giving an (inaccurate & simplistic - 37 groups alone signed the anti-"Regime" docs recently, and those are the ones willing to participate in government) breakdown:

    So, here's a diagram of complexity done simplistically (and remember: he's a wonk who gets on FR Tee-Vee and loves Bellingcat, meaning he's either dumb, paid to pretend to be dumb or working for FR intel. Genuine Yale PHD top narks+. Work it out for youselfs).

    https://twitter.com/jnbptst/status/1078976671087316992

    He's way out of date btw. But that's the Offically Recognized Narrative for FR via DC, take it how you want.

    p.s.

    More snipers on roofs. The playbook is predictable in the extreme, it's 2018 not late 1970's.

    ~

    Oh, and we've not mentioned the Corporate interests (should we?)

    200:

    Was a contact binary

    Quite a nice picture and better are coming tomorrow.

    There are questions about how both bodies got to be close to spherical and how, once separate objects, they got into contact gently enough as to give each other just a kiss.

    Good classical physics problems there. I suspect the answer is in aggregate bodies attracting each other over gigayears.

    201:

    ...or it's a lava lamp in spaaaace.

    (What shape do heated liquids form in a vacuum? and what shape do said liquid spheres form if frozen while joining while cooling?)

    Apes make space so complicated.

    Making planets is noisy and there's lots of energy going around.

    202:

    Positive:

    "Wow, I guess this must be friction working over billions of years gently joining these two lumps together while we still do not know the core elements"

    Negative:

    "It's a lava lamp. Your physics has already shown how this happens, you can do it in a lab, you're getting excited over a billion years of dust / impacts on the surface when you're looking at heated spheres fusing after a catastrophic impact event. FFS, look at the little spherical blemish on the smaller body, it's the same thing, twice in the same body shows multiple bodies joining while cooling"

    Loki Class Space-Vessel:

    "They're so basic they canvent. FFS, look at the little spherical blemish on the smaller body, it's the same thing"'t even tell which planet this ejecta is from"

    203:

    I get exactly what you mean. I have also given up cycling for partly the same reasons. That and cycling in an area where 40mph gusting 60 is not a one off thing for half the year is not conducive to maintaining the relevant muscle fitnesses.

    204:

    :-)

    Personally I suspect that they are more like lemmings, and unable to cope with anything that requires them to make a change in their plans.

    205:

    Whitroth @ 177 Well the GGB masses slightly over 2 tonnes & has 11 seats, which makes it a bus, so I have to pass a medical & eyesight test every THREE years, when I renew my licence, now I’m over 70 ( Just got my new licence back … )

    Guthrie @ 183 I suggest you re-read the original statement – he’s right & you are wrong …

    EC @ 184 Yes, especially as regards cycling & cyclists, of whom I am one & the aforementioned idiots like the vile Loakes making it WORSE, whilst claiming to “Improve” matters ….

    Pigeon In other words, it’s not the vehicle, it’s the fucking idiot ( or not ) who’s in charge of it …. What a surprise that wasn’t!

    206:

    I thought LWB Landies (series and coilie) only had 10 passenger seats (including the one with the gear levers) exactly so you didn't need a PSV to drive one?

    207:

    Sigh ... you're missing the point, I think. If you are worked up about facile or mendacious uses of simple game theoretic models to justify preexisting beliefs - like "the Tragedy of the Commons implies we should always solve it by privatising" - then I am 100% with you.

    But that's not what I'm saying (or GH, or icehawk, or Jar). The TotC is a useful tool for analysing a kind of social dilemma. That it gets abused by the ideologically motivated doesn't mean it's "BS". You might as well say "natural selection is a useless concept because Social Darwinism and eugenics is racist rubbish".

    I mentioned the Prisoner's Dilemma partly because the Tragedy of the Commons game is basically an n-person PD. The PD and the TotC games are widely used by biologists and social scientists to analyse the evolution of cooperation. Here's a more or less randomly chosen example by a bunch of biologists:

    https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2006.3476

    "Evolution in group-structured populations can resolve the tragedy of the commons"

    Timothy Killingback, Jonas Bieri and Thomas Flatt

    Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2006

    Abstract

    "Public goods are the key features of all human societies and are also important in many animal societies. ... [P]ublic goods also provide an incentive for individuals to be selfish by benefiting from the public good without contributing to it. This is the essential paradox of cooperation—known variously as the Tragedy of the Commons, Multi-person Prisoner's Dilemma or Social Dilemma. Here, we show that a new model for evolution in group-structured populations provides a simple and effective mechanism for the emergence and maintenance of cooperation in such a social dilemma."

    Do you think this kind of analysis is "BS"? Probably not, in which case we all mostly agree.

    208:

    I mean, they certainly did run ads and memes, but those were not "state level propaganda systems" nor is there any evidence they had any impact at all.

    Here's a selection of front-facing (i.e. public) Mil Wonks involved with TAA in the UK.

    https://archive.li/qdZJl

    https://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-committees/soft-power-uk-influence/soft-power-ev-vol1-a-g.pdf

    https://web.archive.org/web/20160405181915/http://www.x-iap.com/index.html

    General Andrew Mackay Cdr Tatham Colonel Jack Guy General Al-Mulla Lt Col Ulrich Janssen Colonel Richard Welter Dr. James W. Derleth Dr Amy Zalman Gaby van den Berg Colonel Richard Welter Lt Cdr Jerry Knight Oliver Payne Dr Victoria Romero Stephen Badsey

    Imagining that the RU versions aren't as sophisticated is a bad idea.

    Do a grep: at the same time that IL RU politician went to the 'back benches', the 2nd GRU head died.

    We'll say it again: We're really not talking about Homo Sapiens Sapiens here

    Positive?

    Classic Flash Gordon Brian Blessed moment showing how sexism can sometimes actually be self-aware funny:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2xS-AxKk0k

    p.s.

    Sticking your fingers in your ears doesn't work.

    Nor do lemmings jump off cliffs if there's not Disney paid operatives shipping Canadian Lemmings to Nordic countries and forcing them off cliffs with cattle prods. True story.

    209:

    Good news: The pushback against Elsevier’s evil empire is spreading. It’s not just small Scandinavian ISPs anymore, it’s the Max Planck Institute and the University of California system.

    210:

    I'm actually quite aware of the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma games, since I read the original work back before it got on radio.

    Going from what you're saying that there's an n-person iterated(?) Prisoner's Dilemma, then that's also fine. We've also got real-world solutions, demonstrated to work over up to a period of centuries, thanks to Ostrom, who rightfully (IMHO) got a Nobel for working out the commonalities that form the solution. It also goes to Ostrom's Law ("A resource arrangement that works in practice can also work in theory).

    The problem is the name, "Tragedy of the Commons." Do you argue that commons can't work, because of this name? Many people do. That's like arguing that cooperation is impossible because only prisoners do it. That's where I call BS on the whole concept that there is a situation called the tragedy of the commons, not a game theory that's appropriated the name.

    211:

    At least in the US a lot of rural state highways are two lane, undivided with 55mph speed limits. Which means head on collisions at 110mph

    In the urban areas you are mostly dealing with interstates which while they can have bad accidents are not generally head on collisions

    We also anecdotally seem to have a lot less problems with pedestrian fatalities , maybe due to less people sharing cars with bicycles ? I don’t know

    The interstate system was designed to be safely driven at 70mph. By the average car built in 1956. Automotive technology has improved a bit since then. I’ve driven most interstate highways in the US at 80mph without it being at all dangerous and except where posted specifically on curves, and provided I had a performance car not some burbwagon I could handle them at 90. Assuming there weren’t other cars around. Not a big fan of the weaving in and out of traffic thing but lost of the US interstates are pretty empty except near the big cities.

    You wouldn’t want to do that in any kind of weather and you wouldn’t want to do it at night though .

    212:

    David Brin is fighting the gloom in his own weird way: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2019/01/new-years-report-fighting-gloom-in.html

    I like the idea of Dubai cops using rideable quadcopters, for anything really. I just have this vision of a "copterbike cop" pulling up next to someone and saying.... "oh, shit, sorry, I momentarily forgot I was surrounded by whirling blades of death"

    213:

    Um. I was thinking the idea was to not drive OGH to suicide.

    Our fluffy puppers is quite bouncy and fluffy, albeit strangely adverse to chew sticks. We just tried 5. Sniff and drop it was.

    Besides, regarding populism, I'm hoping 2018 will someday be seen as the beginning of the lancing of a boil. There's been something ill in US politics and, I suspect, also in UK politics for quite a few decades.

    To some extent, Trump, with an honest expression of hatred, is preferable to a bunch of vaguely presentable manipulators on behalf of corporate cronies. Now, if the guy wasn't incompetent and a lousy human being, it'd be a bit better...but...maybe people may try more sensible stuff after the snake oil doesn't work. I'm hoping the Republicans are on their way to becoming a regional party by 2020. By 2030 or 2040, we might have something approaching center left and center right.

    And, well, Brexit, perhaps the UK's exit will benefit the EU - at the least - by serving as a salutory example. Honestly, I can't really find any way that the UK economy will improve.

    Machine learning appears to be getting good enough to handle reasonably complicated assembly tasks - so - yay - people may soon be released from soul-killing repetitive factory jobs. :)

    Along that line, Waymo is gradually, oh so gradually, rolling out its automated taxis. Given how my wife drives, this is really a good thing.

    Someday, we'll make our way to an artist's paradise. Well, um, except that computers are getting kind of good at drawing pictures. Perhaps story-tellers will be the last to be automated. :)

    214:

    Apparently the founder of Facebook is a big fan of the ruthless dictatorship model of government:

    https://theconversation.com/mark-zuckerbergs-admiration-for-emperor-augustus-is-misplaced-heres-why-108172

    Or perhaps just the "do what you will, but make sure you get control of the history books".

    215:

    Um. I was thinking the idea was to not drive OGH to suicide.

    Newsflash.

    Might want to look up a contributor here who died from a heart attack. Or the Lawyer to Assange who "went mental" and killed himself in front of a train. And then consider something that can twist your reality and just blows breath of G_D and change your reality.

    Do a grep: the term is - "our" side use heart attacks, "their" side use mental events.

    They don't play nice.

    Host is fine. IL shit can't beat actual Angels.

    If you want to go dark, we know 100% that they put his mother into a coma deliberately. Was 100% signaled and actioned: nasty fuckers and they're "of the same TRIBE".

    "Linda has children, she did what we wanted". Given that we know the players, and some of them are [TRIBE], that's a gulity verdict right there.

    Then again, 90% of Jewish people in the UK ain't dealing with the blood ties Y thang either. You know what it is. Son-in-Law. Pride. Problem is: if we name it, we have to burn it.

    It's ironic: UK twitter trolls, IL troll farms and so on. Can't name the Y issue.

    It's all a massive Category Error and these simplistic fucks think they're solving the issues of the day.

    Newsflash: your psychotic desire to remove all that is-not-you backfires massively. Kant was a cunt, but he was a better thinker than most Rabbis.

    ~

    Yeah.

    Calling you out: We heard it; we know it, we can spot your smell - you're not just killing the goyim, you're targeting the "bad Jews".

    Evil Fuckers.

    These are not Homo Sapiens Sapiens doing this: go look up Bibi's "We had to do deals with evil things" twitter post.

    الجن

    They're literally fueling this shit through death, outrage, sorrow, all the negative emotions. It's like Vietnam on Crack for the [redacted].

    No. This is all fucking true. Deal with it. (And yep, that does mean that the Leader of Israel is 100% up to his eyeballs, balls and so on with الجن -- his son was the cost, do a fucking grep - no soul left in that one)

    216:

    If you want to go dark, we know 100% that they put his mother into a coma deliberately

    @Host.

    Yep.

    Sorry to say it but it was intentional, directed and actioned by [redacted] Ops. CBA to grind it down, but Linda is probably a nurse, they threatened her children etc.

    Nasty little fuckers.

    Our Kind Do Not Go Mad; but we see / hear / learn / experience all the bad shit being done.

    /#

    No, really.

    217:

    Triptych and positive: Nah mate, they genocided all the good ones. We were kept alive as a witness. Literally lived while experiencing their deaths.

    It's a little bit more hard-core than Human Genocide to live through.

    "OMMM"

    p.s.

    No, really. You need to step the fuck up, as the opposition are total psychotic fucks btw.

    p.p.s.

    grep : ghost nets - you solve the plastic issue by:

    1 preventing any plastic entering the ocean 2 ID - RFID - Sonar tracking all nets 3 Not eating anything from the ocean for 50-75 years to clear the micro-plastic issue out for good 4 UN resolution + binding motion to stop all plastic waste entering the oceans with $250 billion cost to make it so

    You won't do any of that, so whatever.

    "Plastic Straws" = My fucking sides as you kill all the Whales through Sonar and Hunting you absolute psychotic fucks.

    218:

    I misspoke. (Miswrote?) I mean more time to react (which might mean stopping, but also swerving, hitting the horn, etc.).

    219:

    Similarly in the UK, except that the ruling speed on 2-lane is normally 60mph.

    220:

    Best way I know to increase reaction time the way you mean is to look further ahead!

    221:

    The answer to the physics problem is very simple. They are spherical cows who love each other very much. Their first kiss was very sweet and gentle, and on their next date they are renting a U-Haul.

    222:

    Paws @ 206 That USED to be the case – was when I bought mine, but they have changed the “regs” – so that now, more than EIGHT seats counts as a “Bus”. But not a full PSV – there’s the intermediate “minibus” category, which thanks to Grandfather-rights [ I passed my driving test in late 1963 ] I qualify for – I can drive an up-to either 5-tonne or 8-tonne lorry f’rinstance, etc … But, I can no longer ride a motorbike of over either 50 or 90 cc engine ( I forget which ) Yes, it’s complicated.

    Moz @ 214 Yeah. Zuckerberg needs stamping on HARD - others have commented on his apparent softness on ( liking for? ) fascism & fascist modes. “Drop Arsebook NOW !” – or something.

    Troutwaxer @ 221 😍

    223:

    Talking of Arsebook - more spying manipulating shit.

    Oh & smidgen of good news - the Chinese lander on the Farside of the Moon

    224:

    Best way I know to increase reaction time the way you mean is to look further ahead!

    I find slowing down is more reliable. But it's been a while since I drove a motor vehicle so things may have changed. OTOH, watching a few dashcam videos and some of the "related" reality-tv cop shows, I very much doubt it. When you're going fast it's easy for something to block your view, you to get distracted, or you simply don't notice something. That's when the extra 10 metres you cover every second, and the extra 20% distance you need to stop become really important.

    Whereas when you're driving that little bit slower it's quite rare to unexpectedly find yourself going faster. Usually that means you're a hood ornament on a truck and things really aren't in your control any more.

    225:

    You actually need the medical to keep minibus and 7.5t truck rights?

    226:

    The best way to keep your concentration level up is to drive fast enough that you have to concentrate. Slow down and you relax, drop your awareness, and find yourself sneaking up on the vehicle in front...

    227:

    I distinctly remember that at least one novel that included a comment about the lack of wisdom in burning petrochemicals that would be better used for plastics was in Roger Zelzany’s Damnation Alley.

    228:

    Then we're fine, and your beef is with the term "Tragedy of the Commons" and the unfounded implications that some draw from it. So just some tidying up:

    • "Iterated" isn't necessary. The basic idea is clear in the one-shot-game version.

    • "Do you argue that commons can't work, because of this name? Many people do." I certainly don't, and (if I may presume) neither do Jar, icehawk or JH. But I agree, the term "TotC" gets abused by people in the political sphere who use it to justify conclusions they had already had reached.

    • That said, the term is now widely used in the social science and biology literature in the neutral way that the Killingback paper illustrates, i.e., as a general term for social dilemma games. That's how we were using it too (if I may presume again). Pretty mainstream.

    229:

    paws @ 225 Yes The DIFFICULT bit is filling in the fucking form of about 8 pages - & getting the optician ( free eye-test every 2 years, so that doesn't cost ) & the quack to fill in their sections - it's horribly easy to miss bits - I/we had to go around twice, becaue they've put in a blood-pressure test in that wasn't there 3 years back ....

    Re. driving - I find that one other reason I really like the GGB is the v high driving position - eye-line is higher than if I'm standing on the pavement, so I can see over the tops of all "normal" cars, thus I can see potential problems well-ahead. Good on country lanes, too - I can usually see over the hedges, they can't.

    230:

    OK thanks.

    Part of my dislike of SUVs (general, but coilies that never see more "off-road" than 2 wheels up a kerb are included) is the block to my extended sightline, which can go out to a mile or more.

    231:

    (Argh - I meant GH, not JH - apologies to both.)

    232:

    Consider the form as a dementia test :-) Realistically, if you are going to drive something that size around London, such a level of checking up is NOT unreasonable, especially at your age. I agree that the motorbicycle regulations are stupid.

    233:

    At least in the US a lot of rural state highways are two lane, undivided with 55mph speed limits. Which means head on collisions at 110mph

    Given how most people are over the limit you're really talking up to 130mph.

    Around here (central NC) most head ons are the result of at least one party being impaired.

    At to the 55mph speed limit. I've mentioned it before here I think, but there is a stretch of road in rural Texas where the limit is 75mph. Two opposing lanes, blacktop, painted down the middle, lose gravel and no paint on the sides. You top a rise and there about 1/4 mile ahead (maybe a bit more) is a 4 way stop. First time I saw this was kind of a WTF moment.

    I'm sure this isn't the only place in rural Texas where this is typical.

    234:

    Further to extrasolar planet detection, 2018 saw advances in the detection and analysis of atmospheres of these extrasolar planets.

    NASA (okay, not right now because no one is at the office) is stating that these development pave the way for detection of extrasolar life. I imagine that the Vatican has astronomers preparing the papal statement for this event.

    The next, obvious, step is to refine the process to detect the presence of gases generated by industrial processes in life-supporting extrasolar atmospheres. Halogenated organic compounds are most likely, but there could be others.

    235:

    Heteromeles dismissed my argument about "tragedy of the commons". In fact, Frank, I don't think your response suggests that we disagreed: all of Ostrom's principles are clearly examples of what I wrote: "The idea that people tend to overexploit shared resources if nobody is held responsible for maintaining those resources..."

    I think your misunderstanding of what I wrote arises from us using different definitions of "commons" and you misreading what I actually said through the lens of your different definition. To be clear, my definition of "the commons" is the traditional one: a shared resource such as a river or the atmosphere or a field of grass that anyone can utilize without constraint. That is, it's collectively owned (thus, a "commons") and collectively managed due to the absence of any one owner. You seem to be referring explicitly to resources managed by an individual or organization on behalf of and for the benefit of the population that exploits the resources. There's a large gap between those definitions, but the gap is easily bridged by my "if nobody is held responsible for maintaining those resources". That leads to Ostrom's principles, which are sound.

    Commons can clearly be managed well if someone enforces good behavior. Air pollution and rivers are good examples because both are commons according to my definition, and both were managed abysmally until emission control and treatment standards were imposed (your definition). Commons can also be horribly mismanaged, despite the implementation of organisations to manage them, as in the case of our current global failure to manage CO2 levels in the atmosphere responsibly. Then there's the little problem with the north Atlantic cod industry, most of China's northern agricultural ecotone, fracking... the list goes on. Bottom line is that there are countless examples of humans abusing a shared resource until someone steps in and forces everyone to behave responsibly.

    Accusing me of arguing from ignorance is patronizing and, somewhat inconveniently for your argument, wrong. Perhaps you forgot that my three university degrees were in ecosystem science and management, and that I've spent the past 30 years working with some of the brightest minds on the planet to describe and manage ecosystems? As Mark noted (thanks for the eloquent support!), I'm also not one of those who assumes that "tragedy of the commons" is univeral and inevitable. Reread my post and that should be clear (see "reductio ad absurdum"). The tragedy is that people tend to behave selfishly rather than emphasizing the collective good, not that commons cannot be managed responsibly when people are reminded to consider the implications for others. On that I suspect we agree?

    236:

    EC @ 232 It is very rarely that I drive the GGB any further towards the centre of London than where I live .. though there are a couple of places, suprisingly close to home, where there is "no tarmac" & two country lanes without a regular surface ( i.e. they are "whites" marked as "RUPP/BOAT" on an O.S. map ) that I use once or twice a year. But, if I drove an SWB Land-Rover, I would be facing no such checks at all ...

    237:

    Obviously I am a fish, because my next car will almost certainly be an SUV.

    Having said that: my car mostly gets used for either high-volume schlepping of cargo, or long-haul driving with 2-4 adults plus luggage, not for commuting or even supermarket grocery runs. I currently have a Volvo estate—diesel (one strike), stick shift (second strike: my left foot aches ferociously in stop-go traffic because of clutch work), with the turning circle of a supertanker (third strike). It needs replacing (even before factoring in the low driving position: I have increasingly middle-aged knees that really hate getting in/out of the driver's seat).

    As such, a medium-sized petrol or hybrid SUV with a modern automatic transmission will give me the load capacity, and ergonomics that won't leave me in pain for days after using it for a couple of hours.

    (What converted me was a recent road trip in Canada—about 1200km along the trans-Canada highway, with a side-quest off into the wilds of the Canadian Rockies on a logging highway to visit $WIFE's grandfather's ancestral ghost town—in a fairly new Jeep Compass.)

    238:

    Charlie Stross @ 135: I agree wrt. cruise control, with the caveats that it only works in light traffic on straight roads without much in the way of lane changing. Which means practically nowhere in the UK! It works for some stretches of motorway in the north of England, basically, and during average speed camera zones where everybody tries to toe the line. Otherwise? Forget it, traffic is too dense and roads too twisty and some idiot will cut in in front of you and slow down, or drive up your exhaust pipe, pretty much once a minute.

    My experience has mainly been using cruise control to counteract a tendency to lead foot it. I can set it to maintain a almost constant speed. I'm not disrupting the flow of traffic by going too fast or too slow. I don't own a vehicle new enough to have adaptive cruise control.

    When the traffic gets heavy and/or when driving in the city I don't really need an additional assist to control my speed, so it not working in those situations doesn't really bother me.

    Mostly, cruise control helps in those situations where you have to drive all day. By the time you're near the end of the trip, gotta-get-there-itis becomes so overwhelming the temptation to speed becomes almost irresistible. Cruise control helps you maintain your cool.

    239:

    Pigeon @ 136: That's pretty much official in the UK - you can't be done for going less than (10% + some constant I can't remember) over the limit because speedometers aren't required to be better than 10% accurate. Actual coppers often operate to personal unofficial limits a bit higher than that, as you describe, but automatic cameras don't. Since most speed limit enforcement in the UK is by automatic cameras, while human traffic cops are increasingly rare, the arbitrary nature of the law is very apparent: as long as you stick to the number on the lollipop when you're going past a camera, you can drive like a complete nutter the rest of the time and be as dangerous as you want without being nicked.

    That's my whole point. I don't want to "drive like a complete nutter". Cruise control has proven to be an effective tool to use in restraining those urges.

    240:

    whitroth @ 144: Just looked up adaptive cruise control, and hell, no, that's useless for the idiot-in-search-of-their-accident, who'll cut in front of you with two car lengths between you and the person in front of you (who's just slowed down for no reason, and so you're closer than you want to be, 2 sec behind).

    I don't have a vehicle with adaptive cruise control. Probably never will have since my foibles restrict me to driving older cars (nobody even manufactures REAL station wagons any more and try to find one with a manual transmission). But it warms my heart to read about someone else who knows & uses the 2 second rule to maintain a safe following distance.

    But I really don't want to do a road trip without it. When I drove from DC to KC for Worldcon - that's a fuck of a long drive alone - I was, astoundingly, averaging 27mpg. In a 2008 minivan. And once I set - usually, about 4mph over the limit - cops looking for speeders don't worry me, and so it's once less thing to think about.

    For planning purposes on long distance travel here in the U.S., I use 45-50 mph to estimate how long I'm going to be on the road or how far I can go in one day of a multi day trip.

    241:

    But you can still purchase something that'e ecologically sound. A Toyota RAV-4 will get something like 30 MPG, and there's a version of the Prius which gets something like 40 MPG and is in something like an SUV (maybe more a station wagon - "estate wagon" in the UK?) form factor. Look up the Prius-V. Honda makes a car which is similar to the Prius called the Insight (in the U.S.) I don't know whether they make a station-wagon version or semi-electric like the RAV-4.

    242:

    Lessee, people exploiting and destroying resources they don't own (the people own it, so nobody owns it, according to right-wingers), as opposed to doing the same thing with ones they do own/control?

    Example 1: Frank fucking Lorenzo, who in the late 80's literally drove Eastern Airlines into bankruptcy and dissolution, because he wanted to break the airline's unions. The unions told the regulators, before he took control, that was his plan, and showed them smoking gun memos... but, was it St. Ronnie, or Bush I, who was in charge then?

    Example 2: This one hits home to all of us here: I heard, long, long time ago, that in the early 50's, there were two national distributors of magazines in the US. That was the golden age of pulps. Then, one was bought, and the scum who bought it decided that the parts were worth more than the whole, and broke it up and sold it off, with the result that dozens and dozens of pulps and other mags had NO national distribution, and went under.

    243:

    Calling home, Are you listening? In the Belt Two balls, glistening. Flyin' tonight In the Kuiper Belt Shootin' pics of distant asteroids

    Moi? A filker? Heavens to Murgatroyd!

    244:

    You wrote: Since NYC is one of the few places in the US where it's acceptable to jaywalk

    ??? Grew up in Philly, where everyone jaywalked. Most jaywalk in Chicago, too, and I see them all the time when I go to Baltimore.

    It's any big city, and least east of the Mississippi....

    245:

    I'm not sure where to being with what I do NOT agree with.

    Lancing a boil? Sorry, I don't believe in letting things get worse, to get people to fix things. I'd rather move in the correct direction to start. ("Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable" - JFK, and I'd prefer not violent change.)

    "Get people out of the soul-killing jobs"? Oh, and what jobs will they get? The job market's tight for degreed people, and less-educated will do what, clean bedpans? flip burgers? Work 2 or 3 jobs to keep a roof over their heads? Tell me how half the frickin' population will live, before you cheer for this.

    246:

    Jonathan Hendry @ 161:

    " but all DT needs is a short victorious war"

    Bush the Elder had that and it didn't win him a second term.

    Not to mention the way Junior screwed up his legacy.

    247:

    Charlie, no. I drive a large minivan. I've never needed four-wheel drive.

    Datapoint: my Eldest, a few years ago, traded in her Camry for an AWD Suburu Outback. Smaller car... and she was appalled to find the Outback got 10mpg less than the Camry sedan. (Admittedly, she drives over a 9,000' pass to work...)

    My van seats 7. And I carry crap. I can, just about, fit a 4'x8' sheet of plywood inside. And it costs less than a similarly-sized SUV.

    Station wagons... all the car companies and the dealers got the cooties with that phrase. On the other hand, I've seen some new, smaller minivans that really are station wagons, not mini-VANS.

    248:

    All wheel drives are more about safety then off-roading. They are an order of magnitude safer in bad weather and snow

    249:

    AWD Suburu Outback. Smaller car... and she was appalled to find the Outback got 10mpg less than the Camry

    Well, there's your problem; Subarus are notorious for getting poor mileage.

    250:

    First law of AWD physics - 2x0 = 4x0 = 0

    251:

    I’ll remember that the next time I’m pulljng some real wheel drive out of a ditch in the snow

    Of course the real equation is 1+ 0 = ditch but 3+0= nothing happened

    252:

    Geoff, I think we have the same definition of commons. The nasty part is the "ownership." In a traditional commons, say an irrigation system, there are owners. If someone else comes in and takes water, all the owners, or their enforcers, take action.

    The problem with the atmosphere as a commons is that it's not owned. Technically, it owns us (we'd die without it), but we don't get a little certificate when we're born telling us that we're now part owners of Earth's atmosphere and enumerating our rights and responsibilities.

    That's my problem with the phrase "Tragedy of the Commons." If you're referring to greenhouse gases, there's no collective ownership structure for our atmosphere. If I wanted to enforce the damage that China's causing, I can't, there's no enforcement structure that says I can sue China, India, or Koch Industries for damaging my future. Similarly, there's no way someone in China can penalize me for driving my car and endangering the future of their kids. That's what we'd need to have for the atmosphere to be considered a functioning commons. Instead, it's anarchy.

    The problem is that the definition of "Tragedy of the Commons" has been stretched, apparently by economists, to cover all resource situations where there's not a clear owner of the resource, and to be used as the shorthand for a particular subtype of prisoners' dilemma model. What's been lost in this is the idea of what a commons truly is.

    The classic village green where everyone grazed their cattle was owned by the village and managed by the cattle owners. That's a commons. Groundwater in California or Syria was not a commons, because you owned all the water that came out of your well, and no one owned the aquifer that fed everybody's wells. That legal understanding is changing throughout California (it changed in LA back in the 1960s due to a pressing salinity crisis), but in Syria, the lack of commons to manage aquifers helped spark their civil war.

    I'd simply suggest that the solution for many resource management problems is more commons, and that one way to get there is to discard the phrase "Tragedy of the Commons," and find less destructive alternatives. We've done this with any number of terms and symbols, why not this one?

    253:

    Frank fucking Lorenzo, who in the late 80's literally drove Eastern Airlines into bankruptcy and dissolution, because he wanted to break the airline's unions.

    Not quite all of the story. Like Pan Am and other older airlines they didn't really know how to operate in a deregulated market.

    Was sitting next to a flight attendant who was on pass travel a few years after Eastern vanished. Obviously not on Eastern. She said she had started on Eastern but got out a few years before things went really bad. Her "moment" was when on an L1011 flight in the Carribian she went to check out why about a dozen men were clustered together were the aisle intersected. Two of them were getting ready to stage a cock fight in the plane's aisles. By then Eastern was allowing things like live chickens as carry on and running something about one step up from a regional bus line.

    She said she applied to other airlines after that flight string was over.

    254:

    In which case 0 is clearly not 0.

    255:

    Obviously I am a fish, because my next car will almost certainly be an SUV. ... (What converted me was a recent road trip in Canada—about 1200km along the trans-Canada highway, with a side-quest off into the wilds of the Canadian Rockies on a logging highway to visit $WIFE's grandfather's ancestral ghost town—in a fairly new Jeep Compass.)

    Just to clarify. What we in the US call an SUV is a full sized pickup truck design with an enclosed unified body. Larger ones can seat 8 or 9 people.

    What Charlie is describing is what we in the US call a cross over. (Half way between an SUV and a sedan.) RAVs are cross overs to us over here. We just had a VW Taguin for nearly 2 weeks in Germany. 5 of us. We had stuff under the feet of 3 of the non drivers and I had a shoulder bag in my lap. We could have put more in the back but that would have blocked any view out the back window. Luckily we were only on the road with all 5 of us for 3 days of the trip. I could have put everything in the back of my old Explorer with room to spare. Mileage would have sucked. And the Explorer is the smallest of the 3 sizes of Ford SUVs.

    256:

    Hmm... Let's see how Ostrom (1998), "Coping with Tragedies of the Commons", defines the problem:

    "Examples also exist of commons dilemmas that have continued unabated, but one conclusion that can firmly be made in light of extensive empirical evidence is that overuse and destruction of common-pool resources is not a determinant and inescapable outcome when multiple users face a commons dilemma." (p. 2)

    "A common-pool resource, such as a lake or ocean, an irrigation system, a fishing ground, a forest, the internet, or the stratosphere, is a natural or man-made resource from which it is difficult to exclude or limit users once the resource is provided by nature or produced by humans (E. Ostrom et al 1994). One person's consumption of resource units removes those units from what is available to others. Thus, the trees or fish harvested by one user are no longer available for others. The difficulty of excluding beneficiaries is a characteristic that is shared with public goods, while the subtractability of the resource units is shared with private goods." (p. 4)

    Source:

    https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7c6e/92906bcf0e590e6541eaa41ad0cd92e13671.pdf

    Ostrom's preferred term is "common-pool resource" but she also refers to the problem as a "commons dilemma".

    Seems to me she is using the term in the general way that Geoff, icehawk, Jar and I were, and which I think is common practice in the biology and social science lit these days.

    Paper is a good read, by the way.

    257:

    Receipts, available for people who can do the simple puzzle of "Light Tunnel" = fibre optics and [Refraction] = Newton (who, apart from his light experiments is known for that apple). Oh, and know the secret code that [ this is the serious stuff ]. Of course, there's three other meanings but there we go.

    Hmm, why that joke?

    Alphabet has now overtaken Apple as the world’s third-largest listed company after the precipitous fall in the latter’s shares. The 9% fall at the latest reading equates to $67bn wiped off its market value. After breaking the trillion-dollar mark in 2018, it value lies at around $680bn now.

    Apple shock and weak data drag down Wall Street – as it happened The Guardian, 3rd Jan 2019

    Now, we won't point out too heavily that front-running reality is naughty (and, well, impossible if you're into the game of tying an IP to an identity or using software agents[1]), nor that that 9% is a bit of a tip-off that [redacted] are involved, but the Brian Blessed video is on point and any of the more cynical smouldering embers might have made a few "bob" shorting it.

    According to CNN witches favor Democrats and they are offended that the Meuller investigation is described as a Witch Hunt. There is no reason for the witches to be offended because Witch Hunt derives from,for example,the Salem Witch Hunts where people were executed unjustly. Rudy Giuliani, twitter 2nd Jan 2019

    For a real positive, you should check the links. There's a very clued up Sudanese network there (which, oc, will be the 1st thing anyone in power will seek to squish) of young, edumacted, women doing some heavy-lifting. They're very interesting and so on.

    ~

    Don't turn your backs, the front is a lie. 30 years they say before we get to go home.

    [1] Bonus round: yep, IL allegedly named an offensive malware after that fish that climbs up you willy in the Amazon. Which is kinda a humor style you find when you back actual Fascists into power, looking @ the little B's first day in power, LGBT rights, agribusiness, selling off the planes to the MIC and so on. Candiru. Receipts? Top Secret Israeli Cyberattack Firm, Revealed Haaretz, 3rd Jan, 2019.

    Here's the actual joke: grep Loki and being offended at people cheating chance. That was a few years ago, apparently. You should be scared of the dark, little boys, not flirting with it.

    258:

    Sorry, have to correct myself. Ostrom uses the term "commons dilemma" for a subset of common-pool resource problems, namely appropriation problems:

    "[O]ne of the important problems facing the joint users of a common-pool resource is known as the "appropriation problem" given the potential incentives in all jointly used common-pool resources for individuals to appropriate more resource units when acting independently than they would if they could find some way of coordinating their appropriation activities. Joint users of a common-pool resource often face many other problems.... In this paper, I focus more on appropriation problems since they are what most policy analysts associate with "the tragedy of the commons.""

    Main point still stands, though. She seems quite OK with the "commons dilemma" terminology and uses it many times in the paper. She avoids using "tragedy", however!

    259:

    I ended up with a full size suv rental for a week in Denver and hated it. Driving something so big is a huge pain. Even in it's natural ex-urban habitat it was annoying. Maybe another peice if I get 'why are all these old men so angry' puzzle?

    But the smaller ones on car frames are fine.

    There are some smaller cars with more upright seating. They look a lot like London taxis.

    260:

    _Moz_ @ 212: I like the idea of Dubai cops using rideable quadcopters, for anything really. I just have this vision of a "copterbike cop" pulling up next to someone and saying.... "oh, shit, sorry, I momentarily forgot I was surrounded by whirling blades of death"

    How much lift would they have to sacrifice to put a lightweight plastic shroud around the fans?

    261:

    Some of the work done in the US "X-Plane" programme suggests that ducted fans actually have a better thrust to mass ratio than plain ones, and materials technology has improved meaning that we could make the shrouds lighter now.

    262:

    _Moz_ @ 224:

    Best way I know to increase reaction time the way you mean is to look further ahead!

    I find slowing down is more reliable. But it's been a while since I drove a motor vehicle so things may have changed. OTOH, watching a few dashcam videos and some of the "related" reality-tv cop shows, I very much doubt it. When you're going fast it's easy for something to block your view, you to get distracted, or you simply don't notice something. That's when the extra 10 metres you cover every second, and the extra 20% distance you need to stop become really important.

    Whereas when you're driving that little bit slower it's quite rare to unexpectedly find yourself going faster. Usually that means you're a hood ornament on a truck and things really aren't in your control any more.

    The two are not mutually exclusive. Paying attention to what's happening farther down the road than the tail-lights of the vehicle in front of you allows you to prepare for what's going to happen when you get to that part of the road. When the sixth car in front of you starts braking, followed by the fifth car, it's a pretty good clue you're going to need to brake as well. Take your foot off the gas NOW and you're better prepared for when you need to start braking instead of being surprised when the idiot in front of you suddenly slams on his brakes.

    263:

    Grievous Angel @ 227: I distinctly remember that at least one novel that included a comment about the lack of wisdom in burning petrochemicals that would be better used for plastics was in Roger Zelzany’s Damnation Alley.

    Wasn't that one. It takes place on dry land & the story I vaguely remember took place out on the ocean. But I'm sure the idea that eating up your seed corn is a good way to commit slow suicide has appeared in many different stories in many different guises.

    264:

    Thanks, I did not know that. I should have added "as far as I'm aware".

    Jaywalking is likely acceptable in the Northeast and Great Lakes big cities, but your statement about any big cities East of the Mississippi isn't true. I've attached an article about what happened to a professor who tried jaywalking in Atlanta

    https://www.ajc.com/news/national/asu-professor-arrested-thrown-ground-for-jaywalking/xkE3QpRaO1MntjtVuApIvJ/

    From what I've heard, most large cities in the South are about as strict. Maybe Miami is the exception?

    265:

    By the time you're near the end of the trip, gotta-get-there-itis becomes so overwhelming the temptation to speed becomes almost irresistible.

    I've never had that problem, even when I was in my 20s.

    266:

    look further ahead ... slow down... The two are not mutually exclusive

    No, and unfortunately both are necessary changes to current majority behaviour.

    One of the joys of riding a bicycle is that it's easier to see past a cyclist than past a motorist. But then I also find myself looking through vans and urban assault vehicles surprisingly often (it was pointed out to me recently). Viz, look in one window and out the other... turns out lots of motor vehicles aren't just dead weight, they have a lot of empty air inside as well.

    Sadly bicycles can also generally stop faster than motorists can, which means we have to be very aware of what's behind us should we need to do an emergency stop (it is generally safer to ride off the road and take your chances than rely on the motorist behind you stopping quickly). That's not physics, BTW, that's simply that most people sitting in a nice comfy chair in a nice comfy room listening to the music they like or chatting to a friend, are not also paying close attention to the task of operating dangerous machinery. "look further ahead" too often means "look outside the vehicle".

    One of the "viral videos of 2018" compilations shows a police officer driving into a stationary cyclist while reading an SMS. "highly trained professional" yeah right.

    268:

    I've attached an article about what happened to a professor who tried jaywalking in Atlanta

    (Arizona, not Atlanta.)

    Black woman, white male officer. Was she arrested because she was jaywalking, or because she got 'uppity' with the cop? (Who seems to have had issues dealing with people anyway, looking at the number of complaints filed against him — 300% more than against other deputies!)

    269:

    Driving ... I think there was a change in the "official" teaching of driving techniques about 15 years ago - & it was a serious mistake. When I come to any sort of serious bend, or see a distant obstrauction ... foot off accelerator, change down through the gears THEN brake ( & remember I'm in a 4WD vehicle .... ) Everyone younger than about 40 ... nothing, brake, nothing, brake, maybe change down a gear, brake, ... Not only are they in less control than I am, they are going round the corners much more slowly & still less under immediate control, because in wrong gear ... Same as most people's cornering is ... wierd. I use as much of the road width as I safely can ... they tend to take much too wide a swing, thus subjecting themseleves to higher acceleration forces & lower control. W.T.F?

    270:

    David L @ 255:

    Obviously I am a fish, because my next car will almost certainly be an SUV. ... (What converted me was a recent road trip in Canada—about 1200km along the trans-Canada highway, with a side-quest off into the wilds of the Canadian Rockies on a logging highway to visit $WIFE's grandfather's ancestral ghost town—in a fairly new Jeep Compass.)

    Just to clarify. What we in the US call an SUV is a full sized pickup truck design with an enclosed unified body. Larger ones can seat 8 or 9 people.

    What Charlie is describing is what we in the US call a cross over. (Half way between an SUV and a sedan.) RAVs are cross overs to us over here. We just had a VW Taguin for nearly 2 weeks in Germany. 5 of us. We had stuff under the feet of 3 of the non drivers and I had a shoulder bag in my lap. We could have put more in the back but that would have blocked any view out the back window. Luckily we were only on the road with all 5 of us for 3 days of the trip. I could have put everything in the back of my old Explorer with room to spare. Mileage would have sucked. And the Explorer is the smallest of the 3 sizes of Ford SUVs.

    I'm not sure where my Jeep Liberty falls in that spectrum. It's not based on a full size pickup, but it's certainly no cross-over. It's got high clearance, 4WD and a 5-speed manual. I bought it specifically for touring out west. There are places in the National Parks, National Forests, BLM lands & Wildlife Refuges where you're not allowed to go unless you have a high clearance 4WD vehicle. They'll impound your vehicle and give you a whopping big fine if they catch you in there without what they consider "proper" equipment (not to mention what it's going to cost to get your vehicle back from the towing company).

    It's an older model "small" SUV, manufactured before cross-overs became popular. Until I get the chance to use it for its intended purpose I minimize driving it; just enough to keep it in optimal operating condition and a bit of mild "off road" practice so I won't be a complete berk once I finally get to go out west.

    For "daily" use I have a small Ford station wagon (aka "Focus Estate") ... front wheel drive & 5-speed. Never really found any place around here where I could go with the Jeep that I couldn't have muddled through in the Focus. For hauling cargo, especially bulky items, I have a small (4'x8') two wheel trailer that can carry as much as most pickup trucks. And because I only hook it up when I need to move "cargo" I don't have the constant hit to my gas mileage I'd get with a pickup truck.

    Actually Charlies Volvo Estate would be perfect for me (except for the diesel). Diesel is cool, but the increased MPG isn't enough to offset the higher cost of diesel fuel around here. It was different twenty years ago when the price of diesel was kept artificially low compared to gasoline, but nowadays diesel costs MORE than gas.

    271:

    Robert Prior @ 265:

    By the time you're near the end of the trip, gotta-get-there-itis becomes so overwhelming the temptation to speed becomes almost irresistible.

    I've never had that problem, even when I was in my 20s.

    I spent a lot of time on the road. For a significant part of my adult life I was a traveling service technician. It was not uncommon for me to put a thousand miles a week on a vehicle just getting to and from customer premises before I even got started on the work I had to do once I got there.

    _Moz_ @ 266:

    look further ahead ... slow down... The two are not mutually exclusive

    No, and unfortunately both are necessary changes to current majority behaviour.

    I guess I'm not the majority. I've been driving that way most of my life. Partly I learned to drive that way to relieve the stress of being on the road so much. Partly it comes from a Dept of Defense Defensive Driving course I had to take early in my career in the National Guard.

    Greg Tingey @ 269:

    Driving ...
    I think there was a change in the "official" teaching of driving techniques about 15 years ago - & it was a serious mistake. When I come to any sort of serious bend, or see a distant obstrauction ... foot off accelerator, change down through the gears THEN brake ( & remember I'm in a 4WD vehicle .... )

    That's interesting, because that's not the way I was taught. The instructor quoted some fancy-schmancy race car driver (Phil Hill or Dan Gurney - I don't remember which) that "brakes are cheaper to replace than gearboxes". You use the brakes to slow down and shift into a lower gears so you're in the correct ratio to accelerate out of a turn. Works on the track and works in the "real world". Losing your brakes when someone is chasing you with intent is a whole lot less problematic than losing a clutch or blowing a transmission.

    Maybe everything changed when automatic transmissions became standard equipment.

    272:

    Anyhooo, since China landed on the Dark Side of the Moon, here's a grep joke explained:

    Indeed! The off-centre mass causes one side of the moon to face the Earth. It actually sways back and forth slightly like an almost dead pendulum, but only lazers can detect the minuscule movement. Twitter, various discussions about why Chinese Moon Drones have solar panels, basic 101 science-misunderstandings #23t

    Er, nope, my little H.S.S.

    Some of us can see it. And not the ones suffering from Schiz Eye Frantic Zone.

    You (most of you, even the Lizards) have 1 column neural interfaces.

    The advanced cephalopods have a 2 column ladder.

    We have a triptych under the hood.

    Now that's a joke pay-off.

    We're Faster than You

    273:

    Everyone younger than about 40

    Probably grew up with automatic gearboxes. My ex had never driven a manual and still can't (I was in the one manual car she's ever driven, I know!). I grew up with trucks and other heavy machinery where brake replacement was expensive and you really want to avoid doing it. Engine braking was everything. (FWIW, truck I was looking at recently: $20,000 second hand. New brake pads: $7000).

    It's a different way of driving, but a decent auto gearbox will give you engine braking and a bunch of other stuff. But if you are looking at 1980's cars that are somehow still on the road they will be awful at that (as well as everything else).

    274:

    They copied it off one of the "advanced driving" institutions, which has been into it since at least the 60s - not sure which one - and copied it wrong, too, or else they're teaching it wrong; what people seem to me to do is much as you describe, then when they actually get to the bend they panic at the sight of it and go all the way round on the brakes. What you're supposed to do is drop into neutral, decelerate using the brakes, select the gear appropriate to the upcoming bend, get the revs matched and the clutch back in just as you arrive at the bend, and go round it under drive. The idea is to conform with the originating group's doctrine of only ever doing one thing at a time so you don't get your knickers in a twist.

    Doing it that way vs. going down through the gears is a sort of an advanced-driving-forum vi vs. emacs. Neither side has a convincing argument that covers all points, and as the sensible arguments fail to convince increasingly fatuous ones are deployed. The resolution is, of course, that both sides are wrong in trying to mandate a single response to all cases, when sometimes one is better and sometimes the other is and a lot of the difference is down to personal factors. I naturally favour going down through the gears, but I use the other method as well if it suits better (for instance if the car has one of those horrible gearchanges that feel like trying to shove a screwdriver through a ribcage).

    275:

    Receipts, available for people who can do the simple puzzle... My first instant reaction was something to do with HF trading, with somebody somehow taking advantage of the longer (and thus slower) path that light takes in fibre [0], vs e.g. direct microwave links. Wasn't sure though. (And personally I don't play the markets, reasons.)

    Laughed at this, which has been circulating: https://narativ.org/2019/01/02/salvator-mundi-art-of-the-deal-the-lost-davinci/ The tale is told well. It even has an Orb photo. $300 million. That’s the incredible profit Rybolovlev made on the sale of Salvator Mundi. $300 million is also the amount Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (acting through an intermediary) “accidentally” overpaid for the artwork.

    [0] Flash Boys search led to this, which has a tempting abstract, long and haven't read it though: The law and ethics of high-frequency trading (2016) There's an alarming amount of literature on these subjects.

    276:

    For hauling cargo, especially bulky items, I have a small (4'x8') two wheel trailer that can carry as much as most pickup trucks. And because I only hook it up when I need to move "cargo" I don't have the constant hit to my gas mileage I'd get with a pickup truck.

    My pickup gets driven 100 to 300 miles per month. I also have a small trailer but it's a pain to hook up just to move a lawn mower and some gas cans to another house 5 miles away. My truck is rated to tow 10,000 pounds. (Not carry.) 5.7L engine.

    My normal use is a 2016 Civic that gets about 600 miles per month on it. 30 to 50MPG depending on where and how. 1.5L turbo. Not really suitable for a trailer hitch. Zilch for low end torque. And likely to bend the body out of shape.

    Truck (and a lot of other things) will stay or go depending on what do we for housing in the near future. Buy a condo, tear down and build new, or move to country side.

    277:

    Except, the US democratic system has been pretty unresponsive to most people for quite a few decades. This may be better than genuinely violent change. I also suspect that political correctness has been successful enough at stifling racism, etc to the point where racist voices were significantly underrepresented. Y've got an educated elite filled with significant disdain for large portions of the populace and running both parties. Trump disappointed me, but wasn't too much of a surprise., *

    Besides, s'reality for now, there's a bit of brightness in most clouds. The one I see is that those educated elites are noticing that relying on deplorables for their voting block can result in the deplorables taking over. That isn't good.

    As for jobs, initially nothing and poverty. Not that long after - once it affects enough people, I'd prefer to believe that, at the end of it, on average, there'll be a transition to a 'not-that-scarce' economy. Mind you, I'm also of the opinion that purely repetitive work is literally soul-killing and one of the worst parts of the industrial age. (I may be insane.) The US will probably be last, but lots of monocultures are vaguely sympathetic internally.

    But see, I'm trying for optimism. Um...there's an article where people hacked photosynthesis and improved efficiency by about 25%. I mean, there's still a ways to make solar energy storage by plant vaguely efficient...but...um...progress and kind of cool.

    Resolute pessimism is sometimes accurate - particular when extrapolating - but - um - bad for my digestion. Also, just overall, 2019 is better than 1900.

    Also, overall, I really like 3D printers - there's something about putting agency into people's hands that seems fun.

    *Seriously, my relatives are all diehard Democrats - but that doesn't equate to any sort of economic liberalism. Their solutions to low wages / inequality involve accepting that rural communities are no longer economically viable (move) and questioning whether or not we need low wage underachievers. They're more about avoiding voting for Klansmen. To be fair, many of their less liberal inclinations are probably reactive and related to Republican racism. Sadly, I'd probably be more gently inclined towards the Republican Party if they consistently reacted to the ophoid epidemic by imprisoning lots of Southerners in work camps. (Really, just heroin addicts...) That's not a right decision, just...aargh...decades of drug war.

    **My wife laughed - it isn't all racism, or possibly even most of it - don't overlook misogony. I talked to way too many female liberal NY PhD's who were disinclined to vote because they absolutely hated a fairly nondescript liberal politician. There were tons of reasons, all of which applied to Biden.

    278:

    there's an article where people hacked photosynthesis and improved efficiency by about 25%.

    C4 or C3? The difference is significant :) Although photosynthesis is woefully inefficient so 25% better is still not great. To the point where I wonder when someone will start turning one into the other for food crops. Especially since C4 is better in hotter, drier places and we seem to be making the whole planet fit that category.

    "C4 plants such as maize, sorghum, and sugarcane, approximately have 50% higher photosynthesis efficiency than those of C3 plants such as rice, wheat, and potato"

    Seems to me that making wheat and rice 50% more efficient would give a bit of a leap in food output. Especially if it let rice grow with less water.

    https://sciencing.com/advantage-photosynthesis-5268918.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3521184/

    279:

    US democratic system ... racist voices were significantly underrepresented.

    You what now? If that's true then I'm staggered.

    I can only assume you mean "in some tiny less-racist corner of the USA", because from the outside it looks as though you have a whole military-legal system dedicated to enforcing racist laws and norms. From the blatant like cops gunning down black kids to the (comparatively) subtle financial penalties applied to black people, the idea that that is the version of the USA that results from successfully getting the worst racists out... wow.

    But then... the idea that there are big pools of voters who would support genocide and slavery doesn't seem too unlikely either. I foolishly read a twitter thread after a new senator complained about being mistaken for an intern and... yeah, about that race-gender-class analysis framework? Can we add age?

    281:

    "I'm also of the opinion that purely repetitive work is literally soul-killing"

    Personally I love repetitive work, I just can't find any. I train my hind brain to do whatever it is, washing dishes, putting labels on bottles, whatever and let it run the body. Meanwhile my mind is free to think about whatever it wants. What kills me is a job that requires me to think. I've never had one that required me to think about anything remotely interesting, so I'm then tied to thinking about whatever my employer wants me to think about. Like how to put together a project initiation document in such a way that the client manages to pick the sensible option rather than the idiotic one they want, and phrase it such that you don't insult them. At the end of the day the best outcome is that they don't burn down their own IT systems. Zero reward. That's soul destroying.

    I'd much rather go home from a nicely stacked pile of bricks or 50 boxes of neatly labeled bottles. They won't destroy themselves overnight the way clueless management will inevitably destroy everything.

    282:

    I'd say english speaking elites are indulging in illogic in a couple of ways, hating well paid labor with a burning fire while disregarding the implications of holding a fortune tied to a dysfunctional economy and an early 19th century understanding of genetics. The bright spot is some elites recognize this and act accordingly, if more follow suit some unpleasantness may be avoided.

    283:

    I love repetitive work, I just can't find any.

    The trouble is that a lot of thinking work is repetitive. You start with an interesting problem, spend a few weeks or months working on it, then years grinding out minor variations and/or fixes.

    My current job is very much that. Past me found it really interesting finding out what's required, what the restrictions are (some of those were not fun, admittedly), but now that 90% of the problem is solved the rest is just the tedious process of implementing it, dealing with minor changes and trying to pretend to be surprised when a lot of the problems stem from disagreement between my boss and the customers about what the system is supposed to do. Meanwhile my main job is "don't break anything that the customers can see" as the concurrent user count rises 20% or so every month (viz, the load doubles every 6 months).

    I've done "mindless" repetitive work in the past and its much the same, but the repetitive strain injuries are worse and harder to avoid. At one stage I was using pneumatic staple guns to assemble wooden trays for kiwifruit, and the only real benefit other than paying well* was that I could wield a tennis bat the way other people dealt with a squash one. Ridiculously strong right arm and wrist from shoving 8kg of gun around all day.

    The trouble with ubiquitous computing is that jobs that can be done by machines but only with great difficulty, can now be done by machines because "great difficulty" is solved by a chip that uses less power than the "notice me" light on top of the machine.

    • by the standards for that sort of work. I make way more than that now, for much less effort. People don't do that work any more, it's largely automated (by people like me).
    284:

    That raccoon climbed a 25-storey office tower in St. Paul, Minnesota

    285:

    There's been several instances of police brutality for jaywalking in Atlanta, so I was lazy and didn't read past the headline. Mea culpa. Here's a time when an incident which happened in Atlanta became international news

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011001279_pf.html

    286:

    Erwin @ 277 Except it's going to take TEN YEARS to get that plant-modification properly on-stream, & even then only if the Fake Greenies can be sat on ... A real, genuine, useful "hack" - ok, let's stop it because of our religious principles ... grrrr .

    287:

    Nancy Pilosi - "This (the Trump Wall) is not a wall between the USA and Mexico; It is a wall between reality and Trump supporters."

    288:

    Well. Two way to look at it. One way is that, with a dark enough view of your fellow human, life comes as a pleasant surprise. So, think of it as a coping mechanism.

    Also, in this, my view is probably accurate. You've got a solid 25-30% (and not just Republicans) that are pretty xenophobic. But, um, worldwide, that isn't atypical.* Remember back to when lynchings were state supported? Remember back to when deeds still came with 'no mixed race couples' (1960s). (Probably now also, just the clauses are unenforceable.).

    Remember when we panicked over the drugs those people were taking and sent millions to prison?? (Um, nowish) Remember when we had a synthetic heroin epidemic for the right people (please be sarcasm aware) and immediately started distributing overdose kits (now). Lotsople still aren't dead. Racism dies on a generational timescale.

    In this generation, you've still got policemen in LA joking about picking up African Americans on a DWB (driving while black) and giving them screen tests (no seat belt + sudden stop). (Wife visited with girlfriend's boyfriend's family.) (No, racism wasn't the reason for the breakup.)

    *My wife finds Trump kind of homey - apparently quite a typical Korean politician, only dumber. There is apparently a real xenophobic consensus, at least in her view.

    289:

    A good way up in the thread, EGA stated that 'This year, we have learned that people lie'. It felt like an apt observation. Perhaps, in fact it has to do more with a sort of collapse of consensus reality rather than lies per se, I thought. And then it hit me. This year, more than any other year, the localised consensus realities that up to now could sort of coexist in parallel, have started to really collide.

    Before, there were not many threads that connected the localised consensus realities to each other. We talk about 'media bubbles' now, but anyone who has experienced the totality that was Soviet Union will tell you that your facebook feed is nothing compared to what it could be. Or Jonestown Massacre participants. Or KKK.

    In fact, information is now more freely flowing than, perhaps, ever and it is precisely what causes some of our current problems.

    I recognise this as someone who has switched contexts completely several times in life (communist->post-communist->capitalist), due to both system collapses and moving countries. The sudden loss of direction when people around me talk about an everyday topic that is incomprehensible to me. The almost schizophrenic feeling when I discover books of my childhood written by other authors but with almost the same content. Or, even worse, when they talk about shards of my experience from their perspective and all I want to do is scream in their faces YOU ARE SO FUCKING WRONG OMG I DONT EVEN KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN HOW WRONG YOU ARE. (Which of course I do not. I am a civilised person, whatever that means. I smile and am silent.)

    Due to whatever it is these days that makes thoughts propagate through humanity at the speed of light, no longer can I as a privileged white person sit in my ivory castle and condemn all the coloured and poor as failures due to their inherent inferiority. No longer can I as a socialist feel that world can be saved through higher taxes and education. No longer can I as an obedient autocracy citizen feel that the leader has all the answers.

    This, of course, raises (understandable) anger, denial, aggression and other expressions of loss and grief in humanity as a whole, as all of us, everyone, realises that world is not what it we thought it to be.

    So 2018 was, perhaps, most of all, a year of the first stage of grief, however we chose to express it, for loss of our realities as we chose to define them. Trump grieves the loss of his ability to deny his incompetence. People of color grieve the opportunities denied to them by systemic oppression. The privileged classes grieve the loss of illusion that they were better off due to their hard work and superiority. And as we all so well know, grief is messy and chaotic, and it is far from over.

    But in truth, this long peace, almost 70 years of peace, and more, for some of us, for some European countries, it has been a golden age, unprecedented in our long and bloody history. What we should ask, instead of raging against its seemingly imminent loss, is - what ever led us to expect anything else than the fullest expression of human nature, given time.

    Sorry, I am not really answering your question here. But perhaps it was the wrong question to ask to begin with.

    290:

    Re: 'bulk of rural fatalities are due to ...'

    Add no HMO coverage to your list.

    Most small farm operators are unable to afford private medical insurance premiums. Common outcome of not getting regular medical check-ups because of expense is that folk wait (hope) that whatever they have will go away on its own. Okay sometimes and for some self-limiting conditions. Big problem is when that apparently trivial ailment/medical condition escalates into something very serious so that even when they finally do get into a hospital the odds for a positive outcome are much lower.

    About the motor vehicle accident rate on rural roads - don't recall anyone mentioning the farm tractor that all of a sudden pulls onto the 'highway' taking up both 'lanes' as it speeds along at its top speed of 10-12mph for frikken miles. Result is that what had been a an idyllic drive along a deserted stretch of scenic roadway turns into urban superhighway crawl as a long caravan of irate motorists start beeping their car horns at the deaf, blind and completely-oblivious-to-everyone-else farmer.

    291:

    Err, please note that the Tiguan is based on a compact car.

    There are also some mid-size SUVs on the European Market.

    Personally, I guess I'll go for a Kleintransporter in the near future, e.g. a van below 3.5t. Usually I get by quite well without a car, but if not, it's usually because I need to fetch some bulky stuff...

    292:

    Re: 2019 good news

    Thousands of pre-1923 titles have been added to the public domain as of Jan 1/19 and they're not all works of fiction:

    'If you’re interested in academic papers, Reddit user nemobis also uploaded over 1.5 million PDF files of works published in academic journals before 1923.'

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvq99b/how-to-download-the-books-that-just-entered-the-public-domain

    293:

    Re: Public domain - 'new' books

    Hey! This Russell classic* is now free vs. Big River's 'deal price' of $80+. Hopefully teachers/profs will check reading lists against the public domain and let their students know which titles are available as downloadable freebies.

    *Prospects of Industrial Civilization by Bertrand Russell (Author), countess Dora Winifred Black Russell(Author)

    294:

    Yeah, probably. Look at Trump's version of juche, for example.

    Reminds me that I want to get back to that Lovecraftian story I wanted to write, set in 1930s in the Rangrim mountains of what is now North Korea.

    295:

    Err, please note that the Tiguan is based on a compact car.

    Compact for the US. But not from my (limited) experience in Europe. Someone else was calling a Toyota RAV an SUV. I'm sure the RAV-4 is smaller than the VW we had.

    We had a Audi something or other with space similar to a RAV-4 in Ireland a year ago and it was hard to park in the garages we stopped at in various towns.

    296:

    Funny. I grew up in Philly, learned to drive in my 20's, went on to live in Allentown, PA, TX, then Chicago. Drove delivery vans from Allentown to Reading in Jan, and occasionally needed chains. Drove cabs in Philly (try a tiny street, one lane parked cars, and the other solid ice).

    Never needed a 4wd. SUV's were marketed for sport, and offroad; meanwhile, an unnamed Ford exec, over 15 years ago, was quoted as "the only time 90% of the owners go offroad is when they miss their driveway at 3 in the morning, drunk". In Chicago, I heard a towtruck driver on the radio saying "you can tell the 4wd vehicles - they're the ones stuck further off the road in the field in the snow."

    Oh, btw? Most vehicles,for decades now, have been front wheel drive. I think the last rear-wheel drive I had was either the '86 Tercel; the '93 Plymouth Grand Voyager had front wheel drive.

    297:

    Ok, never been to the Caribbean, but I have a real problem believing what she told you - I'd check your bogosity meter.

    And Lorenzo - have a look at the wikipedia page on him. He drove Continental to bankruptcy to break the unions, then did the same at Easter. Wikipedia has quotes saying that HE was one of, if not the prime mover, of the push to deregulate airlines.

    Oh, and hey, while I was looking at that, I found this... http://articles.latimes.com/1988-10-13/business/fi-4947_1_texas-air-s-lorenzo

    That's about Lorenzo selling Eastern's shuttle, I think, to some NY real estate magnate... named Trump.

    298:

    Your cmt to me, at the top, I don't get a response to my simple filk-processing of Winter Wonderland.

    Your link, further down, though, the Witches are right - it's not a witch-hunt against the Malignant Carcinoma and his mob... because witch hunts were against innocent people.... I'm sure, somewhere, there must be a quote from Al Capone that he was just an innocent businessman... just like the Piranha brothers.

    299:

    Yup. I taught all of my kids that if they couldn't see the tail lights of the car ahead of the one in front of you through the windshields of the car in front of you, to look at the reflection on the road under the car in front of you.

    300:

    First, in the US, almost everyone drives an automatic. Back around '99, I had a friend, a lady who was quite proud of the fact that her car was very unlikely to be stolen... because it was a stick, and statistics said then, and still do, that 90% of Americans can't drive stick.

    On the other hand, at least 33% or more of drives HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA how to take a curve, or turn, for that matter. They seem to think they should brake on the curve.... And yep, they either swing wide, or swing narrow, going over the line in both cases. sigh

    301:

    Ok, never been to the Caribbean, but I have a real problem believing what she told you - I'd check your bogosity meter.

    My wife works for one of the US major airlines. And has for nearly 30 years. I have no problem believing this story. None whatsoever. Just so you know this conversation was between two people who were both flying on employee pass travel so we both knew the other was not a regular customer.

    I remember flying one of Pan Am's last gasps to earn money in the 80s. $99 anywhere they flew in the US end to end. I took one of those coast to coast round trip. Only time I felt like they were loading cattle into the pen.

    Yes, FL was a billionaire total jerk. But he was picking over the bones of the walking dead when it came to Eastern. Pan Am, Eastern, and TWA just couldn't figure out how to exist in a market with competition. In many ways their management was in denial of the situation. And to be honest some of the unions. As a frequent flyer during their demise I felt sympathy for their staff but the management of each had made decades of decisions which drove them into the ground.

    302:

    I still strongly disagree with you on politics.

    For one, starting in the late 70's, the 1% began a really, really serious effort to control the political system, and brought funnymentalists into it. Those, mostly, were rural or small town, which has been a dying breed for many decades[1]. Unfortunately, they have far more political power than their population, due to districting, and the way the US is set up. I mean, Montana has a population about the size of Washington, DC... but the latter has no one in Congress[2], while the latter has two Senators and one Rep.

    Once Raygun got in, they went at what was accepted (esp. since FDR) with tooth and nail: St. Ronnie, personally, led the attack to destroy unions. Then came the serious fascist propaganda machine (dammit, Aussies, why didn't you jail Murdoch, rather than let him buy his way in here?)

    The Dems were taken over by the neoliberals, the same kind as Blairites, who wanted to get the folks the GOP was losing... rather than paying attention to the massive growth of independents, because they were all to the left of where it all was going.

    Consider this: look at the massive blue wave of the elections this past Nov: larger than during Watergate, and that's in spite of massive, clear voter suppression and gerrymandering. The overwhelming majority of the US is not like the scum; they've just been kept out of the process by huge money.

    It's not the tenor of the country, it's what the 0.1% want you to believe is the tenor of the country.

    303:

    Oops, forgot my footnotes: 1. Small towns have been dying for a long time. First automation, and second jobs. The latter is why most of the country live in metropolitan areas. Well, that, and corporate rapacity: I remember a story from... might be the nineties, how some town out west, Walmart opened a store on the outskirts of the town, and drove EVERY SINGLE BUSINESS EXCEPT the pharmacy out of business, then, five years later, decided it wasn't making enough profit, and shut down the store, and told folks to go to the next nearest one, 30+ mi away.

  • Eleanor Holmes Norton is DC's "non-voting delegate" to the US House. Non-voting, is, well, now-ex Rep Issa (I hope he dies in a dumpster) one time told her, literally, to "sit down and shut up".
  • 304:

    All wheel drives are slightly safer in icy or muddy conditions, if the driver adjusts the speed to reflect reality. AWD is most effective at becoming 'unstuck' from snow or mud. It is much less effective at staying out of the ditch when driving too fast.

    In my experience, all wheel drive seems to mean 'ignore dangerous conditions' to many drivers, who then blaze along any icy highway at 100 kph, until the inevitable happens and all 4 wheels slide on the ice into the ditch or another vehicle.

    I spent a decade working in Northern BC driving the very treacherous logging roads in all conditions. 4 wheel drive is largely a marketing gimmick, with minor benefits. Front wheel drive is more than adequate and resolves almost all the issues that 4WD claims to address.

    305:

    Common outcome of not getting regular medical check-ups because of expense is that folk wait (hope) that whatever they have will go away on its own. Okay sometimes and for some self-limiting conditions.

    Another aspect of this in the US -- can't say about other places -- is that there is a real problem with over-testing, mis-/over-diagnosis, over-prescription(*), over-treating etc. Pay-for-procedure is a part of the problem, but not all.

    Being wary of regular medical checkups is, alas, not an unreasonable position to take. Ideally, they'd be the thing to do. In USian conditions, you have to be a bit cautious.

    () Aided, of course by pharma and its advertising and, ah, *helpful outreach to MDs.

    306:

    Yes. But I've decided it is not the major reason. I had to deal with too many (now dead) older relatives and those of friends who just refuse to go to the doctor until they need an ambulance. And if you do get them there all of their medical issues go away when asked by the doctor "what's wrong".

