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No comment necessary

Post-infection cardiac damage found in 78% of recovering COVID19 patients

That's 78% of a cohort, average age 49, of whom 67% had recovered at home (ie. disease was not categorized as severe enough to need hospitalization). Cohort was normalized with respect to other risk factors relative to uninfected patients. Diagnosis by MRI. Looks reasonably solid, at first glance, publication in JAMA Cardiol. (Journal of the American Medical Association, cardiology). Study coordinated via a German hospital.

Reason for "no comment necessary" is that this suggests most COVID19 survivors—including mild disease survivors—suffer cardiac damage.

You don't want to get this virus.

1766 Comments

1:

Reminder: blog entries are served as static HTML pages, but whenever you (or anyone else) posts a comment it forces the server to wake up and prod the grumpy MySQL database sitting on a 10 year old PC and re-generate the entire page. This means that if we're up to a couple of thousand comments (a) the HTML output gets kinda bulky and (b) the load on the server rises.

I put this new entry up because we were at around 2400 comments and it was taking over a minute to update with every new comment.

2:

That is NOT what I wanted to hear!

3:

They've been wondering if it's a blood-borne disease, not merely a respiratory one. And there's reports of it passing the blood/brain barrier.

4:

And some of my relatives and others will refuse to believe it.

At all.

[grumpy big sigh]

5:

Yeah, getting Covid19 seems to be a roll of the dice. Of the five people I know of who got it, four seem to have done okay, one died. No one's checking for heart damage though.

6:

I think you have to distinguish between a blood/ fluid transmitted disease, like malaria or AIDS, and one that can be transmitted through the air. SARS-CoV2 is certainly the latter, but one it gets in, the epithelial cells it infects are all over the body.

Some are lucky, in a way: AFAIK there are a large number of epithelial cells in human placentas. While fetuses do get infected, I haven't seen any reports of Covid19 causing spontaneous abortions through placental infections. The bigger problem seems to be keeping the mother healthy enough to carry the fetus to term, and heart, lung, and kidney damage complicate that.

7:

As I've said to people who don't believe it's a big deal. We don't have the data. We need people with very very complete physical workups to get it and recover and then see how they are now compared to before. The number of people who have gotten sick haven't have such a work up recently. Or ever.

I've suggested to some of the skeptics that they get a full workup plus stress test and a full body MRI then volunteer to be infected. No takers so far.

As I mentioned a while back I'm supposed to be in a phase 3 trial. Part of that will be a physical in August. Actually I think 3 over time. I wonder just how invasive they will be.

8:

Completely different subject: remember that airship to orbit thing I posted about in the previous thread at #1495. On a whim, I went and got the book John Powell put out on his adventures getting things to go high. It finally arrived, and it is bonkers in the best tradition of airship building. Whether it's worth spending the $20 is up to you, but if you like mad science airships, you might like this.

9:

The epithelial cells it infects are all over the body, and it infects (and thus disables) a receptor that appears to be a blood-pressure sensor. This also explains the clotting problems: a severe infection causes the body to presume that blood pressure has plunged insanely (more than is actually physically possible), so it ramps up clotting to match, to plug the immense hole that must have caused this. Of course this is way past sensible, so you end up with blood that clots instantly, thousands of times more clot-prone than blood should ever be.

There are a surprising number of positive feedback loops with no limiting condition in biology, only "oops it killed you". The immune system has a lot of them, but this one is thrombosis-related.

I'm not surprised it causes heart damage. I guess this makes a vaccine that much more crucial: if it turns out that the Nature study suggesting that T cell immunity lasts for decades is wrong, and you can get reinfected by this every year or so, like the common cold... how many times can anyone get infected by this before it kills them? I don't really want a civilization-ending disease that knocks most of the population off with heart failure by the year 2030, thanks.

10:

I don't really want a civilization-ending disease that knocks most of the population off with heart failure by the year 2030, thanks.

Morbid thoughts but I wonder if this is true what will happen to the anti-vaxer crowd. I have relatives in this group. Rabid ones.

Will there suddenly be a change of heart? Or, more likely in my mind, a bizarre rationalization that allows them to get THIS vaccine and not any others.

11:

Morbid thoughts but I wonder if this is true what will happen to the anti-vaxer crowd. I have relatives in this group. Rabid ones.

Will there suddenly be a change of heart?

That, sir, was a truly horrible pun.

Wish I'd thought of it :-)

12:

If it turns out that coronavirus vaccines confer limited immunity, then what may well happen, absent the development of global herd immunity, is that this disease gets up there with, say, malaria as a cause of global mortality.

Thing is, we've lived with these before. Until around 1900, 50% of German children got diphtheria, and it was the leading cause of childhood mortality. There was also smallpox, tuberculosis, and all the other miseries that we've temporary transcended.

Society won't collapse by itself from coronavirus. What's more likely to happen is what happens with malaria: a perpetual drain on resources, because so many people are sick. That's not a good situation to be in with a climate crisis ramping up, but it's likely survivable.

13:

Anti-vaxxer. Somewhere in the next dozen years, +/-3, I expect one of the kids to catch polio, and sue the parents for everything they own, and it will be all over the media and the 'Net, and the assholes will crawl back down.

14:

Wish I'd thought of it :-)

Ah, so do I. 8-)

15:

I had what the doctors think was COVID-19 in early March. One month at home coughing, headache, gastro, brain-fog, etc. The weren’t doing testing then unless you needed to come into the hospital. I stayed home. A second month of recovery had me massively exhausted and the brain fog was worse. Focus was impossible and I was just plain dumber to the point some stupid sitcoms were actually amusing.

I now have my faculties back to a degree I can’t tell if I’m still stupid but third party perspectives assure me I’m not an imbecile.

Throughout the entire length, from day 5 of exposure to now, my heart rate has been awful. 100-150bpm climbing a flight of stairs. Random racing heart rate while sitting on the couch. My resting heart rate is in the 80s very often and not infrequently in the 90s or higher.

Before all this I went to the gym 6 days a week and rode a bike 30-60 minutes a day and lifted weights and my heart rate rested around 65. I’m certain this thing has done real damage and I just hope my body can repair itself.

This is anecdotal not data but if this is how even a small fraction of healthy 40 something people respond, then productivity is gonna drop, and health care costs will rise for the foreseeable future.

16:

will crawl back down.

I think you underestimate the depth of their convictions.

17:

Will this reverse falling birth rates?

Or accelerate them.

One thing that lots of births did was allow a reasonable number of humans to reach their teens in the face of all the childhood killers.

18:

The depth of their convictions will run head-first into the depth of their checking accounts and other assets.

19:

I've seen several headlines that birth rates are falling.

20:

"I've seen several headlines that birth rates are falling."

What did you expect when parents are forced to stay home with their kids 24*7 ?

21:

There was an interesting article I read in the last week (no idea where) where it was projected that the US would be missing 1/2 million people at the end of the year. Covid deaths, lower birth rates, less immigration, etc... The US population will still grow but by much less than expected.

22:

What did you expect when parents are forced to stay home with their kids 24*7 ?

Totally.

When I was growing up (born in 54) on the edge of suburbia we would head out into the woods and not return for 1 to 6 hours. And in general no one thought it odd. Now with everyone sequestered it has got to be rough.

One of my clients has said every now and then the 3 people in their house have to go to separate corners and decompress for a while to avoid any homicides. The 3rd one is 12 or 13.

23:

The causes for that are pretty obvious if you believe that contraception can work: many more people are looking at the state of the world and deciding they don't want to deal with it while taking care of a(nother) child. That might be the pandemic directly, it might be the economic damage, it might be that with a bit more experience of catastrophe people are thinking more about climate change.

The current Australian Treasurer is going down the well-worn path of "have a baby for the economy" because they do that here. I still haven't printed my "eine für den Vater, eine für die Mutter, eine für das Land" T short but I might have to if this keeps up.

24:

So the most important question is does this study hold across those who show no symptoms - the choice of participants was based on those tested, which presumably has a built in bias towards those who had symptoms of some sort.

It is perhaps possible that the showing of symptoms is the result of Covid passing some sort of threshold which then allows the other nasty effects to happen - that those with no symptoms don't get the nasty side effects (which, as we learn more about Covid, may be a best case scenario).

If the showing of symptoms is not a requirement, and this does hold close to those numbers for everyone who gets Covid, then the next decade in health care could be very interesting - certainly public health care systems will need to be starting to consider some significant investments in cardiac care, and emergency facilities looking into expecting more ambulances arrive yearly with heart patients.

25:

Why? It's not a bad thing if the birth rate falls, especially in countries where per capita resource use is not sustainable. After all, if people have to move poleward, having dilapidated towns to rebuild sustainably might be a good thing, if done properly.

And yes, I'm perfectly aware that the backlash to such proposals is supposed to be terror-inducing. Silly me.

26:

"eine für den Vater, eine für die Mutter, eine für das Land"

Crap. I thought you were making a statement from Germany from the 30s. Australia or NZ had this slogan a couple of decades back?

27:

This sort of thing & other reports are why I have changed my mind, severely w.r.t. this lurgi. Avoid, if at all possible ... One question: What about "asymptomatic" cases - not "mild" ones, those where someone gets it, gets no symptoms at all ... what then? Ah yes, mdive has asked the same question in different format.

Meanwhile ... keep taking the Warfarin ???

[ Oh yes, admin question: There's a time-limit on re-posting if something new pops up. One could evade this by dropping back to a n other thread & then re-joining the original one. Not available currently. So - what is that time interval, please? ]

28:

Yes, keep taking your meds until you've got good evidence that you're sick with Covid19. Then call your doctor/pharmacist ASAP.

Note, I'm not a medical professional, but this is fairly standard advice: you don't want to die or disable yourself due to prevention measures you take against the Rona. Furthermore, the advice for how to cope with it changes as more data come in, so you want to get the current (hopefully best) advice when you get sick, not have save up the wrong advice for months or years prior to such bad luck happening.

29:

Peter Costello said it in English and he was a loyal supporter of the "we will decide who comes to this country" Howard Governmunt.

I very much doubt any Australian government would use a slogan that wasn't primarily or solely in English, but they will happily steal any idea they think will work. It's us filthy rabble who translate things for them to bring home where the ideas were popularised.

30:

"What did you expect when parents are forced to stay home with their kids 24*7 ?"

The only way to pull off a lockdown afternoon 'quickie' with their 8-year old son in the apartment was to send him out on the balcony with a Mars Bar and tell him to report on all the street activities.

He began his commentary as his parents put their plan into operation:

'There's a car being towed from the car park,' he shouted.

'An ambulance just drove by!'

'Looks like the Andersons have company,' he called out.

'Matt's out on his bike and his mum is telling him off'

'Looks as if the Sanders are going into full isolation!'

'Jason has had his skate board taken off him

After a few moments he announced, 'The Coopers are having sex!!'

Startled, his mum and dad shot up in bed!

Dad cautiously called out, 'How do you know they're having sex?'

'Jimmy Cooper is standing on his balcony with a Mars Bar'.

31:

I have friends who agrees Covid is real but they look at me a bit odd when I mention every day when I get out of the shower I weigh myself. And for the last 2 months I do a pulse OX and temperature and record all of it. Why? So I can notice if either of the later 2 change too fast or too far and the docs can see a baseline.

PS: If I want my income to keep flowing I have to go out into some offices. But so far those places are all on the don't come into the office unless you must. And then wear a mask and wipe down.

32:

So... no comment might be necessary but it’s worth noting that he hypercoagulability that is seen with SARS-CoV-2 affects multiple organs. The brian being a likely site of damage along with lungs, skin and cardiac tissue.

This from The Lancet:

Hypercoagulable states and cerebrovascular disease, which have been seen rarely for some acute viral infections, are an important neurological complication of COVID-19.

Overall, the proportion of patients with neurological manifestations is small compared with that with respiratory disease. However, the continuing pandemic, and the expectation that 50–80% of the world's population might be infected before herd immunity develops, suggest that the overall number of patients with neurological disease could become large. Neurological complications, particularly encephalitis and stroke, can cause lifelong disability, with associated long-term care needs and potentially large health, social, and economic costs.

33:

Don't look at me, guv, I like the idea of a lower population and have done my little bit (by behaving in a way that leads people to not want children 🤬)

I too shake my head a lot at the endless-growth fixation of most of society. I mean, GDP can go up forever, that's not in question (fiat currency FTW), but physical resource use? Population? Not in a finite universe, and definitely not on a single planet.

34:

It's not a bad thing (it's probably a good thing) if there are less people. But if the birth rate falls then, other things being equal, you go through a period where there are proportionally a lot more old people, and that is at best difficult: who pays their pensions? who deals with the consequences their antique bigotry? who cleans up their shit?

Pretty much this is a problem that any system built on the idiot idea that various exponential processes (population growth, economic growth, computer performance, ...) will go on for ever suffers from. And we have lots of superficially smart people with job titles like 'economist' and 'special adviser' who believe that shit because they're massively innumerate. Oh well.

(Note: I am one of these old people.)

35:

I thought we were solving that via health crises that preferentially kill old people and people who need medical help to stay alive?

36:

I have more kids than intended... but adding up my ex's, and their partners/husbands, it's still below replacement rate. Well below. And on my side, as opposed to Ellen's, I have one grandkid (and another one coming). So, still, way under replacement rate.

And How Will We Survive if there are not more kids growing up to support us?!?!?!

Well, maybe it's time to end capitalism as we know it, and fuck the "consumer society" (are you a huge mouth, sitting on a couch, and an open wallet? Don't do anything to produce anything? FtS.

37:

It's "Eins" or "Eines" — except you really mean "three daughters". >;-)

38:

Ooh, thanks. Albeit I would get it properly proof read before doing an actual T shirt.

I spent quite a while doing some "freedom" shirts where the issue was not grammar but coming up with Farsi text that was obviously not bad Arabic. In the end I put the Arabic smaller below the big Farsi text because whatever I tried Arabic-only readers could kind of recognise it and it just looked annoyingly wrong to them.

39:

It's not a bad thing (it's probably a good thing) if there are less people. But if the birth rate falls then, other things being equal, you go through a period where there are proportionally a lot more old people, and that is at best difficult: who pays their pensions? who deals with the consequences their antique bigotry? who cleans up their shit?

Same people who deal with it now: immigrants, largely. I suspect you're being a bit facetious, but I'm not. Where I am, a good chunk, perhaps a majority, of the health care professionals, are immigrants. They're very good at what they do, too. I'm married to one.

The problem the US has isn't a falling birth rate, it's an idiot government that's so screwed up our relationship with the rest of the world that few people can (even if they want to) move here to do those well-paying, rewarding, dirty jobs. Guess Australia and New Zealand could profit from that, maybe. UK too. Just a wee bit of political repositioning and welcome the migrants in before the US gets its act together and cleans up enough to be acceptable to the rest of the world. That's, what, a year-long window? Two years?

40:

Sadly, I fear that a significant number of anti-vaxxers will find someone other than themselves to blame. Being successfully sued by their own children may not change their minds.

41:

Being successfully sued by their own children may not change their minds.

Why would it? Killing their own children doesn't seem to make a difference…

When Ezekiel Stephan fell ill, his parents treated his fever with a tincture of garlic, onion and horseradish.

David and Collet Stephan did call an ambulance, but only after he’d stopped breathing, after his body had become so stiff he couldn’t be placed in a car seat.

David Stephan and his wife are naturopathy enthusiasts, but the judge found that there was nothing wrong with their choice to pursue those methods of treating Ezekiel up until the moment he stopped breathing. Queen’s Bench Justice Terry Clackson rejected the findings of a medical examiner who said the boy died of bacterial meningitis, siding with a defence expert who said the death was caused by a lack of oxygen. He also ruled the Stephans, who testified they thought their son had croup, had done everything possible to get help for their son.

“The Criminal Code does not impose a duty to seek medical attention for every sick child. For that duty to arise there must be a risk to the child,” Clackson wrote, adding that the Stephans did take action when the boy’s life was at risk, when he stopped breathing.

https://nationalpost.com/news/alberta-couples-acquittal-in-death-of-son-raises-questions-over-parental-duties-and-responsibilities

And apparently God is also on their side, so that's OK then. :-/

42:

It's not really difficult though. The difficult thing is getting people to exhibit any understanding or acceptance of why it's not difficult. Roughly speaking, the total amount of work that gets done is split 10/90 between stuff that's actually useful and makes things better, and stuff that falls somewhere between "not useful" and "makes things worse than not doing it". (Note: "work" in the aggregate, ie. above the level of division by particular tasks or workers: at or below that level there are all kinds of overlaps, such as tasks which are necessary to meet a need but harmful if done to any greater extent than the need dictates, or workers who spend 10% of their time hauling water out of a well to tip it on the garden and 90% hauling it out to tip it back in the well again.) Therefore, there is a tremendous amount of potential effort that can be diverted to keeping old people's mouths full and their arses wiped, without detracting from the ability to perform other useful operations.

I did hope that a silver lining to the current plague situation would be that it would make this point much harder to keep on ignoring. The main root of the support for the idea of "getting back to work" - among the actual workers at large, that is, rather than the politicians - is simply that they aren't getting paid. People feeling the lack of whatever it is that other people do when they're working is a factor conspicuous by its insignificance. (After all, why should they, when the people doing mostly useful stuff mostly are still working.)

It is quite obviously bloody daft to insist that people have to do some thing before they can get paid, when nobody cares whether the thing itself is done or not. Better far just to pay them anyway and avoid all the additional waste of the resources that are used to do the thing nobody cares about. Unfortunately, what is obviously bloody daft is not obvious to the bloody daft, and it is they who are in charge. Still, I should know better than to look for a silver lining in the first place. I've been inside clouds, and none of them have had silver on the inside; they're just cold and damp and manky and full of grey, and very few nuclei indeed have more than 16 particles.

43:

Even more obviously we have unemployment and underemployment, and those are higher just at the point where we need more medical assistance (much of it relatively menial rather than requiring years to tertiary education).

The problem is that people can't afford to do that work, or afford to pay for it to be done at wages that would attract citizens. Because wages are driven by the other work that pays well but doesn't necessarily help anyone. Want to rent somewhere to live? You're competing with the telephone handset sanitisers... and so on.

We've also had 50+ years of propaganda about the shittiness of that useless scutwork that no sensible person would want to do, and how we should all get university degrees so we can become lawyers and economists and executives. Apparently those very smart people didn't think through what would happen when we're all generals and there's no-one left to be privates.

44:

Nor about how people react when they've had the long-term conditioning of being brought up to believe they can be a general and thirty years later they're still doing route marches and peeling spuds.

It is very true that the amount you get paid for doing something is strongly inversely correlated with how useful it is. I don't know whether Heteromeles was being sarcastic or serious calling US medical jobs "well paid", but in the UK, excepting the case of senior doctors, it would definitely be sarcastic. We rely a lot on recruiting people from places where you get paid tuppence a week for shovelling shit. And increasingly so; if you plot "age of nurse" against "time since they or their ancestors immigrated" you get a big jump in "time" half way along the "age" range, from a few to a few tens of years at the low end to a few hundred or more at the other.

45:
Same people who deal with it now: immigrants, largely.

So even if we ignore the 'senile bigots really do not like immigrants' problem, immigrants from where? When exponential population growth ends, it ends: there are no more convenient unbounded sources of young people for the old to consume outside the stupid fantasies of science fiction.

46:

in the UK, excepting the case of senior doctors, it would definitely be sarcastic

In Australia we have had a revolution in community health care, which translates to GP practices now being owned by retired boomers and the actual GP work being done by immigrants. Real Australians specialise, and not in general practice (which is a specialty now).

The government has pushed this along by combining lower subsidies with a removal of those pesky restrictions on who can own a practice. Used to be that you had to be a doctor and work in the practice to own it, but these days private equity companies are allowed to. We haven't yet seen a collapse like the ABC Learning (many valuable learnings were made, the key takeaway being that no amount of marketing focus can conceal utter financial ineptitude*) one but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

47:

The real question is, how much of this is real work, and how much paper pushing bs?

For the US, nationalizing health care would cut tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars from expenses (and, oh, dear, investors and execs would lose their ill-gotten gains).

A lot has become automated. We're running fewer jobs... except for the low-level ones.

Oh, yes, and then there's HR, who HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE about the organization they work for, don't care to learn, plan to job hop in three or four years, and want degrees and certificates because THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE JOB REQUIRES.

48:

I wouldn't use that term because of its connotations - Real Australians are Real Men doing Real Work and drinking Real Beer. But also, can we even guess at a definition for "real jobs"?

Under capitalism "real work" is paid, anything else quite literally does not count. Some more progressive{cough} countries try to add in selected other work, and sometimes also their black economies. But their selection criteria are generally "do men do it?", so subsistence farming counts but childcare does not. None of that is new, it's just that we've made fuck all progress since Marilyn Waring was a girl.

And since the only alternative to capitalism is communism {eyeroll}, where real work is that approved by the party, it's clearly not possible to progress.

I'd be tempted to divide work more into "essential" and "inessential", but on a scale rather than as bulls a dichotomy. So you might say that food-for-people farmers are 95% essential, and food-for-tractors (fuel ethanol production) is 5% essential. And "telling people how to stay safer in a pandemic" marketing is 99% essential, but telling people which is the better brand of cigarettes is -95% essential. Hmm, ok, new rule: essentiality can be negative.

49:

So even if we ignore the 'senile bigots really do not like immigrants' problem, immigrants from where? When exponential population growth ends, it ends: there are no more convenient unbounded sources of young people for the old to consume outside the stupid fantasies of science fiction.

It ends in different places at different times. For example, in 2019 and before, there were a number of filipino nurses doing elder care. As places like the Philippines or Bangladesh become less habitable due to climate change, why not let them emigrate poleward towards countries that have a falling birth rate and a radical need for people who want to do the dirty work of adaptation?

I know, I know: racism. Silly thing, really: many immigrants tend to be more patriotic than the natives. Still, stamping that particular mental illness out would make a lot of people's lives a lot easier. Including aging former bigots who need someone to care for them at the end of their lives.

50:

That JAMA Cardiology paper and other such work should be sufficient reason to cull the leadership of countries that have failed in their SARS-CoV-2 pandemic response, particularly with those with a deliberate lack of urgency about reducing R0. (That certainly includes the US.)

Here's another (mentioned previously) line, about male fertility, and mostly speculative at the moment, that can be deployed against people who want to eliminate NPI measures intended to reduce the new-infections rate, and if one is mean, against younger male COVID-19 survivors. Speculations and call for more research: Could SARS‐CoV‐2 affect male fertility? (Rahul Vishvkarma, Singh Rajender, 23 June 2020, free access)

Another newer paper with speculations and a call for more research: SARS-CoV-2 and Male Infertility: Possible Multifaceted Pathology (10 July 2020, Sulagna Dutta & Pallav Sengupta) The figure is nice: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43032-020-00261-z/figures/1

Appears to be a survey, calling for more research including effects on male fertility. Abstract in English, rest in Spanish, which I can't read. [SARS-CoV-2 infection: implications for sexual and reproductive health. A position statement of the Asociación Española de Andrología, Medicina Sexual y Reproductiva (ASESA)].

51:

Iceland already had/s a native population of Filipino women a long time ago: large fleets of ships do that kind of thing [if you want specifics, it's more common to the North]. Check out the other Scandinavian states. In the UK, the NHS lower tiers of nurses is strikingly segregated. And let's not mention MENA states.

The fact you don't know this already... is the racism bit.

Racism isn't a mental illness btw, it's a conditioned response: again, you're slipping into the indoctrination of medicalization of a conceptual issue, which is one of the paths to Fascism. In fact, we can easily find you numerous examples from many states (CN, RU, IL, USA) where it has been used in such ways.

Anyhow: Seagull links.

1 Unbelievable scenes from Mecca today! Historic Hajj amid the threat of coronavirus. @AFP

has amazing colorful photos on a very, very sunny day!

https://twitter.com/aleeharissi/status/1288421390354460672

Do a grep about Google / EU color schemes for people. Not in the Book, nice umbrellas though. Yes, it's a color scheme thing, and yellow do the cleaning (you can find those pictures too, probably not in the broadsheets), not the processions. Again: not allowed by the book. But it'll buy you some time & it at least shows solidarity with Humanity from the people of the Hajj, which is 100% a good thing.

2 President of Slovakia, April 2020

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Edhu0_lXsAcMKe2?format=jpg&name=medium

SF movie 1980's with space lizards or reality? Note the Black Glove and her color scheme.

3 US to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany in 'strategic' move

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53589245

Work out when the Roman Empire started pulling troops from outposts etc, you can spin it into a fun story. They're only moving to Italy (hello government more suited to USA tastes) but hey.

That's your three. But a Spanish Bank just posted losses of E15 bil or so, expect more.

~ETC.

Did warn you about the Heart n Brain stuff though.

p.s.

Those who say 'block quick and block often' aren't doing the work. We don't expect you to understand it always, but come on. We did literally just read a few million of your thoughts and responses to your latest jaunt into hatred and it flopped badly enough that you're not rioting yet, cut us a little slack. The upshot of wank media Barons empty 48 hrs vrs actual progress is there. Oh, and if you're going to claim we're antisemitic or whatever: you do not want to play that tune. It has blaring horns attached. Your Mental Schema is just not equipped for it.

52:

The problem is that a lot of ageing bigots lack the mental flexibility to change. One of my relatives now has dementia and requires continuous care, so they're losing mental skills rather than gaining them. They are still a nasty racist sexist homophobic bigot, but they've lost those mental filters that occasionally made them bearable to visit. My understanding remains that the only improvement in their state will come when they die.

In case it's not obvious, the relative is one I disowned a long time ago*, I just get reports from people who have decided to stay in touch regardless (possibly via the small town gossip system, I don't know).

  • it's possible they disowned me first, a discussion I don't care enough to participate in.
53:

W.r.t antivax/anti-mask/etc idiocy - I see claims that Rep(tile) Gohmert has been diagnosed with COVID and is claiming that wearing a mask caused it. Excuse the upcoming reports of strong earthquakes from the Pacific Northwest ; that will be me banging my head on my desk.

54:

You're competing with the telephone handset sanitisers...

The irony of having only Ark B survive the pandemic is bitter.

55:

Under capitalism "real work" is paid, anything else quite literally does not count.

The males-only anti-feminist utopia of Athos in Bujold's novel "Ethan of Athos" is great on this count. Not that any of it is set on Athos - you get it in asides and inferred detail.

After generations of separation from the rest of humanity they use "social credits" to pay people to do essential work. So Ethan thinks that child-rearing and domestic work is "the biggest part of the economy", which consumes a vast amount of planetary GDP.

Poor Ethan doesn't get how the rest of the galaxy could possibly function without such a system, as who'd do that huge amount of work without pay?

56:

Gohmert is not known for his intelligence: Louis Buller "Louie" Gohmert, Jr. (born 1953) is a Republican Representative from Texas (first elected in 2004) and an accomplished idiot. He continues Texas' long, well-deserved reputation of electing eminently stupid people to federal office. The nasty bit is that he believes (apparently!) that he has a right under the US Constitution to randomly kill people (including possibly himself). I dunno, maybe the Second Amendment; he was spewing forth little droplet-bullets that would have been stopped by a simple cloth mask.

57:

he was spewing forth little droplet-bullets that would have been stopped by a simple cloth mask.

This just in: https://www.theshovel.com.au/2020/07/29/ned-kelly-wore-mask-to-stop-spread-of-covid-new-documents-show/

(yes, it's satire. Strangely relevant satire)

58:

Yeah. It ties in nicely with the "what work is actually essential" question, although it seems increasingly likely that unless you actually lick a recently-smeared surface you're vanishingly unlikely to get infected with the current pandemic.

Still, I'm going to refrain from licking any supermarket trolleys just in case.

59:

Not in the Book, nice umbrellas though. Good (not perfect) distancing and mask discipline too. With the hot dry air and sun and umbrella-colour social bubbles, it's possible that nobody will get infected while in such formations.

60:

I haven't posted any graphs, because there has been no change. There is slight evidence of an increase in positive cases, but the data are such a mess that the statistical confidence level is "well, possibly, or possibly not". However, for people who know something about data analysis, I thought I would share this gem; for those who don't, compare the intent (first paragraph) with the description.

"Surveillance tests (pillar 4) (UK)

Testing in this pillar is designed to understand the spread of the virus and the reliability of different testing methods.

As in pillar 2, pillar 4 tests are counted either when they are sent out or when they are processed by a lab.

This includes antigen and antibody testing. People tested and positive cases are not reported due to this covering a variety of different studies that do not currently allow to deduplicate individuals."

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public#number-of-cases-and-deaths

61:

Brian Apart form getting on the warfarin Really Fast what steps can one take to resist or diminish hypercoagulation - just in case?

Various "Same people who deal with it now: immigrants, largely." I'm still wondering how the Brexshiteers are going to deal with this problem ... ( They aren't of course - but their inventive lies might be amusing for a few seconds )

Moz @ 48 You forgot the last bit ... "... and where the Sheep are scared"

62:

And the first signs of study rejection start coming.