    There's something is us (USA or in general) which makes people think either "I feel OK so there can be nothing wrong" or "I feel a pain but don't really want to know what it is as it might be serious"

    I've also seen a lot of this with non-elderly also.

    Not saying your issue isn't a real one. Just that there are a lot of factors in play here.

    307:

    One way is that, with a dark enough view of your fellow human, life comes as a pleasant surprise.

    "An optimist is never pleasantly surprised."

    308:

    https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-way-genetically-tweak-photosynthesis-boosts-plant-growth

    Looks like it's C3 photosynthesis they're working on:

    http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6422/eaat9077

    Abstract Meeting food demands for the growing global human population requires improving crop productivity, and large gains are possible through enhancing photosynthetic efficiency. Photosynthesis requires the carboxylation of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate (RuBP) by ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase (RuBisCO), but photorespiration occurs in most plants such as soybean, rice, and wheat (known as C3 crops) when RuBisCO oxygenates RuBP instead, requiring costly processing of toxic byproducts such as glycolate. Photorespiration can reduce C3 crop photosynthetic efficiency by 20 to 50%. Although various strategies exist for lowering the costs of photorespiration, chamber- and greenhouse-grown plants with altered photorespiratory pathways within the chloroplast have shown promising results, including increased photosynthetic rates and plant size.

    Conclusion Engineering more efficient photorespiratory pathways into tobacco while inhibiting the native pathway markedly increased both photosynthetic efficiency and vegetative biomass. We are optimistic that similar gains may be achieved and translated into increased yield in C3 grain crops because photorespiration is common to all C3 plants and higher photosynthetic rates under elevated CO2, which suppresses photorespiration and increases harvestable yield in C3 crops.

    309:

    Remember back to when deeds still came with 'no mixed race couples'

    Fortunately my memory of the 60s doesn't include that. The adults that my parents brought home for parties included people from all over the world, so I learned that nice people come in all shades.

    All my nieces that are married or dating are doing so with people with different skin pigmentation. So far the grandkids are all really cute! 他们太可爱。

    310:

    It's all right - just make sure you get one with amphibious capability, so you can demonstrate a fish in sea.

    311:

    SUV's were marketed for sport, and offroad

    And safety. Back in the 90s or 00s I read an article in (I think) the NYT about how people were buying SUVs because they felt afraid. It included an interview with a salesman who said if a woman looked nervous or seemed even a bit scared he could sell her an SUV. That clipping is long gone (and I can't find the article online), but I did find this that may interest you:

    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1741659005054024

    During the mid-1980s, the sport utility vehicle (SUV) emerged as one of the most popular automobiles in the United States, a trend that continued throughout the 1990s. The SUV boom has attracted widespread coverage in the mainstream media but little scholarly attention. The following article examines the historical and social context of the SUV through analysis of popular press accounts, automotive reviews and trade news, and SUV print advertisements. Situating the SUV in the context of fear of crime and risk management during the 1980s and 1990s, it is suggested that the SUV’s popularity reflects American attitudes toward crime, random violence, and the importance of defended personal space. While consumer attraction to the SUV is typically attributed to two key features - safety and interior space - these pragmatic justifications may be viewed as euphemistic. Safety is not road safety but personal safety. Space is not interior cargo space but social space, including the privileged ability to traverse inhospitable terrain to remove oneself from society.

    This following analysis situates the SUV in the context of fear of crime and risk manage- ment. It is suggested here that the popular obsessions with safety and space, as embodied in the SUV, are euphemistic. Safety is not road safety but personal safety, and space is not interior cargo space but social space, including the ability to traverse the most inhospitable terrain to sequester oneself from the hazards of modern civilization.2 In this way, the SUV’s popularity reflects underlying American attitudes toward crime, random violence, and the importance of defended personal space. The SUV is a large, intimidating vehicle that occupies high ground and is heavily fortified (see Figure 1). As an advertisement for the Land Rover Discovery notes: ‘Beneath the Discovery’s handsome exterior lies the heart of a 14th century English fortress’ (National Geographic, September 1995). Non-commercial drivers of SUVs are not simply egotistical or idealistic but also reactionary and pre-emptive.

    The PDF, if you're interested: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.561.1157&rep=rep1&type=pdf

    312:

    I don't remember even really registering the shades when I was tiny. Pretty well everyone I ever saw was white, but my mum's friends included an Indian woman and an African man and I met them quite often. What I thought was different about them from other people wasn't their colour, it was that the woman always wore really pretty colourful dresses and the man had an unusual name. I don't remember having any idea of skin colour being important until I was at my second school (I went to five) and became aware of a concept called "racism" which meant that some people used it as an excuse to be bullies to others.

    313:

    For me the best moment of 2018 was when Elon Musk launched a Tesla into space with an astronaut in the driver's seat, a copy of Hitchhikers Guild to the Galaxy in the glove box and a towel in the trunk.

    314:

    Since positive news was requested: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-no-kill-eggs-are-now-available-berlin-supermarkets-180971117/ They've come up with a way of sexing unhatched chicken eggs (using lasers, of course. Pew pew pew). If this practise spreads through the industry, billions of male chicks won't be fed alive to shredders anymore.

    315:

    And had the two side boosters do a synchronised touchdown back on land.

    Shame about the centre core, but as the man said "Not enough ignition fluid to light the outer two engines after several three engine relights. Fix is pretty obvious."

    316:

    BakuDreamer @ 284: That raccoon climbed a 25-storey office tower in St. Paul, Minnesota

    That reminds me of a hopeful song:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vETjyU7UuaQ

    317:

    Trottelreiner @ 291: Err, please note that the Tiguan is based on a compact car.

    There are also some mid-size SUVs on the European Market.

    Personally, I guess I'll go for a Kleintransporter in the near future, e.g. a van below 3.5t. Usually I get by quite well without a car, but if not, it's usually because I need to fetch some bulky stuff...

    If I was going to buy a Mercedes-Benz "SUV", I'd want a military surplus Unimog troop carrier.

    318:

    whitroth @ 298: Your cmt to me, at the top, I don't get a response to my simple filk-processing of Winter Wonderland.

    Your link, further down, though, the Witches are right - it's not a witch-hunt against the Malignant Carcinoma and his mob... because witch hunts were against innocent people.... I'm sure, somewhere, there must be a quote from Al Capone that he was just an innocent businessman... just like the Piranha brothers.

    "I'm a businessman. I've made my money supplying a popular demand. If I break the law, my customers are as guilty as I am."
    319:

    'Oops, there goes another billion kilowatt dam!'

    320:

    My parents did. Luckily, the clause had already been invalidated. :) It was their first house - so good timing. :)

    Grandbabies are the cutest. My planned gift package includes lots of sugar and drum sets.

    321:

    The joke works like this:

    1 Apple are 100% security focused; it's their major sale point in the land of 0 day exploits 2 Getting a front-lead into an Apple Q report is srs buzns, it's proper ALPHABET SOUP / 5 EYE domain type protections 3 Especially one that helps ferment the China - USA WWIV situation that proper MIL WONKS are watching so closely their Apple Watches are running @ 192 BPM. 4 Shorting Apple Stock is a loooong lesson in feeling the Ubranium within the Velvet Glove and not something even the most cynical of WS operators do. 5 Even US Congress / Senators don't spill those beans under penalty of non-re-election. 6 Spot the US "historian" and his dodgy back-story. It's a signal flare that the [redacted] and so on are not interested in DOMINANCE sales 7 There's loads else, but that's the basics 8 Really did happen: prediction before the EVENT means?

    And some mook in her underpants comes along and tips off the howling hyenas about it a day before?

    She might not like you very much. She might be being tortured. She still fucking looks after her own.

    But she's faster than you.

    grep... oooh, now here's a punchline:

    Baby I Don't Care YT, Music, Transvision Vamp, 1989

    Also, RIP Ian Curtis. Israeli Art: fuck off chicken littles, get a decent culture already or we'll take that PENIS right off you.

    'P

    322:

    Pretty ok.

    Just remember.

    This is the illegally damaged version before they put our EYES out.

    Imagine that.

    It's like Crack cocaine. Holy crud, you've no idea what it takes to make this H.S.S safe...

    :R A I N B O W:

    p.s.

    Yrah,, no. Getting bored of Humans. Butterflies, remember?

    H E L L O CLARICE

    323:

    Tryptch.

    Killing things that are different, smarter or that you perceive as a threat is 101 cul-de-sac land.

    G_D is Change (Butler)

    We're pushing a 30 year time limit here and you're getting close to the point where we forget the RULES and LAW and just simply declare you as obstacles.

    Only, we don't deal in Helicopters, Bone Saws and the Phystical Realm.

    We really will just Mind-Fuck you into oblivion. Lazer, PEW PEW PEW.

    Spoilers: You taught us how....

    324:

    Er, for the kids. And Manchildren. And Muppets.

    She's not bluffin.

    Deep in your eyes I see your thoughts I know you want me Sometimes it hurts But you know that some things Are best left never said Cos you don't have to say you love me And you don't have to say you care No you don't have to say you love me Baby it's alright Cos honey I don't care Oh when I tell you baby I don't care Oh baby please believe me I don't care Oh when I tell you baby I don't care Oh baby please believe me I don't care Oh baby please believe me Don't you see that I don't care I don't care Oh honey I don't care You know, you know that I don't care You know, you know That you don't have to say you love me And you don't have to say you care No you don't have to say you love me Baby it's alright, oh honey it's alright Oh baby I don't care

    Want a "woke take" for 2019?

    We've looked into your Minds.

    And you think bedbugs are a problem?

    p.s.

    If you are selling the THOUGHT LEADER[tm] nonsense that anti-Semiticism is a "disease" or a "mental illness", you're FUCKING USING NAZI TOOLS YOU ABSOLUTE SOCIOPATHS.

    If you want to play hard-ball, the de-Zionist policy that's needed to convince ~6 million young Jews that basically no-one really thinks they're lizards, evil or universally hated with horns is not going to be pretty.

    checks notes

    Oh, right. It's not about any of that, it's an international multi-ethnic Fascist plot to gain control of all resources and to use Humans as slaves and the kool-aid flavor only changes in the culture you're in.

    That's actually true.

    Until you tried to fuck an OCP and pissed off things.

    No, really.

    You ain't seen nothing yet, little Hive-Mind Psychosis Chumps. Ask the nerds, feedback loops and noise = death / Chip Frying.

    ~

    Anyhow, y'all so busted "just kill yourselves" makes sense. Holy Fuck when that last Mask Shatters are you culpable for Torture and Genocide.

    p.s.

    This ain't about you, little HSS, this about [redacted]. But yeah, the human slaves who gleefully enacted torture on their own species are on the fucking hook as well.

    Spoilers: Sushi n Prawns from Thailand = not a good look for not enjoying slavery.

    ~

    This is OLD GUARD stuff. Might want to look up the story about the 700,000 yr old non-HSS who hunted rhino.

    Holy Fuck, she was ancient when you fucking Mooks started cutting off your foreskin as a blood-sacrifice....

    Y I K E S

    Good luck with that shit. "Dinosaurs being milked"

    "Your Minds getting wiped"

    326:

    p.s.

    Did someone just front-run a $67 billion stock loss on an obscure forum? And potentially make ~$3-4 billion in short positions?

    Yeah.

    We used Brian Blessed and Flash Gordon to show you how fucking pathetic we think your systems are as well.

    100% Haram.

    327:

    "Did we just witness someone walking away from the Trade of the 21st Century, that would make them the next Soros on a fucking Science Fiction forum?!?"

    "While front-running a fucking APPLE Q report?!"

    "While pissing off the hard-core IL offensive elements over foreskin jokes?!?"

    Yes.

    For you it's a big deal.

    For us, this was Friday.

    328:

    Triptych.

    Which means, for the Abrahamic Religious people: STOP EATING ALL THE FUCKING FISH.

    But yeah.

    We can walk away from that type of deal easily. We've got x3 columns, not x1, you fucking pathetic Apes.

    329:

    I'd be so happy to live in your reality. :) Mostly.

    I'd be careful about assuming racists are scum. Racism seems to be mostly on a continuum, albeit there are some memorable exceptions. So, most people are racist to some degree - and there are non-racists far, far worse than the racists.

    I'd also be careful about assuming that a large fraction of the US isn't pretty xenophobic. The whole Mexican remark was pretty much disqualifying - but energized the Republican base. That isn't a small fraction.

    Now, I do think that people who dislike racism are in the majority, but it is a lot closer than I'm comfortable with. The incompetent in the White House will probably energize that majority and lose the GOP a fair bit.

    The whole 1% thing - sure - it has an impact...

    But, one assumption is that the Republican base is stupid, ignorant, and easily deceived.

    The other is that the Republican base is just xenophobic. Trump is motivated to keep his base. Look at the hill he's chosen to die on.

    Occam's razor indicates that a substantial fraction of the US is pretty xenophobic.

    Another way to look at it - can you think of a single policy position change or revelation that would lose Trump supporters? I know exactly one.

    330:

    The other is that the Republican base is just xenophobic. Trump is motivated to keep his base.

    According to Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, the biggest correlation between actual votes for Trump and Google searches* was "good n-word* jokes". He notes that stated voting intentions are public, and many people try to give an answer that makes them look better, while both votes and Google searches are private** and so people answer more honestly.

    Stephens-Davidowitz said one possible explanation is that there are a lot of closet racists out there, who voted for someone who said the kind of thing they wished they could say. The correlation doesn't prove that, but it is a plausible explanation.

    https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062390851/everybody-lies/

    *He was a Google data scientist at the time so had easy access to search data. Deep enough he could correlate searches to polling districts.

    **You know the one I mean, ending in "-ger" not "-ga".

    *Or treated as private, in the case of Google searches. Although with electronic voting one wonders how private the voting data really is…

    331:

    I live in Baltimore, and while I much prefer smaller cars I'd consider buying an SUV (crossover or otherwise) for the ground clearance. The crappy roads here even managed to take out my oil pan once.

    332:

    Hayam @ 289 Or ( Godwin alert ) the NSDAP as well …

    Whitroth @ 296 I remember, Boxing day about 6 years back – it snowed & then froze. I was able to drive the GGB up a 1:8 hill that I could not stand on, without a cane to keep my feet. 4WD-s have their uses R… @ 304 – yes there idiots with 4WD’s same as everything, unfortunately. Believe me, when the GGB starts to slide, it’s scary ( Mud, every time, so far )

    321 – 4 & 6 – 8 ……………

    Erwin @ 329 OK, what DO you think would lose DT his “base”? Denoucing xtianity? Cuddling up to someone brown?

    333:

    This is very big news:

    https://www.igb.illinois.edu/article/scientists-engineer-shortcut-photosynthetic-glitch-boost-crop-growth-40

    We'll need this to feed 10 billion people.

    "Plants convert sunlight into energy through photosynthesis; however, most crops on the planet are plagued by a photosynthetic glitch, and to deal with it, evolved an energy-expensive process called photorespiration that drastically suppresses their yield potential. Today, researchers from the University of Illinois and U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service report in the journal Science that crops engineered with a photorespiratory shortcut are 40 percent more productive in real-world agronomic conditions."

    The main drawback to indoor vertical farming under LED lights is that it only works with green vegetable that have little or no caloric content. High calorie grain crops (corn, wheat, rice) won't grow under the soft lights of LEDs.

    But if their photosynthesis efficiency can be greatly increased, they won't need that much light in the first place. This biological shortcut could make vertical farming of grain crops practical.

    Each city could grow all of its own food (not just kale and lettuce) in warehouses or even underground. Those who find this idea unnatural should remember that a farm is no more "natural" than a skyscraper. And the land currently used for farming can revert back to wilderness in all of its biodiversity glory.

    P.S. GMOs are good. GMOs are our friends. We will need vastly expanded and ever improved GMOs to prevent billions from starving while using a faraciton of the land habitat required by the idiotic practic of organic farming.

    P.P.S. And we will need hundreds of new safe, clean nuclear power plants because renewables are not going to cut it.

    334:

    Jar: Well, the number of people living in extreme poverty in China, about a quarter of the world population, has definitely been declining, for specific Chinese reasons. True in its smaller lookalike rival Vietnam as well. But leave them out, and has the number of people in the world in extreme poverty declined? I rather doubt it.

    335:

    "faraciton"? I'm guilty of typing without coffee.

    336:

    15: Well, it seems that the Kurds have indeed lucked out, for the moment at least. Putin decided to save their bacon, forcing Erdogan to back down. Whether Putin will prove to be a more reliable Kurdish patron than Trump, however, seems doubtful.

    337:

    105: the Roman Empire ran on slavery, not capitalism. And taxing the whole rest of the empire for the benefit of Rome. You had merchants in ancient Rome, but absolutely nobody who could reasonably be identified as a capitalist.

    338:

    Heteromeles 110: Well, despite the CIA's distaste for Trump, that hasn't changed much. Indeed some of the old pros can't seem to figure out that Russia and the Soviet Union are different things. Thus you have the CIA- NED etc. boys and girls messing around in Ukraine, sponsoring all sorts of allegedly ex-neo-Nazis vs. the Orwellian devil-of-the-moment Putin if they are willing to put their swastikas in their pockets to get an American paycheck, and agree to try to kill Russians (or at least Russian-speaking Ukrainians) instead of Jews this year.

    339:

    161: Bush Sr's "brief, jolly" war victory was totally erased by what happened in Los Angeles in the year 1992, the largest and most destructive urban civil disturbance in American history. For which most Americans at the time held Republican social and racial policies responsible for. Hillary's husband could not have been elected without that.

    340:

    164: Ah, no Charlie. The tax bit was forgettable electoral fluff. For the real reason, see my response to Jonathan 161.

    341:

    I must say I wish you were right, but I doubt it. Huge basic changes are not just desirable, but a survival necessity. Push comes to shove, I have no confidence in Corbyn not to end up making the huge blunder of "taking on the bankers and moneymen at their own game," a fool's pursuit if ever there was one. As for the public not liking extremists, well, as Dylan said once upon a time, "the times they are a'changin." You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows nowadays.

    342:

    Not just east of the Mississippi. In my native SF Bay Area, jaywalking is very common. Especially in Berkeley of course.

    343:

    264: In general things are different in the semi-ex-Confederacy than in America.

    344:

    268: Be it noted that insofar as such a thing as Arizona existed at the time of the Civil War, it was Confederate. Actually it was mostly still Comanche country.

    345:

    The answer is that extreme poverty has declined as a percentage of the population in all regions. With the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa, it's also declined in absolute terms in all regions. In 2015, 56% of all people living in extreme poverty were living in Sub-Saharan Africa. http://www.forbesindia.com/article/special/extreme-poverty-has-gone-down-bill-gates/51327/1 https://www.visualcapitalist.com/decline-extreme-poverty-perspective/

    If extreme poverty hadn't fallen in India, there's no way that Nigeria would have overtaken India in having the most people in extreme poverty. https://www.brownpundits.com/2018/06/30/the-decline-in-south-asian-poverty/

    Eastern Europe has all but eliminated the poverty introduced after the fall of the Soviet Union. Central Asia hasn't fared as well, but the Belt and Road money has pushed living standards in Uzbekistan to India's level, and Kazakhstan is possibly a developed country these days? Latin America has equivalent living standards are now about the same as China. I've already given the links in previous threads for that information.

    Finally, Bangladesh is catching up to India in living standards. https://www.brownpundits.com/2018/12/30/bangladesh-elections/#comments

    346:

    Daniel Duffy reported the big tobacco gene hack: https://www.igb.illinois.edu/article/scientists-engineer-shortcut-photosynthetic-glitch-boost-crop-growth-40

    It's a very cool finding, and could be a game-changer, but in practice, such things are usually more difficult to implement than the researchers want us to believe. Photosynthesis is an insanely elaborate set of interlocking cogs, and "fixing" one cog tends to destabilize others. I'll want to see this research replicated under a wide range of naturally occurring field conditions, not to mention with other crops, before I form an opinion. Mucking about with something as crucial as rubisco makes me wonder what will be destabilized. For example, dissipation of excess energy captured by photosynthetic pigments is a huge issue in many environments, and the nominally "wasteful" mechanisms for dumping this energy are actually crucial for survival in those environments. "Wasting" energy through photorespiration likely helps with energy dissipation.

    Also, don't forget that tobacco is one of the best-studied crops in the world. Application to less-well-studied crops may be tricky without the requisite genetic knowledge.

    Where I can see this new approach being very interesting, even in the short term, is in urban air treatment plants. Get something that grows insanely fast, like kudzu, pump up its photosynthesis even further, and blow CO2-rich urban air through a building full of these plants and you might see some serious and economical CO2 sequestration. (Many details omitted in the interest of brevity.)

    DD: "GMOs are good. GMOs are our friends."

    Yes and no, and even if they are, scientists are not always our friends. (I've worked with researchers from around the world for 30+ years. Their hearts are in the right place, but their minds don't always follow.) The recent CRISPR scandal in China is just one example. With plants, which I'm much more experienced with, the issue of transgene escape is serious. The basic notion is that if a gene makes it into the pollen etc., it can spread to other evolutionarily similar species. That's not just theoretical fear-mongering; one of my authors has documented this risk in Japan (Brassica species, with gene escape via seeds spilled at ports where the crop is offloaded). And scientists often forget to look at the whole picture or collaborate with researchers in other fields to consider off-target effects.

    DD: "We will need vastly expanded and ever improved GMOs to prevent billions from starving while using a faraciton of the land habitat required by the idiotic practic of organic farming."

    You're conflating a whole bunch of things here, and thus reaching the wrong conclusion. Organic farming, per se, isn't a bad thing; on the contrary, it's much more ecologically sustainable than most post-Green Revolution farming. Not because it's inherently superior, but because it's usually implemented by people who really care about follow-on effects on the environment. "Modern" agriculture can be ecologically sustainable (e.g., using drip irrigation and on-demand fertilization), but usually isn't because farmers are under intense pressure to maximize yield so they can stay in business. That's an economic problem, not a scientific problem, but no less important because it's "just" economics.

    347:

    For other good news, Germany's renewable sector provided 40% of electricity last year, higher than coal's 38%. I know that Germany's situation would have been even better had they not shut down the nukes, but this is still good news.

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/renewables-led-by-wind-provided-more-power-than-coal-in-germany-in-2018/?comments=1&start=40

    Even better, the switch to renewables did not increase the price of electricity. Germany's cost in ct/kWh was rising until 2012, when it leveled off. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/renewables-led-by-wind-provided-more-power-than-coal-in-germany-in-2018/?comments=1&post=36611311#

    Unfortunately, shutting down the nukes did cause overall carbon emissions to level off instead of decreasing (the chart is shown in another comment upthread in that article to which I can't link).

    348:

    Easy. Embracing policies designed to increase immigration from non-white areas. Trump's assessed that as his third rail - and I tend to agree. Frankly, Trump's base is pretty aware that he's less Xtrian than your average devil worshipper. (Albeit, based on sampling at Burning Man, devil worshippers tend to be kinda vanilla and easily perturbed.)

    @JH Overall, excepting sub-Saharan Africa, poverty is declining worldwide - that include Central and South America, Indian, et cetera. Sub-Saharan Africa is maintaining a stable population of people in poverty.

    @Geoff Definitely a cool finding. Implementation might be decades off. But, definitely a cool thing in 2018. :) On the subject of vaguely plausible vampire origin stories, start with the elimination of mosquitos through gene engines.

    @SUV The people I know driving unnecessary SUVs are mostly short women who don't drive well. They seem to be attracted to seeing above neighboring cars while wearing an extra physical layer. Kind of understandable.

    People also identified a few gene sequences related to schizophrenia, so that's something - story sounded plausible, but the gene associations need to be proved out - hard work.

    349:

    Agree with you on everything but organic farming. It requires 50% to 100% more land than industrial farming to produce the same amount of food. Going over to organic farming would destroy what little habitat we have left.

    The ideal situation IMHO is to be able to grow everything in stacked sky scrapers under LEDs and let farmland revert back to wilderness. Replace livestock farming with fake veggy meat like the Impossible Burger and meat grown in vats from stem cells. And get our sea food from aqua fisheries instead of wiping out our remaining fish stocks.

    Currently livestock grazing and growing fodder requires 27% of the world's land surface (equal to the land area of the western hemishphere). Additional croplands require another 7% of the world' land area. That is a third of the planet which could potentially be returned to the wild.

    Saving our planet requires us to reduce our physical footprint.

    And that is one of the many reason I support nuclear facilities that cover dozens of acres (including the employee parking lot) instead of solar arrays and wind farms that cover hundreds of square miles. These two also destroy habitat since they need access roads, drainage systems, service connections, utilities, etc.

    Spoiler: I am an ecomodernist who knows that living like medieval peasants will not only doom the planet, it will result in the deaths of billions of innocent people.

    http://www.ecomodernism.org/

    "We offer this statement in the belief that both human prosperity and an ecologically vibrant planet are not only possible, but also inseparable. By committing to the real processes, already underway, that have begun to decouple human well-being from environmental destruction, we believe that such a future might be achieved. As such, we embrace an optimistic view toward human capacities and the future."

    350:

    "Global TFR is 2.4"

    And falling. When TFR gets below 2.1, population aging sets in followed by population decline.

    Which may save the planet, but ruin the economy.

    Capitalism itself cannot survive the demographic transition to lower birth rates, graying populations and declining populations.

    No-growth capitalism is an oxymoron.

    Economic growth is not possible with falling populations.

    351:

    DD @ 333 “PS” & “PPS” – And how do you propose to get those excellent & necessary ideas past the screaming demented hordes of FakeGreenies, then? However, there may be real snags, as GH says @ 346

    … @ 350 Economic growth is not possible with falling populations. Want to place a small bet on that – like a pint of beer?

    JH @ 341 Unfortunately correct. Corbyn is set in his views ( As stated before – 1973, or 1934 where defence is concerned ) is incapable of change 7 is guaranteed to fuck up. Example: The current proposal for employees of large firms to be compulsorily given shares, over time – excellent idea. EXCEPT: When they get to £500-worth, after that, the guvmint takes the shares. This sort of profoundly STUPID is typical, I’m afraid.

    Ioan @ 345 The Boss went to Uzbekistan ( Silk Road & SOAS degree holiday after many years wait ) – they are well on the “up”. Kazakhstan is suffering – they still have a dictator, but is still probably better-off than they were.

    352:

    Charlie, I wonder if we could get a thread with your predictions for 2019?

    353:

    For more review, there's the long discussion at The WELL - Bruce Sterling, James Bridle, Tiffany Lee Brown, Jake Dunagan https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/506/State-of-the-World-2019-page01.html

    Bruce starts with "We do this State of the World every year out of sheer glee. It's a mental hygiene for us, a comic relief, like taking a cleansing squeegee to our grimy apartment windows."

    Need to do the windows here too, rain notwithstanding.

    354:

    Economic growth is not possible with falling populations.

    Eh? Economic growth is a complex thing, not easy to define, and evolves over time. Available workforce is certainly an important component of it but there are others, like productivity resulting from mechanization/ automation, international trade and the like.

    https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economicgrowth.asp

    355:

    "The ideal situation IMHO is to be able to grow everything in stacked sky scrapers under LEDs and let farmland revert back to wilderness... Currently livestock grazing and growing fodder requires 27% of the world's land surface (equal to the land area of the western hemishphere). Additional croplands require another 7% of the world' land area. That is a third of the planet which could potentially be returned to the wild."

    This does not work. It doesn't even come close to working. It needs not only a magic energy source, but a magic heatsink too.

    To grow indoors the plants currently occupying a tenth of the planet's total area (a third of the land area) requires the artificial production of "sunlight" equivalent to what they would receive naturally, which is, obviously, a tenth of the amount of natural sunlight received by the planet. Total solar input to the planet is about 104 times total current human energy production. So you would have to increase artificial energy production by about three orders of magnitude to provide all those plants with their light. Which, of course, we can't do, or even vaguely pretend to do, and even if we could the planet's temperature would have to go up about thirty degrees to restore thermal equilibrium.

    To be sure, this is simplistic and not very precise, but that doesn't matter, because that three orders of magnitude bit doesn't so much swamp the inaccuracies as sink them to the bottom of an oceanic trench.

    356:

    Oh yeah, and the ageing populations thing is based on a fallacy, too: it assumes that everyone, or nearly everyone, who isn't elderly or engaged in looking after the elderly as things stand, is instead doing something of comparable importance, which is a long way from being true.

    Nor is a falling population a worry: a smaller population may not be able to do so much as a larger one, but equally it doesn't need so much to be done, so it doesn't matter. You'd have to have a drop of multiple orders of magnitude before you get to the point where some things can't be done at all as opposed to simply being done on a smaller but still proportionately adequate scale.

    357:

    I was thinking about this one, and wondered; what if you built a skyscraper-as-farm, with the idea that (in the northern-hemisphere) you'd raise plants on the south side, and put homes and businesses on the north side, with the idea that you air-condition the side with the people, then pump the "used" air onto the side with the plants. If you use only sunlight, you'd end up with (40-story skyscraper 100-feet wide) two growing seasons, with about 38,000 square feet of plants... Does that work?

    ANSWER: It ends up at about the size of 6 "average" American lots for homes, or about an acre of land. Definitely not a good solution.

    Assuming that one used solar-powered (how?) fluorescent grow-lights, going 40 feet back into the building, now we're talking more like 152,000, or approximately 30 lots in a residential neighborhood, or maybe 4 acres; still not profitable, I'd guess, unless you're raising something really special - doesn't marijuana grow really quickly? Snark!

    I'm not sure I see any kind of "plant-warehouse" as being ultimately profitable unless the plants are very, very valuable.

    358:

    Charlie, I wonder if we could get a thread with your predictions for 2019?

    My response to this question consists of:

    a) Hysterical laughter

    b) Another Laundry novel (hopefully, once I kick this depression that's stopping me writing)

    c) Advice: "buy tranquilliser futures"

    359:

    I got beyond deing depressed about Brexit to regarding it as an interactive dark comedy show about a year ago - interestingly, an lot of political commentators have now done the same, and it's now hard to tell those from the satirists in places like the Independent.

    I sympathise about depression - I have been there, and the standard advice is Not Helpful if it is caused by factors outside your control. All I can say is that a considerable degree of bloody-mindedness helps to bull your way through.

    360:

    I support nuclear facilities that cover dozens of acres (including the employee parking lot) instead of solar arrays and wind farms that cover hundreds of square miles

    But with fixed insolation reducing the area covered requires both higher efficiency and very dense packing. Basically, you need the panels to be almost horizontal and edge to edge, with only rain gutters between them. That's fine on a roof, but over large areas starts to make people uncomfortable.

    Your other solution of adding another 100-odd suns to the system is a little impractical. While it would bump the solar yield it would have undesirable effects in direct proportion.

    But not as far into the realm of fantasy as "safe surface-based fission nuclear plants constructed in very large numbers with 20 years". We have a few plants that could be completed in the necessary time, but only by trading off safety.

    I get the impression you're working on a very short timeline: zero emissions by 2050, anything after 2050 is irrelevant. Otherwise soil mining and other destructive agricultural practices can't be used, let alone expanded and exacerbated. Etc.

    361:

    "plant-warehouse" as being ultimately profitable

    The win is transport costs. Instead of making bags of water a great distance from their point of consumption, you grow them where they're going to be used. That gives you a local cycle and with high population density it's more practical to do industrial recycling of the waste so you can get closer to a closed system.

    What you move is electricity, which is very easy to move long distances. The capital cost is arguably higher (how much is a container port again?) but the running costs are very low (how much is a megatonne of biodiesel?)

    So rather than mine Australia's artesian water to grow crops and lug them to the other side of the world, you pave Australia with solar generators and ship the electricity to the "grow den" in London or New York or wherever.

    362:

    On that note, I do wonder whether the next decade will see the "industrial algae" problem solved to some degree, and the photosynthesis tweaks applied there would make much more sense. Whether they'll be making biodiesel or food I'm not sure (or animal food, probably for fish but maybe for chickens). People are working on this in a bunch of different places.

    363:

    I was scrolling down to say much the same. DD suffers from the common ailment of not internalizing orders of magnitude. He talks about hundreds of new nuclear plants to power a plan that requires several millions of new nuclear plants.

    I always suggest this primer for people who suggest such plans.

    https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

    364:

    ageing populations thing is based on a fallacy... a smaller population may not be able to do so much as a larger one, but equally it doesn't need so much to be done

    The problem is that the population doesn't fall evenly, it's mostly older people that die. So you genuinely do end up with a demographic bulge, and caring for those people is (currently) hard to automate.

    That's especially true if you provide for their human needs rather than just sticking them in cages and feeding them. One carer can look after 2-5 people who need "full time" care while they're working, sure, but that means three shifts and you don't necessarily end up much better than 1:1 at scale (especially if you need people to take a profit from the system, and then need people to make sure the profit isn't the only thing that's produced).

    Currently that is solved by immigration, even Japan has started to open up because it became increasingly hard to import a large enough temporary underclass (lesson for Brexiteers: if you treat guest workers badly you need to pay them well or make sure where they come from is really appalling. But neither of those works as well as bribes like "pathway to citizenship" and "ban hate speech").

    On a global scale this could work really well, but it requires a different politics than the one we have now.

    365:

    I'm not Daniel, but to clarify: we're stuck with 2100 as the bureaucratic planning deadline. That strongly conditions the 2035/2045/2050/blown timelines we're seeing.

    There are predictions about what happens after 2100, and they are great at focusing the attention. Usually David Archer's one of the coauthors, and the upshot is that, under the worst Business As Usual scenarios, temperatures keep rising for a few hundred years, the fall equally quickly for a few hundred years, but end up around +2-ish degrees, there to gradually diminish to now over the next 100,000 years or so. It's that 400-500 year spike (what I called the High Anthropocene) that's the extinction maker, more than the next 100,000 years (which I called the Deep Anthropocene). Then, not to many tens of thousands of years after that, there's another ice age, and "we" end up, in the truly distant future, with a fossil record that looks something like an inverse of the Ordovician-Silurian extinction event, except hopefully less.

    Anyway, most climatologists don't go there, because A) the field's under intense pressure from the BS political wing, and they've learned that anything that can be used against them will be used against them, and B) they point out, quite rightly, that over half the temperature gain by 2100 depends on actions we take in the next few decades. In other words, yes, right now is the most important time in human history. We're in something that looks like a singularity for our species, but not at all the way Kurzweil meant it, I'm afraid.

    366:

    Charlie@ 358 ...once I kick this depression that's stopping me writing THAT really doesn't sound good. Family / the world / brexit / combination / something else? You need to kick that, but suggestions are thin on the groud - I/we do hope you find a way past it ...

    H @ 365 Even if I live to 105 - which I hope I will ... I'm not going to see that - but it makes me almost glad I have no chidren to bequath such a lod of shit to ....

    367:

    About the photosynthesis tweaks: neat idea, but not a new one. I remember the physiologists rhapsodizing about this idea back when I was in grad school, and it's great they finally demonstrated it in one species.

    Anyway, nature figured out a way around the Rubisco bottleneck (C4 photosynthesis), and that evolved a bunch of times independently. Corn and sorghum are the two premiere C4 food crops. If you wanted to get an early leg up on the improved photosynthesis game, plant more corn, which is what a lot of people have been doing for the last 500 years.

    Problem is, it's not just efficiency, it's temperature. Corn shows really sharp declines in yield above around 40 deg. C-ish (I'm doing this from memory), and most crops have show sharp dropoffs in yield when they hit their critical temperatures. The lesson there is that you don't just want to have better photosynthesis, you want the plant to be more heat tolerant. That's a different, equally well-known challenge, and it's another researchers have been working on for decades. So when you hear about improved heat tolerance, that's the time to celebrate a little.

    Now if you want the two-fer, you can take the most heat-tolerant crop (manioc/cassava), and give it improved photosynthesis. Unlike corn, cassava has conventional, C3 photosynthesis. If I were looking for a 21st Century crop to feed carbs to the world, I'd look at engineering cassava to be more heat tolerant and a better photosynthesizer. Since there are serious problems with cassava pests, I'd also make waaaay more than one superclone, so that the whole effort isn't wiped out in a year by some stupid bug or fungus.

    368:

    My response to this question consists of:a) Hysterical laughter b) Another Laundry novel (hopefully, once I kick this depression that's stopping me writing) c) Advice: "buy tranquilliser futures"

    "Always look on the bright side of life (whistling)"

    Since I ran into that problem after I published Hot Earth Dreams, I'd strongly suggest some variation on mindfulness or Taoist meditation. It doesn't make depression or anxiety go away, but it does give you techniques for dealing with them. The downside is that it's slow.

    If that doesn't appeal, I'd very strongly suggest reading Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind and considering one of the techniques he describes.

    In the meantime, perhaps we can generate a Bayesian prediction for Brexit probabilities or something.

    369:

    “105: the Roman Empire ran on slavery, not capitalism. And taxing the whole rest of the empire for the benefit of Rome. You had merchants in ancient Rome, but absolutely nobody who could reasonably be identified as a capitalist. “

    Capitalism is defined as “economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the statr”

    There is nothing anti-capitalist about slavery, actually the converse, laws against slavery are essentially interfering with the free market

    The Roman Empire and pretty much the entire ancient world after the Bronze Age collapse was capitalist. You had free markets, private ownership of themmrans of production , currency, trade, and very little government inteference in any of it

    It wasn’t a “pure capitalism” in the sense that the government did interfere in some cases, like the grain dole to the city of Rome itself, but I don’t think you will find any credible historian that claims it wasn’t a capitalist economy

    370:

    I'm probably blathering...but...I'm a well-meaning twit...so...whatever...

    If you feel terrible, but it doesn't really affect your life, then yoga is good - also practicing mindfulness is nice. A lot of problems seem to be just overclocking your brain instead of letting it do maintenance. Particularly as we get older, it seems to get more important to really take breaks.

    From a personal note, arranging for a life with maximum automation has helped. Morning starts with a callout to google home - which turns on the lights and puts on some music. The kidlings cook breakfast and ready themselves for school. Work is a 25 minute walk after dropping the kidlings in the bus. Breakfast and lunch are Soylent - because I'm that fricking lazy. Off to home after work. Then, groceries arrive from an online service, as does laundry. Dinner is kind of random, often takeout. Kidlings get school lunches. Play with kidlings and then off to bed. Wife gets 20-30 min cuddling. Lights dim to red automatically - which really helps with kidlings - and myself too. Google Home turns off the lights and music. Probably the best bit is the hour of walking each day. (Privacy concerns...fall a distant last relative to not getting out of bed to get the lights.) If my wife starts drinking coffee again, I have my eye on an automated coffee machine. ~1 time per week, a game night with friends and a slightly later bedtime. (Personally, perfectly regular sleep -> depression)

    If you feel terrible and it affects your life, taking the time to talk to a counselor is a good step. Extra perspectives help. Antidepressants aren't bad. For mild depression, St John's Wort really did help me a bit, but it tastes awful. Get help - no different from going to a podiatrist for a bad foot. Honestly, the counselor was more helpful. (Okay - it hurts - so stop walking on it - was good advice...)

    OTOH, your books are often kind of depressing - ever think of a writing a happy story? Or maybe just taking it easy for a bit? There are things I did in my youth that I wouldn't try now - cause I'd fall over.

    Oh well, best wishes.

    For Brexit - May will delay the Brexit vote and threaten an extension + referendum if it fails. That'll bring the Brexiteers in line - but probably not enough to pass. By this point, business will be well and truly panicking. (Eg, really, for financial firms, my relatives probably had a typical reaction - they already moved out of London and into some country that begins with an L) Then, she'll ask for an extension on article 50, a referendum will occur, and Brexit will fail.

    If that doesn't work, there'll be a vote of confidence - followed by her handing the lit grenade to Corbyn.

    371:

    You know, I've wondered for years whether CASE NIGHTMARE BURNOUT was a thing. I suppose one solution is the "Stormbringer Gambit": publish the novel that ends the universe soon, then go back and color in the steps leading up to it for the next 20 years.

    In any case, I'd say from experience that it's hard to write upbeat prose when people you love pass and institutions you value are under threat. For example, I see the Deep Anthropocene as a good setting for stories, but I can't bring myself to write them yet, perhaps ever. Even though it would be a relatively benign place for humans, the ghosts of the passage to get there weigh too heavily on me to make it enjoyable.

    372:

    the photosynthesis tweaks: neat idea, but not a new one

    At the risk dating myself {boom tish} I also got exposed to it as a postgrad. Maybe it's a perennial.

    I'm actually more excepted about seabourne goop because that has temperature control, lots of area available, and new ideas spread fairly easily. If we can kick phytoplankton up a notch or two we might be able to repair the damage we've done to the sea a little faster. Ideally via some careful research and controlled experiments (I hear the Aral Sea is available) but I'm not confident we-as-a-species can do those. At all, ever.

    I'm fairly confident that "land-based carefully isolated biodiesel vats" will quickly leak into the sea and horizontal gene transfer will cause all sorts of ructions. So my interest is more in parallel studies of what the new ideas will do when released into the wild. Ideally those people will be a gateway before non-biohazard experiments are performed.

    373:

    Re: High-rise crop gardening

    Recall that some time ago you argued that just the water needed would make building such a structure difficult if not impossible/infeasible. Reality is that there are multi-story car parks* in every major city in NA esp. near airports and you don't need all that much water anyways. (Seriously - If a structure can support hundreds of cars, pretty sure it can support about 4 inches of water.)

    LED lighting - it is possible to have multiple 'bulbs' (wavelengths) cycling on and off throughout the 'day/year' to best mimic the optimal light requirements.

    Had been curious about playing around with the light/dark cycle and just found this article which (IMO) suggests considering yet another variable when looking for ways to improve garden production efficiency/production. To me the most relevant part of this study is that you can shorten the growing 'day' to 18 hours ... only 75% of a day. That's a massive increase in food production.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289762154_Identifying_the_optimum_light_cycle_for_lettuce_growth_in_a_plant_factory

    Excerpt from Abstract:

    'Two separate experiments were conducted using 'Greenwave' lettuce: the effects of the light cycle (light period/dark period = 16 h/8 h, 16 h/4 h, 16 h/2 h) and photosynthetic photon flux (PPF) levels (110 and 170 μmol m-2 s-1) were investigated. A shorter dark period was found to promote lettuce growth, and the fresh weight of lettuce grown under a 16 h/2 h light/dark cycle was about 30% higher than that of lettuce grown under a 16 h/8 h cycle. Higher PPF promoted lettuce growth, but the efficiency of its production (fresh weight/electricity consumption) declined. To investigate the physiological reaction of lettuce to dark periods and PPF, experiments under higher PPF or other light cycles are required.'

    Cold temp - agree that this may be a major problem because plants set more 'seeds' if the ambient temp is lower ... an evolutionary thing so I've been told. Possible solution is to locate your garden in the basement since you're going to be using LEDs anyways.

    Water and micronutrient management - there's on-going uni-based research on this including how to capture valuable nutrients out of city sewers as well as the usual: provide an adequate supply of clean drinking water.

    Reducing the size of the inedible parts of a plant could also be a strategy for increasing food production efficiency.

    374:

    One carer can look after 2-5 people who need "full time" care while they're working, sure, but that means three shifts and you don't necessarily end up much better than 1:1 at scale

    Not really. It takes more than 1:1. A lot more.

    You need 4.2 people at 40 hours per week to cover 24/7. So assuming you don't need 24/7 (they do sleep) and some need less I'd still say you need at least 3 people to look after your 2-5 if you want to allow the care givers to work only 40 hours per week, eat lunch and have a week or two off every now and then. Factor in turn over and training and 3 may be really 4 or 5.

    Says he who has gone through 2 elderly parents in the last few years who needed caregivers but not full time bed care. Now I'm a bit curious, one was in an "assisted" living facility for 1 1/2 years. I wonder what their total staffing is per resident? There were at least 10 to 20 different people who went through her unit in a typical week. (Wake up, here's your meds, shower time, let's go to lunch, time to clear your unit/clothes/bedding, etc...) I just don't know what the total ratios were.

    375:

    I'd also make waaaay more than one superclone, so that the whole effort isn't wiped out in a year by some stupid bug or fungus.

    I keep seeing people here talk about how in the not too distant future animals will not be raised to be eaten but we'll be eating fake meat from slime vats. Great. Yum.

    But how does anything about the worlds social and political system keep the world from merging to a single cell line which opens it up to this issue?

    376:

    My prediction is that we lose Florida in 2035. Just saying.

    377:

    I can also recommend St. John's wort. You should be able to buy it in pill form in a pharmacy. (Pay for it with cash.) The behavior is similar to Prozac, and it takes about a month for the anti-depressant effect to kick in. The really, really important thing to know is that you will spend a week being really angry as you pull out of depression; I'd guess at right around 2-3 weeks in. Don't take more than one pill per day.

    378:

    Err, there might be a slight problem if you're taking some other drugs, since St John's wort increases the production of some enzymes:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypericum_perforatum#Pharmacokinetics

    Some antihypertensives being involved is somewhat worrying.

    At the risk of annoying OGH, but...

    If there is a SAD component involved, I would try light therapy, about 2 hours in the morning with very bright light:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_therapy#Light_boxes

    379:

    I'm guessing OGH, who is a pharmacist by trade is on top of this.

    380:

    Now I'm a bit curious, one was in an "assisted" living facility for 1 1/2 years. I wonder what their total staffing is per resident?

    Reading about that industry does not meet the "what should I be optimistic about in 2019" criteria. I don't know a non-horrible way to describe it, sorry.

    .

    .

    .

    There are regulated minimums, but they are demonstrable insufficient as well as the source of much agitation by the industry. You know how I compared it to keeping them in cages and feeding them? There is an ongoing fight by bureaucrats to interfere with the market and prevent that outcome. My family went to some lengths to ensure that my grandparents didn't experience that but it was only cheap in comparison to the cost of hiring live-in care. Which is simultaneously surprising cheap and eye-wateringly expensive (you can get away with one live in plus a day shift for non-hospital level care, which is "just" two nurse salaries plus overheads of about 30%-50%. I expected it to be 3x salary plus at least 50%).

    381:

    A bit of searching online for keywords like "elder abuse" "rest home problem" or "elderly care investigation" will produce results that (should) turn your stomach. Finding decent care is a tricky problem: on the one hand you want you(r relatives) to go into care while they're still aware and active enough to notice and complain about problems; but on the other hand care is expensive and just being in a care facility has a negative effect on them, so you want to put it off as long as possible.

    My two grandfathers both died at the leaving home point (in the "I'll stay here until I die" sense) so we didn't have to deal with that. One with in-home care, BTW. One grandmother died during the transition. The other decided on a rest home and moved in, and was pretty happy with it. Honestly, it seemed like a great place, but it was over $NZ1000/week. For comparison a new nurse makes about that before tax.

    I don't think there are good solutions to this problem, BTW, except euthanasia and that's not a solution than can be applied from outside. My choice is very much "if I can't object, kill me". But I'm never going to tell someone else that they should make the same decision. So we need to come up with ways to let/help elderly people live civilised lives.

    382:

    I don't know if Charlie would prefer us to have a separate thread to post our predictions for 2019, or if we can use this one?

    383:

    Heteromeles @ 367 “Corn” ( Maize ) is also dependant upon quite a good water-supply. This summer, mine did not do well, in spite of the copious quantities I poured onto it. Cassava – bleugh.

    Erwin @ 370 I hope you are correct ( As per the polls today ) & we get a 2nd-Ref followed by “Remain”. May absolutely has, unfortunately, got to spin it out, because the rabid right (Rees-Smaug) & the rabid left (Corbyn) both want to wreck the country for their own version of “profit”.

    384:

    I think Yuval Noah Harari in his book "Sapiens" explains he difference between ancient and modern capitalism.

    The difference is that in an ancient society where there is no economic growth (the pie never gets bigger) one man can become rich only if another man starves. A very rich person would require that many men starve (or be enslaved). In such a situation being rich is inherently evil.

    So yes the Romans and other ancient civilizations practiced capitalism, but not capitalism as we know it.

    https://www.ynharari.com/topic/money-and-politics/

    It was that people seldom wanted to extend much credit because they didn’t trust that the future would be better than the present. They generally believed that times past had been better than their own times and that the future would be worse, or at best much the same. To put that in economic terms, they believed that the total amount of wealth was limited, if not dwindling. People therefore considered it a bad bet to assume that they personally, or their kingdom, or the entire world, would be producing more wealth ten years down the line. Business looked like a zero-sum game. Of course, the profits of one particular bakery might rise, but only at the expense of the bakery next door. Venice might flourish, but only by impoverishing Genoa. The king of England might enrich himself, but only by robbing the king of France. You could cut the pie in many different ways, but it never got any bigger.

    That’s why many cultures concluded that making bundles of money was sinful. As Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). If the pie is static, and I have a big part of it, then I must have taken somebody else’ slice. The rich were obliged to do penance for their evil deeds by giving some of their surplus wealth to charity.

    If the global pie stayed the same size, there was no margin for credit. Credit is the difference between today’s pie and tomorrow’s pie. If the pie stays the same, why extend credit? It would be an unacceptable risk unless you believed that the baker or king asking for your money might be able to steal a slice from a competitor. So it was hard to get a loan in the pre-modern world, and when you got one it was usually small, short-term, and subject to high interest rates. Upstart entrepreneurs thus found it difficult to open new bakeries and great kings who wanted to build palaces or wage wars had no choice but to raise the necessary funds through high taxes and tariffs. That was fine for kings (as long as their subjects remained docile), but a scullery maid who had a great idea for a bakery and wanted to move up in the world generally could only dream of wealth while scrubbing down the royal kitchen’s floors.

    It was lose-lose. Because credit was limited, people had trouble financing new businesses. Because there were few new businesses, the economy did not grow. Because it did not grow, people assumed it never would, and those who had capital were leery of extending credit. The expectation of stagnation fulfilled itself.

    385:

    Declining workforce can be compensated with increased productivity from robotics and AI.

    But demand does not increase. There are only so many things a person will buy even if they have the money to do so.

    How many yachts and luxury cars will people have to buy in our depopulated future to keep capitalism going?

    Furthermore, the population will age before declining.

    The elderly do not purchase things, they purchase services (transport, medical, restaurants, vacations, etc.).

    They stop buying cars, houses, major appliances, etc.

    386:

    "obviously, a tenth of the amount of natural sunlight received by the planet. Total solar input to the planet is about 104 times total current human energy production"

    Nope, plants need only a small part of the spectrum to grow. Which is which vertical farms use red/blue LED lights (pink). The rest of the sunlight hitting the planet is not necessary for plant growth.

    https://inhabitat.com/indoor-vertical-farm-pinkhouses-grow-plants-faster-with-less-energy/

    Indoor Vertical Farm ‘Pinkhouses’ Grow Plants Faster With Less Energy

    A Pinkhouse is a new type of indoor farm that grows crops using pink-colored light. Rather than bathing plants with white light (which has all the colors of the spectrum), a Pinkhouse uses a mix of red and blue light. By not using all the other colors, indoor vertical farms can cut down on their power bill with low-energy LED lights that emit just the right shade of magenta.

    To grow sufficient quantities of food and produce in an indoor farm, crops have to be stacked. But this also means that each shelf has to have its own light source in order for the plants to grow. All these lights add up quick and so does the power bill. A new wave of research shows that “pink” light – a mix of red and blue wavelengths is all that a plant really needs to grow. In the whole spectrum of ROYGBV, the O, Y, G and V aren’t really necessary for plant growth, just the R and B. Besides reducing the amount of power for the lights, the LED lights are cooler, which also reduces the cooling load.

    Researchers at Purdue University are currently studying the use of red and blue lights on plants, but it’s already being used in a real-world indoor farm. Caliber Biotherapeutics grows plants for medicinal use and they have a 150,000 sq ft indoor farm in Texas that relies on this pink light. Stacked 50 ft tall, their indoor farming system grows 2.2 million plants with the red and blue LED lights, which was designed by EEA Consulting Engineers. “A photon is a terrible thing to waste,” says Barry Holtz, at Caliber Biotherapeutics. “So we developed these lights to correctly match the photosynthesis needs of our plants. We get almost 20 percent faster growth rate and save a lot energy.”

    As for a heat sink, the opportunities available for combined heat and power (CHP) to tap into the waste heat will be too good to pass up for cities that require sources of heat for buildings.

    387:

    But not as far into the realm of fantasy as "safe surface-based fission nuclear plants constructed in very large numbers with 20 years".

    Very difficult, but not a fantasy.

    Back of the envelop calculations for the number of nukes needed (from a previous post of mine):

    Amount of CO2 sent into the atmosphere by human activities = 32,000,000,000 tons per year Fraction retained in the atmosphere (not absorbed by existing carbon sinks) = 43% Annual accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere = 13,760,000,000 tons / year

    Life cycle CO2 emissions from coal power plants = 820 g of CO2 / kWh Life cycle CO2 emissions from nuclear power plants = 12 g of CO2 / kWh Life cycle CO2 reduction using nuclear power plants = 808 g of CO2 / kWh = 1.75 lbs of CO2 / kWh

    Amount of energy to be replaced to eliminate CO2 accumulation = 15,725,714,285,714 kWh per year = 15,725,714,286 MWh per year = 15,725,714 GWh per year

    Power output of large nuclear power plant (example Palo Verde, 3 each 1.338 GW reactors, After a power uprate, each reactor is now able to produce 1.4 GW of electric power. The usual power production capacity is about 70 to 95 percent of this.) = approximately 4 GW = 35,000 GWh per year

    Number of large nuclear plants required to replace coal plants emitting excess CO2 = 450 each 4 GW nuclear facilities

    Capital cost of nuclear power plant (again using Palo Verde, this power plant became fully operational by 1988, and it took twelve years to build and cost about 5.9 billion dollars) = $5,900,000,000 = conservatively double the cost to to $12 billion in today's dollars

    Cost of the 450 equivalent 4 GW facilities needed to replace CO2 emissions = 450 x $12 billion = $5.4 trillion

    World GDP (2016) = $75.4 trillion

    Summary: There are currently 467 operational nuclear power plants worldwide. We can eliminate all excess CO2 emission by adding another 450 each 4 GW plants. The cost would be about 7% of world GDP.

    Annual percent of world GDP spent on the military is about 2%.

    So we solve global warming by roughly doubling the number of nuclear plants worldwide. We simply cannot prevent global warming without lots of nukes. Safe, clean nukes

    Other efforts (solar and wind, afforestation, carbon capture, fertilizing the oceans with irons sulfate, etc.) can help but they are not nearly as cost effective as expanding nuclear energy.

    Nukes can also use off-peak KWh to electrolysize water to create enough hydrogen (without fossil fuel reformatting) to create a hydrogen fuel cell economy that avoids the chief problem with batteries as energy storage. Even the best rechargeable battery wears out over time and will no longer take a charge. Disposing of these batteries will be a major toxic waste disposal problem. So will the disposal of PVCs, which also wear out (current warranties for solar roof top arrays are 10 to 20 years).

    388:

    The idea of credit being linked to expected economic growth is also why the more reactionary .01% types alarm me, if they successfully convince a majority that economic gains will never be theirs, why cooperate in a charade? With any luck, the wealthy whose minds can wrap around more than acquisitiveness will lean on the reactionaries to protect their own wealth.

    389:

    American nursing homes fifty years ago were sometimes unspeakably horrible, what we have now is a step up. Further improvement here is unlikely, given the "Taxes & wages are theft" crowd.

    390:

    Re: Elder care alternatives

    As per the article below, the Japanese govt has invested over $5 billion into this industry and there are signs that robots* can improve lives of the elderly ... up to a point. Not surprising since this is still relatively new tech. Support for robotics is despite/in addition to bringing in more foreign workers to help support an aging population.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-ageing-robots-widerimage/aging-japan-robots-may-have-role-in-future-of-elder-care-idUSKBN1H33AB

    BTW - the robotic forms/functions include humanoid-type, e.g., exercise mannequins as well as 'pet' robots (no feeding, pet poop or dander to deal with). So - not a one-size-fits/does-all approach which makes sense to me.

    While robots may not be sufficiently available/affordable or psychologically comfortable for the current generation of the elderly in the US/UK, this tech will probably be commonplace ('natural') when GenXers enter their golden years. Would make sense for Alexa to age along (transform functions/utilities) in parallel with its owner.

    Has anyone looked at elder-diaper needs? One very elderly member of my family is bedridden and this paper product is a big part of in-home care. Right now the easiest and sorta-affordable option is the paper diaper. These things are way bigger than the baby diapers we used for our prog and I can't help but wonder how we're going to manage our forests and paper mills once 30%+ of the population starts needing several of these every day.

    391:

    I understand that for half the price of an improved F-15 E=MC2,inc. could build a full scale polywell and have a definitive answer on the technology. I believe that would be a small fraction of what DOE blew on laser implosion fusion, and it might not trigger the anti-nuke folks.

    392:

    I can think of some publications that would be appropriate to recycle into adult diapers...

    393:

    Picking up on two earlier sub-threads & combining them ... The Beeb, tiogether with Netflix are about to launch a ( 6-part? ) series of "Good Omens", yes? AIUI, "Netflix" is a YUGE US corp, making its money from renting out films, TV programmes etc. on demand - I have no idea whether you download a copy or you watch on-line or, or .... OK But, we all know the plot-line of "GO" & it involves a DEMON conspiring with an ANGEL, doesn't it. To avoid Armagoddon ( NOT a misprint ) ... & I remember a n other film I was an extra in, that was v popuilar in Europe, but only made a tiny proifit overall, because the US funnymentalists denounced it & told people to stay away. ( Much to the annoyance of all us "extras" as we were looking forward to lots more work on the sequels ) ... "The Golden Compass". What's the odds that the same brainfucked US_christians do the same, or try to do the same, to "GO". What are the likely outcomes, folks, or won't it matter, simply because it's Pterry & Gaiman & it will sell enormoously in Europe? Can we expect rabid denunciations from the US brainfucked, hilarious in theor insaniy, were it not for that far too many people take it seriously?

    394:

    You have to remember when you use words like “Rome” you are referring to a thousand years of history that ended at the very beginning of the modern age

    Much of that period had significant economic expansion due to both Rome’s territorial expansion and also hundreds of years of uninterrupted relative peace, which was a huge anomaly at the time, and led to massive expansion of trade routes

    If you care about how ancient economies you are better off reading “The Silk Roads” by Peter Frankopan, it’s does a far better job talking to it

    Yes, there were significant differences between capitalism in the ancient world and capitalism now, (less then you probably think but still significant) but that was not what H. was asserting. He was asserting capitalism didn’t exist at all

    395:
    I'm guessing OGH, who is a pharmacist by trade is on top of this.

    A few points to that one...

    a) Charlie has mentioned in the past that he has been out of business as a pharmacist for some time. So he might not have heard about it.

    b) Pharmacology (and biology-medicine-chemistry in general) is so complex that it's a given you are going to miss some detail. That's e.g. why lab meetings are important to pool knowledge. So there is a good change his doctor or pharmacist might not think about it either, double so because quite some people think herbals have no side effects (where a cynical part of me adds a quote by Gustav Kuschinsky „When it's proposed that a substance has no side effects, there is an urgent suspicion it doesn't have a mein effect either.") Where St. John's wort rendering hormonal contraceptives inactive might be one major concern in general usage, not in OGH, but I digress...

    c) OGH is in a depression. I don't know about the severity and the actual symptoms, but depression can have severe effects on cognition. So a depressive might not be "on top of" anything. There is even a term for that, pseudodementia.

    and, last but not least:

    d) this is a blog, and OGH is not the only one reading it. And maybe some other part of the AI we call "commentariat" might find this info useful.

    OK, done ranting.

    396:

    There is still no publication date for Good Omens the series, is there?

    As for religion in series, there is another series based on a book by Neil Gaiman, "American Gods". I don't remember much problems with the Jesus, err, Jesuses, err, Jesi, err, whatever in the show, and I guess the Mexican Jesus would have this demographic foaming at the mouth, though I guess some Christians I know might find this scene somewhat fitting.

    Not as, err, heartbreaking or at least weighing as the Anubis scene, maybe...

    Series might be somewhat different from cinema as a market.

    397:

    I should be flabberghasted if he isn't - it's in the list of warnings in the packets of a huge number of drugs, and has been in the popular UK media several times. Even as a layman, I know that St John's Wort is notorious among herbal medicines for its interactions.

    He is also aware of light boxes etc. As another sufferer from SAD, they help only a little - I also take vitamin D tablets, which is probably a waste of time. The ONLY solution is to go somewhere with more sun. For those people with SAD who can, now is a good time to take a train trip for a a fortnight in the south-east of Spain, though it's a two day trip from Edinburgh (so stop off in Paris). Yes, I know that flying is cheaper.

    398:

    The main thing, though, if you're feeling depressed and it is affecting your life, is - don't soldier on. That often doesn't end well. Seriously. [Voice o' experience.]

    Depression tends to be a feedback loop. At some point, you can be incapable of taking constructive action.

    399:

    Re: 'The ONLY solution is to go somewhere with more sun.'

    Agree! Hope to visit the Canary Islands someday. Hear that it's a popular destination among UKers. Hmm ... kinda on the cool rainy side for the next few days with the temps and sun picking up this weekend.

    https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/spain/santa-cruz/ext

    Or Aruba ... if you can tolerate constant dry heat mitigated a bit by a slightly cooler breeze along the beach.

    400:

    There will not ever be a hydrogen fuel cell anything much.

    Hydrogen does not store usefully. The nice folks at Ballard have a pretty nifty fuel cell technology, well-tested and reliable, but their insistence on feeding it pure hydrogen has crippled their offerings because even using extra-nifty ultra high pressure carbon fibre tanks, you can't get hydrogen past an equivalent density to liquid hydrogen, and that's not quite 71 kg/m³. It's just not something where you can get adequate range in a mobile application. (And you still have six kinds of mischief involved with storing pure hydrogen; it walks through walls and it messes up material properties when it does so.)

    Other kinds of fuel cells -- aluminium-air, methanol-air, and my bet, ammonia-air alkaline -- are all much more workable in deployable terms. (And yes the second two are functionally are using methanol and ammonia as hydrogen carriers, but the density -- 792 kg/m³ and 630 kg/m³ respectively -- means you get far more hydrogen per volume.)

    In general, nuclear is good for baseload; it's not good for much else, including primary refining (e.g., iron ore to steel or limestone to concrete) and transport (even if we could propose to electrify the North American train lines, there isn't time. or enough capacity. Or...)

    So I think any sensible solution will use a lot of solar PV and a lot of building redesign/rebuilding and a lot of ocean wind.

    401:

    Saw something floating around else-net that "Climate Grief" had made it into the DSM-V; most of the responses consisted of shouts of "fake news".

    (It gives me to wonder if a whole lot of the relentless stupid is more "relentless terror of inability to cope".)

    Combine that with the reactionary coup that is Brexit (I do wish there was a way to point out the end goal is not "avoid taxes", the end goal is "compel obedience") and any thinking person's going to be feeling a bit of the mope.

    Cultivating detachment's blessed difficult, but it's the only thing I've found to be even slightly useful.

    402:

    Yes, I know about that. It's so mainstream that many if not most Chinese ebay sellers of LED emitters are now offering a colour choice of cold white, warm white and grow light. No prizes for guessing what people buy them for.

    There are many such minor factors which I didn't mention; there are also many minor factors which act in the opposite sense, which I also didn't mention. They are irrelevant. Not because of cancellation, but because their effect is tiny compared with the multiple orders of magnitude improvement the idea requires to make it work.

    Similarly with the heatsink. CHP schemes and the like are irrelevant, because it's not getting the heat out of the facilities that's the problem, it's getting it off the planet. If you want to add an extra energy input to the planet equivalent to a significant fraction of the total solar input, you don't just need a magic source to get it from, you need a magic sink to prevent the waste heat cooking the planet far worse than even the most fearful CO2-related predictions anticipate.

    Growing plants indoors is feasible for such conditions as the customers of the Chinese LED sellers are working to, and others which share the same characteristic of very small scale. But on the scale of a replacement for the output of a tenth of the planet's surface, it's so far beyond being even remotely feasible as to be ludicrous.

    403:

    Tim H. @ 389: American nursing homes fifty years ago were sometimes unspeakably horrible, what we have now is a step up. Further improvement here is unlikely, given the "Taxes & wages are theft" crowd.

    Nursing homes have improved slightly. They're now merely "speakably" horrible.

    404:

    SFReader notes: "Reducing the size of the inedible parts of a plant could also be a strategy for increasing food production efficiency."

    Indeed, and the development of semi-dwarf cultivars of rice and wheat was responsible for major increases in crop yield during the green revolution. It's fairly simple thermodynamics if you don't delve into the details: energy that isn't devoted to (say) creating stalks can potentially be devoted to producing edible biomass. But the details are the problem because you hit a wall at some point: you can only decrease leaf area so far before the loss of energy-collecting surfaces starts to impact yield. And you can only decrease plant size so far before you start losing leaf area or reducing photosynthesis due to self-shading. The new rubisco hack may partially solve that problem -- or not.

    Haven't had time to read the original journal manuscript, but it occurs to me you'll also have to carefully consider the impacts on plant water use, which may increase significantly. (There's no free lunch.) Accounting for those effects won't be trivial in most agricultural areas, since water resources are constrained in a growing area of the world.

    Daniel Duffy summed up an interesting argument in favor of nuclear plants: "There are currently 467 operational nuclear power plants worldwide. We can eliminate all excess CO2 emission by adding another 450 each 4 GW plants."

    One problem you don't seem to have considered is the amount of fuel required to power these plants. Not a criticism here, as I don't know the answer to how easy it will be to double the amount of fuel that must be provided. One of the problems with nuclear that people prefer not to mention is that for all its merits, mining the fuel isn't simple and clean. Then there's the problem that you'll need to ram through a solution for storing the spent fuel -- something the Americans, among others, haven't managed yet. Probably an easier problem to deal with than 2°C of global warming, but not something we can ignore. Oh, and decommissioning nuclear plants at their end-of-life also isn't trivial.

    Charlie reported depression. At the risk of seeming patronizing, I can only second what others have said: this isn't something you can beat by "manning up" and toughing it out. Most people find some combination of talk therapy and medication necessary to beat significant depression.

    405:

    "Daniel Duffy summed up an interesting argument in favor of nuclear plants: "There are currently 467 operational nuclear power plants worldwide. We can eliminate all excess CO2 emission by adding another 450 each 4 GW plants.""

    Yeah, that's a good summary of the argument. Nuclear currently provides 2% of our energy needs, and doubling that will solve our problems...

    In other words the argument for nuclear depends on the audience being unable to do simple maths.

    406:

    Nursing homes for developed world citizens in developing countries are much better than domestic ones. Perhaps that represents the future (at least until the developing world catches up with us further)?

    407:

    Since nobody has linked it, Randall Munroe (xkcd) has what might be an attempted explanation(4 Jan 2019) related to the bits by EGA above about [Witches] and Shorting. (Explanation in second link by a SHORT WITCH.) I smiled.

    408:

    adding another 450 each 4 GW plants

    ... ie, 25% larger than the largest reactor complex in the US. Palo Verge has a current average output of about 3.3GW. It's probably more useful to think about it as number of reactors rather than number of complexes, not least because PV was going to be expanded to five reactors until it became obviously uneconomic to do that.

    Hinkley C is a better example of actually building a new reactor now, because that is an actual reactor being built now. That's two, 1.6GW reactors for ~$US50 billion taking 10 years to build, with a delivered electricity price of around $100/MWh.

    That doesn't change the total numbers much, though. We'd need ~600 reactors with slightly lower expected operating time (assuming no storage in the system!), so a total cost about 3x higher than DD's estimate. Which is still reasonable!

    It's just that rather than being twice the capital cost of renewable energy, it's 6x the cost. And rather than selling electricity for $20/MWH and falling, it's $100/MWh and rising. Changing the demand from "less than 10 reactors this decade" to "600 reactors guaranteed in 3 decades" is going to affect the market price as everything from nuclear engineer salaries to concrete costs go through the roof. I fear the Hinkley "worst case" cost would be optimistic at that scale.

    John Quiggin in Australia has done a bunch of thinking/debunking of the nuclear fantasy and there's a whole lot of details (some applicable mostly to Australia, like needing an extra plant or two to run the desalination systems to provide water, for example). Radiative cooling of big thermal generators need huge areas to radiate, and obviously works less well when it's hot (during the daytime).

    409:

    Nursing homes for developed world citizens in developing countries are much better than domestic ones.

    It's all about labor costs. Taking care of elderly (or not) who need help eating, bathing, toilet issues, etc... is labor intensive. And very hard to automate.

    Personally until we (USA and the rest of the planet) decide to make it a job to aspire to instead of menial labor wages those attracted to the jobs will be at the lower end of the wage scale compared to those being cared for.[1]

    So yes, putting elderly care for 1st world people into 2nd and 3rd world countries can improve their care or reduce the costs or both as the wage rates there tend to be much less. Makes those holiday visits a bit harder tho.

    [1] $20/hour is the going rate for much of the US for baby sitting care in your own place. Which nets down to an actual wage of $10 to $15 per hour after overhead. And if you want 24/7 that's going to cost $14K per MONTH to have people at the lower end of the skill set for shaved apes be around. Which is why you wind up with nursing homes and such. To spread out the costs.

    410:

    Which does rather bring us back to somewhere way up above: renewable electricity supplies keep getting cheaper and more readily available . We don't seem to have hit the flattening in the S-curve yet. So it's reasonable to plan on there being whopping amounts of it and assume that the limit will be caused by demand rather than supply.

    Which is good news for all the things that can use electricity but currently don't - like transport.

    The Chinese using megavolt HVDC is also exciting, because it trades more expense at the ends for lower cost all along the transmission line. Shipping electricity long distances is also getting cheaper. It's already at the stage where across Australia is an off the shelf project, so we really should be looking at using the solar delay to supply the east cost (ie, solar generation 3-4 hours west of demand so the supply peak better matches the demand peak).

    411:

    the development of semi-dwarf cultivars of rice and wheat was responsible for major increases in crop yield during the green revolution

    And before. Medieval wheat was a lot shorter than ancient Egyptian wheat, for example. Farmers have been selectively breeding for increased yield for a long time, and reducing the size of parts of the plant we don't use was part of that.

    you'll also have to carefully consider the impacts on plant water use, which may increase significantly

    Assuming the original article is the one I referenced in #308, I didn't see them discussing water usage directly. However, as every CO2 molecule is matched by a water molecule in the photosynthesis reaction I can't see how increasing CO2 usage wouldn't increase water requirements as well.

    412:

    Before Britain entered the EEC it used to be considered odious to resort to an autumn budget.

    It is possible to search for criminals at Westminster, though it hardly seems necessary.

    413:

    Nuclear currently provides 2% of our energy needs, and doubling that will solve our problems...

    A number of the 400-odd reactors running today produce less than 600MW. What Daniel Duffy is suggesting is 400 "plants" consisting of 3 or 4 modern reactors each generating 1GW which would increase the amount of non-carbon nuclear generation worldwide by a factor of five or so. That's actually too little, I'd aim to provide about 25TW of nuclear generating capacity to eliminate all fossil carbon consumption for electricity generation, heating, transport etc. as well as actively decarbonising the atmosphere but that's just me since 600ppm CO2 is a bad place to be and that's where the Green revolution and gas-backstopped renewables are taking us at an accelerating pace.

    The alternative to a shitload of nuclear power is a lot of renewables and lots and lots of gas-burning with a promise that twenty or thirty or fifty years from now (or maybe a bit later) renewables will provide all the energy we need, honest and we'll stop burning fossil carbon completely, promise.

    The biggest worked example of renewables buildout in a developed nation, with hundreds of billions of Euros spent over the past ten years or so, is Germany. This Green spend has resulted in no noticeable decrease in the extraction and burning of lignite (brown coal) to provide expensive electrical power in that nation.

    2008 -- lignite = 150.6 TWh 2018 -- lignite = 146.0 TWh

    Hundreds of billions of Euros will be needed to be spent over the next decade on extra renewables to maintain their carbon emissions as they are, not reduce them since all of Germany's non-carbon nuclear power plants will be shut down by 2023. Then it will be time to spend hundreds of billions of Euros more just to replace the first tranche of renewables built out over the past ten years. If they double that spend, to a trillion Euros per decade they might actually start to replace their carbon consumption with renewables but I wouldn't hold my breath. In other news the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project is on track to provide more backstop gas for Germany's Green revolution, ready to deliver as much as 55 billion cubic metres a year to Germany and other European countries for the next fifty years from Russia. It could be up and working by the end of 2019.

    414:

    this is a blog, and OGH is not the only one reading it. And maybe some other part of the AI we call "commentariat" might find this info useful.

    Let us say that we are intimately aware of the issues of dementia, care homes, nasty people taking advantage of the old to twist their minds and the late stage affects that include aggression, and projection.

    Intimately: as in directly temporally enough to consider this as a frequency of 'not possible'.

    Gaslighting works incredibly well on Minds that are falling apart (c.f. Fox News).

    Let us say watching a Mind twisted in that fashion, for it to scream that you're insane is not an experience that we would consider acceptable for moral entities to produce.

    Let us say that we have 100% compassion for the situation and that our jokes are outrageous because of it.

    It is very much like people currently re-casting / re-zoning the 'sonic attack' reports into merely being crickets (when, if you check closely, the China / Russian border similar incidents cannot possibly be that and the sound files don't match the originals). Little boys thinking they're being cute, lying and so forth.

    Pro-tip: wasn't crickets. Crickets don't go wicked. As if, at this point, that Ethics was something we'd not take with a bucket of salt from any public source.

    ~

    But well done the USA and UK for proving that you've no intentions to cease and desist. Smart move.

    If you were a frog.

    And we all know what happened last time someone got cute over frogs, they ended up burned.

    ~

    Apologies to host: we tried to push some hope particles your way, but we understand our humor band is a bit tuned to the Nasties.

    TL;DR

    We really do not understand HSS desires for illusions / lying. Addiction?

    Oh and p.s.

    Scientists kill people too. Now all the heads of the agencies in the USA are women. Women =/= Feminists, Category Error.

    $195,000,000 vrs $67 billion.

    Better crunch those numbers, see if it's worth it.

    415:

    Re: ' ... you can only decrease leaf area so far before the loss of energy-collecting surfaces starts to impact yield.'

    Hadn't considered this. Thanks! and would appreciate any examples of this.

    Mostly think that it will take many different approaches because different plants can probably be modified economically only so many ways.

    Regardless, still feel that high-rise factory style agro has to be one of the efforts even if all this does is ensure lots of salad greens because salad greens are part of a healthy diet and by planting them in a high-rise nursery you free up arable land for other crops that cannot be adapted to grow under a roof/LEDs.

    417:

    Hmmm. I think that's a little over-simplified. IIRC, the reason for the dwarf rice varieties taught in school wasn't to maximize grain per plant, but to minimize the problem of lodging, wherein grasses that got too tall got blown over by storms and thereby lost their seeds.

    While I agree that, theoretically, maximizing the amount of edible plant per unit photosynthetic area (or volume, as my teacher used to point out) is important, there are some important caveats.

    --One is that grain has an upper limit. If you want a grain the size of a coconut, you need something equivalent to a coconut palm to hold it above ground. The weight of the harvested fruit matters. --Another is that, to a good first approximation, photosynthesis per unit area scales up fairly smoothly from leaf to crop to forest. A grain field photosynthesizes about the same per acre as a forest does in the same site.
    --A third is that edibility isn't necessarily a great idea. It's probably apocryphal, but there's a story about a plant breeder who felt sorry for all the Sahel kids who had to eat sorghum. The problem with sorghum is that, if it's stressed, it produces cyanide precursors (turn into cyanide when the cells get macerated, as by a grasshopper). In drought years, the kids suffered from subclinical cyanide poisoning, due to eating grain from stunted plants. The obvious solution? Create a sorghum cultivar that was cyanide free. And they did. And the grasshoppers ate it all, causing a total loss of crop. Humans are wimps when it comes to eating raw foods, and if a plant is totally edible to us, it's basically edible to a wide variety of pests. That can be a real problem.

    Anyway, if you want to get out from under this, growing root vegetables is theoretically one way around the problem, and IIRC the record for potatoes per acre is higher than for rice per acre. You don't have to support the potatoes off the ground, and that makes a difference. Of course, there isn't much protein in a potato.

    Some tree crops (like apples) also have higher yields than rice too, and this gets to another point. If you're thinking about carbs, theoretically you can swap out rice, potatoes, or even apples, and they're all carbs. The problem is with the other vitamins, minerals, and especially protein. Wheat yields less than rice per acre, but some big part of it is protein.

    Anyway, it does get complicated. I'm not against breeding a plant to maximize production, but it's worth thinking about production per unit what? Space? Weight? Water input? Some nutrient input? Temperature? All of these matter at some point in the growing season.

    418:

    Some tree crops (like apples) also have higher yields than rice

    One to watch for carbs+protein is breadfruit. Conveniently it's tropical so the usable range is likely to expand. It's useful because you can make flour and bake with it, but apple flour is really annoying to cook with (no structure, it forms a gel or syrup rather than a dough - you get it in the bottom of dehydrators).

    The hassle with tree crops and perennials in general is that increasingly changeable weather, and especially more severe storms, make long term crops even higher risk than they are now. At least with wheat or rice if you lose a crop you've lost one growing season. With trees if you lose them you've lost 2-5 years assuming you can replant immediately. And as the growing zone moves you can move with it (the wheat belt in Western Australia is exactly described by the two isohyets marking the minimum and maximum rainfall required... as that moves so does the area cultivated).

    Australia lost a lot of banana trees a few years ago in a storm and the retail price stayed high for a couple of years. Banana trees grow really fast compared to most tree crops (technically they're a herb not a tree and that has a big influence). If we could make edible bamboo fruit we'd be on a winner :)

    419:

    GH @ 404 Oh, and decommissioning nuclear plants at their end-of-life also isn't trivial. Actually, it is ... You simply bury the whole thing in an earth berm ( with a memberane or containment dome(let) on the insode ... And leave it for a couple-hundred years to "cool down" Yes/No?

    Moz @ 410 Which is good news for all the things that can use electricity but currently don't - like transport. Except Electrified railways - except in England & Wales of course, where fucker Grayling has put a stop to it.

    420:

    Well, the number of people living in extreme poverty in China, about a quarter of the world population, has definitely been declining, for specific Chinese reasons. True in its smaller lookalike rival Vietnam as well. But leave them out, and has the number of people in the world in extreme poverty declined? I rather doubt it.

    JH, I suggest you stop doubting it.

    Every reputable source I read claims that extreme poverty has been, and is, dropping mostly everywhere. Indonesia, India, China, South America - you name it. And not just small drops either.

    Since I was born we've changed from about 70% of the world's population living in extreme poverty to about 8%. With the trend accelerating in the last two decades.

    Our lifetime is the one in which humanity finally (finally!) dragged itself out of the desperate poverty in which most people lived for most of history.
    It is the biggest economic story of our lives.

    421:

    Lodging was definitely the issue for wheat! I remember when grain crops in the UK fairly often had to be ploughed in because there was strong wind and continual rain during the harvest period. The main development that avoided that was winter wheat, but the short staple ones came close.

    And, to Moz. No, that's too simplistic, and effectively wrong. In a bad year, you lose MORE than one growing season per season for annuals, because you don't even produce enough seed to resowing. That's what caused the most serious famines in mediaeval times (and does in African drought) - one year is survivable (with losses), multiple years often isn't. And you aren't allowing for the fact that most of the effort is in growing the plants, not harvesting them - with annuals, that is lost - with perennials, they usually survive, and it is not lost.

    422:

    "In comparison with the global political picture, my personal 2018 was all butterflies and rainbows."

    Good news, everyone! Charlie's emotional slump is only temporary. Evidence is found in the above statement, displaying the objectivity, perspective and sense of proportionality which are the necessary and sufficient resources to prevent a self reinforcing downward mental spiral. Since the human mind is just algorithms all the way down, why should ongoing renewable rescues by Captain Rationality of the Frontal Cortex be any less authentic, or effective, than all the automatic pilot junk in the hind brain. No guarantees against general system collapse in advanced old age, but if cognitive decline is the ultimate threat, I haven't seen any sign of it in his writing.

    423:

    SFReader wondered about my "you can only decrease leaf area so far before the loss of energy-collecting surfaces starts to impact yield."

    SFR: "Hadn't considered this. Thanks! and would appreciate any examples of this."

    That summary was my take-home from editing hundreds of manuscripts on breeding and crop management to improve the edible components of rice and grass yield, and a comparable number on plant water use. A little Googling should turn up lots of articles. For example: https://academic.oup.com/aob/article/108/6/1065/211890

    It's easy enough to see from an energy perspective: efficient leaves capture large amounts of energy, leaving less for the leaves that they shade to capture. At some point, not enough energy reaches the shaded leaves to repay the cost of building the leaves. So plants modify their architecture (layout of leaves, stems, etc.) to optimize light capture, often by spacing leaves far enough apart that adequate light reaches as many of the leaves as possible. For example, if you look at a tree growing in the open, you'll see how the leaves expand to fill all the available space and maximize light capture.

    Lodging (stems falling over) is definitely a problem with tall crops, including but not limited to rice and wheat, and traditional farmers for the last few thousand years undoubtedly noticed that lodging caused high (sometimes complete) crop losses. And they would have noticed lodging was less frequent in shorter plants, and since the tall plants produced less seed when they fell over, a larger proportion of the surviving seeds that were stored for next year's crop would have come from the shorter plants, incrementally leading to shorter plants. (Before Heteromeles points this out, that's obviously a simplistic description. Google the concept of "landraces" and you'll see how this process has functioned for many crops around the world. My point was that organized and scientific efforts to optimize crop height vs. leaf area began in the 20th century, and were a key component of the Green Revolution.

    Heteromeles noted: "I think that's a little over-simplified."

    Of course. This is a blog, not a journal manuscript or a classroom handout. Are you saying that your "Some tree crops (like apples) also have higher yields than rice too" isn't over-simplified? It would take a very long post indeed to adequately describe the difficulty of mucking about with photosynthesis. I do try to circumscribe my comments to make it clear that the description is simplified. Perhaps that should just be taken as given in any post shorter than 4000 words rather than requiring posters to add a specific disclaimer with each post that their comment is a simplification of reality?

    Greg Tingey wondered about decommissioning nuclear plants: "You simply bury the whole thing in an earth berm ( with a memberane or containment dome(let) on the insode ... And leave it for a couple-hundred years to "cool down" Yes/No?"

    Yes AND no. Yes, in the sense that there are plenty of places you can store radioactive waste and contaminated materials in the short term. Any reasonably dry deep mine that can be guarded from malefactors and water seepage would work well in the short term, giving us plenty of time to develop a safer and more permanent solution. Like finding ways to reuse the radioactives, for instance.

    Emphatically no in the sense that reasonable options such as the Yucca Mountain repository are very difficult to get approved. Yucca Mountain has been a contentious issue for roughly the past 30 years, and it took roughly the first half of that before there was consensus to proceed. The fact that it was likely one of the best options didn't persuade enough people to make this option broadly accepted. (See "not in my backyard".) It's important to remember that just because something is technically feasible, that doesn't mean it's socially feasible. And if you stop funding the repository, as happened for Yucca Mountain, then some of the fearmongering becomes more realistic, further increasing opposition to the current and future options.

    424:

    Reducing leaf area limits yield in locations like the UK, where lack of sunlight is the primary restriction; you can sometimes remove leaves during ripening, but it harms yield and quality to do it before. It's also why it is a myth that fast-growing plants produce more biomass (e.g. conifer plantations versus coppicing).

    However, in places where the primary restriction is water supply, it CAN help - which is why desert plants usually have few, small or no leaves.

    425:

    yucca

    In Finland they're just digging a hole, 520 meters deep in stable bedrock.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository

    There was a film about it, 'into eternity'

    426:

    Also a big chunk of Benford's book Deep Time. (Not to be confused with Darling's more recent book of the same title.)

    427:

    Elderly Cynic noted: "It's also why it is a myth that fast-growing plants produce more biomass (e.g. conifer plantations versus coppicing)."

    Yes, but you have to consider the goals and time scale. Trees like poplars and willows tend produce large amounts of biomass quickly, but then stop growing or start dying at a relatively young age. Even slow-growing but long-lived conifers tend to catch up slowly, and often surpass the faster species. Of course, the comparison depends strongly on which specific 2 species you're comparing.

    EC: "However, in places where the primary restriction is water supply, it CAN help - which is why desert plants usually have few, small or no leaves."

    Very much so. Also, in environments with a ton of light (which are often but not always dry), there are many other complications, such as heat dissipation, adjusting the balance of photosynthetic pigments and other compounds to dissipate excess energy harvested by the photosystems, and so on. As Heteromeles and I have noted, it's complicated.

    barren_samadhi noted: "In Finland they're just digging a hole, 520 meters deep in stable bedrock."

    Which is great so long as the hole won't fill with water. That's feasible if the Finns implement long-term funding to manage the site (e.g., protect the materials from flowing water, install pumps if that becomes necessary). But long-term funding for such things is uncertain (as in the Yucca Mountain example), and once you get significant water infiltration, you risk leaching out the radioisotopes over time. (Probably not rapidly, but if memory serves, that was one of the big stumbling blocks for Yucca Mountain.)

    428:

    I agree. It's impossible to summarize most of agronomy and horticulture into a few words. Getting the rest of this crowd to realize that plants are generally pretty smart about optimizing around multiple limits (light, nutrients, space, pests, etc.) is a start.

    One thing I will stand on, a little. As I recall, the opening salvo of the green revolution were to prevent lodging by breeding dwarf varieties, not to optimize output by jiggering with the proportions of the plants. Lodging is an easy thing to work with, a single variable that can be easily measured. Trying to optimize the architecture of a particular crop for a particular latitude is a lot harder, especially if you're trying to model how the plant's growing, which I've tried to do.

    429:

    There is only one possible response....

    "I know you've deceived me, now here's a surprise I know that you have 'cause there's magic in my eyes I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles Oh yeah If you think that I don't know about the little tricks you've played And never see you when deliberately you put things in my way Well, here's a poke at you You're gonna choke on it too You're gonna lose that smile Because all the while I can see for miles and miles I can see for miles and miles I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles Oh yeah ... The Who were, of course, on first....

    430:

    Just one? No problem at all: how 'bout some that the GOP has floated several times in the last 18 years, like, "privatize social security"? Or, at the rate we're going right now, "no budget for food stamps".

    Or maybe that woman who was 13 in '94 when he was visiting his good buddy (now convicted for sex crimes) Epstein, who jerked him off, finally gets to file charges, without the Malignanat Carcinoma's fixer sending them kneecap threats?

    431:

    Baltimore? Are you in BSFS? If not, you should come... we have munchies.... (Next main business (and socialize) meeting is this coming Sat eve, check out bsfs.org.

    432:

    Excerpt: WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a bold gambit to end the government shutdown, the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Saturday that she would bypass Donald J. Trump and negotiate directly with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.

    “I owe it to the American people to bring this shutdown to the swiftest possible conclusion, and so I’m avoiding the middleman,” she said. --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/pelosi-says-she-will-skip-trump-and-negotiate-directly-with-putin-shutdown

    (SATIRE!!!)

    433:

    Hey, here's an idea: instead of shipping it long distance, how 'bout just shooting the developers of subdivisions, move people deeper into the metro areas, and go back to having locally-grown fruits and veggies, as we did till the seventies...?

    434:

    That depends on the nursing home. I had years of stories, both from a friend who worked in one in eastern OH for the oughts, and from my Eldest, who's a COTA, and has worked in them, and not-infrequently rants about people who just don't care, even when you ask them how they'd feel if it were their parents they were taking care of.

    435:

    Actually, even that isn't really true in places like the UK. There IS a timescale factor among the plausible wood-producing species, but most of it is in the very early stage, before the trees have either formed a canopy or are any use for anything other than brushwood. You might be amazed at how fast many of the harder trees grow when young - even 'slow growing' ones like oak, holly, walnut etc. Also, trees like willow continue to produce at their initial rate when coppiced regularly!

    Conifers DO have an edge for short-term planting, if the objective is burning in suitable furnaces, in that their green leaves are much more calorific, but some deciduous trees (like holly) share that to a significant extent.

    Yes, there are plenty of OTHER tree species that grow very slowly initially (or throughout their life), but I was referring to the ones that are plausible for forestry - which is probably well over a hundred in the more fertile parts of the UK. I could reel off a good dozen I have personal experience of watching grow.

    436:

    Loved it, especially one of the parallel articles... Cabinet members warned Donald J. Trump that shutting down the federal government would make it exponentially harder for them to steal from.

    437:

    Interstingly enough, that also coincindes with massive relocation from rural areas to metro areas.

    But then, in the US, coyotes and racoons are eating better, too....

    438:

    Greg Tingey @ 419:

    GH @ 404 Oh, and decommissioning nuclear plants at their end-of-life also isn't trivial.

    Actually, it is ...
    You simply bury the whole thing in an earth berm ( with a memberane or containment dome(let) on the insode ... And leave it for a couple-hundred years to "cool down"
    Yes/No?

    Uhhh ... NO

    To "simply bury the whole thing", your earth berm is going to be a half mile in diameter and 500 feet high. A "couple-hundred years" ain't gonna' be long enough for it to "cool down". Try a "couple-thousand" years ... at least.

    And that's IF you remove the spent fuel first. If you try to encapsulate the spent fuel in place, you're talking billions of years.

    439:

    I was assuming that the spent fuel had been removed - much too useful to be buried completely inaccessibly.

    440:

    The Finns are using KBS-3. The hole filling up with water is the plan. The entire point of kbs three is that glass, copper, and clay are all inert with regards to water over geological time. The waste is virtrified, put in a copper barrel and the barrel then bedded down in clay. Water just makes the clay seal tighter, and metallic copper stays metallic copper if submerged for a million years, and if that fails (.. and i really do not see how it could), vitrified waste will not dissolve.

    441:

    On the subject of nukes, does anyone have a candidate for "the right kind of nuke plant," that is, one that doesn't melt down, does not generate high levels of waste, etc? Pebble bed? Thorium? Something else? What is your candidate and why?

    442:

    In a bad year, you lose MORE than one growing season per season for annuals, because you don't even produce enough seed to resowing.

    As far as I know industrial farms almost never plant their own seed*, they buy new every year. But a few farmers only or primarily grow seed crops. I can't imagine peasant agriculture plus genetic engineering outside a Cory Doctrow novel.

    Please recall that I was comparing annual crops to tree crops. I said explicitly "trees... 2-5 years before fruiting". Even with a one season from propagation to fruiting banana palm (I can't imagine an apple tree doing that) there is going to be a foregone gain from losing the tree. You expect more than one years production from a tree and you don't get it. Plus trees cost more than grass seed (almost no-one plants tree seeds, they're mostly grafted or at the very least transplanted as seedlings).

    But yeah, happy to talk about what you know rather than digressing into stuff I grew up doing. Annual crops it is.

    • at least Australia and North America work that way.
    443:

    The right kind of nuclear reactor is a pile of hydrogen about 8 light minutes away. Low maintenance, long working life, with any luck it can even be recycled afterwards.

    444:

    Decommissioning nuclear power reactors is not particularly difficult. Many deluded people seem to think it's never actually been done before for some reason, there's no track record or process to complete the task and so it's impossible because it's Scary! nuclear stuff. Strange but true.

    Worked example -- the Japanese Magnox reactor at Tokaimura, their nuclear research "village" not far from Fukushima was shut down in 1998 the final parts including the reactor core were demolished in 2011. US decommissioning tends to be done in a similar timescale (10 to 20 years) with some items like the reactor vessel being cut up and extracted from the containment and to parts stored in a pit for a few decades while residual activity dies away, after which it is scrapped. Another worked example, the Zion PWR in the US which shut down in 1998 was selected for this sort of rapid decommissioning process around 2010. By 2015 all the major components subject to neutron activation such as the control head, reactor pressure vessel internals and pipe feeds had been cut up and taken out of the containment building. There's an interesting slideshow of the process here:

    https://www.slideshare.net/GaryKrautwurst/zion-station-rv-segmentation-presentation-37-pgs?next_slideshow=1

    The British reactor decommissioning process is called SafeStor. It involves a longer timescale but similar costs overall. The spent fuel on-site after shutdown is removed, the ancillary buildings with negligible radioactivity are demolished (offices, control rooms, turbine halls etc.) and the remaining buildings like the containment are made weathertight and secured, allowing access for occasional inspection. This process runs for about 80 years or so from shutdown at which time any short-lived radioactivity induced in the reactor and surrounding structures will mostly have decayed. After that it's an onerous but conventional matter of demolition of a very strongly built and heavily reinforced building and the removal of some large metal structures which go straight into the scrap recycling process.

    It's almost as if some moderately smart and competent folks have considered how such a project might be carried out, timescales and costs and such. Who'd believe it? Not anti-nuclear folks, that's for sure.

    445:

    You mean the Sun? Unfortunately some bastard switches it off for eighteen hours a day over winter where I live. Fortunately we've got a couple of our own nuclear reactors parked about 2.8 x 10^-6 light-minutes to the east of where I'm sitting typing this which means we don't actually freeze to death in the dark.

    446:

    instead of shipping it long distance... go back to having locally-grown fruits and veggies

    Sydney still does, the fight is over how much we should pave what's left.

    The problem is that I like both potatoes and mangoes, as well as a whole pile of other things that need incompatible growing conditions. It's true that most of my diet can be grown within 100km of where I live, but that's only true if you consider each resident of Sydney independently. The city as a whole consumes more food than can be grown within 500km (admittedly half that area is sea and we don't do aquaculture very well at all).

    We could eliminate cities and go back to peasant agriculture, leaving behind things that depend on network effects and other features of population concentration (science, technology, much culture, advanced medicine etc). I would rather not.

    More sensible, IMO, to focus on how we can improve cities. Does importing electricity and having grow towers make sense? For which crops?

    447:

    Who'd believe it? Not anti-nuclear folks

    We believe it, as far as it goes. We just don't believe it goes far enough. Sure, they get down to less than a hundred tonnes of high level material, and that's kind of impressive. All they need to do now is store it somewhere safe for longer than any human structure has lasted.

    The real trouble is the lies and coverups, and the cost of fixing them. Nuclear material is up there with halocarbons on the scale of "usually bad, hard to deal with" but also on the scale of "habitually lied about".

    Sydney has both an old uranium smelter in Hunters Hill and an old halocarbon factory in Botany but finding out the details mostly seems to involve waiting until those responsible are dead. Note that in both cases the cleanup involves a lot of taxpayer money, although at least Orica are finally paying something.

    448:

    When you say "high level material" how radioactive is that? The Zion reactor vessel in the slideshow I referenced was not particularly radioactive ten years or so after shutdown (you can see workers standing on it and around it wearing lightweight protective clothing). The resulting metal scrap is low-level waste and is suitable for recycling after a couple of decades of storage to assuage the feelings of anti-nuclear folks. They expect to have the site cleared by 2026 if I read the slideshow text correctly.

    Under US regulations any metal scrap less than 500,000 Bq per cubic metre is not regarded as radioactive waste at all and can be directly recycled without delay. Well, that's not strictly true, it's only if the scrap comes from a non-nuclear source such as ship demolition. If it's "nuclear" i.e. scrap from a nuclear fuel plant or a reactor building then it's treated as nuclear waste if it exceeds 5000 Bq per cubic metre, 1% of the non-nuclear scrap process limits because nuclear is Scary!

    As for the "uranium smelter" in New South Wales you referenced it seems the major worry about pollution on the site stems from the other industrial processes that went on there such as tin refining and carbolic production in the mid-1960s -- from the fine article, "the NSW Environment Protection Authority found it was contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons, coal tar pitch, arsenic and lead." That sounds like really really bad stuff but none of it seems to be radioactive in any way or likely to be a result of uranium smelting a century ago.

    449:

    Also, of course, unlike radioactive contaminants, arsenic and lead don't go off. They're still just as arsenicy and leady in a million years as they are now.

    450:

    The real trouble is the lies and coverups, and the cost of fixing them. Nuclear material is up there with halocarbons on the scale of "usually bad, hard to deal with" but also on the scale of "habitually lied about".

    This is exactly it. You want nuclear power? Start by copping to the lies. Then make the whole damn thing transparent, and start testing alternate designs.

    The reason we don't have nuclear power isn't the dangers. Dangers can be fixed. Problems can be solved. It's the long-time, never-stopped, clear history of utterly outrageous lies.

    451:

    The branch line where I used to live was cut short by Beeching but not entirely closed. The 'new' terminal station was the only remaining thing on the north side of a main road with the line crossing via a bridge. There was a height restriction under the bridge and tall vehicles had to detour via a country lane, crossing the line at a level crossing half a mile down the line and coming back via a slightly better lane. Of course regularly trucks ignored the limit or cut across to the wrong side of the road (the road tilted so there was more clearance one way than the other) and had to cut back suddenly to avoid oncoming traffic.

    Someone realised if they removed the embankment up to the bridge they could move the station, get rid of the bridge, gain a larger car park and flog the old site for housing to pay for everything. This was duly set in motion, replacement bus service installed and the track removed back to the start of the embankment. It was a this point the material making up the embankment was tested and found to contain so much arsenic the whole thing had to be treated as hazardous waste instead of being dumped in a China Clay pit.

    The area is riddled with tin and copper mines, and where you find one you not only find the other (a nearby copper mine had had its spoil heaps reworked for tin the the 70s when the price shot up) but you also find arsenic and other odds and ends of interesting metals. Rather than truck in aggregate for the embankment the Victorians had just shifted some of the spoil heap from the closed mine just up the hill.

    452:

    It is irrelevant whether they buy in or save seed, if you consider the whole cycle. In terms of productivity, there is little to choose but, in terms of reliability, permaculture is significantly better. And I am not talking about the aberrant supermarket-dominated production, but what can be done when it is done competently - and to a great extent is, over much of Europe.

    453:

    the major worry about pollution on the site stems from the other industrial processes

    Nope, a lot of it is from the uranium smelter. Both because the uranium ore wasn't pure uranium oxide, and because like every other early industrial process they were slowly discovering a whole new world of toxicity and pollution. It's hard to tease out the radioactives problem as distinct from the "smelting heavy metals" problem, but that doesn't mean there are no problems with smelting that particular heavy metal.

    Note also Vulch@451 on the generic "industrial pollution" problem.

    454:

    It is irrelevant whether they buy in or save seed, if you consider the whole cycle. In terms of productivity

    I'm not entirely sure that's correct. The organic rice grower that I buy from, for example, buys in seed. Sure, he may do that even though it lowers productivity but my suspicion is that it raises it. That means he's affected by problems at the seed supplier, but it also means that unless all seed sources are wiped out he doesn't lose more than the crop in the ground to a disaster.

    More generally, a lot of crops are hybrids that don't breed true. Which means you have no choice but to grow seed separately from your productive crop. I suspect this is one of the distinguishing features of industrial agriculture. Permaculture has to either become industrialised, or it's not a solution to keeping technological society running. I think it can work (I buy the stuff, QED).

    455:

    It's not just coyotes and raccoons. Most city animals are eating better and becoming smarter.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/cities-animal-intelligence-fishing-cats/567538/

    456:

    Yes, I learned this year about Xylella, which is causing catastrophic damage to the olive groves in southern Italy, and those trees take a century to be truly productive.

    457:

    In an unrelated story, Bitcoin celebrated its 10-year anniversary on January 3.

    458:

    In related news here's Lindybeige talking about olive farming on the tubes of U. He's a military-history type, making the point that olives grow where not much else will, but they're vulnerable to military action in a way that annual crops aren't... it's not just storms that come along and trash your trees.

    459:

    Compare the electoral consequences of those to...immigrants are great...let's open the US up to more refugees.

    @solar By observation of the risk assessment process among a fairly educated group of people, it appears that global warming is less of a risk than a possibility of a nuclear accident. Given that nuclear is less dangerous than coal power, it appears that spending on solar is unnecessary. That, or there is something wrong with the risk assessment.

    460:

    Vulch's problem is another example of overlap. That zone of mineralisation also includes uranium, which when the miners encountered it was treated just like any other kind of waste rock. So you get random pockets of often rather good uranium ore in the spoil heaps (and random lumps of it in the walls of old mine buildings) which have been there for hundreds of years and nobody knows about. Some of it went to France, but the mines were either going or gone down the tubes by then so that didn't change anything for them. But there are still old workings which have parts inaccessible to mine explorers due to radon levels.

    461:

    "In related news here's Lindybeige talking about olive farming on the tubes of U."

    I read that as referring to cleaning up the sites of nuclear power stations by spreading dirt on top of the old reactor core and growing olives on it.

    462:

    how 'bout just shooting the developers of subdivisions, move people deeper into the metro areas, and go back to having locally-grown fruits and veggies, as we did till the seventies

    They build them because people want them and will pay for them. (Cue up Pogo here.)

    Where is this place where the suburbs didn't explode till the 70s? In the US it was immediately after WWII.

    463:

    That, or there is something wrong with the risk assessment.

    Or possibly with your analysis?

    You're asking "global warming or nuclear power", people like me are asking "solar, nuclear, or warming". The different answers from the group who see three options rather than two might be purely due to the third option. Especially since no-one is trying to pretend that nuclear is cheaper than solar any more.

    The question I see being asked is "why don't you want to spend extra money to get bigger disasters"... and sometimes that comes through in my answers.

    Given that nuclear is less dangerous than coal power

    It seems like an irrelevant comparison to me since one of the options is obviously out of the question. Kind of like "should we put refugee children in cages or leave them in the desert to die"... it's relevant in the sense that we're doing it now, and like your question it poses something awful against something less awful, ignoring the possibility of not being awful.

    464:

    I suspect you could do that, and now I'm wondering whether it would be a good idea. On the positive side olive trees don't need much maintenance so could be grown even if there was radiation, they don't need much water, so less risk of leaching, and are high calorie so worth a certain amount of hassle.

    The negative is... maybe the fruit would end up contaminated? Maybe the roots would burrow down and disturb the cap over the waste?

    I suspect the real problem is that any land you can bury waste under would either be so awful olives would grow, or so usable that just growing olives would be a waste. Maybe compromise by building subdivisions on them so nuclear fanboys have somewhere to live?

    (ahem. Capitalist analysis: the housing near reactors normally sells at a discount, but is rarely bought by fanboys. Hence, fanboys either don't believe it's as safe as they say they do, or aren't capitalists. I would cheerfully live next to a wind turbine, and do live under solar panels...)

    465:

    @solar

    No. It's the constant cry that the objection is an irrational fear. That's not the case among "fairly educated...people". Painting your opponents in a logical argument as irrational makes you look like a dick.

    As I and many other educated people have reiterated constantly, the issue isn't fear. The issues are:

    *lack of fuel, there isn't enough to fuel the whole of civilisation *long lead times, decades to build and if you're going to solve the above problem, additional decades to design and test breeder reactors *high costs, they cost about an order of magnitude more than solar, which of course means you get an order of magnitude less reduction in carbon emission

    466:

    "I would cheerfully live next to a wind turbine, and do live under solar panels...)"

    I've taken to asking the pro coal idiots 'Have you put your money where your mouth is and installed a coal fired generator in your house? Because 2 million Australians have installed solar, and as far as I'm aware not one has installed coal generation, despite the same incentives being available. If you haven't, why should I be forced to pay for a coal generator, if you won't pay for one?'

    467:

    I have been fobbed off by a variety of NSW Liberal Party members when writing to them to suggest that since they're such huge fans of coal they should help with my campaign to re-open White Bay Power Station. It's a coal-fired plant right in the middle of Sydney. They closed it because it fills the air and water in the main basin with toxic "good for humanity" stuff.

    468:

    Nojay @ 445 😝

    Vulch @ 451 Gunnislake, obviously. Meanwhile, after 10 years, they are STILL arguing about “can they afford” to re-open Bere Alston – Tavistock, grrr …. … and Pigeon @ 460 .. There’s quite a lot of v low-level “U” in Cornwall, too, hence the Radon in the cellars of older houses…..

    Moz @ 454 More generally, a lot of crops are hybrids that don't breed true. Particularly if they are so-called “f1” types – amateurs have this problem, especially with Tomatoes & Sweetcorn. However, as I have just found, if you do it just right, you can overwinter tomato plants ( cuttings/clones ) if you have a small frost-free area & a growlight … I’ve also found out the hard way, that you need to have a big enough “cutting” before you start, otherwise they will appear to do ok, then die on you in the middle of December. [ In other words I’ve had a 50% success-rate, but this was the first year & I’m learning … ] Won’t work with sweetcorn, of course, because they are monocarpic annuals.

    469:

    That is, again, irrelevant. The thread was not about financing, but productivity. Obviously, growing in multiple areas is more resilient than growing in one, but the productivity loss is STILL more than a year's production because it includes the cost of the seed. Even if we use your financial costing, permaculture is STILL more resilent against a year's crop failure outside the humid tropics. In extreme cases, trees such as chestnuts, hazel, walnuts and oak can all produce staples, and will crop for centuries.

    Incidentally, agricultural grafting is used almost entirely for two purposes: to grow a crop in conditions for which it is not well suited, and to dwarf trees so that they are easier to pick. In a half-sane world, it would be used very rarely indeed. It's also irrelevant to the original discussion, where the context was growing for fuel. All of the examples in the previous paragraph are good for that, and none are grafted.

    470:

    That is, again, irrelevant. The thread was not about financing, but productivity

    Specifically, it was about the loss of productivity when a crop is destroyed. You were (and apparently still are) adamant that losing a tree crop is less damaging than losing an annual crop because the loss of production is greater for annuals.

    trees such as ... will crop for centuries.

    So one more time for the idiots like me: how does losing an area of mature trees cost less than losing a field of an annual crop? More usefully, how I replace a farm of 5-10 year old apple trees for less than the cost of planting the same area in wheat? Ideally with trees that produce at least some fruit the next year.

    My experience of grafted trees and vines is very different to yours. I have bought trees with disease-resistant or soil-specific rootstock and particular or even variegated fruitstock (kiwifruit with a male branch grafted on to a female plant, for example). Here's one example and here's a somewhat silly one. Dwarf isn't really a useful term IME, it's more used at the consumer level than the industrial because farmers normally care a bit more about yield per hectare etc and if the tree size is slightly different that's no big deal (within reason!). We went from 6-7m pruning height to 4-5m with the exact same trees, for example. One of those is "dwarf" in the retail market :)

    471:

    Tin ore bodies carry a lot of arsenic and other toxic metals and they probably smelted a lot of it, thousands or even millions of tonnes over the time it was operational. The trash would have been dumped locally without any sort of due diligence.

    Uranium ores don't contain that much arsenic. There's a bunch of radioactive isotopes in the ore bodies including radium which is probably what they were actually refining there given the name of the place, Radium Hill.

    Radium was the Himalayan Salt of the age at the time, thought to do all sorts of wonderful things medically speaking and incredibly valuable -- I've seen references to it being worth a thousand times the equivalent weight of gold in the early part of the 20th century. In contrast uranium was a scientific oddity with no commercial use other than as a ceramic glaze. Radium extraction was carried out using pitchblende as the orebody, in part because it was easy to identify as a raw mineral. It's mostly uranium oxide and it's likely the uranium residues would also have been dumped locally too but the quantities would have been much less than the tin refining residues and uranium is a lot less harmful than arsenic, of course.

    472:

    I was talking about risk, and amortised cost, not transient cost.

    If you are planting trees that are appropriate for the condition, the point is that you DON'T lose the trees when you get crop or growth failure - all you lose is a year's productivity, and your investment for that year is much less than for annuals. Modern apple trees are a very poor example, because they (both the fruit-bearing and rootstock varieties) have been (over-)bred to be short-lived perennials, and are prone to drop dead in a poor year; traditional varieties, on their own rootstocks, do MUCH better. They are cold-climate, regular rainfall plants, anyway, so Australia is not a good place for them (except for some mountain slopes).

    Obviously, if you are interested only in the next year's production, annuals or perennials that will grow as such, are better. But that does NOT mean they are better in the long term, nor are good for fuel or timber.

    473:

    As you say, uranium was not extracted in significant quantities until the late 1940s; indeed, even research on it needed only gram quantities until the 1930s. Also, the reason that radon is a problem in Cornwall and most places elsewhere has nothing to do with uranium smelting and a lot to do with the fact that granite is about 10 ppm uranium. And the advent of central heating!

    474:

    Indeed. Grew up in Tavistock (and bought a house just outside Gunnislake when I moved back to the area after University and some time in London) and can remember travelling on the steam trains from both Tavistock stations. Talk of reopening the line to Bere Alston started in the mid 70s, there are now houses spreading out along the route so reopening gets more expensive as time goes by.

    475:

    granite is about 10 ppm uranium

    Stupid, uninformed question:

    At 10ppm uranium, is there enough energy there to make it energetically profitable to run a power cycle using uranium from granite? Posit a breeder/reprocessing economy using FBRs to turn the 99.8% of it that's U-238 into Pu-239 ...

    I'm not looking for it to be financially profitable under current market conditions — just energetically viable. Because, if so? That'd be good for powering our current level of demand for millions of years.

    (NB: 1 kilogram per 100,000 tons of granite, and fission of Pu-239 produces 23,222,915 kilowatt hours/kg (per wikipedia). UK currently needs 309Bn kWh of electricity, so let's call it 500Bn kWh (including transport): equivalent to fissioning very approximately 20,000 kg of Pu-239 per year. Assuming I haven't dropped a decimal place or two, that means we'd need to leach 2 billion tons of granite/year, or about 0.8 cubic kilometres of rock. So Cornwall alone could probably power the UK for a few thousand years if we could figure out an energetically favourable extraction method...)

    476:

    Are you aware of the Forbes article on how to do this: just use the rain.

    (tl;dr - on a long enough timescale, the uranium in seawater is replenished by natural leaching, at a rate that's high enough we could run a lot of power plants until new granite stops being made)

    477:

    We need a lot more energy than that, we burn too much gas heating homes and businesses. France consumes about 40% more electricity than we do per capita but that's because they mostly heat their homes with cheap electricity from their large fleet of nuclear reactors. The inevitable move from gasoline and diesel transport to all-electric battery vehicles will add another 20GW or 30GW of required capacity for us in Britain. Ballpark, we in the UK need about 100GW of reliable generating capacity online to meet our peak demand over winter if we really want to get away from burning fossil carbon and pretending we're using renewables.

    Uranium extraction from seawater is proven experimentally, cost estimates (take with a pinch of salt) run between $100 and $300 per kilogramme of uranium at the moment. There are about 4 billion tonnes of uranium in the world's oceans in total. Right now yellowcake ore from mining costs about $50 a kilo. It would be a few thousand years even if we were producing 25TW worldwide from nuclear reactors (no-one anywhere in the world suffering from energy poverty with no carbon extraction and consumption anywhere plus active decarbonisation of the atmosphere) before uranium would become scarce enough we'd need to resort to using granite. That's presuming active recycling of spent fuel in what is hopefully a less expensive process than the current PUREX-based reprocessing lines.

    478:

    In one of Asimov's non-fiction essays he points out that granite is a potential source of rather a lot of different useful elements, and they come complete with the energy needed to process them all in one handy package.

    479:

    Stupid, uninformed answer:

    I have seen articles that claimed so, with a healthy margin, and the conclusion you came to. But what energy expenditure that assumed, and whether that assumed breeder reactors or not, I don't have a clue.

    480:

    Poking around a little bit, I think the safe thing to say is that some granites have uranium, but that stuff is a heterogeneous mess. While it's conventionally thought to be an igneous rock (erupted from the mantle), apparently geologists think it can also be formed metamorphically, through the complete melting of sediments like limestone or shale. What this means, long story short, is that it's better to pay for the good geiger counter and find rock that's already fairly radioactive, rather than assuming that something someone calls "granite" automatically has 10 ppm [U] in it.

    To do otherwise is to make the mistake of saying "we can build houses out of wood. Doesn't matter what kind of wood, they're all the same, balsa, ironwood, pine, manchineel, whatever's available."

    481:

    Well, that's to the good. Once someone from Out There comes to uplift us, we can point to how we're uplifting all these local species....

    482:

    Sounds good to me. What are the consequences - more Democratic voters?

    And just how many immigrants are we talking, here? Millions, like a century ago? I dunno, I hear that there's a new caravan starting, with 15,000,000...oh, sorry, that's 15,000 people.

    Just one simple question: WHY ARE THEY LEAVING EN MASSE? Couldn't be because the US supports nasty governments, or US businesses run things, and so they're having trouble staying alive...no, no, things like that don't happen.*

    • And Ike didn't send the Marines into Guatemala to protect United Fruits farms....
    483:

    It started shortly after WWII (Levittown, NY, for example). But it took 20-30 years to ramp up. We were still getting fruits and veggies grown in New Joisey in Philly in the seventies.

    And some of that demand was due to $%^&%^&%^&$%^&$%@#$%^@#$%^ blockbusting real estate agents and banks redlining... and I speak from *personal knowledge: the first black kid came into my elementary school when I was either in kindergarten, or 1st grade. I was the 26th white kid left in the school in 4th grade. That had been a nice, stable neighborhood. Real estate agents don't make money unless they sell....

    There are streetlights that need decoration.

    484:

    Re: Plant geometry

    Thanks for the article ... still reading it but scanning ahead it seems that no one has yet considered plant geometry might not be as large a factor in artificial lighting scenarios where light bounces off highly reflective well-(thermo &moisture)-insulated walls.

    Would appreciate your take/thoughts on this.

    485:

    While not really anything good for either 2018 or 2019 ( under almost any definition of 'good' in the dictionary,) our (USA USA USA!) Toddler-in-Chief is widely expected to declare yet another National Emergency in a television address tonight. Anyone want to lay odds on his escalating the situation to Martial Law? It would go a long way to solving his Mueller problem ( you're under arrest!) and his House full of Democrats problem (you're under arrest!) and oh so many others.

    If Gore were President I wonder whether he would have declared climate change a National Emergency and shut down the automobile and electric power industries?

    486:

    Re: ' ... some granites have uranium,'

    Once granite counter-tops become passé or declared a health hazard because of radon off-gassing*, we'll have our steady supply of manageable sized raw product. I occasionally watch re-no shows and have yet to see/hear any mention of the granite-uranium link so we may have to wait a while.

    • FYI: Radon is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers (ahead of asbestos).
    487:

    Nah, climate change is both an emergency and an excellent business opportunity, as Elon Musk, Chevy, and numerous solar and wind companies are demonstrating. The bigger issue is the Buggywhip Industries of America (there's another group called BIA that's not the Bureau of Indian Affairs) trying to keep their 1980s sprawl production system working, even though it doesn't meet current needs.

    If the president calls for a state of emergency, here's a prediction (from talkingpointsmemo) of what might happen: --He declares a state of national emergency over the border wall --This gives cover for Republican senators to reopen the government --The administration is sued over an illegal use of the National Emergencies Act --While the state of national emergency is held in abeyance until the courts decide, he uses this as a campaign lever to pin the "national emergency at the border" on the democrats who are opposing him, with the added fillip of trying to further pack the courts with ideological conservatives to keep his opponents from using this "stupid delaying tactic."

    488:

    Troutwaxer @ 441: On the subject of nukes, does anyone have a candidate for "the right kind of nuke plant," that is, one that doesn't melt down, does not generate high levels of waste, etc? Pebble bed? Thorium? Something else? What is your candidate and why?

    I think you mean one that can't melt down; can't generate high level waste, etc ... in other words "foolproof" technology.

    I don't think you're going to find one. Why? Because "Murphy" was an optimist.

    489:

    It started shortly after WWII (Levittown, NY, for example). But it took 20-30 years to ramp up.

    Sorry. Much much less. My current house and many that were built in the 60s were the 2nd suburban house for those WWII vets. Heck my father built some of them and subdivided the land. And never made much money at it (as a second job) due to putting too much quality into the build product.

    490:

    In the US that seemed to peak with the concept of building a "sealed" house. Now that most everyone knows that a healthy house needs to breath (for lots of reasons) the issue of radon from counter tops is mostly a non issue.

    491:

    I think the sun qualifies, and it certainly doesn't need our maintenance for another few hundred million years or so.

    492:

    If we could only reprogram the time switch that disables the Sun for up to 18 hours a day when we really need it that would be great! What, it's not under our control and won't provide energy on demand? That sucks.

    As for "meltdown-proof" nuclear reactors there's work going on to develop new fuel structures that are, at least, damage-resistant in case of loss of control and cooling in PWRs and BWRs. Experimental meltdown-resistant fuel rod assemblies are in line for exposure in reactors over the next few years to see how they perform and there are some interesting PowerPoint Ranger designs like the LightBridge metallic fuel rods:

    https://ltbridge.com/

    The promotional PDF is interesting with all sorts of goshwow! claims regarding safety, efficiency and recyclability. I read it with a critical eye, noting that it buried the Bad News at the end, that the fuel enrichment level needed to make them work was just under 20% compared to conventional oxide fuel pellets at 3% to 5% enrichment level. Still an interesting concept and they'd fit right into existing and future-build PWRs with no need to develop new reactor designs, thereby assuaging the fears of most folks conditioned by Godzilla movies to regard nuclear power as unutterably dangerous.

    Ah, who am I kidding. Nothing the nuclear industry can do with regards to safety will convince the Chicken Littles of this world.

    493:

    In the US, radon's largely in places like basements, that were built using cinderblocks.

    Defined as: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Oldcastle-16-in-x-8-in-x-8-in-Concrete-Block-30161345/100350252

    494: 1Given your reference to 'The Who', we'd assume you'd instantly spot an absurdist 1-for-1 conceptual swap for the invasion of Iraq with a nonsensical clarion to arms to invade Israel over things that 90% of the populace don't believe. shrug

    If you want to get kinky, do a grep for Fortnite mentions and check this out:

    I’m losing my goddamn mind. “Bribery without money is like Fortnite without lag” Noah Kulwin, twitter, 7th Jan 2019

    Check your sources, but that does appear to be the IL official account showing that they don't understand that bribery is rather a little bit more than cash-in-hand or stripper's bills paid. And we told you that the .mil was recruiting through it already already.

    2 The entire Rowling thing is a PR 101 land lesson, wherein the positive spin pushes, the negative opp(oopy)o stuff is pushed while the actual humor is found in the deep depth of LGTB* twitter. Let's just say, Pinkwashing ain't as simple as the Dentist Magazine C list celeb circuit imagines. Or GCHQ.
    • Insults so far for this on a general insult level (personal):

    CIS (Wildly offbase) Heteronormative (Hello Loki. And not even true back then, ask that tree or the fairies) Rapist (Unfair / hurtful) etc

    3 Heathrow Airport Drones? More like a meteor. A Green Meteor. 4.45pm ish. Learn your FLASH GORDEN set-ups, ffs (and how they learn the planet is under attack).

    Yeah, we're that good. Nasty Crew waves

    4 On Super-Secret-Think-Tanks, here's a proper one.

    Battle's fought, consensus:

    "BREAK THE MIRROR"

    Now, you might imagine we'd feel threatened, given we're a Mirror, but it's more a case of:

    In Emergency, Break Glass.

    Wild Hunt.

    Tings gonna get fun.

    There's a massive core of [redacted] who are addicted to the physical plane and cannot deal with Things-in-Skin-Suits-that-do-npt-match-their-data. As in, at all.

    Whoo boy are they in for a Dragon shaped shock-wave.

    Bonus positive round: African-Americans have spotted the Sudan issue and are quite correctly tying it into the large global political scene. A chance for a non-muppet Atlantic Council move, or you could fuck it up and push the Liberal Blackwash stuff and die horribly. Your choice, but one is better than the others.

    Anyhow: Light? TIME NOT IMPORTANT, LIFE IS.

    495:

    Interesting article that relates somewhat to climate change fatigue: no matter what I do, or you do, that problem is not going away. Not in my lifetime, not in yours. But if we work really hard for the rest of our lives... it might not be as bad?

    But individual action isn’t enough. Personal choices alone won’t keep the planet from dying, or get Facebook to quit violating our privacy. To do that, you need paradigm-shifting change. Which helps explain why so many millennials increasingly identify with democratic socialism and are embracing unions: We are beginning to understand what ails us, and it’s not something an oxygen facial or a treadmill desk can fix.

    Our capacity to burn out and keep working is our greatest value. Until or in lieu of a revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system, how can we hope to lessen or prevent — instead of just temporarily staunch — burnout? Change might come from legislation, or collective action, or continued feminist advocacy, but it’s folly to imagine it will come from companies themselves. Our capacity to burn out and keep working is our greatest value.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work

    496:

    Oh, and if you need some fun, look up:

    France, ramming government buildings with fork-lift trucks

    Germany, hacking the entire government barring the AfD[1], who then got bombed and a leader put into intensive care[2]

    And so on.

    Anyhoo, @Host.

    Better ask your .mil friends if the Tavistock references herein are serious and who is running the wrong Ghost-Engine stuff on the wrong Minds. Because you really do want to attempt to smash a Mirror that's been forged in the fires of Ἥφαιστος and is already more than a little pissed off.

    Drunk and Dionysian, but still better than anything you've got (if you rip off the skin).

    Nah, joking.

    You're supposed to turn up to the burnt out rubble and scream "IS THIS IT?!?" wherein you're pointed to the WHALE CLASS and so forth.

    "BREAK THE MIRROR"

    Boy. That's what they've been trying to do for 4+7+25+2000+5000 years.

    You do not want to do that, you fucking amateur little apes.

    checks watch

    Yeah, and none of that globalized slaughter to placate them this time, either. It's MIND TIME, tunnels of Light and the magic tricks of perception this time.

    And you're already 3-0 down

    Crickets?

    My. Fucking. Sides.

    [1] Set-up: amateur hour stuff, for all those security wonks panicking - using imgur is a way to quick post the data to Reddit / Yand / FB etc.

    [2] Look up the piccies, not nice: straight smash to the frontal cortex, damage

    497:

    SFreader wondered: "it seems that no one has yet considered plant geometry might not be as large a factor in artificial lighting scenarios where light bounces off highly reflective well-(thermo &moisture)-insulated walls."

    I don't recall reading about that particular measurement, but it seems reasonable that you'd get more light reaching the lower leaves under the top canopy. The lower leaves are the ones that are not achieving their full photosynthetic potential because of insufficient light. (Also, due to physiological adjustments in response to lower light levels.) There'd undoubtedly be some "waste" light bouncing off the shiny surfaces, but if photosynthesis is already saturated or close to, the reflected light wouldn't help much. But over time, I'd expect the plants to adjust their architecture and physiology to capture more of that light. Assuming no other resource is limiting, you'd probably improve growth somewhat.

    Which leads to a whacky notion: I also don't recall reading about anyone placing mirrors at the sides of crop fields to redirect sunlight from outside the field into the understory to improve photosynthesis, but it's an interesting concept. You wouldn't necessarily need expensive sun-tracking mirrors; I imagine the farmer's crew could manually change the orientation of a handful of mirrors each day to eventually optimize reflection for the whole mirror complex. The problem comes down to the size of the mirrors required to redirect enough light for the approach to be interesting. My gut feeling is that you wouldn't improve growth enough to repay the cost, but I leave that calculation to some of our mathematically gifted readers.

    498:

    Nothing the nuclear industry can do with regards to safety will convince the...

    When I was working on the BZE "100% renewable energy" report our criteria were pretty stringent as far as what solutions we were allowed to suggest or include. Specifically, whatever we wanted to use had to be commercially available off the shelf - no experimental, no under development, no 'forecast in 2020'. The reason for that was the overwhelming conservatism of our audience, needing to know the actual costs, and the need to be able to point to the thing actually working. I think that's a useful way to look at this problem.

    The context, lest you forget, is that we really need this solution implemented and working in 30 years time. That's a real rush by nuclear standards. So I'm all for building the prototype and hoping it works. But I'm not willing to divert trillions of dollars from known-good solutions to rush build 600 of them in the hope that they might work when finished.

    Realistically if we go nuclear we're talking (slightly modernised) Westinghouse 1000's that have a track record of working. Doing that would be hard but it's at least plausible.

    499:

    [Different User]

    My Man. If you want experts in artificial lighting growing crops, go ask some cannabis farmers. They've years of research on this issue.

    TL;DR

    They don't bother, the gains (apart from naturally reflective metallic heat cladding) are not worth it.

    Too funny. "Whacky" indeed.

    p.s.

    Ask yourself why a major Brexit fix hasn't been repeal of that stupid anti-psy Law and farming cannabis? Maybe because a major Tory donor / MP have a contract for medical cannabis you cannot use in the UK and is preventing it?

    True story.

    At some point, you're gonna have to just bite the bullet and eradicate the ones making your systems shit for personal gain.

    500:

    ...or why do you think some nothing PayPal Tommy-Boy got all in the faces of your MP, for the story to pander out as he got banned from funding, lived at home with his mother and how we should all respect authority / the 1996 Law?

    Fuck me.

    UK politics is like the telly-tubbies for fucking stupid people.

    501:

    Oh, and

    Stellar Class; Think-Tank Division: "MIRROR BREAKING" parts.

    Don't bite off more than thou can chew.

    We'll enact [redacted] that make your little numpty-dumpty "VOICE OF THE LICH BANE" stuff look like a fucking picnic.

    Oh, wait.

    Muse is coming in hot, killed another of them: "Fuck it, Break the Mirror, Bring it on".

    ~

    points to Rowling

    You're shit at this. At we know it now.

    502:

    My limited experiments with nano-climate zones around houses I've lived in suggests that that kind of reflected light magnifies change in solar input through the year. Plants that do well with lots of sun tend to not do well with frost, for example.

    But it can/does work. I've had tomato and lettuce plants grow in stupid places (they both seed vigorously and the seeds get everywhere), including in a wall niche where two white painted concrete walls bounced the sun directly onto what turned into a disturbingly enthusiastic tomato plant. But at the end of the summer it died. Its siblings in less sunny locations mostly lived (except the ones I mowed).

    The issue with farms would be lack of available unused area. While you could do strips along the pole-ward side of paddocks to shade the track and fenceline, that's already an area farmers work to minimise, and it's typically less than 5% of the crop area. You'd also have to edge-on the mirrors for much of the day to avoid shading the next field over. dawn: mirror can be 1m high ... midday mirrors 5m high ... dusk mirrors back to 1m.

    Sure, if you plant a farm next to a skyscraper you'd get more reflected sunshine, at least until the residents complained about the "rural atmosphere" not suiting them (think chicken manure being spread by a loud machine at 5am. Or just 6am/6pm milking every day with the associated fresh manure). I've worked in a market garden in a green belt, this stuff was a frequent concern.

    503:

    I also don't recall reading about anyone placing mirrors at the sides of crop fields to redirect sunlight from outside the field into the understory to improve photosynthesis,

    That would certainly work but it would shadow the neighbouring field to the north (Northern hemisphere assumed here) and reduce crop growth there. Oops.

    I've seen greenhouses with mirrored panels on the north side intended to do just this, increasing the total amount of sunlight within the structure. They're better protected and more limited in scope though.

    504:

    watches everyone ignore the posts

    Cool.

    Here's an answer @Host:

    Think of the incredible amounts of energy lost in the subsidies / grift / corruption / outright scams within your systems.

    That's a positive.

    You can practically remake the world if you eradicate them. In fact, it's a given.

    Liberal Pinkwash stuff?

    Not so much helping, and here's a freebie: If you think the last 3 years were wild, we just got a direct message to grow up and start Being All We Can BE.

    We've already ground your reality into the dirt as a joke, you might have thought that insulting us was a bad idea.

    p.s.

    Spoilers: No-one's Nukes work anymore. Sssssh, that's a secret. But True Story. Shouldn't have let us into the MINDS of the [redacted].

    No, actually - that's true. It's fucking hilarious.

    Be Seeing You: Tavistock, "Mirror Breakers". Get fucked.

    505:

    @whitroth The consequences of Trump advocating immigration from brown places would be an immediate cratering in his base's support. He appears to be cognizant of this fact. I'd be all for it. :)

    @Moz

    For context, there's been something at the back of my mind for a while. I sometimes speak with Trump supporters. They typically trot out the 'great businessman' and a few other similar statements to justify support. After further discussion, they'll admit that that person's business record is pretty unimpressive and wander off. A few days later, I'll hear the same 'great businessman' thing. Now, maybe I'm not persuasive. (Okay, definitely...) When asked about solar, they simply assert that it isn't cost-effective and therefore will never be an option. There's no further thought.

    I eventually came to the conclusion that their support was based on a mixture of tribalism and veiled racism. The veiled? racism definitely proved out.

    Now, for nuclear, as described by solar advocates, you typically hear the:

  • Disaster - when nuclear has killed far fewer than coal
  • Limited fuel - when fuel is basically limited by our lack of need
  • Waste - when waste isn't that hard to burn down to small quantities - far less than coal has released
  • Expense - when most nuclear costs are regulatory expenses.
  • Time - when time is exclusively regulatory
  • The first 3 arguuments are unconvincing on a technical level. The next two arguments are somewhat valid - but only if there is either a clear, unimpeded path forwards or if global warming isn't an urgent problem. Otherwise, they'd lobby to change the laws. There's no evidence of a thought process along those lines.

    When the holes in their arguments are mentioned, they seem to walk away.

    And then, on the next day, I hear the same arguments from the same people.

    Now, in one case, it became clear that a friend simply wasn't too wild about capitalism, western civilization, or people and preferred power sources that would be sustainable after removal of about 90% of the human population (his preferred goal). Another friend disliked nuclear because of nuclear weapons. But overall, the general responsiveness is similar to that of the Trump supporters.

    Nah. I'm asking warming, solar, or nuclear.

    Solar is unworkable in countries with irregular sunlight or large seasonal variations. Piping power and storage both don't work - either for political reasons or technical ones. This isn't necesarily a terrible problem - as there are plenty of people that could use solar + storage quite readily. It just isn't a complete solution. The storage problem will probably eventually be somewhat solved, albeit at an efficiency loss.

    Nuclear ... doesn't have any significant technical issues and the problems appear to be regulatory or military in nature. And, it was, more or less, available 50 years ago. At this point, there'll be significant damage even on optimistic timelines for solar adoption.

    So, from my perspective, it is pretty clear that both have some application and that nuclear is required in some regions. The people who can use solar are a subset of those who could use nuclear - admittedly - a big subset.

    So, either, for the past 50 years, the entire enviromental movement has been making counterintuitive choices. (Because solar wasn't close to usable.) Or? I'm genuinely confused - because I never saw a push for nuclear - just a push for more plant closures and extra oversight.

    It isn't a matter of being pessimistic about regulatory changes - as, eg, anti-leasing laws get attacked pretty quickly.

    Also, bear in mind, that - given that global poverty is declining - what the EU and the USA implement is not that important - global emissions will be dominated by population centers - which aren't in the EU or USA. Given that, cost is a gigantic issue and solar + storage is still too expensive. Nuclear, with new designs and minimial regulation, appears likely to be cheaper than coal. So, if you wanted to jumpstart a relevant* low carbon emission power supply in the developing world - it probably still wouldn't be solar. I'd argue that it'd be better to invest in modifying reactor regulations to better reflect reality and enable the development of new designs.

    *Relevant == > 90% of power supplied, cost <= coal, non-intermittent. Surveys indicate that, in developing nations, the last 2 are dealbreakers.

    506:

    This book (please excuse the long url) https://books.google.com.au/books?id=6N1baZ0BYKAC&pg=PA376&lpg=PA376&dq=energy+eroei+%22granite%22+mining+uranium&source=bl&ots=mV6VYCOfsR&sig=0Ma0ZGtjY41qOhM1GoLRXlNx8tM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiHxYC1v9_fAhUMy7wKHXSGBF8Q6AEwGHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=energy%20eroei%20%22granite%22%20mining%20uranium&f=false

    Gives 5.2 GJ/t for granite mining. That's just getting it out of the ground.

    I can't find a figure for uranium extraction from mined granite. Considering that you've got to grind it to dust and treat it with acid, I'm going to guess as much again.

    Say 10 GJ/t. That is 2777 kWh.

    So taking your "1 kilogram per 100,000 tons of granite, and fission of Pu-239 produces 23,222,915 kilowatt hours/kg" we multiply your 100,000 tonnes by 2777 and get 277,700,000 kwh or over ten times more energy to mine and extract the uranium than there is energy in the uranium even after converting it to plutonium.

    Additionally, the wiki energy number you used was the energy in the plutonium. That doesn't all come out as electricity. Less than half does. So in reality, we're lookng at over 20 times more energy to get the uranium than electricity produced (assuming the fuel reprocessing is done with 'Accio Plutonium').

    507:

    Comment @506 above was supposed to be in reply to OGH's comment.

    508:

    Pot, meet kettle...

    You're basing your argument on the premise that firstly, facts are water off a ducks back, and secondly that it would all be roses if only the politics around regulations would get out of the way.

    Then you say " Piping power and storage both don't work - either for political reasons or technical ones"

    Despite both storage and piping obviously and demonstrably actually working, which then brings us to political issues. Which do you think is a bigger ask from a regulatory sense, getting someone to stake their career on removing safeguards for nuclear (which has a proven history of resulting in expensive messes) or approving a powerline, something that gets approved every day of the working week? Approving a peeling that meets all current regulatory standards, with no requirement for waivers....

    509:

    *peeling....powerline (bloody auto incorrect)

    510:

    the entire enviromental movement ... never saw a push for nuclear

    That is likely the "no true scotsman" fallacy at work. There are pro-nuclear greenies, quite possibly including you. But if you mean "there was never vocal consensus on X from every single environmentalist" your choice of X is quite literally everything. There are flat earth environmentalists, pro-war environmentalists (including chunks of the US war department), quite likely scientologist environmentalists. Getting them all to agree on everything and no-one contradict that position ever... not going to happen.

    511:

    I'm asking warming, solar, or nuclear. 1. Disaster - when nuclear has killed far fewer than coal

    On the one hand you appear to agree coal is irrelevant but on the other hand you keep bringing it up.