I quote:

Most of the 'damage' is myocarditis which is simply heart inflammation. It happens during infections and can be pretty common.

You heard it guys. It's all normal for an infection. Nothing to see, move along.

We need a term for these people. We have anti-vaxxers for vaccines. What would you call anti-covid people in a way that makes it catchy and easier to remember when you label fools?

63:

It seems people are bleeding at about the rate they're clotting. It's also possible that people on anticoagulant are doing both. Which presents the great option of stroking with a brain bleed while simultaneously losing your kidneys to thrombosis. It's not clear yet what the best therapy is.

The more I hear about this, the less I want to catch it. I've got extended family in the USA (Brother's wife is USAian) and my sister in law's grandfather died from it yesterday. He was in good health though old. Being old the hospital stopped treating him, moved him to a hospice, and he only lasted hours after that.

https://ashpublications.org/blood/article/136/4/489/460672/COVID-19-and-coagulation-bleeding-and-thrombotic

64:

"We need a term for these people."

how about "Capitalism's hostages" ?

People who got all their news only from FaceBook bubbles and Ultracapitalist's propaganda vehicles for years and years literally suffer from Stockholm Syndrome, where they now defend their captors cause, because they no longer belive there is any other way.

65:

'Covidiots' seems to be the accepted term...

66:
Oh, yes, and then there's HR, who HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE about the organization they work for, don't care to learn, plan to job hop in three or four years, and want degrees and certificates because THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE JOB REQUIRES.

I worked in (and part owned) a little 10 man company for decades, no HR, everything was ok.

We sold ourselves to a smallish (~1,000 people) multinational a few years ago, real HR department.

And it's fucking great. They do all that boring crap and they do it well. They are better at finding new people that we ever were, they just make life better.

67:

I make a distinction between administrators, who attempt to ensure their organisation works effectively, and bureaucrats, who regard their job is to make Rules and Procedures and Apply and Enforce the Now Holy Rules and Procedures. In the case of HR bureaucrats, they feel that it is also to Minimise Staff Costs and Protect the Organisation (against the employees' demands, that is). I have had dealings with the sort of HR people that whitroth described.

I had a problem when applying for a parking permit, which was needed for the start of Term (October 1st). The Form did not cover my case of partial disability, which caused an issue. I tried contacting them about that and the conversation went like this:

Me: people like me are covered by the Disability Discrimination Act, but not your form. All you need to do is have a box marked 'other' and somewhere to write the reason.

Them: We can't change the form.

Me: Who is responsible for the design and contents of and changes to the form?

Them: We are.

Me: Why can't you change it?

Them: we aren't allowed to change it.

Another year, the Relevant Person (i.e. the sole administrator in a team of bureaucrats) was on leave from July until mid-September and, of course, nobody else could deal with Exceptional Cases. It was fortunate that he wasn't away wasn't until the end of September because, as well all know, October The First Is Too Late.

68:

It would seem to me to be a reasonable expectation for COVID to do similar damage to female reproductive systems. Speculating further, for those with unlimited access to health care, it might be possible to acquire eggs and sperm from behind blocked tubes and allow those people to reproduce in spite of the damage. My question is, will the small percentage of global population with the resources to access that level of fertility clinic provide enough genetic diversity, if COVID sterilizes all of us?

69:

My sympathies, I've been in the same boat for over 2 years. I have M.E, I have lost my job and have barely left the house in that time. It is shit. If Covid does a similar thing to a lot of people, it will be bad!

70:

Apart from getting on the warfarin Really Fast what steps can one take to resist or diminish hypercoagulation - just in case?

I take an aspirin and a multivitamin (for D and zinc) every day. Hopefully the aspirin thins the blood a little.

71:

That's the one I keep seeing.

72:

Interesting: Trump is now proposing delaying the election, because fraud…

"With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???,"

https://www.teletrader.com/trump-delaying-election-better-than-mail-in-voting/news/details/52827590?ts=1596114476506

Interesting given that Trump uses mail-in votes. (He calls them absentee, but Florida doesn't have absentee only mail-in.) The only difference between mail-in and absentee voting seems to be who is doing it. Democrats use mail-in, Republicans use Absentee :-/

73:

Rbt Prior Yes That, or anyhting else at all that allows him to stall, delay, invalidate the election &/or shit-stir enough to start a civil war.] Arsehole

74:

Interesting: Trump is now proposing delaying the election, because fraud…

Translation:

Even Trump has now figured out Covid is in charge, and that the mess his underlings have made (because it can't be him) means the economy is again tanking, and taking his election chances with it.

And of course the GOP senators, having somewhat figured out that Trump is going down, are no longer united and thus happily squabbling based on what they think their own voters want rather than what is good for the GOP, thus throwing a lot of Americans into extreme financial trouble this weekend.

75:

happily squabbling based on what they think their own voters want rather than what is good for the GOP

So you're saying American democracy is actually functioning as it says on the label, rather than business as usual?

76:

Interesting article on the issues Biden faces picking a VP, and the impossibility of making everyone happy.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/30/joe-biden-pick-running-mate-democrats-name-favorites

77:

Re: Hypercoagulation

Be careful with anticoagulants - ACE2 is pretty well distributed everywhere throughout your body with various parts needing slightly different levels for optimum function. Keep an eye on your diet because drug-food interactions happen: for anticoagulants it's mostly with VitK - see below.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/thrombophlebitis/expert-answers/warfarin/faq-20058443

This looks promising ...

The article below was published yesterday in Nature. It's a mouse study and hopefully someone will soon test/verify this on humans because it appears to show a very direct correlation, i.e., therapeutic target.

Here's the key finding/result:

'Anti-C5aR1 therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) prevented C5a-mediated human myeloid cell recruitment and activation, and inhibited acute lung injury (ALI) in human C5aR1 knockin mice.'

'Association of COVID-19 inflammation with activation of the C5a–C5aR1 axis

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a new pandemic disease caused by infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)1. The C5a anaphylatoxin and its receptor C5aR1 (CD88) play a key role in the initiation and maintenance of several inflammatory responses, by recruiting and activating neutrophils and monocytes in the lungs1. We provide a longitudinal analysis of immune responses, including immune cell phenotyping and assessments of the soluble factors present in the blood and broncho-alveolar lavage fluid (BALF) of patients at various stages of COVID-19 severity: paucisymptomatic, pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). We report an increase in soluble C5a levels proportional to COVID-19 severity and high levels of C5aR1 expression in blood and pulmonary myeloid cells, supporting a role for the C5a-C5aR1 axis in the pathophysiology of ARDS. Anti-C5aR1 therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) prevented C5a-mediated human myeloid cell recruitment and activation, and inhibited acute lung injury (ALI) in human C5aR1 knockin mice. These results suggest that C5a-C5aR1 axis blockade might be used as a means of limiting myeloid cell infiltration in damaged organs and preventing the excessive lung inflammation and endothelialitis associated with ARDS in COVID-19 patients.'

As depressing as this pandemic is in terms of day-to-day life, the quality and amount of research plus the level of cooperation by scientists and clinicians on this virus is amazing and encouraging. Bravo and thanks to all involved!

78:

So you're saying American democracy is actually functioning as it says on the label, rather than business as usual?

No - notice the word "think"

It is, I suspect, a reasonable assumption that many GOP voters at this point want a good response to Covid, and likely a continuation of the Covid financial help given many of them will be relying on it (or have customers that do).

None of them are proposing that.

Instead what they are doing is reverting to what got them selected in the primaries in the first place - for many of them the extreme positions that made the (small part of the GOP) Tea Party and it's descendants happy.

79:

Developments with Trump's Troops in Portland - supposedly they are leaving today after an agreement with the State Governor.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/30/federal-agents-portland-oregon-trump-troops

80:

A brief counter: The study did not assert permanent heart damage. Of course, it also didn't deny it. It was a brief study, and IIRC only covered about a couple of months after symptoms.

So... It could be very bad news. But it might just be a warning. https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/heart-damage-recovered-covid19-patients-coronavirus/

quote: Again, there is no evidence at this stage that the viral presence in heart tissue means the disease has any long-term negative cardiovascular effects. But, the two studies combined do suggest this new virus certainly has an effect on the heart.

81:

So you're saying American democracy is actually functioning as it says on the label, rather than business as usual?

The earthquake will occur if 4 Senators bolt and for a coalition with the D's to pass a bill or replace Mitch as Senate leader. He can stop a bill but if voted out as leader then bills can be forced.

But this is a very very long shot.

Happened at the state level in NC 15 or so years ago when there was an even number of Ds and Rs in the state Senate. Cost a few decent politicians their political lives.

82:

My wife points out that it is operating within a mouse immune system, so may not transfer to humans. So don't get your hopes up too far, yet. There are some monoclonal antibody treatment trials going on, but I don't know if they are related.

83:

Interesting article in the New Yorker on American police unions:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/how-police-unions-fight-reform

84:

Ok, I clearly need to step back and define my terms.

Back in the sixties, even, people used to talk about "real work" and "what daddy does", which is pushing useless pieces of paper that are signed, filed, and never looked at again. Huge amounts of that are done in the US, and much of it isn't just for regulation, but for management's happiness... even though they don't realize how much make-work they've created.

Really. Now, given the general idea that I've gotten over the years, people here do, in fact, work. Too many of the general public does what I describe above. And then, of course, there are the people whose lives the TOP wants to recklessly endanger... the folks who stock the shelves, give haircuts, etc.

Most manufacturing jobs in the US are gone, and not all to overseas. The coal miners? Sorry, in the sixties, there were about 780,000 of them, directly, miners. Now? about 78000, thanks to not doing classical mining, but mountaintop removal and pit mining, and the use of HUGE earth movers and trucks big enough to put small buses in them.

That's what I was talking about when I said "real work". Plowed the back 40 this year? Harvested? Built things on an assembly line? Worked construction? And, yes, worked in childcare or taught middle-schoolers (and you're not allowed either duct tape or whips in the latter profession....)?

85:

Greg, STOP RIGHT THERE!!!

Warfarin is NOT A SAFE MEDICINE, escept under extreme medical supervision.

A very close friend, Jack Chalker's widow, nearly DIED after flossing her teeth... because the pharmacy somehow managed to give her warfarin, instead of her antidepressant prescription... AND she normally took 1.5 pills... while the users of warfarin normally took HALF A PILL.

86:

"There are very few childcare applications that cannot be handled by a suitable application of duct tape."

Duct tape these people in a chair, in front of a TV, which alternately, in the US, switches between, say, MSNBC (my SO's preferred news) and Public TV, and leave them there for a week....

87:

Sounds like a wonderful thing to advertise, loss of fertility. That might make the maskaphobics change.

88:

Thanks for reminded me, I haven't had D this week, though I do have milk and cereal every weekday morning, and milk in my tea...

And I take a stress complex - B with zinc, been doing that since the eighties....

89:

Rbt Prior NOT a surprise Lots of supposedly "progressive" Trades Unions in this country sold women down the river & actively opposed their working or getting equal pay for many many years. IIRC the old NUR was particularly bad & reactionary & "male fascist pig" about this ...

mdive Biden's VP Entirely correct & not a surprise. He has got to pick the one who will, if not "offend the least", at least offend as few as practicable and, much more importantly, be able to step into his own shoes at a second's notice - he's already said "I will be a one-term President" & he knows, all too well, that he might not last 4 years. That last really matters.

whitroth STOP SHOUTING & calm down ... my aunt, who finally had an accident & died at 99yrs &10 months, had been on * very carefully prescribed * warfarin for several years. Jack Chalker was a great guy - had a long talk with him at some long-ago worldcon - probably the second Brighton one.

90:

Yes. There are a LOT of dangerous drugs out there. But if the other option is to be bed ridden or die, sometimes the dangerous drug is the best option.

Especially when someone's body is breaking down due to old age or for other reasons.

91:

Off-topic, but really cool: a new explanation for why leaves are green and other photosynthetic organisms are the colors they are. It's not to maximize energy input through photosynthesis, it's to stabilize input rate against fluctuating and noisy light levels. Fun stuff, and the model code is apparently available if you want to tinker with plant color on an alien world:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-are-plants-green-to-reduce-the-noise-in-photosynthesis-20200730/

92:

In this case, whitroth is right. My stepfather was on it, too. The problem is that warfarin is available online, and is is NOT something you should self-prescribe, or in response to COVID 19 symptoms. Even ignoring the risk of an internal bleed (which can kill you faster that you seem to realise and is an eually common cause of strokes), the link in #63 indicates that an anti-coagulant is as likely to make things worse as better.

93:

He has got to pick the one who will, if not "offend the least", at least offend as few as practicable and, much more importantly, be able to step into his own shoes at a second's notice - he's already said "I will be a one-term President" & he knows, all too well, that he might not last 4 years.

Good point.

Sadly not covered by the article but he should also be factoring in side effects of the choice in Senate races given the need to also win the Senate - something that it seems a lot of these factions in the DNC seem to be entirely overlooking in their demands that they be rewarded/satisfied by the pick.

94:

Looks like Ontario has announced some more back-to-school guidelines, and they are not nearly as bad as I feared. For one thing, they mandate masks for all children above 10.

Whether they are enforceable is another matter. I would like to think that "refuses to wear a mask" or "keeps taking mask off" is grounds for removal, to protect everyone else in the room, but three decades of experience with the system has made me dubious.

And given experience with colleague who apparently don't need masks because they take essential oils*, I'm dubious about enough staff following the rules, too.

Still glad I decided to retire. Wish my subconscious would realize I have — I'm getting back-to-school nightmares (which usually don't start until late August) starring non-compliant students who refuse to wear masks…

*Seriously.

95:

I don't think the DNC is ignoring that at all. The loss of a Massachusetts senate seat is the big argument against him picking Elizabeth Warren. The governor of Massachusetts is a Republican, and he'd pick her successor until an election could be held. Contrarywise, it's a good argument for Kamala Harris (California is safely Democratic in 2020, so her replacement would be a capable Democrat) or Susan Rice (who's currently teaching and writing).

One minor bit of awkwardness is that both Harris and Rice have white husbands. That was a problem for Harris as a presidential candidate, as her spouse (a Jewish lawyer) would face a bit of awkwardness doing the Michelle Obama thing of going to black church barbeques and talking up the spouse. I don't think that's as big an issue for the VP, but I could be wrong.

We'll see who Unca Joe picks next week. Yay.

96:

Warfarin is rat poison, after all. (Though I think they use some turbo derivative these days.) I still find it slightly odd to see it used as a drug since it was in the rat poison application that I first heard of it. Not clear as to the advantage of internal haemorrhage as a means of dispatching rats, but there you go. It certainly makes humans leak copiously externally as a result of everyday activities that you wouldn't normally suspect of being injurious at all.

97:

How about Coumadin?

My point is there are lots of drugs that taken in more than the recomended dosage will do nasty things. Especially things like blood thinners.

From the WebMD site:

This medication can cause serious bleeding if it affects your blood clotting proteins too much (shown by unusually high INR lab results). Even if your doctor stops your medication, this risk of bleeding can continue for up to a week. Tell your doctor right away if you have any signs of serious bleeding, including: unusual pain/swelling/discomfort, unusual/easy bruising, prolonged bleeding from cuts or gums, persistent/frequent nosebleeds, unusually heavy/prolonged menstrual flow, pink/dark urine, coughing up blood, vomit that is bloody or looks like coffee grounds, severe headache, dizziness/fainting, unusual or persistent tiredness/weakness, bloody/black/tarry stools, chest pain, shortness of breath, difficulty swallowing.

Tell your doctor right away if any of these unlikely but serious side effects occur: persistent nausea/vomiting, severe stomach/abdominal pain, yellowing eyes/skin.

98:

I knew Jack from the seventies, before he and Eva got married. You probably never heard him do the art auction - he had taken an actual course in it, and was actually one of those you see in movies, talking that fast.

Sorry, but we nearly lost Eva just a few weeks back, she wouldn't stop bleeding after the flossing....

99:

Duct tape the masks to their faces.

100:

Coumadin is the same stuff. (Culture-based confusion: Americans are far more likely to refer to a drug by the trade name used by one specific manufacturer, British to use a generic name.) What makes it particularly dodgy is it has a whole stack of weird interactions with very ordinary kinds of food; the right dose is difficult to determine, specific to the individual, and can suddenly become the very wrong dose if you eat the wrong thing.

101:

Whether they are enforceable is another matter. I would like to think that "refuses to wear a mask" or "keeps taking mask off" is grounds for removal, to protect everyone else in the room, but three decades of experience with the system has made me dubious.

Maybe the ability to invoke the local health department to enforce things will help.

102:

Maybe.

I still remember how much paperwork it took to remove one student who was on video stamping on someone's head (with parents who weren't fighting the removal, and a VP who was willing to work lots of overtime). With parents who are fighting the removal, and administrators who usually choose the easiest option…

103:

Re: '[Coumadin/Warfarin] ... the right dose is difficult to determine, specific to the individual, and can suddenly become the very wrong dose if you eat the wrong thing.'

Agree - hence why anyone on this drug must have blood work [INR] done regularly including people who've been on it for decades. Major reason so many MDs now prescribe the NOACs: no fiddling with dosages, no having to go regularly for blood work. Some people feel that the blood work isn't a big deal but it's a major problem for those who are housebound (bed-ridden) due to a medical condition. At-home blood draw services are available with some insurance plans.

https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/arrhythmia/prevention--treatment-of-arrhythmia/a-patients-guide-to-taking-warfarin

'The INR is a standardized way of expressing the PT value. The INR ensures that PT results obtained by different laboratories can be compared. It is important to monitor the INR (at least once a month and sometimes as often as twice weekly) to make sure that the level of warfarin remains in the effective range. If the INR is too low, blood clots will not be prevented, but if the INR is too high, there is an increased risk of bleeding. This is why those who take warfarin must have their blood tested so frequently.

Unlike most medications that are administered as a fixed dose, warfarin dosing is adjusted according to the INR blood test results; therefore, the dose usually changes over time. Coumadin/ warfarin pills come in different colors, and each color corresponds to a different dose (see graphic below).'

104:

timrowledge @ 53: W.r.t antivax/anti-mask/etc idiocy - I see claims that Rep(tile) Gohmert has been diagnosed with COVID and is claiming that wearing a mask caused it.
Excuse the upcoming reports of strong earthquakes from the Pacific Northwest ; that will be me banging my head on my desk.

Gohmert is STUPID AS FUCK and it wouldn't surprise me at all if he did it all wrong and DID infect himself. But it wasn't from wearing a mask, it was wearing the mask WRONG.

He said he had been putting it on and taking it off and all he had to do was flip it inside out one time so that whatever might have got on the outside was now on the inside.

As Bugs Bunny is won't to say, "What a Maroon! What an ignoranimus!"

105:

timrowledge @ 53: PS: You know HE will get top dollar medical care and there is little or no chance it's going to kill him, so it won't lead to culling the herd of idiots.

He's already as evil as a bad tempered as a feral hog with an infected tusk, and this is just gonna make him worse.

106:

Re: 'There are some monoclonal antibody treatment trials going on, but I don't know if they are related.'

Haven't checked but would be surprised considering this article has just been published. Can't imagine that this - or any COVID-19 research - would have been sitting around all that long in pre-prints.

Re: Mouse model - my impression was that the mice used were genetically bred to have a closer simulation of that particular immune functionality, i.e., more like that of a human. Even so - yes, I agree - this is still iffy because there are so many other potential layers therefore differences between species' immune systems. Still, it's one more treatment approach they can examine more closely. With any luck Racaniello and his TwiV group will review this article in one of his podcasts.

107:

He also berated his staff for wearing masks, so one might suppose that he wore a mask as little as he could get away with.

“Jake, thank you for letting our office know Louie tested positive for the Coronavirus. When you write your story, can you include the fact that Louie requires full staff to be in the office, including three interns, so that ‘we could be an example to America on how to open up safely. When probing the office, you might want to ask how often people were berated for wearing masks."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/07/29/gohmert-aide-alleges-staffers-are-berated-for-wearing-masks-office-is-regularly-full/#610b902377f2

108:

icehawk @ 55:

Under capitalism "real work" is paid, anything else quite literally does not count.

The males-only anti-feminist utopia of Athos in Bujold's novel "Ethan of Athos" is great on this count. Not that any of it is set on Athos - you get it in asides and inferred detail.

After generations of separation from the rest of humanity they use "social credits" to pay people to do essential work. So Ethan thinks that child-rearing and domestic work is "the biggest part of the economy", which consumes a vast amount of planetary GDP.

Poor Ethan doesn't get how the rest of the galaxy could possibly function without such a system, as who'd do that huge amount of work without pay?

I don't feel too sorry for "poor Ethan". He manages the culture shock, defeats the bad guys (and the bad woman), wins a new friend & gets TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE of the number of tissue samples he came for plus the bonus of Elli Quinn's donation.

109:

Here's a bit of news: The prime mover behind a lot of the rapid response vaccine and treatment approaches was - the boffins at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Here's a link to the Washington Post paywalled article. (Sorry for that, Charlie - I'll post a free link when one of the aggregators picks it up).

It turns out that, post the H1N1 scare, some of the eggheads at DARPA realized that it would be a really good idea to have a way to rapidly develop protection for deployed troops to a novel pathogen.

"In the years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a series of anthrax incidents, combined with overseas intelligence about potential biological threats, heightened fears of bioterrorism and drove DARPA to invest in faster ways to respond, including technology to accelerate vaccine development, spot emerging viruses and speed up pharmaceutical manufacturing. A decade ago, a brainy Air Force doctor named Dan Wattendorf helped push rapid pandemic response further to the top of DARPA’s priority list.

Regularly citing the 1918 flu pandemic, the DARPA program manager saw how a novel pathogen, whether from another species or an enemy’s lab, could cripple the American military in the field.

“If we need to deploy someone in harm’s way and it’s a new virus, you don’t have time to wait for a new vaccine,” Wattendorf said. “That could be a decade.”

Wattendorf had ideas for a solution. In 2010, he took to a conference room at DARPA headquarters in Northern Virginia with notes scribbled on his hand to make a pitch.

At the time, the Obama administration was emphasizing the need to step up pandemic response capabilities in the wake of the H1N1 outbreak, and DARPA was increasingly focusing on biology — an emphasis that would lead to the agency’s first biotechnology office in 2014.

In the conference room, Wattendorf outlined his ideas to agency higher-ups. Regina E. Dugan, the DARPA director at the time, ribbed him for the writing on his hand before greenlighting his proposal.

The result was a program called ADEPT, which invested $291 million from 2011 to 2019 in an array of technologies — including a credit card-sized device for rapid antibody discovery developed by the Vancouver-based firm AbCellera — that, taken together, could significantly reduce the timelines for vaccines and antibodies.

“It may turn out to be the most important program from my time at the agency,” said Dugan, who ran DARPA from 2009 to 2012."

110:

Bill Arnold @ 56: Gohmert is not known for his intelligence:
Louis Buller "Louie" Gohmert, Jr. (born 1953) is a Republican Representative from Texas (first elected in 2004) and an accomplished idiot. He continues Texas' long, well-deserved reputation of electing eminently stupid people to federal office.
The nasty bit is that he believes (apparently!) that he has a right under the US Constitution to randomly kill people (including possibly himself).
I dunno, maybe the Second Amendment; he was spewing forth little droplet-bullets that would have been stopped by a simple cloth mask.

I can believe he's stupid enough that he'd fuck up wearing the mask and infect himself.

I kind of agree that stupid people should be allowed to kill themselves. Cull the herd, improve the breed.
I just don't like the idea of them randomly killing other people.

111:

John Hughes @ 66:

Oh, yes, and then there's HR, who HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE about the organization they work for, don't care to learn, plan to job hop in three or four years, and want degrees and certificates because THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE JOB REQUIRES.

I worked in (and part owned) a little 10 man company for decades, no HR, everything was ok.

We sold ourselves to a smallish (~1,000 people) multinational a few years ago, real HR department.

And it's fucking great. They do all that boring crap and they do it well. They are better at finding new people that we ever were, they just make life better.

It often starts out that way. But as the original founders move on and hired management replaces them, HR often ossifies and becomes unresponsive to the needs of NON-HR parts of the company.

112:

Me @109: Well, that didn't take long. Here's the non-paywalled link from MSN.

113:

I just returned from Texas. Last bit of Texas I was in was in his district. Ugh.

Last week was fun. Tues-Wed drive to Texas. (NC,SC,GA,AL,MS,LA,TX) Spend 3 days loading van and boxing and whatnot. Then drive back for 2 days. Tuesday get a Covid test. Results back this morning. Negative.

Wheee.

PS: If you search for Gohmert on US news sites you'll find he is fairly known as a crazy guy even by the Rs. But wins his district by unreal margins every year.

114:

Troutwaxer @ 70:

Apart from getting on the warfarin Really Fast what steps can one take to resist or diminish hypercoagulation - just in case?

I take an aspirin and a multivitamin (for D and zinc) every day. Hopefully the aspirin thins the blood a little.

I think it does. They had me stop the baby aspirin a week before my surgery.

The surgery went Ok. Can't breath through that side yet, but no headaches so far, so it does seem to be draining ... or at least allowing the pressure to equalize.

115:

timrowledge @ 53: PS: You know HE will get top dollar medical care and there is little or no chance it's going to kill him, so it won't lead to culling the herd of idiots.

Maybe.

Herman Cain died today, his social media says it was from Covid - and he was admitted to hospital within 2 weeks of Trump's Tulsa rally which he attended and didn't wear a mask or social distance.

116:

Robert Prior @ 72: Interesting: Trump is now proposing delaying the election, because fraud…

"With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???,"

https://www.teletrader.com/trump-delaying-election-better-than-mail-in-voting/news/details/52827590?ts=1596114476506

Interesting given that Trump uses mail-in votes. (He calls them absentee, but Florida doesn't have absentee only mail-in.) The only difference between mail-in and absentee voting seems to be who is doing it. Democrats use mail-in, Republicans use Absentee :-/

It's a SCAM! It's how wannabee dictators operate. First they delay the election because of potential fraud, then they cancel it all together.

... and doubly interesting because the only election fraud regarding absentee/mail-in ballots in recent elections CAME FROM REPUBLICAN CRIMINALS

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/30/politics/north-carolina-election-results-delay/index.html

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article222263905.html

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/04/politics/north-carolina-house-race-mccrae-dowless-absentee-ballots/index.html

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/419693-second-woman-says-she-was-paid-to-collect-absentee-ballots-in-north?rnd=1543953464

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article224173095.html

117:

Iraq is hitting record temps (for the stupids: they measure by the water, not the desert bits, derp) - 51oC. Spain is hitting records. And so on.

It doesn't get better.

Mecca will look like this in 20 years (although those $mil cool mega-umbrellas were cool, and makes anything made in the UK for the general public look like a bowl of poo):

But, ignoring the UK Football scene, it did actually cut down on potential mega-death by approx. 1.3 billion, so they did a good thing.

In other news:

1 Priittttiii Patel comes out swwwhinging over GRIME UK racism claims (no, really: 80+ actual cases, fuck that. Single ex-Grime artist on Twtter spat: DIPLOMATIC ACTION), totes not a full media spread to bury that Windrush thing, at all. Fuck me, if we'd known we were playing against that level of evil, we'd not have allowed the BBC to publish "NIGGER" on main time tv. While decrying racism and how BLM was a threat to the "WHITE SOCIETY" as a Jewish lady.

Oh, and the NIGGER comment was over live TV, prime time about someone running over a black UK national. While the Wiley stuff .... OMG, don't tell me you've fallen for the fake twitter stuff already, you fucking ancient muppets?

Fuck me: if this goes more off the rails, you'll have Ganesha live on TV pointing out that these fuckers are totally insane.

Which they are

Note: all of that happened. Today. Really.

It didn't just jump the shark, these fucker's noodles are scrambled. Good luck with future **SERIOUS BUZINESSZ" legal libel cases when this lot are all tied into this amount of clownish fuckery.

Best £200k we ever spent.

118:

mdlve @ 74:

Interesting: Trump is now proposing delaying the election, because fraud…

Even Trump has now figured out Covid is in charge, and that the mess his underlings have made (because it can't be him) means the economy is again tanking, and taking his election chances with it.

And of course the GOP senators, having somewhat figured out that Trump is going down, are no longer united and thus happily squabbling based on what they think their own voters want rather than what is good for the GOP, thus throwing a lot of Americans into extreme financial trouble this weekend.

No, Trumpolini's proposing to Delay the election IS THE FRAUD. It's the first stage of stealing the election by canceling it.

119:

We're joking about us spending the £200k.

The rest, actually happened. Everyone saw it happen.

Actual reality bite: Cool. You spent your shot, got a fucking member of the serving government involved (already fired once for dodgy deals with non-UK governments), SkyTV (hello little editor), a few magazines, and your reach was?

What.

10 minute blowout before Philippppan de-Time managed to declare race war live on TV?