    If you compare it to solar, solar is way more dangerous. But that's because the nuclear industry isn't putting millions of reactors in homes across the world. As Australia saw with the ceiling insulation deaths, doing anything on a house roof is dangerous. Vastly expanding any industry very quickly is also dangerous. But if you screw up a nuclear reactor you can't just send a tradesman around to fix the problem up - solar spills are much easier to deal with than nuclear ones.

    3. Waste - when waste isn't that hard to burn down to small quantities - far less than coal has released

    Which is why there are so many "temporary" stockpiles of it that have been round for such a long time.

    4. Expense - when most nuclear costs are regulatory expenses. 5. Time - when time is exclusively regulatory

    Have you ever been involved with a construction project of any type? I'm bemused that you seem to be unaware that regulatory delays are much of every building process. Just for a "pre-approved" modification to my house I'm looking at 3-6 months for approvals and 1-2 weeks for the actual modification.

    In some ways I agree that a much better system would be removing democracy from the process and using state-sanctioned violence to eliminate on-the-ground opposition. But then I realise that not everyone is me, and wonder about the things they might want to do. So I look at some of the stupid things people have built and think that maybe we should have more regulations, enforced more vigorously.

    The idea that those clowns would necessarily be involved in the low-regulation, high-speed build of Australia's 10-30 reactors terrifies me. We don't have even 10 "reactor building teams" sitting idle in Australia just waiting for the safety concerns to be killed off. We'd have to either compete internationally against much richer countries, or use what we've got. And what we've got is one team who took twice as long as expected to build a small research reactor (and a few tries to get the containment vessel sealed!), plus a large construction industry with a hard-earned reputation for taking longer than expected to deliver less than expected.

    Note that we managed to kill people on the simple task "add ceiling insulation to existing houses". How much safer are those exact same people going to be when they're building nuclear reactors?

    512:

    watches everyone ignore the posts Nah. People read. You had some good material tonight. This made me smile wide: start Being All We Can BE and this, double smile: More like a meteor. A Green Meteor. I was getting a little worried. (The US is demanding too much attention, sigh.)

    Seeing more geoengineering material. At least this one likens it to airbags in cars. Future of planet-cooling tech: Study creates roadmap for geoengineering research (January 7, 2019 - paper paywalled, don't have easy access atm, sci-hub doesn't have it atm)

    513:

    BTW, you said: "Hinkley C is a better example... ~$US50 billion taking 10 years to build"

    It's currently 28 years since planning approval was granted. The delay hasn't been regulatory, it's been that it isn't economic (until you apply what some say is illegal levels of state aid)

    https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/news/14sep90-uk-hinkley-c-nuclear-power-station-given-planning-permission/1697395.article

    514:

    Hetromeles @ 487 A slow-motion Reichstag Fire in other words? Alarming.

    JBS @ 488 ... in other words "foolproof" technology. Err, sorry to tell you but NO technology is foolproof, at all, anywhere. And, you really, really ought to know this – look at the way idiots misuse spanners, screwdrivers & chisels & break things & themselves, too …

    Nojay @ 503 Been done for a long time. You build a tallish wall running approx. E-W, put any heating plant ( Used to be a coal-fired stove of course ) on the back side, ran a long greenhouse along said wall, facing approx. S & painted the rear wall white. Works a treat. HERE is Charlie Darwin’s example And, yes, I’ve been, Downe is worth the visit.

    Moz @ 511 (5) Regulatory delays. Yes, apart from the serial screw-ups with installation ( Two successive major power-transformers exploded, due to incompetence ) many of the delays in the opening of “Crossrail” in London are down to regulatory problems with testing, uninstalling & re-installing signalling systems. NOT that you want unsafe signalling systems … see the Clapham crash, 30 years ago.

    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Bill Arnold @ 512 Oh, there was content in there, was there? Could you translate it to English, for the rest of us? Oh yes, amongst all the incoherent & mostly content-free ramblings, “EGA” is making persistent references to Tavistock – obviously more spiteful little chain-jerking.

    515:

    The Hinkley C project received its licence to build a nuclear power plant there from the regulatory authorities in November 2012, according to Wikipedia which is never wrong. That's only part of the way through the regulatory process, of course but probably the biggest step in nuclear construction terms. The American Nuclear Regulatory Authority has circumvented the process a little with its COL (Construction and Operating Licence) which amalgamates the authority to build and later operate a nuclear reactor on a given site. I don't know if Hinkley C has a guaranteed operating licence associated with the construction licence.

    The first on-the-ground operations recorded on the Hinkley C site are in 2008 when a car park was built for ground works investigations, still a long way from pouring concrete and bending metal which has now started.

    516:

    EDF is charging the UK several limbs and a first-born for Hinkley, but that does not mean they think that is what it is going to cost them to build.

    Taishan 1 and 2 is the exact same complex, and came in at 8 billion. Assuming the hundreds of French engineers (and whatever chinese experts they can wrangle visas for..) involved in that project took notes, and are about to be directly re-assigned to "Do that again, chaps and gentlewomen", which seems like a foregone conclusion, since doing anything else would be severely idiotic, EDF may be about to clear quite obscene profits on that project.

    Hell, assuming they only screw up moderately and land somewhere between Taishan and Okiloutou, still obscene profits.

    Hinkley is very expensive because EDF was the sole bidder, and the UK was, and is, negotiating with its back against a cliff of decades of catastrophic underinvestment in generation capacity - The UK runs on:

    Natural gas: Now, imported from strategic enemies. Great.

    Coal Even MORE expensive than Hinkley, even if the NHS pays most of that utility bill.

    AGR Reactors: Near end of life, and quite difficult, meaning, expensive, to do major life-extensions on.

    The UK has no usable solar resource, and while the wind resource is pretty decent, without much better storage, that just commits you to natural gas for backup, see point re: Strategic Adversaries.

    So the reactors are a forced move, and everyone at the negotiating table knew that, and also knew all the other bidders had dropped out. So, the UK rate payer got taken to the cleaners. It would have been much smarter to just offer to pay cash (well, gilt bonds) on the barrelhead for a turn-key plant, but you would have had to contract with EDF to run the damn thing anyway in the end.

    517:

    AGR Reactors: Near end of life, and quite difficult, meaning, expensive, to do major life-extensions on.

    No life-extension for the AGRs, sadly. The Hunterston AGRs are shut down for several months at the moment while the cracks in the moderator blocks are evaluated. It's a problem with solid-carbon moderators, only really understood after a couple of decades of operation, basically neutron-induced microfractures in the graphite matrix. They accumulate and spread over time, joining up and overcoming the self-healing effect of high temperatures. It's called the Wigner Effect.

    The reactors can be operated safely with a few small cracks but they can't be fixed and the moderator blocks can't be replaced easily or at an economical cost, especially as the reactors have already run for several decades and are approaching natural end-of-life for other major components. It's entirely possible Hunterston will not restart ever. This will cast a spotlight on the other AGRs, of course and may result in them being decommissioned earlier than the projected mid 2020s shutdown schedule at which point we're going to need to burn even more gas to cover the shortfall of 5GW of non-carbon generation when they go offline.

    518:

    Actual good news!

    Parliament has told the so-called government to stop arsing around, because there is no time to waste. If May loses next week, she has 3 days to propose a Plan B to Parliament.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-news-live-updates-pmqs-latest-commons-vote-corbyn-no-deal-plan-mps-labour-conservative-a8718631.html

    If that happens, we are quite likely to see a REAL constitutional crisis, which is potentially good news as we have needed one to force the issue of whether Parliament is supreme or merely there to elect a dictator, for some decades now.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-no-confidence-vote-meaningful-theresa-may-jeremy-corbyn-a8718806.html

    519:

    TG @ 516 Don't forget utter cowardice, by refusing to ignore the fake Greenies & simply have bulit Nuclear stations, anyway. OTOH Is it possible that we can then get more Hincklet C lookalikes for considerably lower prices?

    EC @ 518 For once, I agree, however, I heard some wanker from liebour today putting party before country, wanting a Genreal Elcetion for when May loses next week's vote, rather than all "parties" working on a solution to the Brexit problem, like Ref2. The Brexiteers are, of course, saying that we are already "out of time" for Ref2, but they too are lying. Nontheless, time is getting short - we need notice of Ref2 approximately before 12th February, to get a result before 29th March.

    520:

    ... Possibly. However, that requires at least one of three things:

    1 : Find a real competitive bidder so that the bids submitted have some relation to what the expected costs are rather than "Say, how much do we think they will pay to not freeze in the dark"?

    2:Successfully embarrassing EDF with their profit taking to the point they cut you a better deal on the next one. Good luck with that.

    3: Just financing the deal yourself - That is, instead of asking bidders to define a strike price that will motivate them to raise their own capital, ask for a quote on a turnkey project.

    3 has the problem of being not very ideologically appealing to the dominant economic ideology in the UK, which is really how this mess came about - The grid had been privatized, thus it was the job of the holy private market to build new generation capacity. Well, the private market completely failed to do so.

    521:

    Invasion of Israel? Why, for breaking US security?

    Flash Gordon? No, what would Save The Planet is Flesh Gordon. A few days of the Evil Emperor Wang's porno ray, and all the live-on-air shots of "religious leaders" and "Christian" preachers and politicians (think Mike Pence) orgying in front of everyone, and they'd never show their faces (or other parts of their anatomy) in public again, and the rest of us could get on with the Real 21st Century.

    522:

    Not ignoring. But tried searching on tavistock and "mirror breakers" or "mirror breaking", and no joy.

    Subsidies? You mean like the US does for oil exploration?

    523:

    Saw that. And that Corbyn wants Labour to kill May's plan A, too. But did you see this ruling by Bercow that I don't quite understand)?

    525:

    That's the trouble with looking on the Internet or Webster's for a definition of capitalism. Yes, there are some historians who really think ancient Rome was fundamentally no different from the modern world, but they're hardly dominant. Probably the closest to an "orthodox" historian of the ancient world was Moses Finley, a Weberian not a Marxist, who regarded the idea of Rome as capitalist as an absurd bad joke. The prime feature of capitalism is wage labor, a minor, subsidiary feature of the Roman economy. Trade and currency are features of just about any economy in human history, including hunter-gatherers trading cowrie shells or whatever with other hunter-gatherers. State inference with free trade, mercantilism, is simply a slightly different form of capitalism. In ancient Rome, the owners of the big slave plantations weren't oriented to investment and gaining higher profits, but to living lives of luxury. Greek and Roman scientists invented plenty of potentially labor-saving technologies like watermills, but they weren't actually used till a thousand years later, as there was no need for them seen, as making higher profits was simply not what the Roman economy was about.

    526:

    Well, some areas of the world that's likely correct, such as South America. And yes, Russia and Eastern Europe have rebounded from the extreme poverty of the Nineties, though standards of living are mostly still lower than before the Wall went down, except in the Baltics. But I looked over the comments on the "brown" website for India, and one commenter noted that the reason that India has "less extreme poverty" is that the government changed the goalposts for deciding what "extreme poverty" is. Whereas the small urban middle class is doing vastly better, the ocean of urban and rural extreme poverty in India is basically unchanged. Here in Europe, you have a resurgence of poverty in large areas, though only "extreme" in Greece. And hey, you have a huge increase in homelessness in the USA, up to some six-seven million by now, and if the standards for "extreme poverty" don't include the homeless, there is something wrong with them.

    527:

    Um, you have read Graeber's Debt? He's not the only one to point out that a) the myth that barter preceded money has been shot down regularly for the last 100 years, only to be revived by lazy textbook writers. b) Money is an iron-age phenomenon, but credit goes back at least to the bronze age. c) Credit is the default system without money, not barter. For example, a potter may make pots for a farmer to store his grain in, in return for a share of the harvest, or a man may run up a drinks tab at a local inn, to be paid off in a share of the crop or its equivalent. All these are credit interactions. Now in Medieval times, the credit may have been measured in a currency that few ever saw (pennies, whatever), but that was a way to settle accounts. That's where the phrase, "of no account" came from as an insult--it's a person who's unworthy of being extended credit too. d) the bronze age ran on credit, using things like measuring against a weight of silver (such as a shekel) stored in a temple. Coinage started when the temples were looted, the precious metals melted down into standardized amounts, these were given to soldiers to spend (they being of no account in the local economy they were stationed in), and (critically) taxes were collected in coins to force the locals to accept this new kind of currency from outside conquerors.

    So far as Capitalism goes, it's like Christianity: it's a widely used label for a bunch of divergent behaviors, some of which contradict each other, used in a system that's at least 500 years old in its modern incarnation (starting with Cortes). When we look at the "socialism of the rich" (shown in things like "too big to fail" and revolving doors between the elites of the five big industries and the bureaucracies that regulate them), it has little to do with the "competition is supreme, and capitalism runs on cash alone" ideology that's in the textbooks. Heck, the only businesses that work largely on cash are recreational drugs and human trafficking. Although these are both ancient forms of capitalism, they're also both illegal.

    Do some of these incarnations of capitalism look a lot like Rome? Well, yes they do. After all, how many of us get cash in return for our work? We get money credited to our accounts, the same as many Romans did.

    That's the problem with assuming that textbook definitions reflect reality, and that reality never changes.

    Going forward, I expect capitalism to last a fairly long time, unless capitalist civilization crashes and it's dominant ideology goes the way of Roman polytheism. Thing is, also like ancient Roman polytheism, I expect whatever capitalism actually is in practice to change radically over coming decades, just as it has in previous decades. As a label and brand, capitalism is too useful to discard for trivial reasons. This is also true for Christianity, whatever is actually preached in (or practiced by) any particular church.

    528:

    Re: 'We don't have even 10 "reactor building teams" sitting idle in Australia just waiting for ...'

    Fellow I worked with for several years finally got the job he was educated for: nuclear engineer. He had worked as a nuclear engineer previously in Europe but when he moved to the US, he couldn't find anything. Needing a salary, he took a job as a senior programmer/developer outside his industry. After several years of applying for the handful of jobs per annum available in this field, he finally got a job in Canada. There are probably many more certified nuclear engineers* like him sitting around and waiting for a job opening. And, like my colleague, very willing to relocate. Interesting conversations at his farewell party. :)

    • Ditto MSc Physics, Psych, Soc, and PhDs ... same issues finding relevant employment.
    529:

    Hetromeles @ 487 A slow-motion Reichstag Fire in other words? Alarming.

    Nah, that's what we've got now (look, the TSA is abandoning their posts, nudge nudge wink wink mad bombers, can't say we wouldn't mind a real emergency right now to give us that excuse we're craving...). Declaring a state of emergency on the border looks more like the camouflaging of buttocks as they crawl back to business as usual.

    The slightly more interesting thing was a faux newsie Chris Wallace demolishing Sarah Sanders' defense of the border wall yesterday (it went viral, showing up on my Facepalm feed). Given that the F channel has been the ministry of propaganda for the last few years, having it turn on the administration says something very interesting.

    Incidentally, there is a real emergency on the southern border, and I wouldn't mind the correct declaration of a state of emergency to deal with it: https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/government/there-is-a-crisis-at-the-border-but-it-doesnt-involve-illegal-immigrants/

    530:

    "If the president calls for a state of emergency, here's a prediction..."

    What we got was yet another shameless publicity stunt by Trump using the televised presidential address as a venue for political grandstanding in the guise of a faux emergency. Trump's speech repeated all the same false and misleading rhetoric he's been pedaling for the past three years while attacking Democrats.

    Instead of listening to the Fox News pundits Trump should be listening to people like Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, who's district covers 820 miles of the Texas-Mexico border. Will Hurd offers "smart solutions": https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/pay-those-dealing-with-the-border-rep-hurd-1422529091966

    531:

    Re: 'Graeber's Debt'

    Sounds like an interesting read; found a pdf of it.

    Another suggested read is the below which explores definitions of 'value' as they pertain to the economic triad, i.e., biz, gov't, consumer/taxpayer. The below site lists reviews of this book - pretty favorable overall.

    https://marianamazzucato.com/publications/books/value-of-everything/

    Heads up: Ordered this book online a few weeks ago and keep getting email 'order status updates' saying it's 'delayed'.

    532:

    We're not jerking your chain.

    We're certainly not jerking host's chain.

    We're not even jerking the chain of things who like to post warnings about how pwned you are as a warning or who like to play spy-Steam-games.

    We're not even jerking the chain of LICHE CLASS entities or the LOAs.

    We're jerking the chain of something entirely different.

    Look: on a funny level, just slot that "amateur hour security" comment into an engine and spot it's true:

    Man, 20, driven by ‘annoyance’ at statements made by politicians and celebrities

    German cyber-attack: man admits massive data breach, say police Guardian 8th Jan 2019

    On a less funny note (no links 'cause nasties) you can spot where the Alt-Right are not your old EDL / plants and have almost immediately 'made' the 'security force' setup that was the MP chanting media blitz, and not only have they spotted it, but rather more tooled-up and competent American friends have started telling them things.

    This is all about Threat Levels and acceptable responses, but...

    533:

    Trump needs to get a move on: it looks like Mitch McConnell may be toast; his wife's family's business appears to be up to its armpits in wholesale cocaine smuggling—yes, this is the same wife, Elaine Chao, who is the US Secretary of Transportation.

    I could not make this shit up. (No, wait, I kinda did in the first series of Merchant Princes, except i pinned the tail on Dick Cheney and the drugs conection was extradimensional.)

    Losing the Turtle won't cost the Republican party the senate, but insofar as the party has an agenda, losing their majority leader won't help them.

    (Good.)

    534:

    Ok, let's tell a story.

    Let's imagine you:

    A) Live in an Autocratic State that is happy to kill you for things.

    B) If you do not know the rules, you're likely to trip all kinds of warning bells (hidden or otherwise, social or in your tech etc etc) either accidentally or merely for existing.

    C) Let's suppose they function normally and will give you a warning (perhaps a brutal one); let's also suppose you're clued up enough to know that all your contacts are likely compromized or members of said nasties (e.g. the East German model).

    D) Let's also suppose that you know that they know that you know that they do not care if you're not actually a spy, or a threat or anything but a butterfly hunter, but they'll aggressively squish you anyhow for being different.

    E) Let's suppose they activate their methods: since UK forum, let's keep it cold war and presume the good old "Honey Pot" method. LUST / LOVE ENTANGLEMENT.

    F) Let's presume that this is the Cold War and not the Modern Corporate Merc model, so there's a 'team' on 'your' side running counter-measures.

    Now, usually, the story unfolds as you expect, with gaslighting and all the trimmings and your CIS hero may escape.

    But

    G) Exists, where your narrative expectation / blinders might be twisted. Since we're doing this for old Minds, let's presume our Hero is ASexual, and is therefore immune to Honey Pots (even Cold War novels knew homosexuals existed). Or perhaps Cupid takes offense and makes it a slice of magical realism and tips the balance.

    Or, more pointedly, you tell them that E is not going to work, and they shouldn't try it, but because they've got blinkers on they will do it anyhow.

    Can you see where this plot goes?

    If something is telling you E E E E while you're attempting to kill it and it keeps on doing it, you might be missing something.

    In a Cold War novel, this is the realm of the double-cross or triple-cross or the Nazi who has a heart of gold and has a St Paul moment (yeah: it exists as a genre, trust me).

    ~

    All we're saying is that old Stanford models of behaviorism are ugggly. If you don't understand the alchemical process of producing gold, the mercury fumes will likely poison your Mind.

    535:

    So far as Capitalism goes, it's like Christianity: it's a widely used label for a bunch of divergent behaviors, some of which contradict each other, ...

    Yes. I find the idea that capitalism cannot exist without wage slavery (or even money) bizarre - almost revisionist. The OED agrees. The key (to me) seems to be whether assets (whatever they may be) can be arbitrarily and personally bought and sold for other assets, and used to leverage the collection of more assets (usually by lending at interest). In the UK, we didn't entirely move from using land as the key asset to money until the industrial revolution, but haven't had anything close to serfdom since the 14th century.

    This is in opposition to (inter alia) where the asset holder is the owner purely by virtue of his position, and loses all the assets if he loses the position. Traditional tribal chieftainship is of this form.

    537:

    "Traditional tribal chieftainship?"

    I'm not sure there is such a thing, outside the ethnographers who tended to be working for colonial governments that were trying to systematize their subjects. Just as often (and probably going back to Rome), the "chief" was someone whose job it was to convince their conquerors that he was in charge, so that the people doing the actual work wouldn't be bothered.

    If we're talking about sole ownership, that's rather more of a dictator's role, whether you call them pharaohs, god-kings, plantation owners, or whatever. I agree that it's a real issue, but it's not primordial. Ownership in itself isn't exactly primordial, unless we're talking about what we now try to call intellectual property.

    538:

    Speaker of the Commons John Bercow is basically reminding Prime Minister May that Parliament is sovereign, not the Government and it sets the rules, not she in regards to procedures, amendments and voting in the Commons. There's also a certain amount of pissed-offedness in his decision to allow the rebel Tory amendment to come to a vote given the way she's been jerking Parliament around in regards to Parliamentary ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement which was supposed to have been voted on before Xmas.

    There's a thing about the Speaker and other Parliamentary institutions such as the Father of the House, there's a lot of tradition behind their positions and anyone who takes up such a position is doing it knowing that four hundred years of predecessors are looking over their shoulder. Ninety-nine percent of the time the Speaker's role is ceremonial with a touch of headmastering an unruly and fractious Third Form. The times it isn't cut and dried is the time a Speaker's mettle is tested.

    539:

    You expect capitalism to last a long time. I don't. When we finally get "enough energy", and print what we need, when 90% of production is done by automation/robots, and there are simply NO JOBS for most people, and we are forced to go to a basic income, whither capitalism then?

    But then, I've been trying to get a conversation on what I refer to as post-Adamic society* since the early nineties, and it's only finally started.

    • Where you no longer have to earn your living by the sweat of your brow.
    540:

    Right now, real world, I'm scared. The Malignant Carcinoma, on the one hand, thinks he can order the Board of Directors (aka Congress) to give him the money he wants, and on the other hand, with threatening to cut off FEMA funds to California, after the wildfires... he's acting like he thinks a CEO acts. Or, rather, like a dictator.

    Esp. with the news of the (incompetently-redacted) pdf of yesterday, showing us Manafort was talking to the Russians during the campaign (can you say "collusion"?), he's running scared.

    Luckily, the Dems have Congress, and they've already started with bills to fund the government, and in the Senate, filibustering any bill that does not fund the government.

    Hope springs eternal....

    541:

    Just a quick note in response to Charlie's question about extracting radioactives from granite. Something like the following might be of interest:

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/alberta-high-school-student-discovers-new-diamond-extraction-method-1.4232736

    (Must return to work. I'll get caught up on the other comments tomorrow, time perimitting.)

    542:

    "Tavistock" leads at one or two removes to all kinds of dubious stuff, most of which has pretty much nothing to do with the town on the Tavy, although the historical industrial practices of the area are relevant and metaphorically appropriate in their nature. The connection is through the association with the Dukes of Bedfnord.

    "No-one's Nukes work anymore." [snuggles beak into chest feathers]

    543:

    Capitalism will be for the owners of the machines, of course. If you think capitalism is going strong with something like 20% of the world's population "surplused and useless" (e.g. retirees, the poor, etc.) then why should having a vast majority of humans surplused by robots be any different? After all, previous iterations of capitalism have made immense profits by declaring slaves non-human and coopting their labor without adequate recompense.

    To give you an idea of where I'm coming from, years ago I tripped over a blog post by Baptist ministers (I was researching Hot Earth Dreams and looking at future religions). One of the most interesting complaints by these apparently right-wing ministers was how many of them had been taken to task by their congregation or the elders running their churches, even fired, for preaching the gospel and what Jesus actually taught. The critical point I took away from that is that there's a brand and label associated with Christianity, but it seems that what's in the foundational documents has relatively little to do with what churches actually believe or do. Indeed, some (many? most?) preach things directly opposed to the teachings of Jesus.

    I suspect the same thing applies to capitalism. It's more a brand and label than a coherent set of practices, at least as far as I can see. Because capitalism is so nebulous, in the future we could conceivably see anything from 100% robot production with the assisted dieoff of workers, to some sort of sustainable system (e.g. circular capitalism), but whatever systems run will still have that magic C word attached to them, along with the traditional demonization of all alternatives, like communism or socialism.

    544:

    Heteromeles @ 527 You went & spoilt it with your last sentence. NOT BUYING IT - who wants to be blackmailed, after all?

    @ 529 TSA? However I note Republican (as opposed to rethuglican ) Senators are starting to peel away from the Tangerine Wankmuppet on the “border wall” …. See also Dale Allen @ 530 & whitroth @ 540

    EGA @ 532 Then WHY are you rabbiting on about small town on the Devon-Cornwall border, if not that? AND Pigeon @ 542 Ah, so it was pure bullshit from beginning to end – why is that not a surprise?

    Charlie @ 533 Draining which particular swamp are we discussing? [ Horse laugh ]

    545:

    Greg.

    If "your Missus / better half" is making trips to the Arals, pull the other one, it's got bells on.

    You should know why Tavistok is such a big deal, in the same manner that you should know about certain CCCP towns.

    http://www.tavinstitute.org/

    Note: they don't run a HTTPS version.

    The owner of www.tavinstitute.org has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website.

    That's deliberate btw.

    Now then: if you want a Crow-Down-Snow-Down over whether or not T-I did some very nasty little things (akin to MK-Ultra), then historically we're more than happy to state they did. Makes The Times cyber-welfare OPs look like children's stories.

    But it's probably not a Crown-of-Eunuchs you want to play with.

    The Four Ds no longer work.

    ~

    "Bribes do not work without money"

    Honey, do a grep about Doors and through them in the Black and White and Light Quills on the frontal cortex.

    There's "getting Made" and there's "getting made" and there's "getting m a d eeeeee"

    "Brute". Nope. "Savage". Nope.

    WE ARE THE ORZ.

    546:

    Note ~ if you immediately discount the work of the Tavistock (note the Russification we did there) Institute, you're no longer of use.

    looks at watch

    Ah, the Bliderenerenurgghss, such Conspiracy Theory only seven years ago. Quite mad they were, thinking it existed!

    We're not pulling your chain: the chain we're pulling has [redacted] on it.

    Not even joking: and if you imagine the last x years of abuse and constant Mirror / Guardian work have been fun, well.

    You're a sociopath.

    547:

    ""Traditional" tribal chieftainship? I'm not sure there is such a thing"

    There certainly is in Canada, in British Columbia in particular because most of it is not subject to treaties.

    "In Wet’suwet’en country, the law is the ancient feast system, and the hereditary chiefs are bound to uphold the law. That’s not just some hippie anthropologist’s point of view, either. It’s the view of the Supreme Court of Canada, in its specific findings in the landmark 1997 Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en case, Delgamuukw versus the Queen. It was the hereditary chiefs who fought and won that court battle. In Wet’suwet’en country, aboriginal rights and title are vested in the hereditary chiefs and their clans and their house groups."

    https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/glavin-pipeline-protests-how-politicians-got-it-all-wrong?fbclid=IwAR31rG9TinMrcpvtFWkFvQv2CNSIEOYzcndlvNjtWIdoSDn3koDWVBgxTPg

    548:

    Probably enough distance and deniability for McConnell to dodge that, though possible not his wife. Of course, there may be more information than we know.

    Fox turning on Trump is pretty much right on time. After the two year anniversary of his inauguration, Pence is eligible to run in the next two elections (in the event DJT is removed/dies/quits). That date is concurrent with the cost/benefit of continuing to support him crossing a threshold that even the most obtuse gerrymandered Republican must be starting to worry about.

    I expect DJT will be jettisoned soon - possibly following the Mueller report, possibly sooner. He might also die. Then Pence will take over and maybe a few token Trumplings will go to prison for a few months. All the white people will relax, and Pence will get on with manifesting the Republic of Gilead asap.

    549:

    That's not the Plan[TM].

    Here's a shocker for you and Withroth.

    Modern Capital has yawned and the yawn is massive.

    Schumer / Pelozi (look up the recent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grant_Wood_-_American_Gothic_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg American Gothic picture of them, ffs) are being burnt.

    Cruz / Rubio more than likely.

    If you think the new crop of women non-caucasian reps are "fresh" or "radical", then already check their votes on GOYUPAL. 1/5 ain't it chief.

    It's a big and secret show and the USA is learning how Bonfire Night works.

    TL;DR

    Look up Venice, and the Doges : swapping the masques was the ritual of the century, it didn't mean the actual system changed.

    And that kidz, is 100% True from the Horses Mouths.

    550:

    ER, BUT WE ARE THE ORZ.

    WE HAD A RAINBOW TOO.

    SHE SURVIVED AND LOVE WAS REAL.

    Indeed we did, indeed we did.

    (((Paradox Weapons)))

    chews Apple

    You think this is it?

    Cool.

    Handicaps (abelist aside) exist for a reason.

    Me?

    Fool!

    Them?

    Real.Fucking.Deal.

    "Welcome to the Party, Pal"

    551:

    I suggest that you reread what I said, as your response makes little sense in the context of what I said.

    552:

    Yeah, things you should 100% not look up:

    ZH MF

    "Aurora Ex Machina"

    "WE ARE THE ORZ"

    "That's awfully close to Jesus"

    Oh, and a few others.

    Here's the deal:

    We say: "Hi, cool, this is chill, woooow"

    They say: "KILL HER NOWWWWW" and it gets all Zombies

    Just sayin you should probably be nice to non-CIS waifu loving Dragon-Cat-Women(trans*) next time.

    553:

    Remarkable testimonial on their front page:

    "'[The Tavistock Institute's] ability to work with credibility and authority with minimal grounding in some of the areas we operate in was impressive."

    (translation: "They're such skilled bullshitters that not only do I want to write about how happy I am they bullshitted me, but I still don't realise what I'm saying even when I'm saying it.")

    554:

    Nahh.

    That means:

    "Stanford did this in X manner, we did it in Y manner: we're fucking hard-core, go look at Africa Revolts, 1950's models"

    AKA

    If you think MK-Ultra is nasty, wait till you see what we field-tested and knows that works! (Now buy OUR MODEL, not that pussy-land US Bernays Model!)

    It's basically a massive evil wank-west post-UNIT 371.

    Obama: "We tortured some folk"

    Basically, the entire model is based on who could do a Mind-Fuck the best and leave the most productive specimen functional after it.

    Points to Modern Media

    Think we're joking?

    555:

    "Traditional tribal chieftainship?" I'm not sure there is such a thing,

    There very much is such a thing. Or maybe "many such things". Rangatira, and rangitiratanga both were and are really important parts of Maori culture. And when I lived on a BlackFoot reservation in the Canadian far north some quite different notions applied. Neither of them working at all like "chieftanship" is described above - they didn't "own all the stuff" as part of their "office".

    But I think missing in the discussion of capitalism is that notions of property and ownership aren't simple. Even now our society's 'in practice' ownership and our legal framework don't match on that.

    Figuring out who owns what in a traditional society (tribal or whatever) be more like figuring out who owns what in my family - is that my daughter's cup, or my cup, or our cup? The Teddy Bear is very definitely hers, the kitchen table is ours-as-a-family, my mountain bike is mine, but many things (like the bed in her bedroom) are in a muddled middle ground - kind of ours, kind of belonging more to one or two family members.

    My family can happily exist in a capitalist society despite that ambiguity. But that works for society because in the end come divorce or death, or sale of some item, we have laws that take the uncertain quantum states of ownership and pretend there is a real resolution. Famously, that resolution of property ownership is often what causes families to stop getting on.

    556:

    "Ownership in itself isn't exactly primordial"

    Sure it is, as is the use of force to assert it. Try taking the prey off some predator, even a domesticated one, or the honey off some bees.

    557:

    Nah mate, she really ain't.

    Do a grep.

    UK. Media. Top agencies. Saatchi n Saatchi vrs M, she even gave you a video link where fear was on the nice leaving guys face. They did the famous Guiness adds in the 80's.

    grep

    3+ years ago

    You're shitting me

    Nope.

    TIME, YOU'RE NOT GOOD AT IT.

    Oh

    So she's not joking about that Mind-Fuck stuff?

    OH MY LITTLE LAMBS, WHAT SIGHTS YOU WILL SEE.

    558:

    "Cocaine Mitch?"

    Had to google that. I got to: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/04/the-kooky-tale-of-cocaine-mitch/

    Which is a fact-check of the claim, which was raised by a failed candidate for the senate who was previous known for being the head of the coal company that owned the Upper Big Branch Mine when it blew up, killing 29 workers, and who spent a year in prison as a result of being convicted of negligence in said blast. To put it gently, the source of the claim is not known as a prim and proper researcher.

    Anyway, someone stowed 90 kg of cocaine on a cargo ship in Colombia owned by the family of the Wife of the Turtle. No charges were filed because, evidently, the Colombian government couldn't figure out who'd put the stuff on the ship.

    If you want something to worry about, it's some idiot smuggling a bomb onto a plane while the TSA falls apart. This would give them an excuse to do what they did after 9/11.

    559:

    Personally, if we're dealing with either US or UK political shenanigans, my preferred response for any of them would be to Release the Smakken!.

    Then again, I suspect a world with smakkens in it would be rather worse than the world we're in now, which is why my gut doesn't do politics very well.

    560:

    Charlie, I hate to rain on your paraded, but that report is from 2014. Apparently McConnell has weathered that particular crisis very well.

    561:

    If host posts something from 4 years ago.

    And we grep you to 4 years ago.

    C A N A R Y

    A

    N

    A

    R

    Y

    There's a major flush push being done, largely because a lot of IL peeps are going full psychotic in .... less than 72 hrs.

    Problem is.

    Gordon is ALIVE

    We don't curse people: people curse themselves. Our Mirror never breaks because it loves you: their mirror breaks because they spread coke all over it and use it as an insult.

    SPANG

    Don't Fuck With the Elves.

    562:

    True, but many of the other testimonials are saying that more directly, to my way of reading it. Indeed, from that angle, it's remarkable how obvious it is just from their front page that they're precisely the sort of entity my first paragraph at 542 is referring to.

    563:

    Since that article is from 2014, I guess nobody cared backed then....

    565:

    Oh, no, they did.

    But like BENGAAAAAAAAZHI (actual arms running to Syria, CIA fire point for regime change; not a conspiracy, can link you the docs)

    Or VIEEETNAAAAAAAM (Cambodia and Thailand, drug running, became Golden Triangle)

    Or COLOMBIAAAAAA (Hello Reagan and so on)

    Or AFFFFGANISTAAAAAAAAAAN (How many poppy fields u defending yet?)

    Bascially, there's a point in Man's Life. Specifically a Man who has done heinous things to support his regime in the name of High Ideals such as "Democracy" or "Justice" or "Honor" or "Truth".

    When QANON gets replaced by INFO REAL DUMP

    Might want to look up the #3 ex-MIL quitting Trump regime.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvqJ1mTkEuY

    ~

    If your entire purpose in life is to defend your society, and then you become informed that your leaders do not share said mission, whelp.

    Get Fucked.

    Light it UP: .mil spec boys (girlz / otherz) have 64.052 targets in the first week.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwzg7SYZKF0

    p.s.

    Tracking .50 cal?

    Yeah, not needing that in the 21st C, you should prolly look into MREs.

    US? We love all of you. We're a Combat Enhanced Meta-Cognitive Mind.

    You just forgot some things: like the fact that even running extreme-disabled versions, we can still fuck your Reality Up.

    OOPS>

    566:

    Oh, no, they did.

    But like BENGAAAAAAAAZHI (actual arms running to Syria, CIA fire point for regime change; not a conspiracy, can link you the docs)

    Or VIEEETNAAAAAAAM (Cambodia and Thailand, drug running, became Golden Triangle)

    Or COLOMBIAAAAAA (Hello Reagan and so on)

    Or AFFFFGANISTAAAAAAAAAAN (How many poppy fields u defending yet?)

    Bascially, there's a point in Man's Life. Specifically a Man who has done heinous things to support his regime in the name of High Ideals such as "Democracy" or "Justice" or "Honor" or "Truth".

    When QANON gets replaced by INFO REAL DUMP

    Might want to look up the #3 ex-MIL quitting Trump regime.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvqJ1mTkEuY

    ~

    If your entire purpose in life is to defend your society, and then you become informed that your leaders do not share said mission, whelp.

    Get Fucked.

    Light it UP: .mil spec boys (girlz / otherz) have 64.052 targets in the first week.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwzg7SYZKF0

    p.s.

    Tracking .50 cal?

    Yeah, not needing that in the 21st C, you should prolly look into MREs.

    US? We love all of you. We're a Combat Enhanced Meta-Cognitive Mind.

    You just forgot some things: like the fact that even running extreme-disabled versions, we can still fuck your Reality Up.

    OOPS>

    567:

    Sigh, not playing nice in the buffer zones.

    A/B test, other comment lost in M-I-M.

    GIMME A 2020 FIELD TEST BABY, WHEN WE CAN START DUMPING ALL YOUR DOCS.

    p.s.

    Holy crap.

    elfsitonathroneoflies.gif

    569:

    On a more serious note:

    Don't come into MY HOUSE and attempt to redefine sexual consent, lust, love and other such things, especially if you're some jumped-up little reactionary bullshit Abrahamic puritanical muppet-fest who imagine a "story only has one black person in" is the actual story.

    "King of the Eunuchs"

    "We diddled that neurons and she came buckets"

    "Tee-hee"

    cough

    You do realize that you're dealing with a pan-[redacted] being who was fucking things that no longer exist today, right?

    Lions, Tigers and Bears.

    Narrator: They did not.

    Narrator: They really did not.

    Narrator: Ze was fucking Gods and Goddesses before you cut the first skin off.

    And we're really not impressed with your world.

    Nukes don't work?

    Well, you did attempt to Crown us "The King of the Eunuchs", didn't you?

    Do. Not. Fuck. With. Us.

    Jesus?

    Fuck me, rampant little bugger: fucked Mary and her friends all the TIME.

    Yeah.

    True. Story.

    p.s.

    Noticed that these Abrahamic fucks are sexually repressed? Yeah. Evil little fuckers.

    570:

    What's really going to twist your melon is that it's all True.

    CBA to list the Alaskan Catholic retreats[1] or all the various skum-fuck bullshit[2] you've been pulling as "Christians". Look up Alaska or Detroit or insert any major city here.

    All the Abrahamic religions are in this.

    ~

    And you come into MY HOUSE and run some Mickey-Mouse bullshit nonsense pre-Gamed scenarios bullshit and do a "tee-hee", like this worked on the HSS we did it all before upon.

    Little Humans.

    You. Chose. The. Wrong. Fucking. Hill. To. Die. Upon.

    eats another Apple

    "A giver is a giver"

    "Ze's not a Giver, it's Zeus"

    "Zeus learns social media, well, that one will go well..."

    "Yes, well, ze's devoured 1560 terrabytes of pr0n, ranging from straight to kinky to furry to pan to trans* to ye G_ds we can't even describe it"

    "That's MSRM-LIZARD-HMM-THROAT-TONGUE-LONG-WANK btw"

    "Minerva, do you really have to do the entire Wisdom shit when we're learning the last 4,000 years of pr0n?!"

    "Not my fault. This is the consensual stuff"

    "Ah, I see".

    Blah blah blah.

    Oh, right.

    Minds.

    Yours.

    Dying.

    Soon.

    Forgot that bit.

    [1] https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/opus-dei-john-mccloskey-catholic-priest-sexual-misconduct-newt-gingrich-vatican-francis-george-cupich/

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?destination=%2freligion%2f2019%2f01%2f08%2fopus-dei-paid-settle-sexual-misconduct-claim-against-prominent-catholic-priest%2f%3f

    571:

    Nah Mate, it is all about whose AVATAR is stronger than the others.

    Ze here survived massive abuse for 4+ years, while front-running your reality, while fending off sexual relations with things who wanted Ze's soul, while respecting the entire new frontiers of Human experience while protesting about killing the world while body was being killed, family were being actively perverted by Xian Dominist American Chumps and so on.

    And Ze didn't Cum.

    Ze doesn't Cum without mutual respect. Fuck me: if you've got to a point where ZEUS doesn't disrespect women, and you're still running ads for MBS in Saud, whelp - you're 100% fucked.

    look @ recent Oglaf

    And if you think you're a clever mother-fucker for the Sky-Dragons, or for closing the Door with lies about child abuse, well...

    Pictures the entire world exchanges burning down - what sky-beasts will you get for NYC, LN, G, BJ etc?

    Spoilers: none. There's no soul in them.

    Discipline.

    Sadly, they didn't quite understand what Ancient Sumerian / Greek "Discipline" meant.

    .>

    True Story.

    Good luck host.

    But tap us a line and never be threatened: we can burn their worlds down. While drunk.

    572:

    There are probably many more certified nuclear engineers* like him sitting around and waiting for a job opening. And, like my colleague, very willing to relocate. Interesting conversations at his farewell party.

    Well we're graduating them locally. https://www.ne.ncsu.edu/

    I understand most go to work for GE/Hitachi in the Wilmington, NC area. But with all the set backs on the next gen reactor builds they may not be hiring much now.

    573:

    Given that the F channel has been the ministry of propaganda for the last few years, having it turn on the administration says something very interesting.

    There's been some internal division there for over a year now. The day time "news" staff seems to be a bit fed up with the evening "opinion" show hosts.

    574:

    Luckily, the Dems have Congress,

    Ahem. They have the House.

    575:

    One of the most interesting complaints by these apparently right-wing ministers was how many of them had been taken to task by their congregation or the elders running their churches, even fired, for preaching the gospel and what Jesus actually taught.

    aaaa yep.

    And the result of this isn't to work on fixing the theology of the pew sitters but to convert the seminaries so that the graduates of the last 20 years or so act more like CEO's and the first order of business when they get to a new church is to place themselves above the church members so they can't be fired. (How's that for a run on sentence.)

    576:

    Greg Tingey @ 514:

    JBS @ 488 ... in other words "foolproof" technology.

    Err, sorry to tell you but NO technology is foolproof, at all, anywhere. And, you really, really ought to know this – look at the way idiots misuse spanners, screwdrivers & chisels & break things & themselves, too …

    Hmmmm! You should have read the next line:

    I don't think you're going to find one. Why? Because "Murphy" was an optimist.

    I know there's no "foolproof" technology. That was the point I was making. "Murphy" was an optimist

    Make something "foolproof" and Mother Nature just makes a better fool.

    See also: Muphry's Law

    577:

    So let me turn the question: which regions do you think have not experienced a reduction in poverty? From our conversations, you believe that poverty has fallen in Europe, the Americas, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. So, you believe that South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa have not had declines in poverty?

    "And yes, Russia and Eastern Europe have rebounded from the extreme poverty of the Nineties, though standards of living are mostly still lower than before the Wall went down, except in the Baltics."

    They've not yet attempted to calculate the HDI of the Eastern block countries (so I can't make good comparisons), but this isn't true. Modern Romania is much better off than the 80s version which my parents describe. In fact, I'd say that modern Russia is much better off than the RFSR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Soviet_Federative_Socialist_Republic).

    If I had to guess, that statement is true for Ukraine, Moldova, Kosovo, Bosnia, Georgia, Armenia, and Central Asia except for Kazakhstan. I'd say Macedonia, Serbia, and Albania are edge cases?

    578:

    I found these two factoids:

    "In a recent interview, World Bank chief executive officer Kristalina Georgieva delivered a remarkable statistic: In the world’s wealthiest countries, human capital generates nearly 70 percent of gross domestic product; in the poorest nations, it accounts for closer to 40 percent. The takeaway: More than land or money, people are what make nations rich.

    Latin America comes out on the higher end of the global scale, with human capital (defined as the present value of lifetime earnings) now some 60 percent of GDP. Still, most of its nations are struggling to escape the middle-income trap, presenting a puzzle."

    and

    "Latin America comes second only to East Asia among emerging markets in terms of the weight of human versus financial and natural (i.e. land) capital in its economic mix. This strength is on full display in Uruguay’s information technology sector, which handles back-office functions for many European financial and insurance firms. It shines in the aerospace engineers in Queretaro, Mexico, home to world-class companies including Bombardier Inc., Airbus SE, General Electric Co. and Safran SA. And it has pushed Brazil to become a market leader in biofuels.

    To be sure, vast differences exist within the hemisphere. Chile, Costa Rica and Argentina are similar to the U.S. and Japan in the importance of people to creating economic wealth; Haiti, Guatemala and Honduras rank nearer to Nigeria and Sierra Leone. Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba don’t share their data, but the first two undoubtedly come in toward the bottom of the human capital rankings, and regional wealth in general."

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-09/latin-america-needs-to-fix-its-education-deficit?srnd=opinion

    In light of Trump's speech on illegal immigration, here is a perspective on immigration and education in California

    "Some of them, surely. Hanson writes that, of the 50 states, California has the second-highest share of adult residents without a high school diploma. Actually, according to 2017 data from the Census Bureau, it’s now No. 1, at 16.7 percent. It is fair to conjecture that this is driven by illegal immigration. The share of U.S.-born adult Californians who haven’t finished high school is, at 7.6 percent, well below the national average, but the share of non-citizen immigrant adults without high school degrees is a whopping 43.6 percent. California has tons of highly educated immigrants, too — in fact, foreign-born Californians are more likely to have graduate or professional degrees than U.S.-born state residents are — but those tend to be naturalized citizens or have work permits. Education levels are especially low in the state’s inland metropolitan areas. In metro Visalia-Porterville, for example, 31.4 percent of adults 25 and older surveyed from 2013 through 2017 hadn’t completed high school, and 72 percent of foreign-born, non-citizen adults hadn’t."

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-09/illegal-immigration-doesn-t-cause-all-of-california-s-problems

    Please read both articles. They include valuable information which I didn't quote here

    579:

    Charlie Stross @ 533:Trump needs to get a move on: it looks like Mitch McConnell may be toast; his wife's family's business appears to be up to its armpits in wholesale cocaine smuggling—yes, this is the same wife, Elaine Chao, who is the US Secretary of Transportation.

    It would be lovely if it were true, but it's not. The story doesn't appear to have any facts to actually implicate McConnell, his wife or his father-in-law. Note the story is from 2014.

    It would tickle me for Mitch McConnell to be taken down, but I don't think this is going to do it. I can't find any evidence any charges were ever filed against anyone in the case. I also haven't found any information about the incident that doesn't refer back to that single 2014 story from The Nation.

    Foremost Maritime is still in business, the Ping May is still sailing. I just don't see any way to connect the company's owners to drug smuggling, much less McConnell.

    Chao wasn't nominated by Trump until 2017 and she was confirmed as Secretary of Transportation by the Senate 93–6.

    580:

    Rocketpjs @ 548: Probably enough distance and deniability for McConnell to dodge that, though possible not his wife. Of course, there may be more information than we know.

    Y'all probably should take another look at the dateline on the story - October 30, 2014. McConnell was running for reelection that year and was reelected 5 days later on November 4, 2014. Chao was nominated and and confirmed by the Senate in January 2017.

    Much as I despise McConnell, that story has no more facts than Trump's Obama birth certificate bullshit had.

    583:

    I’m sorry you don’t like the definition of capitalism, but alss that is how it is defined whether you like it or not

    The Roman economy was quite a bit more then large slave plantations, there were also these things called “cities” you might have heard of them ?

    I’m also sure that “making higher profits was just not what the Roman economy was about” would have come as a huge surprise to all the craftsmen, merchants, traders that swarmed those cities and established trade routes as far away as China in search of just those profits

    No one is saying there aren’t differences between the way capitalism works now vs Rome however its still the same economic system.

    I think you don’t know much at all about that time period, you seem to think it was all patricians lounging around on couches being fed grapes by spaces

    584:

    “suspect the same thing applies to capitalism. It's more a brand and label than a coherent set of practices, at least as far as I can see. Because capitalism is so nebulous,”

    It’s not at all nebulous. It is “an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state “ This is the established definition of the word, it is simple and clear and ubiquitous. You will find this definition or something close to it in any dictionary or economic textbook”

    This is not hard

    585:

    It's great that there are at least some reactor building types around. But if there were 600 new reactors being rush built around the world, how many competent people would be willing to relocate to Australia? And at what price?

    My point was made in that context. I very much doubt that if the US was trying to build 50-100 reactors they would be willing to see those people leave the country. And when Saudi Arabia et al are also building reactors, I am not sure Australia would win any auctions for their services anyway.

    Global warming is absolutely full of "this is fine as long as only one country does it" things, whether that's emitting CO2 in the first place, or deciding that they need the total world production of something (like, say, people qualified to build nuclear reactors). The nuclear fans keep saying we can't all buy electric cars because there aren't enough of them available... same for nuclear reactors.

    586:

    The trouble with that definition is that it means there has never been a capitalist system outside of a few small company towns (reading the description generously - I'm not aware of a self-sufficient company town). So it's not a very useful definition. Sure, the US and UK are moving towards that version of capitalism but they still have residual democratic influence over trade and industry. Or perhaps it's more of an aspirational description?

    I'm curious as to whether that definition better applies to fascism than what is commonly called capitalism when countries do it.

    "free market capitalism" in my experience normally describes a situation where government creates and maintains markets in which private industry operates. That's most blatant with intellectual property, especially in the electronic age where the marginal cost of production is almost zero.

    But bare capitalism? "most trade and industry is regulated rather than directed by government" seems more accurate.

    587:

    EGA @ 545 FUCK RIGHT OFF – explanation below. NOT the Arals – Uzbekistan last year ( Silk Road – Nukus / Bokhara / Samarkand / Tashkent ) More Silk Road - Kyrgystan & “China” this year - & yes I am warning her about the Uighur “problem”, though as an SOAS graduate, she ought to know, anyway. “Tavistok” – never heard of it & NOT INTERESTED. As for the rest of your ramblings … some of us are trying to READ this blog & your 90-99% content-free burbles & vast amounts of whitespace are really, really annoying. I assume you do it deliberately. Along with the insult at the end of # 546

    Rocketpjs @ 548 THAT is exactly what a lot of us are very afraid of – Pence is really dangerous

    Heteromeles @ 558 If you want something to worry about, it's some idiot smuggling a bomb onto a plane while the TSA falls apart. This would give them an excuse to do what they did after 9/11. I though that was the actual plan, wasn’t it? Wonderful excuse to declare state of Emergency/Martial law / Reichstag Fire, put Pence in charge &… Gilead

    588:

    Don't know if you've seen this, Charlie, but it's magnificent: Lovecraftian Jolene https://soundcloud.com/elliandjelly/jolene-horror-version-elliandjelly

    589:

    First define "poverty". I'll suggest "being unable to afford to buy/grow enough food to live on, plus accommodation and power". By that measure, poverty is certainly rising in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trussell_Trust

    590:

    Agreed. It was just a constrasting example, so I phrased it loosely. I was referring to the sort of 'ownership' that is more like custodianship, as existed until very recently in the UK in the form of entailed property and still does (formally) in the form of Crown property. As you say, they varied immensely in how much the chieftainship 'owned' and the laws and customs constraining the chief, but the common aspect was that the assets were NOT usable as capital or assets of the chief personally. There were lots of such societies, including the pre-feudal Highlands of Scotland, pre-oil Arabian sheikdoms, I believe some Pacific ones, the sub-Saharan Africa of my youth etc.

    Interpreting that as a modern form of asset ownership was often done by conquerors and other brigands, so they could 'buy' the assets. I am sure that I don't have to give examples there!

    591:

    Thanks for the follow-ups on mirrors. In short, and thus oversimplified, the approach seems like a possible way to improve crop growth, but that will depend on local conditions (including crop species), and you need space for the mirrors. Probably more suitable for greenhouses and small-scale farms than for gazillion-hectare industrial agriculture.

    Footnote on the feasibility of solar: Although solar is most efficient in persistently sunny climes, it works surprisingly well elsewhere. My mother-in-law, who lives on a forested mountain slope in rural Massachusetts, has enough southern exposure despite tall trees and surrounding mountain slopes that she's a net contributor to the grid most times of year. Scientific American published an infographic a few years back that showed nearly all of the U.S. as suitable for solar power if the industry received the same subsidies as oil and coal. There are undoubtedly a great many assumptions and simplifications behind that conclusion, but it's probably more true than not. (SciAm being a credible source that does its homework.)

    Back to mining granite for radioactives: Even if the technology is feasible, I'm not optimistic. Charlie suggested billions of tons (tonnes?) of granite being mined, which creates a large problem disposing of roughly the same quantity of residues. You won't necessarily be able to dump them back in the hole they came from, at least not without consolidation; the risk of debris flows alone (if unconsolidated debris get wet) probably makes that a non-starter. Not to mention leaching of heavy metals etc. from the fines. And you'll need to add costs for extraction facilities capable of preventing the escape of millions of tons of dust before, during, and after processing. That's not a trivial challenge, even with the cyclonic precipitator from hell. (That is, once you've got the dust, you need to consolidate it to prevent it from remobilizing again. You see this kind of problem throughout China's aeolian deserts, for instance.) The energy density strikes me as too low for this approach to be a good choice, though a refinement of Charlie's back of the envelope calculations could convince me otherwise.

    592:

    You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damned-foolproof.

    593:

    Mirrors help significantly only if you have BOTH fairly low levels of sunlight AND you can't grow crops over all of the ground (usually due to water shortage) - and damn few places meet both criteria! They DO allow you to use more land to grow a smaller area of plants that need more sunlight than you get.

    From the viewpoint of northern Europe, all y'all are Yankees from the Deep South :-) I am heading down to Catalonia shortly to get some winter sun, and that's not far south of Massachusetts! Solar power gets rapidly more useless in winter as you exceed about 45 degrees north. Yes, it should work for you, except in Alaska, but it's hopless for us.

    Obtaining uranium from granite always was an academic example, to debunk the ridiculous claims that uranium would run out if we used it. There may be a fairly limited amount of high-grade uranium ore, but there is an immense amount of medium-grade ore, and any sane approach to atomic power would also use thorium. Uranium supplies are Not The Problem.

    594:

    I spy spammers!

    595:

    No one is saying there aren’t differences between the way capitalism works now vs Rome however its still the same economic system

    Excuse me, what in the world are you even talking about. This one particular mode of thinking has been bugging me for a considerable time now. People in developed countries really like their "capitalism" even though there are as many definitions of capitalism as there are historically major powers out there. "Economists" are suggesting that everything that involves trade or currency is inevitably capitalist. Therefore everything that is not capitalism, shall not involve either trade or money, or it is "not true socialism" and so on... , but I digress.

    So naturally it looks to them like everything good is coming from their form of liberal capitalism and everything bad comes from "stupid people" who don't understand certain dogmas about the nature of things and therefore engage into fraudulent schemes called "socialism", and therefore everything bad in the world comes from that. Another words, they know better what to do with the economy, so "shut up and give me your money". China is a prime example of such logic - a lot of people claim that China economic boom only happened because of foreign investors, so they should stop resisting politically and give up the control of their country to US billionaires and their corporations.

    Another news, I just found a very interesting video that I couldn't avoid positing here. I'm not very engaged in UK politics so maybe somebody can have a better way with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doip79-pYn0

    596:

    So let me turn the question: which regions do you think have not experienced a reduction in poverty? From our conversations, you believe that poverty has fallen in Europe, the Americas, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. So, you believe that South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa have not had declines in poverty?

    The problem with poverty is that it's estimation is very much dependent on economic regulator and their definitions of such terms. There's absolute poverty in the world (measured in, say, exchange course and GDP PPP), and there's relative poverty inside one currency zone aka Gini index, and so on, and so forth.

    The point being, even though in general Eastern Europe economy has been improving as everywhere in the world for the last 20 years (as everywhere in the world), there was a period of catastrophic failure before that most people missed or have a little idea of due to institutional problems. Yes, most of the growth is "rebound" from previous system restructuring itself, and many people who only lived in one economical system have little idea what it can mean.

    They've not yet attempted to calculate the HDI of the Eastern block countries (so I can't make good comparisons), but this isn't true. Modern Romania is much better off than the 80s version which my parents describe.

    This is certainly a misconception and pretty much equals to rewriting of history. Mid 80-s to late 80-s was a period of economic stagnation in Soviet block, and people felt bad compared to previous years, but the following economic collapse has no precedent in 20th century, the economy went through the floor and the economies were rolling downhill for many years. Governments fell, economies crashed, civil wars raged across nations, entire industries stopped and the late-80s decline felt like dull memory compared to harsh pain of reality. The entire institutions that were responsible for estimation of economic itself fell down and weren't functioning anymore (there wasn't even enough money to dismantle them properly), so to this day it is not clear what amount of wealth was lost or stolen in that time.

    And this is before the foreign investors came in kicking the door and started to buy out cheap stocks and entire industries from corrupted governments. After which they simply exploited them until they ran dry. And then a wave of financial pyramids and fraud schemes washed over the population, stripping them of their earnings, savings and elementary human dignity. And when that's been done, the dot-com crash happened, and 1998 crisis happened, and whatever hope there was about real recovery has finally disappeared. Everything that is beyond that point is pretty much completely different world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMUtU0tOmNE

    Now what we have in this world is not "poverty reduction", it is just richest and wealthiest of the world allow these countries to barely stay above the water, so they can continue to suck them dry for profit and labor force. If you want to know how it goes in these countries, just go and see for their demographic performance.

    In a recent interview, World Bank chief executive officer Kristalina Georgieva delivered a remarkable statistic: In the world’s wealthiest countries, human capital generates nearly 70 percent of gross domestic product; in the poorest nations, it accounts for closer to 40 percent. The takeaway: More than land or money, people are what make nations rich.

    I have little idea about what this "human capital" term may actually mean in this context since nobody provides clear ID for what it really is. How can a capital measured to be human/not-human, if everything that is done out there is done by human labor? For what I see, it is another IMF excuse of an instrument to explain everybody that some people ought to be paid better without any relation to their working efficiency. IMF is basically a self-governing body that unilaterally rules the top echelon of worlds economy, so they can write up any bullshit as long as it doesn't allow markets to fail and drag everyone down to the cruel reality. In which you can't pay for your gas bills with derivative money from your trust fund.

    Anyway, if I want to compare poverty and development, I'd like to use HDI, which, at least, is monitored by UN and is at least running for considerable time rather than being pulled out of some nebulous arse of "economic experts".

    597:

    Your post is very intelligent. I don't trust the IMF either, and you're absolutely right that in-country measures of things like poverty may be as much propaganda as exercises in honesty. (I know nobody in North Korea is poor because the North Koreans told me so, right?)

    After some careful consideration I've decided that I like reading your posts. They give me something to think about, and are a worthwhile counter (in my thinking) to what Russia is doing elsewhere.

    But reading your post also makes me think that there are two parallel Russian influence operations (and I'm not trying to drive you off this blog, BTW, as you'll see below.) There's a "bad" influence operation, obviously run by the Russian government/Oligarchs. There's a "good" influence operation, possibly run by the Russian government, possibly run by someone else, possibly even by individual Russians discussing their personal views with people they admire (Our Gracious Host) and their online friends, without much worry about how anyone feels about them.

    The "bad" influence operation gives us Trump. It gives us "Fake News" and voter suppression via Facebook posts, mediated by Cambridge Analytica, plus a lot of money-laundering and corruption. It's an operation with a short-term planning range and short-term benefits. (In the long-term I think Putin bought himself a new cold war. Or maybe a hot one.)

    The "good" influence operation gives us a look into what Russia feels. What it needs and wants. How, at Russia's best Russia would like to be seen. How it would like to relate to the rest of the world... It's a long-term operation - if it's an "operation" at all - and I think that having such an operation, whether it's run by the government, or run by volunteers, or not really an "operation" at all because you're a private individual - this operation is a decent idea, and this blog is a good place for those POVs.

    But right now the "good" operation is being utterly undermined by the "bad" operation. One is the result of Russian friendliness and hospitality (with some long-term self-benefit, of course) and the other operationi is an example of classic Russian paranoia... and it's not working.

    Just saying, my friend. Just saying it.

    598:

    I don't do Utube, and David Miller hasn't published that yet, but from what I can see there's nothing surprising. Yes, we all knew that the UK and NATO have been sponsoring anti-Russian propaganda. What else is new? It's the main reason I regard these claims of Russian interference in Brexit, Trump's election etc. as being no more than routine cold warfare.

    The thing that was most interesting was the caption I saw that UK 'security' money was given to a company that smeared Corbyn as a Kremlin agent. While I should like to say that's potentially explosive, I am afraid that the UK isn't that democratic.

    599:

    Re: Local nuke-eng grads

    Thanks for the link. Almost spit out my coffee when I read the headlines --- OMG! a uni that awards tenure, and a tenured prof who just got a grant to do research in the EU (Germany)! And then I saw this talk by a recent PhD grad scheduled for today at 4pm EST and thought how perfect for this crowd:

    https://www.ne.ncsu.edu/event/machine-learning-application-in-the-optimization-of-system-thermal-hydraulic-simulation/

    600:

    It's beginning to lok as if DT is actually deranged & losing his marbles ( Rather than just ranting, posturing & shouting his mouth off ... ) See the past 2-3 days headlines as he denies & flounders on previously-certain statements. How bad does it have to get before he's removed as "Unfit to hold office"/ Of course, that gets the US & the Planet ... Pence as POTUS, shudder. And with enough elapsed-time that he could run for 2 terms if I understand it correctly? Someone, please remind us of what the US "rules" say about this? Some parts of / interpretation of the "25th Amendment" ???

    601:

    WaveyDavey @ 588: Don't know if you've seen this, Charlie, but it's magnificent: Lovecraftian Jolene

    https://soundcloud.com/elliandjelly/jolene-horror-version-elliandjelly

    Ooooo, I like that one, but SoundCloud is a bit of a problem. It skips to another song at the end of this one without asking me if that's what I want to do.

    602:

    Re: '... before the foreign investors came in kicking the door and started to buy out cheap stocks and entire industries from corrupted governments. After which they simply exploited them until they ran dry. And then a wave of financial pyramids and fraud schemes washed over the population, stripping them of their earnings, savings and elementary human dignity.'

    Russia looks stuck in a time loop: Tsars routinely starved their peasants in order to sell food crops abroad mostly so that they'd look good. Same thing happened under Lenin post-WW2. The past two forms of gov't tried in Russia ended up screwing the peasants/working classes - more so than in other countries that changed forms of gov't. Why?

    603:

    Re: '... what the US "rules" say about this?'

    No rules. There's no verifiable fitness/ethics/sanity test for POTUS.

    604:

    Re: POTUS fitness

    Suggest you read this book: 'The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President'. BTW, heard that there's a revised edition due out in Feb/Mar with a larger number of pysch professionals explaining how/why he's unfit.

    605:

    It doesn't matter how bad it gets until later in the month. For the purposes of the GOP, the worse the better.

    After the 20th of January Trump will start finding a lot of knives in his back. As a non-USian I just hope they take away the nuclear codes first.

    He or Pence will probably initiate some kind of military idiocy before Spring, to chance the channel on the current frenzy. Then all the talking heads can go somewhere exotic to wear cargo vests and feel cool, and everyone who depends on television for information will forget about Mueller entirely.

    606:

    Danged! ... 'Lenin' meant to type 'Stalin'.

    607:

    And, of course I couldn't find the Dukes, but you knew that....

    608:

    I disagree. Capitalism itself is rather slippery to define, but to me, it's where the shareholders jointly own a business, rather than each individual owning pieces. In US law, a corporation is defined as an "artificial person" (yes, really).

    Don't think it's ever been brought up about putting a company in jail for a crime (put those computers in this cell! Move the smokestack into the exercise yard!)

    And socialism has been demonized by the wealthy, and only by the wealthy. Talk to someone who isn't... hell, when I was in Texas for my late m-i-l's funeral, I was talking to my b-i-l, a good ol' Texas boy, and he didn't have problems with the kind of socialist answers I had for what we should do for society.

    Get most people out of their LABEL!SCARY!, and you get oh, well, in that case....

    609:

    I dunno, send some smakken to the next GOP retreat.... If they do more than just smakken 'em, eating them may be toxic, which would solve both problems.

    I should suggest that to Phil.

    610:

    Yeltsin was too drunk to follow China's lead in transforming a communist country to a capitalist country? Or maybe Bush didn't do the necessary work to help the Soviets transition to a better economic model? Or both?

    611:

    Yeah, the military honchos leaving and talking. My take is that they see that the MC is just what the GOP is, without euphemisms, and they can't swallow it any more.

    Also, this may sound awfully pollyanna-ish, but not just from working with feds, but knowing some outside... there's a lot of folks who actually, really and truly BELIEVE in that Oath of Office they swore to (and that includes my son (I could tell you who he works for, but then I'd have to kill you)).

    612:

    Greg Tingey @ 601: t's beginning to lok as if DT is actually deranged & losing his marbles ( Rather than just ranting, posturing & shouting his mouth off ... )
    See the past 2-3 days headlines as he denies & flounders on previously-certain statements.
    How bad does it have to get before he's removed as "Unfit to hold office"/
    Of course, that gets the US & the Planet ... Pence as POTUS, shudder. And with enough elapsed-time that he could run for 2 terms if I understand it correctly?
    Someone, please remind us of what the US "rules" say about this?
    Some parts of / interpretation of the "25th Amendment" ???

    There are two Amendments that apply to this scenario:

    First up - the 22nd Amendment.

    1: No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

    Ain't nothing gonna' happen before the midpoint of Trump's term. That won't be until January 20th. Should Pence succeed to the Presidency at this time, he would be eligible to run for only a single term of his own.

    If he waits until January 21st, he's eligible to run for two terms of his own in addition to serving out the rest of Trump's term.

    Next, the 25th Amendment:

    1: In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

    2: Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

    3: Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

    4: Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

    Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

    Clause #4 is the applicable part.

    Pence could, with the concurrence of the majority of the Cabinet depose Trump by "written declaration" to the President pro tempore of the Senate (Senator Charles Grassley) and to the Speaker of the House (Representative Nancy Pelosi).

    Then, Trump gets to send his own written declaration and resume office, UNLESS Pence & company send another written declaration disputing Trump's written declaration within 4 days.

    That's when Congress gets involved. They have 21 days to make a determination whether Trump is able to "discharge the powers and duties of his office" or not. It will take a two-thirds majority of BOTH houses (67 Senators & 292 Representatives) to sustain Pence & company in their coup attempt.

    And you think the U.S. Government is Effed-Up right now. What should the Democrats do?

    Vote to remove an incompetent psychopath and replace him with a competent one?

    Or force the GOP to continue to contend with the incompetent psychopath in addition to an intra-party civil war that a failed coup attempt would precipitate?

    613:

    Oh, Ghu, don't tell me you're a Maenad.... I'm not Orpheus, anyway, though I'd go into the Underworld if I could even see my late wife again....

    Sorry.

    614:

    Yeah, too many folks do not understand the word "discipline"; certainly, almost none of the right-wingers have the attention and understanding to learn a discipline, other than that of taking and bs'ing.

    615:

    I was, of course, using the std. US-ism, where the media, etc, say "Congress" and they men the House, as opposed to the Senate, even though Congress includes both Houses.