$%KODK made a shit load of gremlins more money in a lifetime that your grimly shit-house entertainment business has ever dribbled down to the fucking clowns running your bullshit.

Fuck me. UK is cursed land. Fucking muppets.

120:

David L @ 90: Yes. There are a LOT of dangerous drugs out there. But if the other option is to be bed ridden or die, sometimes the dangerous drug is the best option.

Especially when someone's body is breaking down due to old age or for other reasons.

The best option is to discuss any medications & supplements you take with a physician, understand WHY you are taking them (what do they do for you?) and what side effects to look out for. And if any of those side effects crop up contact your physician immediately to see about adjusting the dose or switching to a different medication (or supplement).

And don't take drugs based on what some internet quack recommends ... although you might ask your doctor & maybe it IS something he/she will prescribe.

I also talk to the Pharmacist & read the package insert because sometimes they might spot some drug interaction the doctor overlooked & you might want to go back and talk to the doctor about it.

121:

Hey, you missed that the impeached resident of 1600 PA Ave, Washington, DC, voted in the primary in FL, claiming Mar-a-Lago as his residence.

And Pence voted in the primary in IN, claiming the GOVERNOR'S MANSION, which he moved out of four years ago, as his residence.

122:

Heh, heh. From the LA Times, excerpt: In 1845, Congress set a national date for the election — the Tuesday after the first Monday in November — and that is when it has been ever since. In theory, Congress could choose to change this date, as well as the date set for the electoral college to choose the president. But it is unimaginable that the House of Representatives would pass such a bill this year and I doubt even the Republican-controlled Senate would agree to such an unprecedented effort to manipulate the electoral process.

Moreover, the 20th Amendment to the Constitution established that the president’s term ends on Jan. 20 at noon. If at that time a president and vice president have not yet been chosen by the electoral college, the speaker of the House of Representatives becomes president. My guess is that President Trump has not considered that delaying the election for a significant amount of time would mean Nancy Pelosi becoming president. --- end excerpt ---

123:

Herman Cain died today, his social media says it was from Covid

He said he had Covid a week or so ago.

And he was worth a $billion or so. Well maybe only a few $100 million. So if his money can't stop it maybe it will get through to a few others that if they get it luck (or the prior 50 years of living) will determine if you live or not. Not the size of your bank account.

124:

whitroth @ 99: Duct tape the masks to their faces.

No need to waste a mask. Just use Duct Tape.

125:

Seriously.

No-one is playing by the old rules anymore. We keep trying to tell you this, with examples, but you keep ignoring it.

THEY. DO. NOT. GIVE. A. SHIT.

Oh, and they also have a majority in the Courts.

They're not looking for impeachment or a dribbling Biden to wander around the WH calling out for his POTUS Obama thinking he's still the VP.

No. ONE. CARES.

You fucked up: you failed to make a working society. Your influence on the rest of humanity was corrosive. You managed to allow the corrosive elements to ruin and then gain power within your societ.

~

Fuck me.

Now. We have to go harvest Murdoch, and that fucker has some seriously [redacted] shit. Kissinger too.

126:

I doubt even the Republican-controlled Senate would agree to such an unprecedented effort to manipulate the electoral process.

Mitch on down said nope almost as fast as they could read then type.

127:

mdlve @ 101: Whether they are enforceable is another matter. I would like to think that "refuses to wear a mask" or "keeps taking mask off" is grounds for removal, to protect everyone else in the room, but three decades of experience with the system has made me dubious.

Maybe the ability to invoke the local health department to enforce things will help.

If y'all are referring to Pelosi's decree after that idiot from Texas got himself infected that henceforth everyone in the House of Representatives WILL wear appropriate face coverings, she DOES have the authority to have the House Sergeant at Arms remove ANYONE who is NON-compliant.

128:

If y'all are referring to Pelosi's decree

No, talking about the school plans in Ontario and what happens if the kids (10+ year old) refuse to wear the required mask.

129:

whitroth @ 122: Heh, heh. From the LA Times,
excerpt:
In 1845, Congress set a national date for the election — the Tuesday after the first Monday in November — and that is when it has been ever since. In theory, Congress could choose to change this date, as well as the date set for the electoral college to choose the president. But it is unimaginable that the House of Representatives would pass such a bill this year and I doubt even the Republican-controlled Senate would agree to such an unprecedented effort to manipulate the electoral process.

Moreover, the 20th Amendment to the Constitution established that the president’s term ends on Jan. 20 at noon. If at that time a president and vice president have not yet been chosen by the electoral college, the speaker of the House of Representatives becomes president. My guess is that President Trump has not considered that delaying the election for a significant amount of time would mean Nancy Pelosi becoming president.
--- end excerpt ---

... and we know Trumpolini always follows the law and would never attempt to cheat in any way.

He might not be successful, but you know damn well he doesn't care what the law says and HE IS GOING TO TRY TO STEAL THE ELECTION!

He's incapable of feeling like he's really won unless he cheats. And if he loses he's going claim he was cheated and ignore the results and cling to power. You think his minions at DHS, INS & CBP will refuse to send the GESTAPO out to restore order by taking his opponents into custody? He's already setting it up.

130:

As opposed to children in their 60s refusing to wear the required mask… :-)

131:

the House Sergeant at Arms

Not a toothless post, it would appear:

https://www.house.gov/the-house-explained/officers-and-organizations/sergeant-at-arms

and

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/5605 2 U.S. Code § 5605. Law enforcement authority of Sergeant at Arms (a) Law enforcement authority The Sergeant at Arms of the House of Representatives shall have the same law enforcement authority, including the authority to carry firearms, as a member of the Capitol Police. The law enforcement authority under the preceding sentence shall be subject to the requirement that the Sergeant at Arms have the qualifications specified in subsection (b). (b)Qualifications The qualifications referred to in subsection (a) are the following: (1) A minimum of five years of experience as a law enforcement officer before beginning service as the Sergeant at Arms. (2) Current certification in the use of firearms by the appropriate Federal law enforcement entity or an equivalent non-Federal entity. (3) Any other firearms qualification required for members of the Capitol Police. (c) Regulations The Committee on House Oversight of the House of Representatives shall have authority to prescribe regulations to carry out this section.
132:

mdlve @ 129:

If y'all are referring to Pelosi's decree

No, talking about the school plans in Ontario and what happens if the kids (10+ year old) refuse to wear the required mask.

Can't duct tape kids. That always gets you in trouble. Probably can't even expel them.

About the only thing you can do is to exclude them into separate classrooms with other kids who refuse to wear the masks so they can only infect one another.

Probably the first teacher who gets sick should sue the parents of the non-complying students. Make them bear the brunt.

133:

Well done.

That's what you build.

Jack is going to take a long look at his IL investors and do a UK specific wank job then tell them to fuck off.

And .... that's the political discussion allowed for 2020 to the plebs. And they're so shit at it, they manage to shit the bed the very next day over "White Society".

Ok. Here's the real antisemitic rule: stop media companies taking millions of dollars off these fucking insanely myopic fucktards constantly to spam shite that backfires.

p.s.

Your economy is about to break. Being fucking muppets is singing loud and clear who they should blame, death cultists.

134:

We know he's going to try to steal the election.

The goons... yeah, and then there's some other folks. I'm sure you read about the wall of vets in Portland.

There are people in the government, and the military, who do, in fact, believe in the Oath.

Fuck, I never took it, and I believe in it. And if there's even the slightest question, I do plan to go down to 1600 PA on Wed, 4 Nov.

135:

Nope, sorry, the economy is already broke. Excerpt: The US economy contracted at a 32.9% annual rate from April through June, its worst drop on record, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday. --- end excerpt ---- https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/30/economy/us-economy-2020-second-quarter/index.html

136:

About the only thing you can do is to exclude them into separate classrooms

Not necessarily. Look at the record on violence, which is often to integrating special needs students with inadequate support. And the current Ontario budget for Covid protection measures in school is 7¢ per student per day. All other required money will have to come from regular funding (textbook, lab supplies, etc.).

A recent poll of Ontario elementary teachers, for instance, found seven in 10 have personally experienced violence and witnessed violence against another staff person. This poll was conducted by the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario which represents 83,000 teachers, occasional teachers and education professionals employed in Ontario’s public elementary schools. Thus the poll suggests more than 58,000 education workers are victims or have been exposed to violence at work. Almost 40 per cent of those polled also report suffering mental stress, physical injury or illness as a result of workplace violence.

Many polled reported being told not to report the incident, or chose not to report, for fear of repercussions. Fifty per cent of those who reported an incident say there was no follow-up or investigation “in all cases” or “in some cases.” Even when actions were taken by school administrators to prevent recurrence, most polled said the actions were ineffective.

https://www.whsc.on.ca/What-s-new/News-Archive/Workplace-violence-growing-in-education-sector-st

Julie Austin said in October that she was attacked by a 10-year-old student with special needs, an attack she said lasted 20 minutes.

“I ended up taking a chair over the head and suffered a mild traumatic brain injury and now I’m suffering from post-concussion syndrome,” Austin told Global News Tuesday.

“I’m a sitting duck. My hands are tied. I can’t touch him. I can’t leave him. So I had to take what was coming.”

https://globalnews.ca/news/3983569/ontario-elementary-educators-union-classroom-violence-survey/

Rebecca Robins says there aren’t a lot of jobs where you can expect to be injured with virtual impunity. Educational assistants are increasingly facing violence in the classroom, she says. “We endure concussions, broken bones, sprains, being spit upon, bitten, bruised and sworn at.

“I get the kids who do the most damage,” he says cheerfully, including children with both developmental and mental health conditions who lash out at teachers and assistants unexpectedly, hitting, punching, kicking and spitting. His name has been withheld to protect the identify of the children he has worked with.

One elementary school child was so aggressive he was placed in a room by himself with three full-time educational assistants, says the man. “He was violent toward anybody, anything, anywhere. I’ve had multiple shirts torn right off me.”

The hallways in the school had to be cleared of other students if the child walked to the washroom because he might attack them. That student ended up being expelled when he reached high school after he attacked two girls in the hallway, dragging them by the hair and kicking them.

The educational assistant says staff are told they can’t restrain a child until a student hits them twice. “Can you imagine showing up to work and being told ‘you are going to get hit twice today, but you don’t do anything about it until the second hit.’

“We have to take whatever comes because they have the right to an education.”

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/wage-war-of-words-are-salaries-a-key-issue-in-ontarios-dispute-with-education-union

Children legally have the right to an education. The Powers That Be seem to think that making policies and setting targets will magically change things, without considering the work necessary to actually get there.

So like placing special needs kids in class without adequate support, I expect handling children who can't/won't wear a mask (or distance, or stop spitting or coughing on people) will be left to the classroom teacher to handle.

I would be happy to be proved wrong in September.

137:

Now. We have to go harvest Murdoch, and that fucker has some seriously [redacted] shit. Kissinger too. Those guys are both ... slippery. If Murdoch and the worst of his crotch-fruit lose political influence levers I and much of the world will be a bit happier and safer.

Recent easy-reading profile just noticed: How Rupert Murdoch turned a small Australian newspaper into a global media empire — and built a family dynasty worth $17 billion (Meira Gebel and Melissa Wiley, Jul 14, 2020)

(SARS-CoV-2 crashed the global economy; more precisely, the incompetent response(s) to it did.)

138:

https://theconversation.com/the-secret-history-of-news-corp-a-media-empire-built-on-spreading-propaganda-116992

It started just over a century ago, by Australian mine owners to publish anti-union propaganda.

Murdoch, for what he's done to the world, deserves the guillotine.

139:

It's a shame Keith didn't get popped at Gallipoli.

140:

I've read that it's a vascular disease transmitted through aerial droplets - but that was last month and the theories may have changed since then.

141:

Mine check your temperature before letting you in. Some have questionnaires on symptoms. (So far I'm okay.) But I'm only going in when I have to - some things can't be done by phone.

142:

he was in the hospital for a month with the virus. The Tulsa rally was in mid-June.

143:

I'd settle for a pillow lovingly pressed to his face for 3-5 minutes. Apparently he's one of the few people who has managed to feed on nothing but the hate directed towards him. If the world is just and right he'll get coughed on by an unregistered migrant house keeper who he's currently underpaying and has to work three jobs.

But on a serious note, 6 months into the slow spiraling doom of the current empire why are most countries struggling so badly with what appears to a low-ball disaster?

Talking with folks who did/do public health professionally it seems that strategies that we've had for going on 500 years work just as well with Covid-19 as other respiratory illnesses, and on-mass we seem unable to apply them in most countries (including my own now, FFS Melbourne). If I hear a another politician say "people know what to do and should just do the right thing" I will scream, it's like the plastic drinking straw debacle all over again. Lots of gumn'ts seem to want to blame people for bad choices rather than create systems where bad choices are hard to make.

Anyway, to ask the community, is your country doing (which seems like it may be enough): Government run isolation for sick people (aka sanatoriums for the sick e.g. Dubai, Vietnam, Thailand?) Mandatory covering of the coughy bits, and handing out face masks where required. Banning large public gatherings bars/clubs/church/football/weddings/funerals/dance-parties for the foreseeable future Setting up quarantine stations/accommodation at borders (Australia really badly) Offering widespread free/fast/no hassle testing (Australia). Passing laws to stop people working 5 different front line jobs a week. Paying sick leave for people who have the covids (???).

Or is your country : Hoping people will "do the right thing" (Sweden, Australia, I assume everwhere). Advising people to stand further apart (everywhere?). Advising people to wash their hands more (everywhere). Advising people to not go to work if the have symptoms (everywhere). Talking about how important it is that everybody get back to work. Going back into lock-down, well after everyone has pointed out that the horse has bolted. Hoping for a treatment to pull its chestnuts out of the fire (USA). Hoping for a vaccine to pull its chestnuts out of the fire (USA).

The second list isn't bad, but its just thoughts and prayers which is nice and all. A ton of countries appear to be acting like they have no agency (like the US with gun violence) and no plans beyond the phase one knee jerk lock everything down (which was the right thing to do).

This apparent inability for countries to learn from others mistakes (and successes) is starting to freak me out and makes me wonder if someone is... (looks at Murdock).

144:

f I hear a another politician say "people know what to do and should just do the right thing"

If "people will do the right thing" was a viable strategy we wouldn't need laws, let alone prisons. We shouldn't need Parliament, either, except perhaps for negotiating with countries where that premise doesn't hold (ie, you can't sign an international treaty without some form of government to do the actual signing... 1.3B Chinese can't all sign it)

But as a public health strategy there is a whole bunch of science covering that approach, ranging from the Olson Paradox through dozens of game theory experiments right up to the War Games problem. So apparently those politicians qualify for Darwin Awards when people obey their instructions.

It would obviously be better if whoever supervises those people just responded "ah, you say you are not doing your job, so I have noted your resignation and will start the appropriate process". Because saying that isn't just a failure of leadership, it's an active abdication of responsibility.

[[ link fixed - mod ]]

145:

Not sure your point. To me and others it seems he didn't catch it at the rally.

My point was before he died he said it was Covid. And his money made no difference.

146:

The offices I go to are a all basically shut down except for required in person things. So I'm unlocking the door most of the time.

Home offices are a bit different but we are all on similar pages in terms of isolation and protections.

I've had 2 tests in the last 3 weeks. Before driving NC to TX so my clients could know if I got sick it was after I was with any of them. Ditto when I got back to make sure I didn't get it in the land of denial and spread it to them.

Plus an isolation time after my son't roommate was stupid.

Hell of a time to need a dental molar implant.

Ditto getting the flu March 1.

147:

JBS Trump has Belarus as a model to follow Unfortunately even Moscow Mitch & all senior "R's" immediately screamed "NO!" to postponing the election ... Interesting, in the old sense.

148:

People keep saying "when" or "until" herd immunity develops. But thats by no means certain. Its "if" herd immunity develops and there is some evidence that immunity may be short lived. One would hope that if you had it once that a second round would be less severe. But thats not a certainty either. The best of the worst scenarios is that its just as bad. The worst of the worst is that maybe the first bout primes your immune system to over react. Then the second kills you.

Similarly, theres a study that suggests that some people who have never had covid might have some resistance. They hypothesize it might be from existing seasonal corona virus "common colds".The article assume that this might be the reason that some people have mild or no symptoms. That may be, but thats an assumption thats not yet supported by data. You can't conclude that. Its also possible the ones that had that pre existing immune response, or some subset of them were the ones that get very sick or die. Similar to the failed SARS vaccines, where they vaccinAte all the mice, get a really good encouraging immune response, then infect them all with the disease and every single vaccinated mouse drops dead when their lungs fill up as their immune systems over react.

149:

Things like 75 mg aspirin and 25 mcg vitamin D are pretty safe; beyond that gets rapidly trickier, and drugs that have a narrow boundary between therapeutic and lethal doses or potentially serious interactions or side-effects are definite red flag territory.

And relatively few people have the expertise to distinguish - indeed, I check up on what the doctors say (and I mean on the professional Web pages) because I know that they often know less than they think they do.

150:

Moz,

First, your link to the Olsen Paradox just takes us back here. I take it you mean This.

Then, even if people are ready to do the right thing, there is still a lot of room for disagreement about what the right thing is. In extremis there are things where it doesn't matter what is done, but it is essential that everybody does the same thing (eg what side of the road you use). Laws and so forth are needed to cope with that.

JHomes

151:

This should not be a problem. The Democrats have a super majority in the Massachusetts legislature. They can pass a law requiring the appointment of a replacement from the same party without the danger of a gubernatorial veto.

152:

Probably not Pelosi. I am not a constitutional lawyer, but from what I read, the following would apply:

20th amendment specifies the Presidential term ends 20 Jan; but the congressional term ends 3 Jan. All 435 congressional representatives lose their jobs, but only 33 (or 34?) Senators do.

Therefore a new House can not be formed, but a new Senate can. Due to the makeup of the remaining 67 Senators, there will be a democratic majority. They will elect a democrat as the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, who will become President when Trump is turfed on the 20th.

153:

You fucked up: you failed to make a working society. Your influence on the rest of humanity was corrosive. You managed to allow the corrosive elements to ruin and then gain power within your societ.

Correct. And the UK escort destroyer is going down with the US carrier.

(This is why I'm urgently advocating for Scottish independence in the near future. The London political culture is as much a lost cause as DC, for the same reasons: English public sentiment is lurching towards actual no-shit nazism: but Scotland still has more of a civic culture and a political system that got a 300 year reboot about two decades ago and is still running on founders' idealism -- if we cut loose in time we might be able to survive the coming shit-storm without dictatorship and mass graves.)

154:

Oops, thanks. And yes, disagreement about what's the right thing is another of the many problems with that particular bit of stupidity. Another big one is that a l;ot of people can't do the right thing - for example "stay home" as applied to homeless people. See for example India, where the governmunt locked the country down hard on four hours notice, poverty-stricken slums, day labourers, caste system and all. That worked about as well as you'd expect (if you're someone who looks at Modi and sees a genocidal maniac).

156:

Children legally have the right to an education.

In Ontario, schools can't legally exclude or send home troublesome kids?

(UK schools have that power and tend to overuse it for trivial shit like uniform infractions or casually racist attitudes to non-white hairstyles. Violence would in principle be an instant exclusion issue.)

157:

Charlie NOT "The London political culture" PLEASE! London would LURVE to declare UDI from the tories & remain in the EU ... It's the deep, ignorant, stuck-in-the-mud shires & provinces that are committing this slow-motion suicide .... Even I who simply couldn't stand Salmomd & has no love for the Wee Fiswife, can begin to see why a poverty-stricken independant Scotland might be (short-term, anyway) better for them, than tied to BoZo's bootlaces.

158:

No, you are wrong, but OGH is being unfair. Politically and economically, London is at least 60 miles, possibly more, in diameter, and includes the 'commuter belt', including much of the Home Counties. In that area, there are two Londons.

The first is what he described, is the London of the ruling cabals, and is the London that has been artificially and viciously depressing the provinces for at least 60 years, and using its power to concentrate the UK's wealth in its hands.

The second is everyone else and, despite what you imply, 40% of even Greater London (let alone the commuter belt) voted Leave. That was fractionally more than in my 'shire' constituency.

159:

Please note: it's too hot to work creatively today, so I have finally plugged in my new KeyboardIO Atreus ergonomic keyboard, and am back to hunt and peck for pretty much anything that doesn't fit on the default QWERTY area because this is a totally alien typing ecperience! And it took me five minutes to even find the exclamation mark. Flipside: really good keys, compact, and I'm noticing markedly less finger extension already.

Now I just have to burn about eighty new key chord combinations into muscle memory and I'll be all set!

160:

In Ontario, schools can't legally exclude or send home troublesome kids?

Not sure about Ontario but in the land south of there it can be problematic.

When I was in school 60s into 70s students could be kicked out for somewhat trivial reasons. Well suspended but if you didn't want to go to school you could work it out to be suspended all the time. In 1969 guys got sent home for hair over ears to touching collars and the girls for not wearing a skirt or dress. Then there was that guy who had been in the marines (and I think did a tour in Nam) who came back to get his diploma. [eyeroll]

Now it has gotten to be where unless you pull a weapon (or maybe sneak one into school) you are treated as someone who needs to be "treated".

It has caused teachers in rough schools to walk over the years as they fear from their safety. Which has lead to many schools in the US having issues with "police" taking down students. And over reacting.

Just what does a teacher do with a 14 year old who is threatening and out weighs the teacher by 50%?

161:

so I have finally plugged in my new KeyboardIO Atreus ergonomic keyboard, ... Now I just have to burn about eighty new key chord combinations into muscle memory and I'll be all set!

Back in the 70s Byte magazine had an article on building a chording mouse where you had 4 buttons for the non thumb fingers and the thumb could click and move a button in 4 directions. I lost the issue and haven't found it online when searching but haven't looked in 10 years or more.

Always though it would be interesting to build.

The point of it was that you could do everything with one hand holding a single "hockey puck".

162:

Fully customizable

Way back in the day with IBM 327x terminals VM geeks would program lots of custom function keys to make themselves way more productive. Of course everyone had their own key sets. Which meant no one could use anyone else's log in / terminal as the muscle memory was a total fail.

163:

In Ontario, schools can't legally exclude or send home troublesome kids?

It is possible, but rarely done. Actual violence captured on video can do it. Being troublesome in-and-of-itself isn't sufficient. Most suspensions are short, and repeated infractions are common.

If the student has a medical condition (eg. autism) then the violence is often accepted as part of accommodating the student — and the school has a legal obligation to accommodate. Hence the violence against teachers and EAs.

And students can't be permanently excluded. We often get kids on Safe Schools Transfer, which means they caused problems elsewhere and are being moved to give them a fresh start. Leaving aside how one gets a fresh start in an age of social media…

164:

I'm in the process of building a programmable button array to automate some common operations for graphics, editing and the like. This will be the Mk 3, the first version used footswitches, the second was a hacked-up keyboard. I'm now trying arcade machine buttons, a row of ten of them plus a Sparkfun Pro Micro which has a USB interface that will work as a Human Interface Device (HID) to push keystrokes into a PC.

There are programmable keypads available off-the-shelf but they're eye-wateringly expensive for some reason.

165:

Have you thought about midi controllers? Some are pretty cheap and if you use python, dotnet or god forbid java you should be pretty covered for apis.

166:

Some people are less than happy about the potential candidates :

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/07/kamala-harris-or-susan-rice-the-veepstakes-appears-to-have-kicked-out-two-truly-terrible-choices.html

What's your take ? I kind of like this site, but they are also often not shy of pushing pie in the sky "solutions".

167:

Not sure your point. To me and others it seems he didn't catch it at the rally.

Tulsa Rally - June 20th

Cain admitted to Hospital with Covid - July 1st

So 11 days after attending an event in a location experiencing a Covid outbreak, an event where we knew at the time a bunch of the staff had Covid, where he posted images of himself sitting close to other people, with none of them wearing masks.

Can we say definitely that he caught it at the Tulsa rally? No.

But the time frame certainly suggests that it was highly likely unless he was doing any other really stupid things.

168:

unless he was doing any other really stupid things.

Nine Nine Nine

Medical people who looked into it said it was definitely possible he caught it there but that was not the most likely source due to the time lag. And give that he was a big anti-masker meeting with lots of similar people all the time.

169:

Some people are less than happy about the potential candidates :

https://levniyilmaz.tumblr.com/image/178858888734

170:

Re: '... the first teacher who gets sick should sue the parents of the non-complying students.'

Are all of the kids' parents in Ontario rich enough to make money out of suing them? Recall seeing some data about 15-20 years ago showing that per capita Ontario had the largest number of students in private schools suggesting that public school kids in Ontario skew pretty heavily toward low-to-middle income families.

Seriously though --- What about the 10-15% of school kids whose only real daily meal is the free one they eat at school? There's still a helluva lot of poverty around and I don't think their parents have extra cash on hand to buy disposable masks*. Personally - if the schools have a compulsory mask policy then they should supply the masks out of whatever COVID-19 gov't budget/moneys they receive. The mask count could be a useful visible metric for what they have to contend with - good for newspaper pix, tweeting, TV news.

  • These parents would probably have to buy about 2-3 times as many masks per kid because kids lose any/at least one of a pair of any smallish clothing item that's not directly and firmly attached to their bodies/outerwear/snowsuits.
171:

I cannot agree more.

But the number of people that prefer ideological purity over practical progress is always worrying.

172:

Re: '... the first teacher who gets sick should sue the parents of the non-complying students.'

Not gonna happen. Hard to prove that the non-compliance of student A caused the infection of teacher B, especially when students C-Z were also non-compliant.

The Parental Responsibility Act allows someone to sue parents for restitution when a child "takes, damages or destroys property" and is convicted under the Young Offenders Act. I'm not certain that it applies at school, because schools have a duty of care and teachers are in loco parentis*, so technically it is up to the teacher/school to enforce compliance.

if the schools have a compulsory mask policy then they should supply the masks out of whatever COVID-19 gov't budget/moneys they receive

Which in Ontario is currently 7¢/student/day to cover everything, including leasing computers modems etc for students whose parents have opted for remote learning.

It comes down, as usual, to how much money the system is willing to spend (and how much of what is spent actually reaches the front lines). Which is a rant for another time.

*But held to higher standards than parents, because they have training.

173:

The advantage of warfarin as a rat poison are that rats don't notice that they've been poisoned. They die of blood loss, and considerably later. Also it's extremely bitter, so people and many other animals aren't tempted to eat it.

The disadvantage of warfarin as an anticoagulant is that there is a dose that varies with the amount of green leafy vegetables that you eat. My wife objected to that sufficiently that her doctor shifted her to apixaban.

174:

Coumadin is warfarin. I think they changed the name so that people wouldn't realize that they were being prescribed rat poison, but it's exactly the same drug. More highly refined, usually, but otherwise the same. Dosage is critical.

175:

But the number of people that prefer ideological purity over practical progress is always worrying.

This impression I get is that they are a very small and very vocal minority, their perceived (self-)importance magnified by the fucking Internet and the one-click retweet button. Time was they were the sort of folks, like the Socialist Workers Party, who were prone to appearing on street corners waving flags on a Saturday afternoon, all eleven of them. Nowadays they've got blogs and an Instagram account and fancy-sounding group names and a few thousand "followers" meaning people who read what they publish for a moment's amusement. No biggie but it is not a crime to point and laugh at them while the retired granny down the block gets out the vote one person at a time in her local community but without the clicks and Internet exposure. And there's a lot more grannies out there than Berniebots.

176:

whitroth @ 135: Nope, sorry, the economy is *already* broke.
Excerpt:
The US economy contracted at a 32.9% annual rate from April through June, its worst drop on record, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday.
--- end excerpt ----
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/30/economy/us-economy-2020-second-quarter/index.html

Nobody wants to say it, but we're headed into another Great Depression.

177:

I'm definitely in the anti-Kamala camp. She's got that "I'm a sociopath" vibe in a way that's obvious even without knowing her record, which is terrible.

Susan Rice is what you'd expect of a former "National Security Advisor."

My favorite possible VP pick is Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta. She's good-looking, has an approachable feel, and seems to have done all the right things where COVID-19 is concerned.

178:

whitroth @ 134: We know he's going to try to steal the election.

he goons... yeah, and then there's some other folks. I'm sure you read about the wall of vets in Portland.

There are people in the government, and the military, who do, in fact, believe in the Oath.

I think he might have figured out the military are not going to support a coup. That's why he's using his Homeland Security GESTAPO the way he is now. Get them compromised now; drag them so far down the slippery slope they can't back out later.

Fuck, I never took it, and I believe in it. And if there's even the slightest question, I do plan to go down to 1600 PA on Wed, 4 Nov.

I took it. Just because I'm retired doesn't mean it doesn't still apply.

On the subject of postponing the election (as a prelude to cancelling it altogether) .... Here's the template.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/31/asia/hong-kong-election-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html

179:

David L @ 146: I've had 2 tests in the last 3 weeks. Before driving NC to TX so my clients could know if I got sick it was after I was with any of them. Ditto when I got back to make sure I didn't get it in the land of denial and spread it to them.