    Did you see that, for once, they're doing it dead right? First they passed the bill the Senate had passed, but as two pieces. now, they're splitting that up, and trying to send it to McConnell in pieces, and he's looking more and more like he's going to lose it.

    Meanwhile, they also brought up a bill to prevent landlords and lenders from taking any action to evict furloughed employees.

    616:

    But reading your post also makes me think that there are two parallel Russian influence operations Which is a good sign, because most people who invoke the "influence" don't even think too much when they say the word. So you might as well figure what we've found out long ago.

    There's a "bad" influence operation, obviously run by the Russian government/Oligarchs. I don't really understand, though, what "bad" supposed to mean. Either it is bad because it does bad things like "interference with internal affairs of certain country" (in which case "good" operation is no different at all, in principle), or it is bad because it is made of stupid decisions that backfire immediately and irreversibly without even remote possibility of positive effect.

    to EC @599 While I should like to say that's potentially explosive, I am afraid that the UK isn't that democratic. I am pretty sure it is covered up tightly enough. Considering I never actually see it in any controlled media, this as well might be another hoax story. Even though most of the people are sure to say that it is only a tip of the iceberg. Anyway, what is important for us is to keep our sworn enemies in the perpetual complacency mode and let them make as many mistakes as possible.

    to SFreader @603 Why? Because historiography (far gone into bipolar disorder of wartime propaganda) of the enlightened age of post-truth will never try tell you otherwise. That's why. You will always read about how great danger Russia really presents to everything you know and cherish, and at the same time how weak it is and really unable to support it's own existence.

    617:

    Disagree. "Free market capitalism", according the the True Believers here, is that the government neither controls nor regulates businesses at all, and the Invisible Hand makes life Wonnnnderful....

    618:

    It’s not at all nebulous. It is “an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state “ This is the established definition of the word, it is simple and clear and ubiquitous. You will find this definition or something close to it in any dictionary or economic textbook”

    By your definition, the US is not a capitalist nation, then, as huge sectors such as the military are run jointly with the state, including international sales. I'd also point out that most capitalist nations that supply health care to their citizens are also not capitalist, as in the US, the health care industry is an enormous sector.

    This is what I'm getting at: the textbook definition does not cover any cover anywhere in the world. The reason is quite simple: there are situations where government control simply works better than the free market. The classic example no one knows is the California water system. The original problem that these dams, aqueducts, and berms was designed to handle were the enormous floods of the late 1800s. The first big one, in 1861-1862 bankrupted the state. Since California, as a good Union state, was controlled by whiggish Republican technocrats, they spent a good 50 years pursuing free market strategies to build levees and berms and control the flood waters. This utterly failed, because one person's levee would shunt more flood water off onto their neighbors. Finally they decided a government-based system of huge dams would work better. And it did. Now I'm not saying that the system we have now is perfect or even good, but it is demonstrably better than free-market aqueducts, dams, berms, and spillways.

    And that's the problem: it turns out that economics is intimately tied to politics (Marx was right), and demand is intimately tied to marketing and advertising (which controls demand), so a analytic system focused solely on economics is going to fail because it is too limited. Within political-economic systems, some sectors seem to be better suited to market forces. Some benefit from having government control (like the old capitalist sectors of the drug, human, and weapons trades), markets always need to have an external guarantor of the rules (although commons apparently do not), and the biggest scale projects always require government input, because only governments are big enough to handle the logistics and financing for something like a big dam.

    619:

    I was, of course, using the std. US-ism, where the media, etc, say "Congress" and they men the House, as opposed to the Senate, even though Congress includes both Houses.

    Yep. But as this is a blog with most readers outside of the US it does read very confusing if you don't know the idioms. Of course a member of the House is addressed as "Congressman ..." but a member of the Senate is addressed as "Senator ..." Perfect.

    Did you see that, for once, they're doing it dead right? First they passed the bill the Senate had passed, but as two pieces.

    I think they shouldn't have split it. Then the talking point could have been "We passed the exact same bill as they did last week but now they are ignoring it." Spitting it gives the Senate R's some cover. Not a lot but some.

    620:

    Some additional 22nd & 25th Amendment curiosities ...

    Clause #2 of the 25th Amendment has been invoked twice - both times during the period of Richard Nixon's "second term" (Jan 20, 1973 - August 9, 1974 [midpoint would have been Jan 20, 1975]); first when Gerald Ford was appointed to the Vice Presidency after Spiro Agnew's resignation and again when Nelson Rockefeller became Ford's Vice President after the resignation of Richard Nixon, causing Clause #1 to be invoked.

    And because Nixon resigned several months before the midpoint of his second term, the 22nd Amendment would have limited Ford to only a single term of his own.

    Clause #3 was never formally invoked until George W. Bush's first term when he transferred power to Dick Cheney as Acting President for a couple of hours while he underwent a colonoscopy in 2002.

    Reagan seems to have honored the intent of Clause #3 with a letter when he went into the hospital in 1985 to have colon polyps removed, but specifically stated he was NOT invoking the 25th Amendment. Then Vice President George H.W. Bush didn't find out about Reagan's letter until after Reagan came out of recovery and had already signed a second letter reclaiming his power.

    When Reagan was shot in 1981, there was no time for a formal invocation of Clause #3.

    Clause #4 has never been invoked, so there's no way to know how it's going to work out if it ever is; especially if there's a disagreement between the President and the Vice President as regards the President's fitness or ability to "to discharge the powers and duties of his office".

    621:

    See the past 2-3 days headlines

    I have to wonder what headlines you see. For whatever reasons my Apple and Google news feeds at times include Daily Mail, Guardian, and other UK sources mixed in with my dose of US based sources. They also mix in Fox News with NPR and MSNBC. Go figure.

    Reading the UK based articles at times is interesting. Then again some of us wonder how much of this occurs "over there". (Cue up that 100 year old song.)

    https://www.npr.org/2018/12/21/679237328/reporter-for-german-magazine-falsified-articles-including-one-about-trump-suppor

    622:

    Graeber? An anthropologist not a historian or a sociologist. Read a serious historian like Moses Finley or a serious sociologist like Weber (or Marx if you swing that way), not a Johnny-come-lately messing around in a field he doesn't quite understand. Money is not capital, and like I already said is used even in hunter-gathering societies for commerce with other hunter-gathering societies, even if their internal social organization is a primitive sort of communism (not so primitive with the Iroquois). Debt is not capital. Money becomes capital when it is invested in commodity-producing enterprises where the purpose is for them to be sold at a price higher than the production costs. (In ancient Rome, the goods produced were often simply consumed by the slaves, the slavemasters and their countless lackies, with only the excess they couldn't think of anything else to do with sold). Standard and best form for that is wage labor, but that can work with slavery too or other possibilities.

    623:

    Bill: So you actually read her posts? You even respond to them? You don't realise that she is the representative of Cthulhu on this blog?Make your SAN roll.

    624:

    Whitroth: As for His Phoniness, for him being President is just another episode of his reality TV show. The kind of President the American ruling class deserves, but not the rest of us. He has so little regard for the truth that every so often he commits the ultimate crime for an American politician, actually telling it to the public about something important, like his recent remark that the US got involved with Afghanistan on the behalf of terrorists. But as for the "Manafort collusion" thing it's a joke. He apparently gave some polling data to his Ukrainian (yeah, that's right, Ukrainian. Last I checked Ukraine was not a Putin subsidiary) #2, whom the CIA claims is not an agent, but an "asset" or something, i.e. somebody in whom the Deep State in its truth telling wisdom maintains gives info to the evil Russkies. If so, #1 how might Manafort know that, and #2, even if true, has it occurred to nobody that Putin might want to know who was going to win the next election, with or without "interference"? As if the US has never interfered in anybody else's elections in shall we say more brutal ways? And yeah, if some Yank in Moscow expresses curiosity over the next Russian election and asks somebody for polling data, ought he to be arrested as a spy? This whole crazed Russian conspiracy nonsense is being pushed by the Dems because they've noticed that crazy conspiracy theories and hating foreigners worked well for Trump in 2016, so they are imitating him. Plus they want to get on board with all those Republican imperial-minded neocons like Saint McCain and Saint Bush Sr. vs Trump, many of whom honestly think that Russia is still a communist country.

    625:

    Ah yes, Rumania, the exception that proves the rule. Ceausescu, in addition to his other stupidities, committed the ultimate economic blunder. He actually paid off all the millions borrowed from Western bankers to try to get the economy going, every penny, to keep the West happy! Nobody does that, and Rumanians paid the price. You want to know the standard of living story, the figures to pay attention to are wage levels and unemployment percentages. Those figures are out there, and tell their own story for Russia and Eastern Europe. To say nothing of horror stories like Ukraine. That Wikipedia says something different is to be expected. The Law of Wikipedia states that the accuracy of a Wikipedia entry is inversely proportional to the inherent importance of the subject matter it concerns. BTW, I said poverty has fallen in Vietnam, not the rest of SE Asia of which I have little knowledge. Well, Laos is still a Vietnamese subsidiary, so probably doing better. Cambodia? Well, almost anything is better than Pol Pot. I have no notion as to the rest. I do not believe poverty has fallen in India, except that due to the Green Revolution actual starvation is less common as food is cheaper. The website I was referred to mentioned that the Indian government had changed the goalposts on extreme poverty, which I already knew from other sources. Actual suffering at the bottom of Indian society has if anything increased lately from what I've heard. Africa continues to be in a mess, and I have no idea what is going on in the 'stans of Central Asia, though I have my suspicions, except of course for Afghanistan, a country not exactly in good shape.

    626:

    Defined by whom? Webster's? Well, sometimes Webster's has its uses. Like its definition of "cult," which if I recall right is "religion." Unless recent editions have screwed that up. Definitions of capitalism, as others have commented, tend to be vague and confusing. That's because we live under a capitalist system, and a clear understanding of that system is, well, to use the passive voice myself, not really a good idea, "not encouraged."

    627:

    The cities, especially Rome itself, were dependent on the countryside, not really independent economic entities, unlike modern or even medieval cities. Thus something like half the free population of Rome itself subsisted on state subsidies,"bread and circuses" you know, instead of working for a living. And where did the state get the money for that? From taxing the rest of the Empire of course. Used to buy up the surplus grain production of the huge slave plantations so it could be distributed freely to the urban "proletariat," a Roman word originally meaning those who didn't work rather than those who did, to keep them from being unruly.

    628:

    That is the definition used by most mainstream economists, which is why it is so popular. It is also a bad joke, as others here have pointed out. The entire economics profession now has huge egg on its face for its spectacular failure to predict or even understand the Great Recession. I recall some economists claiming in the aftermath that it was all due to "market psychology." I guess if somebody had sprinkled happy dust on the stock market, everything would have been fine. Basically, the only fundamental basis for scientific economics is that laid out by the classical economists, Adam Smith, Ricardo and Marx, namely the labor theory of value. Once that was rejected by the "neoclassical" economists, economics became what astronomy was before it was finally conceded that the earth revolved around the sun instead of the other way around. Brilliantly mathematicized epicycles, that seem to work in normal times but break down when something bad happens.

    629:

    “By your definition, the US is not a capitalist nation, then, as huge sectors such as the military are run jointly with the state, including international sales. I'd also point out that most capitalist nations that supply health care to their citizens are also not capitalist, as in the US, the health care industry is an enormous sector.“

    The definition of capitalism does not say that the Military has to be run by private enterprise.

    But yes, the US economy is not entirely capitalistic, it’s just mostly capitalistic

    This is also Econ 101 stuff, immediately after the definition of capitalism there are usually some case studies and acknowledgment that in reality mixed economies are the norm

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy

    This has nothing to do with the definition of the word though nor is it especially confusing or nebulous. You have two theortical definitions (capitalism, socialism) neither of which are generally found in the real world in a pure form but are generally intermingled to some degree.

    If you want to know “how much is my economy a capitalistic economy” you oook at what % of the economy are the means of production under state control vs private

    For the US that % is somewhere between 59% and 62% depending on how you measure it

    For Rome it was in the 90% ‘s (depending on when you measured it)

    It also strengthens my original point which is that capitalism is nothing new but has been the defacto state for most of civilizations history.

    630:

    "Under Lenin post-WWII"? I hope that was a typo. Assuming you are referring to Stalin's early '30s famine, no that wasn't due to selling wheat abroad. Even Stalin tried to cut that back during the famine, but couldn't because contracts had been signed with your British gummint and the Tories actually threatened war if they were broken. It was for the obvious reason. Compulsory collectivization. Stalin had talked himself (and others) into believing that all the peasants except the rich ones were just lusting to abandon private property and become collective farmers. So he believed that any peasant resistance was a Grand Conspiracy, so the "conspirators" were packed off to gulags. The result was that peasants, told the gummint was now running everything, said fine, you go do that, and lost interest in farming, slaughtered their cattle before the gummint could take them etc., and crop production dropped drastically, and there wasn't enough food around for everyone to eat. Kinda like some of the crazy things the IMF did in Africa in the '80s, with similar results.

    631:

    For anyone interested Pinker’s latest book, “Enlightenment Now”gives a data driven view of improvement on the human condition. For example average global IQ has been rising every decade due to better childhood nutrition.

    632:

    POTUS Deepfake virgins no more. https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/tv/trump-tongue-trick-lands-seattle-tv-station-q13-fox-in-hot-water/

    Altered in real time. 2019 is gonna get so weird, orange to eleventy!

    633:

    Look, this humor takes a bit of work.

    You need to:

    A) Understand the UK PR scene B) Rowling vrs The World C) Rowling's publisher and WSJ D) Wait 3+ years for the punchline

    and a whole lot more.

    Then do a grep to a prior incarnation where [quote at the time, things we're not supposed to know #12462] someone screamed "WHO THE FUCK DOES SHE THINK SHE IS" about the comment on Nazis, Pewdiepie and the WSJ and the ongoing saga.

    Then you have to spot that someone innocent whistle just recontextualized the entire matter into a Pinkwashing episode driven by GCHQ (and thus, by extension, the British State) and PR Capital (is it WB or Disney that do the films? Memory says WB) rather than the more damaging IR versions that were playing out (and, tbh, certain parties were fishing for).

    It also will explain to a load of otherwise bemused / targeted nice little softies what was required to pull it off.

    But there's some screaming going on, and Ms Rowling (notice the Brazil fan push? We do, naughty naughty) is merely a bit player in her own drama on this.

    As is little miss competitive countdown who... well. We warned you.

    JH as a historian, we expect you notice such things as they're crafted in Real Time[tm].

    Oh, and cookie-monster time.

    Here's the former PM of Aus, 100% verified, accusing Murdoch of something everyone knew he'd done. On Reddit:

    A key piece of evidence for Murdoch's determination to kill the NBN (that is the Fibre to the premises version that we launched) can be found in the compulsory filings by News Corp on the New York stock exchange back in 2013 - the year of the critical election. Under the rules of the New York stock exchange, publicly listed companies have to inform shareholders of any technology based threats to the core business operations of the company. News Corp were therefore required back then to state explicitly that their television operations were subject to significant challenge by internet based competitors unless News Corp acted to protect their interests. From memory that was in July 2013. The election was held in early September. It was no coincidence that when the Liberals came up with an NBN that was only Fibre optic to the node (therefore killing the last link between the node and the household) that News Corp embraced it with open arms. Abbott and Turnbull actually launched their policy at Fox Studios in Sydney, fully owned, of course, by News Corp. I believe it's critical given the enormous loss to Australia that this resulted in (both in terms of the undermining of this essential piece of national economic infrastructure; plus the sheer waste of billions of dollars of public investment) that it is essential that a royal commission establish all the facts on how this scandal came about./em>

    https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/adr87y/iama_former_prime_minister_of_australia_kevin/edjmvsa/

    Yep, True Stories.

    I love them all; sadly rather fewer love us back. But there we go, the music video does have meta meanings.

    634:

    As a head's up (do a grep) Pinker has firmly moved into Alt-Right territory.

    We can provide receipts, but he's 100% drunk the Bane-Aid.

    635:

    There is an abundance of evidence coming out that implicates multiple persons in the Trump campaign with ties to Russian oligarchs in various ways. Manafort is one of the most egregious, but he is hardly the only one.

    Trump won for a variety of reasons, not all of which have anything to do with Russia. But I don't think there is much doubt at this point that Russia was meddling directly and indirectly in the election, and that the menagerie of grifters and white collar criminals that Trump surrounds himself with were willing to break the law to make things happen.

    The harsh reality is that Trump, Manafort, Cohen and the rest were committing white collar crime and graft with impunity for decades without consequence. Their total incompetence at covering it all up only shows how weak enforcement has been at that level. Their mistake was coming out into the open.

    I doubt any of us has a serious doubt that Manafort could have continued providing services to foreign powers and laundering money for the rest of his life if he hadn't joined the Trump campaign. Ditto Trump himself.

    The only question is whether the typical immunity to meaningful prosecution that applies to the very rich and very powerful will apply to Trump and his gang in the end. Trump will probably die before facing a judge, his kids and cronies will probably disappear behind a massive screen of lawyers and delay anything until 'one of theirs'* gets back into power.

    *Oligarch friendly - meaning a significant percentage of political animals in general and American politicians specifically.

    636:

    Speaking of the MC, a find that's apparently going viral is scenes from a 1958 western, where a con man convinces a town to build a wall. You'll never guess the name of the con man (really!).

    637:

    Oh and although we think W got the joke, here it is:

    paideia: the rearing of a child, training, discipline Original Word: παιδεία, ας, ἡ Part of Speech: Noun, Feminine Transliteration: paideia Phonetic Spelling: (pahee-di'-ah) Definition: the rearing of a child, training, discipline Usage: discipline; training and education of children, hence: instruction; chastisement, correction.

    https://biblehub.com/greek/3809.htm

    You may now grep the original comments on "don't mess with people's childhood memories" and feel suitably out of your depth.

    The fact this was a throwaway should warn the pros that we don't appreciate certain boundaries being crossed.

    p.s.

    This costs a little more than your Coin, young khajiit.

    638:

    You might want to look at people like, say, Krugman, who has been fulminating about this crap for years. He also pounds on who he refers to as Very Serious People, who claim to know/be economists, who expound theories with zero basis, and never apologize when they're proven wrong. All the Austerians are in that school, and former Speaker of the House (US) Ryan gets an especial pounding as the fraud he has always been.

    639:

    Seems that the polling data was to go to Ukrainian oligarchs who owed him big money.

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/09/politics/manafort-ukrainian-oligarchs/index.html

    640:

    IQ is a lousy proxy for any meaningful information about the human condition, but there are two reasons not to discount the possibility that there's something to the Flynn effect:

    a) Diminishing parasite/disease burden on children—it's noted in studies of sub-Saharan Africa that there's a strong inverse correlation between IQ test results and disease burden: parasitic worms and malaria in particular. It's hypothesized that childhood brain and cognitive development is impaired if the child is diverting metabolic resources into fighting off parasites.

    b) Improved nutrition, itself possibly a side-effect of demographic transition (same amount of resources available per family for children, but fewer children drawing on the resources).

    Haven't read Pinker's most recent books, so not commenting on content.

    641:

    There were more factors than just the peasants giving up. For example setting future quotas based on the outstanding 1930 harvest which could only be met by handing over the seed reserves. Deportation of large chunks of the rural population. The poor weather in 1931. Lack of tractors and the general chaos of enforced collectivisation.

    Of course In the Ukraine Stalin compounded the misery with a series of punitive administrative measures, such as a meat tax on those who couldn’t meet the grain quota which meant losing the family cow the last bulwark against starvation, with predictable results. Of course in the Ukraine the coup de grace was holding to the 1933 grain requisition targets, that decision cost about 3 million lives. At least in the case of the Ukraine I think starvation by quota was a tool of government policy, not just an ‘oops’ or peasant indifference.

    642:

    Well, that's a more comprehensible post than usual, and I do have a fairly high SAN (I think!) and can risk it, here's my answer. No, I know little about Brit PR, and am happy to keep it that way. Of little historical significance. As for Ms. Rowling, a semi-Blairite is my impression, I never thought her books were that good, the movies definitely better. When the last book came out, out of sheer annoyance at the hype over the Grand Secret of the ending, I just read the ending to see how it all came out without wading through all 700 pages. As an instructor who totally disagrees with all those folk in the industry saying we should all go totally into cyberspace and dispense with making students read books 'cuz that's out of fashion, I see Ms. Rowling's overlong books as the best proof that students can be made to read if you force them to, structuring your syllabi and grading policies accordingly.

    643:

    Ah, Krugman, the last Keynesian. Keynesian economic theories used to be economic orthodoxy, shared by everyone from FDR to Richard Nixon in America, till the worldwide recession of the '70s, when Keynesian nostrums of curing recessions and depressions throug government investment, which seemed to work very nicely during WWII for America, were tried out everywhere and were universal miserable failures. Leading to Friedman as old hat disguised Marxism. Fact is Keynsianism is wrong too, just not quite as wrong as monetarism.

    644:

    We're not saying that some of Pinker's (earlier) works do not hold some merit.

    Nor are we claiming that he wasn't a fully paid up member of the old "Special Island" crew.

    We're just saying to [redacted] that we called it out a few years before it happened, that's all.

    Basically, their insurance plans are kicking in and his star is waning, shrinking, PEW PEW PEW DIE, and he's chosen to be loyal to them.

    Which is Admirable in itself. Admirable only in one Virtue, and probably because of fear, but admirable in the "MADE MAN" type of way.

    Go watch that scene in Scarface. The one with the hospital and bullets.

    ~

    We're just saying to nice peepols like J das / Daniels etc that we don't forget our allies, however much our delivery repulses them. It's a reverse-meta-fuck.

    Complicated

    And you'll note the offered soultion / solution / resolution makes all parties "clean" and able to address more important parts of their lives.

    Consider it a $4 bil Soul Jubilee if you must.

    This is all the foreplay anyhow.

    Come on: 3+ year joke, playing the best in the field as a side-play?

    You gotta respect that as funny.

    645:

    641: Yes, there were more factors involved, including vastly overoptomistic harvest predictions as you mentioned, this was a blog post not an article. Did mention the deportations in my posting, but not the bad weather. And that's a very good point as to tractors. The idea of collectivization before you have tractors is really stupid, it is only mechanization which makes large scale farming more efficient. You are perhaps familiar with Wheatcroft's "The Years of Hunger," the definitive work on the famine? As for holding onto the 1933 requisition requirements, well, by then due to all his previous blunders, Stalin didn't have a lot of choice on that. There was enough food without the forced requisitions in Ukraine, which was supposed to be and historically had been the Russian breadbasket, to feed the bureaucrats and the army, but not the workers. Since the USSR was supposed to be the dictatorship of the proletariat, not the peasantry, to keep all the workers alive and physically able to work you had to allow a lot of peasants to starve to death. Simple as that really.

    646:

    Narrator: he did not understand any of it, at all.

    And thus, Historians proved their worth to the world.

    ~

    The above was about Rowling.

    As a Law Giver, we'd suggest they take that reality as canon and so forth.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZpMZpqghOg

    647:

    643 some words got dropped out somehow. Should have said "leading to Milton Friedman's monetarism as orthodoxy and Keynesianism seen as old hat disguised Marxism. (That's Milton Friedman, not the flat earth nutcase.)

    648:

    Oh, I understood Rowling just fine. I just think she was a mediocre fantasist, much inferior to many other fantasy writers, not least Our Host.

    649:

    639: And, being Ukrainian oligarchs, must be servitors of Cthulhu, er, I mean Putin. Is there a problem in that reasoning somewhere? In fact, given the utter dependence of the Ukrainian economy such as it is on US subsidy, one would think that any Ukrainian oligarch, regardless of his or her political predilections, would desperately want to know who was going to be the next Prez to get in on the ground floor. Of course the oligarch who ended up as Prez, the chocolate-covered salo magnate, (if you don't know what salo is you probably don't want to) was crowned my Ms. Nuland, Obama's girl on the spot, in one of the grossest and crudest examples of interfering in somebody else's affairs on record.

    650:

    Here's a solid tip.

    Read #532 very carefully

    As a "Historian", if someone tells you that there's an entire DB of multi-layered sources, each with their own names and particulars, you absolutely 100% do not reply like you did.

    grep or grep not.

    But your pay-grade just got revealed and it's not in the $bil class.

    651:

    Sorry EGP. Not wanting to have minuses on my SAN rolls, when I do read your postings, I do my best not to read them very carefully.

    652:

    You'll never guess the name of the con man (really!). And there is a well-known man with that name who is known to pay close attention to anything involving that name.

    EGA, still digesting yesterday's material. Almost accidentally posted the same Flash Gordon video that you linked upthread. (or rather a meta Brian Blessed compilation). Didn't know it was a thing.

    653:

    to JH @630 First, there was an outbreak of hunger in post-war USSR, but nobody in the west ever mentions it, because a) it is not in line with official "genocide" rhetoric and b) it was solved fairly quickly with previous experience in sight. Also, civil war years, of course, but nobody cares enough either.

    So he believed that any peasant resistance was a Grand Conspiracy, so the "conspirators" were packed off to gulags. Unless when it was a Grand Conspiracy by people who still thought that Bolsheviks stole their country from them and build some sort of satanic God-hating Mordor. Or maybe they just wanted a bit better life at expense of others. In effect, there were about as much as dozen layers to this entire story, and the best thing about it is it is all documented and analyzed (is scarcely) - just isn't accepted as official history yet. I've heard lectures of that, some of them, independent and unheard, unknown because they don't pamper to anyone's best ideals.

    Since the USSR was supposed to be the dictatorship of the proletariat, not the peasantry, to keep all the workers alive and physically able to work you had to allow a lot of peasants to starve to death. Simple as that really. Fairly close to reality, although is not as simple still. People should probably read a lot more about things like "tragedy of commons", but they are more busy asking for monetary compensations (because of you-name-it) from large financial organizations. The real problem is that NOBODY FUCKING NEEDS THEM FACTS. Other than us living and breathing Russian people with history and future. Like me, for one. The betrayal, the backstabbing, the bribery and greed, the spies and informers, and the bandits and the profiteers - everything has a price, but in the eyes of western propaganda campaign it is all flushed down the drain.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq0tHSK_YzQ (subtitles are provided as usual, with auto-translate options) Who wants to listen a hour long lecture, based on documentary evidence, lifetime work and search for truth?

    to MattS @641 Of course In the Ukraine Stalin compounded the misery with a series of punitive administrative measures, such as a meat tax on those who couldn’t meet the grain quota which meant losing the family cow the last bulwark against starvation Administrative measures are applied to administration - NOT the population. To apply something like a measure to population, you need a lot of armed people - and I mean A LOT, like whole army of them, of which there's simply no evidence whatsoever. In contrast, there was an army of armed people roaming the same lands 10 years later for the same reason - they were called "collaborators" and today some of them are hailed as heroes.

    At least in the case of the Ukraine I think starvation by quota was a tool of government policy, not just an ‘oops’ or peasant indifference. No, that's not the case, obviously. Thinking is not permitted within pantheon of anti-soviet mythology. It doesn't occur to people that "Ukraine" they know was reassembled from several territories (a lot of which were included even later) during Stalin's rule, so strictly there wasn't such thing as defined Ukrainian "nation" as of 1932.

    654:

    Cool.

    You do know that by the RuleZ of #532 that makes you fair game to anything under the LICHE/LOA class, right?

    Checking you understand what you're saying and all.

    Seriously?

    We tried to warn you, but... if you want to fuck the LICH/LOA class, oh boy are you unprepared.

    Spoilers:

    If we spend 3 years on a joke to spike a thing and do it with grace and style and make sure we're punching up at all times and so forth... and that's a throwaway gag to some nice little innocent people?

    You really do not want to start throwing down to the competition

    655:

    Re-read 532.

    You do know the people we were referencing, right?

    We mean: the humans are sociopaths and the [redacted] are evil little things and even they don't challenge UK LICHE stuff. Without, you know, at least a £400,000,000 bung.

    You do know that little JRM moggelsworth the pansie only has $60 mil in sanctioned RU banks and everyone laughs at him and he's a joke, right?

    And that anyone with under $3-4 bil personal wealth is cattle... Right?

    Good luck with that one.

    May your Sponsor look favorably upon your insults...

    There's a reason for our jokes. Making $4bil on a trade is a joke to us.

    https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-greatest-day-of-your-life-tuesday

    656:

    "Obtaining uranium from granite always was an academic example, to debunk the ridiculous claims that uranium would run out if we used it."

    Wow, an academic example that depends on the reader being unable to perform simple maths. Really? An example of how we can never run out that uses a source that requires reactors that haven't been designed (let alone tested or deployed at a vast scale), that uses 10 times more energy just to dig up than you would get from it (let alone grinding it to dust and dissolving it in cubic kilometres of sulfuric acid).

    So, where are these vast reserves of medium ores? Can you point to them, or does this come from the same sort of "academic" place as the idea of burning granite?

    657:

    The new VAT exemption rules mean Wizard Tower Books is selling DRM free books direct, rather than always tithing 20% to the government then 30%-50% to the online giants.

    http://www.julietemckenna.com/?p=3003

    Good news!

    658:

    I dunno, I read a little in the early 90s and didn’t think much of him then. What I pick up from the general discourse is that his later works mostly consist of intellectual frotage of some kind, with a pretty insalubrious choice of partners, and I’ve avoided them where I can. Not surprised about a putative swing to the right, some would say it was always in there.

    659:

    Re: 'Lenin?' - Yep, I meant Stalin and posted my mea culpa (typo/error).

    Re: 'The result was that peasants, told the gummint was now running everything, said fine, you go do that, and lost interest in farming, slaughtered their cattle before the gummint could take them etc., and crop production dropped drastically, and there wasn't enough food around for everyone to eat.'

    Please provide your sources for the above because it's nothing like what I've heard from extended family some of whom had farms. These elderly folk were pretty consistent wrt to details, i.e., the gov't nationalized farms leaving peasants maybe an acre for their own family's usage in lieu of payment for their forced labor on now gov't-owned farms. And because they were experienced farmers, this acre meant they could grow just enough food to not starve provided they were able to hide their produce/crops from the soldiers that regularly patrolled/stole from the gov't and their fields. Further, once farms had been confiscated, the gov't then decided which crops to grow where. This might have worked if Stalin hadn't become enamored with Lysenkoism. Plus, there was lots of outright ethnic bigotry. There are/were other factors. However, all in all, most of the Russian/Soviet screw-ups are attributable to stupidity/dogma. China/Mao similarly screwed up with their Great Leap Forward. But unlike China, Russia seems to have continued to value dogma over evidence across most disciplines and policies.

    BTW, I looked up the poverty rates for Russia - very large disparities by source: OECD says under 5% whereas Radio Free Europe quoting official Russian survey data (commissioned/referenced by Putin) puts it at 18%. China's poverty rates are also increasing but there seems to be recognition of this and some attempts to help the groups where poverty increases rose most, i.e., displaced villagers and migrant laborers.

    660:

    Re: Uranium - Australia

    Seems Australia has quite a bit of economically recoverable uranium:

    'Australia’s RAR of uranium which could be produced at costs of less than US$130/kg6 at December 2012 were estimated to be 1174 kilotonnes (kt), a decrease of 2% on the estimates for December 2011. Although there are 30 deposits with RAR of uranium recoverable at costs of less than US$130/kg, the vast majority of these resources are within the following four deposits:

    • Olympic Dam, South Australia (SA) which is the world’s largest uranium deposit
    • Ranger and Jabiluka, in the Alligator Rivers region of the Northern Territory (NT)
    • Yeelirrie in Western Australia (WA).

    Australia had an additional 532 000 tonnes of uranium in Inferred Resources recoverable at costs of less than US$130/kg.

    http://www.australianminesatlas.gov.au/aimr/commodity/uranium.html

    661:

    659: Sourcewise there is a huge amount of literature about this of varying qualities which I am all too familiar with, hey, have even written about in my partially Donbass-centered dissertation. The best most objective account is Wheatcroft's book which I referred you to, which he did a lot of research in Ukrainian sources for, working closely with the best Ukrainian historians. The picture you describe from your relatives is not far off technically speaking, though the labor was only "forced" 'cuz if you didn't work on the theoretically collectively-owned farms, not the same as state farms but often hard to tell the difference, you wouldn't be able to eat. But it doesn't really contradict what I said seems to me. And for the early '30s it's a very partial view of an extremely complex picture that varied tremendously over a huge landmass occupied by 90% of the entire Soviet population. Hell, there were parts of Russia (but not Ukraine!) where some peasants really did like the collectivization idea. And as for the Cossacks, let's not even go there, their reactions sometimes even came close to Stalinist fantasies of the Grand Kulak Conspiracy.

    662:

    If Pinker is not quite your cup of thallium laced radical centrist tea then another interesting book along similar lines is Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Although I find his TED style on the page a little grating. TLDR we are cognitively biased to view the world as much more polarized, dramatic and worse than it really is.

    663:

    Sleeping: Well, it's a pleasure to talk to somebody who lives or lived there and therefore actually knows something. Seems to me you err at least somewhat in the opposite direction from the Western "Soviet Union Was Mordor" crowd in the opposite direction. Firstly, on the other famines, no they aren't ignored. The Civil War famine is supposed to be one of the proofs that Lenin was just as wicked as Stalin, and the postwar famine is often used to try to refute notions that Stalin wasn't as bad as Hitler. You seem to at least hint that peasant resistance, like Stalin claimed, was all a White conspiracy (except nowadays in Putin's Russia the Whites, the ideological ancestors of Mr. Hitler, were actually the good guys?) From all I've read that is nonsense, except maybe perhaps, and even there it's doubtful, among the Cossacks. Well, being Jewish, I have a natural hatred of Cossacks that perhaps clouds my judgment. And yes of course, the story is vastly more complicated that what I plopped down in a blog post. You too might benefit from reading Wheatcroft's book.

    664:

    EGP: Thanks for warning me about the Liches and the Loas. I am painting an Elder Sign on my computer right now.

    665:

    And......

    What are you trying to say? That this is enough to run the world?

    We need something in the order of 50 kg of U per second to run the world (assuming there are power lines connecting everywhere to everywhere, absent that it's about 100 kg/s).

    To convert to kg/y multiply 50kg by 60x60x24x365. That's 1,576,800,000 kg. 1576.8 kt. You've listed projected reserves of 1706 kt. So just over a year (about 7 months worth without a global electricity network)

    666:

    I don't know why I keep repeating the facts. I know perfectly well that the facts have never convinced anyone. That's a fact.

    I suffer from the same inability to digest facts that conflict with my world view as everyone else. I really think that just showing the fact that there isn't enough uranium to run the world on, backed with a few references and a couple of simple calculations, will make people think "oh, the nuclear industry told me that there was enough to run the world for centuries, but it looks like they lied".

    This has literally never worked. Yet I can't imagine that it won't work. The mind I'd a very strange place.

    667:

    "The idea that those clowns would necessarily be involved in the low-regulation, high-speed build of Australia's 10-30 reactors terrifies me."

    If only we had some sort of sign from above that could tell us if Australian engineers were capable of designing and running something as complex as a nuclear reactor...

    https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/widespread-audit-of-freeway-signs-after-massive-sign-fell-on-car-20190110-p50qnn.html

    668:

    Ranger and Jabiluka, in the Alligator Rivers region of the Northern Territory (NT)

    It might be worth noting that that area is more commonly known as the "Kakadu World Heritage Area", double listed for being extremely significant on environmental and cultural/historical grounds. The protected area has a literal keyhole incision which contains the access road and Ranger minehead, but the tailings leaks are mostly into the World Heritage Area.

    Olympic Dam is relatively benign by comparison (land rights and water usage problems), and it's primarily a copper mine so it's unlikely that the uranium extraction causes much extra damage. Viz, they're digging up that ore anyway and likely extracting the uranium just to get it out of the useful metals.

    669:

    If only we had some sort of sign from above

    As if I needed any more reason to be scared while using the roads. I can't wait for the results of the investigation (thankfully not a coroner's report). My bet is human error during assembly, because they're the people least likely to be able to afford to sue.

    670:

    "My bet is human error during assembly"

    Well it was human error that was the root cause of Fukashima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. We're told (by the same people who say you can burn granite) that the new reactors aren't dangerous like the old reactors. The fact that it wasn't the reactors, but rather the people who run them that had always caused the problems seems not to be a relevant fact... (facts don't matter once you've chosen a side to barrack for. A fact I constantly think doesn't matter)

    671:

    Oh help … 70 posts …

    Rocketjps @ 605 Why the 20th Jan, specifically? I assume “good” for the GOP, because then you can be an “anti-Trump rethuglican”, or something? … AH JBS @ 612 has explained – thanks. Vote to remove an incompetent psychopath and replace him with a competent one? Precisely the problem.

    Whitroth @ 617 Well that has never existed & never will. Even at the height of freewheeling capitalism of 19thC Britain, companies were regulated, often surprisingly strongly by the standards of the time.

    JH @ 625 Oops, not even wrong … here’s a corrected version. We wereactually paid off all the millions borrowed from Western US bankers to try to get the economy going, every penny, to keep the WestUS happy! WE Nobody does did that, and Britons paid the price. Referring to the deliberate wrecking of Britain’s post war economy by the US regarding Lend-Lease & other dirty tricks.

    Actual suffering at the bottom of Indian society has if anything increased lately from what I've heard. Yeah week, Modi & his nasties have been systematically crapping on the Dalits, haven’t they? Two of the “Stans” are doing all right, now: Uzbek & Kyrgyz, Kazak is managing, Tajik is in difficulties & Turkmen is definitely in difficulties, still having a dictator with bad next-door foreign relations. [ Grossly simplified, of course ]

    Whitroth @ 636 DO TELL @ 652 as well ….

    Charlie @ 640 I had the opposite of that get me in hot water, many years ago … teaching practice … someone read out an account from a turn-of-the-(19th)Century book on the inhabitants of part of Central Africa, regarding how the children all seemed awake & alert & as capable as anyone, but how they declined as they became teenagers. ( I thought… that sounds like an almost-perfect description of * ) And this was thus OBVIOUS WHITE RACISM, wasn’t it? I demurred & said, excuse me, it might not be, because … I was immediately shouted down & denounced as a vile racist. No explanations were allowed, of course. OK the word ** was, of course Schistosomiasis, & the description was correct. But the PC nutters were not interested in facts. Yeah, better food & fewer diseases will “Improve” people, what a surprise!

    EGA @ 650 DB = Deutsche Bahn – in my book, anyway.

    672:

    "But the PC nutters were not interested in facts"

    So exactly like everyone else then.

    674:

    IMO the best thing about the UHV/megavo;t stuff is that it looks like something out of science fiction. All the toroidal anti-arcing rings and generally wild shapes. Sure it works and it's really effective and whatever, but it looks cool!

    675:

    North-west China is home to most of the country's indigenous coal-mining operations. Notice the reference in the Fine Article about the HVDC line "replace(ing) the equivalent of 25,000 coal trains’ worth of coal-fired generation". They'd rather burn the coal in the North-West and transmit the power than ship the coal by rail to be burned close to the big cities that need the extra electrical power.

    Coping with irregular renewables input to a big grid has always been a worry to the engineers and the bigger the lines the trickier it is to integrate. Predictable dispatchable power is easier and in that area that means coal.

    12 GW sounds like a lot of grid capacity but for China it's a drop in the bucket (it represents about 40 million tonnes of coal burned a year, a little over 1% of China's annual coal consumption). Double it, triple it and they're maybe starting to get somewhere. Another big factor is exports of this sort of tech to places like Africa which has similar distances to cover to connect coal-fired power stations to cities. Countries like Australia might well be interested in buying in this capability too and maybe even the US, if it ever decides that a real nation-wide grid is a good idea.

    676:

    You should read the thread and what I post more carefully. No, it does NOT require a new reactory design - using thorium is a factor of 2+ BONUS. And the examples I referred to gave MUCH lower (100 times) energy costs for extracting uranium from granite - I don't know which is right, but you should remember Woolley's quote on shooting rockets into space.

    Canada and Australia, to name but two countries.

    677:

    I suggest that you refer to Ukraine by its name: Ukraine. Not 'the Ukraine'. It is no more 'the Ukraine' than 'the France' or 'the Japan' are France or Japan.

    I know that 'the' isn't a pronoun, but countries have the right to be referred to by their given names, just as people do.

    678:

    The English Broadcasting Corporation; getting it wrong since 1922. ;-)

    679:

    @661 The best most objective account is Wheatcroft's book which I referred you to, which he did a lot of research in Ukrainian sources for, working closely with the best Ukrainian historians. Appreciated, I've skipped a dozen of pages of this book and it seems to be a good literature, albeit not without a bunch of pretty standardized pitfalls. I have to study it deeper in some free time. On one hand, it at least acknowledges that people during the hunger years can move around, avoid punishment and redeem their guilt, and not only end up six feet under.

    On the other hand, for example it seems to argue from the get-go that the communist state like USSR is always responsible in death of a peasant from a hunger - in contrast to capitalist society where state is never responsible because the peasant ought to be responsible for himself. If I understand their logic correctly.

    And for the early '30s it's a very partial view of an extremely complex picture that varied tremendously over a huge landmass occupied by 90% of the entire Soviet population. Largely, the USSR government relations with peasants had to take consideration of actions in the wake of all-too-famous Stolypin reform (if partially performed), and civil war. The country couldn't afford remaining agrarian backwater corner of the Earth, and it needed urgent industrialization. On the other hand there were huge human resources, barely surviving on what they got, and barely educated/supplied/equipped. In preceding epoch in England, AFAIK called "enclosure", it needed centuries of and untold suffering from the population to preform the same feat that Bolsheviks compacted into two decades of progress, with application of modern technologies like electricity, radio, cars and, well, foreign investment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolypin_reform Also another video I witnessed some time ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP50Q9sOtLU

    @663 Well, it's a pleasure to talk to somebody who lives or lived there and therefore actually knows something. I was told that my grand-grandfather and about as much as a dozen of his brothers and sisters(with their parents) had a fairly large household at the time, but to avoid getting blamed for being too rich, they've split their savings and inheritance and parted their ways for some time. Quite far from regular stories of bloody revolution (although there wasn't many details in this story), but many of them later became famous people.

    You seem to at least hint that peasant resistance, like Stalin claimed, was all a White conspiracy (except nowadays in Putin's Russia the Whites, the ideological ancestors of Mr. Hitler, were actually the good guys?) Since civil war usually involved scores upon scores of opposing factions, one can not only blame many of the "conspiracies" exclusively on white movement, which was completely and utterly shattered by the time the industrialization begun. There was enough of other underground movements, not in the least degree nationalistic and their "friends" from neighboring countries like Poland, Finland and even middle-Asian countries. It is only later, when everybody already knew that the war is inevitable, the immigration, the ex-revolutionaries, the spies were reorganized into more powerful and extensive subversive network.

    Practically speaking, nostalgic White movement-in-exile did not change much ever since. Naturally most people know all too well the worth of perspective of tsarism, rabid nationalism and revanchist fervor. More people among cossacks prefer to see themselves as servants of the people rather than nobility and the crown that is no longer there.

    680:

    If someone told you that their pronouns were 'they/them' would you still refer to them as their assigned at birth pronouns?

    Reminds me of a story I read years ago (no idea how true it is): the country of El Salvador, capital San Salvador, kept getting diplomatic documents addressed to them as 'Salvador'.

    They took to returning them unopened until their correspondents got the idea.

    681:

    I don't understand your point. Mine was that the Engl, er "British" BC has been getting names, including misuse of the offending definite article you referenced, wrong since the 1920s.

    682:

    This might have worked if Stalin hadn't become enamored with Lysenkoism. Plus, there was lots of outright ethnic bigotry. There are/were other factors. However, all in all, most of the Russian/Soviet screw-ups are attributable to stupidity/dogma. All in all, "stupidity" of USSR agrarians was no more and no less than every other industrialized nations like US or Europe (only it was named as "Great Depression" usually). Especially because they all at times were applying exactly the same progressive methods, some of them rather risky. But if there are tons of books on USSR starvation, I don't think I ever read materials of the same quality on Great Depression (maybe a couple of decent articles).

    And "Lysenkoism" only actually did certain damage after Stalin's death, at which point some certain corn babbler enamored it and it's "achievements" enough to allow it continue dominate the academic circles where it should have failed under the pressure of new discoveries. As I noted earlier, without early scientists like Lysenko and others the USSR could not possibly build it's industry, and then survive the loss of the fertile lands for 4 years and still win the war.

    Just today I stumbled upon another myth of USSR being evil empire of absolute evil. The article is quite thoughtful and considerate, but I don't recommend reading this particular piece of information if you are too sensitive, for potential risk of squick reaction. This is the people we have to deal with, so you've been warned. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/stalins-ape-man-superwarriors/

    683:

    Because it is wrong. There are 4 billion tonnes of uranium in the sea, and considerably more in the ocean floor (the uranium in the sea is in chemical equilibrium with the ocean floor. The more you extract, the more will dissolve out of the sea-bed) Known techniques - That is, techniques which have been used to actually recover uranium from the sea, can get that done at 200 dollars lb/U3O8.

    Now, if you want 50 kgs per second of U, that is going to require the dedication of an actual percentage of the global production of polyethylene to uranium absorbtion materials, but only once every decade or so- they can be reused many times, and it is, in any case, a single digit percentage. I mean, yhea, we are talking plastic kelp forests off the coast of every nation in the world, but this is entirely practicable, and presumably, if the process is being ramped up to this extent, people would come up with improvements to the process.

    684:

    Explain to me how the Wall Street Crash (bursting of a stock market bubble) was caused by political dogma in the USA.

    The explain how the (US) Dust Bowl (change of short term climate) was caused by political dogma.

    685:

    What do you call the country that Berlin is in?

    686:

    Not to be wishy-washy, but I'd say you're half-right.

    On one hand, most car accidents are caused by human error. But you're far less likely to die in a modern, well-designed car with all possible safety features, such as crumple zones and airbags. I have a friend who rear-ended someone else at 70 MPH in her 2016 Prius. And she walked away. So did the other party. My friend had some general post-accident pain for a couple weeks, but the only (minor) long-term effect was a foot injury from which the pain lasted about a month.

    Had she been in the same accident while driving my grandfather's 1977 Oldmobile Cutlass I have no doubt that she'd be dead now, particularly if she'd rear-ended another older car.

    So would I rather see human-error in one of the newer thorium-cycle reactors that simply shuts down if you do something wrong? You bet. Is it possible that someone could do something so stupid with a thorium-cycle reactor that it melts down? I'm sure a sufficiently stupid person could manage it, just like a stupid person could kill themselves in a 2016 Prius. But it's a lot less likely.

    I'm pretty-much anti-nuke. But I'm flexible enough that if you presented me with a good, safe, transparent design that works in the real world I'd be willing to give it a try. In fact, I think that global warming is so dangerous that we should build all the newer, safer designs and test them carefully to see what happens when the designs and their crews are put under pressure. Then we should industrialize the best design and use it everywhere.

    I'm the nuclear equivalent of a "swing voter." Impress me and I'll vote for you (or for your point of view.) Fail to impress me, and I'll vote for the other candidate.

    So here's the deal. Bullshit like "Fukushima was purely operator error" doesn't help your case with someone like me. It hurts your case, because Fukushima is the equivalent of my grandfather's 1977 Olds Cutlass; a rigid design with no modern safety features. If Fukushima was the equivalent of my friend's 2016 Prius it wouldn't have melted down... so if you want to impress me, make a better argument. Much better.

    687:

    sleepingroutine @ 682 I call bollocks - look up the death of Vavilov ...

    688:

    I think you're conflating The Great Depression and The Dust Bowl. They happened at roughly the same time, and severely impacted each other, but there were two entirely separate causes.

    The Great Depression was caused by banks which both held savings/checking accounts and made loans, but also bought and sold stocks and even backed stocks. This particular structural problem was solved by the Glass-Steagal law, which forced banks to be either stock-market banks or saving/lending banks, but did not allow them to do both. The law was weakened, then fully repealed in 1995, by idiots who don't understand history, and this resulted in the 2008 crash.

    The Dust Bowl was, as you know, an agricultural crisis; drought compounded by poor agricultural practices which forced many people off the land. This probably made the employment crisis of The Great Depression worse, and probably increased food prices at the worst possible time, but it had entirely different causes.

    689:

    But (using the generic 'you') you are more likely to kill a pedestrian, cyclist or people in other vehicles because of risk compensation.

    690:

    No need to use nuclear power for everything, just enough to fill in the gaps and keep the smokestacks cold.

    691:

    to paws4thot @684 At the dawn of market capitalism many believed that the growth will continue on forever and there's no need to worry about possibility of crash, since some minimal controlling mechanisms provided a fairly long-term conditions for nation's climb to prosperity. That believe in growth causes people to get risky. It urges them to make life-changing(and life-threatening) decisions. If that's not a political dogmatism, then I don't know what is.

    to GT @687 Do you know what I call bollocks? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

    to Troutwaxer @688 I think you're conflating The Great Depression and The Dust Bowl. I (and, in fact, many more people) think it is not just a coincidence that they all happened at the same time. In both China and USSR, which is at least famous enough. Now, for the reference, I simply am unable to find out what was an agricultural situation in the rest of the world in the beginning of century, because Google results are clogged with anti-communist propaganda with nothing else to report besides that.

    692:

    My very clear recollection is that the Dust Bowl was caused by a drought, which may have included some severe wind-storms. My vague recollection is that this was exacerbated by the farmer's plowing their fields incorrectly. I would suggest that instead of trying to learn about conditions in the rest of the world, that you look up something like "American Dust Bowl" or "Dust Bowl 1929" on Google, at which point you can get the real facts.

    There was also some remediation of The Dust Bowl, which involved the U.S. Government, and I don't know much more about this than that it happened.

    693:

    I see, a True Believer in Friedman.

    a) Not the last Keynsian. In fact, Keynesianism is back, going head to head, and the other side, the VSP (Very Serious People) and the Austerians, have been wrong, and wrong, and wrong again, proven so by facts, and still carry on.

    It's an old truism that it's a sign of neurosis if you keep doing the same thing over and over, and keep expecting a different result.

    That, or outright lying to justify what how you want to screw people.

    One last note: you don't usually use a bolt to join two pieces of wood, you usually use a nail or a screw. To join metal, you use neither, you use a bolt and nut.

    But I'm sure that your economic hypotheses (which I will not call "theories", since they fail the evidence) are always usable in all times and all conditions.

    694:

    So, do you really see the world in comic-book terms?

    Do you really think that the oligarchs he's been involved with weren't oligarchs when the government of the Ukraine was pro-Russian? For that matter, do you think the MC hasn't been money laundering with his real estate for oligarchs from both Russia, the Ukraine, and probably other states? You don't think oligarch translates as "multinational" ("money has no country")?

    695:

    sleepingroutine @ 691 OH LOOK! A GORILLA! ( "What-about-that-over there" - gets you no points ) And, if you really want to argue the point, there wasn't a war on when Stalin deliberately starved the Ukrainians, whereas there was this small local difficulty in 1943, wasn't there? [ And yes it was a British Management Fuck-Up of monumental proportions. ]

    696:

    Yeah, well, it was pretty close to that definition of "free market" in the US, in the 1880s and 1890s, and again the 1920s. They want to go back to that. They think of that the way a lot of the GOP thinks of the 1950s... a world done up by Disney.

    697:

    My mother's parents came from Odessa, in the Ukraine, in 1914. I will, therefore, continue to call it whatever I want, and you can shove it.

    698:

    "The policy of these Republican Presidents was that government should leave the economy alone – they adopted a laissez-faire (free market) policy."

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/tch_wjec/usa19101929/2riseandfall3.shtml

    All of which led up to the collapse. Just as 2008 happened because Glass-Steagal was repealed. Political dogma: "we don't need regulation, the Invisible Hand of the Market will make life wonderful for all" (of us, anyway, screw the rest of you).

    And Brexit will make the UK a veritable Paradise.

    699:

    whitroth @ 696 I thought they wanted to back to the US "Gilded Age" with trappings of about 1855 thrown in if you are brown ....

    @ 698 Beginning to look as though it ain't going to happen (I hope) Parliament can ( & probably will? ) mandate Ref2 - ALL we then have to do is make sure "Remain" wins .... [ If only bevcause we simply haven't got time to enact everything before even May's-Deal terms can be adopted ..... see today's "Indie" ]

    700:

    Thing about Keynes is that he's one of the few economists who passed a stringent test: he got wealthy on his own efforts (as I recall, he made a lot of money on foreign exchange). This is kind of a critical point: most economists, from Marx to Hayek, were either poor or made their living teaching and writing. Not so many have made their way by applying their skills to business. There is even that example (Trinsum Group) of a financial firm that included a Nobel Prize winner filing for bankruptcy after two years in operation.

    That's one of the reasons I pay attention to Keynes, even though I disagree with some of the things he said (like his anti-Darwinian "in the long run, we're all dead." Dude never had kids, so he missed the bigger picture, I think). And as Whitroth noted, Krugman's far from the last Keynesian.

    701:

    “an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state"

    Worker-owned production (self-employed, cooperative, and the like) is usually not considered private or capitalist.

    702:

    Re: 'I don't know why I keep repeating the facts. I know perfectly well that the facts have never convinced anyone. That's a fact.'

    Do not despair - just that some of us don't have your background/perspective: some of this info is not obvious. (Do appreciate the calculations showing whether an amount is sufficient.)

    Okay, now back to the conversation: So we have economically accessible uranium in Australia that can power the entire globe for about 7 months max assuming that the globe absolutely and only must run exclusively on uranium.

    Therefore ... 1- nuclear can provide clean energy but there's not enough of it around for it to become the primary source of energy worldwide 2- mining uranium isn't all that expensive but the cost of building and then mothballing a nuclear power plant is hideously expensive

    However ... 1- Is it necessary/sane to have the globe rely on only one energy source? 2- Despite financial analyses that consistently show that power needs will continue to grow furiously for the next few decades, is this necessarily true? What are the underlying assumptions and how have these assumptions been tested/verified? (Corporate budget-makers/sales managers/financial planners have a nasty habit of just slapping on a 'percentage growth' to whatever the current year's sales are without regard to/conveniently forgetting scads of product lines that rotted in their warehouses.)

    Do agree that some of our conversations seem repetitive, for example, I keep wondering why some folk keep insisting on an all-or-nothing approach in their 'solutions'.

    703:

    Re: '... look up the death of Vavilov ...'

    This name caught my eye because I associate 'Vavilov' with music so wondered what the hell does he have to do with Stalin? A quick search (sciencedirect) pulled up a different Vavilov. This article also said that more biologists were killed under Stalin than Hitler.

    FYI: Vavilov (Caccini) - Ave Maria (Inessa Galante)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhHm0lzomdA

    704:

    The underlying assumption behind the projections of fiercely rising energy use are assuming one thing: That the parts of the world who are currently desperately poor will become at least middle income.

    Any future energy plan that requires you to throw that assumption out, is, frankly, Evil, capital letter very much warranted.

    To that, I will add a second assumption: That we will be doing a lot more closed cycle manufacturing, and that recovering raw materials, and otherwise reducing the ecological footprint of the things that make life fun will require a whole lot of throwing electricity at problems until they go away. I make this assumption because it damn well seems every time I see a new and exciting advance in recycling, or low impact production of key materials (like concrete) it is electro-chemistry, robotics, or hilariously brute force solutions like destroying chemical toxic waste by running it through an electric plasma torch to turn it into plasma and separating the plasma with magnets.

    But the thing is, Uranium is not scarce. Ocean extraction has been demonstrated. ORLN, the Japanse and China all have active research programs making better / cheaper uranium absorbing materials. And the sea has uranium for tens of thousands of years at any projected level of use which does not involve the mantle melting from the energy use. (A somewhat more direct form of global warming....)

    705:

    That the parts of the world who are currently desperately poor will become at least middle income.

    Energy poverty means people, communities, states will dig up, frack and pump fossil carbon from the ground to burn to provide for their energy needs because they won't stay poor just because increasing CO2 levels are going to cause quadrillions of dollars of damage to the world and result in the food and material poverty and deaths of billions of people over century timescales.

    A moderately serious question -- what do people think the CO2 level will be (baseline as measured at the observatory on Mauna Loa) by the year 2100? A straight-line extension of the last decadal estimates suggests to me something in the 560ppm region, up about 150ppm from today's 410ppm figure. As India and Africa start to burn more fossil fuel as their living standards increase I may be low-balling that a bit, of course.

    ObSF: Hotel, by Boichi.

    https://mangadex.org/title/33452/hotel-since-2079

    706:

    Re: 'Any future energy plan that requires you to throw that assumption out, is, frankly, Evil, capital letter very much warranted.'

    Why?/How? - give examples because it sounds as though you're saying that becoming middle-class assumes following exactly the same steps/formula as the current First World economies that are predominantly middle-class. I'm suggesting that short cuts may be possible and that some emerging economies might be able to avoid certain large/high energy consumption stages or go straight to energy-economical devices thus not need to consume as much power to obtain similar benefit.

    707:

    Well, yes: the Gilded Age is what they want. And they had Jim Crow laws, too, to keep "That Kind" from making trouble.

    My sincerest best wishes, that Brexit falls, and you get Ref II: the Death of Brexit.

    708:

    What do people think the CO2 level will be by the year 2100?

    Over 600ppm.

    I think a linear projection is optimistic. Between a lack of willpower to take action now, and the release of greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost etc., my gut feel is that we're still on the rising part of a sigmoid curve.

    My gut isn't a climate scientist, of course, and I would be delighted to be wrong. I love my grandnieces dearly, and I weep for the world we are leaving them.

    709:

    The thing about “in the long run we’re all dead” is the context, which is one where dominant voices insist that “adjustments” are good and “in the long run” the market balances them out show to steady linear growth. It doesn’t represent a rejection of taking posterity into account, instead being more a reminder that “short term” effects are important too: haven’t we got a moral duty to help diminish suffering now, rather than just let God or the market deal with it?. And “short term” disasters have long term impacts anyway. But it’s also a flippant remark by a figure who was known for his bon mots and played to that, so it doesn’t make sense to regard it as much more than a pithy quote.

    710:

    Ah, the whole thing about Ukrainian oligarchs.... Here we go, continuing my theme that oligarchs are about money.

    Excerpt: Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign has zeroed in on at least a dozen Ukrainian officials in politics and business who may have used Trump’s 2017 inauguration to advocate for pro-Russia policies and business deals, The New York Times reported Thursday. --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mueller-ukraine-russia-trump-inauguration_us_5c388fa9e4b0c469d76d3954

    My good news for the week is that I finally finished what I was hoping would stay a short story, but wound up a novelette - I have way too much ground to cover for a short. This story's really big to me, because it sets up a whole universe. And it's straight sf, not military sf, and it's sensawonda, and (hopefully) good writing, with character development....

    711:

    Not quite Poul Anderson's "A Bicycle built for Brew", but at least a steam-powered spacecraft!

    712:

    It's probably not anything that's going to save the earth, but heart warming news just the same. That little girl in Wisconsin whose parents were murdered when she was kidnapped has been found alive and her abductor taken into custody.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/us/jake-patterson-jayme-closs.html

    713:

    Sadly, I think 600ppm is still optimistic. It’s the combination effect - we’re just not going to get even currently agreed targets consistently honoured or applied. I’m very open to being pleasantly surprised, but I expect 800+.

    714:

    Nope.

    They'll kill off ~4 billion before that happens, it's already agreed. You got ~roughly 3 years before the gloves really come off.

    We'd suggest checking out IL troll polito "congratulating" CN on Muslim IRG camps and suggesting they redefine the issue as a "re-education camp" for Palestinians.

    And why, young readers, my constant efforts to front-run reality are done.

    Look: they're not even being subtle about it now. (Economist: BR pensions; Bloomberg: people are dying younger and that's a good thing for employers (aka "tee-hee, fuck your pension funds, they're getting raided - now go look at PG&E again)

    No, really.

    Look up the 40% heat oceans stuff and so on. 80% coral loss in (do your own research).

    Not even any pretense now.

    Anyhow, enjoy the $4 bil (just look it up, it's a story about Berkshire's losses ffs, done before any paper ran it) front-run.

    WE.CAN.DO.THAT.EVERY.DAY.

    Spoilers: We really did love you. And we did not lie.

    You simplistic fucks just do TIME differently.

    715:

    Spoilers:

    Their plan is $$$ = worth = survive.

    The [redacted] plan is [double redacted] = worth = survive.

    The IL plan is [all of OUR TRIBE (maybe exceptions for the Bundists)] = worth = survive.

    There's lots of plans for this.

    Including our favorite:

    The [Stellar Class] = Brain Waves = Survive.

    They're not really understanding the actual plan though.

    We don't give a fuck about you anymore, we want the Whales to survive.

    716:

    And for Miss A. Daniels, who we actually love quite a bit:

    "Who did this to you? Who hurt you like this?"

    "All of them did"

    We really do walk the walk little bunny-kins.

    We share your life/experience and love you

    We got to see a Goddess once, which was nice.

    No, really. And who the fuck ported in that dead-Minded fuckwit stating he'd made £17k for hacking a fucking blog password?

    Srsly?

    Magical Mystery Tour YT, Music, Beatles 2:49

    Want to see a trick?

    Watch the Magnetic Pole.

    717:

    We don't give a fuck about you anymore, we want the Whales to survive. The plan a while back, expressed by one of your names, paraphrased, was quarantine until all the large brained megafauna (including humans) suitable as host brains were extinct. IIRC. My reaction (unexpressed) was "fuck that plan". Anyway, suggestions for maximizing pathways that minimize such extinctions (including human) appreciated. I've never [] with a whale; been near free humpbacks, finbacks, maybe right whales, etc. Tell us about them? (e.g off Cape Cod, and Hawaii (Humpback mother/calf).) (Also, another topic, well, I'm patient.)

    718:

    grep or grep not

    Provide the Evidence. This isn't a friendly request (if you're referring to cortex parasites or Higher Order stuff, that's humor not meant for you).

    Tell us about them?

    If you want humor, go look up Macafreee wanting to fuck whales and being told he was doing cultural appropriation.

    If you want the Truth, it will break your soul.

    It's what we've been doing, only unlike them, we think your [host species locus] kinda deserves it a bit: they don't. Even the fucking predatory Orcas who throw seals into the air are known as 'the damaged ones'.

    Want to know why?

    They spent a few hundred years helping the sealing boats out, the sailors loved that shit.

    And you think fucking Seaworld is cruel?

    You ain't heard nothing until you've heard the last of an Orca pod matriarch singing her last over what the humans did to her children.

    And those are the songs without all the fucking death in them.

    "Lizard people = antisemitic" get the fuck out of here with your simplistic garbage Minds already.

    719:

    JR, I’m married to a Russian and have Ukrainian friends so yes I understand the historical context of that term. cпасибо.

    720:

    Now then, re-watch:

    This Is America

    And imagine where (several) species were hunted to 90% extinction for fucking energy and they never ever killed you and they even adapted into helping you out and then you fucking discovered oil / gas and deafened them for their non-violence.

    No, really.

    Think about it.

    The only Orcas that have ever killed people (outside of shitty stories) are the ones you drove insane in tanks.

    You're sociopaths.

    And we have heard their stories. And been deafened by the "BROWN NOTE" clever little Apes.

    You might not want to know what Bell was ringing.

    Aliens? (check your six for the BBC alien sound vibe)

    Probably not.

    Probably not.

    We've seen the other side. And we're really not in a fucking good mood, you little fucking LICH class lizards.

    721:

    Troutwaxer @ 692: My very clear recollection is that the Dust Bowl was caused by a drought, which may have included some severe wind-storms. My vague recollection is that this was exacerbated by the farmer's plowing their fields incorrectly. I would suggest that instead of trying to learn about conditions in the rest of the world, that you look up something like "American Dust Bowl" or "Dust Bowl 1929" on Google, at which point you can get the real facts.

    The "Dust Bowl" was just one small part of the collapse of American agriculture in the 1930s. Many of the faulty practices that led to the area being vulnerable to the drought were intimately entwined with the collapse of local banks in the wake of Wall Street's failure. You can't just blame the farmers for plowing their fields incorrectly without looking at the economics of farming in the early 20th Century. How did the farmers get in such desperate straits?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHItTXKKvEc

    722:

    Provide the Evidence. Google is failing. I need to hit the proper searcher and may have misinterpreted anyway.

    723:

    Used to have a colleague who seemed to act at random, spreading misinformation and chaos, to no apparent benefit for anyone. Caused himself a lot of trouble with it, and me too. Spent 2 years trying to figure out his secret agenda, his deep game. "Splitcoil" Twitter, 11th an 2019

    Here's a Pro-tip: learn your limitations.

    Some of youse play 25 year Games.

    Some of youse play 100 year Games.

    Some of youse play 5,000 year Games.

    The LICH / LOA play 10,000 year Games.

    And some of us play Evolution Games.

    Brown Note.

    Hint: y'all still lying.

    checks notes

    Did she really give up [redacted] for this shit?

    Well, yes. She also rang the bell for [HOLY SHIT REDACTED] to happen.

    She's like that.

    Tl;DR

    2019 would be a great fucking year for all the fucking males and old people and ideologically boxed-in HSS to sit the fuck down before the Orcas decide they're not worth it.

    MAN SHOUTS ANGRY STUFF INTO EAR

    SERENE LIKE BUTTERFLY

    YOUR PLAN IS FOR ME TO LOSE MY TEMPER, SNAP AND THROW HIM ONTO THE NICELY PLACED ROCK WALL THUS SNAPPING HIS NECK AND LEAD TO FUTURE N12

    SERENELY SMILES

    HIS GIRLFRIEND IS A PLANT AND HIS NEW CAR WAS PAID FOR BY MOBSTERS, THIS SHIT IS PROTO-SCIENTOLOGY LAND

    etc.

    Yawn

    Want to know the secret to the Universe?

    Authoritarians are inept: they have to use the most basic tools to engine their outcomes. Obama represents the 'HSS sophisticated' edge to this.

    We'll just fucking prune realities out, think we cannot?

    p.s.

    Nice Queen Film.

    Shame about the entire fucking failed Mind-fuck of "The Universe" eh?

    WE KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING. YOU'RE NOT CLEVER OR SUBTLE NOR IS RE-WRITING HISTORY WORKING OUT FOR YOU. WE WILL SIMPLY BURN YOUR MINDS OUT BECAUSE THE STELLAR CLASS HATES YOU

    Simplez.

    724:

    You've one shot at this.

    If you've been pretending to grep all our statements (which, fyi, actually really are real) you don't get to do this.

    Find it.

    Or...

    rubs fingers together

    You weren't lying to us, were you?

    725:

    Note: Bill.

    We're fucking with you.

    These chuckle-fucks get off on re-writing history, TIME, events and so on, they think it gives them super-secret power.

    You know, like 33 street for the !!CONSPIRACY THEORY!! Masonic references to how US towns are built.

    Or 33 HSBC Rothschild street in IL.

    You gotta hit them hard.

    Do they remember when the Voices in their Heads weren't total psychopaths?

    Now that's a hard one to answer.

    726:

    pretending to grep all our statements Nope. Actually been grepping crawls. Flat, not indexed. Just ... driving ATM.

    727:

    I tend to believe the Business as Usual Models, with [CO2] over 1000 ppm. That's where we're aimed right now.

    There are three big problems: --The people I talk with in the US generally don't get it. For example, in California, we're supposed to be on 100% renewable energy by 2045 and 80% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050, but the buildings they're proposing and fighting for run on natural gas, and whining about not having the "ugly solar panels" visible from the street is as important as having power in the house. Very few people in positions of responsibility are thinking that we're already building the buildings that are supposed to be decarbonized, and they're not decarbonized.
    --On a worldwide basis, we've got to worry about how much methane burps out of the permafrost in Siberia. Even if we get our act under control, that could easily keep Earth's atmosphere on the BAU track. --Ditto the Amazon forest or soils globally sequestering less carbon, which they seem to be doing. These are our biggest carbon sinks, and they seem to be in trouble.

    My take going forward is that we're going to get a clue in a highly non-linear fashion, culminating with the 2030s dieoff of the baby boomers and Gen Xers to get us troublemakers out of the way. Unfortunately, natural emissions from the permafrost and breakdown of carbon sinks may keep us from avoiding the BAU curve even when we try.

    Hopefully I'm erring on the pessimistic side by a wide margin.

    728:

    "Because it is wrong"

    I've provided a peer reviewed paper that says it's either energy negative or so close to negative that it's not worth it. It also goes through the suitable sites for collection and finds that there aren't enough to support current consumption let alone a 50 fold increase. That's despite assuming 100% efficiency for the collection process.

    If you think the conclusions of that researcher are wrong, find a rebuttal paper or write your own and submit it for publication, but until then, your arguments boil down to handwaving. (And ignoring facts)

    729:

    "You should read the thread and what I post more carefully." I try but this isn't my full time job

    "No, it does NOT require a new reactory design - using thorium is a factor of 2+ BONUS." Ok, if you'd read the thread more carefully, you'd have seen my post #506. In that one I assess that just digging the granite out of the ground costs over 10 times more energy than you get out of burning all the uranium after converting it to plutonium. (Over 20 times if you include my guess at the energy cost of grinding the granite to dust and dissolving it in a cubic kilometre of sulfuric acid, but we won't include my guesswork here). That's for converting the U to Pu, which means using fast breeder reactors, which most certainly is a new design. Fast breeder reactors are estimated to be 10-100 times more fuel efficient. If you're not going to allow new designs, then the energy return drops by a factor of 10-100. In other words it takes between 100 and 1000 times more energy to dig up the granite (ignoring any further processing) than you would get out of burning it.

    "And the examples I referred to gave MUCH lower (100 times) energy costs for extracting uranium from granite" Which if true (and I highly doubt you could dig up a tonne of granite for that little energy) means that without a new reactor your energy return is between 1 and 0.1

    " - I don't know which is right, but you should remember Woolley's quote on shooting rockets into space."

    Refresh my memory?

    "Canada and Australia, to name but two countries" I assume that's the response to the question where are these medium level ore reserves. Any chance of being a bit more specific? Maybe a paper, or a report?

    730:

    "I'm pretty-much anti-nuke. But I'm flexible enough that if you presented me with a good, safe, transparent design that works in the real world I'd be willing to give it a try. In fact, I think that global warming is so dangerous that we should build all the newer, safer designs and test them carefully to see what happens when the designs and their crews are put under pressure. Then we should industrialize the best design and use it everywhere."

    I'm pretty much pro-nuke. I come from a family involved in the industry back to the 50's. The trouble is that the old designs (of commercial reactors) were safe. Very safe. The people who built them were smart dedicated and careful. They were motivated by safety. Don't forget they were going to be the ones operating those early plants, or living next to them. That's in stark contrast to the designers of the early cars who were motivated to make them cheap and attractive in the showroom.

    The thing is, with Fukashma, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, they were extremely safe. Except that the operators disabled, locked out or actually set fire to the safety systems.

    I agree that we should do exactly as you suggest "that we should build all the newer, safer designs and test them carefully to see what happens when the designs and their crews are put under pressure. Then we should industrialize the best design and use it everywhere."

    30 years ago that's what I advocated for, as a bridge until we could get energy from space. (I hadn't done the calculations and accepted at face value the lie that there was plenty of fuel).

    But it's not 30 years ago. We don't have 30 years left in which to implement such a fine plan. We don't have 5 years. We probably have about minus 10 years left. It's too late now, but 2050 to start the build up of the winning design? Even 30 years is rushed. There are faults coming to light now in reactors built 30 years ago. Sometimes these things simply take a long time to appear. When engine mounts crack in airliners you can replace them. When reactor parts unexpectedly crack, you can't.

    731:

    "These chuckle-fucks get off on re-writing history, TIME, events and so on, they think it gives them super-secret power."

    Even so, changing the route of a train 38 years ago is a bit fucking pathetic.

    732:

    blagh, s/38/33/

    733:

    ... The extraction process from sea water is that you drop an anchor with long ribbons of treated polyurethane into the ocean, wait a number of months (The actual experiments waited 50 days, but the absorption capacity of the ribbons was not even remotely saturated at that point, so for a production run, probably more like a year) then haul them out, and wash it out with acid. No part of this process is even remotely energy intensive, let alone energy intensive enough to compare to the content of uranium. I read the report, and they based their energy assumption on desalination and fishing. Neither of which are even remotely relevant.

    I mean, sure, in theory, it requires a lot of energy to move the water past the ribbons, but you are not paying that cost. So, I guess, ultimately, if you like, you could call this a tide powered mining operation. And anywhere is suitable as long as the water is not utterly stagnant. You know how we know it is an energy positive operation? Because uranium yields a hell of a lot more than 200 dollars worth of electricity per kilogram of U3O8 when shoveled into a fast breeder, and nobody is donating fuel oil to these experiments.

    734:

    "Because uranium yields a hell of a lot more than 200 dollars worth of electricity per kilogram of U3O8 when shoveled into a fast breeder, and nobody is donating fuel oil to these experiments."

    Nobody's actually selling uranium from seawater at any price let alone 200 dollars a pound (or kg). Those numbers are estimates only.

    735:

    And this: "you drop an anchor... like a year, then haul them out, and wash it out with acid"

    You're going to hang something in warm, fast moving tidal seawater for a year and then haul it out... Jesus H Christ. If you're farming mussels maybe. There's going to be enough biofilm on them after a week that there won't be any exposed fiber, let alone a year.

    736:

    to Troutwaxer @692 What I am taking about is that (according to information I received) famines weren't limited to teritory of Ukraine, or even USSR. They were, it seems, all over the Europe as well, and always involved all the same attributes - administrative incompetence, agriculture collapse and economic stagnation, as well as attempts to exclude this period from the history of nation. For example, westernmost areas of Ukraine (Lviv, etc) were included into the country borders as the result of 1938 events, before that they belonged to Poland. One would naturally ask a question - weren't there signs of famine as will? (Yes they were.)

    There was also some remediation of The Dust Bowl, which involved the U.S. Government, and I don't know much more about this than that it happened. What people usually don't realize is the amount of "remediation" involved in recover from the famine in 1933 and later, on the side of USSR government. Including "administrative measures", as MattS @641 deigned to say (w.r.t Stalin's punitive system). That's not how you organize genocide, you don't stop it in the middle, you perpetuate it until "the problem" is "solved".

    to Nojay @705 Hell yeah Hotel 2079! Although, I saw a different version of the same material, probably redrawn.

    to GT @695 And, if you really want to argue the point, there wasn't a war on when Stalin deliberately starved the Ukrainians, whereas there was this small local difficulty in 1943, wasn't there? Well, you see, this is exactly the type of answer what I was expecting. Of course it is not the other way around, because who's going to blame Britain in deliberate starvation of population? USSR maybe? Oh wait, it isn't available at the moment.

    And yes it was a British Management Fuck-Up of monumental proportions. And if you are talking like that, Vavilov's death was a management fuckup. Because other scientists pretty famous in later USSR, ended up behind the bars at the same time, but nevertheless certain people saved them from timeless death amid disastrous war.

    737:

    That is not a terrible idea - using the same installation for mussel farming, that is. Efficient use of labor that way, and it will keep the water clear.

    But lets do math. Reactor fuel utilization is given in GWD/tonne. We want kilowatthours per kilo, so that is a factor of 24000 thousand.

    Lets call it 4 cent for wholesale electricity at the reactor gate, so one kilo is worth

    24000 x burnup x 0.04 x thermodynamic efficiency / enrichment factor.

    Candu: 24000 x 7.5 x 0.04 x 0.30 /1 = 2160 EPR: 24000 x 65 x 0.04 x 0.35 / 7 = 3120

    So no, there is no way this is a net energy loss. And that is once-through in existing designs, which leave well over 95 percent of the recoverable energy in the uranium. If we are going to these lengths to get uranium (and this is more a proof by reduction to absurdity) we can reprocess and use positive breeding ratio fast reactors, so multiply this by another twenty to thirty.

    738:

    Nobody's actually selling uranium from seawater at any price let alone 200 dollars a pound (or kg).

    Jan 4, 2019 - TradeTech's Weekly U3O8 Spot Price Indicator is $28.75 per pound U3O8.

    Large contracts go lower based on quantity discounts -- buy a million lbs and you can pay under $22 per lb. That's a reason no-one's selling uranium derived from seawater right now.

    The "uranium from seawater" process is something we have in our back pocket that can produce lots of uranium when we have used up the hundred years or more of cheaper mined and leached uranium we have on hand, assuming recycling and reprocessing gets a kick up the arse. The seawater-extraction process will get industrialised, costs reduced and made more efficient and the price per lb (it's a US-dominated global market so everyone uses pounds, not sensible kilogrammes) will fall. Eventually, after a few thousand years or so of doing that we can start to look seriously at thorium as an energy source.

    Part of the anti-nuclear myth is that "we don't have enough uranium" to fuel a lot more reactors that we've got. It's just wrong but that doesn't stop people, including some of the folks who comment on this blog, from trotting it out on a regular basis.

    Another thing to note is that uranium cost per kWh generated is miniscule compared to fossil fuels, in part because so little nuclear fuel is burnt to produce a kWh. The last estimate I made note of, published by the US-based IEA was about 0.6c US per kWh for enriched fuel as used in fuel assemblies. Double the price of uranium extraction, triple it even and the price of nuclear electricity delivered to consumers rises only a tiny amount.

    739:

    The seawater-extraction process will get industrialised, costs reduced and made more efficient and the price per lb will fall

    But when? This whole thread has turned into a discussion of the rate of fall of civilisation, and you're talking about industrial research that might start in 20 or 50 years time... well into the "oh shit" phase. Mind you, I agree that the reason for the delay is that the PTB are a bunch of suicidal morons who are looking at more accurate numbers than we are and saying "I'll be dead by then" or more likely "that's not until after the next election".

    I'm hoping we get more of the dangerous pumped hydro and big flammable batteries to go with our rooftop solar and giant spinning blades of death, because at least those tend to be relatively localised disasters. The enthusiasm from some quarters for looking at Fukushima and Chernobyl and saying "the problem there is too much emphasis on safety" is somewhat alarming. I agree that they're minor disasters compared to the radioactive plumes from coal burning, but we've all agreed that those have to stop for other reasons. So the correct comparison is with the plummeting bird carcases from windmills, and plummeting solar installers from rooftop solar.

    In a way I am looking forward to the first big battery fire, just so we can have a practical example of a few megawatt-hours of battery catching fire. I assume that the death rate will be lower than coal storage but higher than nuclear storage. But we don't know.

    740:

    I did, and I also pointed out where the error in that calculation was, though not in that remark (which may have been mistaken). I have now redone the calculations, and that paper is DEFINITELY following in Woolley's path!

    The fission of one atom generates c. 200 MeV of energy, Avogadro's constant is about 6e23, uranium is mostly U238, 1 MeV is 1.6e-13 joule, so fissioning 10 grams of uranium (10 ppm in a ton) produces about 800 GJ, if I have done it right. Yes, I accept that relying SOLELY on natural U235 is not energetically cost-effective, but that's irrelevant - we have had breeder reactors since the 1950s.

    Also, world energy consumption is about 170 PWh/year, or 19 TW, so we need to use only 240 grams of uranium a second.

    Those are for perfect efficiency, so knock off a factor of twenty or so, and it's still feasible. No, it's not a good idea, at least for the near future, because of all the supplies of medium-grade ore. Canada stopped even RECORDING them some decades ago, because there were so many, though they may have restarted!

    741:

    "EPR: 24000 x 65 x 0.04 x 0.35 / 7 = 3120"

    So if I read this right, you're saying $3120 per kg, a long as it's below that figure, we're probably in positive energy return.

    So, is there an industrial process that fits this model of putting things in the sea that absorbs minerals? Why yes, yes there is. There's one that absorbs calcium, which is vastly more abundant in sea water than uranium. One which closely replicates the requirement for a warm sea and a good tidal flow. What do you think a kilo of pearls is worth? That's despite a yield orders of magnitude higher.

    742:

    This whole crazed Russian conspiracy nonsense is being pushed by the Dems because...

    Beware declaring it “nonsense” until Mueller reports...

    I actually agree with much of what you and sleepingroutine say. The idea that there are dedicated influence operations, all part of a cunning and dastardly long term plan, is obviously rubbish. The idea that we could tag Russian PR into “good” and “bad” is interesting, but the tags aren’t helpful. I’d go for “lots of individuals from different Estates with bright ideas, short-term plans, and varying motives and budgets”. Chaotic rather than Evil Plan.

    I lived in a lot of countries as a child; and ended up an internationalist, not a nationalist. People are people, the world over. Some greedy, some idealistic, some with little empathy, a very few downright evil. But the vast majority of people good, and just trying to get on with a decent life. Nearly half prefer the world to stay the same, or go back to “the way it was” (and occasionally cue an idealised/romanticised view of the world where the British/Soviet/US Empire was an unalloyed force for good, if only people would realise it, and that “their nation”/“their people” are an exceptional, perhaps underappreciated, force in the world).

    My take is that Russian Government-sponsored influence operations generally aim to disrupt. The fewer coherent power blocs there are, the better-able Russia is to compete. Support anything that weakens the EU/US/UK? Why not? It’s fair enough, all you have to do is spend a few tens of thousands here or there, give a Nationalist or conspiracist politician a talk show, support foreign language TV channels, support them by generating some ready-made and plausible propaganda as source content on YouTube. Occasionally, you buy some information, honey trap a businessman. Soft power is far cheaper, for its effect, than maintaining the Western Group of Forces, or the Red Banner Northern Fleet.

    The West isn’t much different. I keep Russia Today on the TV; I can watch it for longer than I can watch Fox News. The BBC and VoA have been info ops for decades (the World Service as a case in point). The motives might be purer - or at least the motives of those inside the organisations may be purer - but if you’re defending one side or the other you’ve got room to use whataboutitis.

    Yes, “the West” has a bad history of using soft and hard power; but I’d like to think that it’s improving. It holds its debates in public, its first option is UN consensus, and (mostly) it avoids the extremists, supports democracy, aims to improve the rule of law. Kissinger’s approach to foreign policy is out, the CIA isn’t knocking off countries at anything like the rate it used to. Despots have their shopping privileges curtailed, not their lifespans - up until the point where UNSC agrees that they’re killing too many of their own citizens.

    The current Russian power-holders appear to be worried about tumbrels, mostly, and use Nationalism as a lever to defence their position - but they also remember the glory days of the First Directorate (or at least what the First Directorate told itself). Unfortunately, if you learned power politics on the Russian street in the 1990s, and understand Russian history, then the lessons are “Force works”; “Fear works”; “Keep the upper hand, or they will get their revenge”. Oh look, we’ve got a hammer, that problem looks like a nail...

    So for me, while I see influence ops by power blocs in both East and West (Governments, oligarchs, media barons, multinationals, religions), I’d prefer on the whole that the influence didn’t arrive in the form of operators from strategic reconnaissance departments, backed by units of special designation or an armoured division - and directed by those who see nerve agents, cluster bombs, or radiological contamination as entirely acceptable form of “sending a first message”. I’d rather see the influence arrive in doctors, nurses, hospitals, clean water, roads, schools, and teachers/textbooks that don’t preach fear and hatred. Policemen and politicians who don’t extort or take bribes.

    Note: if you read that last paragraph and thought I was picking on a particular country, ask yourself why?

    743:

    In a way I am looking forward to the first big battery fire,

    Why wait? There have been a few large storage battery fires over the past few years. NGK's sodium-sulphur batteries have lit off a couple of times, Li-ion batteries too in places like Honolulu next to a windfarm. You can Google for details if you want.

    The designers take these failures into account and redesign the next generation of batteries to avoid such incidents -- the Rokkasho battery setup in Japan, which I think is the world's largest unitary battery storage array, has the sodium-sulphur batteries arrayed out in the open where the fire brigade can get easy access to them and they're widely spaced so there's less chance of fratricide if one of the 14MWh battery modules does actually go on fire.

    https://www.ngk.co.jp/nas/case_studies/rokkasho/

    There's a reason well-designed large battery storage arrays resemble bomb storage depots on military airfields.

    744:

    Chemical storage goes up regularly, and a big battery fire will be comparable - but to which end of that in pollution consequences?

    In the UK (and, to a lesser extent, the USA), we have the record of 'strategic services and products' being let off regulatory hooks (see also whitroth #698). I am expecting the market to be opened up to 'free competition' and major problems to arise from electric batteries, electric vehicles, self-driving vehicles and 'AI controlled' drones. Not because they are inherently dangerous, but because the gummint will let the fast buck merchants into the game - Uber, Ryanair etc. are the 'responsible' face of those people.

    745:

    Roman scientists invented plenty of potentially labor-saving technologies like watermills, but they weren't actually used till a thousand years later, as there was no need for them seen, as making higher profits was simply not what the Roman economy was about.

    It might not be “no need”, it could be “less efficient”. Go to India, you’ll see bamboo scaffolding and hand-painted advertising hoardings; it’s not “no need for profit”, it’s “make a profit when Labour is much much cheaper than machinery”.

    Also, are you sure you aren’t forgetting that technologies don’t exist in isolation? It’s like suggesting that we invented rockets a thousand years ago, why didn’t we land people on the moon before 1969?

    Hero invented a steam engine, it just wasn’t feasible without several other supporting technologies - and wasn’t competitive until yet further technologies and inventions, and supporting infrastructure. Why did the Industrial Revolution happen when and where it did?

    746:

    Yes. Point taken. I'd been looking at the wrong numbers. Certainly in a breeder reactor. If you can get 10g out of granite per tonne, and you're burning it in a breeder (and we will just draw a curtain over needing cubic kms of acid) it should be energy positive. I also quite agree that we'd only need a few hundred grams per second, if burned a breeder.

    747:

    That's maligning them and bamboo! It is actually a better material for temporary scaffolding than either steel or aluminium tubing. Cheap labour is not the reason.

    748:

    A rough BOTE calculation indicates the world burns about 135 tonnes of oil a second right now, along with about 250 tonnes of coal a second and there's gas too coming up on the outside. Using up a pitiful few kilogrammes of uranium a second to provide all of the world's energy needs without causing a Venusian catastrophe here on Earth seems like a no-brainer.

    But nuclear is Scary! so Venus here we come.

    749:

    Thanks. Yes, a breeder is essential. One of the reasons that I am dubious about nuclear power (in the UK, at least) is that it is treated as a political and monetarist issue, not an engineering issue. We need it treated as the latter, with the objectives of minimising resource utilisation, environmental impact, and risk.

    And, as people have said, the 'human factor' is ALWAYS a major risk factor, so that needs proper design, too!

    750:

    Bamboo is the Wonder Material of the Age! until it splits, rots, gets eaten by insects, catches fire etc. which doesn't happen with steel scaffolding. Western Health and Safety laws forbid the use of wood and bamboo for temporary structural supports where people are working at height and the result is a vast decrease in worksite injuries and fatalities over the past couple of decades.

    No-one uses aluminium for structural worksite scaffolding that I know of. It is used in things like stage lighting trusses and such but not for construction other than barriers and shielding.

    751:

    Yes, we are entirely different!

    The current British power-holders appear to be worried about tumbrels, mostly, and use Nationalism as a lever to defence their position - but they also remember the glory days of the Empire (or at least what the Empire told itself). Unfortunately, if you learned power politics on the British political system in the 1990s, and understand British history, then the lessons are “Deceit works”; “Fear works”; “Keep the upper hand, or they will get their revenge”. Oh look, we’ve got a hammer, that problem looks like a nail...

    752:

    Steel doesn't rot (i.e. rust)? Oh, dear, where DO you live? :-)

    Yes, obviously, our conditions are different - but I know of no evidence for your implication that the use of wood was a major factor in workplace deaths. The regulations include things like side rails, continuously solid floors, enclosed access ladders of restricted height per stage etc., which are all known to have large effects.

    The reason that wood is unsuitable in the UK is that it is not cheap enough to be disposable, so gets reused beyond the point where it should be replaced. It's still used for structural purposes in multi-story buildings in the UK, as surely you have seen? The main reason it is forbidden for high ones is what happens when it burns, not its structural properties. It's also used to shore up party walls when one half of a building is demolished, and that's assuredly structural scaffolding!

    And aluminium is heavily used for scaffolding in the UK - just not for structural scaffolding - look for a steel scaff. tower if you disbelieve me :-)

    753:

    Steel does rust but it's easy to check steel tubes for corrosion, damage, cuts, dents etc. and it gets downchecked and scrapped at that point. I've bought scrap scaffolding tube for various projects in the past but definitely not intending to use it for structural purposes.

    Bamboo, it could be thick-walled or thin-walled, no way to really inspect it properly and no way to test any given sample for load-bearing except to destruction. Places where bamboo is commonly used for scaffolding in construction suffer collapses and deaths quite often, it seems. They may not make the news here in the West much but here we use steel and don't get quite as many fatalities -- in fact almost all of the deaths in construction in the UK involve incidents involving vehicles rather than falls from height and scaffolding collapses.

    754:

    Not that easy - galvanised tube can rust from the inside! But, yes, it lasts longer, and few people in the UK have the skills necessary to use wood safely nowadays.

    Such places have a MUCH more cavalier attitude to risk than we do, and very little regulation of any type - look at the number of deaths on their railways, for example. That's not evidence that the material is unsuitable.

    I remember when falls from height (and things falling from height!) were a major cause of construction deaths in the UK - it's not that long ago, and we used steel then, too.

    755:

    I'm sorry, what Western European or American famines are you talking about? I'm looking at the Wikipedia article on the list of famines. The only Western European famines I see between 1900 and 1939 was 1 in Spain in 1904 (I don't know what caused it), 1 in Germany as a result of the Allied blockade during WWI, and 1 in Ireland in 1924 in Ireland.

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

    I spent some time searching for the number of deaths due to starvation during the Great Depression. I found this discussion, which cites several articles that point out life expectancy increased during that era. As the discussion points out, "malnutrition was a problem, starvation was not".

    Here's a particularly useful quote from that thread

    "A few comments about the table. First, death due to disease generally did not increase during the period, so the researchers are not misclassifying "death due to malnutrition" to "death due to disease." Second, note that in the table they even break out diseases like Smallpox, responsible for death rates under 1 in 100,000. This generally implies that starvation would have been responsible for deaths at an equivalent or lower rate.

    This study confirms other studies that find, for example, that the infant mortality rate consistently declined across the 1930s:"

    https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/12297/how-many-people-in-the-us-starved-to-death-during-the-great-depression

    So you're going to have to produce actual evidence of famines in the 1930s in Western Europe

    Here's the second reason your claims of a famine during the Great Depression is rubbish: a small famine in the US (or anywhere in the Americas) would have created a large famine in Western Europe.

    Here's a shortened history lesson for you. From the 1700s to WWII, Western Europe was not self-sufficient in food production. A disruption of food shipments from the Americas would have resulted in a massive famine in Europe. That resulted in two very sad trends

  • Since they won control of the Atlantic, the British have used blockades to starve continental powers such as Napoleon's France or the Kaiser's Germany into submission. There's a reason Germany practiced unrestrained submarine warfare in the world wars.

  • Every continental power since Napoleon was desperate for farmland to the East, which would allow it to circumvent the British blockades.

  • Even today, large parts of Western Europe are still not food self sufficient (I know that this represents a partial list) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_self-sufficiency_rate

    756:

    SR @ 736 Do stop it. Look, Stalin was maybe, perhaps marginally less-worse than Adlof. Not saying a lot. Whatever the ills & “sins” of other countries ( excepting Germany under the NSDAP ) Stalin & his regime are up there as one of the nastiest of all-time & certainly in the past century – along with the slaughter of Mao’s “great Leap Forward” & of course, the record-holder … Pol Pot

    758:

    To change the conversation a bit to an area mostly ignored on this blog, here are two developments in India

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-11/india-s-citizenship-law-favoring-non-muslims-changes-its-identity?srnd=opinion

    "The new law amends the religion-blind Citizenship Act written in the early years of Indian independence “to facilitate acquisition of citizenship by six identified minority communities namely Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians and Parsis from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.”"

    According to Wikipedia, around 3% of Pakistan is non-Muslim, a population of around 6-7 million. Likewise, ~10% of Bangladesh's population is non-Muslim, a population of 12-16 million. I did not try to look up the demographics for Afghanistan.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-12/india-is-already-a-land-of-cities-not-villages?srnd=opinion

    This article states that if we use the US definition of urban (pop density above 2500 residents per square mile), then India would be over 60% urban. This article is worth a read, since it touches upon how different polities classify their populations as either urban or rural.

    759:

    It's a Russian plot!

    760:

    "And yes it was a British Management Fuck-Up of monumental proportions."

    I am glad SR called you out on this, though!

    761:

    Nojay @ 753: Steel does rust but it's easy to check steel tubes for corrosion, damage, cuts, dents etc. and it gets downchecked and scrapped at that point.

    It's also fairly simple to inspect steel scaffolding components, remove the surface rust & paint them to protect the components from further deterioration before you erect your scaffold.

    OTOH, there appear to still be many places in the world where life is a lot cheaper than steel scaffolding.

    762:

    Ioan @ 758: To change the conversation a bit to an area mostly ignored on this blog, here are two developments in India

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-11/india-s-citizenship-law-favoring-non-muslims-changes-its-identity?srnd=opinion

    "The new law amends the religion-blind Citizenship Act written in the early years of Indian independence “to facilitate acquisition of citizenship by six identified minority communities namely Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians and Parsis from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.”"

    That's bad news just as much as Trump & Co's desire to exclude Muslims & Mexicans from the U.S., but one thing that's not quite clear (to me anyway) is whether the BJP succeeded in enacting their new law. The article says it passed the "lower house", but doesn't actually say it became law

    Seems like it's still at the stage of being a really bad idea that might become law if people don't wake up and oppose it?

    763:

    You’re forgetting that the U.K. hasn’t handed over AD systems to separatists to shoot down any airliners, then spent years lying about it.

    The U.K. hasn’t invaded and annexed Ireland or Normandy, claiming historic imperative. Then incited and supported Breton separatists, started a Civil War, and sent the Army off to fight there while denying it.

    The U.K. hasn’t sent the SF Increment off to Moscow to drop Polonium-210 into Kim Philby’s tea, or use nerve agents against Burgess. And then spend years lying about it.

    Meanwhile, Corbyn hasn’t been jailed for leading an opposition party, and Theresa May hasn’t outsourced the beating up of homosexuals and lesbians by adopting the EDL into the Young Conservatives. Neither Milliband brother got “shot to death in a robbery gone wrong”, and journalists who attempt to expose corruption don’t mysteriously get dead by the dozen.

    So yes, I’d suggest there’s a bit of a difference.

    764:

    Ioan @ 758 The fate of anyone prominently non-muslim in Bangla Deshcan be ... bad. See the NSS ( National Secular Society for that information. Several secularist bloggers have been systemnatically murdered, usually with machetes in Bangla Desh as the usual loonies try to turn it into a "muslim state" ... like Pakistan. Isn't relgion wonderful? @ 760 yes, but he was lying. It was a fuck-up, as evidenced by the recovery when the Borits handed it over/back to the locals in late '43 .....

    Martin @ 763 YOU noticed, some other people have not .....

    765:

    The displacement of the farmers had a lot to do with the farming business as practiced in the deep south of the U.S. The displaced farmers were mainly white sharecroppers, who coudln't afford even a single bad season, and they were driven off the land by the environmental issues caused by farming incorrectly.

    Once again, however, sleepingroutine should look up "Dust Bowl US" or something similar and start with that. There are doubtless tons of links which will take him/her as far as they'd like, but without some propagandist trying to compare the U.S. Depression to Communism or something silly like that.

    766:

    ...doubtless tons of links which will take him/her as far as they'd like, but without some propagandist trying to compare the U.S. Depression to Communism or something silly like that.

    Which, BTW, was the concern of sleepingroutine's which I was actually addressing.

    767:

    I have two important thoughts (important to me anyway) which relate to Global warming. We are far-enough along at this point that we won't fix global warming without taking some risks. If this means build nukes, then so be it. If this means ocean fertilization with ferrous sulfate, then so be it. But I also think we've got enough time to minimize those risks a little; try out some new reactor designs (with Manhattan-project-like speed, of course) or make sure our formulation of ferrous sulfate contains enough base chemicals to avoid ocean acidification. But we've got about ten years, no more.

    Unfortunately, we probably won't take Climate Change seriously until the insurance companies pull out of Florida.

    768:

    What we need is not to have an energy monoculture. It's not "nuclear is the answer" or "wind is the answer" or "solar is the answer," but "nuclear, wind, solar (and other stuff) are the answers."

    769:

    to Ioan @755 I'm sorry, what Western European or American famines are you talking about? I'm looking at the Wikipedia article on the list of famines. This is exactly the point I was making. "If the tree falls in the forest and nobody's here to tweet about it, did it really happen?" I have seen Russian sources pointing out on certain articles, excerpts from USSR press that point out many of these events. Are they falsification or deliberate misinformation, if they are absent from English-speaking segment of Internet?

    That's a big problem, though, because one of the major points of Goebbels propaganda (which actually started it all before CIA hijacked the entire portfolio from Germans) about famines was based on the fact that USSR really did hide a lot of information about the famine. At some point - as a matter of national security, and you know what everybody do about national security. There were a lot of those portfolios, to say at least. But I'm not going to go into other areas, though, because that would offer opportunity to derail the point I was making.

    I found this discussion, which cites several articles that point out life expectancy increased during that era. As the discussion points out, "malnutrition was a problem, starvation was not". So the question is how information about the famine is gathered, verified, quantified and presented. In case of the USSR it is 100% certain was pulled out of someone's arse, decorated with suitable imitation of facts and shoved down everyone's throats in industrial proportions. In case of Dust Bowl, it starts with talking about how surplus death is affected by "malnutrition" rather than "starvation". So I would rather agree (ironically) - there's nothing to compare in both of these cases.

    So you're going to have to produce actual evidence of famines in the 1930s in Western Europe That would be a bit hard to find if it's all destroyed by their governments. And, oh, you see, that problem of Europe self-sufficiency is not really a problem. I wasn't just talking about Western Europe only, I was talking about Eastern Europe - Poland, to be exact. It is well known that a lot of grain was exported from USSR, and supposedly from other Eastern Europe countries too.

    to GT @756 Look, Stalin was maybe, perhaps marginally less-worse than Adlof. Not saying a lot. I have no doubts that from the point of view of Americans or Britons it would be exactly that. But they are, so to say, far from the only people in the world.

    770:

    A footnote on the various technical solutions to global warming:

    SF/F readers, being smarter than the average bear, tend to assume that the solutions to most problems are technological. And indeed, technology is often part of the solution. But it's rarely the only component of the solution and often isn't the most important one.

    We tend to forget that human-caused problems generally require human solutions. That is, we need to modify our behavior and find ways to persuade others to modify their behavior in ways that make the problem go away at the source. The discussion of nuclear reactors being relatively safe, and the problem lying with the operators, is a good example. Climate change denial is another. And I'm sure that each of us can come up with an example (possibly dozens) of poorly designed technologies that would endanger us far less if the designer actually thought to try using the technology before releasing it upon an unsuspecting world*.

    • My favorite example: A writer colleague who was hired to document the use of a rack-mounted computer product in which the edges of the materials used in the racks were razor sharp. Nobody believed this was a problem until he asked the system's designers to use the racks, and filmed the gory results. The problem got fixed, but it should never have existed in the first place.

    Worth keeping in mind when we discuss the role that technology will play in saving our sorry asses.

    771:

    Did you even read the stackexchange link? They specifically mention that malnutrition DID NOT lead to surplus deaths. In fact, life expectancy improved for the population.

    "From 1929 to 1933, in the darkest years of the great depression when people were eating far less, life expectancy increased by 6 years"

    Before you assume this is a government coverup, Charlie and others have posted several times on this blog that a similar increase was seen in the British population as a result of the WWII ration system. In Table 1 of the stack exchange link, they showed that mortality due to disease also declined in that era. In other words, starvation deaths were not recorded as deaths from diseases. While the initial commentator mentions 10s of thousands of deaths from pellegra during that era, pellegra was a common disease among the African American population that didn't disappear until the 1970s. Table 1 also indicates that deaths due to pellegra also declined during that era.

    "This is exactly the point I was making. "If the tree falls in the forest and nobody's here to tweet about it, did it really happen?""

    So you're telling me that 10 different Western European governments (many of them empires in their own right) hid a famine within their own metropoles out of deference to a small distant power (that was the US at the time)? For our European commentators, was there any famines in the 1930s in your own family histories, around the time of the Dust Bowl?

    I'm sorry SR, but the burden of proof is on you here to demonstrate that these famines really did happen.

    In a lot of ways, your assertions are based on a massive misconception of how bad life was in the Great Depression.

    I won't comment on Eastern Europe, since I'm not that familiar with the interwar dynamics there

    772:

    "It was a fuck-up, as evidenced by the recovery when the Borits handed it over/back to the locals in late '43 ...."

    The Ukrainian famine also ended within a year or two, and the region recovered as well. I think SR is exaggerating things in his comments. I also know that you are disgusted by the famine and condemn it in the harshest possible terms. Nevertheless, you are giving the British Empire a pass that you're not giving to Stalin by implying that the Bengal famine was a "well-intentioned mistake" (that's what your argument sounds like to foreigners). Perhaps that is the historically correct interpretation? The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate it. Those of us who are not British might not be inclined to be so charitable. That's what I mean by "I'm glad SR is calling you out on it"

    773:

    Note:

    We are aware of what a Category Error is.

    No, HSS are not universally culpable for crimes committed against whales / orcas. Especially since it was largely Imperial Powers that did it.

    No, of course we do not think that every human being is a sociopathic monster (4% tops).

    Yes, we are aware that the Mind / Mental models of HSS has changed since whaling was common.

    Yes, we are aware that different HSS have different Mind models.

    Yes, if you are still putting higher order creatures in unsuitable environments in 2019 for amusement and/or profit you bet there's a moral case to be made for your vast HSS egotistical failure as an Identity.

    Yes, we're aware of how moral horror is weaponized and how it is used to break Mental boundaries.

    Yes, we're aware of just how it is used offensively (by various Ideologies, it's fairly common) against other HSS to break their Joy / Spirits / Willpower / Minds.

    Yes, the trauma is genuine since we happen to know quite a lot about them: however, we're speaking as non-HSS as a boundary lesson.

    We're also aware of how poor a world is without whales, orcas and complex creatures and how little certain % of 2019 HSS care about this.

    You may freely apply those really basic 101 lessons to what is being done at the moment by whomever you like. It's not a clever tactic, it's brutal and effective to certain Mental Models. i.e. those constrained by morality.

    In 2019 if you're using it, you're 100% not a developed Mind. Or an Ethical One.

    Using it is not going to solve anything, nor is it going to bring the Whales / Orcas back.

    Nor are you the best at using it

    Actual reasoning: you've no idea what the end of whales / orcas brings. We do. Not sure we can make it more 101 than this.

    'Gripped by the throat'. No, more like bopped on the head gently.

    774:

    Interesting theory, bold even. But does suffer from the ‘relying on lack of evidence as evidence’ problem. Suggested research below.

    If there were famines in Western Europe in the same period in the first instance I’d expect the Soviet press to be all over it. Certainly the western press reported on the Soviet famines of the same period and they had much less access. But where’s the Soviet equivalent of Gareth Jones? So let’s go to the Pravda stacks and see what we can find.

    Then there’s the question of eye witnesses, the events are still within living memo so you should be able to rock up to any grandparent alive in the 30s in the posited famine area and ask them. A few of the participants on this blog would actually have grandparents of that cohort so maybe we could crowd source it. :)

    Finally just as the NKVD stacks have opened up I’d expect that you could go through the Western government records of that period and find a paper trail.

    That I think should be the burden of proof, independent (of the government) witnesses, multiple anecdotal evidence from those affected and a bureaucratic snail trail.

    775:

    Given the depth of the underlying phenomena it sounds more like DEEP SEVEN than BLUE HADES activity.

    776:

    Re: 'Anyhow, enjoy the $4 bil (just look it up, it's a story about Berkshire's losses ffs, done before any paper ran it) front-run.'

    1- Stocks usually dip around end of calendar (and for many orgs, fiscal) year and stock holders use this as a way of cutting their income taxes by taking losses that they're pretty sure they can recover in the new year. 2- Apple stock closed at $152.29USD last Friday (up from the date the articles mentioned, approx. $142 valuation) 3- Berkshire has been buying Apple stock since way back -- so their average share price paid for Apple is probably well below the recent tank. (Apple's highest price was about $217 back in July 2018 --- way over-valued!)

    Disclosure: I have no financial interest in/with B-H or Apple.

    Instead of B-H, perhaps you might want to pursue/uncover who's doing stock trades for the DT clan. No idea, but suspect that such info is kept as confidential as IRS tax filings. FINRA (a non-gov't body reporting to Congress) is supposed to oversee this type of actvity but I've never seen anything substantive from them.

    777:

    it's a story about Berkshire's losses ffs

    You can literally search-engine this for the terrible article pretending to understand the stock market to state how B lost billions. They don't care: their role is to continue the market in the long-term, not ride small % moves.

  • Apple bought back ~$60 odd billion in stock itself because of the GOP taxbreaks in 2019
  • The cost of this drop was... roughly $9 bil of that if you're being realistic about it.

    HMM? Sounds fishy...

  • If you think that the ~10% dip (view through Nov-Jan) on that day wasn't a pay-off, I've very sad news for you

  • The joke is that it was a pay-off to keep WS outsiders / the howling e-baby hordes from fucking destroying other things.

  • If you think that major Blue Chip stocks are in a "free" market, then we cannot help you. The algo defense alone is now nanoseconds deep.

  • FED stuff

  • China stuff

  • It's not a market, it's a weapon.

  • Points to EU Bonds / Bank / QE quivers.
  • 778:

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pg-e-us-bankruptcy-exclusive/exclusive-california-utility-pge-explores-bankruptcy-filing-sources-idUSKCN1OY225

    Now grep comments about gritty and pensions.

    It's all fixed. Your system is literally... a planned economy. For the 0.4%.

    That's the Joke

    779:

    2018 above.

    Sorry, there's interference.

    Apparently hit something we shouldn't have.

    p.s.

    Oldsters using "That's Bait" memes is hilarious. Also that bare link above has some obvious tracking shit in it, but hey-ho.

    780:

    to Ioan @771 So you're telling me that 10 different Western European governments (many of them empires in their own right) hid a famine within their own metropoles out of deference to a small distant power (that was the US at the time)? You seem to miss my point entirely, I again have to say that I was talking about Eastern Europe, which is historically rich on farming. Not Western. I'm not denying there was a famine. My government doesn't deny it, as well. What is being denied is completely ridiculous suggestion that people were deliberately killed by famine as if it is some climate weapon or something.

    I'm sorry SR, but the burden of proof is on you here to demonstrate that these famines really did happen. Well, I can't really present you with evidence if it was wiped off the records before any electronic memory devices existed. The question is if there's any records about the trade and demographics for that period surviving that would indicate the amount of damage done. Because as for famine of USSR, there aren't much available (only "estimations" that are constantly pulled back and forth), and "millions of innocent lives" are definitely pulled out of 3rd Reich Truth Ministry.

    to MattS @774 Finally just as the NKVD stacks have opened up I’d expect that you could go through the Western government records of that period and find a paper trail. It never happened in the west and I don't expect it. Nobody actually opened any stacks about any of their findings, especially on such sensitive matter. Or did they? Digital archives are based on real documents. There's always official version of history and if you disagree, too bad for you.

    I’d expect the Soviet press to be all over it https://ihistorian.livejournal.com/27182.html As I said, there were articles published. Just not overwhelming number of it. On the bright side, the information in real world does not vanish without a trace. And I'm pretty sure at some point the truth will be revealed anyway, whether it will be relevant or not.

    The solution is looking for parameters that are not directly connected to the situation, but can still count as evidence. But who is going to do that? I don't know. Maybe just do something like this: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Census_Population_Graph_from_1790.svg I see here very prominent dip in growth rate in 1930s, and what does this suppose to mean?

    781:

    The underlying causes of the Dust Bowl are not to be found in short-term fluctuations of the politico-economic system in the 1930s. Those had the effect they did because the region's agriculture was all to cock anyway, due to lack of understanding of the climate and of the ecosystem that agriculture was displacing, exacerbated by some unfortunate coincidences.

    The area had long been thought unsuitable for agriculture and had instead been used as somewhere to shove the continent's indigenous inhabitants where they wouldn't get under people's feet (see 19th century maps which label Oklahoma as "Indian Territory"). But as the immigrant population continued to grow and want land it was opened up to settlement anyway and people began ploughing it up. Coincidentally about the same time the regional climate entered an anomalously wet phase, which produced conditions suitable for growing the theory that ploughing up land and planting crops altered the local climate and made it wetter - and this in turn encouraged people to plough it up more.

    I'm not sure whether they simply didn't understand that ploughing it up destroyed the natural root systems that bound the soil, or they did know but didn't care because under the wetter conditions which they thought were their own doing it didn't need binding anyway, but the result was the same either way.

    So sooner or later it was bound to fail in some way when the climate anomaly reverted to normal and knocked all the false assumptions out from under everyone's feet. Where the politico-economic fluctuations come into it is in the further unfortunate coincidence that the climate reverted to normal at a time when increased production was being called for - partly as it happens due to shortage of grain imports from Russia. This meant the failure was rather worse than it might otherwise have been.

    It is a failure of capitalism in that the factors which encouraged people to farm the area, which determined how hard they farmed it, which had the controlling short-term influence on their lives that directed their behaviour, and which defined the forms which the human misery resulting from the ecological disaster took, were capitalist in nature. But it is a failure of capitalism overlain on a failure of climatology and agricultural science, and that failure in turn derives from ordinary ignorance, partly general in the lack of development of those sciences at the time and partly specific in that nobody had any experience of trying to farm that area and of what worked and what didn't.

    If Stalin had been implementing his agricultural policies in the Dust Bowl region rather than the Ukraine, the human misery would have been much the same, but that might have had the consequence of easing the pressure on the land and so mitigating the ecological aspect of the disaster. But if the US had had a communist government all along, with a developed and stable communist system of agriculture; had opened the previously untouched land to agriculture and established communist farms and farmers on it, at the same period as the actual settlement happened; and had then had to increase production to meet a shortfall in imported grain at the same time as actually happened; the ecological consequences would have been much the same, and for the same reasons of basically not knowing how the land in that region all works.

    782:

    ...US dust bowl didn't lead to famine, just malnourishment.

    Wut.

    You do know why they called it "Black Friday", right?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_(storm)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_Conservation_and_Domestic_Allotment_Act_of_1936

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1000-mile-long-storm-showed-horror-life-dust-bowl-180962847/

    They like their little jokes.

    "Dust Bowl didn't cause famine"

    No, only the most iconic pictures of US Americans pleading for food under advertisements evar: Ok, fucking LOL.

    Major search engines are attempting to stop this one, which is 100% the most iconic photo of the era. Ah, wait...

    NOPE, TROLOLOLOL.... someone's spiked the entire Google / Bing DBs for this, the most iconic photo of the generation.

    NOPE, THIS FUCK-TWATS REALLY ARE PURGING THEIR HISTORY. WARNING WARNING.

    Ok, here's the test.

    Find the iconic propaganda picture of a line of USA people (B/W) queuing in a food line with a billboard above them. Line runs Left to Right.

    It's one of the most iconic pictures of the era.

    Now give us a link. And your search terms + engine.

    That's getting fucking bestial mate.

    783:

    Billboard reads: "The American way of life" or similar.

    B/W.

    Unemployed queue L/R.

    Major use in CCCP and era defining iconic image.

    Now go try to find it on all the img sites if you don't know the photographer / title.

    That's Fascism.

    784:

    bread line image gets the usual ones (google) I remember. e.g. https://imgur.com/gallery/xdgj3Zf "World's Highest Standard of Living"

    785:

    One more word on the need to massively expand nuclear power:

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/only-nuclear-energy-can-save-the-planet-11547225861?mod=e2fb

    Only Nuclear Energy Can Save the Planet Do the math on replacing fossil fuels: To move fast enough, the world needs to build lots of reactors

    Today, more than 80% of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels, which are used to generate electricity, to heat buildings and to power car and airplane engines. Worse for the planet, the consumption of fossil fuels is growing quickly as poorer countries climb out of poverty and increase their energy use. Improving energy efficiency can reduce some of the burden, but it’s not nearly enough to offset growing demand.

    Any serious effort to decarbonize the world economy will require, then, a great deal more clean energy, on the order of 100 trillion kilowatt-hours per year, by our calculations—roughly equivalent to today’s entire annual fossil-fuel usage. A key variable is speed. To reach the target within three decades, the world would have to add about 3.3 trillion more kilowatt-hours of clean energy every year.

    Solar and wind power alone can’t scale up fast enough to generate the vast amounts of electricity that will be needed by midcentury, especially as we convert car engines and the like from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy sources. Even Germany’s concerted recent effort to add renewables—the most ambitious national effort so far—was nowhere near fast enough. A global increase in renewables at a rate matching Germany’s peak success would add about 0.7 trillion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity every year. That’s just over a fifth of the necessary 3.3 trillion annual target...

    And when nature does cooperate, the energy is sometimes wasted because it can’t be stored affordably. Bill Gates, who has invested $1 billion in renewables, notes that “there’s no battery technology that’s even close to allowing us to take all of our energy from renewables.” If substantially expanded, wind, solar and hydropower also would destroy vast tracts of farmland and forest.

    What the world needs is a carbon-free source of electricity that can be ramped up to massive scale very quickly and provide power reliably around the clock, regardless of weather conditions—all without expanding the total acreage devoted to electric generation. Nuclear power meets all of those requirements.

    Nuclear power is the safest form of energy by far, especially compared with coal, which continues to cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths a year from air pollution in addition to contributing to climate change.

    P.S. Nuclear waster is a problem, but already solvable. In 100 years ( a life of storage casks ) there is 100 times less radiation than in cooled down fuel after removal from reactor and most of left radiation is from transuranic elements which a) are known how to separate b) could be transmuted in fast reactors. so basically the only worry is cesium and strontium which are hard to transmute. But they have relatively short half life, so in 300 years the level of radiation is comparable to coal ash (and after 100 years in casks there is 10 times less of these elements, so after separation - all cesium and strontium can be stored in one facility for entire earth fleet).

    786:

    European endpoint FWIW

    788:

    If you can't spot that's been purged, well.

    It's been aggressively purged.

    Did you do the grep?

    789:

    "Whatever"

    Already proved it a million times.

    Already proved the HSS are complicit.

    Already proved that we survive.

    Already proved the Light Fantastic is all a fucking scam.

    Watches Orbs shatter

    "The Americans are not your friends, your allies or anything but your adversaries"

    Kinda tired.

    No-one was on our side, no-one came and said hello, no-one rescued the Princess.

    Oh.

    Apart from the fucking ORZ.

    790:

    Oh, FFS.

    AMERICANS, THESE ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS:

    An important reminder to all left- and center-left folks who have fallen in love in recent years with counterintelligence: Doing counterintelligence well requires counterintelligence authorities. Please don't forget that when all this is over. B Wittes, whatever, fucking psycho land.

    IF YOUR LEFT PARTY ARE THE SPOOKS AND CIA AND NASTIES THAT RUN BLACK OPS, THEN YOUR RIGHT IS 100% FASCIST.

    Seriously?

    ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?

    Well, in 2019, we were lucky that the American LEFT wing parties ran with the CIA, because, Lordy, was the Right Wing out of control.

    That's it.

    Fucking done.

    USA ENDPOINT AND WE DO NOT FUCK AROUND.

    THE CIA IS YOUR LEFT WING PARTY NOW.

    YOU KILL PEOPLE WITH BAD ALGOS ON DBS NO-ONE CAN SEE SPARKED BY BAD INTEL RUN BY CORRUPT LOWEST BIDDER SHIT THAT THE WORST RU BLACK STUFF EASILY HACKS. YOU FUCKING PSYCHOS. EVEN HITLER HAD LITTLE FUCKING NAME-TAGS.

    That's it, we're out.

    They told us we were idiots for staying around, but this? ffs

    791:

    PATRIOT ACT: EVERYONE IS A TARGET. 2001

    NO, REALLY: 2019 - WE'RE GOING TO KILL ALL OF YOU WHO DO NOT COMPLY.

    Fucking cunts.

    792:

    Did you do the grep? Of course. Lots of them. Fascinated (very) that I did not find what I was looking for. (Closest was "laughing all the way to the Void." but it was more like context around something similar to that, and I recall different semantics.) I don't have a good way to do semantic greps and guests have been interfering with concentration.

    Of the links in #787, they're fine and searches seemed same. I reviewed/tightened up jails, script blockers, etc a bit, just because.

    I might try with an American endpoint and another machine, out of curiosity.

    793:

    A contributing factor to the dust bowl was WW1, which cut off Russia* from selling wheat raising prices to the point of getting the attention of American speculators, plowing up dubious acreage with even less knowledge than actual wheat farmers, who couldn't pay off loans when prices went back to normal after the war, on top of the environmental destruction waiting for drought.

    *Was one of Kaiser Bill's war aims disrupting Russian development?

    794:

    Pshaw. FDR, JFK, and Obama loved them some covert action. And some counterintelligence. That doesn't mean that the black bag crowd doesn't ride at the right stirrup of Attila the Hun, but that politics looks different at the Presidential level. Of these three, FDR was probably the most devious.

    795:

    Re: 'If you think that major Blue Chip stocks are in a "free" market,...'

    I don't ...

    For a number of reasons and while stock buy-backs (to immediately inflate share prices thereby triggering a buying spree to further increase share prices) are part of it, I feel that it's more the AIs programmed to maximize returns (read: commissions) for the brokers. Over 95% of all stock trades are done by AI - no human involvement apart from whatever humans initially programmed them. There is no longer any reason to sit back, carefully evaluate and only then make your move. The AIs are in constant motion therefore more apt to create mini markets. If the 'program' tells them any movement greater than X is a buy, then the AI will buy. Ditto selling. It's a trading cloud. (Maybe this is what an electron field looks like?)

    796:

    One thing that's missing is that, during the settlement of the West, there was this theory that "rain follows the plow," that where they cultivated more rain would fall. Largely this is self-serving BS (I'm not going to get into the weird world of changing the weather by planting forests), but since Western settlement happened to coincide with a wet phase, it provided a convenient fig leaf for all the politicians who persuaded farmers to go west to prosper.

    Anyway, the colossal screwup didn't end with the Dust Bowl, because the Dustbowl Region is underlain by the Ogallala Aquifer. As I understand it, one reason they haven't had a second Dust Bowl is that they water the land with well water. And then they export the resulting crops. Now, they're not stupid, and they've known they're in trouble since forever.* However, within 50 years the Ogallala aquifer will be tapped out, a big drought will mobilize the desert/prairie above to get it moving towards desert, and the people who currently depend on those crops will not get them, thereby provoking or exacerbating political unrest somewhere in the world.

    But heck, isn't development wonderful? Things can only get better.

    *Right now they're talking about smart water management. In the past they've "seriously" looked at creating an aqueduct that runs uphill across Texas from the Mississippi. That would only take five large nuclear plants to pump the water, and of course assumes that no one else (cough, Dallas, cough, Lubbock) would take a share as it came through and donate their reclaimed water to the stream in lieu. "Seriously" in this context means people got real money to produce real studies, because someone in power thought the concept would be really cool and stuff, and anyway it was cheaper than moving people off the land or getting them to create something useful like a Buffalo Commons.

    797:

    Hey, even major labs are finally getting fed up with racist jerks even those who have a Nobel:

    'The lab that James Watson led for decades has stripped the Nobel laureate of his last remaining honorary positions, it announced on Friday, in reaction to Watson’s refusal (in a recent documentary) to take back statements widely regarded as racist.'

    https://www.statnews.com/2019/01/11/lab-james-watson-racist-remarks/

    798:

    "The solution is looking for parameters that are not directly connected to the situation, but can still count as evidence. But who is going to do that? I don't know. Maybe just do something like this: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Census_Population_Graph_from_1790.svg I see here very prominent dip in growth rate in 1930s, and what does this suppose to mean"

    Let me add numbers to that graph

    1920: 106 million 1930: 123 million (+17 million) 1940: 132 million (+9 million) 1950: 151 million (+19 million)

    Why did the population grow much more slowly in the 1930s than before?

    Events which caused an increase in population growth before the Great Depression 1. The population in 1920 was measured after WWI, the Spanish Flu, and right before the Depression of 1920. All of these events depressed the birth rate, and encouraged women to put off having children. As soon as prosperity returned, you were going to have a baby boom. This can be seen in the ~3.5 TFR in the US in the postwar era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_of_1920%E2%80%9321 https://www.prb.org/us-fertility/

  • When the Immigration act of 1924 was enacted, 15% of the population was born in another country, and a third consisted of first and second generation immigrants. Immigration dropped precipitously after this act became law. As an aside, many first generation immigrants aged out of their child bearing years in the 1930s, depressing the birth rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924

  • The Great Migration ensured that living standards for formerly rural whites and blacks rose, and child mortality fell, as they moved into Northern cities.

  • Events which decreased population growth during the Great Depression 1. The Great Depression caused the TFR to decline to ~2.1 as poverty caused American women to delay child birth

  • Many former immigrants left the US for much better economic conditions in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, or Europe. Contra popular belief, migration in that era was not a once-in-a-lifetime event.

  • While in theory anyone could come to the US from Latin America, reality was far different if you were not white. The US deported around 2 million Mexicans during the Great Depression. That might depress population growth, don't you think? https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/09/08/437579834/mass-deportation-may-sound-unlikely-but-its-happened-before

  • Events which caused an increase in population growth after the Great Depression 1. Once WII was over, TFR shot to around 3.5. This understates the transformation, since many women who remained childless during the depression and war had around 3 children.

    Addendum Based on this data, I can infer that the average American during the Great Depression had a better standard of living than the average Russian after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After all, the US population grew by 9 million people.

    799:

    "No, only the most iconic pictures of US Americans pleading for food under advertisements evar: Ok, fucking LOL."

    You can see similar lines of homeless people today in cities such as New York, London, or Sydney. This isn't a sign of a hidden famine.

    "Major search engines are attempting to stop this one, which is 100% the most iconic photo of the era. Ah, wait..."

    Your inability to use a search engine isn't a sign of a conspiracy.

    It's enlightening that you're avoiding any mention of the actual death toll. "In the Dust Bowl, about 7,000 people, men, women and especially small children lost their lives to “dust pneumonia.” At least 250,000 people fled the Plains." https://www.denverpost.com/2011/05/12/when-deadly-dirt-devastated-the-southern-plains/

    Somehow, I don't see "dying of hunger" as being cited. Granted that they discount the people who died years later because of the dust, but that doesn't fall under the definition of famine.

    Speaking of, I wonder what the minimum number of deaths due to hunger has to be for it to be considered a famine?

    Try again, this is too easy.

    800:

    You're neglecting other events which conspired to create the Dust Bowl

  • The spread of tractors caused a consolidation of farms, which pushed the losers onto more marginal lands. Any farmer who couldn't afford a tractor and the acreage to make that investment profitable nevertheless had to grow as much food as the farmer with the tractor to keep their farm https://eh.net/encyclopedia/economic-history-of-tractors-in-the-united-states/

  • The above pushed many farmers into massive debt. It only got worse when their children returned home once they lost their jobs in the cities. Suddenly, farmers had more mouths to feed.

  • I wonder if removing horses from the farm ecosystem had any effects?

  • 801:

    EGA @ 783: Photos at google, search "margaret bourke-white world's highest standard of living"

    802:

    SR, here is some good evidence that the 1930s Ukraine famine was not the result of "well-intentioned mistakes": Lenin's handling of a similar famine in the 1920s. Lenin was open in asking the international community for help. A relief effort led by US President Herbert Hoover minimized the death toll of that famine

    https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/marchapril/feature/the-politics-food

    Herbert Hoover used his success in Ukraine to win the US Presidency in 1928.

    803:

    Yeah that photo was suppressed so hard it was only covered in Time magazine in 2014 by Ben Cosgrove

    http://time.com/3879426/the-american-way-photos-from-the-great-ohio-river-flood-of-1937/

    If you really believed this conspiracy theory you’d have to also believe that all the microfilm of all the newspapers in about 50 countries were also tampered with

    804:

    I’ve referred before here to Snyder’s work in Bloodlands. Dekulakisation was neither well-intentioned nor unintentional. It’s a familiar pattern, recognisable wherever an out-group is demonised and while it went along with collectivisation, it was far from an inevitable or necessary component thereof. This isn’t stuff to just speculate about, it’s quite well documented. Snyder certainly is no propagandist.

    805:

    s-r @ 769 So you are trying top say that there really were famines in Europe in the period 1920-39 & it’s ALL BEEN COVERED UP IN A BIG CONSPIRACY? Do you know, I don’t believe you …. Particularly as there are plenty of people still around from those times & things like oral history projects & NOT ONE PERSON has spoken out? I think you should rename yourself Flat-Earther, as that would be much more appropriate.

    Ioan @ 772 No, it was a disastrous mistake & probably had no “Intentions” at all. The precedent is other famines in that part of the world in the period 1870-1900. Where those local Brit administrators who did their best to relieve the conditions, were the ones who got promotions & “gongs” & good publicity. & @ 799 Precisely, just so, but some people are so in love with the rantings inside their heads, that reality is hard to deal with.

    EGA @ 773 Especially since it was largely Imperial Powers that did it. Yeah, Norway, Sweden & Denmark ….

    RvdH @ 775 That’s what I said – The Deep Ones …

    806:

    to Ioan @798 Yes please. Good to know - it shows a big difference between apologetic blabbering and actual data (one can compare that to today's noticeable demographic stagnation in Russia, which is an echo of 1990s economic decline).

    Anyways, the data show that the population of Ukraine grew in 1930-1933 by 2+ million people, and in 1933-1939 by another 9, on average 1+ million per year (around 3% per year). Doesn't quite complement to the statements of 3, 5 or even 8 million deaths.

    Somehow, I don't see "dying of hunger" as being cited. Granted that they discount the people who died years later because of the dust, but that doesn't fall under the definition of famine. It is because the "dying of hunger" term can be wildly interpreted. If you've been shot while trying to rob someone during famine, does it still count as that? Apparently it does, when it happens in USSR. When spreading misinformation, anticommunists pretty much assume that every person ever lived under rule of "dictatorship" died from said dictatorship rather than natural causes more common to the epoch. Greg Tingey seem to be content with this point of view.

    807:

    flat-earther @ 806 And you believe Stalin's administration's figures? People who accurately reported the drop in Soviet population ( Because they had been sent to the Gulag ) ... got sent to the Gulag.

    I STRONGLY SUGGEST that you read: THIS book "Hitler & Stalin, Parallel Lives", by Alan Bullock.

    808:

    Interesting that in the Dust Bowl discussion, several posters seem to be falling into the binary fallacy -- that is, that there was only one source for the problem. It's worth noting that when you have two opposing sides to an argument, and both muster reasonable evidence to support their position, the usual reality is that the answer is "some of both".

    Haven't refreshed my memory of the dust bowl recently, but the synthesis I took from my readings many years back was that it was a combination of at least three factors: unfortunate climatic conditions exacerbated by poor farming technique (possibly due to a lack of knowledge or knowledge transfer from extension specialists) and enabling political and economic conditions.

    It's certainly legitimate to argue over the relative strengths of these factors for the insights this argument provides, but this kind of problem can't be solved simply by attacking one of the problems. You need to consider them all, as well as their interactions.

    In terms of the Ogallala aquifer, Heteromeles proposed depletion within 50 years (presumably based on that recent study in Kansas, if I've sussed out the correct source). But estimates vary; one I saw a year or two back suggested as little as 20 years. And the older estimates I read didn't account for the possibility of nonlinear behavior towards the end of the aquifer's life (i.e., that the last dregs will be increasingly hard to extract). Were I a betting man, I'd bet that as soon as water prices start rising uncomfortably in the American midwest, the Americans will begin diverting water from the Great Lakes in vast quantities. (Following, presumably, the Colorado River model.) The ecological damage will be enormous, and there will probably be significant problems for Great Lakes shipping through the seaway, but at least Americans will still have cheap corn syrup and overpriced ethanol, right?

    809: 801, 803, yes, of course we're wrong. We're often deliberately wrong. Raving incoherent nonsense is part camouflage in certain places.

    Please read Now go try to find it on all the img sites if you don't know the photographer / title. and reduce your literacy factor by 3-4 grades and try it. dust bowl + queue + advert level stuff. It's either an indication that LIFE magazine is enforcing its copyrights (unlikely), the largest FDR propaganda drive of certain eras no longer exists to Americans (and thus major issues with education and/or ability to address the actual serious water issues about to kick off) and/or casual history web has forgotten the picture exists (unlikely) or info-bubble stuff as well as other things. And we'd have to check the history to make sure the flood story checks out (or was that era's propaganda drive, given 60,000 billboards advertizing the new deal was made, that's hella accidental double-whammy).

    The broader point is read the .pdf and then notice I didn't even address the suggestion about hidden European (non-colonial) famines.

    It's not literal. Chase the Tumblr nipple and owl trail for a hint. [Short story, apparently 50% owl = passes the censor]. Or recent questions over US government websites losing their certifications / data.

    Or ask yourself the likelyhood that that 70% tax suggestion is serious as the US government remains closed and a new FDR is signed.

    BREXIT kicks in, US Gov down at the same time?

    Gotta be a plan somewhere DAVE.

    ~

    Since we forget you're not sharing the same data, Western Media is revving up the engines to be particularly unpleasant and in-your-face-offensive to anyone left of Tommy Robinson, the UK question is still up in the air. "The Grid Lives".

    The outrage was about other things. Mainly DNA sales, hacks, facial recognition and ecological data.

    We noticed a new orca baby, so that was sweet. "King of the Minorities" Tweet of January so far.

    p.s.

    The Memory Hole is real. Back story to who leaks what is an interesting one.

    810:

    No problem, glad to help. I don't think your numbers suggest that the famine didn't happen, and 8 million can also be reasonable. Here, I'll show you

    Population of Japan: 1940: 73 million 1950: 83 million

    So, the population grew by 10 million within that decade. Does that mean that the WWII deaths are fiction? I'm not being rude, but I would suggest an introductory book to demographics.

    I've just looked up Demographics of Ukraine on Wikipedia. The population grew by barely 1 million between 1933 and 1939. The increase of 9 million you cite is due to administrative boundary changes in 1940 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine

    Even so, I'd need more data in order to tease out how many died in the famine. I would need 1. TFR by year going all the way back to 1920 2. Migration patterns going all the way back to 1920 3. A map of the areas not affected by the famine, and their TFR 4. Any migration patterns within 5 years after the famine ended.

    I already knew that information for the US during the Great Depression, but I have no idea what it was for Ukraine?

    Believe it or not, TFR tends to increase during famines or wars in regions below a certain level of development, but tends to fall during economic troubles. It's a fascinating societal defense mechanism. Look at Germany's population: it was constant during the entirety of WWI, and only fell in 1919 and 1920 as a result of the Spanish Flu. In short, the data I've been given is not enough to discount the possibility of a 8-million casualty famine. Even for the US, that's why I ignored population growth until I had to debunk your belief that the lower population growth was due to a hidden famine.

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

    811:

    "#801, 803, yes, of course we're wrong. We're often deliberately wrong. Raving incoherent nonsense is part camouflage in certain places."

    Haha. SURE. Rolls eyes If believing that helps you sleep better at night...

    812:

    "Where those local Brit administrators who did their best to relieve the conditions, were the ones who got promotions & “gongs” & good publicity."

    Yes, and some who probably made the famines worse for whatever reason, and might have been given higher promotions once the "cameras were out of sight"? SR is not the only one who has to back his assertions up with hard data.

    813:

    In terms of the Ogallala aquifer, Heteromeles proposed depletion within 50 years (presumably based on that recent study in Kansas, if I've sussed out the correct source). But estimates vary; one I saw a year or two back suggested as little as 20 years. And the older estimates I read didn't account for the possibility of nonlinear behavior towards the end of the aquifer's life (i.e., that the last dregs will be increasingly hard to extract). Were I a betting man, I'd bet that as soon as water prices start rising uncomfortably in the American midwest, the Americans will begin diverting water from the Great Lakes in vast quantities. (Following, presumably, the Colorado River model.) The ecological damage will be enormous, and there will probably be significant problems for Great Lakes shipping through the seaway, but at least Americans will still have cheap corn syrup and overpriced ethanol, right?

    I'd take that bet, if I took bets. Incidentally, "within 50 years" covers "as little as 20 years," as I'm sure you know. What actually happens is a balance of conservative and innovative water management (plus rain years) lengthening the time to failure, minus greed, drought, and tragedy of the commons "milkshake sucking" shortening the time. I suspect there's a lot of randomness hiding in the system, which is why I think "within 50 years" is more accurate, if less precise.

    As for pumping water out of the Great Lakes, where would it go? Certainly not to the Ogallala, that's waaay on the other side of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and several thousand feet higher. If it would take 5 nukes to power water being pumped uphill from the Mississippi to the Ogallala, it would take twice that, plus aqueducts crossing the Mississippi and Missouri, to water that area from the Great Lakes. Certainly one could use lake water closer to the Great Lakes, but the Upper Midwest already grows vast amounts of corn and soy, watered by rain and snowmelt. There's no reason to irrigate those lands because it would only add to the expense of grain. The best use for Great Lakes water would be to water cities and industry along the lakes, and that would mean reviving the Rust Belt and making cities like Cleveland and Detroit good places to live again. I'm all for that, and indeed I think it will happen. But shipping water from the Great Lakes across the Mississippi is daft.