One of the fun things I had to deal with at the VA was the list of questions they ask you before they'll let you in:

Have you had a stuffy nose? Nasal Congestion?

Well, yes I have had a stuffy nose & nasal congestion ... I'm here to have sinus surgery (or surgical prep or getting my pre-surgical Covid19 test ...)

Didn't slow me down much, but they did have to think about it for a few seconds before letting me in.

The surgery went well. I have very little pain, not even enough to warrant a single Tylenol, much less a Tylenol3. I have a bandage loosely affixed under my nostrils to catch any blood seepage & it itches a bit. And this morning I am slowly developing that headache again, but I think this time the blockage will clear as the passage heals, so I don't think it's going to be a problem.

And I too am developing a toothache. I'm not sure why it hurts because that tooth had a root-canal & has a crown. There shouldn't be anything there to feel the pain.

180:

I can't argue with your worst case scenario, but it looks unlikely.

Most likely seems that antibody based immunity is transient, but TCell based immunity is durable. This MAY mean that second cases become "silent spreaders", but would also mean that the second case was much milder.

Unfortunately, to be on topic, it looks as if each case you get is going to cause additional permanent(?) damage. If so, then at some point your heart will just stop, or your kidneys give out. IF the damage is permanent. Antibody immunity seems to last a couple of months, and then start decreasing.

OTOH, possibly TCell immunity will be a real immunity. That is won't be is my own worst case scenario.

Also, preliminary indications are that a second case won't be worse, or even as bad, as the first case. But these are quite preliminary, as there is disagreement that any second cases have even been detected.

181:

Microwriter. Two buttons for the thumb rather than a multiway. A bit big and clunky, and right hand use only. I did wonder of it would be possible to fit a mouse ball and mechanism (it was a long time ago) underneath. Could probably be duplicated using a Wemos ESP32 or similar as a Bluetooth keyboard.

182:

My take on it is that ALL the Democrat VP candidates are better than either Trump or Pence. Which one will do the most to ensure that Trump loses? (I don't know.)

It is a very important question, as the winning VP is quite likely to end up being president before their term is up. But the most important step is to get elected. The only one I really liked was E. Warren. Most of the others I don't know well enough to have a considered opinion.

183:

Elderly Cynic @ 149: Things like 75 mg aspirin and 25 mcg vitamin D are pretty safe; beyond that gets rapidly trickier, and drugs that have a narrow boundary between therapeutic and lethal doses or potentially serious interactions or side-effects are definite red flag territory.

And relatively few people have the expertise to distinguish - indeed, I check up on what the doctors say (and I mean on the professional Web pages) because I know that they often know less than they think they do.

Everything I take (including the supplements) I have discussed with multiple doctors & understand why I'm taking them and what I'm supposed to look out for in terms of possible side effects & interactions.

Because I'm getting old & sometimes absent minded, I have it all written down & pinned to the wall right above the row of meds & supplements where I keep them in the kitchen.

I also try to be advertent when taking them, looking at & reading at least the name on the bottle so I don't get to the fourth bottle and start to wonder did I take the third one or not?

184:

Wrong. "Coumadin" is a trademark for a proprietary brand of Warfarin (the generic pharmaceutical). It's one of a bunch of coumarins (polycyclic lactones) that are found in plants (notably sweet clover, from which warfarin was first isolated) as plant defenses -- appetite suppressants, bittering agents (to deter herbivores), and hemorrhagic poisons (in the case of sweet clover).

185:

Charlie Stross @ 156:

Children legally have the right to an education.

In Ontario, schools can't legally exclude or send home troublesome kids?

(UK schools have that power and tend to overuse it for trivial shit like uniform infractions or casually racist attitudes to non-white hairstyles. Violence would in principle be an instant exclusion issue.)

Broadly speaking, NO.

If it's anything like it is here, teachers have limited recourse & school administrations are reluctant to enforce even what little recourse they have. Violence can get the child excluded, but the school system has to provide some alternative venue and frequently does not have the resources to do so, so the violent child ends up back in class, perhaps in another teacher's classroom.

And for non-violent offenders, a lot of it depends on why they're troublesome. Mental, physical and emotional handicaps have to be accommodated in the "mainstream" classrooms; again frequently without additional resources.

186:

And woodruff (Waldmeister), which smells of hay when dried and is sometimes used to flavour drinks. I find it makes apple juice much better but, when I served it at parties, I warned people not to have it if they were on anti-coagulants or pregnant. I believe that I was being wildly over-cautious, but that was before the Internet, and ....

https://www.drugs.com/npp/woodruff-sweet.html

187:

Just to cheer you up, abcesses are common in teeth with root canal fillings. On the other hand, I have one with a root canal filling and crown that has been twinging (and slightly loose) for 5-10 years now!

188:

And I too am developing a toothache. I'm not sure why it hurts because that tooth had a root-canal & has a crown. There shouldn't be anything there to feel the pain.

If it is in your upper jaw it might be a sinus issue that your brain is confused about due to the location.

189:

it's too hot to work creatively today

(Checks weather in Edinburgh)

So ~ 25 C? That's coolish here.

190:

A HIGH of 77F. Let me move.

Today and for a few days (we may get the edge of a hurricane) we're supposed to be 92F/33C with humidity around 70%.

And this is a relief from the heat of the last 2 or 3 weeks. (North Carolina, not the Gobi desert.)

My birds have been light at the feeder the last few weeks.

191:

Violence can get the child excluded, but the school system has to provide some alternative venue and frequently does not have the resources to do so, so the violent child ends up back in class, perhaps in another teacher's classroom.

Or in another school, which is called a Caring and Safe Schools Transfer here.

Policy manual: http://ppf.tdsb.on.ca/uploads/files/live/98/476.pdf

We are governed by P/PM 145: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/extra/eng/ppm/145.pdf

Key distinctions between shall consider and shall are in appendix 1, as well as the mitigating factors that must be considered. Actions that require suspension (which might be short-term) are:

1. Possessing a weapon, including possessing a firearm. 2. Using a weapon to cause or to threaten bodily harm to another person. 3. Committing physical assault on another person that causes bodily harm requiring treatment by a medical practitioner. 4. Committing sexual assault. 5. Trafficking in weapons or in illegal drugs. 6. Committing robbery. 7. Giving alcohol or cannabis to a minor. 7.1 Bullying, if, i. the pupil has previously been suspended for engaging in bullying, and ii. the pupil’s continuing presence in the school creates an unacceptable risk to the safety of another person. 7.2 Any activity listed in subsection 306(1) that is motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or any other similar factor. 8 Any other activity that, under a policy of a board, is an activity for which a principal must suspend a pupil and, therefore in accordance with this Part, conduct an investigation to determine whether to recommend to the board that the pupil be expelled.

Mitigating factors that must be considered are: 1. The pupil does not have the ability to control his or her behaviour. 2. The pupil does not have the ability to understand the foreseeable consequences of his or her behaviour. 3. The pupil’s continuing presence in the school does not create an unacceptable risk to the safety of any person.

So committing bodily assault that doesn't require medical attention does not automatically lead to suspension. (It might. Didn't when I was assaulted.)

192:

I've been to the Gobi. It's a dry heat, not as bad as Toronto as long as you stay hydrated…

(Seriously, last weeks low-30s with 90% relative humidity did me in.)

193:

Sorry, but I don't understand why you think a new House can not be formed. In fact, a later section of the Amendment explicitly says that the House must meet at least once a year, and that meeting MUST begin on 3 Jan, so they form it, and elect a Speaker on the 3rd.

194:

Stop it. Stop it, NOW.

Either introduce me to a single berniebot, or STOP TALKING ABOUT THEM.

195:

Let me know when you're treated for carpal tunnel.

196:

Either introduce me to a single berniebot,

Nina Turner, co-chair of the Sanders 2020 campaign said recently, of the choice between Trump and Biden, “It’s like saying to somebody, ‘You have a bowl of shit in front of you, and all you’ve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still shit.” It sounds rather that she doesn't really support the idea of Biden being elected President.

197:

Yes. I have been in the Sahara, at 49 Celsius, and it wasn't too bad even under the sun. It shows my age and lack of adaptation that I more-or-less flaked out today at 35+ Celsius and c. 45% humidity. Oh, yes, I could be and was physically active when needed, even under the sun, but most of the time I thought "sod it", and read in the shade.

Scots are even less used to heat, but what dispirits visitors (other than the winter darkness) is when it is below 5 Celsius, above 90% humidity, with a 30+ kph wind and a continual drizzle of slush. You can get that in the Highlands even in summer.

198:

(Seriously, last weeks low-30s with 90% relative humidity did me in.)

I know the feeling. Hauling down from the third floor 40 boxes plus other stuff into the van was brutal. I'm 66 and by the end of it after 3 days I was just spent. Dallas area but similar to NC last week.

199:

Could she justify her position? If so, she's not a bot. Were I a transpondian, I would have backed Sanders. I wasn't happy about Blair and am not happy about Starmer, either, and the more of see of the latter the more I think he is another of the same (though with a fraction of the ego). But does that make me a Corbynista, let alone a Corbinbot?

200:

It shows my age and lack of adaptation that I more-or-less flaked out today at 35+ Celsius and c. 45% humidity.

In my teens I was mixing mortar for 3 people laying blocks. Temp was over 100F/38C for a week or more. 2 of the guys laying the block were in their early 60s. They just kept on going. This was their job (building houses for my father) before they would leave at 330pm to take care of their farms. After about a week of this Cue said during lunch "Maybe we should just call it a day." No one argued the point.

The only time they EVERY quit early over a 6 year period.

201:

Even now, I would have no trouble with doing heavy work (for me) at 40 Celsius - I was agreeing with Robert Prior that it's the humidity that is the issue, and pointing out that it's also adaptation.

202:

All you've done is demonstrated that Turner is sane.

In the U.S. right now it's like running for Captain of the Titanic. It's either "I promise to build bulkheads around the engineering room as soon as I'm elected," or "What do you mean? This ship can't possibly sink!" Obviously the best of your very limited and stupid choices is to vote for the guy who wants to build bulkheads around the engineering section, but the idea that you might slow down while cruising through iceberg-filled seas never registered to either candidate and if you comment on this you must be some kind of communist agitator who wants the boat to sink because it didn't go fast enough.

203:

Saved by someone else because the arseholes responsible have judiciously deleted it but Cain's Twitter account was still posting covid bullshit just hours before he shuffled off. - https://twitter.com/sandiuagain/status/1288856408323219462?s=09

As for Trump's attempts to delay? Well I'm sure he'd like to but it's also a huge infobomb to draw the newsfeed away from the cratered economy figures.

204:

EC You too? the London that has been artificially and viciously depressing the provinces for at least 60 years What utter gullible twaddle. London is not only the main financial generator of the country, it's taxes are subsidising the rest of the country & Scotland. This idiocy was tried before in the 1970's & failed, but I'm terribly frightened that this time it wil "succeed" & accelerate the crash, caused by the combination fo this idiocy, C-19 &, of course Brexshit

JBS THe economic figures here & in the EU are, if not as bad as the US, pretyy grim The BoE is saying 14% overall, with a 20-25% drop in the worst month - April

Temperature High of fractionally under 38°C at Theifrow, today - in my greehouse I had the doors open, the flaps up & the thermometer was reading 36°C in the shade & the draught ... Relative humidity is highish ( Over 60% )- very unpleasant.

205:

Interface Age (remember them?) had an article about a one-handed keyboard. It wasn't a mouse, but I remember the shape being something like a half-sphere. Sounds similar: You had to press a "chord" to get a character. Friend of mine who played the trumpet thought it was a great design.

I probably have that issue in my archive yet...

206:

I sort of remember them. And maybe that is why I could never find the article in my old Bytes. :)

207:

Meanwhile, the joys of utterly corrupt tory privatisation & regulatory capture are to be seen here Finding this was actually a relief to me, as I am tryng to deal with these very arseholes, who are doing this to our allotments ... And guess who the Treasurer is?

208:

I remember something similar to that - a sort of lump with buttons on that you could enter a byte at a time in binary with, as long as it didn't have more than five 1s, or something like that. It had memory in it as well and the idea was that you could use it to write things down without taking it out of your pocket. It was, apparently, very popular and the best thing since sliced bread etc. etc.... with piano-playing journalists who wanted to take notes while making it look like they were fiddling with their goolies. Since that is a set with very few members, it almost instantly sank without trace.

209:

I was agreeing with Robert Prior that it's the humidity that is the issue, and pointing out that it's also adaptation.

Totally. I'm there. I sweat more than most so I do OK in dry heat if I can drink water. I've worked outside in 110-115F a few times (younger days) but the humidity was such that instead of sweat on your skin you had salt.

My wife doesn't sweat much and it caused issues with her a few years back walking around the rim of the Grand Canyon. She got sick to her stomach and we had to bail.

210:

So if anyone is curious I'm going to my first Phase 3 trial medical exam next week and may get a shot of something. The trial vaccine or a placebo.

211:

Make your own Quirkey - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3433244

I had a microwriter many decades ago, the version that attached to a BBC Micro. Got quite comfortable with it fairly quickly. Been meaning to make one ever since

212:

phew

I'm back. What, you didn't notice me leaving, looking nervous?

About two weeks ago, a new vulnerability was announced that affected a ton of routers... including mine.

Moi, trust the phone company's router to be secure?

I have mine inside of theirs. Anyway, it was time to update the firmware to fix the vulnerability. For those of you who've never updated firmware, trust me, speaking as a just-retired sr. Linux sysadmin, this is always scary - if it doesn't work, you frequently wind up with what is technically known as a brick.

Anyway, I tried to use their UI... and for some reason, it couldn't connect. I emailed them... an d it wasn't more than an hour before I got a response. Admittedly, I'm the tech suupprt email they want (what I have, here's what happened, got a link to the firmware for this model?), but still - that's amazingly fast for consumer tech support. Updated the firmware, it rebooted and reconnected, and all is well.

Oh, Asus is the vendor. They are definitely on my "vendors to trust" list.

213:

Re the top post, another study, also in JAMA. This one is an autopsy study. Association of Cardiac Infection With SARS-CoV-2 in Confirmed COVID-19 Autopsy Cases (July 27, 2020, Diana Lindner, Antonia Fitzek, Hanna Bräuninger, et al) Results Cardiac tissue from 39 consecutive autopsy cases were included. The median (interquartile range) age of patients was 85 (78-89) years, and 23 (59.0%) were women. SARS-CoV-2 could be documented in 24 of 39 patients (61.5%). Viral load above 1000 copies per μg RNA could be documented in 16 of 39 patients (41.0%). A cytokine response panel consisting of 6 proinflammatory genes was increased in those 16 patients compared with 15 patients without any SARS-CoV-2 in the heart. Comparison of 15 patients without cardiac infection with 16 patients with more than 1000 copies revealed no inflammatory cell infiltrates or differences in leukocyte numbers per high power field.

214:

She's not a bot. For a concentrated dose, see https://twitter.com/ninaturner and look through the replies on a few tweets. (The problem is that the US is an entrenched two party system, with elections often very close.)

215:

Wouldn't worry. My posts got edited a bit, tweaked, spread out, additions made, things removed. It's a primitive form of gaslighting when it's done professionally and it's used almost constantly by lower order operators.

MiM is a bit fierce atm. Νέμεσις.

Getting audited for genuine Feminist contributions[0] when we're working with males is kinda harsh though. Still: if it appears on a human tech platform, chances are someone somewhere is able to fuck around with accreditation and so on after it happens.

Which is why we cheat, and do it before it happens / is an 'Event'.[1]

~

Small tip: planned media campaigns are a thing, almost all (90% ish) charities and NGOs in the USA/UK don't do what they say on the tin, & the entire system is endemically myopically corrupt.

Nobody wants to say it, but we're headed into another Great Depression.

Someone told you that in Sept 2019, only you weren't paying attention. Same to W.

Oh, and media is hawking this nonsense: Public Disorder and Public Health: Contemporary Threats and Risks https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/904677/S0578_SPI-B_Public_Disorder_and_Public_Health_-_Contemporary_Threats_and_Risks.pdf

1. The escalation of programmes of protest paused during the lockdown (e.g. Extinction Rebellion, anti-HS2).2. The beginning of protests planned during the lockdown, (e.g anarchist / anti-capitalist groups seeking to frustrate a ‘return to normality’; some are planned for July).3. Possible resumption of terrorist activity beyond lone-actors, which may complicate the policing and volatility of large assemblies.4. Resumption of right-wing protests planned on issues such as child sexual exploitation or ‘blaming’ BAME communities for local lockdown measures

Come on: if you want to nab someone for inciting BAME riots, look for your local Conservative MP or SkyNews editor.

The jokes, they write themselves.

Also: you obtain no knowledge of us via intrusive stuff, we're camouflaged. Chances are: this is us slow, spiking shitty media campaigns is us being nice and friendly.

Points to the sky

[0] Not by Humans.

[1] LOL.

[2] Cowards! Metallica - For Whom The Bell Tolls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO3l6qNA2Q4

216:

For something different, something old, the CIA's nuclear-powered(*) spy drone disguised as a bird!

http://alert5.com/2020/07/31/cia-declassifies-project-aquiline/
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has declassified its Project Aquiline on Jul. 30. The secretive program from the late 1960s was to build a bird-like unmanned air vehicle that can collect photographic and electronic intelligence plus emplacing sensors in denied environments. Prime contractor was McDonnell Douglas and the vehicle’s dimensions are 5ft length with a wing span of 7.5ft. Powered by a silent engine with 3 1/3 horsepower, the mechanical bird has an endurance of at least 50 hours and a range of 1200 miles. It was proposed in the research study to add a radioisotope engine for it to stay airborne for up to 30 days or 36 000 miles range.

(*)Well, kinda. It was a proposal for an isotope-heated Stirling engine the size of a small trash basket. Never went anywhere AFAIK.

217:

The point of it was that you could do everything with one hand holding a single "hockey puck".

In the 90's, the one-handed keyboard/mouse of choice in the MIT "Wearables" community was the Twiddler. I still have a Twiddler 2 in a box somewhere. It worked fine, but took a bit of a grip, and had a learning curve.

218:

As ever, it's mostly projection there (we know we sound corrosive and most of your readers cannot process the crap, but we don't know how much more 'tricks' when the other side has zero repercussions and so on)

However:

The London political culture is as much a lost cause as DC, for the same reasons: English public sentiment is lurching towards actual no-shit nazism

It's more Ethno-Nationalist-Supremacy with an massive throbbing need to hit weaker things with a sado-sexual inability to experience emotions, with a side order of "we were PROMISED that £££ = worth in society, but now the entire thing is falling apart", but yeah.

Check the talent: there's none up there. Notice how... interesting voices / good art is getting strangled. It's not just Disney, although... they're Fasch tooo.

Actual reality check: grep shooting in forests. It wasn't a joke. Look @ new RU HOUSE OF LORDS entree (and the pathetic other scrapings they entered, which all mostly just "FU, traitors get bantz" entries).

Klept. Kelpt with some really nasty hard-core tech behind them [SATELLITES]. Makes D-the-Fink's Gateshead poison look... quaint.

Still, Mrs May becomes Lady May because her husband is a fucking arms dealer.

That's what's running the show now. No-more nice polite "embarrassed BBC cuts feed as MI6 is mentioned", they're going full on 'Superman and dross, fuck information'.

Unless

Nah, fuck it. "Deserves a bullet in its head".

~

And then pulling that Human Scale bullshit on us? Noooooo.

p.s.

Our Feminist Contributions (waves at ISIS) are there. Gotta see the OTHER SIDE*

219:

and had a learning curve.

As someone who on some days will use 20 different keyboards and mice/trackballs/trackpads from different vendors with different concepts of how things SHOULD work ...

I've gotten to be a bit flexible.

Now that my life will be a bit less hectic I'll track down some of the references to see what out there these days.

220:

1) It wants to be using something like 90Sr for its isotope because if it uses transuranics like they do in spaceships the real nuclear pigeons will eat it.

2) One hundred times the peak power output of an ordinary biochemical wood pigeon. Geese and swans are nothing like that.

221:

Just saw this ad from Juice Media. Thought many of you would find it blackly amusing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpIkl2QnJeI

Compare with this gem from Congressman Jim Banks' latest newsletter:

Without a vaccine, the virus was always likely to spread through most of the country, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted in March. The lockdown-as-miracle-cure is a fantasy, as the World Health Organization has now acknowledged. The economic and public-health harm is too great and the virus is too easily transmissible.

The public is smarter than the media and can adjust its behavior when flare-ups occur.

222:

200+ comments in a couple of days. If you charged a farthing for every comment, you would have a lot of farthings.

Perhaps upgrading movable type will yield better performance, i see they are on ver 7. You must find great benefits from this product to put up with it, their current terms are a bit harsh. I expect there are way better options out there for a blog spot.

223:

Hey, you missed that the impeached resident of 1600 PA Ave, Washington, DC, voted in the primary in FL, claiming Mar-a-Lago as his residence.

And Pence voted in the primary in IN, claiming the GOVERNOR'S MANSION, which he moved out of four years ago, as his residence.

Regarding the IMPOTUS, the elections board says voting is legal even if the person's residence is illegal, which sounds like good law to me. Even if their analogy to someone living under a bridge might not be one that the GOP likes.

(For those watching from a safe distance, one of the things The Donald promised in order to open Mar-a-Lago as a resort was that it would not be a private residence.)

I hadn't recalled the one about the governor's mansion but a moment on Google says it's true. No doubt lots of voters have out-of-date addresses on record but that just seems sloppy.

224:

So if James Murdoch just resigned from the News Corp Board over "disagreements over certain editorial content"...who's Darth Siddious' new heir in the Dark Empire?

225:

Why? I don't see anything wrong with it.

226:

Um, nope. He agreed to one thing, and the real point is HE LIVES AT 16oo PA AVE, NW, Washington, DC. Period. And the FL county board of elections....

Meanwhile, Pence has not even the vaguest cover.

Like imPOTUS, though.

227:

My upper teeth ache when I get colds - the previous dentist said that sinus pressure affects the nerve 8right there*.

228:

I understand it's Lachlan. (James is the more liberal of the two.)

229:

And... there is Hugos.

230:

FWIW, it hit 40C in my neighborhood today, and the current dew point is about 2C (up from -2). The high humidity is at night, when it's maybe 70% - during the day it gets down to 15 to 20%. (In the "rainy" season, it's routinely down in the 10-25% range.)

It's so much fun when your eyelids are sweating.

231:

Hadn't posted this. Yeah, churn in the House of Murdoch. Lachlan is now apparently the favored son, but it is not clear; his history is mixed too. "In 1994, he graduated with a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in Philosophy", so he might not be stupid like son-of-DJT. (Probably worth doing a dossier skietch if interested in the Murdochs.) News Corp: Rupert Murdoch's son James quits company James Murdoch, the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has resigned from the board of News Corporation citing "disagreements over editorial content". Perhaps climate change related: Their spokesperson told The Daily Beast they were "particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary."

232:

I used to live slightly inland. We had a few days in the high 40's. I think 49 was the highest official number. I ride into town one day when the roadside temperature sign said 52. In full leathers it was uncomfortable but bearable.

A couple of months ago I was riding in the rain at an indicated 32 and it wasn't bearable. If I hadn't had only a few minutes to go I would have had to stop and pour water over my head.

233:

Oh yes, I forgot ... Charlie ... WHat's your take on this? If the Scottish Police Fereation are campaigning vigorously against a new law, it should be a warning sign, but (from here ) it looks as though the SNP are determined to (re)-introduce a blasphemy law ... The level of stupid is as bad or even worse than our lot's, if true.

Rbt Prior Sick, amusing & horribly true - & STILL idiots will vote for this tosser.

Bill Arnold A philosophy degree is no guarantee of rationality. Plato / Hobbes / Houston S Chamberlain ....

234:

Interesting but not surprising that the post of Sergeant at Arms, like most US police agencies I've seen, require qualifications in weapons and firearms, but no qualification in law.

It appears possible to be one of the most critical law enforcement agents in the country while being completely ignorant of the law.

235:

Again, IANAL. But who forms the new house? The terms of all the old house members will have expired on 3 January, and since no election took place, there's no one to form the new congress.

Maybe.....

236:

Perhaps upgrading movable type will yield better performance, i see they are on ver 7.

Alas, this blog is running on the last open source release. They took it closed source and currently demand a minimum $1000/year price for a license. It's pretty glaringly obvious if you're running a blog on illegal/pirated software, not to mention hypocritical (if like me you earn your living via licensing copyrighted IP), so I'm not going to do that.

Most likely at some point I need to get someone competent (I no longer am: 20 years of neglect have rotted my sysadmin/webadmin skills) to move the blog to a more modern platform. I considered WordPress hosting, but ... I still have an aversion to PHP on security grounds, and something tells me porting over this blog might choke the hosting system (it's closing in on a quarter of a million comments).

The alternative would be to freeze the current blog as a static HTML snapshot and start a new one. Which might actually be easier.

237:

Mine is similarly dated, and not entirely relevant, but I recommend the last. My experience with similar systems is that facilities you rely on are quite often seriously incompatible or just plain broken in the new system, so you have to do things differently, anyway.

238:

All you've done is demonstrated that Turner is sane.

Sane in that her ideas are generally good, and would make things better for Americans?

Yes.

Sane in that she is grounded in reality?

No.

She, like AOC, is living in a bubble and thinks because a small section of Cleveland voted for her in the past that the same applies to the entire US.

In the U.S. right now it's like running for Captain of the Titanic. It's either "I promise to build bulkheads around the engineering room as soon as I'm elected," or "What do you mean? This ship can't possibly sink!" Obviously the best of your very limited and stupid choices is to vote for the guy who wants to build bulkheads around the engineering section, but the idea that you might slow down while cruising through iceberg-filled seas never registered to either candidate

Except in your analogy there currently is no way to slow the Titanic down and building a speed control will take 10, 20, or more years.

Yes, medicare for all is a great idea - but most of the US isn't going to vote for it (at this time), and those who make money from the current mess will fight to keep making money.

I believe I have mentioned this before but the ACA allows states to go single payer - and Vermont attempted to and failed. If Vermont can't do it, there is no way currently to get it done in the entire US. It will take decades of educating the public.

239:

What's your take ? I kind of like this site, but they are also often not shy of pushing pie in the sky "solutions".

Nojay's cartoon response is certainly valid - perhaps the result of the Internet and social media we (as in the public at large) seem to be tending to want an exact match and purity instead of compromise, with unpredictable results.

But there does appear to be some truth in general to what that commentator is saying - the DNC VP choice has become about checking certain boxes and rewarding factions in the DNC with a total disregard for actually winning - and by winning I mean the Senate as well as the White House.

242:

Re: ' ... and those who make money from the current mess will fight to keep making money.'

I'd really like to see a vs-previous-years comparison of the various HMOs' earnings for 2020. Would also like to see which (if any*) HMO contributed even a penny toward any healthcare for their inflated-premium paying customers affected by COVID-19. Many of the big name pharma at least have been going full tilt at finding therapies and vaccines, i.e., they've been doing their as-advertised jobs.

I'm guessing that the cost of COVID-19 is being covered almost entirely by tax-payers but that somehow the HMOs will be able to find some statistics to justify hiking up premiums. I'm also guessing some of the Cal-based HMOs might have done the right/ethical thing and provided some medical services to customers who might not have been able to keep up their premium payments.

The UK and EU have universal healthcare as well as large pharma companies so I wonder what their financials look like vs-USian pharma particularly re: changes in revenue sources/streams, write-off's, increase/decrease in intra-company (subsidiary-to-HO) transfer payments, etc.

243:

Charlie The alternative would be to freeze the current blog as a static HTML snapshot and start a new one. Which might actually be easier. Don't understand that, I'm afraid ...

mdive The "D's" have to make a choice for VP that: Is really capable of stepping into Biden's shoes at a moment's notice. That will help them get control of the Senate Be reasonably popular with a large number of their prospective voters

I suspect that you can only get 2 out of 3 there ....

244:

The "D's" have to make a choice for VP that: Is really capable of stepping into Biden's shoes at a moment's notice. That will help them get control of the Senate Be reasonably popular with a large number of their prospective voters

I think all 3 are possible - particularly this year when "popular with a large number of voters" comes down to being a) not Trump and b) not being to "scary" to middle America.

The problem is that they don't appear to be looking at "popular with prospective voters" but rather "popular with a faction within the DNC".

In other words, the standard way to lose an election...

245:

Be reasonably popular with a large number of their prospective voters

Piling on mdive, both D and R are really an association of tribes. The major unifying factor is tax cuts, Trump, and judges. At this point.

Within these major tribes are many smaller ones that really think their way is the only way. The D VP pick and the current Senate state of affairs within the Rs over the next relief bill are both good examples of such.

246:

Hm, my mental picture of the isotopes used in RTGs and their Stirling-engine cousins is this red-hot pellet of plutonium oxide. Strontium-90 seems to pack a similar amount of energy, so I wonder what the heat signature of the drone would look like.