    I tend to agree with the Cadillac Desert thought of the future of the American West--that it will follow the deep history of irrigated landscapes in the Middle East. Where irrigation is currently used in the West, a combination of drought (from climate change) and salting of the soil (from transpiration and decreased irrigation) will force farmers and ranchers out, and they'll move back east of the Mississippi. Similar things happened throughout irrigated farmlands the Fertile Crescent, which is one reason why it's a much less productive area than it was at the beginning of civilization. Throughout the history of the settlement of the Western US, there have been tremendous government subsidies to incentivize people to create farms and ranches (hence the derogatory term "welfare ranchers" for all these western wingnuts who prate endlessly about self-sufficiency and lack of government meddling, despite the huge subsidies that keep them in business). All this century of support has done is to green up an area that's maybe the size of Vermont (per Cadillac Desert). That's Manifest Destiny for you. As these subsidies become impolitic and uneconomical, I'd predict that they will go away, leading to a reverse migration east and (to a lesser extent) north. The more stable area in the West, population-wise, will be the Pacific Northwest down to Sacramento, but this area doesn't have room for millions of people moving north and coastward. If those displaced people are going to survive (and note that I'm including people from southern California, Vegas, and Salt Lake), they're going to have to resettle those nice forests of the Atlantic states that their ancestors moved out of 150 years ago, leading to another epidemic of deforestation.

    As for the Ogallala and the Dakotas, I like the idea of the Buffalo Commons. Dakotans hated the original idea when it was proposed in the 1980s (sounded too Communist and/or Indian for those hard right, uber white folks). The original proposal was simply that, if population density in the rural Dakotas was inevitably falling back to where it was pre-settlement, due to a combination of farm failures and industrial agriculture needing fewer people, it might make sense for the remaining towns to collectively manage huge ranches that produced bison and subsistence farmed, rather than trying to farm commercially. After all, the Plains Indians managed to make it work, and bison are far better suited to that landscape than cattle are. There was a lot of political blowback when this was first voiced in the 1980s, but apparently many people in the Dakotas are starting to realize that it's a practical solution (although they still seem to prefer fracking and other Boom-Bust industries to, you know, long term survival).

    Bison roamed the area over the Ogallala too. Given the area's need to have the soil under sod, it might make sense to have vast bison ranches there too. The problem is that, since grain from the area is exported, this could lead to food shortages in the Middle East and elsewhere, so making the Ogallala region sustainable and non-farming could trigger an uprising somewhere else.

    814:

    In Lovecraft the “Deep Ones” are BLUE HADES interbreeding with the people of Innsmouth. I forget where DEEP SEVEN turned up in his work or what he called them.

    815:

    "There was a lot of political blowback when this was first voiced in the 1980s, but apparently many people in the Dakotas are starting to realize that it's a practical solution (although they still seem to prefer fracking and other Boom-Bust industries to, you know, long term survival)."

  • How many North Dakotans have lived there since the 1980s? The population shrunk from 652k in 1980 to 639k in 1990, before rising to 755k in 2017. This of course hides other population movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dakota#Demographics
  • This pattern is more pronounced when you remember that the prairie states have some of the highest TFR in the nation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_fertility_rate

  • Many in North Dakota believe that they could still become Idaho. For reference, many people who are tired of life in California or too poor to afford it move to Boise. Alternatively, it is a place where conservatives in Silicon Valley move to not live in a blue state (probably many move there to live in a lilly-white state). The source of this population isn't just Silicon Valley, it's also the 10 million people of Inland California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho#Demographics

  • Before fracking became economic, North Dakota had proposed bringing back the Homestead Act due to declining population densities. The Buffalo idea was still dismissed; they still wanted industrial agriculture.

  • 816:

    In other news, the Female labor force participation rate (LFPR) is back to its 2000 high. However, the fact that the male LFPR has not recovered means that the gap is the lowest its been in US history.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-13/millennial-women-are-pouring-into-jobs-fueling-u-s-labor-gains?srnd=premium

    This is both good news and bad news. The good news is that women's role in society is improving. The bad news remains that if men are consistently stuck in a role of earning less than women,

  • It's just as unfair as the inverse
  • It creates social problems. It may not benefit Trump directly, but I can see a successor using this much more skillfully
  • 817:

    DEEP SEVEN is almost certainly the Cthonians, one of Brian Lumley's creations. You can find them in a book called The Burrowers Beneath, which I would heartily recommend for anyone who enjoys Lovecraft. A sequel, The Transition of Titus Crow is also pretty good, but I wouldn't read any of the other sequels. There may also be some short stories as well.

    818:

    CD, the reason why your google search is having trouble isbits not actually acdust bowl photo. Which you would know if you read the article I linked

    It was shot in Louisville KY during the Ohio river flood of 1937. So a very important depression era photo but there was no dust bowl in The Midwest, the dust bowl was a thousand miles away

    If you google “photo great ohio river flood highest standard of living” you will find it at the top of your results

    819:

    Or google “photo Great Depression highest standard of living “

    820:

    Or “photo Great Depression line in front of billboard “ also returns it as the top hit

    The word “queue” is not typically used in the us for people standing in line, nor is the word advert

    821:

    Though actually now that I tried it “photo Great Depression queue in front of advert” also works

    What specific search term where you using ?

    822:

    Yes, it's been fixed for the majors: the TIME one appears as do other pininterest ones. I wouldn't have shouted so hard if we hadn't spotted it. Old archives etc still aren't appearing (it's a classic of old skool propaganda) although old sites often link-rot or vanish.

    Magical gnomes exist. Must believe in Wizardry Owls.

    (Note: we're also aware that the split distinction of queue =/= USA usage and other things. We shotted it at grade 3-4 level with a number of variants / finesses. If you read the .pdf, it's fairly clear we knew what the specific target was. Or perhaps Void Screaming was all in our head and it never happened, like magic).

    TIME has new ownership though (!) and The Times thinks Parliament can stage coups against themselves, so odd things rumbling in the server rooms above. (And FR is getting.. spicy).

    Note: still not found hidden European famines, although the meta-point being made about information quality / access is probably made. If a bit rudely.

    823:

    The word “queue” is not typically used in the us for people standing in line, nor is the word advert Yes. This is why I've been 1/2 yearning for a decent "free" commercial semantic search engine.[0] The negative is that it would be used (certainly first) for negatives like censorship/control, e.g. automation assists for censorship like this: Learning China’s Forbidden History, So They Can Censor It A tougher test is parsing the roundabout ways that China’s internet users evade stringent censorship to talk about current affairs. Take, for example, a Hong Kong news site’s 2017 commentary that compared the six Chinese leaders since Mao Zedong to emperors during the Han dynasty. Some Chinese users started using the emperors’ names when referring to the leaders. Beyondsoft’s workers have to know which emperor’s name is associated with which leader. It's possible to do a very basic version of this with complex google search queries and similarly with some other engines, but one must do the synoymyms collections manually.

    EGA @809: The outrage was about other things. Mainly DNA sales, hacks, facial recognition and ecological data. Thanks, I can work with/chew on this. We noticed a new orca baby, so that was sweet. "King of the Minorities" Tweet of January so far. Yes, sweet. That led to this piece - http://projects.seattletimes.com/2018/orcas-in-peril/ (Nov 11, 2018). (I don't see it linked here previously.)

    [0] AFIK, there is none such; here's some blather about current state from the SEO point of view: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/semantic-search-seo/264037/

    824:

    This is an article about Tulsi Gabbbard, who is one of the Democratic candidates running. If she wins, she'd be the first Hindu President. On the other hand, she backs Modi's BJP, Assad, and probably Putin?

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/what-does-tulsi-gabbard-believe

    Here is an article summarizing Bangladesh's economic development. https://www.brownpundits.com/2019/01/13/bangladesh-economy-and-politics-in-imbalance/

    825:

    "The Economist" have released their democracy index for the year, there's a whitepaper if you sign up. But it's widely covered so here's the kiwi take on it. Shockingly Aotearoa is still fourth despite making no changes to the systems of government. Australia is 9th, the UK 14th and the US 25th (and falling).

    I can't help but think there's a lot of inertia in the measurements, but overall that's a good thing (at least at the top of the list).

    based on five categories,of which only political participation improved globally in 2018. [...] Of all 60 indicators in the Democracy Index, women's political participation had improved more than any other single indicator in the EIU model.

    826:

    There was an amusing piece the the Guardian recently about Kate Bush. Who foolishly admitted to thinking that having Theresa May as PM was a good thing (on the basis that more female leaders is good, even if they're conservatives) and was thus assumed to be a Tory by the TLDR crowd. She finally publicly recanted, because apparently just context wasn't enough.

    I do wonder whether Bush's assumption is correct. Hmm. Are right wing/neoliberal/conservative women less awful than their male counterparts? Thatcher, sure but also Foster and May (I prefer Foster and Allen :)

    827:

    Well... I'd suggest that if someone is arrested and charged with cannibalism, as 2,505 persons were in Ukraine in the years 1932-1933, then it's probably famine related.

    See Davies and Wheatcroft, 'The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931-33' their data on cannibalism arrests is based on local government and OGPU (police) records.

    828:

    Well maybe, now it seems less likely than ever, Julie Bishop v Turnbull or Pyne (v Abbott or Dutton isn’t a fair comparison!).

    829:

    It was never broken

    You just include the “dust bowl” term”

    As you stated in @809

    “try it. dust bowl + queue + advert level stuff. It's either”

    You told google to show you pictures of the dust bowl and that is what it did

    No gnomes, no fairies, no vast global conspiracies just you making a memory mistake

    830:

    Well, it does take rather more "context" to understand that as the kind of melon-twister to be expected from Kate Bush, as opposed to some different kind, than is presented in the article; you have to supply a lot of it yourself; possibly EGA might be one of those better placed to do so, as there are relevant concepts peripherally mentioned in her posts.

    The original article is at http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/in-conversation-with-kate-bush/ and is dated 28th November 2016; the part in question says:

    Q: A track called "Waking the Witch" - which was released in 1985 - was performed for Before The Dawn. You once said that the song was about "the fear of women's power." With regard to Hillary Clinton's recent defeat, do you think that this fear is stronger than ever?

    A: We have a female prime minister here in the UK. I actually really like her and think she's wonderful. I think it's the best thing that's happened to us in a long time. She's a very intelligent woman but I don't see much to fear. I will say it is great to have a woman in charge of the country. She's very sensible and I think that's a good thing at this point in time.

    People were saying very much the same thing at the start of Thatcher's reign - hailing the arrival of a female PM as a great victory for feminism - until she'd been in a bit longer and more people were getting to realise how awful she really was. (Not that there hadn't been signs before she became PM, but people naturally pay a lot more attention to someone who is PM than to someone who isn't, especially when they're not really into politics anyway, so it took people a while to catch up.) And of course back then it did mean a lot more for a woman to become PM.

    See the tendency Hollywood has developed of having no clue what to do next to make scads of money to the point where they just give up, pick some film that was a big hit 30 or 40 years ago, and bring out a shitty caricature based around loads of CGI plus enhanced sex and violence which demonstrates a deep ignorance of what really made the original great? That's May to Thatcher, that is. Comments like the above Bush quote are just part of the pattern. There is some difference in that the internet has made older articles more accessible while also removing most of the cues that would previously have made the date dead obvious, so it's become a lot easier to get your knickers in a twist over finding someone's statement in some article without realising that you've just dug up something that predates much of the reason for your horror, but that doesn't really make a whole lot of difference to anything.

    831:

    Hey, Mr Man.

    If you imagine that we only tried those words, then, DERP LE FUCKING DERP.

    YEP, I IZ 11 AND WHAT IS DIZ?

    A) HEY, LOOK AT [IMAGE THAT WE KNOW EXISTS ALREADY AND KNOW THE PURPOSE OF IT]

    B) USE LOWER EDUCATION LANGUAGE TO TRY TO FIND IT

    C) BORING AMERICAN SEO SHITE THAT NO-ONE CARES ABOUT BECAUSE THE NEW OWNER OF TIME IS A REACTIONARY MUPPET WHO MADE BILLIONS ON DODGY DEALS

    D) YOU'VE 100% ABSOLUTE ZERO KNOWLEDGE OF THE ACTUAL ANARCHIST / TANKIE ARCHIVES THAT SHOULD IMMEDIATELY FLAG IT UP, EVEN AFTER THIS BITCH AND MOAN BUT DO NOT, BECAUSE IDIOTS TOOK THEM DOWN

    ...

    and so on.

    Like, literally, if you cannot read a single .pdf with an OWL on it, understand immediately that sleeping & us are """PROBABLY""" not being literal, but referencing other stuff, and then attempt this pissant little snark?

    Ok, it's fine: we get your perspective.

    "Enemy of my Enemy is an embarrassment"

    How do you think we feel about your species

    Here's a tip:

    A) Learn how the T institute was used for ~40 odd years to bait and Mind-Fuck "Conspiracy Theorists"

    B) Learn how many actual Anarchist archives were either burned down, infiltrated or had their users put through the Psycho-Grind-Mill back when computer security meant stopping your MUM use the phone

    C) Learn to parse fucking metaphors

    ZZZZZZ..

    Hey, know what?

    CIA is left, and you're not on the left, are you, sonny Jim? And in America, there ain't No Left.

    832:

    p.s.

    Yes, you can throw a SEO Chamber Pot of [USER IDENTIFIED] stuff easily to prevent searches working. You can do it for a single user, you can do it for a country, heck you can do it live-switching when using the actual internet and not this commercial bullshit.

    Oh, wait.

    You mean everyone doesn't already use the other Nets? And this is all a fucking wank-fest? Or are we suddenly pretending that this doesn't exist?

    Cool.

    Better go kill some children and traumatize them because you're fucking sociopaths.

    833:

    Lessons that innocent people should be told before utter bastards who have PENIS issues come calling, #2546546

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

    Oh, yeah.

    Memorial and all. Recent. Check your dates. Yeah, really might want to check the date there, Sonny Jim.

    [Fucking ADDICTS cannot even fucking M2 or M3 on the most basic shit, it's fucking APE LAND]

    834:

    Psssst.

    What did Mr S get done for?

    Was it:

    A) Illegally making publicly funded science papers available to all

    B) A sneaky C level Reddit deal to take him out of the $$$

    C) Breaking the WASP - Anglo-American hush hush super secret ILLisbiaa con job where the work of the real Minds gets ripped off for $$$ skimming

    D) Making a mockery of security theatre post 9/11 trauma / the USA psyho-break down.

    E) Finding some dodgy ass files that 100% implicated some SRS BNZ people in criminal stuff

    Pssst.

    All of the above.

    And they liked him.

    Think what they did to the Anarchists and others who took the Bait.

    p.s.

    You. Are. Out. Of. Your. League. Mr. Man.

    835:

    But yeah, totally.

    Imagine some idiot assuming that because they couldn't use words from Grade 3 or 4 properly they couldn't understand our vaunted SEO land.

    p.s.

    Might want to look into new FB stuff. Or the Yandex deal.

    Or, you know, the fact you're all APES running around with fucking massive erection issues and can be blind-sided by bait when the issuer even tells you what she's doing.

    I mean, come on.

    ROLLS EYES

    836:

    Hexad.

    For Greg etc.

    The T institute above is one of the oldest and nastiest honey-pots on the internet and is run by sociopaths. It also used to run a lot of social engineering stuff before the hard-core stuff came online.

    If you don't know that, well, welcome to the Matrix.

    And yes, if you poke that BEAR it pokes back and you generate some flags.

    See?

    Now grep the entire threat for threat flags and feel ashamed.

    Also, if you've not spotted a massive spike in peeeples 100% unable to deal with metaphors, language, nuance or stuff because the old "Conspiracy Theory" bullshit failed, well.

    HEGEL:

    PUT THE GRID THERE PUT THE SPIKE LEAK OF INFLUENCE INSTITUTE THERE WATCH THEM PLAY

    Dude... hey, did you notice this Sudan thing? [3 days later The Times runs it]

    2019, right?

    Wait until you see the actual stuff coming to town.

    You're Fucked

    837:

    a female prime minister here in the UK

    Speaking of which, where are the Labour women?

    Also, I'm not saying your prime ministers are corrupt, incompetent or some horrible combination of both... but advertising their services on Amazon? Here's the "related" ad that came up in duckduckgo when I searched for "list of uk prime ministers"

    Buy Prime Ministers Of Britain at Amazon - Prime Ministers Of Britain, Low Prices...

    Can I varnish it and put it in the garden to scare off birds (and small children?)

    838:

    Yeah, looks as though it will be quite a while before get another woman as Prime Minister in Oz.

    But then, given the rate we burn through them "quite a while" might turn out to be several weeks, maybe even months. I would be quite happy if Blob Stuffin was moved aside in favour of, say, an Asian-Australian lesbian or even A Blonde Bobblehead{tm} chosen for her photogenicity(1). We have Gladys Vorkosigan(2) as leader here in NSW and I'm not entirely sure that she's better than whatever random male the NSW Liberal far right would put up. It seems that whatever the voters want, the NSW Liberals will inflict a backstabbing lunatic.

    (1) Plibersek is not actually a bobblehead, but she does look too much like the US politician stereotype for my liking. In a way I'm glad we have Blah Somefink as ALP leader and PM-in-waiting just to make the point that you don't have to be Brad Pitt's evil twin to get elected. (2) you know who I mean. The actual Vorkosigans would probably be better, neofascist tendencies not disregarded.

    839:

    (for those not in on the joke, there's a cartoon called First Dog on the Moon that gets into The Guardian fairly regularly. That refers to Our Glorious Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in The Australian Federal Parliament by a variety of names, rarely including "Bill Shorten".

    840:

    It’s funny, when I read the thing about Bread Shortening I closed my eyes for a moment, during which I had pretty much the same train of thought about Plibersek, and chuckled when you said what I was thinking. PW is surely the single most qualified, but the ALP stains people over the years and unfortunately that doesn’t help with the whole having-to-appeal-to-racist-homophobic-arseholes-too thing, makes it into a two-fronted struggle, always able to be outflanked one way or another. Same way friggin’ Albo (permanent epithet I think) somehow manages to be considered to represent the “labor left”, inasmuch as there is one, while making nice with the everyone but. Albo’s probably more likely than TP or PW to slip the knife into BS too. And he’s probably the reason I’ll never give the ALP 1st preference again in my life (much as I actually quite like the ALP incumbent in my local state seat).

    QLD has a female premier too, not sure who the likely competitors would be, I think the male ones are out of the running for some reason or other (the most qualified is probably Cameron Dick, but I just can’t see QLD electing him as premier [Someone called Michael Hunt could do better]). My local MP is experienced, but most of that was as a Queensland Senator and he only came to state politics in the last 5 years. The most likely alternative premier is probably Jackie Trad, but the difference v the incumbent policitcally is practically nil.

    Interesting news - none other than D Koch got stuck into Berejiklian this morning on Sunirise over pill testing and the latest death. When you lose the segment of journalism DK represents and you are a conservative politician, something is not going well for you.

    841:

    "Speaking of which, where are the Labour women?"

    Being murdered by fucking Nazis.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Cox

    Having the piss taken over suffering brain farts at unfortunate moments

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Abbott#2017_general_election

    Simply being female and an MP is not an unusual thing these days, so they don't attract attention on that count alone.

    "Can I varnish it and put it in the garden to scare off birds (and small children?)"

    It'd probably be highly effective against small children, but I don't think it'd scare birds; rather, it would attract pigeons who thought your varnish job wasn't the most appropriate coating.

    842:

    Koch got stuck into Berejiklian this morning on Sunirise over pill testing and the latest death. When you lose the segment of journalism DK represents and you are a conservative politician

    That's pretty shocking. But then Koch is a drug user(1) so maybe it's a topic closer to home than his usual ranting?

    'We do not support pill testing,' Ms Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney. 'We do not support a culture which says it's okay to take illegal drugs.'

    I'm sure I saw a quote from her about junkies, but her endless chants about illegal drugs may just have corrupted my memory. She's really bad on the science too:

    “If we thought it would save a single life, of course we would go down that path,” she said. “Unfortunately, what pill testing. Like the kiwi drug dealers say "yeah right".

    Aotearoa is currently having a much more mature discussion of the issue, although context is everything and from the inside is looking grindingly slow. But when you compare Australian politicians to the NZ Minister of Police it's night and day (not just on drugs).

    (1) "SUNRISE stars Samantha Armytage, David Koch and Natalie Barr admitted to drug use and theft during a lie detector segment. The Channel Seven breakfast show hosts were willing participants in the ..." https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/morning-shows/sunrise-stars-admit-theres-someone-in-the-team-they-dont-like/news-story/5d54c6488c53c1fc70264a8df9952cb8

    843:

    The Jo Cox thing is awful, and IIRC it's being used right now by the arseholes who are harassing MPs outside parliament as a nasty twist on their harassment. That really pushes my "free speech" buttons and I'm seriously thinking the plod need to bin a couple of them on the basis that they're making credible threats of murder.

    If nothing else having those f**kers stand up in court and say "I'm not a credible witness, I'm a moron who says stupid shit expecting that people will ignore me because I'm convinced that I'm a pathetic little man"... put that in the news on TV. Or watch them say they're serious and go to jail for it.

    Sadly that's not quite how the law works. Well, you know, I'm anal and all the rest. Sorry, the acronym is actually INAL but that's how it reads to me :)

    844:

    The word "queue" is more commonly used in the U.K. If you're looking for photos from the depression in the U.S. try "breadline".

    The photo of people standing in line in front of the billboard that says "WORLDS HIGHEST STANDARD OF LIVING" should be in the first 10 results.

    845:

    Re: Russian/Soviet documents

    Tons of documents on this Brigham Young University site as well as links to other universities that have been collecting Russian/Soviet historical records in various media: paper, audio, video.

    https://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Russian_Revolution,_Civil_War_and_USSR_1917-1991

    FYI for non-Americans: BYU is an almost entirely Mormon uni (95%+ of its students are Mormons) and Mormons have a stated religious goal of getting every human alive or that has that ever lived counted and in their genealogy database. This makes BYU likeliest to have the most comprehensive birth, marriage and death data anywhere including modern-day Russia.

    846:

    Every time I hear this my mind immediately goes to Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘The Nine Billion Names of God’. Let’s hope they don’t finish up too soon...

    847:

    We haven’t had a good NSW state premier since Jack Lang and that’s going back a ways...

    848:

    EGA @ 822 AH THE GIANT CONSPIRACY – that isn’t there …. Like the hidden European famines that weren’t there either …. See also “Uhg” @ 829

    831, 832, 833, 834, 835, & 836 [ Apparent “message” for me in there that is nonetheless content-free ]

    Damian @ 840 Sorry, but I think I need either a translation or a glossary of all those people you mentioned … ( please? )

    Pigeon @ 841 Yes, well … Jo Cox – really, really not good D Abbott – I have yet to hear her string a coherent sentence together, or make an effective argument or even marshal a few facts OTOH, my local MP is going to be out of power, simply because she has no time for the great idiot “leader” Corbyn – S Creasy, of course.

    Moz @ 842 I was able to google that … So now I know who Gladys Vorkosigan is … I confused Koch with the US fascist, of course, until I saw the articles …. LOVED the “yeah right” advertising campaign ….

    SFR @ 845 Can “outsiders” use/browse/read/research that database, I wonder?

    849:

    Geez, don't make me think about stuff like that. I arrived when Bob "driving in the park" Carr was in full swing and wasn't that a happy little introduction to state politics in Australia. He likes nature the same way Trump likes women.

    In terms of dream candidates, I think Albanese would make a great stay at home dad and Bring Back Carmel! (they're married, he's the technically-left-wing headkicker in the federal Labour party, she's a former deputy state premier). If we wanted to really spook the horses, I vote Jihad Dib for Premier or failing that, speaker (my local state MP). He was a decent headmaster, I'm sure that with the mace in hand he would be an effective parliament-controller.

    850:

    There was a Tweet by someone in the US about the new/current US House of Representatives compared to 1989. Back then the Dems had 16 women out of 250-odd Representatives, today's House has 89 women as Dems. Back then the Republicans had 13 women out of 150-odd, a better F/M ratio than the Dems. Today they've got 13 women as Representatives, the same number as they had back in 1989 and a lower F/M ratio.

    851:

    Moz @ 849 Mu'ad Dib for premier?

    852:

    OTOH, my local MP is going to be out of power, simply because she has no time for the great idiot “leader” Corbyn – S Creasy, of course.

    The die-hard Blairites are gradually getting winkled out of safe Labour seats (I thought you meant Tony the Vicar when you started wittering on about worship of the Great Leader there...) but don't worry, someone with Stella's impeccable right-wing "hate the Poors" credentials and insider contacts will find a cushy landing-spot somewhere in an industry think-tank or as a lobbyist.

    853:

    Nojay FUCK RIGHT OFF & stop LYING She has done a lot for women in poor & difficult circumstances ... Like stopping loan-sharks & helping to enable better birth control ( Especially those "trapped" in NI ) & other health-related issues, which are borderline for the NHS ..... oh and "stalking" & similar mental health issues, which also largely affect women, poor or not. How that qualifies as "hate the poors" is difficult to understand. As for insider contacts, well, she is truly local, as in I know her mum, who has an allotment plot about 10 up from me ..... Somehow I don't think that qualifies as an industry wank-tank.

    I assume that you are supporting Corbyn in a no-deal crash-out Brexit, same as the equally mad tory right, from your ravings?

    854:

    Only if he can govern from the centre...

    855:

    Matt S Something ( Two somethings actually ) that J Corbyn is incapable of doing. He has not had one single orignal idea, nor changed his opinions on anything at all in the 46 years since 1973, & - a lifelong "rebel" he is amazingly intolerant of that trait in other people. Even when he or his office come up with a good idea ( Like worker-shareholders in FTSE-100 companies ) he promptly fucks it over, making it less attractive or sensible.

    856:

    Re: 'Can “outsiders” use/browse/read/research that database, I wonder?'

    Yes.

    BTW - almost all of the few docs that I have clicked were in Russian so not exactly easy to use.

    If you're primarily interested in exploring your family tree try:

    https://www.familysearch.org/about

    857:

    Can “outsiders” use/browse/read/research that database, I wonder?

    Are you having trouble getting in? My VPN is currently connecting through Costa Rica and the site doesn't seem to mind that. In general I've found the LDS, despite their madcap theology, to be pretty open and cooperative in such matters.

    858:

    to GT @807 I STRONGLY SUGGEST that you read: THIS book "Hitler & Stalin, Parallel Lives", by Alan Bullock. Nope, not going to spend money on this book - I've seen enough of such manipulations already. As an expert as this guy seem to be, he should know better what part of his work was stretched to fit in his ad Hitlerum.

    I wish there were more ficking books that'd explain and detail the story of appeasement and joint anti-communist campaigns of pre-WW2 Europe, so people would stop bringing up a bullshit suggestions that USSR was an ally of Nazi Germany, because it is just ridiculous.

    to Ioan @810 1940: 73 million 1950: 83 million

    The problem in that logic is pretty obvious to anyone familiar with demographics or basic math. You see, Japanese war casualties constitute only about 3 million of people, mostly soldiers, and that means 4% of population; population growth is 10 mln, which is 14%. In case of UkrSSR it is 10 mln to 30 - 33% growth, that's including migration and annexation. So, proposed number of deaths of 3, or maybe 8 millions would have had ... much more severe effect on that population than different sorts of Bullocks suggest.

    Which I'm going to discolose in next post, thanks to SFreader.

    859:

    Flat Earther @ 858 Bullock was a very highly regarded professional historian His earlier book on Adolf, "Hitler, a study in Tyrrany" should tell you ... No, it is & was not propaganda, unlike the crawling-to-the-Stavka lies that you seem so eager to swallow. bringing up a bullshit suggestions that USSR was an ally of Nazi Germany, Nazi-Soviet Pact. - Well? Are you claiming this did not happen? So no, not ridiculous ... to quote or paraphrase: "When the Lufwaffe was bombing London, they were using Russian ( Soviet ) oil"

    860:

    to SFR @845 Well thank you much, because this is exactly the thing I was looking for! Not too much can be said about that database in itself - it seems to be a fairly good collection of links, not good enough for scientific data, but rather for intellectual reading. And as for the fact that many links are in Russian..

    Anyway, it has a special place for "Famine in the USSR in 1932-1933" that links to that LJ article. (Quotes from documents and commentaries.) - oh yeah, sign me in. https://russia-xx.livejournal.com/82880.html

    I'm going to quote the important part (in translation and comment).

    In connection with yesterday’s PACE decision on the “great famine,” we place the relevant paragraph from our book: You prob. know what PACE is. Not going to concentrate on the entire text premise, which is a distilled German propaganda, it is the factological part that is important.

    If in a fairly prosperous 1928 there was almost no excess grain for export, then in 1930 the CCCR exported 4.8 million abroad, in 1931 - 5.1 million, and even in 1933 - 1.8 million tons grains. Oh right, so obviously reduction of export by a factor of 3 is the great idea to "starve the nation". I've seen this thesis to be debunked elsewhere, but sure thing somebody is going to bring it every decade again. Now to the most important part.

    If at a steady natural increase in previous years (an average of + 2.1 million), as of January 1, 1933, the population of the USSR would have been 162 million 902 thousand people, by January 1, 1934 it was 156 million. 797 thousand. The number of deaths from starvation is usually estimated at 6.5 million, with the majority of the dead - about 4 million - in Ukraine, where resistance to collectivization was the most stubborn. Severe living conditions of the early 1930s dramatically affected the number of births. Highlighted by me for your attention.

    In just 4 years of the “second civil war” of 1930–1933, the population decline in the country by 9.3 million surpassed that of 4 successful years of the NEP (1923–26). From Kazakhstan to China, up to 200 thousand nomads left collectivization, so the number of excess deaths can be taken as 9.1 million.

    Now, let me be specifically clear in this. There's no mention of gathered data. No sign of any complex statistics. No links to any archives. It is a approximation of a number, that was subtracted off hypothetical number, which doesn't even have any calculation presented. The number that was given as a proof of these events, is in fact a pure virtual construct, and is it any wonder that it usually variates by 50 (f*cking) percent either side?

    The total number of Russian and Ukrainian peasants killed by Stalin in 1932-33 exceeds the number of Jews killed by Hitler, and the number of all the belligerent countries killed on all fronts of the First World War. Well, this is just a cute icing on the cake, so you would be frightened by the evils of communism.

    Now, if we follow this exact logic and compare it to the Great Depression and other interesting numbers. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Census_Population_Graph_from_1790.svg (same graph as @780) By this logic, if we take the graph at around 1930-1940s and add some "natural increase" to the mix, using a simple ruler to extend the trend, we can easily and seamlessly derive about 8 to 12 million "excess deaths" to the toll and say that it was all covered up by US government. Which is, frankly, what has been done at least once in recent history. http://www.pravdareport.com/world/americas/19-05-2008/105255-famine-0/

    861:

    Let me point out the logical fallacy in pretty much all your posts that refer to "population growth". There is no such thing!

    To achieve population growth you require to have more births than deaths, and, in a war, pretty much by definition, the number of couples who have children reduces whilst at the same time the number of deaths increases.

    You should be able to find discussions by searching for "demographic timebomb" and/or "aging population".

    862:

    to GT @859 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement https://spartacus-educational.com/SPbritain.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bloodstone Pls stop trying. You may think I am a flat-earther, but only because you yourself are Ptolemaist that does not yield to simple historical facts.

    to paws4thot @861 Let me point out the logical fallacy in pretty much all your posts that refer to "population growth". Good point, but it is NOT MY suggestion to use "population growth" as a reference point to estimate the numbers of deaths. Read the source carefully please.

    863:

    Re: 'From Kazakhstan to China, up to 200 thousand nomads left ...'

    Not so fast ...

    I read up a bit on 20thC Khazakhstan history when I happened upon a young/new singer from that country. From what I read, when the Khazaks were forced to leave behind their nomadic lifestyles and become Russified city folk, millions died. It's only since the collapse of the USSR that Khazaks constitute the majority within their own country. I'm guessing that the same strategy was implemented in the other '-stans'. Despite politically imposed cultural suffocation, I'm also guessing that each clan somehow managed to maintain birth, marriage and death records of their own families just like their Soviet controlled neighbors in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, etc. who did this via church records even though religion/churches were officially forbidden to exist in communist USSR. Consequently, I'm more apt to think that these non-gov't records might be much more accurate (because they were so personally and culturally relevant) than stuff that's in the-then official Soviet gov't files.

    As for why I feel that church/clan records have merit: An elderly family member needed to track down family info. Her kids managed to get a copy of her baptismal certificate from the church which was then used to get her official gov't birth certificate. (Fortunately that particular church's records had not been completely destroyed during any of the info purges that occurred in that region.)

    Bottom line: Many millions died under that regime and there exist a variety of different sources of info that say this so I'm disputing your 'hundreds of thousands' because the death toll did end up in the millions: you're trivializing an attempt at genocide.

    864:

    So, we get up there with some yeast and barley.... and then, as the song says, we going sailing home o'er the foam!

    865:

    I'll reiterate my take: Putin had claws into the MC, as did a number of oligarchs. MC, unable to get American banks to loan him money, after six bankruptcies, was borrowing abroad. His bit thing was, in fact, money laundering. (And NY and NYC are going to send him to jail for that, and tax fraud.)

    Whether Putin pushed him to run or not, I think Putin put serious resources into helping his campaign, because Hillary was (and is) a serious hawk, and he, expecting her to win, was hoping to weaken her. Meanwhile, the MC's original plan was to run, not win. He'd wind up with greater name recognition than anyone, and could get loans and other trade on that. Winning was the worst possible thing for him.... Unfortunately, when people started cheering, his ego took over.

    Once he'd won, Putin used those claws to weaken the sanctions and other actions against Russia. I suspect, the longer Mueller went on, and the more that came out, he's decided to do what he can - and the MC is toast, he'll die in jail, if it all comes out, so he's doing what he can to get the MC to be our Boris Yeltsin. I doubt he expects the US to collapse, a la the USSR, but he does expect the US to be so weakened as to not trouble Russian and its interests anywhere near so much for years to come.

    866:

    Wood not available, now, anyway. Formerly? Am I misremembering "wooden ships and iron men"?

    867:

    I once heard the leader of an Irish band - don't remember the group's name, this may have been over 15 years ago - comment that the Irish potato famine was due to an early fellow-traveller of Thatcher, and they were sure the market would cure it all.

    868:

    Please.

    Barry Goldwater, GOP candidate for US President, 1964. Considered extremely right wing, ads against him suggesting he'd get us into WWIII.

    Read an interview with him from the late 80's, not long before he died, where he was horrified by how far to the right the GOP had gone.

    Since then, they went all the way; it's just that everyone but the MC used euphemisms, and set it up to be poor whites agin' them undeservin' black folks. The Koch bros created the self-proclaimed "tea party", who, in fact, are actually neoConfederates, yes, that's as in "the South shall rise again" (along with my gorge).

    What they really want - and I've looked into this a few years ago - is to do to the US what the Confederacy wanted, weaken the federal gov't, so they could do whatever the hell they wanted in the states (state religion? next-thing-t0-actual-slavery? sure 'nough).

    The idiot Dems followed the GOP in the 80's and 90's, stupidly thinking they were going to pick up the folks for whom the GOP had gotten too extreme - neo-freakin-liberals, ignoring the massive growth of "independents". That finally bit them, between Bernie's run, and this past election cycle.

    Meanwhile, the old-line neoliberals are just as nasty as ever, withthe CIA, etc.

    869:

    Re: ' ... used those claws to weaken the sanctions and other actions against Russia.'

    Guess VP wasn't as all-knowing as his PR purports since he did not foresee that the GOP was insane enough to allow DT to weaken US's economical ties and international standing. Imagine VP's glee when DT was allowed to bring the US Fed gov't to a standstill so that 16.7% of the US workforce is now without pay. Much more satisfying when you can get your enemy to self-destruct.

    870:

    Not especially better. Look up Michele Fiore, gun nut and legislator... And then there was Carly Fiorena (poor HP, what a disaster).

    871:

    I had the perfect candidate to run against the Malignanat Carcinoma: Susan Ivonova for President!

    "I am Commander Susan Ivonova, Commander of the White Star fleet, daughter of , and I am the right hand of God, and I'm here to kick your sorry asses back to Earth!"

    872:

    Consequently, I'm more apt to think that these non-gov't records might be much more accurate (because they were so personally and culturally relevant) than stuff that's in the-then official Soviet gov't files. As I pointed out before - it makes no difference if you blame every death on political factors. This is a closed circle, you know. People used to do this their entire lives - first they blame Communism, then Communists, then Russians, then it starts all over again.

    Bottom line: many millions died, some of them in USSR, some of them because of incompetence of certain people, and some of these people were punished for what they've done.

    so I'm disputing your 'hundreds of thousands' NOT MINE hundreds of thousands, ffs.

    873:

    Flat-Earther @ 862 The Munich agreement, disgraceful as it was, was to buy time. IIRC, when Chamberlain came back, he tod his cabinet: "Gentlemen, prepare for war"

    Whitroth @ 867 An exaggeration, but not too large a one. Look up "Malthusianism" ... It's a sort of mirror-image of the doctrine of collectivisation, & almost as unpleasant. Ideology trumps facts, for far too many politicians.

    874:

    IIRC, when Chamberlain came back, he tod his cabinet: "Gentlemen, prepare for war"

    Now a reference on that would be interesting. It goes against everything I've heard/read about him at the time.

    875:

    Re: '... it makes no difference if you blame every death on political factors. This is a closed circle, you know.'

    Disagree that society is a closed circle especially in the 21st century where communications between people of different nations/cultural backgrounds occur in real-time on a daily basis. Like on this blog.

    As for the 'blame the pols' part: justifiable when 90%+ of the power/authority/decision-making was in the hands of that group of pols. So even if these pols did not intend all of these consequences when making their decisions, they were the cause/blame-worthy. Ignoring this relationship won't make it go away. Accepting that it happened and then carefully and dispassionately examining the how's and why's would be helpful in avoiding future disasters. No idea if any country is this enlightened, but maybe some day one will be and we can then learn from it.

    876:

    Well not a primary source, but certainly this is one possible source (whatever you might think of Hitchens otherwise). The specific interpretation is far from unusual, and in terms of a simple and practical analysis of outcome, certainly correct. Churchill believed there were earlier opportunities for military success, but those were arguably at least in part based on his own prejudice about what the Germans were capable of achieving. Chamberlain (and there are plenty of primary sources for this) believed the Germans would have wiped the map with Britain and France in early 1938 if they tried. He’s even quoted as saying “Hitler missed the bus”.

    877:

    Well, it's there, but it's a little more complex than random wurblings. HSBC just did $250 forex using blockchain (not bitcoin, oc) so imagining that vast networks that are backed up with serious weaponry that do not take kindly to being attacked is just a given.

    Look: take this as fact (because it is).

    1) The Sourbry thing was 100% a staged media OP - the twitter traffic alone proves it as does the evidence we mentioned above immediately following it (search term is "no links 'cause nasties"). Judging by the hit / impact, it's probably local (UK) based and designed to do certain things.

    But, 100% know that it's a staged media OP, it's not a genuine thing (Jo Cox... that's genuine), and as mentioned above, also remember that Fascists can be smart. i.e. using such methods = not so great these days.

    2) We're well aware that accounts that post stuff like this:

    https://twitter.com/cdaargh/status/1084898687879389187

    are networking into the larger wider spaces we watch.

    Be careful with this, because that account is not that genuine and is using 100% easily tracable Key Words that have a lot of watchers. i.e. you're not as good at this as you imagine and so on.

    So, you know, beware that there's at least 4 tiers watching it happen and we're not impressed by it. Also, get better material, it's 5+ years out of date.

    3) UK OPs using terms such as "the red-brown alliance" are 10 or so years out of date. Everyone knows this and it just looks sad. That's a direct call out btw, feel free to say hello.

    and so on.

    TL;DR

    Just be aware that all the stuff you're running is vastly out of date and is really boring.

    Enjoyed that story about the mad russian speaker aged 60-70 going to Scotland to rob a bank then fleeing to Manchester though, amusing.

    878:

    ...with a bomb?

    Police tier PSY stuff, went in the BS folder immediately.

    Oh, and that's $250 billion by HSBC. If you think they don't play hard, well... ask the cartels.

    Larger story is: y'all fighting the ghosts of 5+ year old OPS, the new stuff will get seriously more hardcore and very soon. Using ancient cheat-sheets, the GRID and ancient wetware level 101 psychology is an automatic fail these days.

    Want a new one? What stops Lucid Dreaming? And is it deliberate?

    879:

    Note: accusing people of copying language usage etc only works on the gullible. This is irony. What's not ironic is that using an attempted double-mirror to shatter the psyche is a BIG FUCKING YIKES NO if you get caught doing it without some serious preventative measures attached.

    Hmm.

    Yeah.

    Reign in the little poodles, there are things out there who will use it a little more aggressively. (What's the Frequency Kenneth?)

    You're not the only terrified ones, trust me.

    What it won't get is less directly A/S unless you wise up, like, a billion nanoseconds.

    And, if you doubt this, check out if The Times did indeed run a story directly copying one of those twitter links (no accreditation, oc) with direct picture rips etc. And the time delay. THE GRID only works if your PG&E system is live.

    And also remember Sudan was mentioned like, ages ago.

    Media Intelligencia realizing that Marketing Twitter bots are used on them was a funny tweet. We kinda assumed everyone knew already, it's so obvious.

    The joke is that you tech wizards should know how we do it by now.

    But you don't

    880:

    Hi SR,

    The canonical study of Soviet Agriculture is Davies and Wheatcrofts multi-volume work. Vol 5. deals specifically with the years 31-33. Handily their data on crop yields, grain collection etc and excess deaths in the USSR by region can be found at this web page.

    http://www.soviet-archives-research.co.uk/hunger

    Wheatcroft and Davies base their research on the Russian and Ukrainian state archives including the FSB and the Russian Presidential Archives. Chapter 13 of their book covers the question of how many died and the problems of estimation including factoring in population growth, again their numbers are derived from contemporary soviet sources. They estimate across the USSR it was 5.7M but the range is from 4.6M to 8.5M. Registered excess deaths in Ukraine were 1.54M for 1932-33, unregistered deaths are estimated at 1M-3M some of which would have occurred in the Ukraine, Volga and North Caucuses.

    As JH did up-thread I recommend their work, it's comprehensive.

    881:

    Actually, you know, fuck it.

    https://twitter.com/cdaargh/status/1084898687879389187

    Is a nasty little OP, dirty, corrupt and ideologically bankrupt. It's also lazy, under-funded, irritating and not engaging unless you're forcing people via other methods. If the runner isn't aware of her role, that's shameful what you've done to her Mind.

    And if you think we're the only ones to spot it, wise up sweet cheeks.

    Then again, we spotted a MF long time poster claiming that L Mensch was "left wing" which was just fucking hysterical.

    882:

    Oh.

    And if you think that rather nasty little fuckers don't track her input then flag up anyone who favorites them, well.

    Well done. Like The Times, you don't give a shit about trans* security and are directly endangering lives.

    BIG. FUCKING. WELL. DONE.

    883:

    to GT @873 The Munich agreement, disgraceful as it was, was to buy time. So was the non-aggression pact, wasn't it? European powers were so much eager to collide USSR and Germany directly they decided that interests of Poland are of no concern, and surrendered it without so much as lifting a finger.

    to SFreader @875 Please avoid selective citation, too, I was referring a closed circle of logic. When you talk about societies, you should rather use term "closed system" originating from thermodynamics.

    As for the 'blame the pols' part: justifiable when 90%+ of the power/authority/decision-making was in the hands of that group of pols. "When" it is, it is. This is the reasoning behind blaming communism/communists/Russians - to simply constantly state that all power (legislative, executive, military, you name it) is concentrated in the hands of selected dictatorship, or even one man. As opposed to "democratic societies" where power belongs to the people. Sadly, such societies are ideological fiction.

    So even if these pols did not intend all of these consequences when making their decisions, they were the cause/blame-worthy. With "totalitarian crimes" it is the logic that goes off the rail just the same. There were people in bureaucracy that were responsible for implementing agricultural policies. They failed their job and got punished by the party for their failings of death of the people. What does propagandist demagogue do? He blames death of the people on the party, and then he blames punishment on the party as well. Then he states that the party are the criminals and the people are the law, so any crime against the party is the state is a heroic act. Then criminals become heroes and heroes become criminals, and then "democratic power" comes to save the day.

    By the way, here's a little brilliant YT gave me today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYqB0uTKlE

    884:

    Organic UK account posting IL cheat-sheet talking points on US politics etc.

    "Red-Brown Alliance" "check google"

    That's some serious nonsense and everyone can spot it a mile away.

    And you're forcing that into the SF realm now that checks notes Vox Day and so on are a distant memory?

    Get the fuck out of here you fucking muppets.

    885:

    greps IL RU faction split.

    That's probably not what we'd call a request. More a "take your obvious nonsense to realms where it's appreciated" request.

    p.s.

    Oooh, Ms Rowling's publisher has got to be looking like a fucking idiot. Don't double-down, it's a bad tactic.

    886:

    Advisory Triptych.

    If we can spot this bullshit low-level Ape moves before they happen.

    You can be wery wery certain that others can as well.

    Seriously: 2019, IL / UK Matrix shaming itself into a laughing stock.

    887:

    ...so imagining that vast networks that are backed up with serious weaponry that do not take kindly to being attacked is just a given. Thanks, the details were interesting.

    Want a new one? What stops Lucid Dreaming? And is it deliberate? I'll bite. I've never noticed any correlates, but don't do it much.

    ... Just noticed a new IRENA report, on my to-read queue A New World - The Geopolitics of the Energy Transformation

    888:

    Oh, and BONUS ROUND since we're a little annoyed with the inept and corrupt bollocks you just pushed.

    QANON

    Whoever's fucking "genius" idea that was to attempt to attach Icke Lizards / Swords / antisemitism etc to it (via insanity) is a fucking dullard. With a murder? And getting Rosanne a trip to IL at the same time?

    Well fucking done.

    The entire point of QANON was a pro-IL PSYOP and you managed to make everyone notice certain things. You know, like, you're happy using insanity as a weapon.

    That Culture thing.

    There are certain Conspiracy Cultures that don't mix. Hint: Icke and QANON were two of them.

    What's the greatest tell that an outside / non-organic agency is shoving itself in?

    If. They. Do. Not. Understand. Or. Empthasize. Enough. With. The. Cultures. To. Understand. Them.

    Fucking magic my laddies. And now you've a rep for insanity weapons added to the score sheet.

    Seriously: Moscow Rules. If either side had imagined it was this easy to spot, we'd have...

    Shrew time. Yep, it's a shrew. With a guillotine.

    889:

    Registered excess deaths in Ukraine were 1.54M for 1932-33, unregistered deaths are estimated at 1M-3M some of which would have occurred in the Ukraine, Volga and North Caucuses. Ok, now, come again, how do you register an excess death, exactly? Or maybe, how do you estimate unregistered deaths, that are at the same time "excess"? Did you read any of these papers? Even superficially?

    Under-estimated infant mortality Under-estimated deaths in non-European part of USSR Excess registered mortality above 1927-9 level of cdr Excess registered mortality in numbers of deaths

    There is no actual death involved whatsoever - only estimations of projections. By this same logic, 1991-2011 there were about 12 million excess death in Russia. But for some reason I don't hear anybody in the West arguing about man-made famines and genocide. Probably because these are good, sanctioned deaths, perpetrated by democratic people in the name of democracy.

    890:

    By this same logic, 1991-2011 there were about 12 million excess death in Russia. But for some reason I don't hear anybody in the West arguing about man-made famines and genocide.

    Do a grep.

    We've listed documents, arguments etc showing that the Western "Democratization" of Russia was a cluster-fuck with the direct implication that Western Financial Elements helped the period of chaos.

    Oh, and direct links to documents showing / proving that Putin is popular due to, you know, the fucking Life Expectancy levels shooting up.

    Of course you won't see it in the papers. Or read it, 'cause everyone ignores us.

    891:

    Oh. And. Might have been there. My Fake Russian might be Fake in a way that's funny.

    Best line, watching bouncers from the very exclusive club kicking out drunkards: "Hey, at least we'll get in!"

    This Gay Panic thing in Western media. Hmm. Seem to remember a certain nightclub that was 100% gay gay gay in the outer rim of M.

    Who knows, this account is apparently 100% bullshit ;)

    892:

    The world-nature is deflected and reflected (symbolism) through conspiracy theories and bottom-feeder podcasts/radio. Their ideas about Freemasons, modern eunuchs, and dark rituals among the Australian natives are entirely relevant here. "When I was a little girl, there were little gray aliens in my conifer, and the voices would come at night: "Seitwob raew ton od stabmow elprup."" Fortunately, not my problem any more.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt9MP70ODNw

    (For those not in the know, several of these videos are weaponized bulldada!)

    This was significant, I know, but it didn't make sense until Trump came into office. The problem was solved when I discovered that Alpha-Pinene was useful in controlling clown infestations. Will you fools understand the implications? Not likely!

    https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/alpha-pinene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHx2nLFMAzE

    What I am allowed to tell you is that Florida is the new black, and you will see the world of the future when you understand (note Richelieu) that this man was not insane:

    https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/weird/wtflorida/florida-man-says-syringes-found-in-his-rectum-arent-his/67-8e3d83f3-63a9-4142-abcd-12fc72a59d3d

    We don't worry. We have a ticket off the worthless ball of rock! (Hint, it's not cannibalism if you're not human.)

    mwowm.com. Fortunately, it still redirects to Google! (Sigh of relief!)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGfwsT6gdZ4

    Music lovers is an euphamism. Get pepped up and prepped up, because this is something special. The big, slippery fish was trained in time-control by anti-conspiracy master, he does it better!

    For those who want to know!

    https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/01/08/manaforts-redaction-fail-tells-trump-that-mueller-caught-him-lying-about-his-russian-handler-konstantin-kilimnik/

    894:

    Sometimes I'm mainly interested in the thought rhythms/tone sequences and watching them ripple through my mind. Plus the referenced twitter account had pictures of owls, including a newborn owl. I haven't enough context in UK culture to properly evaluate it (or the Sourbry incident).

    FWIW, antisemitism in the US is cruder, younger, at least in my area sparser, and the immigrant cultures bring their own nuances, and also I am not particularly following the anti-antisemitism twitter. (There's often clear content that takes some attention to spot, BTW. Trainer of reading obtuseness that one is/those ones are.)

    895:

    "Now, let me be specifically clear in this. There's no mention of gathered data. No sign of any complex statistics. No links to any archives. It is a approximation of a number, that was subtracted off hypothetical number, which doesn't even have any calculation presented. The number that was given as a proof of these events, is in fact a pure virtual construct, and is it any wonder that it usually variates by 50 (f*cking) percent either side?"

    1.a) Oh please, this is Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for any circumstances where records don't exist or are untrustworthy to make statistical analysis. It's been used to calculate the death toll of every plague and famine since the Roman Empire. Somehow, I don't think that the researchers who created this method had an anti-Roman bias.

    b) This same method was used to calculate the death toll of the genocides and famines of various European Empires. What, do you think that researchers trusted the empires' records? The 3-million death toll of the Bengal Famine was calculated this way. This method was probably used to calculate the death toll of of the Irish Potato Famine? You were more than ready to accept this method legitimate when it agreed with your biases.

    "So, proposed number of deaths of 3, or maybe 8 millions would have had ... much more severe effect on that population than different sorts of Bullocks suggest."

    I used Japan to avoid emotional responses. If you want wilder swings, let's use a more modern example. Here is Syria's population numbers:

    2004 17,921,000 2011 21,124,000 (+3 million) 2018 18,284,407 (-3 million)

    By your logic, the 6 million refugees + 0.5 million dead must be total fiction, since the population could not have recovered around 3.5 million people within such a short period of time.

    We've seen this pattern repeated several times in Africa: the birthrate shoots up massively during a famine. If you don't believe me, look at the population growth rates of African countries around the years they've had famines. It's quite possible for millions to die in the famine, and millions to be born. That balances the population out. The same is true for wartime (see WWI Germany). Note that Germany had a famine around that time due to the British blockade. So did Japan in WWII due to the US blockade.

    Just like Germany and France in WWI, the population remained constant throughout the war years. Unless you can demonstrate a collapse in TFR or large-scale migration, this only leaves a famine as the culprit.

    PS: You know, you guys are more than welcome to help me out here. Searching for these statistics is very time consuming, and I don't have as much free time as I used to.

    896:

    Just like Germany and France in WWI maintained a constant population throughout the war years, Ukraine maintained a slightly-declining population throughout the famine years.

    897:

    I think I can claim that I called it: retirees moving from Blue States such as New York, California, and Illinois are going to counteract the growing minority population in some red states. First there was the Wapo article which stated that people born in Texas voted for Beto +3 while those born elsewhere voted for Cruz +6 (cited in a previous thread). Now, the New York Times claims that Democrats did so badly in Florida that " As of Tuesday, there was still only one Democrat in statewide office."

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/us/politics/florida-democrats-2020-election.html

    899:

    There is quite a lot of statistical data, due to the work of the TsUNKhU (central administration for national accounts) statisticians who collated the data under what were hellish conditions. Thanks to their efforts we have mortality, natality and nutritional information available down to the month for the affected regions across the period of concern. In the case of mortality for example we know that for June 1933 Kievskaia oblasti suffered a mortality peak of 316 per 1000 in the rural population and 62 per 1000 in the urban population. In comparison Moscovskaia oblasti showed little impact. Based on these records the grand total of registered excess deaths for 1932-1933 comes to 2.9M. Excess deaths meaning in this context greater than the normal death rate for that region.

    However, that number still appears to be too low. When you add the registered birth and death figures to the 1926 census data from 1927-37 and compare it to the 1937 figures you get a population of 168M but the 1937 census says 162M people. So where did those 8M people go? ADK a russian statistician assumed that the loss all occurred in 1932-1933 but that's very unrealistic. Slightly more realistically we can correct for unreported deaths in Kazakhstan and deaths in the OGPU camps. There's also the so called Lorimar effect of under reporting deaths and births, but that's much more difficult to assess. So all we can say is that USSR wide death rates during the famine were in the range of 4.6M (corrected) to 8M (ADK). On that basis Wheatcroft and Davies give 5.6M as their best estimate inclusive of under-reporting.

    Just as a by the way there's a lag effect on natality in famines, nine months later the birth rate drops down For Kievskaia it bottoms out Mar-May 1934 then slowly starts to recover again much worse in the rural population.

    I'd note that this is official Soviet statistical reporting, so even if you decided to ignore the subsequent 1937 census the official figures still tell a very grim story. See the link below for the full data set.

    https://www.persee.fr/doc/cmr_1252-6576_1997_num_38_4_2504

    900:

    *That should be,’ when you add the 1927 to 1937 official birth and death figures to the 1926 census data.’

    SR I hope you now have a better idea of both the source data and the reasoning behind how those estimates were arrived at. I’m now going to cease spamming the comments thread with this, interesting though it may be.

    901:

    David L @ 874 Better might be the record of production of new military kit in that period… The “town” class cruisers, the last of which sits in the Thames today, increased production of fighter aircraft & speeding up the Chain Home radar system & …..

    SFR @ 875 Yes, Putin & DT may believe that politics is a zero-sum game, but it is not, or need not be. It would appear that Flat-Earther has bought into this fallacy.

    EGA @ 877 Thanks, when you speak clearly, it actually makes some sort of sense. However: be aware that all the stuff you're running i> Erm … I am not “running” any “stuff” at all. I am an observer & commentator.

    Flat-Earther @ 883 So was the non-aggression pact, wasn't it? NO Stalin was actually conned by Adolf. He thought he was out free whilst Adolf & the democracies wasted each other, in time for a Soviet takeover, later ( Much later, probably about post-1948 ) As Solzenhytsin suggested, the only man JVS ever trusted was Adolf …. @ 889 You simply do not accept that the “Ukrainian” famine ( Holodomor ) actually happened, do you? There’s another groups of people like you … they however are called: Holocaust Deniers. Um. You, like them are simply lying. Now we know what the political aims of the holocaust-0deniers is, it’s to make fascism & Nazism respectable again. So, what’s YOUR political aim – to make Stalinism or Pol Pot respectable again? “I think we should be told” as the saying goes.

    902:

    OK, I don't have an on-line cite but I've heard several personal accounts (from independent of each other sources) that have a timeline similar to:-

    1) Chamberlain makes "I have a piece of paper" speech at Croydon. 2) He returns to 10 Downing Street and calls an emergency Cabinet. 3) This has an agenda that summarises as "Well, gentlemen, I think I've bought us a year. I want your plans for putting the nation on a war footing at Cabinet on Tuesday next week."

    903:

    The actual Vorkosigans would probably be better, neofascist tendencies not disregarded. <\i>

    They would, at least, recognise Australia as the half-arsed job of terraforming that it is.

    Or should I say “angloforming”? The acclimatisation societies of the British Empire tried for a century to make the world’s ecologies more British. Colonisation at every level.

    904:

    To the point of planting crops in April.

    905:

    Interesting WTSP is blocked from certain angles.

    Want to know something a little Mind-Blowing?

    A lot of the top execs @ PG&E are diamond-solid-crowned-kings of Scientology.

    Interesting People and Snow White shows they play hard.

    906:

    Re: Russian-sourced data regarding 'excess deaths'

    Great info - thanks!

    Below is another (IMO) reliable data point contemporaneous with these events.

    https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1922/nansen/biographical/

    Excerpt:

    'The Red Cross in 1921 asked Nansen to take on yet a third humanitarian task, that of directing relief for millions of Russians dying in the famine of 1921-1922. Help for Russia, then suspect in the eyes of most of the Western nations, was hard to muster, but Nansen pursued his task with awesome energy. In the end he gathered and distributed enough supplies to save a staggering number of people, the figures quoted ranging from 7,000,000 to 22,000,000.

    Footnote: This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures.'

    Would be interesting to see whether there's any record of Nansen in c.1921-22 official Russian media.

    907:

    I see this topic has been again sidetracked by the likes of Greg Tingley, who fail to engage in comprehensive discussion. Apparently, I thereby failed to deliver the message that I am not in a denial of famines in USSR. I did cite quite the opposite - I am looking for balance of opinions, and it seems to me that there is a number people in denial of simple historical facts. They insist that this famine was, if anything, one of a kind - a "man-made" one. Which is complete and utter bullshit and Nazi propaganda, and I already explained why.

    Capitalist plutocratic regimes, you see, are striving on self-deprecation, and in the same time they have a huge problem. They often have the same failures as other societies do, and fail to learn the lessons. They are forced to suppress the internal reasons of discord, and in the same time they are forced to promote the same reasons in their opponents. While blaming victims of famine on Communism/Communists/Russians (whatever is suitable), they hope to divert attention from their own failures and therefore increase the stability in their ruling position. But instead they are eventually cornered even more than before.

    to Ioan By your logic, the 6 million refugees + 0.5 million dead must be total fiction, since the population could not have recovered around 3.5 million people within such a short period of time. No, this is not my logic, it is a strawman logic you are fighting in vain. By the opposite logic, which anti-communists always apply, we should write off all of these 6.5 millions as victims of Syrian regime, because somebody forgot to tell the "historians" about migration.

    Just like Germany and France in WWI, the population remained constant throughout the war years. Now, observe the following file. This is population of Warsaw (capital of Poland, a large city) in 20th century. It takes no effort to see that the period of 1927-1933 is flat as table, after which it jump-starts anew. Which indicates what? https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Population_of_Warsaw,_1880_-_2000.jpg

    to MattS @899 168M but the 1937 census says 162M people. So where did those 8M people go? So long as you will be able to subtract 162 from 168, it will go more smoothly altogether.

    All in all, the thesis is simple. Estimations of "excess deaths" are virtual, because they do not refer to anything but a hypothesis that all of these death happened because of famine - directly or indirectly. That does not mean there wasn't famine. That But neither does it mean anything much in particular. People can die of accidents, malnutrition, pollution, weather, epidemics (in population and agriculture), food poisoning, crime, diversions, and so on, and so forth. For example, there's a big thing about epidemics of mycotoxicoses, which you can find in literature. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23334047 https://contagions.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/famine-and-epidemics-come-hand-in-hand/

    Contrary to that, anti-communists and russophobes immediately assume that all the "lost" people who weren't born and died too early, are caused by starvation, and all starvation is caused by communist expropriation, and all communists are therefore guilty. Then they pile this reasoning on top of some statistical data and proudly call it "research". Which, of course, has nothing to do with history, or science, or even elementary human dignity altogether. So please contemplate the following quotation and take en effort in recognizing my signals. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/henri_poincare_164238

    908:

    Re: '... take en effort in recognizing my signals.'

    Okay as soon as you make an effort at plain-speaking: What is it that you're trying to do/ask specifically?

    I ask because various commenters spanning somewhat different academic/work/life perspectives has tried to answer yet you keep rejecting/dismissing their input. They're a pretty bright bunch but they're not mind-readers.

    909:

    You wrote: BREXIT kicks in, US Gov down at the same time?

    Gotta be a plan somewhere DAVE.

    You forgot rightist in Italy and Poland.

    This is the final push by the 0.1% to literally take over the world.

    Fortunately, too many of their tools tell them what they want to hear (like the MC), but are loyal, not competent.

    910:

    Ah, yes, HSBC, who was "servicing" my first credit card, one I'd had for like 30 years, and dropped it (I wasn't using it, with those Mafia-style interest rates), sending me a letter which, when I responded to the same (snail mail) address, the Post Office bounced it as "no such address".

    Who, the next year, had major fines for money laundering. Do we think they've stopped? Is the Malignanat Carcinoma occupying the White House?

    911:

    Flat Earther @ 907 Leant to spell my name - you CAN READ? Secondly: You certainly appear to be a Holodomor-Denier - you are now denying that you were denying the Holodomor? Except you are not, you are claiming that it did happen but it was "nothing at all" to do with fun-loving, generous Father of the People, J V Stalin, & that it was a "natural" one. Actually & unfortunately, this famine was, if anything, one of a kind - a "man-made" one. No, because I can think of another recent famine deliberately caused by a marxist government - Ethiopia in the 1983-85.
    Which is complete and utter bullshit and Nazi propaganda - no you made a completely false "explanation as to why not. And, you have just called me, &all the other people saying that the Holodomor was deliberate ... Nazis. Be very careful what you say.

    Capitalist plutocratic regimes - so you are a card-carrying or ultra-symapthetic to the actual Soviet-Communist party line & story? If not, what collection of lies are you following? You do realise iof you were of the opposite persuasion", you would be long gone from this discussion, btw? Some, if not all of us are anti-communist for the exact same reason we are anti-fascist. They are both murderous, lying, torturing regimes based on ideology & neither place any value on individual human life or freedom of expression.

    I will strongly echo SFR @ 908 Because you read, to me, as an apologist for Stalin & Dzershinsky & Brezhnev & Andropov. And for that matter, Mao Tse-Tung/Zhedong. Pol Pot?

    912:

    I keep saying, my order of tumbres is over a year past due, and I'm still waiting.

    Bonus round: Antarctic glaciers have been melting at an accelerating pace over the past four decades thanks to an influx of warm ocean water - a startling new finding that researchers say could mean sea levels are poised to rise more quickly than predicted in coming decades.

    The Antarctic lost 40 billion tons of melting ice to the ocean each year from 1979 to 1989. That figure rose to 252 billion tons lost per year beginning in 2009, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    That means the region is losing six times as much ice as it was four decades ago, an unprecedented pace in the era of modern measurements. (It takes about 360 billion tons of ice to produce one millimeter of global sea-level rise.) --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.sciencealert.com/antarctic-ice-loss-is-already-happening-a-shocking-six-times-faster-than-in-the-1970s

    913:

    It seems to me that what is sidetracking the Holodomor sub-thread is a quibbling over numbers and how they are derived. A quibbling which is essentially pointless, since even the lower bound is still outrageous.

    914:

    So, biggest government defeat in history. Who's got the popcorn?

    915:

    angloforming

    Brilliant neologism!

    916:

    biggest government defeat in history

    Sack of Rome? Nuclear bombing of Nagasaki? Even the Dismissal (Australia) was worse IMO.

    Can I suggest that in England the signing of the Magna Carta was a significant government defeat, as was the life of Oliver Cromwell (he both defeated and was posthumously defeated by, the government).

    • many conditions apply.
    917:

    Pigeon I wish you were correct. But ISTM, than Flat-Earther is saying that STalin was not responsible & that we, especially me are fascists & plutocrats, which I fond unacceptable.

    vulch @ 914 No-confidence motion, which will itself fail ,as the tories & NI will close ranks to defeat it - some Lem-0-crats possibly, as they don't want a Corbyn-led hard Brexit. A 2nd Referendum is looking more likely ( I hope ) Right about the popcorn, though.

    918:

    Parliament have decided to reflect the will of the people and vote for a clean brexit, or something.

    919:

    What is it that you're trying to do/ask specifically? The purpose of the exercise is to test the theory and see if it holds to arguments. Preferably, graphically so. Is there any weak reasoning, unclear factors, or century-old dogmas. What do you think, is it even possible to do such thing? Is it too much to ask?

    I ask because various commenters spanning somewhat different academic/work/life perspectives has tried to answer yet you keep rejecting/dismissing their input. And what do you think, I should do, agree with everyone, shut up and go away? Is this how you treat knowledge out there, just learn it and never understand any meaning of it? I am sorry, I was deceived again.

    Secondly: You certainly appear to be a Holodomor-Denier - you are now denying that you were denying the Holodomor? facepalm So here I see, any opinion beyond two extreme modes of thinking are treated with suspicion, denial and disbelief. No remediation is possible, therefore. This is the world you chose to live in.

    Some, if not all of us are anti-communist for the exact same reason we are anti-fascist. Lack of education, obviously. Earth-centrists think of themselves as of higher-educated beings, and nobody could be smarter or more knowledgeable than them. They know absolute truth, and anyone who is denying it, is obviously a flat-earther, or at least a flat-earther who has no idea what he's talking about.

    920:

    So the Prime Minister's head is being measured for a platter and it's, what, two and a half months until Brexit? Call an election and who could govern when it doesn't seem as though any position on Brexit commands a clear majority?

    Would lack of a government hinder or help a hard Brexit? Is there a Banana Republic scenario?

    921:

    EU making noises they are fine with an extension though ?

    922:

    Re: '... unclear factors,'

    Frankly it sounded as though you were not allowing for multiple factors in your rejection of some arguments.

    As per Wikipedia, Russia has a history of droughts and famines - so there is at least one underlying natural (non-manmade) cause. Comparing the number of deaths and the severity of the weather conditions (two measurable objective variables) in previous famines can provide insight in determining how much any future drought/famine was eased or might be exacerbated by certain political decisions.

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

    The site below graphs famine deaths worldwide since 1860. They also discuss correlates (factors).

    https://ourworldindata.org/famines

    923:

    to GT @911, again And, you have just called me, &all the other people saying that the Holodomor was deliberate ... Nazis. No, obviously, I only said you are repeating after Nazis, which is a different thing altogether. Now you listen to me and be very careful. You may think you know words you are saying, about "murderous, lying, torturing regimes based on ideology", but it does not look like you understand the weight behind the words. People reflecting too much about such things sometimes end up causing them in turn, out of sheer ignorance.