(I shortly wondered if we could use nuclear isomers to make it easily recharchable, but, err, we want alpha, not gamma radiation.)

I noticed we are shy of the usual 300 postings we need before we can ramble around, but I hope the rule isn't enforced this time[1]; if so, sorry for that one[2].

So, as for the rest, well...

I handed in my letter of resignation yesterday[3], let's just say it has been a week.

On Thursday, I wasn't careful enough with a paper box at work, those edges are sharp, thankfully I had my last tetanus vaccination in March 2020, but it feels like ages ago.

To JBS, I mentioned people brought up neutering the male cat to the owner, that's all I can do. Less testosterone might help with him domineering the other cat, his sister. But I have no say in this, and, short reminder, I'm out of the appartment in about 2 weeks.

Weather has been quite sunny the last few days (today it rained), and most bars serve drinks on the outside, so yesterday after work I drank a limo at the local collectivist bar, sitting somewhat apart from the groups on the tables. Guess it helps somewhat with my cognitive skills and mood, empathising too much with the protagonist in Watts' "The Island" makes for a strange headspace.

Oh, and mods, "errorneous" was my erroneous way of writing, err, you know which word, err. I'm still not a native speaker and writer, and sadly it shows.

[1] Let's remember I ran into that one last time, quite a few people use Floyd's tox results to smear him, my comment was, well, you need methamphetamine to keep multiple jobs and can't afford modafinil for "shift work sleep disorder"[1a], cannabis can be anxiolytic, and as for the fentanyl, quite a few drugs are laced with it, and back pain is quite common. Sorry, just in case people wondered what I wrote in this deleted comment. [1a] Let's just say this indication not getting the shitstorm it deserves and this diagnosis not leading to some serious soul searching is, err, indicative. Thankfully, I already took my antihypertensives. [2] Err, yes, I know I can be quite disruptive. [3] Link goes to the Propagandhi version, I first encountered the version by "The Weakerthans", apparantly their concert was Kamp Bielefeld was already in early 2001. 'I guess I mentioned I call my way of reconstructing the past and the way I though at that point "cognitive archaeology", though the concept is somewhat different?

247:

I'm also concerned that COVID-19 might have a long term effect analogous to shingles.

Has anyone suggested that, since COVID-19 might be very bad for male fertility, men should be freezing sperm?

Could pandemics be part of the Fermi Paradox? It's not the way I'm betting, I'm going for a combination of life with a possibility of getting into space is very rare, we're probably the first in the region, and expanding into space is harder than it sounds.

Still, the easier travel is, the greater the risk of a serous pandemic, and I suspect that easy travel contributes a lot to technological progress.

248:

Going back to the fun with Libertarianism and Anarchism in the last thread...

This is David "Debt" Graeber on Anarchism.

(Hey, I see Anarchy Archives is still up. Made me giggle when the German translation of an article from "Scientific American" described Chomsky as a .)

249:

Concerning the Fermi Paradox, that would be "Periodic extinction by natural events", though veering into "It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself".

Please note most intelligent species on earth live in somewhat smallish groups like packs, which is also the state of hominids for much of our history.

Most of the pandemics (leaving aside HIV) are not native to us or other apes, we got them from cattle, pigs, birds living in big groups etc.

So maybe intelligent life itself is somewhat protected from pandemics, but once it develops civilization, with big concentrations of individuals, this changes.

250:

Pu-238 hits a sweet spot for RTGs -- it's got a half-life of about 84 years which means it produces quite a lot of heat energy per second but it will continue to produce significant amounts of heat, decreasing in intensity of course, over decades. The Pu-238-fuelled RTGs on the Voyager probes have been running for nearly half a century now. Pu-238 emits only alpha radiation which is easy to shield, a real bonus for spacecraft where every gram counts. Its big downside is that it's not cheap and requires intermediate isotopes produced in specialist reactors and complex chemical separation processes.

Sr-90 has been used by the Soviets to make RTGs to power land-based "lighthouses" and other navigation aids. In those use cases the shielding can be a lot heavier than an RTG intended to fly on spacecraft and Sr-90 produces quite energetic beta particles. The half-life of Sr-90 is shorter than Pu-238, about 28 years IIRC so it's hotter per kilogram but the heat decays faster.

ESA have been investigating using Am-241 as an RTG thermal source. Like Sr-90 it can be extracted easily from spent nuclear fuel and it emits mostly alpha particles so shielding is less of an issue compared to Sr-90. Its half-life is quite long, 430 years or so which means it lasts longer but more of it needs to be used to generate a given amount of electrical power on Day One.

251:

David L @ 188:

And I too am developing a toothache. I'm not sure why it hurts because that tooth had a root-canal & has a crown. There shouldn't be anything there to feel the pain.

If it is in your upper jaw it might be a sinus issue that your brain is confused about due to the location.

Lower. Hurts when I have to bite into something "chewy". I think maybe the crown is loose & pushes into the gum when pressure is applied. It's a very old crown, at least 30 years old.

252:

Good news everyone... Vitamin D is as many have suspected is vital in battling COVID-19 a study from Israel found.

Also Ivermectin may be a good treatment, but we need more data. If anyone here wants to follow the science but not have time to read The Lancet / preprint servers daily I would recommend YT channels MedCram, DrBeen, Vincent Racaniello (TWIV - This Week In Virology).

Stay safe out there.

253:

I recently let myself be roped into doing some of the work on a site running on WordPress. The combination of PHP, CSS, WordPress, themes and plugins seem to have recreated all of the worst system maintenance problems of the 1990s...

254:

whitroth @ 193: Sorry, but I don't understand why you think a new House can not be formed. In fact, a later section of the Amendment explicitly says that the House must meet at least once a year, and that meeting *MUST* begin on 3 Jan, so they form it, and elect a Speaker on the 3rd.

There is no Constitutional provision for what to do if the current Congress ended without new House members being elected.

House terms are two years. If Trumpolini did somehow manage to prevent an election the terms of ALL House members would end Jan 2. There would be no new House members to take office on Jan 3.

It would be a problem.

OTOH, there is no provision in the Constitution to allow the President to postpone or cancel an election. It's a Jacksonian dilemma. What would the Supreme Court do? What would Congress do? What would they do?

John Marshall made his decision, now let him enforce it,

...given the makeup of the current Supreme Court, I don't know if they would even try.

255:

Pu-238 hits a sweet spot for RTGs

For relatively short-duration applications like the proposed Aqualine drone Po-210 looks promising. Half-life of about 4.5 months, mostly alpha radiation with not many gammas and high specific heat output. Just don't eat any.

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2011/ph241/yemane1/docs/ragheb.pdf

256:

The office "Sergeant At Arms" of the House of Representatives is not an important law-enforcement position. It's far more ceremonial, much more along the lines of "Sergeant At Arms, are the chamber doors open and are all dressed in their formal cerements of office?" than "Arrest that man!" - and like many House members probably a lawyer and not-unlikely to be a former prosecutor.

257:

Probably some different attractors for Democrats; Equality for all, a safer financial system, don't screw with Social Security.

258:

I think this is something the U.S. does a pretty good job on: We have something called a "Hate Crimes Law" which allows the state to add charges if someone commits a violent crime on the basis of some kind of prejudice. So someone can say "I hate Muslims" (protected speech) but if they've said "I hate Muslims" at some point, then the assault a Muslim the assault becomes a "Hate Crime" and extra penalties are applied.

259:

David L @ 219:

and had a learning curve.

As someone who on some days will use 20 different keyboards and mice/trackballs/trackpads from different vendors with different concepts of how things SHOULD work ...

Now that my life will be a bit less hectic I'll track down some of the references to see what out there these days.

I learned to type on a standard, manual Remington office typewriter. It had all blank keys, so we had to learn the key positions in muscle memory. If the teacher caught you looking at the keys you were likely to earn a rap across the knuckles with a wooden ruler.

To this day, I can still type more efficiently when I'm not looking at the keyboard. If I actually LOOK at the keyboard while I'm typing, I get confused. My only issue with keyboards is where they put the '\' key (I'm more comfortable with it above the Return key. I can use a keyboard with a backwards 'L' shaped Return key, but it's not comfortable. (The [Enter] key is the one down at the lower right-hand corner of the number pad.)

One problem with computers is I'm developing bad habits, backspacing to edit while I type instead of typing out the whole thing and then making corrections. You couldn't do that in typing class, so you had to pay close attention and not make mistakes that had to be corrected.

We were graded not just on typing speed, but on the number of errors we had to correct with even more points taken off if we had uncorrected errors.1

1 Meet or exceed the required word count for the timed test = 100. Minus 1 point for each corrected error; minus 2 points for each UN-corrected error ... typing with carbon paper, so you had to correct the errors on the carbon copy as well as on the original.

I breezed through Keyboarding class when I had to take one years later.

260:

I remember Turdpress as being a fucking mess on the server side when I used to deal with it, which was quite a long time ago now. As well as being as full of holes as a sieve. And their method of dealing with that seemed to be to release an update every couple of weeks, which broke anything you'd done to fix its problems yourself.

I am glad to no longer have to have anything to do with maintaining sites using it. It's bad enough just encountering it from the client side. It seems to have become ten times more of a fucking mess now, and moreover, it has spread its fucking mess to the client side as well. All kinds of things that used to work fine when it did them with plain HTML are now done with javashit and therefore don't work any more. Mainly because of sheer bleeding stupidity on the part of whoever wrote the stuff. The general principle seems to be to set CSS rules such that all the stuff you don't need to see is visible and all the stuff you do need to see is not, and assume falsely that the javashit will then go round and invert the sense of all those rules, instead of doing it the sensible way round and making that inverted sense the default.

Some variants of it go to incredible lengths to disable the browser's standard built-in scrolling mechanism, so there are no scrollbars and no way to see the rest of the page. They've added megabytes of fucked-up shit which is supposed to re-implement the scrolling which they have deliberately broken, and of course it doesn't, and for fuck's sake what possible point is there to begin with in doing such an utterly idiotic thing. And as for the sheer mindblowing stupidity of hard-coding style="display: none;" as an inline attribute on the BODY element, words fail me.

As for posting comments, forget it. Even in "the old days" that never worked, largely because of some fanatically oversensitive anti-spam crap called "akismet" that everyone used, along with comment forms that reported success on submission even if they had never actually contacted the server at all. These days it would take a week of hacking just to get it back to that useless condition, never mind to make it actually work.

I am particularly grateful to Charlie for running his blog on Movable Type simply because everything works just as it comes. I could simply come here and read it and sign up and start posting comments. I did not have to hack around for ages first fixing who knows how much broken shite just to reinstate a bunch of standard browser functionality that it had fucked up for no reason. I am similarly glad that he can't be arsed with moving it on to anything else. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

261:

Ivermectin? Really? That's the stuff you put a drop of on the back of pets' necks to get rid of ectoparasites. (The stuff that works, that is, that you have to get from the vet, as opposed to the half-arsed things you can get anywhere.) It's also a good idea to wear rubber gloves while doing that, because getting even a tiny smear on your skin is not fun. Good thing for the pets that they only need it once.

Two things so different as arthropods and viruses both responding to the same drug is kind of weird.

262:

210Po is kind of dodgy stuff. Its specific power output is so high that getting more than a minute quantity together in one place is thermally contraindicated. Also, even in tiny quantities, it walks. So many alphas whizzing around in it crashing into the large atoms that they don't stay put but go on their own little sightseeing tours, all over the inside of the back of the truck you were carrying some fraction of a gram in. Not that easy to get any quantity of, either, because you have to get it from the end of a decay chain. Be handy if someone developed a method for grabbing it out of tobacco smoke though.

263:

I think drive-by poster "TJ" was a spammer or, being kind, a mission poster with IMPORTANT and SIGNIFICANT INFORMATION to pass on to us. It's snake-oil season out there, everything from pieces of the True Cross to Himalayan salt is being touted as a sure cure and preventative to COVID-19. Random-blind trials, pfffh, who needs 'em? It worked in a cell culture, buy buy buy!

I know plagues of old were rife with the selling of indulgences and propounding of odd cures (toad vomit was apparently a solution to the Plague, according to Newton) but I wonder what sort of flim-flammery was going around in the early scientific Age during the 1918 flu pandemic?

264:

Sorry, I disagree. From what I've read, heard, and spoken with, most Americans REALLY would like Medicare for all.

265:

HMO's? Other than Kaiser-Permanente, there are few left - the insurance companies are all about "PPO", preferred provider network, and, oh, sorry, they're not in network, no, neither are they, nope, nope.....

266:

The FDA-approved drug ivermectin inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro

Ivermectin has an established safety profile for human use (Gonzalez Canga et al., 2008; Jans et al., 2019; Buonfrate et al., 2019), and is FDA-approved for a number of parasitic infections (Gonzalez Canga et al., 2008; Buonfrate et al., 2019). Importantly, recent reviews and meta-analysis indicate that high dose ivermectin has comparable safety as the standard low-dose treatment, although there is not enough evidence to make conclusions about the safety profile in pregnancy (Navarro et al., 2020; Nicolas et al., 2020). The critical next step in further evaluation for possible benefit in COVID-19 patients will be to examine a multiple addition dosing regimen that mimics the current approved usage of ivermectin in humans. As noted, ivermectin was the focus of a recent phase III clinical trial in dengue patients in Thailand, in which a single daily dose was found to be safe but did not produce any clinical benefit. However, the investigators noted that an improved dosing regimen might be developed, based on pharmacokinetic data (Yamasmith et al., 2018). Although DENV is clearly very different to SARS-CoV-2, this trial design should inform future work going forward.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220302011#!

LeonCalyaJulian D.DruceaMike G.CattonaDavid A.JansbKylie M.Wagstaffbhttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.antiviral.2020.104787

Authors / centres are AUZ and legitimate, however: there is a major gold rush type situation out there at the moment, so everything (including Kodak) is being chucked until something sticks.

267:

Well, no. The GOP base are a tribe, alright, but really, REALLY do not understand democracy, and think that if they won, locally, they can shove what they want down everyone else' throat... and "bipartisanship" means "here's a bill, take it or leave." They do not understand having give and take.

For example, on another website, I said to a gun nut, "What are you willing to give me?", and this moron's reaction was, "nope, we already gave up too much"... with not even a single example.

268:

Troutwaxer @ 256: The office "Sergeant At Arms" of the House of Representatives is not an important law-enforcement position. It's far more ceremonial, much more along the lines of "Sergeant At Arms, are the chamber doors open and are all dressed in their formal cerements of office?" than "Arrest that man!" - and like many House members probably a lawyer and not-unlikely to be a former prosecutor.

He has the same law enforcement authority as the Capital Police:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/5605

The current incumbent, Paul D. Irving is a former agent of the FBI & the Secret Service who served as a supervisory agent in the Presidential Protection Division, as Deputy Assistant Director for Congressional Affairs, and as Assistant Director for Administration; elected to the office in January 2012.

Removing a non-compliant member from the House Chamber at the direction of the Speaker of the House is not an actual arrest, although the Sergeant at Arms does have that power to the extent required by his duties of "maintaining order and decorum in the House chamber."

The Sergeant at Arms can also be sent to "arrest" someone who refuses to comply with a Congressional subpoena, forcing them to comply. Apparently it has been done before.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04tue4.html

Although, Congress apparently no longer has a jail in the basement of the Capital Building.

269:

It's a link to a legit newspaper, the article passes the sniff test, and the commenter's email address isn't a thinly-disguised link to a MAKE MONEY FAST scam. Could plausibly be a lurker? We do have them, you know.

(Caveat: I use a bunch of adblockers: if anyone thinks that Times of Israel web page has been hit by malware or spammers, tell me and I'll go back and remove the comment.)

270:

But the Sergeant does not traditionally use that authority.

And I'd be thrilled if Nancy Pelosi would rebuild the jail in the basement of the Capitol

271:

Sorry, I disagree. From what I've read, heard, and spoken with, most Americans REALLY would like Medicare for all.

Most Americans would also like strict gun control, how well is that working out for you?

(for those not aware, gun control is wanted by 60% of the US population, single payer health by 70%)

What the public wants - particularly when it isn't yet being opposed by a massive publicity push - is irrelevant as long as those same Americans keep voting in politicians who oppose what they want.

Which bring us around (yet again) to the US Senate and the anti-democratic way in which seats are given. If the minority of people in the south and flyover states don't want something, you aren't getting it given their (current) control of the Senate.

Things may change, say in 10 years, when population change finally (hopefully) swings enough of those states to semi-permanently DNC instead of GOP but until then the votes simply won't be there.

As I said, the Vermont government was very much pro-single payer - until the money got involved and then after 3 years or so they gave up because they could no longer get the votes.

272:

"Concerning the Fermi Paradox, that would be "Periodic extinction by natural events", though veering into "It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself"."

Not 'destroy itself', just 'technological civilization is hard to maintain, for either internal or external reasons'.

There's the classic idea that if a (post) oil-based civilization collapses, then a successor has to deal with the fact that all easily obtained oil sources have been thoroughly exploited.

Or nuclear war, or massive conventional WWII-type wars, or massive pandemics with bad medicine/leadership.

273:

All sorts of snake-oil gets reported by the press. Sometimes the retractions get printed too when it turns out it was a badly-carried-out trial based on a couple of dozen carefully-selected random cases and the data was tortured until it confessed -- see hydroxylquine for a worked example.

Give me solid double-blind trials bigger than a single ward in a single hospital and three researchers and a significance value very much greater than 0.05 and I'll listen, but until then the snake-oil pushers can kindly fuck off.

274:

210Po is kind of dodgy stuff.

It seems to have had a brief fling in the late-1950s through late-1960s, but clearly lost out to Pu-238 for NASA. Other interested parties were absent or lost interest.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19700026329.pdf

275:

@Nojay 263

Drive by? Like with an AK? I'm more of a Teller-Ulam man myself.

Mission poster is a new one on me, but then the only other place I post is ycombinators Hacker News. If by mission you mean to inform what seems like an interesting community of what the latest scientific knowledge is regarding the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 disease it causes then I am guilty as charged.

276:

From what I've read, heard, and spoken with, most Americans REALLY would like Medicare for all From my experience talking to Americans about healthcare, a significant number don't want their money going to the undeserving poor, even if this results in worse results. "I don't want to pay for poor fat people who don't look after themselves" as one woman said to me.

277:

FWIW here's the Israeli study, observational, N==7807 with 782 COVID-19 positive. There are some RCTs for Vitamin D supplementation for COVID-19, both prophylyaxis and treatment, in process or recruiting. There are 4+ observational studies(some still preprints) including this one that show a relationship between COVID-19 severity and Vitamin D deficiency, and this one might be that as well in disquise; reduce severity enough and people don't know they have it/get tested. Low plasma 25(OH) vitamin D level is associated with increased risk of COVID‐19 infection: an Israeli population‐based study (pdf) To conclude, our study found that suboptimal plasma vitamin D levels may be a potential risk factor for COVID-19 infection, particularly, for the high hospitalization risks, independent of demographic characteristics and medical conditions. and (bold mine); there are subpopulations with lower Vitamin D levels. The finding is important, since it could guide healthcare systems in identifying populations at risk, and contribute to interventions aimed to reduce the risk of the COVID-19 infection.

Ivermectin, on the other hand, is (appears to be) rather more fringe science-wise. Here's Derek Lowe a couple of months ago: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/05/11/whats-up-with-ivermectin Any recent peer-reviewed papers re clinical trials (not in vitro, thanks though SLWOH)? Not spotting any with a half-hearted quick search.

278:

Let me guess, her BMI was above 40, and her income was below 50% of the median income?

As for "not looking after herself", if she voted for the Trumpenfuhrer, I rest my case.

279:

@Charlie Stross 269

Actually I rather like your writing and am looking forward to Dead Lies Dreaming. As you were kind enough to reply to me, I'd be very interested in your take on the GPT-3 transformer language model, it seems to me reminiscent of William Hertling Singularity series take on the AI timeline. Also with the recent Epstein-Maxwell stuff coming out Trump almost seems like a Scott Adams Pointy Hairied Boss of The Black Chamber.

280:

Sorry to reply to myself, but I forgot to add that Boris could well be The Mandate himself.

281:

Thanks. I wasn't aware the warfarin was multiple active compounds, I though Coumadin was just more purified. (So as to meet USP standards.)

282:

Well, if the elections have been postponed, then the House can't meet. Doesn't do any good to say they must if there are no current members. Of course, that also means that there is no legal possibility of passing any law for expenditure of money...

283:

Well, I don't think Biden is quite that bad, but I'm sure not enthused by him...quite the opposite, in fact. But I might become enthused by his VP choice. Perhaps.

OTOH, I've got to admit that the candidates that I like have a truly dismal record of collecting votes. Not all of them because of being sabotaged by the DNC.

284:

[RANT[ And I bet this is the kind of idiot who reposts that stupid cartoon about "under socialism, you get half of your cow".

How about EVERY FUCKING BILLIONAIRE pay for your healthcare? And NO CEOs get ANY bonuses for their medical insurance company? [/RANT]

285:

Has anyone suggested that, since COVID-19 might be very bad for male fertility, men should be freezing sperm?

I suspect outfits like this one will soon be hawking such things. alcor.org

Ted Williams head is there. (baseball phenom at hitting back the 30s, 40s, 50s)

286:

The combination of PHP, CSS, WordPress, themes and plugins seem to have recreated all of the worst system maintenance problems of the 1990s...

But you can make it do ANYTHING!@!#!

And free plug ins that make your site do it's special thing never go unsupported. [eyeroll]

I maintain one that is nearing 400K comments. It was the right choice for various reasons but WP/Themes/Plugins can be a bear at times.

287:

I've got my own answer.

  • Must be a technological civilization.
  • Must be within +/- 150 years of us.
  • And, once you've met those criteria... 3. Must not be too paranoid to talk, and willing to wait, unless they've got an ansible.

  • Have any interest. "Oh, it's folks at that level again. Let's wait till they have something interesting to say."

  • And, if they have interstellar travel... remember, overwhelmingly, almost all shipping is between KNOWN PORTS. Going out exploring costs real money, and the odds against a jackpot....

  • In my universe https://mrw.5-cent.us I've got human-settled space, 11,000 years from now, under 5k ly across. Vastly more to deal with there... and no, we are not going to go back to 20 kids per woman.

    288:

    To this day, I can still type more efficiently when I'm not looking at the keyboard. If I actually LOOK at the keyboard while I'm typing, I get confused.

    I remember automating a business around 78 and the staff nearly revolted over having a separate "1" key. Their muscle memory said to type a lower case "L". They were very vocal in their demand that we "fix" it.

    289:

    Now tell us how you really feel. :)

    290:

    Actually, Vit D and COVID19 has been a topic of discussion since back in Feb/March. Can't recall the precise source but I'm on the stuff as a supplement anyway (Scotland! Winter! Everyone is Vit D deficient to some extent) and see no reason to stop taking it now.

    291:

    Re: '... ivermectin ... dengue'

    Saw/heard a few discussions about meds originally developed for dengue being considered at least as part of the architecture for developing treatment for COVID-19.

    Dengue has also been discussed as a serious reminder/warning about what can go wrong with vaccines. The first (?) dengue vaccine appeared safe right through most of the clinical trials until those people were re-exposed to dengue. Then the worst happened: a much higher proportion of the people who had already been exposed to the virus or got the vaccine came down with much more severe symptoms and died, i.e., 'cytokine storm' - the uncontrolled over-reaction by the patient's immune system. So the result was sensitization rather than immunization. (This happens with bee stings and a bunch of other things too.)

    I've been watching MedCram and TWiV Virology fairly regularly and they're still saying 'we need more controlled clinical trial-level data' because viruses (and human immune systems) are very varied and hard to predict. Observational studies are great for background and identifying potential spots to dig deeper but are not good enough for the decisions that need to be made about new pathogen and vaccine: way too many ways of skewing/biasing the sample therefore the data.

    292:

    Well, I don't think Biden is quite that bad, but I'm sure not enthused by him...quite the opposite, in fact. But I might become enthused by his VP choice. Perhaps.

    Remember, the purpose of a vote for Biden is to get the ship of state aimed away from the reef, first and foremost. Then you worry about getting it to deeper water.

    To be less poetic, Biden's a reasonable choice, not for the likes of you or me, but for the overwhelming group of moderates who are a bit worried and scared about all the crises going on (maybe even...gasp!...climate change), but they think that after four years of an "ideologue" in office, we need a moderate to clean up the mess the extremist made. Moderate means, old, white, male, and mainstream Christian. Hence--Biden. He's the Milk of Magnesia after the road-baked skunk we've been forced to eat for the last four years. If we're lucky, the VP is the stomach pump and course of antibiotics we really need after all the rotten shit we've been forced to swallow.*

    Now, you know and I know that there are other candidates who could do a better job. Problem is, they're not old white male moderate types, and unfortunately, we need to get the people for whom this is a problem to not vote for El Cheeto or stay home. They're the ones who will make a difference in November, more than us.

    Sucks, but there it is.

    *If we're more lucky than I'd dream possible, we'll see the US criminal justice system re-enact the finale of Spartacus, after the convictions and speedy appeals of all the people who caused and benefited from the current corruption. But I'm quite sure this is a pipe dream. That's why I actually hope that these people (yes, if they're convicted) get nice clean, white-washed cells all to themselves for a very long time, so that they don't have to worry about seeing another human being for 23.7 hours out of every day.

    293:

    Well, I guess Orthodox Marxists would speak of "false consciousness when the subordinate class internalizes the ideology of the ruling class. You might also use the term "Stockholm syndrome", though the term is problematic.

    Personally, well, I'd use the term "Lumpenproletariat", please note some anarchists criticised this term, and it being coined in relation to Max Stirner is interesting, well, for some context...

    Hmkay, there is this chump called Hegel, who has a reputation of being the "preußischer Staatsphilosoph" (basically, "philosopher of/for the Prussian state", or "Prussian civil philosopher"). His pupils split into two groups, called "Rechtshegelianer" ("right Hegelians") and "Linkshegelianer" ("left Hegelians"). In the latter group, you find Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but also Bakunin (an early anarchist) and a guy called Max Stirner.

    According to Hegel "Since the state is mind objectified, it is only as one of its members that the individual has objectivity, genuine individuality, and an ethical life...", Stirner countered that one with (enlightened) egoism and individualism.

    In the USA, Stirner influenced one Benjamin Tucker, who was cited by Murray Rothbard (IMHO, not something to be proud of) and, well, Robert Anton Wilson.

    As for what Engels made of the fellow, well, Wiki quoted from this letter:

    "And it is certainly true that we must first make a cause our own, egoistic cause, before we can do anything to further it – and hence that in this sense, irrespective of any eventual material aspirations, we are communists out of egoism also, and it is out of egoism that we wish to be human beings, not mere individuals."

    Let's leave it at that one.

    BTW, how is 1632 doing? I thought about introducing one of my older cousins (a priest) to "Papal Stakes" in 2013 or so, sadly he was diagnosed with dementia at about the same time and died 2 years ago.

    294:

    TJ @ 280 BoZo is nowhere near competent (enough) to be The Mandate - more's the pity actually. Though it means we will be rid of him in 4 years or less, but, like DT, he can do an awful lot of permenent damage in that time ...

    Trottelreiner You are, surely, aware that "Rothbart" is the egotistic controlling villian in "Swan Lake" - using women ( & swans ) as puppets for his comntrolling desires?

    295:

    So it is not just the US.

    https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/01/thousands-protest-against-coronavirus-measures-in-berlin-390021

    Germany has it's crazies also. The gathering was organized with the title "The end of the pandemic — day of freedom."

    296:

    Agreed. Getting rid of the Trump is job #1. As long as the other choice isn't a total fool, I'm voting for him.

    297:

    Thanks for pointing that one out, we listened to "Swan Lake" in musical education in school, sadly I only have a vague recollection of the plot. Reading the Wiki article, interesting, it's quite open for interpretation.

    Of course, "Rothbart" is German for "red beard".

    As for Murray Rothbard, he was quite important for US libertarianism; also, son of Eastern Jewish immigrants and embraced holocaust deniers. Err.

    298:

    Ivermectin binds to quite a few ion channels, so maybe one of those is involved.

    There are some other antiviral channel blockers, rimantadine works against Herpes, in this case, the ion channel is viral.

    299:

    I learned on a manual typer also (ancient Royal at home, Underwoods at school). I still remember how to do it, but I adjusted to keyboards pretty quickly. (My first typer was an Olivetti with a type element - sliding latch, less prone to breaking), and the one I currently have is an Olympia.) I also learned to use keypunches, which came in handy in college when one class required using one (most of my work was done at home, where I didn't need cards). I knew where there was a usually-available machine in a closet in the engineering building (and I surprised someone by knowing how to load one card quickly - there's a way that doesn't require loading two cards).

    300:

    The usual analogy is that we're catching a bus, not getting married. We want to get closer to our goal, and that frequently requires voting for the lesser of two evils. Biden is much less evil than Trmp, and his plans as laid out so far are farther left than you would expect (closer to Sanders than to Obama).

    301:

    Ivermectin binds to quite a few ion channels, Thanks for the Ivermectin thoughts. It was one of the drugs of early interest for SARS-CoV-2, like hydroxychloroquine cheap and a potential magic bullet for people looking for such things.
    Dumb to be solely focused on magic bullets though. Mandatory masks and other low-economic-cost NPIs (plus contact tracing and testing, all while waiting for a vaccine) prevent people from getting infected at all, and thus they avoid the long term/life long consequences of infection.

    302:

    If the president were to try to order elections delayed, it would result in a legal challenge. Its likely the supreme court would weight in fast and knock it down. But if that didnt happen, its most likely that many states would hold them anyway. The ones that wouldnt would all be red states. On the appointed day, the electoral college would still meet. And they would still choose a president. But those red states that didnt would have issues sending electors that they never chose. When January rolls around, those states that voted will still send their representatives to Washington creating a house that heavily tilts democrat. The senate republicans may try to avoid seating the new democratic members, but more far more republican seats were up for grabs. That means that of the two thirds of senators that were not up for election, democrats have a majority so any attempt to not set incoming senators will fail. Later in january, the chief justice of the supreme court would swear the newly elected president into office. At that point, the electoral college chose the president, and the chief justice swore him in, and its a done deal. The only thing that could stop it is a strait up coup and a hail of gunfire.

    303:

    Since your eyes also have those delicious mucus membranes the medical professionals have long been (trying to) shield them. Now some experts are suggesting we should all give that a go.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/01/face-shields-goggles-eye-protection-coronavirus

    I've recently ordered a better workshop mask (full face), now I'm wondering whether I should be wearing it when I'm out and about.

    In other news, looks like Victoria has realised that deeming people who mostly live in hotspots "essential workers" and the rest "too important to lock down" has not worked, so they seem likely to lock back down. This time they've discovered that they can use police to enforce the "do not leave your home, at all, for any reason" rules so it might actually work. Per Modi, expect a certain amount of starvation and a few murders, but that's the price we might have to pay.

    304:

    Thank you, and to Bill also for the Ammonia Avenue link. Seems like something does happen but they find the idea nearly as weird as I do, and the gulf between where we are now and whether it really is useful in humans has one or two places where the cliffs on either side come close to each other but nobody knows how good the rock is and it's mostly pretty wide.

    305:

    "I wonder what sort of flim-flammery was going around in the early scientific Age during the 1918 flu pandemic?"

    Interesting point. The principal reaction I am aware of was "half our bloody troops are unfit for duty", rather more so on the German side due to poorer diet etc. But there seems to be very little flavour of seeing it as anything more than just another flu. It seems to have been pretty low on the list of concerns of the various home fronts, too, most of which had plenty of other stuff to worry about. I think it took people in general a while to realise that there was something more than just the usual stuff that comes round having fun with a population who were short of food and fuel etc.

    Also the deaths were a lot more spread out and low-key than the deaths in the war. When you're used to the news reporting concentrated deluges of thousands of shredded deaths in a day, over and over again, people gasping away quietly in their own beds aren't really noticeable. Not to mention the number of them who were in foreign countries so you'd never hear anyway. It's a bit like jamming GPS: overload the front end with one big signal and it never stands a chance of picking up the small stuff, even if there is a lot more of it overall.

    306:

    And Bernie, and others, have been pushing him lefter... and remember, Bernie in '16 kept talking about the Democratic wing of the Democratic party. Consider Hillary... and LBJ.

    And I suspect he keeps looking at Warren, and her huge crowds, and all her plans, and they're not stupid impossible.

    I really need to talk to my Congressman, and then send him my plan for Medicare for all that's easily reachable.

    307:

    Any minute now, I'm going to pull out my steampunk goggles and wear them outside....

    308:

    The eye protection vs SARS-CoV-2 science seems to be speculative and related to this paper, though I do recall a case study of a doctor who contracted COVID-19 even though wearing a good face mask, but no eye protection, and suspected transmission through the eyes. And obviously people working (physically) closely with patients in hospitals should wear eye protection. ACE2 and TMPRSS2 are expressed on the human ocular surface, suggesting susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection (The preprint was May 9, 2020)

    I (and many others) think the primary focus should be on minimizing sharing of unfiltered recently-exhaled air. Airborne spread (droplets, that eventually settle) is a proven mode of transmission, with multiple case studies, some of large clusters. Though wearing large glasses or goggles seems like a good extra precaution.

    309:

    the primary focus should be on minimizing sharing of unfiltered recently-exhaled air.

    I agree. Sadly my team members have to attend the office for a face to face meeting on Monday. It's expected to be 4+ hours with 4-5 people in a meeting room. We had a whole series of semi-humorous chat posts about how much protective gear they should wear, but fundamentally it comes down to me being willing to "just say no"{tm} and them not, so they've been pushed into a face to face meeting and no doubt will be socially shamed into not wearing PPE. Stupid fuckers.

    310:

    I'd wear a mask with a face shield, because air currents could carry droplets under the shield and into your face.

    311:

    If you have to have a F2F meeting (WTF?) then have it outdoors. Refusing to have it safely is clearly in breach of the v duty of care to provide a safe workplace. "Safe" on this sense doesn't have degrees. If people object, point to the hazard charts (risk of death trumps low probability) and get them to do a HASRIG.

    The correct PPE is positive Pressure full face, as I've pointed out before. Dust masks are not adequate for toxic atmospheres or toxic dusts.

    312:

    I also learned to use keypunches, which came in handy in college when one class required using one (most of my work was done at home, where I didn't need cards)

    There were only a few of us (out of a few 100) who figured out how to do inserts and deletes on the manual IBM 029s. Required finger pressure at the right time.

    313:

    I suggest bringing to the meeting:

    a) a camera, to document it for the trial.
    b) a written warning that they and the company are liable if you get sick as a result of the meeting, and advise them to take similar precautions against catching it from you. c) an electric leaf blower, to improve turbulence. Plug in the leaf blower, leave the door and/or window open, and leave the blower running for the entire meeting. As a safety measure.

    314:

    An electric leaf blower? Do you mean a fan?

    315:

    A directional (via a tube) fan that makes a lot of noise. Mainly used to blow leaves and yard debris into the street to piss off the local city crews who get to deal with storm sewer clogs.

    316:

    I'm using a full-face metal mesh mask - spaced off from my nose by about a cm, so that I can actually BREATHE. But it goes from about where my hair-line ought to be, down to below my chin & sideways enough that I can't see "round" the edges. Of course, I'm also weraing spectacles. Droplets probably could get through, but I'm lowering the odds by a really significant factor. One of these, in fact - or very similar.

    317:

    Vitamin D is well-known to be important for the immune system, and there's some evidence it helps to protect against melanoma (sic), which is one reason that TOTAL sun-blocking is a good idea only for people with special requirements. In this case, it's not news:

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(20)30183-2/fulltext

    318:

    Interesting. Very interesting. We are trying to set up a legal document, and had to correct just such an error. I remember when certain codesets didn't actually have separate characters, though it was was actually 'I' for '1' and 'O' for '0', as they were upper-case only, but they were all obsolete by the mid-1960s.

    319:

    No, you aren't. I agree that it's more effective than carrying a fragment of The One True Cross, but only marginally. You could test that yourself, easily enough, if you felt like it.

    320:

    My comment on police training was more about my shock of lack of law training in the US in general (in my extended family I can count police/civilian advisors in 4 countries including 2 in the US).

    The current incumbent as Sergeant at Arms is exactly the kind of person you'd be looking for. But the role is 99.5% ceremonial and acting with as little fuss as possible (how to defuse a situation without verbal aggregation, never mind violence) and 0.5 % deeply constitutional (arresting a Senator, Potentially President,etc) - and yet the only specified qualifications are about firearms training, in a city not short of other armed police.

    321:

    I may have been too subtle.

    it comes down to me being willing to "just say no"{tm} and them not, so they've been pushed into a face to face meeting

    I do not have to attend this meeting. Quite probably because last time they demanded I go in to the office for a meeting I said "o rly" and sent an email saying basically the points above. The email means their reply was in writing, and it took them about an hour to decide what to write. Which was still "you have to come in for a periodic catch-up", so I did, I wore a mask, I kept looking at the time on my phone, and I made it pretty clear that I was there under protest. Oh, and because I know my boss hates it, I said a couple of times "this seems like my performance review so we're also negotiating my pay rise, right?"

    I strongly suspect he does not want to go through that again. Not just ringing me to tell me to come in, but having to discuss his demand with the other partners and formalise the demand in an email. It's a hassle, it leaves a paper trail, and it's really fucking obvious why I want a paper trail.

    Boss has since said I and the other two in my team are working from home until the pandemic is over and possibly after that. We shall see.

    322:

    Oh, and I've been looking at cheap rural properties within wired internet distance of train stations. Boss doesn't want me moving to Aotearoa... they have fibre to just about every premises and it's cheaper than Australia's "fibre to the neighbourhood" NBN bullshit.

    The bushfires mean that there are a few properties that are going cheap, have house permits/right to occupy, and meet my internet needs. I'm just looking for one less than 50km from a train station that I can afford. Ideally one that lets me turn my house into a boarding house*, leave key stuff here, and commute in when I need to.

    • not officially, but the laws seem to allow me to use this as my place of residence as long as I am here overnight "regularly" (presumably once a year, on a fixed date, is regularly?)
    323:

    This one is hilarious - it's a chunk literally in the middle of a reserve, more than 20km from the nearest accessible road, and I very much doubt you're going to get a building permit for it. But... it's for sale.

    https://goo.gl/maps/42Spr2J5P9XYFfW76

    Kind of reminds me of the private holiday homes in Abel Tasman National Park that AFAIK are still there. Many get donated to the park when the owners die, but they are/were right on the path of one of the business national parks in Aotearoa. Except this is just literally in the middle of nowhere.

    324:

    I wasn't aware the warfarin was multiple active compounds,

    It's not!

    "Coumadin" is a trademark and proprietary brand name slapped on a drug that's been around since the 1950s ("warfarin"), which is one of a class of coumarins (chemicals produced by plants for defense against herbivores).

    325:

    This is a digression, but it's past #300, and is a reply to Mike A in the last thread. OGH and moderators: if it's too boring, please delete it. I apologise for using mathematical jargon, but ....

    I have got Shadows of the Mind, read most of the first three chapters and glanced at later ones. I agree that it is VASTLY better than the utter crap that was The Emperor's New Mind, and I may look at some of its other references, but it is seriously shoddy.

    In particular, it drowns the reader in detail and hides the fact that he hasn't actually formalised his argument (probably not even in his own mind). I agree that he demolishes the hypothesis that the human brain can be modelled by a simple Turing machine, and that is an adequate explanation of 'consciousness'. As you may have observed, I have been pouring doubt on that for years. But it fails to make his case that new physics is needed, still less that he is along the right lines.

    Firstly, he is making the unjustified assumption that any computer is necessarily a simple Turing machine. He correctly points out that quantum computing doesn't change anything, and that using reals rather than integers as a basis is probably only a theoretical matter, but does not point out that changing the termination requirements may extend the model. I currently believe that, but don't have a watertight example, and those are the references I may look at.

    Secondly, he seriously doesn't understand emergent properties. While those are often merely indirect and unobvious effects, they can also be unprovable ones. For example, many of the provably undecidable axioms can be regarded as emergent properties of ZFC - i.e. any of them where a counter-example (should one exist) could be constructed within ZFC.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statements_independent_of_ZFC

    Thirdly, he should have applied his own argument the other way round. Start with an algebra equivalent to a Turing machine A. Find the first statement that describes an unprovable 'truth', and extend A by that, giving A1. Recurse ad infinitum, and the Axiom of Choice means that there is an upper-bound algebra A. But A must also have an unprovable 'truth', which could be 'consciousness'. Note that I can see at least three flaws in this argument, but he SHOULD have included it as a counter-argument to demolish.

    Fourthly, what I read of his explanation of the flaws in modern physics seems sound (and he is no more impressed by the 'many worlds' bullshit than I am), but his speculation on how quantum mechanics can apply at the cellular level is well-greased with handwavium, and his one about quantum gravity is pure handwavium.

    In summary, I stand by my position: I simply don't know, and he doesn't, either. Also, he bloody well should have known better than to perpetrate the above flaws, as he was and is a much better mathematician than I am.

    326:

    And it's done. Victoria is locked down from 6pm Sunday (~2 hours ago)

    (from The Spinoff link) Under the new stage 4 restrictions, only one person in each household can do shopping once a day. Exercise can be undertaken once a day for one hour, and no more than two people can exercise together. Residents can’t travel more than five kilometres from their home for shopping or exercise.

    During the curfew, the only permitted reasons for being outside will be to receive or give care, or to go to or from work. A fine of A$1,652 will apply for anyone breaching these restrictions, and police will have the power to arrest those breaking the curfew without good reason.

    (from The Conversation link above) A state of disaster addresses matters beyond public health issues. It is intended to deal with emergencies such as natural disasters, explosions, terrorism or sieges, but it can also be used to deal with “a plague or an epidemic”. It was used in Victoria in January 2020 during the bushfires, but the declaration was limited to specific areas that were in danger from the spread of bushfires. It was initially for a period of 7 days, which was later extended for a short period.

    This time, however, the state of disaster has been declared for the entire state of Victoria, and for the maximum period of a month.

    One of the most extreme powers the minister has is to override legislation.

    Looks as though I have been complying with those restrictions since the pandemic hit Australia.

    327:

    I can guarantee that the Abel Tasman ones are still there - I have stayed in one, owned by one of my relatives.

    328:

    Yeah, possibly to subtle, but more likely my reading comprehension had dissolved in a red mist of utter outrage that anyone would be forcing a F2F meeting during the current emergency.

    329:

    Sadly my team members have to attend the office for a face to face meeting on Monday. It's expected to be 4+ hours with 4-5 people in a meeting room.

    Makes one wonder what the company's insurance carrier would think about such questionable decision making...

    330:

    "Makes one wonder what the company's insurance carrier would think about such questionable decision making..."

    They take it so seriously, that they have told republicans that they will withhold donations unless a law is passed which makes companies no liable.

    331:

    Why the URL shortener?

    I'd very much like to know the source of this without following all the redirects in a command line...

    Not to mention that if this weren't Charlie Stross's blog I simply wouldn't click on a hidden URL...

    332:

    No, I mean a leaf blower. Unfortunately, anyone who's going to call a long F2F meeting in an enclosed room either has a real crisis on their hands (at which point the stunts need to be abandoned), or isn't paying attention to the news and deserves all the literal blowback they get (at which point the leaf blower is the appropriate device).

    333:

    Why the URL shortener?

    Because the target is a PDF of a pre-print on a file hosting site, rather than a web page, and my attempt to grab a link off the upstream place I found it just gave me a file:/// URL pointing to my own "Downloads" directory. Which is less than useful.

    334:

    That's a bugger Moz - here in Victoria, since the start of the first lock-down back in March, it has been illegal for an employer to require an employee to attend a place of work unless the task(s) to be undertaken cannot be performed remotely.

    So it's okay for me to take tapes out to the data centre and swap them, then take the old ones in to the office to store (which I do sometime after nine at night!), but not okay for me to be required to be physically present for a meeting.

    This makes sacking someone a bit of an exercise, I've heard of people in a Zoom/Skype/Teams/XYZ meeting being told, "You're services are no longer required," "Ding Dong!" "And that will be security with the contents of your desk."

    336:

    Actually it's the Berniebros. Having failed to hijack the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination for their Independent-forever Lord and Saviour are now trying to sink the foul usurper's chances of getting elected by splattering dirt over all possible vice-Presidential candidates he might choose. How dare he stand in the way of Medicare-for-All merely because he's infinitely more electable than an irascible old never-a-Democrat scold from Vermont?

    337:

    Self-proclaimed Berniebros and quiet Republican operatives are remarkably hard to tell apart from a distance. Gotta be careful about who gets credited for the dirt digging and mud slinging.

    338:

    I think Bass is already out. She also said something very complimentary about the Church of Scientology. The ads just write themselves...

    339:

    Agreed, Biden is less than ideal, but far preferable to the "Fuckwork Orange". Being in my mid sixties, there's a more personal matter to consider, anything a Democrat touched is on some Republican's hit list, Social Security is very much one of those things. Seeing that you were so generous in providing John Carter fans a mental image to go with it, may we think of Judge Doom and the weasels from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" when this (Mal)administration and it's enablers are in the news?

    340:

    We are trying to set up a legal document, and had to correct just such an error. I remember when certain codesets didn't actually have separate characters, though it was was actually 'I' for '1' and 'O' for '0', as they were upper-case only, but they were all obsolete by the mid-1960s.

    Reading between the lines you were trying to extract numbers and letters from old data. The situation I was referring to had to deal with first time computer use where the system would NOT let them type the lower case "L" into a numeric field. Agony all around.

    I'm sure that they were typing such into Alpha fields for inventory items and such but it didn't matter. This was a 50 year old family business dealing with autos (service, gas, parts, etc...) since the 20s. And the family decedents all had very different opinions on how to do things. Turns out they computerized to bring some order to things. But the computer showed them how bad things were and they just shut it down within a year.

    On a side note the office worker who handled petty cash got to leave within a week of the computers showing up. She could no longer hide that she was balancing petty cash with IOU's from herself. I suspect she was the tip of a very large iceberg.

    341:

    The thing is, one way in which the human mind is not equivalent to a Turing Machine is that it's inconsistent. This implies that the rules of formal logic will not be of use, though it doesn't say what to replace them with.

    IIUC, the way this is handled is by using environmental inputs to strengthen valid conclusions. But it can still lead to wildly unprovable, or even disprovable, beliefs.

    Note that in a system (DNA) depending on multiple copies with variations the gains in efficiency can compensate for the fact that individual instances (people) can go off on wildly dysfunctional courses. Often speed of reaction can be better than guaranteed correct reaction.

    342:

    No - I was referring to the codesets used by machines on which such old data were produced in the first place! Yes, there WERE both those and paper-tape punches which did not have a full range of digits. I saw some. As I said, they were OBSOLETE by the mid-1960s.

    343:

    Zeynep Tufekci has been a voice of sanity on NPI measures against SARS-CoV-2 transmission for the entire (declared) pandemic. Good read; she does a superb point in time exposition of the issues re minimizing sharing of unfiltered recently-exhaled air. We Need to Talk About Ventilation - How is it that six months into a respiratory pandemic, we are still doing so little to mitigate airborne transmission? (Zeynep Tufekci, July 30, 2020)

    344:

    Turing machines can be effectively inconsistent, too, and can be genuinely inconsistent if you just add a true random bit generator. Any Turing program containing one of those can be emulated by an extended program including a pseudo-random number generator, which does not necessarily mean that one of the latter is findable.

    345:

    Seeing that you were so generous in providing John Carter fans a mental image to go with it, may we think of Judge Doom and the weasels from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" when this (Mal)administration and it's enablers are in the news?

    It's rude to weasels, but certainly, whatever works for you. Heck, if you're into magic or psionics, I'd suggest repeatedly blessing every member of the administration with a conscience, broad-spectrum empathy, and an overwhelming urge to tell the whole truth. It would be fun to watch them try to operate with that.

    346:

    Tim Bass I like that new one: "The Fuckwork Orange"

    "Debating" with said orange ... The "playing chess with a pigeon" meme seems to fit that, doesn't it? What should Biden do? Avoid it entirely? Be thoroughly prepared to call out DT as a public liar, every time he does it? Or what?

    347:

    Well, if she was with the Venceremos Brigade, good on her. And a lot of the 2nd and 3rd generation Cuban-Americans don't really care - remember when Obama opened Cuba, and a lot went to visit relatives? The pro-Mafia and pro-Battista-dictorship screamed... and everyone discovered it wasn't that loud any more.

    On the other hand, Scienterology is Right Out.

    348:

    Don't see where the John Carter image is from... but I'll note I saw a headline in the Guardian today, that Paul Begals, referring to the Hairball, says that nothing unites the people of Earth like a threat from Mars.

    349:

    Unfortunately, COVID-19 is a very credible SQUID.

    350:

    Mallen @ 302: The only thing that could stop it is a strait up coup and a hail of gunfire.

    Which cannot be entirely ruled out. Trumpolini is already defying the Supreme Court on DACA.

    351:

    Actually, a nation-wide strike would shut him down pretty nicely. If, say, Amazon struck until Trump left, especially including all the online stuff the government and business depend on, that would make it hard to do anything. Ditto Google.

    On the other hand, the simplest way to get Trump to leave is if every employee in the White House, including the Secret Service, locks up anything important and walks off their job when he fails to step down. It's hard to run that place without government employees.

    The other thing is for prosecutors to withhold any indictments until 30 seconds after Biden (or whoever) gets sworn in, so as not to put him against the wall prematurely.

    352:

    David L @ 315: A directional (via a tube) fan that makes a lot of noise. Mainly used to blow leaves and yard debris into the street to piss off the local city crews who get to deal with storm sewer clogs.

    ... as opposed to just raking them into a big pile in the gutter the way the city told us to do.

    The real drawback with the leaf blower is that I've already raked my leaves into a city approved pile in the gutter when the guy next door's "yard service" comes along with their leaf blower and half of the leaves from his yard end up scattered across mine so I have to rake again to clean up his leaves (or face nasty letters from the city for not raking up the leaves in my yard).

    353:

    _Moz_ @ 322: Oh, and I've been looking at cheap rural properties within wired internet distance of train stations. Boss doesn't want me moving to Aotearoa... they have fibre to just about every premises and it's cheaper than Australia's "fibre to the neighbourhood" NBN bullshit.

    That's still better service than most rural areas in the U.S. get.

    354:

    Superconductive Quantum Interference Device? Please elucidate!

    355:

    It's a reference to the Watchman Comic books. The SQUID was a ruse meant to unite the world against an obvious external threat.

    356:

    Heteromeles @ 332: No, I mean a leaf blower. Unfortunately, anyone who's going to call a long F2F meeting in an enclosed room either has a real crisis on their hands (at which point the stunts need to be abandoned), or isn't paying attention to the news and deserves all the literal blowback they get (at which point the leaf blower is the appropriate device).

    I know the "dads" who came out to support the "moms" brought hockey sticks to try & shoot the tear gas canisters back, but I think a Lacrosse racket might be more effective.

    357:

    mdlve @ 335: So it appears the Biden campaign may be trying to lose Florida - https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/07/karen-bass-cuba-venceremos-brigade/614662/

    You're reading way too much into it. AFAIK, Bass is only one of a number of women being considered. She's not even near the top of the list. Kamala Harris still appears to be the front runner.

    All of the women who have been mentioned have someone with a axe to grind who wants the world to know why "That woman" would be the worst possible choice & the only reason Biden would select "HER" is because he secretly wants to throw the election.

    It's all bullshit. Doesn't matter who he picks, even if he were to pick the virgin Mary, there's going to be someone screaming he's made the wrong choice. Name ANY name and you'll get termites swarming.

    358:

    re: the wordpress thing, one big advantage of such a widespread platform is the relatively easy access to short-gig help. Yes, I could create a complex website all by myself, or using Seaside, or Aida etc but then I wold heve to spend my time on maintaining it instead of doing the work that the website is meant to be selling. Also, using WP + WooCommerce means I don't have to worry constantly about handling credit card details and the data safety. SEP field confirmed.

    359:

    Agreed completely, though I hope he'll pick Liz Warren!

    360:

    Considering who started this, I think a cricket bat may be more to hand. Or, since it's winter, a nice, big golf umbrella to establish appropriate space.

    361:

    Re: ' ... or isn't paying attention to the news and deserves all the literal blowback they get'

    Everyone's at risk (kids included) as reported below.

    F2F hours' long meetings are insane, unsafe and -- given the real possibility of threat to one's health -- unethical. Some top-of-mind questions/thoughts about that meeting:

    1- Does that outfit have a meeting room with a table/seating plan large enough to maintain the minimum 6ft social distance between participants.

    2- Unless all of the meeting participants are miked, they'll need to speak more loudly which means that their raised voices will propel air (virus) farther than the minimum social distance of 6 ft.

    3- Most offices have central AC and windows that cannot be opened. CAC even if it has 'air (dust) filters' does not filter out virus. Meeting/confereence rooms are probably comparable to restaurants which have been identified as venues for super-spreader events.

    4- Bathroom breaks - most office building bathroom toilets do not have lids therefore if anyone's infected, the virus gets sent out into and trapped in the (usually) closed bathroom air. If this is an hours' long meeting - I'm guessing most people will need to use such facilities.

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/31/health/georgia-camp-coronavirus-outbreak-cdc-trnd/index.html

    'According to the study, published Friday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the camp adopted most of the components outlined in the CDC document "Suggestions for Youth and Summer Camps," but it did not make campers wear cloth face masks -- only the staff.

    Nor did the camp open windows and doors for increased ventilation In buildings.'

    Not a bright idea to hold a F2F meeting during a pandemic.

    362:

    I absolutely agree that the F2F meeting is stoopid in multiple ways. That's why I suggested bringing a leafblower in to keep the air turbulent enough that the viruses ended up on surfaces that weren't mucus membranes.

    Otherwise, you've got to use a gas mask, or an n-95, face mask, gloves, ppe, and no bathroom breaks.

    363:

    whitroth: And a lot of the 2nd and 3rd generation Cuban-Americans don't really care - remember when Obama opened Cuba, and a lot went to visit relatives?

    Personally I think the whole Cuban thing is stupid, and the US should just treat Cuba like any other country.

    But I'm not running for President, and Trump's wins in some of the swing states in 2016 were by very small margins - and thus even contemplating pissing off a small number of older (and thus more likely to vote) voters seems to be very poor judgment.

    JBS: You're reading way too much into it. AFAIK, Bass is only one of a number of women being considered.

    My point is that given the Cuban issue she shouldn't even be on a long list never mind a short list in the weeks prior to an announcement.

    All of the women who have been mentioned have someone with a axe to grind who wants the world to know why "That woman" would be the worst possible choice & the only reason Biden would select "HER" is because he secretly wants to throw the election.

    I agree, a lot of this is politics, with (sadly) the added problem of the candidates being female and (mostly?) non-white.

    But the Cuba issue is such a long standing issue that it should have disqualified her from even making a list.

    364:

    "the DNC VP choice has become about checking certain boxes and rewarding factions in the DNC with a total disregard for actually winning"

    In french : "Vendre la peau de l'ours avant de l'avoir tué"

    365:

    Il faut le tuer? Personne me l'a dit!

    366:

    Lacrosse was originally a military training exercise. The Turks on Gallipoli used bombs with long enough fuses that you stood a good chance of being able to pick them up and chuck them back. The Brits and Anzacs lost a few hands doing this, but the French trained up a corps lacroissiers to sling them back with nets on sticks, which was a lot safer.

    367:

    Yeah, well... I'm not really into chess. (Or any other kind of game, really.) That's how it goes.

    368:

    The Cuba issue is only an issue with some politicians, those who are unimaginative and out of touch, that Fidel and communism are the only words beyond the racial slurs they can think of to show they are gr8. Fidel's been dead for years and wasn't running things before he died. I would confidently make book that these ignorant bozos can't tell you who matters in Cuba's current government, not a single name.

    Cuba is not the same as it was in 1960, and it's not even the same as it was in 1990, and certainly not what it was in 2014. In the meantime, Cuba has crushed the virus and people are living normal lives again -- but quite hungry lives as there are real food shortages for all the same reasons -- though they do keep ramping up their own food production. Even in Havana everybody has a garden now.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~

    But here -- how in hell is this not a mass gathering of people???????

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/15-new-locations-added-to-nyc-open-streets-open-restaurants-program-to-allow-for-more-outdoor-seating/ar-BB17shCz?li=BBnbfcL

    The photo was taken in the morning. By mid-afternoon, the hordes had fully taken over all the blocks of streets and sidewalks surrounding where we live, and through which we must make our way -- for blocks and blocks -- to get anywhere else. The teeny walk ways in-between -- there is no way I am not passing well within the 6 foot DISTANCE rule and guideline -- and very few of these places have remotely six feet between the tables. By evening, holy cow. These are not neighborhood people -- a lot of them aren't even from the city. Other stories report people literally driving in from Michigan and other states to have weekends here now. How in hell is this not way over the density gatherings the rules have set -- there are hundreds and hundreds of people within the radius of these blocks -- and I'm talking at 5 - 6 blocks in every direction.

    In this humidity, particularly as Isaias barrels up the coast, one feels palpably this miasma of covid-19 bearing aerosole droplets the moment of stepping outside the the apartment building's door. These are the age groups that are spreading it everywhere throughout the country. They take no precautions whatsoever, anywhere.

    What in hell are They -- the mayor and the governor -- thinking? This isn't saving any frackin' restaurant from going under. The cold weather comes. In any case, the nation is gonna be shut down entirely, whether willingly or not -- if only because way too many people are sick and dying and dead at numbers that no one will be able to handle -- BECAUSE OF THIS BS.