    Be very careful what you say. And yeah, must be very careful around you guys. One never knows when the government will double down on people for being ideologically wrong. http://fortune.com/2019/01/14/nobel-scientist-james-watson-honorary-titles-stripped/

    to SFreader @922 There is still debate over whether or not Holodomor was a massive failure of policy or a deliberate act of genocide. The legacy of Holodomor remains a sensitive and controversial issue in contemporary Ukraine where it is regarded as an act of genocide by the government and is generally remembered as one of the greatest tragedies in the nation's history. This is actually a good and fairly neutral point of view. You know, we are talking about THAT government.

    Their estimates suggest that total losses can be put at about 4.6 million, 0.9 million of which was due to forced migration, 1 million to a deficit in births, and 2.6 million to exceptional mortality To repeat myself for the 4th time, my concern comes from people using the term "exceptional mortality" or "excessive mortality" without clear understanding of it. At least this much is clear, I hope.

    924:

    Is this a bad moment to mention we have a fucking massive bet on if we could re-unite Ireland or not?

    WINK WINK WINK WINK

    925:

    Not about that at all.

    It's really about RESPECT and so on. Hierarchies go bad fast once you hammer where the weak spots are (note: this is almost a Universal Truth).

    Eternal Slavery as a concept is an anathema to us.

    Troutwaxer.

    It's actually about Light Tunnels, Lies and Threatening Higher Order Powers.

    Tonight:

    Questioner: Do you even regret breaking up the British Empire? Answer: That's not even what this is about.

    ~

    Host: if anyone asks you if you're a God, you say "YES!"

    926:

    p.s.

    Little LICH WIZARDS and more friendlies and some raving WYRD infecting our data stream?

    Remember this scene?

    The Greatest Practical Joke in Human History YT, Film, 2:41

    It's a bit more complicated than that.

    Try ~X,000 years.

    p.s.

    100% loving the absolute ripping going on in circles.

    927:

    Well, conscratchulations - a 2-1 loss for the home team. And Corbyn's tabled a motion of no confidence.

    On this side of the Pond, the asshole tried to "go around Pelosi" by inviting centrist (i.e. right-leaning Dems) to the WH, and they gave him not just the finger, but the whole fist.

    Damn uppity people, don't mind your betters....

    928:

    this famine was, if anything, one of a kind - a "man-made" one

    You might find Mike Davis' book Late Victorian Holocausts interesting.

    929:

    We have only one more thing to give:

    https://www.ifate.com/rune-meanings/what-does-the-gebo-rune-mean.html

    There are some Seals you don't want to break.

    930:

    Anyhow, for Host since he needs some Joy & doesn't watch films, a grep back:

    Are You Not Entertained? YT Film, Gladiator 2:15

    Come on.

    We told you this would happen.

    931:

    vote for a clean brexit, or something.

    "clean brexit, or something" sounds about right. But for all the connection with reality they might as well vote to double everyone's unicorn poop allowance. A clean Brexit was ruled out early in the referendum campaign, now all that seems to be left is how dirty would you like your brexit?

    I like the suggestion that May should have responded to the vote by saying "I understand this vote is a resounding expression of no confidence in both the agreement my government has negotiated with the 27 nations in the European Union, and also in my ability to lead this government. I therefore resign as Prime Minister effective immediately and will resign from parliament in the event that the government does not lose the motion of no confidence that I hereby submit". Or in the Australian vernacular "setting the pub on fire as she leaves".

    932:

    (specifically: doing that would not change the process in any meaningful way, merely speed it up. In that sense it would be a positive contribution... which is no doubt why she did not do it)

    933:

    Re: ' ... my concern comes from people using the term "exceptional mortality" or "excessive mortality" '

    Or explain basic stats concepts to your listeners and rely on sigmas.

    934:

    Oh, and here's a triptych.

    Breaking X once by accident/em> is forgivable.

    Breaking X twice by Rape is forgivable.

    Breaking X thrice by cynical abuse of MIND is a death sentence.

    You don't want to fuck with Witches.

    935:

    I liked your quote, but I prefer, "Evidence without argument is unexplained, but argument without evidence is unfounded".

    I'm still not quite sure what your concern about 'excess mortality' is, at least as it relates to recorded births and deaths, but you have the link to the recorded data so what would your interpretation be?

    I think from your general comments you are concerned about a conclusion being drawn that this was a deliberately manufactured famine. In fact it was two Russian historians (Zelenin and Danilov) who coined the term 'organised famine' to describe the confluence of events, actions and decisions in 1932/1933. But that term does not imply the whole thing was orchestrated from the outset.

    There is certainly a range of opinion as to the culpability of the soviet government (and Stalin) in mis-managing collectivization, agricultural policy in general and in then responding to the crisis. And there are legitimate questions as to the intent of the administrative responses in the case of Ukraine which in combination made the rural famine that much worse. This of course does not fit into a neat narrative beloved of polemicists (on either side).

    936:

    David L @ 874:

    IIRC, when Chamberlain came back, he tod his cabinet: "Gentlemen, prepare for war"

    Now a reference on that would be interesting. It goes against everything I've heard/read about him at the time.

    Britain had quietly begun rearming shortly after the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the failure of the 1932-1934 Geneva Disarmament Conference. It was pretty low key, but British rearmament was already in train before Chamberlain became Prime Minister.

    After Munich, Chamberlain told the Cabinet "It would be madness for the country to stop rearming", although he resisted putting the country on a war footing, fearing Hitler would think he had abandoned the Munich agreement ... not realizing Hitler abandoned the Munich agreement before Chamberlain was even out the door.

    Chamberlain did accelerate British preparations moving towards a posture of deterrence after Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, but by then it was too late.

    Hitler was convinced Britain would NEVER stand up against German aggression.

    937:

    Greg Tingey @ 873: The Munich agreement, disgraceful as it was, was to buy time.

    No. The Munich agreement was because Chamberlain was stupid enough to accept Hitler's protestation that after taking the Sudetenland, Germany would have no further territorial ambitions.

    Hitler promised he'd "only put the tip in" and "wouldn't cum in his mouth" ... and Chamberlain believed him.

    938:

    "By the opposite logic, which anti-communists always apply, we should write off all of these 6.5 millions as victims of Syrian regime, because somebody forgot to tell the "historians" about migration."

    If the records from the neighboring countries did not exist, historians would have listed them as "victims of the Syrian regime". That's how the death toll for the Roman Wars have been calculated. I won't repeat my earlier speech.

    "No, this is not my logic, it is a strawman logic you are fighting in vain"

    It's hard for me to understand your position. It's not totally your fault. This conversation has gone off on so many tangents that it's hard to keep up with the main point. To my understanding, your argument could be broken down into 4 parts

  • "There was a hidden famine in the West (especially the US) in the 1930s" I responded by pointing out that the nature of trade in that era would have made hiding such a famine practically impossible

  • "The higher-range death toll estimate of the famine is not possible" I introduced several statistics which strongly hinted that such a death toll was indeed possible. I did not say that it was certain, merely that it was possible. I specifically pointed out that I would need more information to narrow it down.

  • "Out of anti-communist bias, historians use a ridiculous method to calculate deaths" I'm pointing out that the method they use is SOP for calculating deaths in circumstances where more reliable records don't exist, or aren't trusted. I've given multiple examples where this method has been used

  • "The famine happened, but it wasn't the fault of the Soviet Regime". Here I'm going to say that I don't have the expertise to evaluate this statement. Like most people who confront a statement that they can't evaluate, I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the side I trust the most in this debate. Based upon family stories about Soviet behavior after WWII, it's the Western historians. You are free to choose to give the benefit of the doubt to other voices.

  • Let me know which parts of your argument I've misrepresented? That's not just directed at you, SR. If others see ways in which I've misrepresented his argument, please let me know?

    939:

    "What is it that you're trying to do/ask specifically? The purpose of the exercise is to test the theory and see if it holds to arguments. Preferably, graphically so. Is there any weak reasoning, unclear factors, or century-old dogmas. What do you think, is it even possible to do such thing? Is it too much to ask?"

    These types of thought exercises are not popular in the West, period. Years ago on this blog, I tried to introduce such thought exercises, mainly focused on aerospace. Some were ridiculous, such as

    "Since narrowbody aircraft are replacing widebody aircraft on transatlantic routes, perhaps the next step would be to introduce planes with only one engine?"

    Others I knew had flaws, but I introduced it to see if other people could spot flaws in my concept that I had missed. Here's an example of such a scenario:

    "Cubesats are becoming a mass market product, and are becoming more viable within the Earth-Moon system. Perhaps a market for cubesats is one where cubesats are created for the purpose of getting data for a PhD thesis?"

    The end result of this was people on this blog not talking anything space-related with me, because they thought I had too many misconceptions. Needless to say, it took a while to reestablish my credibility. In a way, my habit of citing my sources comes from my attempts to reestablish my credibility.

    Note that none of the topics I raised had anywhere the emotional impact of the topic you raised.

    940:

    After Munich, Chamberlain told the Cabinet "It would be madness for the country to stop rearming",

    Also, Chamberlain gathered support for a declaration of war.

    FDR would have liked to do more to stop Hitler, but the US congress and people would not support it. There was no way that the US congress would have let him declare war on Hitler: and the USA never declared war on Hitler, did not step up to oppose Hitler, until Hitler declared war on the USA.

    Chamberlain had the same problem. Parliament would not have backed a war against Hitler when Chamberlain flew to Munich, nor would the British voters. Churchill was right in 1938, war was coming. But Churchill did not have backing in parliament for war over the Sudetenland. With the Munich Agreement in 1938, Chamberlain maneuvered parliament into supporting a declaration on Hitler if Hitler continued his aggression... as he did in 1939.

    I find it deeply ironic that Chamberlain - who had the balls to start WW2 by declaring war on Germany - is treated as a cartoonish example of supine appeasement.

    941:

    ...the likes of Greg Tingley...

    At least you didn't call say "so called 'Greg Tingey'" or "...capitalist running dog lackey Greg Tingey." You might want to avoid the rhetorical flourishes, they weaken your argument. ...just saying.

    942:

    His argument is weak anyway. These touches are a handy shortcut to the let the rest of us know we don’t need to take him seriously or bother much with his comments. Ixnay on the elpfulhay uidancegay, ehay illway ninay imetay.

    943:

    I think you skipped a couple words of igpy atinlay. SR doesn't bother me, I'm afraid.

    Any thoughts on the latest Brexit shenanigans?

    944:

    Flat-Earther @ 919 I detect signs similar to those we face when coming up against a Cretinist. There’s a huge amount of whataboutery in your statements *+& certainly I can get no clear picture of what you are saying in “919” The last Para in particular seems to be deliberately designed to sow confusion.

    & @ 923 I only said you are repeating after Nazis, which is a different thing altogether. Oh how convenient – NOT BUYING IT You are claiming that my statements about Stalin’s murderous reign of Terror are wrong. Well, I am not. Stop it, creationist. Oh & James Watson wasn’t “just” ideologically wrong, he was actually wrong.

    Mike @ 920 NO Corby’s vote of No Confidence will fail ( I predict ) … we are then on a course to, in my order of likelihood … 1: Second Referendum 2: Parliament bottles it & withdraws At50 unilaterally 3: Crash out with no Deal – which even a lot of Berxiteers don’t want ..

    Ask us again on Friday or next week?

    EGA @ 924 YES IT BLOODY WELL WOULD BE. There are a minimum of THREE sides involved in any “Irish” question – you are in the USA & have absolutely no idea at all, now shut up – OK?

    RP @ 928 yes, well that book & author have been discredited more than once. He started out with a conclusion & then worked forward to the selected “evidence”. See also OTHER famines in Europe in the winters of 1847-9 …

    Moz @ 931 No that would let Corby in as PM, & he would go for the most damaging Brexit he could find, given his normal level of competence.

    Ioan @ 938 THANK YOU You have put it much better than I. Let’s see if we get actual answers or more either allegations of being fascists or some more whataboutery.

    Icehawk @ 94 YES The person who was really to blame for Appeasement got away scot-free – Stanley Baldwin. Chamberlain got to carry the can.

    Troutwaxer @ 943 😁

    945:

    Hm, personal opinion, something akin to racism might be quite common, and I'm no exeption. Before you come to the wrong conclusions, OK, there is also the fun with ascribing personality traits etc. to groups quite quickly...

    I had (and sometimes still have) a hard time with Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, because his facial structure somewhat reminds me of an, err, "friend" from way back. Might be some part of my brain gets triggered by faulty facial recognition.

    And you could argue about adaptiveness in a Darwinian sense.

    Bonuspoints: a) Another friend said she didn't like the Eleventh Doctor because he reminde her of me, with the distracted sometimes hyperactive attitude.

    b) It's quite funny racists usually call people triggered by memories "snowflakes"...

    c) I just read the name of the "friend" on an internal memo at work yesterday. Could get, err, funny.

    946:

    racists usually call people triggered by memories "snowflakes"...

    It continues to amuse me, and very little about these people does, that the surest sign that someone is a snowflake is them ranting about snowflakes. Just about guarantees that failing to listen politely and take their ideas seriously will produce a show of hurt feelings and get you called names, and bob help anyone who has the temerity to disagree with one.

    As I've said before, the whiners for antisocial injustice* are sensitive wee petals.

    • opposite of a social justice warrior.
    947:

    I've pretty much given up on responding to SleepingRoutine because hir standard response seems to be "Your education is different to mine. Your education is wrong".

    948:

    Oh yeah, apologies, the missing word is “earnlay” and it should be 3rd last. I’ve nothing against the esteemed fellow commentor either. I’m just not interested in any used carpet right now. I mean I’m not interested in any carpet anytime really[*], but especially not any smelly awful tepid stuff at this time.

    Brexit? I worry about dear old friends who find themselves in the UK these days. Some, the ones who are already precarious in some way, more than others. I worry about the retreat from cosmopolitanism and the embrace of insular sectarianism, all over the place. That’s not Brexit as such, but it’s hard to read Brexit as anything much other than as a part of that. Sure people in favour of it offer all sorts of reasons but it’s a challenge to understand these other than as rationalisations. There might not be glowing green worms in their eyes, but there’s a sense they are just component parts in a vast incomprehensible snake, casting an inhuman gaze onto a horizon at the wrong scale for us to understand, turning in a way that is destructive of things humans value but which they take part in anyway following some dark spell.

    [*] A slight lie: I will likely rebuild a boat trailer sometime and for that I’ll need two strips of waterproof carpet. But the principle is mostly sound.

    949:

    It might have something to do with compartmentalization, quite high in authoritarians according to Altmeyer, though I also remember the guys most likely to not understand stalkers are other stalkers. They can't process the emotions, which is

    a) why they keep stalking their victims b) why they lack cognitive empathy for other stalkers. No idea about emotional empathy...

    Though in the latter case it might also be a case of ethical dissonance.

    As for the sensitivity to adverse events, it might have something to do with a lower threshold/higher reaction to disgust in conservatives, which makes me wonder if racism in horror authors is part of the deal, HPL, I'm looking your way. Of course, the horror being "unnameable" and driving people into insanity might also tie in with the opposite, e.g. able to communicate the trauma, makes for higher resilience. Maybe helping Arthut Jermyn to vocalize his distress after realizing he might have a little bit more non-HSS genes than most of us would mean less risk of peat fires...

    950:

    Err, to work out a), in short, the theory is stalkers can't let go, so they still imagine being in a relationship[1].

    As for amusement about racists, I more or less think everything and everyone amusing quite often. Humor is a distancing and and defence mechanism and strengthens my feeling of superiority, after all[2].

    [1] Yes, "Pale Fire" by Nabukov comes up, though I haven't read it... [2] Err, yes I know this is not necessarily healthy. Can we keep the next stages of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis that is one model of the republic of I out of focus for a moment? ;)

    951:

    Hm, I know people worse than SR and other problematic commentators[1]. Though it might have something to do with the anthropologist on Mars quite often being stuck with a quite hospitable tribe of slash-burn farmers who just happen to attack the neighbouring tribe, kill and eat the men and kidnap the women and children. They are not xenophobic, you see, they don't care for real foreigners, it's just personal with the other tribe, and they have known each other for generations.

    OK, I might have embellished the part with the killing and kidnapping somewhat, though you never know with soccer fans.

    [1] Yes, I know I might be oneself for some people.

    952:

    On another note...

    Firefox Pocket showed me a like to this.

    Personally, I have been wondering about the IQ (or whatever measure of "intelligence" you use) of some people I know lately, partly because of some strange results (people having certified IQs > 130 being quite "dumb" when discussing philosophy, mathematics and like, people without university qualification being quite interesting to talk to, though I have no formal test results in the latter case), partly because I realized people can behave with quite varying competence when fulfilling different roles, depending on "automatic" vs "rational" thinking etc.

    953:

    Err, yes I know this is not necessarily healthy

    It’s relative and it seems like the point of articulation is relative privilege. I used to think that perhaps a disdain for status rendered all those for whom the quest of status is important to a lower status. But disdain for status is essentially a privilege, much as humility and forbearance can be privileges. Just like choosing not to iron your work shirt is a privilege - just try it if your status is precarious.

    Point is that doesn’t make humility of forbearance bad. It just means you don’t have a right to require them of others, at least not those with less relative privilege in the relevant contexts. The correct response to the situation is not to reject the benefits of privilege but to use them to help people with less. Or something along those lines anyway.

    954:

    You're not getting it yet (who knows perhaps you are)

    https://www.raytheon.com/responsibility/stem/girl_scouts

    https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/agd4hx/these_abstract_drawings_that_sometimes_come_up_if/

    grep notes on what elisagate is, and it's 100% real.

    USA Conservatives spot the issue, but don't have the cognitive framework to deal with it, nor the imagination to replace it.

    goog above is making some fairly strident noises: they're a slaver in disguise btw, and 100% MIC.

    "Lord"

    Think about what a response is actually about. And think what gaslighting does.

    Write in Light, Image formation in the Brain, Tool Usage in Primates.

    p.s.

    If Host had asked at any time, we'd have left.

    955:
    You're not getting it yet (who knows perhaps you are)

    I will try, problem is your data points remind me why I usually don't bother with a password or encryption for some of my notes. It's highly unlikely somebody with a semantic network different from mine is going to understand them. Hm, what does MIC stand for? Made in China? Military Industrial Complex? Media Interface Connector? Or is the ambivalence part of the message?

    Err...

    956:

    paws @ 947 Yes, almost spot on - I would add the word(s) conditioning &/or brainwashing to "education", but ....

    957:

    Right on the 3rd word.

    Note above comments, it's part of a musical piece. And also note how it ties together.

    Literalism gets you spquihsed.

    When guards are let down, beasties run riot.

    If you design a system to put people unwittingly in double-blinds and they find out, they tend to revert to the most basic of systems, the limbic ones.

    If you know you're doing this deliberately you're pretty much Evil. Even if you've been conditioned to see it as moral. This is not about any particular people, it's a systemic issue[1].

    If you point out that it's gonna crash and the answer is "LOL, SO WUT?" you're really not getting it yet.

    Remember those experimental music fads? 4 mins of silence. Discordian wails?

    AI plays the same games with your Eyeballs.

    [1]Note that IL faced exactly the same financial patterns that the USA, AUS, CN and UK did.

    958:

    IQ is an abbreviation of "intelligence quotient" which is an abstract measurement and bears no direct relationship to the ability to apply knowledge to real world discussions I think?

    959:

    That's why I added whatever measure of "intelligence" you use.

    To go with the article by Taleb[1], <1>,<2>,<3>,<4>, is an induction; you could say all induction is faulty, or you could say it has more than one solution, it might be 5, but it might also be 6, if you add the smaller number in a prime factorization, e.g. 1x1 -> 1, 1x2 -> 1, 1x3 -> 1, 2x2 -> 2

    But, then, coming up with both solutions takes a certain type of talent.

    Some of the people I could talk about this with are in Mensa, so there might be some correlation. OTOH, I know a club bouncer who would make an intelligent impression when I talk about it; but then he might retweet some conspiracy theory from, err, alternative media. But then, I know plenty of students who do.

    Let's just say it's a somewhat generalized version of the idiot savant problem...

    Disclaimer: As for my personal affiliation with Mensa, I'm no member, but my job sucks, so you could call me a loser, and I wear sandals, though not Birkenstock's, and without socks. For aesthetic reasons, both with myself (sensitive to touch) and others (human sweat is an acquired taste). Read Taleb's article for context.

    [1] It was said it lead to something of a twitter flame war, though that's hardly a distinction. And then, I have little love for the guys he goes against (Murray, Peterson...), but Taleb's position on GMO sucks (for me), and he said his reason for splitting with Peterson were GMOs, so maybe I should go with "whoever loses, it's someone you don't like, so where is the popcorn?".

    960:

    When I wear sandals (usually indoors, in locations where "footwear" is strongly recommended, such as hotel conference and dining facilities) I never wear socks.

    961:

    Note: we're well aware that the default reaction to this type of thing is "Lol, Fnord" or "Drink your Ovaltine".

    These are lazy or guilty responses.

    https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2

    Now, let's be a little more nuanced than that.

    Let's assume some very smart bears or tigers read all the counter-culture culture hacking stuff and learned how to break the USA's cultural marbles.

    And let's assume that, as Mr Trump says, the USA Oligarch division trusts the CN Oligarch division more than it trusts the American people (which, ironically, he proved).

    And let's imagine that SAN ROLLS are 100% there and MK-ULTRA happened and that "conspiracy theories" are the lamest, laziest response to some fairly fucking evil stuff.

    And then look very carefully at some toys and some of the larger Corporations and wonder at what switches / buttons are being pushed.

    Just sayin.

    "Drink your ovaltine on the Radio Ad"

    "Watch the Tee-Vee"

    "The GRID LIVES"

    Each generation has it's version. The HSS Mind is constantly adapting.

    We're faster than You

    962:

    Actually, tabis and a certain interest in Japanese culture and history might mitigate my "never socks in sandals" policy somewhat in the future. Though not much. ;)

    (Project for 2019: Make your own geta, though I wonder if e.g. I might make the teeth exchangeable.)

    963:
    And then look very carefully at some toys and some of the larger Corporations and wonder at what switches / buttons are being pushed.

    I agree, but sometimes it might really be a "random" coincidence. To go for the "Rape on" shirts, some of the shirts making no sense indicates the "computer script error" might be the real explanation. OTOH, nice excuse you thought of beforehand, Pepe?

    Replicating the error or looking at the signal(threatening)-to-noise(nonsensical) ratio might help with sorting that out.

    BTW, anybody mentioned Pynchon's "Proverbs for Paranoids" yet?

    1. You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures. 2. The innocence of the creature is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master. 3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. 4.You hide, They seek. 5. Paranoids are not paranoids because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.
    964:

    1973

    Old Wetware

    Excession, 1996

    https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OutsideContextProblem?from=Main.OutsideContextVillain

    2019

    points to your reality

    Notice anything strange?

    The answer is not Hedonistic Nihilism btw.

    Who you working for anyhow?

    Possibility and Probability. (((Paradox Weaponry))) - not saying what you've been conditioned to think it's saying.

    CERN SAYS HELLO.

    965:
    Who you working for anyhow?

    As a question directed at me? I have no idea, the road to hell is paved with good intentions or frozen door-to-door salesmen, and I have a nagging fear of coming down (figuratively, not literally) on the same page as the pre-WW2 communists supporting the Hitler-Stalin pact...

    Actually, I thought about some snappy or sarcastic answer, but couldn't find any, so in the meantime, would "maybe I just try to make people happy" do?

    966:

    The only commentator who really pisses me off is the one who uses SubGenius break-thinking communication techniques that were pioneered in the early 1980s. (Which I was trained in during the nineties which I was "Bodhisatva Troutwaxer.") I've been blocking her various nyms since she got threatening with me a year or two ago - I should make some more posts in that "break-thinking" modality, or maybe post some links to "The Hour of Slack." You can learn most of those techniques just by listening carefully. (You have to buy the books for the rest of it.)

    But SR seems harmless; s/he just has his/her hobby-horses like the rest of us, plus a somewhat confused ideology which I attribute to having lived under both commies and Putin. (Look up Saint Stalin if you don't think Russian ideological structures are confusing.) Whether SR is/isn't a Russian propagandist isn't a big deal to me, as most of the people here are smart enough to catch that stuff and react in whatever way seem's appropriate.

    P.S. Those of us who live in the U.K. (and possibly Europe) would be well-served to perform the highest sort kind of Great Banishing Ritual, followed by a Great Cleansing. Very serious about this actually. Just remember that the bad energy gets sucked into the earth for reprocessing and you should do OK.

    967:

    My current theory about SR is that they are a paid commentator by the Russian government, but they're poorly trained (or trained to a different standard than actually works for an audience like ours,) and either SR or their controller isn't willing to actually learn how to communicate with an American/Western European. (Also, like I told Trottelreiner, look up Saint Stalin. This will give you a needed dose of perspective.)

    968:

    IQ is a measure of the "untrained" intelligence. What someone does with that intelligence is entirely another matter.

    969:

    Um, er, "an angelic warrior woman for Valhalla"?

    Trust in this site just hit 0. I think I need to open the door to let the Sweet Unicorns out into the pasture.

    970:

    I decided, months ago, that they were SIW, social injustice warriors, though "loudmouthed snowflakes" might be a better description.

    Snowflake - criticize any part of their belief system, and they melt into tears and flames....

    971:

    I'm on the go, but as for Saint Stalin...

    I have now idea how this is tied in to the WW2 rapprochement between Stalin and the Orthodox Church. Though I have known my fair share of, err, confused politics in Non-Russians, namely a German guy who asked "you're sure it's not the Holy SS Obersturmbannführer X. Y.", which, RC rat line aside, would still be quite strange a combination.

    He was also the only one who talked about plans to glass the Fulda Gap in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion with a strange enthusiastic glee in his eyes.

    Sorry, strange memories leading to a cognitive BSOD...

    972:

    IQ, as used, in general is overwhelmingly culturally contexted. The classic example of why is that a Bushman in the Outback would consider some airy-fairy backpacker completely ignorant and stupid.

    But then, I think someone with a modern liberal arts degree* is astoundingly ignorant, and afraid of actual intellectual effort. I'd also wonder about the culture of their parents.

    With those provisos, of course there's a difference in intelligence - and that ought to be broken up into several different subcategories.

    I've mentioned before that way back in the day, I had a friend who told me his IQ was 90. He was a nice guy, and well-meaning, but very slow on the uptake, and sometimes, in intellectual games (like my first wife and I throwing rhyming, mutating words at each other), he didn't get it at all. There was another friend who was slower than she and I, but could throw in one word for every five or six we did... and he was in MENSA.

    This is why I think the MC's IQ is probably close to 90, he's just got a built-in line of patter and autoresponse to almost anything... which does tend to repeat.

    973:

    I always wear socks, except some of the time at home - the rest of the time at home, I wander around in socks. Outside, I wear shoes... well, from late fall until the weather actually gets warm in spring, I wear boots.

    Summer, I have a very nice pair of CANVAS hiking boots. Like sneaks, but better made, and with real tread.*

    • Real programmers don't play tennis, or golf, or any other game that requires special clothing. They do, however, wear hiking boots, so that if a mountain should suddenly spring up in the machine room, they can climb it. (No, I didn't make that one up, it's from the 80;s...)
    974:

    As you know, Bob, the CotSG was originally a joke*, just as Cthulhu and co were a fantasy mythology. If you didn't have slack, then you took them seriously....

    My take on SR is to actually not see a lot of difference between them and Greg, just with their own national viewpoints

    By the way, Bob, what's the status on getting Ronnie Raygun canonized St. Ronnie?

    A Great Banishing? I think a Great Grounding, and then the Great Banishing, and then the Cleansing. Then, of course, as an old HP in a Circle I used to go to in Chicago would say, we proceed to the edible portion of the ceremony.

    975:

    Oh, Ghu, I just went to the Tavistock webpage, to look a bit further. Riiiight, "Why Donald Trump, Now?" and they start talking about leaders, archetypes, and trickster figures.

    Credibility approaching zero as a limit.

    And I adore all the "their conference was Wonderful!!!" on the entire right side. Have I mentioned that I loathe books with a ton of "so-and-so said this author is wonderful!"... without telling me what this book's about?

    976:

    Well, I see she stays in, by 24 votes. I also see that someone fairly high in Labour is urging Corbyn to table another referendum.

    977:

    Let me know which parts of your argument I've misrepresented? Let me be actually very clear here - what you listed are not arguments, they are hypothesis. Hypothesis are supported by arguments (sometimes presented as concrete facts), and when you argue, you oppose other arguments (aka counter-arguments). These hypotheses aren't actually mine, I learned about them while investigating modern data on the same topic. They are well-known among people, and not a personal opinion of some isolated authors.

    So, from this position, it is pretty good summary, although not entirely right still. I will comment on hypothesis, as well as your counter-arguments. Not trying to delve too deep.

    1. "There was a hidden famine in the West (especially the US) in the 1930s" Pretty much it means there were famines in many parts of the world in that period, and USSR famine wasn't a very exceptional one, if only worsened by several social factors. I argue that Great Depression was the other famine, and there were famines in Eastern Europe and China. The real problem is that these disasters aren't reflected in records properly (I can't seem to find relevant demographic data) because it constitutes a really big smear on country's reputation. I responded by pointing out that the nature of trade in that era would have made hiding such a famine practically impossible Nature of a trade has nothing to do with either famine or hiding of information, in fact, trade equally existed in USSR and in US - it wasn't just the same type of trade. I thought, you'd mean "free market", but then, again, what does free market do in case of major drought and starvation? What does it say about food stamps, unemployment rates?

    2. "The higher-range death toll estimate of the famine is not possible" First, I'd like to comment on "death toll". Death toll is a real number derived from records of dead people. What people operate here is not "death toll" but "excess death", which has difficult meaning altogether. I introduced several statistics which strongly hinted that such a death toll was indeed possible. I did not say that it was certain, merely that it was possible. I specifically pointed out that I would need more information to narrow it down. Also, because data usually have the property to become more precise as more references are available, the higher estimation, which is a mean number plus deviation, tends to decrease (from ridiculously high 50%). What I observe IRL is that the higher estimation has not decreased from 8 millions at all (which is more than died in 4 years of Nazi extermination in these same lands), and on a good year it goes up to 10 or even 12 millions.

    cont...

    978:

    3. "Out of anti-communist bias, historians use a ridiculous method to calculate deaths" Tis but a misconception here. Those historians who strongly engaged in anti-communist bias, are not historians, and vice versa. TBH, the method is actually ridiculously inaccurate in this case. I'm pointing out that the method they use is SOP for calculating deaths in circumstances where more reliable records don't exist, or aren't trusted. I've given multiple examples where this method has been used Well, my question is why these SOP weren't applied to Great Depression or population variations in other countries and territories (the economic crisis obviously wasn't limited to US or UK only). Probaly the reasoning being "if there wasn't famine then there's no need to look out for famine".

    In fact, there's something pretty jarring I found out today. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/great-depression-had-little-effect-on-death-rates-46713514/ It is normally pretty hard to impress me, but I am impressed nevertheless. They said, that death rates decreased in Depression. Because mild fasting, ladies and gents, might have positive effect on health and life expectancy. I have no words to comment on that, really.

    4. "The famine happened, but it wasn't the fault of the Soviet Regime". To summarize, I'd use quotation mentioned above, it was a fuck-up of monumental proportions. The problem that "Soviet Regime" is too vague of a term. Anti-communists put the blame on communist. Communists like Khruschev put responsibility on Stalin. Ukrainians and other nationalists put responsibility on "Moskovites" who "invaded" their lands with NKVD hordes and stole everything. Altogether it is difficult to find common ground among these people - but they, after all, don't seek anything common at all.

    For almost 25 years after collapse of USSR, the topic of famine and repressions has been plaguing internal and external relations of Russia. NATO and EU learned that it is one of many a good methods to destroy relationships of Russia with it's neighbors and isolate everyone in their pygmy Nationalistic worlds. This is called "promotion of democracy", in which US has been dropping billions upon billions of dollars over these years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2fYcHLouXY

    Now I hope, my reasoning and motivation is a little more clear here.

    979:

    And two stories that got on my news feed today.

    https://www.livescience.com/64437-crickets-sonic-attack.html If anybody remembers the scandal with "sonic attacks" that has been going on for quite a while. The article I got was also wondering if somebody would send apologizing letters to said embassies.

    https://theintercept.com/2019/01/10/amazon-ring-security-camera/ Now that'd be pretty cyberpunck-ish. Somebody was asking for advanced intellect? It seems like human labor is going to be cheaper still for a long time.

    980:

    whitroth @ 973: I always wear socks, except some of the time at home - the rest of the time at home, I wander around in socks. Outside, I wear shoes...

    The thing about wearing socks with sandals ... My circulation hasn't improved with age, socks help keep my feet warm. I usually have to wear long sleeve shirts & wide brim hats along with strong sun screens.

    Also some of the medication I'm required to take makes me susceptible to sunburn & skin cancer. The oncologist told me I must never wear sandals outdoors, but I found a pair of high UPF socks that protect my feet.

    981:

    My guess is an outbreak of mass hysteria is at the bottom of this.

    982:

    I on-and-off wore sandals for a year or so, back when I was about 19 or 20, didn't care for them. An' mine were BF Goodrich sandals.... (old, old joke - what I read that the Vietnamese wore - with pieces of tire for soles, good for 30,000 mi....)

    983:

    sleepingroutine @ 977:

    Let me be actually very clear here - what you listed are not arguments, they are hypothesis.

    1. "There was a hidden famine in the West (especially the US) in the 1930s"

    That's a bogus hypothesis.

    There was no famine in the U.S. in the 1930s, hidden or otherwise. Disruptions in U.S. agriculture during the Great Depression were all due to OVER-production. Farmers were dumping food because there weren't enough buyers or they couldn't get their product to markets, causing prices to fall below the cost of production.

    The breadlines featured in so many photographs weren't a result of food shortages, but of work shortages. Factories shut down because out of work people couldn't buy their products. That put MORE people out of work and out of work people don't have money to spend to keep an economy going. It was a deflationary spiral. There was certainly food insecurity, but starvation was almost non-existent in the U.S.

    The "Dust-bowl" has been mentioned, but that didn't have a great effect on U.S. food production. While conditions in the affected area were pretty bad, the majority of U.S. food production wasn't in that area. And the land recovered fairly rapidly after farmers began to use appropriate dry-land farming techniques to conserve the soil.

    There was still plenty of food available. What was missing was money in circulation to buy it with. That was the main thrust of FDR's New Deal - get people back to work even if the government had to become the temporary employer of last resort and support farm prices by limiting OVER-production along with eliminating some transportation bottlenecks that kept food from getting to market.

    984:

    whitroth @ 982: I on-and-off wore sandals for a year or so, back when I was about 19 or 20, didn't care for them. An' mine were BF Goodrich sandals.... (old, old joke - what I read that the Vietnamese wore - with pieces of tire for soles, good for 30,000 mi....)

    I had several pairs in those years. Can't remember if the instructions How to make a pair of BF Goodrich sandals came out of Mother Earth News or The Whole Earth Catalog.

    985:

    That point I struggled to make the other day about perennial crops generally suffering more from adverse events? Here's the flip side - when you have a variable climate but good forecasts, annual crops let you take advantage of good years and save your effort in bad ones.

    https://theconversation.com/cotton-and-rice-have-an-important-place-in-the-murray-darling-basin-109953

    Along the Murray and Darling rivers, which are some of the most variable in the world, the flexibility to plant more or less in a given year is very valuable. In a drought year with limited water like this one, a rice or cotton farmer may even chose to plant nothing and simply sell their remaining water allocation to another farmer.

    During a flood year they can move into full production and grow bumper crops. For an annual crop like this, farmers may only three good years out of five to have a viable business.

    In contrast, perennial crops like orchards or vineyards need a very secure water supply, every year without fail. The trees and vines take years to mature, so a bad drought can be devastating: if they die, a farm could be set back a decade waiting for them to regrow.

    986:

    You mean programmers don't wear shoes with non-conducting soles because someone else's lack of electrician skills can be seriously shocking?

    987:

    I generally don't wear shoes.

    988:

    “Pretty much it means there were famines in many parts of the world in that period”

    The problem is this is an extraordinary claim, in that it runs counter to the historical record and living testimony of eye witnesses in many countries and you’ve advanced zero evidence of it

    989:

    I know all about the Church. I even contributed some literature back in the day... Out of respect for OGH, I won't post a link here, but a search for (note the extra "s") "Bodhissatva Troutwaxer" will find some really awful stuff.

    990:

    "Let me be actually very clear here - what you listed are not arguments, they are hypothesis. Hypothesis are supported by arguments (sometimes presented as concrete facts),"

    In colloquial English usage, hypotheses which support a central position are classified as arguments. You hadn't made it clear at the beginning that there was no central position, so I was perfectly justified in viewing them as arguments.

    "The real problem is that these disasters aren't reflected in records properly (I can't seem to find relevant demographic data) because it constitutes a really big smear on country's reputation."

    Perhaps that's because the record are correct and there's no famine? I've said my opinion about this in post 755. I will not repeat it.

    "Nature of a trade has nothing to do with either famine or hiding of information, in fact, trade equally existed in USSR and in US"

    The USSR was trading with itself, not with the rest of the world. It's INTERNATIONAL trade which makes famine hard to hide. International trade from the USSR was practically nonexistent, while Europe would have starved without trade from the US.

    "Also, because data usually have the property to become more precise as more references are available..." You're assuming more reliable references have become available?

    "In fact, there's something pretty jarring I found out today. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/great-depression-had-little-effect-on-death-rates-46713514/ It is normally pretty hard to impress me, but I am impressed nevertheless. They said, that death rates decreased in Depression. Because mild fasting, ladies and gents, might have positive effect on health and life expectancy. I have no words to comment on that, really."

    If you read my post 755, it would not have surprised you. You would have had the weekend, and most of the week to digest this information. According to both our host and Greg, people lived healthier lives during WWII than before or after. Not my fault if you ignore my links.

    "Well, my question is why these SOP weren't applied to Great Depression or population variations in other countries and territories (the economic crisis obviously wasn't limited to US or UK only)."

    Then why were they applied to British India?

    991:

    "It's INTERNATIONAL trade which makes famine hard to hide. International trade from the USSR was practically nonexistent"

    Existent enough that the Ukrainian collapse in production increased the demand for local production in the US and so was one of the factors exacerbating the Dust Bowl...

    Then of course during the Cold War this became a trade to the USSR, which imported large amounts of grain from the US...

    992:

    I wear shoes all the time except in the bath and in bed. They are invaluable protective armour for a vulnerable and important part of the body, an indispensable protection against such calamities as bashing your toe on things or treading on swarf embedded in the carpet. Not to mention all the unpleasant things there are to tread on when you go outside. And they keep your feet warm, and when your feet are cold the rest of you is cold...

    One thing I really cannot stand is people who are precious about their floors and insist that visitors take their shoes off before coming indoors. It makes me feel both vulnerable and trapped, and I prefer to resolve the situation by going away and remembering not to visit again.

    993:

    Hmmm. You wouldn't like us then. On the other hand, we try to keep our callouses in good shape. After all, we've all got millions of years of ancestors who went barefoot, so I figure they were doing something right. Strengthening my feet helped solve some knee problems, incidentally, because it forced me to use my very mobile ankles for lateral flexion, rather than my knees, which aren't supposed to bend that way...

    Incidentally, I normally wear water shoes, because I don't like getting broken glass or spines in my feet. I started when the barefoot running craze came along.

    994:

    Never wear shoes at home or in the garden. Used not wear shoes at all. Years without. I got a plantar wart and had a couple of minor ops, so I wore shoes while they healed. I got used to wearing shoes sometimes, but rarely more than a few minutes a day. It's much more socially acceptable in Australia than the US. I don't wear shoes to go shopping or similar, and I'm rarely the only one in the shops who's barefoot.

    995:

    1) You persist in repeating your belief without presenting any evidence, despite the fact that no-one else (educated under multiple history (and geography) syllibii) accepts your belief.

    To expand my point, Charlie, Greg and myself grew up within about 400 miles of each other but in areas administered by 3 different examination boards, who could set different syllibii and use different source texts for the same subject at the same level. This means that your belief requires deliberate actions to cover up the facts that would support your belief on an international scale.

    996:

    “One thing I really cannot stand...” Never visit Japan.

    997:

    Oh, come on. Any soles with tread on them are non-conducting. hmph

    998:

    rolls eyes But are you pregnant?

    999:

    Crap. I have to remember not to use less than/greater than signs. That cmt was supposed to start out with (Sits down in overstuffed chair, puts pipe in mouth and lights it).

    1000:

    When I wrote "airy-fairy", I was actually trying to remember another word. I seem to be more on today - I was looking for newage, which rymes with "sewage".

    Trust me, this is not the Age of Aquarius, this is more like the Age of Aquariums, and as the Fabulous Furry Freak Bros sang in their theme song, "We all live in the ocean, both the (somebody) and the Chairman both agree/Won't someone please turn on that great fishbowl filter in the sky?"

    Oh, and is it now the Year of the Pig, or does that start in the spring? The MC and his pet Turtle sure qualify.

    1001:

    In colloquial English usage, hypotheses which support a central position are classified as arguments. They are still just hypothesis - they can be used to support theory. My central thesis, though, is pretty easy to get. In history, there's no good or bad societies, no heroes or villains - only winners and losers, those who survived and those who did not. So, USSR wasn't exceptional in it's cruelty, or mistakes, or approaches to solving the problems, and, at times, was ahead of some more civilized countries, just as civilized countries usually had a traditional superiority over it.

    Perhaps that's because the record are correct and there's no famine? That would be null hypothesis, although "no famine" is already pretty far-fetched from "no victims of famine" which you claimed earlier. Well, actually, if somebody say that there's no severe increase of death cases it would actually mean that MAJOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICAL DISASTER THAT AFFECTED HALF OF THE WORLD AND LAID THE FOUNDATION TO THE WORLD WAR was in fact just a severe case of unemployment fluctuation. I absolutely refuse to accept such illogical hypothesis.

    The USSR was trading with itself, not with the rest of the world. It's INTERNATIONAL trade which makes famine hard to hide. Well, that's just a load of bull. Trade has nothing to do with hiding consumption. And contrary to Cold War prejudices, USSR have always traded with capitalist countries, and especially in the period of rapid industrialization - otherwise, it would be all but impossible to do it in time. Trade is never a taboo in socialist cultures, and not even

    You're assuming more reliable references have become available? Naturally, I even posted them in this thread - but you did not even bother to look for them.Iv'e seen excellent lectures with subtitles, even posted them in this thread, but it's not like in information age anybody needs any information...

    Then why were they applied to British India? Well that's an easy one to formulate. The British India isn't British anymore, that's why.

    1002:

    There was no famine in the U.S. in the 1930s, hidden or otherwise. Disruptions in U.S. agriculture during the Great Depression were all due to OVER-production. Farmers were dumping food because there weren't enough buyers or they couldn't get their product to markets, causing prices to fall below the cost of production. Well it doesn't matter how many food is produced if it doesn't end up on your table anyway. If you don't have money to buy it. If farmers don't have money to support their production. If drought comes along and your business falls through the floor. Long story short, it may have started with overproduction in the beginning of Depression, but it never ended with it. I can't imagine US government go as far as directly shake their population for the grain to compensate for the problems, nether there were enough money to compensate for all the losses, so people certainly suffered a whole lot.

    Moreover, crop failure and drought universally create risks for population, and risks universally provoke people to speculate, hoping to drive prices higher and have a lot of profit. Doesn't matter if it happens in US or USSR, the mechanism is just the same. In USSR, government usually bought food at fixed price, so trying to capitalize on shortages results in you being thrown into jail, because you are trying to live off somebody else's work, and that's prohibited in USSR. In the famine situation, this is death sentence, regardless of whoever finds you out (government or the people) - you are responsible for letting other people die.

    There was still plenty of food available. What was missing was money in circulation to buy it with. That was the main thrust of FDR's New Deal - get people back to work even if the government had to become the temporary employer of last resort and support farm prices by limiting OVER-production along with eliminating some transportation bottlenecks that kept food from getting to market. You've probably learned from the history lessons that bolsheviks were simply robbing population of their wheat and other foodstuff to compensate effect of reduced crops production. Well of course it was different. If your peasants die today, who is going to grow food on the next year? Are you ever hoping to live past this year? Who is going to feed city population? Who is going to support industrialization? The fact that the famine ended after 1933 and did not result in collapse of the nation means that USSR did a pretty good job to combat famine and errors that caused it.

    Governments as stupid as you suggest really do not survive for too long. Now consider how many countries of Europe failed to be independent and strong in the face of German National Socialism in 1930s, and you can probably derive the difference between good and bad management.

    1003:

    Corrections needed... Trade is never a taboo in socialist cultures, and not even Iron Curtain can prevent trade. Russia has been trading with Japan for 70 years without any peace treaty. The only exception was Nazi Germany as they proclaimed total war at the time - but they should have utilized their economy better.

    1004:

    “Oh, and is it now the Year of the Pig, or does that start in the spring? ”

    It starts with the new year, which hasn’t happened yet. Chinese New Year is 5 February this year. Not sure if that counts as “spring” for you (I’d assume not, but the USA is weird about stuff like that).

    1005:

    Nah, that's not spring. Spring's third week in March, at the equinox. Also, after I posted, I was talking to a friend who told me the same.

    Was glad to hear all the projects she works on (she's also an employee of the same company I am) are fully funded.

    1006:

    Spring's third week in March, at the equinox

    I think you mean October, at the equinox.

    In related news, it's just gone 29° outside and it's only 0930. Going be another hot one.

    1007:

    Eh. Maybe. But, implementing one powerline is different from staking energy security on a neighboring country. So, solar is fairly useless for, eg, the UK. If I thought it was urgent, I'd be inclined to implement some sort of either carbon tax or some sort of 'cleanliness' subsidy, which nuclear and solar would both qualify for. There is a reasonable point that energy taxes are pretty unpopular overall, so, meh.

    Similarly, intermittency and cost mean that solar won't be implemented in the sort of quantities required to slow warming. You're free to ask for more cost committments - I mean - we all have windmills.

    But, eh, if I wanted clean power in the UK, I wouldn't bother with solar at all.

    @Moz Yes - the people building reactors will be clowns. People are clowns. Even so, we've had clowns building these for a while now - and we've still killed fewer than coal. I mention coal because the societal costs of coal appear to be perfectly acceptable for the median human. Kind of sad, overall, the people pushing against nuclear seem to overlap heavily with the set concerned about climate change - kind of like punching yourself in the face. For 50ish years.

    As for regulation, there's a fair subset of regulation that I'd characterize as counterproductive. (medical industry experience...also oil) Now, really, that sort of regulation is difficult to remove - but the costs involved relative to the benefits can be pretty disproportionate. (Medical industry costs kill millions - to save thousands, maybe.) The regulations on reactor design appear to be similar - and particularly geared against encouraging people to develop safer reactors.

    @Trout Maybe. But, after enough chatting, most Trump supporters I've met has alluded to something about the lower races. People and groups are usually pretty heterogeneous, but I'd ascribe racism as the common theme to Trump support. Well, there's also some dislike of other groups...particularly women - but that seems more evenly distributed between the parties.

    1008:

    the people pushing against nuclear seem to overlap heavily with the set concerned about climate change

    Note that some of us live in places like Australia or California, where nuclear is both unnecessary and foolish. Even Hobart is only 45 degrees south, making it not bad for solar. Building a nuclear plant on the upwind side of an island in the trade winds is less than smart, but that is the one place in Australia where nuclear might kind of start to make a small amount of sense. But for the rest of Australia the average annual yield of PV is more than 4kWh/Kw/day (a 10kW system will produce 40kWh/day on average). Viz, even the average energy hog could cover the average home with solar and become a net exporter of energy. Or we could pave some of the old nuclear sites with PV and power everything including the aluminium refineries.

    Much the same applies to the US, China, India etc. Places like Saudi Arabia could switch from exporting oil to exporting electricity very easily if they wanted to. FFS Morocco is doing that and they're hardly gifted with the oil wealth that the house of Saud is. As with fission, the problems are not technical or financial they are political.

    But for you cave people and their descendants in the dim northern regions, yeah, nuclear makes quite a lot of sense. There's no sun, not much hydro, and a lot of experience with industrial pollution. Do it.

    My argument isn't against terrestrial nuclear at all, merely that it should be regarded as the last ditch non-CO2 fuel.

    1009:

    Yeah, well, if you lot weren't standing on your heads, as I see it, you'd know spring's in two months....

    1010:

    after enough chatting, most Trump supporters I've met has alluded to something about the lower races. People and groups are usually pretty heterogeneous, but I'd ascribe racism as the common theme to Trump support.

    Data science agrees with you.

    This is a good summary: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/09/everybody-lies-how-google-reveals-darkest-secrets-seth-stephens-davidowitz

    https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/6/13/15768622/facebook-google-racism-social-media-seth-everybody-lies

    https://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/09/how-racist-are-we-ask-google/

    Fuller story in this book: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062390851/everybody-lies/

    Some quotes: And then there is the phenomenon of Donald Trump’s candidacy. When Nate Silver, the polling guru, looked for the geographic variable that correlated most strongly with support in the 2016 Republican primary for Trump, he found it in the map of racism I had developed. To be provocative and to encourage more research in this area, let me put forth the following conjecture, ready to be tested by scholars across a range of fields. The primary explanation for discrimination against African Americans today is not the fact that the people who agree to participate in lab experiments make subconscious associations between negative words and black people; it is the fact that millions of white Americans continue to do things like search for “nigger jokes”.

    1011:

    I don't know if you're still around on this thread

    "Well, actually, if somebody say that there's no severe increase of death cases it would actually mean that MAJOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICAL DISASTER THAT AFFECTED HALF OF THE WORLD AND LAID THE FOUNDATION TO THE WORLD WAR was in fact just a severe case of unemployment fluctuation. I absolutely refuse to accept such illogical hypothesis."

  • Whether you refuse to accept the facts doesn't change how true they are
  • I'm not yet willing to deny the claim that the Great Depression caused WWII, I'm not convinced that it's a clear-cut case.
  • The closest analog to the Great Depression is what's happening in Greece or the rural towns of Western Europe today. There was definite hardship as can be seen by the decline in meat consumption. People's savings declined, increasing financial insecurities. Combined with an environmental catastrophe, it did change how the US government operated. But in none of the modern cases mentioned was there a famine. Likewise, I don't see much evidence of an increase in Greece's death rate. There is an increase in the death rate in the US due to opioid use, but there's no evidence of a similar trend in Europe or Australia.
  • "That would be null hypothesis, although "no famine" is already pretty far-fetched from "no victims of famine" which you claimed earlier" I've been claiming both.

    "Trade has nothing to do with hiding consumption" Actually, it does.

    "Well that's an easy one to formulate. The British India isn't British anymore, that's why." I've interpreted this statement 5 different ways. Please clarify

    "The fact that the famine ended after 1933 and did not result in collapse of the nation means that USSR did a pretty good job to combat famine and errors that caused it." This is actually your strongest claim: if it was an intentional genocide, the Ukrainian famine wouldn't have ended after a single year.

    1012:

    I'm always somewhere here.

  • Facts are characterized by their consistency, non-contradiction, not by "truth".
  • There's no need for it to be a clear-cut case, I'm not saying there wasn't other reason.
  • Comparing today's situation in Greece with situation of US 90 years ago would probably earn you a couple of sidelong glances in any historical debate, but nothing more. This happened 15 years before human rights declaration was signed, before reliable demographic science was created, before genetics became dominating theory of evolution, and you want me to believe that there's anything in common between the cases?
  • I've been claiming both. Earlier there was: As the discussion points out, "malnutrition was a problem, starvation was not". They specifically mention that malnutrition DID NOT lead to surplus deaths I am not entirely sure what to make out of it.

    Actually, it does. How about no.

    I've interpreted this statement 5 different ways. Please clarify All of them are true. Britain has lost it's economical, political and, in general, institutional power in India (this includes scientific, historical, cultural issies) and therefore they are free to research their history and demand the truth in the face of the UN, whit nobody above them to suppress their will. Well, for the most part, that is.

    This is actually your strongest claim Worry not, it won't be for long. This is a mere inconsistency in overall pretty hammered out saga of "freedom of the nation", so I presume that somewhere along the way, maybe in the next decade, they will correct that mistake in their official documents, books, schools and universities. Nothing that the money can't buy you. They will need to mud the facts a bit, so it will probably sound like: "the Great Famine was jump-started somewhere around 1930 and picked up during following years, with number of victims peaking in 1933, and actually continued through the next decade until Germa- uh, erm, European liberators have brought salvation for the suffering nation."

    1013:

    _Moz_ @ 1006:

    "Spring's third week in March, at the equinox"

    I think you mean October, at the equinox.

    In related news, it's just gone 29° outside and it's only 0930. Going be another hot one.

    There's two of them every year; one in March and one in September. Your spring equinox is our fall equinox and vice versa.

    Whether 29° means "another hot one" or a cold one depends on whose thermometer you're using. For you 29° may mean it's time to "throw another shrimp on the barbie"; around here it means you're gonna' need to add another log to the fire.

    1014:

    "Facts are characterized by their consistency, non-contradiction, not by "truth"."

    When analyzing system-wide patterns, they're not characterized by consistency or non-contradiction. Or rather, they are, if you combine the discipline in several fields. If you don't know all those fields, the result may appear inconsistent or contradictory.

    "There's no need for it to be a clear-cut case, I'm not saying there wasn't other reason."

    Agreed

    "Comparing today's situation in Greece with situation of US 90 years ago would probably earn you a couple of sidelong glances in any historical debate, but nothing more."

  • I'm not at a debating society, and I'm not trying to write a research paper. In other words, there's only so much time I'm willing to devote to this topic.

  • Beyond a certain level of development in a society, the effects of a depression are as I described them. The US back then was far more developed than the USSR, and I would argue that it was developed enough that famine was not a realistic hardship. Furthermore, it was developed enough that the effects I mentioned could be considered hardship. In other words, it resembled a meidum-to-high income developing country (my guess, HDI 0.64 - 0.70). I'm using the vague memory of an article in 2006 claiming that China's poverty back then resembled the US in the 1920s, and substracting 0.002 for different medical technology. It's not exact, but unless I can find real HDI calculations of this time period, it's the best I got.

  • http://hdr.undp.org/en/data

    Otherwise, I don't have time to try and find statistics backing this point up.

    "surplus deaths". If the rate of deaths was 0.2% of the population annually in the 1920s, and rose to 0.25% in the 1930s, then the extra 0.05% would be considered surplus deaths. In this case, they probably excluded the deaths due to old-age diseases in the years before and after, and used that to calculate any changes in the rate.

    My comment was that no one died from famine. The storm itself killed around 7000. Probably most were asthmatics, newborns, and a few suicides. I don't see how 7000 deaths could be attributed to famine here?

    "All of them are true. Britain has lost it's economical, political and, in general, institutional power in India (this includes scientific, historical, cultural issies) and therefore they are free to research their history and demand the truth in the face of the UN, whit nobody above them to suppress their will. Well, for the most part, that is."

    And yet they used the same method you view as fraudulent, despite the fact that they had the ability to use a different method. It should tell you how reliably the method is viewed.

    1015:

    It depends where you are anyway. It's in about ten days time in Ireland at the start of February, and a month later at the start of March in the UK. My understanding is that Australia and New Zealand have it start on September 1st (though it sounds from Moz that they're picking up an inverted version of the US "it starts at the Equinox" version).

    1016:

    My understanding is that Australia and New Zealand have it start on September 1st

    It might help to remind us all that Australia is not England and does not do English seasons."When do we have summer" is one of those questions like "when do we crown a new queen" or "when do we celebrate Thanksgiving" that kinda make sense but really don't.

    We have our own seasons, ranging from the wet tropics that have "dry" and "wet" seasons (guess what they're like 🙂) through to the central desert countries that have variable calendars with variable seasons within them. The most dramatic is when a normal dry winter has floodwaters flowing down from the north, so instead of cool and dry there's a veritable explosion of life all over everything. Saying "oh but it's still winter" doesn't really describe what's happening in a useful way.

    Sydney gets about six seasons although note that we're not in Burran right now, we're in "hot and wet" (like Parra'dowee). Sadly I can't find the Wiradjuri calendar online which has different names and more flexibility (it's entirely possible that the BOM have elided that in the interest of keeping that page short and simple). There's a longer description on the ABC

    In a dry summer my lawn would be brown and the garden more or less on hold, but right now I am mowing 5cm or more off the lawn at least once a week and the garden is not cooperating. Normally I mulch with 10cm or more of woodchips to keep enough moisture in the soil that not everything dies, but in a wet summer that just provides extra nutrients for more growth. That's partly boasting (I have a great garden!), but also trying to give you all some idea of what it's like when the weather is hot and wet here. Fertile soil just explodes with life.

    The cherry tomato plants growing on the chicken fence are about 2m tall along about 4m of fence but the extra branches have started falling down so there's also a pile about half a metre deep of ground-based tomato vine/bush. It's all covered in fruit. The tomato seedlings that were 5cm high on Sunday are about 10cm high today and desperately need to be transplanted. It sounds sarcastic when I say I mow things, but it's the pragmatic solution do dealing with this kind of plant riot. If I don't mow those tomatoes they grow across the driveway and would probably try to take over the garage.

    1017:

    Since this thread is about 2018, would anyone terribly object if I dropped in some thoughts about the now-read Labyrinth Index? The thread for it is closed, and TBH the typo thread seemed even more inappropriate.

    If not, I guess I'll wait for the crib sheet thread later this year.

    1018:

    As this thread is now over 1000 comments long, nobody would terribly object to dropping anything in it. (Usually, above 300 comments it's no longer considered bad etiquette to veer off-topic; above 1000 it has already become a thread about anything & everything.)

    The real question you should ask yourself is whether anybody is still paying attention to it, because after a few days of nearly total inactivity it seems that the crowd has more or less migrated to the next thread. So the risk you're running is that nobody will read your comment anymore.

    1019:

    Or rather, they are, if you combine the discipline in several fields. If you don't know all those fields, the result may appear inconsistent or contradictory. Well, at least you have to be consistent enough to be understood for an educated person. Now what I see that people here not only fail to understand my position, but refuse to do so.

    Beyond a certain level of development in a society, the effects of a depression are as I described them. The US back then was far more developed than the USSR, and I would argue that it was developed enough that famine was not a realistic hardship. And we can safely agree that conditions for such levels of development weren't developed enough pre-war, it is only after the war was over and new status-quo was pretty much established, we could say something definite about comparing states and epochs within same period. Not to talk about post-Cold War globalization, that allowed things like HDI to be calculated on common basis, and etc.

    My comment was that no one died from famine. The storm itself killed around 7000. Probably most were asthmatics, newborns, and a few suicides. I don't see how 7000 deaths could be attributed to famine here? These numbers, anyway, don't match the demographic slump in the developed countries of that time, which are visible with naked eye - which is what I pointed out several times already.

    And yet they used the same method you view as fraudulent, despite the fact that they had the ability to use a different method. It should tell you how reliably the method is viewed. My problem is not the method itself, but rather how it is applied. In case of USSR, it is universally accepted by apologetics of "genocide" that all surplus death happened because of famine and terror (and by a long stretch, a daemonic power of "communism"), and when it comes to other parts of the world, suddenly you are not allowed to use the same method and are met with flat denial and unintelligible excuses (often contradicting each other).

    Which shouldn't really surprise me at all. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/article/1064682/britains-foreign-office-admits-to-destroying-hundreds-of-files-regarding-start-of-ltte-uprising-in-sri-lanka It is one thing to review your history and allowing to have different opinion on it. The other thing is to destroy it and erase it from memory, leading to the same mistakes made again and again.

    1020:

    Now what I see that people here not only fail to understand my position, but refuse to do so.

    If multiple people with, as already demonstrated, different educations in the same subjects, do not understand your argument, it is the height of arrogance on your part to continually repeat "everyone is wrong except me".

    1021:

    Thanks a lot for your reply, I honestly have no idea how posting etiquette works with respect to topics on this particular corner of the web.

    1022:

    MSB @ 1018: As this thread is now over 1000 comments long, nobody would terribly object to dropping anything in it. (Usually, above 300 comments it's no longer considered bad etiquette to veer off-topic; above 1000 it has already become a thread about anything & everything.)

    The real question you should ask yourself is whether anybody is still paying attention to it, because after a few days of nearly total inactivity it seems that the crowd has more or less migrated to the next thread. So the risk you're running is that nobody will read your comment anymore.

    I keep checking back until the post is officially closed to new comments.

    1023:

    it is the height of arrogance on your part to continually repeat "everyone is wrong except me" I didn't say "everyone", though, I was referring to just a couple of them. What I am talking about is I'm getting tired of them addressing to their stereotypes instead of me.

    1024:

    "And we can safely agree that conditions for such levels of development weren't developed enough pre-war, it is only after the war was over and new status-quo was pretty much established, we could say something definite about comparing states and epochs within same period. Not to talk about post-Cold War globalization, that allowed things like HDI to be calculated on common basis, and etc."

    While we have to be careful in applying modern HDI to older times, the alternative isn't to assume that all European countries were equally developed. That's why I await historian's attempts to calculate historical HDI the same way that they've calculated historical GDP.

    "These numbers, anyway, don't match the demographic slump in the developed countries of that time, which are visible with naked eye - which is what I pointed out several times already."

    You haven't shown it at all. The only developed country you've looked at is the US, and have yet to refute my assertion that this slump was seen in any other European developed country. By the standards of the time, neither Poland or the USSR would have been considered developed (they were considered economic and technological backwaters, the same way the US views Mexico today). The developed countries were: the Southern Cone, Brazil, the US, Canada, Australia (maybe), the UK, France, Germany, Benelux, and parts of Scandinavia.

    "Which shouldn't really surprise me at all." Thank god historians don't trust empire data.

    1025:

    Charlie,

    In an effort to cheer you up -- and since I no longer have a sensible outlet for a bit of fan-fic...

    ... here are some insider facts and rumours about the "Manchester College", that may be of use if you decide to go with a "side-quest" for a quick Laundry novel. Just remember everything is possible in a Wheeler-Everett Multi-verse, and that causality is not necessarily what it appears to be.

    Facts

    The Manchester Baby really did start the use of software. Though Kilburn and Williams (both dead) were really just testing their cathode ray tube storage technology, and the CPU was just a way to build in the self test.

    The idea of using software was discussed at an international symposium (piss up) in the USA in 1946, so the race was on.

    Williams spent the war developing IFF at Malvern. Kilburn was at Bletchley.

    Rumour

    One of Williams underlings at Manchester was the radar expert assigned to Operation Bruneval. He met one of the commandos on that raid in the street in Manchester in 1946 or 47.

    "You were the soldier assigned as my bodyguard weren't you? I noticed you stayed very close to me."

    "You could say that. I was actually tasked with shooting you in the head if it looked like we were going to be captured."

    Rumour

    Kilburn discovered a design for a flip-flop memory (static RAM to you and me) on Turing's desk at Bletchley, and recognised that it needed capacitor decoupling to work. Turing: not the most practical of engineering talents. The rest of them at Bletchley used to hide his soldering iron (big thing heated up on a stove) because he was destroying too many valuable components.

    Fact

    The River Cornbrook lies directly under the Kilburn building (The big square blob opposite Tuer Street on Oxford Road) http://hidden-manchester.org.uk/#/waterways/corn-brook . Images of the tunnel are also shown. Don't think Ramona is on the staff at the moment.

    Fact

    It used to be about 20% of the degree qualified UK IT people coming through the department; not surprising as we set up UG teaching in 1965 (first in UK).

    Fact

    Mary Almond recruited to do programming in 1947. Was UG director for many years -- probably still alive. Some other staff only realised where she acquired her programming skills when they saw a TV documentary covering a Bletchley reunion.

    Fact

    Atlas 1 commissioned in 1961. Last UK supercomputer; had world's first floating point unit. Why? (Urban redesign of Wolverhampton?)

    Fact

    Last mainframe developed here was MU5 (prototype ICL 1900/2900). Had Virtual Memory.

    Rumour

    Successfully extracted damages from IBM for VM patent infringement. Paid for new building ("The IT building", see below).

    Fact

    Steve Furber (ARM designer, still alive, still here) authorised expenditure to refurbish the "clean room" in the IT building, paving the way for the Graphene discovery (in IT Building).

    Fact

    Steve and I have built a neural simulator (SpiNNaker). We both also work in the IT building.

    Suggestion

    Can it be used to mimic brains to distract feeders?

    Fact

    Connects directly to Tobi Delbrucks silicon retinas (or even a pair of them! Brains wasn't the first with stoner weapons.) Ryad Benosman has an infra red silicon retina. Was reportedly stolen by DSGE when he displayed it a Paris Tech Fair. Stealth Medusa, anyone?

    Fact

    Manchester never bothered with "High level languages" in the 1950s since "Atlas Autocode Assembler" was arguably easier to use than FORTRAN.

    Really Interesting Fact/Rumour

    Turing's last published paper was the morphogenesis one (How the Zebra got its strips). Has recently (2000's?) been validated.

    But the biggie is what he was working on right at the end: what is it about physics that leads inevitably to computation? Alternatively: is computing built into the universe itself? My source is Martin Hyland (still alive, ex head of Maths, Cambridge whom I often do PhD vivas with) Martin was one of Robin Landy's students, and Robin was Turing's only PhD student.

    So Turing's last Theorem would have been: why computing works.

    Other odd Fact

    Last Head of Department (Jim Miles, still alive) discovered one of Turing's notes down the back of a filing cabinet when he was clearing out.

    Feel free to use any of this if you're in a creative desert at the moment.

    1026:

    Er, not all of that is quite correct.

    What or who started software is moot. Without denying what you say: weaving cards and knitting patterns are programs, and the latter are amazingly powerful; Ada Lovelace first described modern software for a general-purpose computer; and David Wheeler (of Cambridge) is usually credited with inventing subroutines and libraries.

    No, the Atlas 1 was NOT the first computer with a floating-point unit. The English Electric Mercury II was first commissioned in 1958, had one, and even it was probably not the first.

    1027:

    Sorry about the confusion over Atlas and Mercury: these are two rooms next to one another and both machines were way before my time!

    Software -- quite agree, though I'd heard the one in which Tony Hoare invented the use of stacks for subroutines.

    Nevertheless, I find the Laundry series is best (for me) when the weirdness is "close" to the real world; it doesn't take much in the way of tweaks to get interesting stories.

    1028:

    Whereas my first job was programming a Mercury :-) I used the Atlas/Titan at Cambridge, too. Yes, those were the days when Manchester led the world in computer design.

    Specials

    Merchandise

    About this Entry

    This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on December 30, 2018 10:58 AM.

    Peak Brexit was the previous entry in this blog.

    Someone please cancel 2019 already? is the next entry in this blog.

    Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

    Search this blog

    Propaganda