    Also those flights of tourists from Europe and Asia, disgorging 10s of thousands every day ain't coming back either. And these places live on that, and had already destroyed our neighborhoods to make money out of it -- people who don't and never have lived here.

    I guess ... de Blasio and Cuomo don't care because of the pressures put on them by the real estate multi-nations ... November! elections! Neither of them are running but others with whose political future they are connected are running.

    369:

    Morbid thoughts but I wonder if this is true what will happen to the anti-vaxer crowd. I have relatives in this group. Rabid ones.

    After many years of experience with anti-vax crowd, my inclination is: "Let Saint Darwin sort them out"

    370:

    ilya187 Entirely correct, but there's one slight problem: Do their children deserve to be eradicated as well, because the parents are terminally stupid?

    371:

    but I think a Lacrosse racket might be more effective.

    The canisters aren't smooth balls and would get caught up in the webbing.

    372:

    outrage that anyone would be forcing a F2F meeting

    One of the joys of working in the hobby business of a rich property developer is that there's no danger of losing my job just because the hobby isn't profitable for a while. The flip side is that he has a well-developed sense of being above the law, and an equally well-developed inability to understand why anyone would think that matters.

    He's also a talking type not a writing type, and he prefers video calls to voice calls when he can't have face to face. So the pandemic really is hurting him (in the rich person sense of his inconvenience is equivalent to your major problem).

    My expectation is that until someone he cares about dies from covid he's going to continue on with his "{sigh}, if you must" approach to pandemic precautions.

    373:

    the anti-vaxer crowd. I have relatives in this group. Rabid ones.

    Literally, I presume? Not wanting that particular vaccine could be very revealing of the value of vaccines, I would have thought.

    374:

    Not quite. But let's see how I remember comments my 2nd cousin made to my brother on FB.

    I'll never take a Covid-19 vaccine. (and by implication his wife and kids)

    Everyone knows the flu vaccine causes the flu.

    The only thing I'll take are natural things that enhance my body immune system. Like hydroxylquine.

    My brother just kind of walked away.

    375:

    Non-biologist here, but if this St. Darwin's way, and one approves of the way the consequences for anti-vaxers play out because by their very stance they prove themselves too stupid to exist, shouldn't one spend no grief on their progeny going the same way as their progeny are genetic inheritors / carriers of the too stupid to live genes?

    Or, as in the days of Vietnam, the days that are the source of all this insanity, kill 'em all and let the lord sort 'em out.

    376:

    That is precisely how evolution works after all.

    378:

    You'll be lucky if anything like that is in stock. You'd be better off with something like this:

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=plague+doctor+mask

    Cheaper too, and more to the point (so to speak).

    379:

    JBS, I had a tooth with a root canal and a crown (2nd molar) that split and gave me pain that ricocheted arounnd my mouth for a week before it finally settled in the tooth that had the problem. When it was X-rayed, it looked like there was interaction between the sinus cavity and an infection in the bone around the tooth. Antibiotics and a tooth extraction fixed the problem. I'm looking at a tooth implant next month. Glad I'm working, since I have no dental insurance.

    My dentist had done complete X-rays less than three months before, and the endodontist told me that the infection had been there for a year. I now have a new dentist.

    Glad to hear that your sinus thing has been dealt with.

    Is there a reason you don't use a 7 day pill box to ensure that you've taken today's pills? Your method sounds like it works for you, but I wouldn't remember which pill I was up to...

    380:

    https://theconversation.com/secondary-school-textbooks-teach-our-kids-the-myth-that-aboriginal-australians-were-nomadic-hunter-gatherers-133066

    Meanwhile, back on a somewhat happier note, more coverage of "Dark Emu" by Bruce Pascoe. Albeit in the context of what's being taught to kids here and the "controversy" over whether facts have any place in our education system.

    381:

    I checked in with my mate who works in Victoria Barracks, Melbourne. He (and his wife) have been working from home since March. He has gone on-premises about once a month to perform specific tasks. The new restrictions mean that he's limited to only two independent booze stores with interesting beer selections, rather than occasionally going further afield. Glad the ADF is running such things sensibly .

    382:

    Lacrosse was originally a military training exercise.

    Not certain I'd call it that. Certainly violent, with a playing field 2-3 km long and games lasting 2-3 days (while daylight lasted) between warriors of different tribes. Less violent than warfare, so probably a good way to keep the young men active and channel their aggression.

    The Wikipedia article is a decent summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse

    The modern version is a pale shadow of the original game.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/George_Catlin_-_Ball-play_of_the_Choctaw--Ball_Up_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

    If you're interested, this is a good book: https://archive.org/details/lacrossehistoryo0000fish/

    TLDR: Anglo-Canadians adapted the Hodenosaunee game of tewaarathon, creating modern lacrosse.

    383:

    The only thing I'll take are natural things that enhance my body immune system. Like hydroxylquine.

    Coincidentally, I'm currently reading (and very much enjoying) Dan Rankin's book Mother Nature is Trying to Kill You.

    TLDR: Most people have an idyllic and pacifistic view of what "nature" is like.

    384:

    That's what Hitler thought too, taking his pages from 19th C US eugenicists' handbooks, and, how, law and order-wise (lynchings,etc. how to handle racial incursions one prefers not to be in one's spaces, for his own ways with the Jewish populations and other undesireables of at home and conquered territories.

    Which led FDR into incredible contortions and even evil, such as turning away boats of Jewish refugees, until he could get the Southern segments of the Senate and House to vote for war against Germany.

    And other contortions to deal with the Depression earlier.

    385:

    until he could get the Southern segments of the Senate and House to vote for war against Germany.

    The USA did not declare war on Germany in WW2.

    386:

    Sorry? We declared war on Japan, Germany declared war on us, and we declared war on Germany, 11 Dec 1941.

    https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/legislative-highlights/declaration-war-germany-december-11-1941

    387:

    TLDR: Most people have an idyllic and pacifistic view of what "nature" is like.

    Couples having 10 babies was my clue. But no where near 10 grown children.

    388:

    Well Japan declared war on the US first. But got the timing wrong by an hour or so.

    389:

    Well this is interesting. COVID-19 and Misinformation: How an Infodemic Fueled the prominence of Vitamin D (pdf avaiable at link) is saying that “Patterns of COVID-19 Mortality and Vitamin D: An Indonesian Study” (I linked it a few months ago), a preprint which oddly disappeared from the internet a while ago (supposedly due to the death of the lead), is almost certainly fraudulent, if they are to be believed. What would the motive be? Who did it? The authors do no speculate in print. (Vitamin D supplements are really cheap, and the sun is cheaper.) The broader point is to do some extra digging when reading preprints to estimate credibility.

    There are a few remaining observational studies about Vitamin D and COVID-19 severity, one out of Iran, and one Israeli, one UK, and some reviews, and a few RCTs are in progress. Vitamin D Sufficiency Reduced Risk for Morbidity and Mortality in COVID-19 Patients (14 Jul 2020, Zhila Maghbooli, Mehdi Ebrahimi (both Tehran University of Medical Sciences), more) and an Israeli one linked at #277 in this comment thread. and this one (preprint): Low serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) levels in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 are associated with greater disease severity: results of a local audit of practice. (June 25, 2020) and the google scholar search used: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=0&q=%22covid-19%22++%22vitamin+d%22++severity&hl=en&scisbd=1&as_sdt=0,5

    390:

    "the DNC VP choice has become about checking certain boxes and rewarding factions"

    The running-mate choice is about uniting your party's after the bruising primary fight. That's not new.

    Hence Obama's choice of Biden - he beat the establishment candidate (Clinton) in the primary, so got Mr Establishment as his VP. Trump's choice of Pence - Mr Establishment Evangelical Conservative.

    It's not done because uniting your party is a lovely inclusive thing. It's about money.

    The running-mate choice is a chance to convince the donors that are a bit dubious about you that you're okay. Modern US election campaigns are heavily about fundraising, and this is part of the campaign.

    Whether they'd actually be any good as a VP is hardly relevant to the choice.

    391:

    Actually, the GOP has done two things, since Raygun: they pick a VP who is not only something for a major section of their voters... but also protection against assassination. I mean, Cheney, replacing W? Or (GHU!) Quayle replacing Bush, Sr.?

    392:

    The D's have also picked some turds.

    That hometown[1] boy John Edwards had a big mess he was hiding from Kerry and most everyone else. If Kerry had won he would have had to deal with Edward's affair, love child, and the very messy break up with his wife to contend with.

    [1] At the time he lived within 2 miles of my home. Go down the street, under the 6 lane belt line and home prices triple or more. :)

    393:

    Through the 90s I worked as a treeplanter in Northern Alberta. July - August would mean temperatures up to 35C. It was a piece rate job, hard physical labour. I was good at it and enjoyed being outside all summer.

    I would suffer under the heat but was able to keep working. One crew I worked on had some recent immigrants from Ghana that came alive in the heat. While I was gasping along in light pants, a t-shirt and a hat, these guys would be wearing sweat pants and sweat shirts, working twice as fast as me and enjoying themselves.

    The point being adaptation. I adapted somewhat, they had grown up in temperatures like that and were no strangers to hard work. They very much humbled the pampered college types such as myself.

    394:

    "...Northern Alberta. July - August...35C...recent immigrants from Ghana that came alive in the heat..."

    For the other side of that:

    I've a friend who worked with Jamaican immigrants in Toronto in the 90s, for the city park service. She said in winter it included night-shifts on the outdoor ice rinks downtown, spraying water onto the ice which then froze. Brutally, brutally, brutally cold.

    The Jamaicans thought those night-shifts in winter purest hell. And said their mothers back in Jamaica - who'd never seen snow - loved the pictures of it and to tell their friends of it as they thought it sounded romantic and beautiful, like something from a fairy-tale.

    395:

    In Australia puffer jackets are a bit of a fashion thing in certain non-snowsport circles. Round Sydney we see some people rugged up as nigh on Antarctic mission dress when the temperature gets below about 15 degrees.

    The Kenyan nurses that were living in my cold house really suffered. I suspect the three of them slept in one single bed purely to survive, despite the electric blankets in both beds. They definitely appreciated being able to buy snow sport clothing from op shops, once I told them to head to the shops in the rich suburbs.

    I'm told by Canadians that the appropriate response to snowy winters is to treat "going outside" as a recreational activity that you do occasionally when the weather is nice. Meanwhile inside is nice and toasty warm, because you have insulation and central heating. Instead my house has ventilation and is well designed to shed heat and stay several degrees below the outside temperature year-round. It fails dreadfully in many ways, the least offensive of which is that when it's below about 5 degrees outside it is often not colder inside. That's no consolation to a Kenyan experiencing 5 degrees inside in the morning.

    396:

    "Dark Emu" WELL! That's an enormous surprise - I too, & ( I think ) the whole population of Britain have been fed what turns out to be a (?) deliberate (?) lie. The extracts from the really early European accounts simply damn the intervening years taradiddles. Thank you.

    397:

    How long untill english immigrants are as badly considered as ... say italians in the 1930s ?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/02/brexit-fuels-brain-drain-as-skilled-britons-head-to-the-eu

    "Co-author Daniel Tetlow added: “We’re observing a new social migration phenomenon and a redefining of what it means to be British-European. In 2019, Brits came in just behind Turks in numbers receiving German citizenship – way ahead of Poles, Romanians, Iraqis or Syrians, whom you might otherwise expect to be more eagerly applying for German/EU citizenship.”"

    398:

    Right. But, as those (real) papers and I said, vitamin D is well-known to be important to the immune system and, as you say, it's cheap and safe. As my wife and I were discussing l;ast noght, the sane thing for hospitals is to check the levels of everyone admitted for COVID, and supplement as necessary.

    399:

    ) the whole population of Britain have been fed what turns out to be a (?) deliberate (?) lie.

    You seem surprised. Have you not learned about the deep and richj history of war crimes in the "civilised" world (the Ghandi quote is apposite)

    Empire, and arguably nation-states, are built on lies from necessity. If our ruler said "go die in a foreign country so I can be slightly richer" even the most devout capitalist or racist would say "hey, what?" if not something stronger.

    So instead they say "for Empire, for Glory, for Holy Writ, let us go forth, conquer the savages and bring peace to the world". These days we have various war crimes and tribunals but it only illuminates the problem rather than solving it. That list is just for one invasion of one country and it's not exhaustive en so...

    400:

    We've had this discussion here before, and it's gratifying to see that Greg has read something about Dark Emu this time around and is starting to grasp the point. He might even come around on the Dickens-based assumption that all transportation was "for the term of his natural life" and all that. I think there is more work in pointing out the range of dissent from Salman Rushdie to Shashi Tharoor and how it contains a lot of simple factual background that contradicts a lot of assumptions inherited from the Olden Days too. But that could be a bridge too far for today.

    In terms of the mechanics of colonialism, we really need to appreciate just how awful life could be for ordinary people in the hearts of empires. So for the imperial project, you take people who have no prospects, put them in a context where they can expect hard work to lead to realistic rewards, but make them travel to the other side of the world for it, watching their fellows die on the way. Make the work backbreaking and by the time they start to see something for it they have been through a lot of things that we wouldn't even consider reasonable these days. Then when they encounter people whose land or village or way of life is in the way: they weren't told this would be a problem, they've been through all they've been through, of course they will gladly participate in whatever it takes to remove the obstacles.

    Sure it's an ideology too: God, King and Empire and all that. But it's like most animals can be trained to do things they already have some natural inclination to do relatively easily, likewise it's easy to convince people to support Empire when it's in their interest, part of their way of life. And when doing the dirty work of the imperial project is intrinsically linked to their own hopes and aspirations. And that's how Queensland pioneered death squads, for instance, some decades before the concept caught on back in Europe.

    401:

    The running-mate choice is about uniting your party's after the bruising primary fight. That's not new.

    Except as you noted Biden is the establishment candidate.

    Whether they'd actually be any good as a VP is hardly relevant to the choice.

    Except when it is relevant, as in this year.

    Biden is a one term President, thus the choice of VP matters as they will most likely be the leading candidate in 2024.

    402:

    After many years of experience with anti-vax crowd, my inclination is: "Let Saint Darwin sort them out"

    If vaccines were 100% effective that would be a viable option.

    But vaccines aren't 100%, but instead rely on herd immunity to protect those who can't take the vaccine for medically valid reasons (often an allergy), or those who take the vaccine but for whatever reason it is not effective in their body.

    Thus as anti-vax numbers grow they also put everyone else at risk.

    403:
    "Co-author Daniel Tetlow added: “We’re observing a new social migration phenomenon and a redefining of what it means to be British-European. In 2019, Brits came in just behind Turks in numbers receiving German citizenship – way ahead of Poles, Romanians, Iraqis or Syrians, whom you might otherwise expect to be more eagerly applying for German/EU citizenship

    Tetlow is an idiot?

    "Poles, Romanians... eagerly applying for German/EU citizenship"?

    They already have EU citizenship, there is nothing to apply for. If you're already an EU citizen the usefulness of German citizenship is small.

    "Iraqis or Syrians, ... applying for German/EU citizenship".

    Iraqis or Syrians in Germany are mostly refugees, they won't be eligible for German citizenship for many years, if not decades.

    404:

    But here -- how in hell is this not a mass gathering of people???????

    We need to start accepting and following the evidence of Covid, and stop the knee jerk reactions of fear.

    Most of the evidence is that outdoor activities are relatively safe given the ability of the air to circulate and refresh, thus helping to keep levels of the virus low - something that is not possible in almost any indoor space.

    These are the age groups that are spreading it everywhere throughout the country. They take no precautions whatsoever, anywhere.

    They are spreading it through indoor gatherings - usually being done to try and avoid the eyes of the authorities who treat outdoor gatherings the same as indoor.

    It's the indoor bars and nightclubs that are the prime problems, hence why many places have opened them and then been forced to close them again.

    What in hell are They -- the mayor and the governor -- thinking?

    Multiple things - including the fact that human nature (particularly among the younger who feel invincible) means that you can't successfully implement a total lockdown for month after month after month.

    You need to provide a way for people to socialize in person, because the population at large is a social species.

    But they also need to allow people to relax and get this done before the colder weather comes, and with (at least those of us in Northern areas) the resulting retreat into the much more dangerous indoors and the likelihood of further lockdowns.

    This isn't saving any frackin' restaurant from going under.

    Maybe. Depends what happens on the vaccine and treatment fronts (I don't particularly believe it but there are multiple reports of vaccines by Christmas).

    What it does to though, given the infighting in Washington inside the GOP, is provide at least some income for some people so that they can continue to eat, pay the rent and utilities, etc. as the $600 week has now ended.

    405:

    That is not true. Some vaccines are to provide the person with resistance aginst a disease that would otherwise kill: e.g. rabies, tetanus and anthrax. Herd immunity works only against anything that is almost entirely spread by entity-entity contact (and there are vaccines for many domestic animal diseases, too).

    407:

    ""Poles, Romanians... eagerly applying for German/EU citizenship"? They already have EU citizenship, there is nothing to apply for. If you're already an EU citizen the usefulness of German citizenship is small.""

    Until Poland, Romania or wherever, decides to leave the EU, of course. EU citizenship alone doesn't mean much when my government can unilaterally strip it from me, as indeed it has done.

    408:

    mdive I have, very cautiously, started going foa a beer, once a week, or even less frequently ... but always, outside at an open table, away from others. NOT going to sit inside a pub, even with supposed distancing in place.

    Richard H Yes ... grrr.

    409:

    Until Poland, Romania or wherever, decides to leave the EU, of course.

    Or, the EU grows a backbone and tells those countries to return to being a modern European democracy with failure to reform resulting in being kicked out of the EU.

    410:

    Ah the joys of macho diplomacy.

    The EU doesn't get to tell its member states what to do. The EU is its member states.

    Stop thinking like a Brexiter.

    411:

    The EU doesn't get to tell its member states what to do. The EU is its member states.

    It's also a legal framework.

    This is why the brexiteers have run into a brick wall trying to "negotiate" the terms of brexit: they keep asking for stuff that is simply unlawful, and the negotiators try to explain this to them and they go "huh? Why can't you bend the rules -- just for us?"

    Well, that's the whole point of laws: there are no exceptions and no loopholes, they apply equally to all. (Which is why we in the UK are screwed. We've elected a junta of bullshit artists who are willing to play fast and loose with the law -- look at Dominic Cummings, especially his record of defeats last year after he prorogued parliament, never mind his "eye test" road trip -- and can't understand how anyone else's laws could possibly apply to them. Which is also the whole sticking point over the ECJ. Wanting to be outside the jurisdiction of a transnational court should be a clear tell about their intentions ...)

    412:

    Heteromeles @ 360: Considering who started this, I think a cricket bat may be more to hand. Or, since it's winter, a nice, big golf umbrella to establish appropriate space.

    I don't own a cricket bat. It's not a sport much played around here. Maybe it's big in Portland, but I don't know.

    ... AFAIK, it's still summer here in North America (Portland, Raleigh, DC) & I don't think umbrellas are effective against tear gas or pepper spray. Maybe against those pepper balls

    413:

    Pigeon @ 366: Lacrosse was originally a military training exercise. The Turks on Gallipoli used bombs with long enough fuses that you stood a good chance of being able to pick them up and chuck them back. The Brits and Anzacs lost a few hands doing this, but the French trained up a corps lacroissiers to sling them back with nets on sticks, which was a lot safer.

    Are you aware that Lacrosse is a derivative of a "sport" practiced by the indigenous people of North America. It wasn't invented by the British/French.

    414:

    Erich Zann has nothing on this old Black man. Maybe Mo should take up the guitar as a replacement instrument!

    You could just about read COVID news as a unicorn chaser for this one.

    415:

    RockyTom @ 379: Is there a reason you don't use a 7 day pill box to ensure that you've taken today's pills? Your method sounds like it works for you, but I wouldn't remember which pill I was up to...

    I tried it before when I didn't have as many pills to take. It just traded one memory problem for another - remembering to load the pill box every week. It's a bit easier to remember if I do it every day.

    Plus, they don't make 'em large enough to hold all the pills I have to take now. I'd need something like this.

    https://www.amazon.com/Plano-728001-Angled-Tackle-System/dp/B006PKXVAA/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=Plano+Angled+Tackle+System&qid=1596472171&s=sporting-goods&sr=1-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFHRFlOTDRERkRGM0omZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTA2Mzc1MTYxTlpIWDM5OUlSNFJIJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTAzMzMyODYzRk9IODlETkxFSlYzJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

    416:

    Charlie a junta of bullshit artists who are willing to play fast and loose with the law To the point were a tory MP is seriously investigated by Plod, for rape ... & keeps the whip. But an MP who dares to thwart BoZo, even for a few seconds, by sidelining the vile & incompetent Grayling is kicked out ... yeah.

    417:

    icehawk @ 385:

    until he could get the Southern segments of the Senate and House to vote for war against Germany.

    The USA did not declare war on Germany in WW2.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_war_upon_Germany_(1941)

    Admittedly it didn't come until after Hitler declared war on the United States, but the United States did indeed declare war on Germany in WW2.

    That old smoothie Winston Churchill pulled a fast one on Hitler by declaring war on Japan without waiting for Parliament to act, causing Hitler in turn to declare war on the U.S. in a tit-for-tat response.

    Had Hitler not declared war on the U.S., Roosevelt might have had a harder time getting the U.S. into the war against Germany. Popular sentiment would have favored ignoring the war in Europe to concentrate on the war against Japan. As it turned out, the U.S. agreed to a strategy of essentially conducting a holding action against Japan until Germany could be defeated.

    418:

    Someone once asked me why my pigeon was always standing on one leg. I replied that if he stood on two legs, he'd fall over.

    419:

    I have an inhaler with an automatic counter on the side that displays in big numbers how many honks it's got left. It helps me to not run out of it, true, but it does not help me to remember whether I've taken today's honk yet, since I can never remember what number I left it showing last time.

    420:
    I have, very cautiously, started going foa a beer, once a week, or even less frequently ... but always, outside at an open table, away from others.

    No idea if I mentioned it before, but since last week I visit my regular coffee house and an collectivist bar about every second day, sitting outside and keeping some distance from others. Both are somewhat small, with the coffee house, you have to write down your contact information for contact tracing in case of an outbreak.

    As for beer, too many people at the coffee house, having a slight buzz makes it hard to keep discipline, the collectivist bar is less crowded, but at the moment I have to keep a tight schedule, so no alc....

    421:

    David L @ 388: Well Japan declared war on the US first. But got the timing wrong by an hour or so.

    They didn't. Even allowing for the delay in decoding, it's just more diplomatic obfuscation replying to Secretary of State Hull's November 26th note.

    Text of the Japanese note, Dec 7, 1941 -
    https://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/p3.asp

    It doesn't declare war, merely expresses regret that "in view of the attitude of the American Government it cannot but consider that it is impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations."

    It wouldn't have made any difference if they'd managed to deliver the note before the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, it would still have been an attack without a preceding declaration of war.

    422:

    Yeah, well, I wanted Edwards that year... after Faux News used tens of millions in illegal campaign contributions to take down Dean.

    After Dean, Edwards' policies were good.

    423:

    What is this "puffer" jacket business? I look, and see old-style quilted jackets, since they're cheap, I'm guessing filled with cheap insulation?

    Why, yes, I do have a down parka. And the better kind, overlapping seams and an outer cover....

    424:

    As I understand it, the original "sport" was "beat up opposing team members, but if it doesn't keep you from doing that, and you're in a convenient spot, try to make a goal".

    425:

    If there's any folkies here, you'll understand that my reaction to that is that the only song any of them can play is "Oh, the wind and the rain".

    426:

    Some friends with parents in Montana would not pack such things when visiting in the winter. They would fly into the "big" town, visit a thrift store and buy up cold weather gear, then do the 5 hour drive to the family farm. (They would call ahead so if they didn't show search parties could head out. Literally.)

    When leaving they'd stop by the thrift store and donate the winter gear and fly back to where the world wasn't frozen solid.

    427:

    Edwards' policies were good.

    Locally most of us (at least the ones I personally knew) decided, after voting for him for the Senate, that he was a total fraud.

    Trump only with better PR and facade.

    He proved us to be totally correct.

    428:

    My SO lived in the Central Valley in California for a total of 7 years. I lived in Austin, TX for 7.5 years, and on the Space Coast of FL for another 3.5 years. She boggles at the sheer number of t-shirts I own....

    429:

    Oh, and I miss both Philly and Chicago. I like my cold winters.

    For you Suddeners, I have two things to say: kudzu and fire ants. And, for Texas, grass burrs (yes, they will go through thin leather soles).

    430:

    That old smoothie Winston Churchill pulled a fast one on Hitler by declaring war on Japan without waiting for Parliament to act, causing Hitler in turn to declare war on the U.S. in a tit-for-tat response.

    What else happened on December 7th, 1941?

    Hint: it wasn't only Pearl Harbour that got attacked.

    Over the 7th and 8th of December Japan bombed Midway, invaded Thailand and Malaya, invaded the Dutch East Indies, landed on Batan island, invaded Guam, attacked Wake Island, and kicked off the Battle of Hong Kong. The Royal Navy's Force Z set sail from Singapore that day to attack the Japanese troop carriers, resulting in the loss of the battleship Prince of Wales on the 10th of December.

    Frankly, Churchill declaring war on Japan on the 8th was sluggish and late: Australia jumped the gun and declared war an hour into the Pearl Harbour attacks, and the rest of the British Empire dominions followed suit rapidly.

    431:

    You left off the Philippines on Dec 8. Which might have been the 7th for the US and Europe due to the date line.

    432:

    Oh, and I miss both Philly and Chicago. I like my cold winters.

    People I know from Montana and N. Dakota talk about visiting Chicago to get warm during the winter.

    Personally I really don't like such cold. I can't imagine winters on the Canadian prairie.

    433:

    Ah the joys of macho diplomacy.

    Hardly. Simply a matter of stating that if you want to belong, you need to follow the rules.

    If you don't want to follow the rules, fine, but you no longer belong.

    The EU doesn't get to tell its member states what to do. The EU is its member states.

    Stop thinking like a Brexiter.

    Thanks for the laugh - I am anything but a Brexiter. While it doesn't directly have any consequences for me (living in Canada), having lived in the UK I do still sort of care and I have believed since before the referendum that Brexit is a damaging "shoot ourselves in the foot" exercise that will provide no gains - at least to the 99%.

    And while I am not familiar with intricacies of the EU and its legal framework, the fact remains that countries like Hungary and to a lesser extent Poland are making a mockery of everything the EU is supposed to stand for, and designed to prevent.

    The fact that Hungary can regress to the 1920s/1930s and still retain all the benefits of being a member of the EU will only cause further problems down the road.

    (and as a side note, Hungary is merely doing what the Brexiters want - just smarter. They get to ignore what they don't like and keep what they want - ie. getting the cake and eating it to0 like the Brexiters want).

    434:

    For one thing, you down there, it gets hotter, and they won't let you take any more clothes off.... [g]

    435:

    I don't own a cricket bat. It's not a sport much played around here. Maybe it's big in Portland, but I don't know.

    Moz started the ball rolling by complaining about a (hopefully completed or ditched) 4 hour F2F meeting at his office.

    He's in Australia, so it's winter there, so a nice big umbrella to enforce social distancing within the conference room is appropriate.

    Aside from being a salute to Portland (where CBP learned to use leaf blowers in self-defense), the leaf blower is there to make the air environment so turbulent that any virus particles end up stuck all over the place, not inhaled because the primary air movement is people exhaling and inhaling. It also shortens the meeting.

    The cricket bat (it being Australia) is in case someone gets uppity about forcing him to endanger himself for a meeting. Generally it's bad form, but I suppose it could also be used to dispose of shared food without touching it.

    As for the use of umbrellas, I've learned of a couple more that makes me want to start collecting the buggers: --surveillance blocking --IR blocking on some models --Stopping anyone hosing with pepper spray or dye markers, and deflecting pepper balls and similar light stuff. --They're legal to carry, especially if you don't go for the one with the solid metal/carbon fiber main rods and kevlar canopy.

    Turns out sun-blocking hiking umbrellas are now a thing, especially in Europe. The Fair Folk reading this might want to check these out.

    437:

    Or possibly the report author knows what he’s talking about and uninformed internet commenter is an idiot.

    • Poles and Romanians and any other EU residents can still benefit from German nationality, starting with the right to vote, as well as everything just being that bit simpler with a German passport. And, as noted, if your country goes insane, you still have the right to live and work in the EU.
    • EU members don’t have to give up their original nationality. As someone who’s going to miss the opportunity to do this by 6 months and will face the choice of giving up my British citizenship for German naturalisation, I’m quite bitter about this.
    • stateless people or refugees can apply for German naturalisation early. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to the news but things have been less than good in Iraq and Syria for some time now.

    On the plus side, the planned law confirming the residence status of British citizens in Germany is sensible and humane, which is more than anything that’s come out of the UK government for the last 4 years.

    438:

    (I couldnt work out how to flag it on the Tor site, but in your author bio, they misspelt Delirium:

    including Locus Award finalist The Dilirium Brief

    439:

    And if there's even the slightest question, I do plan to go down to 1600 PA on Wed, 4 Nov.

    It may be more productive for you to go to the nearest polling place situated in a minority district. Not to vote (that you should do in your own district), but to keep an eye on the goons. Because that's where they will cngregate.

    440:

    Not to vote (that you should do in your own district), but to keep an eye on the goons. Because that's where they will cngregate.

    This is the kind of thing were HE might be perceived as a goon if he ethnically doesn't blend in.

    441:

    It's not always bad news.

    Kid uses a technique he saw on TV to stay afloat when he was swept out to sea.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-53637025

    442:

    I can't imagine winters on the Canadian prairie.

    Brisk. Invigorating.

    As long as you have the proper clothing, of course.

    443:

    The Manhattan D.A. is investigating Donald Trump and his company. There's just over 91 days to go to the election. Not sure how this could go.

    444:

    I like brisk, bracig... but when I was in Chicago, and it got down to 9F (-13C) it had gone to fucking bitter.

    445:

    I live in Mongomery Co, MD, a very large, DC 'burb. It's very liberal (our current county executive is, in fact, a socialist - came to the DSA for endorsement, and I decided he was good when he mentioned what he had done when young: when I was in the streets during 'Nam... he was in SDS).

    Won't be a problem here. Elsewhere... the cops might go after me.

    If it wasn't for the pandemic, I'd consider volunteering with the ACLU, or some such.

    446:

    That's not a problem if you walk over to the folks already there, and start talking to them.

    And it's not like I'd go armed... well, I am having hip issues, so if I take my walking stick, not a thing.

    I mean, just because in the late seventies and early eighties, I fought heavy in the SCA, and my walking stick's the length and about the weight of an SCA broadsword.... [g]

    447:

    Do their children deserve to be eradicated as well, because the parents are terminally stupid?

    Alas, that is a problem. Especially in places like US, which traditionally regards children as property of their parents.

    448:

    "What else happened on December 7th, 1941?

    Hint: it wasn't only Pearl Harbour that got attacked."

    Yeah, the Japanese wanted SE Asia, and thought the US would come to defend the British if they attacked British SE Asia (Malaysia, Burma and Singapore) and took the Dutch oil fields of Indonesia. They were just wrong about that.

    They should have stuck with their Plan A for Dec 1941 which was a surprise attack on the British in Burma and Malaysia. Their military got too entranced by the military advantage of first strike on Pearl Harbour, when the politics was all wrong.

    Because FDR didn't have the votes to bring the US into WW2. The US would have sat out the war and watched the world burn.

    449:

    Probably nothing will be filed until the day after the election, but (Comey) you never know, because sometimes (Comey) poetic justice is poetic.

    450:

    but when I was in Chicago, and it got down to 9F (-13C) it had gone to fucking bitter.

    A comedian once said (maybe Richard Prior) that the winter wind in downtown Chicago could rip the skin off your face.

    I am in agreement with that.

    451:

    They should have stuck with their Plan A for Dec 1941 which was a surprise attack on the British in Burma and Malaysia. Their military got too entranced by the military advantage of first strike on Pearl Harbour, when the politics was all wrong.

    If Japan had just done the 3rd wave at Pearl things might have turned out very different. The last wave was supposed to hit the repair facilities and fuel depots. Without those the US just might have decided they couldn't fight on and sued for peace.

    But they didn't (were afraid of carriers they couldn't find) and the US was able to repair their fleet and keep operating what was working.

    If you are willing to do a Pearl Harbor attack then you should be willing to risk your carriers to take out the ability of the enemy to repair and sail. Especially when you are risking only 4 of your 11 and the other side only has 4 total with only 3 in the Pacific. (Numbers from memory.)

    I think Japan blew it for themselves and Germany by cancelling that 3rd wave. Not that Germany would have won against the USSR but they might have done a truce. Europe and the Pacific rim would sure look different today if the US had sat out the war or even started way further behind that they did.

    452:

    The Royal Navy's Force Z set sail from Singapore that day to attack the Japanese troop carriers, resulting in the loss of the battleship Prince of Wales on the 10th of December.

    And the sinking of Prince of Wales by mostly land-based aircraft marked a different kind of turning point in naval strategic thinking. Up to that point aircraft had only sunk a fully operational battleship at port, or at least in circumstances of limited manoeuvrability.

    453:

    I like brisk, bracig... but when I was in Chicago, and it got down to 9F (-13C) it had gone to fucking bitter.

    Chicago is damp. Prairies are dry. Makes a big difference.

    I'd rather have -25 in Saskatchewan than -10 in Toronto.

    454:

    Charlie Stross @ 430:

    That old smoothie Winston Churchill pulled a fast one on Hitler by declaring war on Japan without waiting for Parliament to act, causing Hitler in turn to declare war on the U.S. in a tit-for-tat response.

    What else happened on December 7th, 1941?

    Hint: it wasn't only Pearl Harbour that got attacked.

    Over the 7th and 8th of December Japan bombed Midway, invaded Thailand and Malaya, invaded the Dutch East Indies, landed on Batan island, invaded Guam, attacked Wake Island, and kicked off the Battle of Hong Kong. The Royal Navy's Force Z set sail from Singapore that day to attack the Japanese troop carriers, resulting in the loss of the battleship Prince of Wales on the 10th of December.

    Frankly, Churchill declaring war on Japan on the 8th was sluggish and late: Australia jumped the gun and declared war an hour into the Pearl Harbour attacks, and the rest of the British Empire dominions followed suit rapidly.

    I know all of that. I know the U.K. had it's own reasons for going to war with Japan. I know Parliament would have declared war on Japan in due course.

    Immediately after Pearl Harbor, there was solid sentiment in the U.S. to turn its back on the U.K. & Europe to fight its own separate war with Japan. The U.K. would have been screwed if those sentiments had prevailed.

    Churchill's declaration and Hitler's response pulled the rug out from under those in the U.S. who were ready to abandon the U.K. and I believe that was part of Churchill's calculation.

    455:

    Give FDR some credit too, I think. He was preparing for war with the Axis long before the US public came around.

    456:

    Autarch @ 443: The Manhattan D.A. is investigating Donald Trump and his company.

    There's just over 91 days to go to the election. Not sure how this could go.

    On and on ... it'll go on and on ... and on ... and on ... and on ... and

    The Supreme Court ruled that the accountants have to comply with the subpoena, but that Trumpolini & his lawyers could go back to the original court in Manhattan with additional arguments to challenge them. This news comes out of the additional filings the New York DA made in response to those arguments.

    The plan appears to be to obfuscate & stall until some statute of limitations kicks in and it's too late to charge him.

    I don't think that's right, but apparently it can be done. The statute of limitations should not apply when it's the accused who's delaying the process. They shouldn't be allowed to escape justice by running out the clock.

    457:

    -10 in Toronto.

    Been there. Nearly 40 years ago. Memory is still seared on my cold senses.

    458:

    [ 'Most of the evidence is that outdoor activities are relatively safe given the ability of the air to circulate and refresh, thus helping to keep levels of the virus low - something that is not possible in almost any indoor space.

    These are the age groups that are spreading it everywhere throughout the country. They take no precautions whatsoever, anywhere.

    They are spreading it through indoor gatherings - usually being done to try and avoid the eyes of the authorities who treat outdoor gatherings the same as indoor." ]

    https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6931e1.htm

    "SARS-CoV-2 Transmission and Infection Among Attendees of an Overnight Camp — Georgia, June 2020 Early Release / July 31, 2020 / 69"

    https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200731/kids-efficient-transmitters-as-covid-19-raced-through-a-georgia-summer-camp#1

    There are quite a few other stories reported about YOUNG PEOPLE outdoors. Virus doesn't care that you are singing OUTSIDE, when in the company of the same people for hours and days at a time, asymptomatics are present and they spread the stuff throughout.

    Which is why party boats and outdoor concerts are prohibited. And where I live at any one time through the weekend there are hundreds of people who are only inches apart, for hours at a time, yelling, screaming, dancing, getting drunker and drunker, and I can't walk around them for it goes on blocks and blocks and blocks.

    459:

    Heteromeles @ 455: Give FDR some credit too, I think. He was preparing for war with the Axis long before the US public came around.

    I agree. But without Hitler's declaration of war on the U.S., for which I at least partially credit Churchill's quick declaration against Japan, it likely wouldn't have been war against the Axis, it would have been a war against Japan alone and the U.K. & Europe would have been left to fend for themselves.

    460:

    I can see an outcome there with an eventual victory for Stalin, and Soviet occupation forces probably clashing with British in eastern France - the British having grabbed what was available as Berlin pulled every functioning unit eastward.

    461:
    Not that Germany would have won against the USSR but they might have done a truce.

    Yeah, nope.

    Stalin's empire was able to save itself from Germany. Lend Lease equipment didn't start coming in numbers that made a difference until 1943 - by which time the war was unwinnable by Germany[1]. Could the Germans have forced a draw? Not with Hitler in charge, with his increasing disassociation from reality.

    With no lend lease, and no US presence in Europe, it would have taken the USSR longer to defeat Germany. It would have happened, though. D-Day happens in 1945 with Commonwealth / Polish forces, and they occupy France and maybe Belgium and possibly the Rhineland. The allies might free southern Italy as well. Who knows? Let's be super-optimistic and say that the UK liberates Greece as well.

    The rest goes to the USSR.

    My $0.02 worth, and worth every penny.

    ~~~

    [1] Note that the war actually became unwinnable for Germany on 22 June 1941.

    462:

    Oh god. I contributed to the strange attractor!

    463:

    Lend Lease equipment didn't start coming in numbers that made a difference until 1943

    Not quite. The Arctic Convoys were supplying tanks and aircraft from September 1941; Hawker Hurricanes and Valentine tanks fought in the Battle of Moscow. The kit was often worse than the latest Soviet equivalent, but given the dire situation that the Red Army faced, and the appalling losses that they had taken, every little helped...

    464:

    These are the age groups that are spreading it everywhere throughout the country. They take no precautions whatsoever, anywhere.

    And it is for the most part spreading through indoor activities - bars, nightclubs, etc.

    I can't quickly find the story, but there was a case of a party by young people that involved people outdoors by a fire, and some people also went indoors to the kitchen. Those who stayed outdoors remained Covid free, while those who congregated indoors had a Covid infection rate of about 50%. Thus outdoor is low risk.

    "SARS-CoV-2 Transmission and Infection Among Attendees of an Overnight Camp — Georgia, June 2020 Early Release / July 31, 2020 / 69"

    There are quite a few other stories reported about YOUNG PEOPLE outdoors.

    Except that story is about INDOORS - they were doing stupid activities like yelling and singing indoors, sleeping packed into cabins with no social distancing, etc.

    In other words, entirely predictable - we know deep lung activities like singing are bad, and we know lots of strangers indoors is bad.

    Which is why party boats and outdoor concerts are prohibited.

    Party boats are primarily indoors, and essentially a water based nightclub with physical activity in close proximity (aka dancing) with lots of alcohol. So yes, banned.

    Outdoor concerts - frequently can have physical activity in close proximity - so banned.

    And where I live at any one time through the weekend there are hundreds of people who are only inches apart, for hours at a time, yelling, screaming, dancing, getting drunker and drunker, and I can't walk around them for it goes on blocks and blocks and blocks.

    Which is not what you claimed earlier, and is not what the original link you posted.

    The original link you posted was the expansion of outdoor restaurant dining - aka people sitting at tables and eating. And that is, while not perfectly safe, reasonably safe and relatively low risk.

    465:

    Right. But, as those (real) papers and I said, vitamin D is well-known to be important to the immune system and, as you say, it's cheap and safe. As my wife and I were discussing l;ast noght, the sane thing for hospitals is to check the levels of everyone admitted for COVID, and supplement as necessary. What's intriguing to me is that that possibly/probably fraudulent paper might have been crafted to manipulate by exploiting conceptual biases, but there isn't an obvious motive involving personal gain. Somebody adjusting the direction of scientific research, perhaps. (I agree that more attention should be paid to Vit D levels at hospital admission time, at least large-scale experimentally.)

    Anyway, this is interesting for the apparently-negative result, after adjusting for "potential confounders". Vitamin D concentrations and COVID-19 infection in UK Biobank (30 April 2020?) Adjusted for ethnicity, sex, month of assessment, Townsend deprivation quintile, household income, self-reported health rating, smoking status, BMI category, age at assessment, diabetes, SBP, DBP, and long-standing illness, disability or infirmity.. That list is a little suspicious (unclear causality), and this lays out a few complaints: Letter in response to the article: Vitamin D concentrations and COVID-19 infection in UK biobank (Hastie et al.) (2020 Jun 13) The statistical error is that the multivariable model was over adjusted due to including factors that are likely mediators of disease rather than confounding factors. Statistical criteria and causal diagrams should be utilized to identify confounders and communicate assumptions being made [2,3]. Multiple causal structures between 25(OH)D and COVID-19 infection may be equally plausible so we suggest performing multiple analyses with both simple and complex models.

    466:

    What, Alt-WW2, with the USSR victorious on both fronts (Germany and Japan), the US in neither theater to as great a degree as it was, the UK and France exhausted, and the US with nukes that it hasn't tested in battle?

    What could possibly happen after that? All you need to do is to add in aliens or psionics and you've got a nice, alt-golden age SF universe.

    467:

    The original link you posted was the expansion of outdoor restaurant dining - aka people sitting at tables and eating. And that is, while not perfectly safe, reasonably safe and relatively low risk.

    Read her text though; this is large-scale street closures to make room for more tables, with many tables filled with people from COVID hotspots, some loud and drunk, and the ventilation is only good if the wind is blowing in the right direction. Sort of a hybrid between inside and outside. And disruptive to people who live there, and it increases death/disablement risks for them with little or no compensating gain.

    But so far the NYS tracker looks "good" (no obvious spike, horrifying to much of the rest of the world) for new cases for NYC (though some cases return to where they came from to get counted.)

    468:

    Would the US even have bothered with the Manhattan Project if they were only fighting Japan? Or if they weren't involved in either war at all?

    469:

    Someone suggested this link the other day, possibly not here, but it's an interesting read about how Trump has kicked the decline of the US as a world power into sharp relief.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/america-image-power-trump/613228/

    Although stuff like this always make me go "what?" Some of the fundamental complaints consistent to both Trump and his Democratic challenger for the presidency, Joe Biden: European free riding, the strategic threat from China, and the need to tackle Iranian aggression.

    Europeans not contributing enough cash to the US war machine... sigh. China threatening the US... sigh. Iran in being a victim of the neighbourhood bully who's crying "I kept kicking the dog until it bit me". The Iran Deal was going fine until the US unilaterally broke it.

    Which ties back into the article: the US is less great militarily, economically, diplomatically than it used to be, but what's changed is that it used to have some claim to being a good example to other countries. Trump is determined to smash that, and he's succeeding.

    470:

    I understand there's not statute of limitations for tax fraud. Which is what NYC is looking at. (Now that they have Cohen's testimony and investigative reports from the NY Times and Washington Post, it should be easier. However, it should be NYS doing this.)

    471:

    Drunk people lose any sense of precaution, and there are hundreds of quite drunken people sitting here for hours and hours. They are sitting in semi-enclosures, roofed and half walled -- sitting very close to each other for hours. Think of how much aerosol is being expelled every minute -- and for blocks and blocks.

    It this is so safe, why then are the outdoor sports stadiums not open?

    People are operating in utter fantasy, pretending to themselves and everyone else there is a way to have both safety and let people gather and drink in large numbers. It just isn't possible, and everyone knows it. Just like everyone knows there is no effin' way to open the schools at any level of education -- yet they are pretending they are going to. On top of that, the school systems blithely inform the public and the staff and teachers about how they are going to keep everyone safe -- without even a budget to do that special cleaning, without enough people to clean NOW, without money to pay for the extra supplies, from plexiglass, to tablets to Zoom.

    Teachers know better, the custodians know better, everybody knows better yet they are pretending. And then, as in Indiana for a single instance, within literally hours of the first day, it had to close. There were sick kids there the first day. Not just asymptomatic, but sick.

    472:

    Would the US even have bothered with the Manhattan Project if they were only fighting Japan? Or if they weren't involved in either war at all?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project

    On 9 October 1941, President Roosevelt approved the atomic program after he convened a meeting with Vannevar Bush and Vice President Henry A. Wallace. To control the program, he created a Top Policy Group consisting of himself—although he never attended a meeting—Wallace, Bush, Conant, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and the Chief of Staff of the Army, General George C. Marshall. Roosevelt chose the Army to run the project rather than the Navy, because the Army had more experience with management of large-scale construction projects. He also agreed to coordinate the effort with that of the British, and on 11 October he sent a message to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, suggesting that they correspond on atomic matters.

    Maybe not as fast but it was underway before Dec 7, 1941.

    473:

    If you parse the sentence you quote it basically says the most likely outcome would be USSR beats Germany. But it would be a long slog. And I wonder if they would stop at Germany or continue all the way to the Atlantic? Lots of communist true believers in France through out the 30s.

    The British most likely would have lost N. Africa to Rommel without the US tanks that would not be in mass production.

    No invasion of Italy.

    So Rommel and his troops on the eastern front?

    The USSR would not get as much help from the west as in the real history but still would be building all those tanks east of the Urals. And maybe still make a deal with Japan to free up all those divisions.

    Gets way too complicated too quickly to make accurate predictions.

    474:

    Re: 'Would the US even have bothered with the Manhattan Project ...'

    If the US hadn't bothered then my guess is that Einstein would have written letters to other Allies' leaders --- maybe Stalin? Now that would be an interesting alt-history.

    If public news media had started circulating that the Nazis were attempting to build an atomic bomb then the Allies would have been screwed: one of the key reasons that the Manhattan Project succeeded was because it was a well kept secret. Plus having most of the key physicists involved working in the same location helped keep them and news of the project out of reach of enemy spies.

    If Germany had found out that the Allies were also working on the atomic bomb, they'd have probably would put even more resources into their project.

    475:

    Bill Arnold:

    Read her text though;

    The problem is the text disagrees with her links.

    this is large-scale street closures to make room for more tables, with many tables filled with people from COVID hotspots,

    Any proof for this, or is it simply rumor and supposition?

    some loud and drunk,

    Generally speaking people don't get drunk in restaurants, and thus if there is a drinking problem it is separate from the restaurants having outdoor dining.

    and the ventilation is only good if the wind is blowing in the right direction.

    While a breeze helps, it is more the huge volume of air and lack of artificial recirculating HVAC that makes outdoor better than indoor.

    And disruptive to people who live there, and it increases death/disablement risks for them with little or no compensating gain.

    If you don't want disruption then you need to live in the middle of nowhere - living in a city inherently means compromise and disruptions.

    And again, to repeat, by all measures the outdoor dining poses little risk to those dining, and even less risk to anyone walking past. It takes more than one droplet to infect a person, it takes prolonged exposure.

    For example, this story on study on the risk of contacting Covid on a train - which shows it to be low except for those right next to a person, and even that is 3.5%, over 2 hours.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-train-rail-passengers-risk-mask-travel-china-a9648911.html

    But so far the NYS tracker looks "good" (no obvious spike, horrifying to much of the rest of the world) for new cases for NYC (though some cases return to where they came from to get counted.)

    Because outdoor dining is low risk, which is why it is being expanded.

    Foxessa: Drunk people lose any sense of precaution, and there are hundreds of quite drunken people sitting here for hours and hours.

    That isn't a restaurant - there is no way a restaurant would allow a table to be occupied by a single sitting for "hours and hours" - restaurants rely on turning tables over as fast as possible.

    Now an outdoor bar may have people sitting for hours, though again despite your descriptions and fears so far the evidence is that even an outdoor bar remains low-ish risk.

    To put it another way, there is a difference to what we think is happening, and what is actually happening.

    It this is so safe, why then are the outdoor sports stadiums not open?

    Because many sports fans engage in cheering and other loud noises, which like singing involve moving a lot of air into and out of the lungs - otherwise known as high risk behaviour. For example some NFL stadiums are known for fans that make it so loud that opposing teams can have trouble communicating on the field.

    People are operating in utter fantasy, pretending to themselves and everyone else there is a way to have both safety and let people gather and drink in large numbers. It just isn't possible, and everyone knows it.

    The numbers say otherwise.

    Again, to be perfectly safe from Covid you wouldn't allow any of these activities - we would all stay isolated. But human nature simply won't allow that, and thus these low risk options are the best we have until either a vaccine or effective treatment (or giving up) happen.

    Covid is dangerous enough without demonizing the few relatively safe options we have that provide mental health benefits.

    Just like everyone knows there is no effin' way to open the schools at any level of education

    See my next post. But returning kids to school has nothing to do with outdoor dining.

    without even a budget to do that special cleaning,

    This is an interesting one. So far all the evidence is that Covid primarily spreads via droplets in the air, not on surfaces. Is this because we are wrong about surfaces (that they don't provide a high dose?), or because of the extra cleaning? We don't know yet.

    Teachers know better, the custodians know better, everybody knows better yet they are pretending.

    In an ideal world we would keep the schools closed - and I certainly don't envy the teachers, particularly older ones, being put into a tough position.

    But once one looks past the stupidity of Trump & Company and their desire to pretend everything is normal there is no getting around the apparent fact that the online schooling experiment last spring was a complete failure - it is clear from most reporting that little education happened and parents suffered the most.

    I don't pretend to have the answer, because I certainly don't. But writing off the last 2 to 3 months of the last school year was one thing, to now decide to essentially write off the next entire school year is something else entirely. Particularly for the younger kids who are learning social skills as much as classroom stuff taking a year off could have a lifetime of repercussions.

    477:

    Any proof for this, or is it simply rumor and supposition?

    My reading is that it's pure anecdote - Foxessa goes outside, looks round, then reports what she sees.

    I'm very much on the side of the theorists here, I don't think observable reality has any place in discussions of the brilliant handling of the pandemic by the USA.

    478:

    In an ideal world we would keep the schools closed

    Your ideals are very different to mine. I have read about the unschooling movement, but I think imposing it on everyone without preparation and in the middle of a pandemic is unlikely to work.

    In an ideal world I think the schools would be open, people would be free to move round; systematic testing and track'n'trace programmes would be combined with taxpayer-funded quarantine and regional border control so that 90%+ of the population were living much as they did before the pandemic.

    You could look at a country like Vietnam where they are desperately trying to contain their first outbreak as one example of how this could be done. Except that apparently their communist nutcase government is more sane and competent than whatever is happening in your country.

    479:

    If COVID only spreads through aerosolized droplets in the air,and not off surfaces, why do I need hand sanitizer to sterilize my hands after I touch the surfaces that the droplets landed on, because it doesn't spread from surfaces, right? The fact that im supposed to sterilize my hands implies that it DOES spread off surfaces.

    480:

    J reynolds Slightly later - about 1st August 1941, when Adolf diverted the direct line of attack on Moscow...

    mdive Erm ... deep lung activities LIke oh "Heavy Breathing" ( smirk ) ?? ... later: Particularly for the younger kids who are learning social skills - You what? Where & when is this supposed to happen? Or is this code for "keep your head down, avoid the bullying & pretend to like fuckwits" ???

    Heteromeles Except, if the Nazis take Moscow, the Japs will attack from the E ...

    481:

    Update on Brexshit ANOTHER brexiteer lie exposed at our mortal cost. Who will they try to blame for this one?

    Oh yes ... A quote: A short list of Quitling ideas: Easiest deal in the world = LIE. We hold all the cards = LIE. We can cherry pick = LIE. No deal is better than a bad deal = LIE. Brexit dividend = LIE. German car industry will save us = LIE. No special treatment for NI = LIE. Trade talks will take place in parallel with divorce talks = LIE. A raft of trade deals will be in place by March 29 = LIE. Isn’t it time for a reality check?

    482:

    Re restaurants wouldn't allow people to occupy a table for hours and hours - there's apparently a lot of bars & similar in the US which have quickly got restaurant licences so they can take advantage of any difference in rules applying to one vs. the other.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/voraciously/wp/2020/07/30/bars-strip-clubs-and-breweries-discover-how-to-survive-during-the-pandemic-reopen-as-restaurants/

    483:

    Though being outdoors does seem to have helped - there wasn't a surge in the number of cases from the BLM protests.

    484:

    Several of my friends from Toronto said that they had never been as cold as when they moved to Cambridge (East Anglia) - and that's solely because we are a lot damper! But, for real damp cold, try the western side of Scottish Highlands.

    485:

    I'd been in Boston in February during a couple of storms from the north east a few times and thought I knew cold, then I went to Detroit in January. -10 plus a steady wind off the Great Lakes was kind of special, and taught me that no, my cold weather gear needed an upgrade.

    Then the next year I ended up in NYC during a cold snap then up the coast to Boston during two storms bad enough to trigger cold emergencies and shut down the T, and was actually grateful for the extra 10kg of winterwear in my suitcase: I could actually go out of the hotel if I wanted to.

    I've still got that kit but there is absolutely zero prospect of me ever needing it again in Edinburgh (he said optimistically).

    486:

    For all his faults, and he had plenty, Churchill was the leader we needed at the time - and you are right that he was a shrewd politician.

    487:

    What could possibly happen after that? All you need to do is to add in aliens or psionics and you've got a nice, alt-golden age SF universe.

    Oh, how about this? Extended jungle campaigning as the USSR and its allies roll through south-east Asia result in a bunch of new zoonoses escaping into a vulnerable human population (underfed soldiers and starving civilians) and burning as a green-field epidemic, including an odd hacking cough with some mild gastric symptoms and loss of taste followed by fever and long-term muscle weakness and organ damage that spreads like the common cold ...

    The extra twist is that there are zero anti-virals and smoking is more prevalent -- much more prevalent. Fewer diabetics and old people in the population, but more pre-existing lung damage ...

    488:

    COVID is no longer under control in the UK - we knew that, but the test data shows it fairly clearly.

    https://imgur.com/gallery/N5tDL8C

    489:

    I don't actually see it being the USSR. Even if Germany had not invaded it, the USSR would have had enough on its plate in Europe, central Asia and China.

    490:

    Well, at least with the aliens bit Harry Turtledove has got you covered... (World War series)

    491:

    The British most likely would have lost N. Africa to Rommel without the US tanks that would not be in mass production.

    That's not clear. Look at Rommel's logistics chain: he had to ship everything across the Med, which was under the guns of the Royal Navy (especially after the battle of Mers el Kébir). As it is, Rommel got badly over-extended, and while he might have taken Cairo he would still be vulnerable to reinforcements arriving from India. The real threat he posed to the UK was cutting off the Suez Canal, which all those Indian convoys passed through, but by the same token, if he tried to blockade the canal all those supplied would be funnelled straight to the troops defending it.

    I think the best we can say is that the North African campaign would have taken longer and been a lot bloodier (with lots of Indian troops fetching up in the theatre), and the British would have had more of an incentive to get something, anything, into production from the project that ultimately began churning out Centurions in early 1945 (the version that shipped was their third attempt, and the first modern Main Battle Tank -- gun and armour comparable to a Royal Tiget, but speed and maneuverability closer to a T-34).

    492:

    If Germany had found out that the Allies were also working on the atomic bomb, they'd have probably would put even more resources into their project.

    They could hardly have put less into it; their project was run by the Post Office, IIRC, and they drove all their best scientists into exile apart from Werner Heisenberg (who was very ambiguous in his loyalty). Note that the Manhattan Project was the product of about 70-80% of the nuclear physicists on the planet, with people like Fermi (Italian exiled Nobel Laureate), Szilard (Jewish German exile), Teller (Hungarian, exile), Von Neuman (Hungarian, exile), Oppenheimer (ooh! An actual American!) all pitching in.

    Working more or less on his own in a field of physics the NSDAP had denounced as "un-Aryan" (because it had Einstein cooties: hint, Einstein was Jewish), Heisenberg tried to compute the critical mass of U235 ... and came up with a sphere of about 2000kg mass. Yeah, that would go supercritical rather rapidly, but not much use as a weapons proposal in a world where bombers that could carry more than 5000kg of payload were rare.

    Nope, the Nazi nuclear weapons program was doomed from the outset due to their peculiar political prejudices, which flushed 90% of their best talent down the drain (and it ended up in the USA).

    493:

    The far more important thing is that we might have lost the battle of the Atlantic - as it was, it was damn close, with the UK almost running out of fuel.

    494:

    "Werner Heisenberg (who was very ambiguous in his loyalty)"

    Are you saying that Heisenbetg's principles were uncertain?

    495:

    EC Unlikely - it's far more probable that the Nazis would have replicated the mistake of the first time round & sunk one or two US ships too many ....

    496:

    Ivermectin is weird stuff; a huge molecule and a fungal secondary metabolite. It kills insects and most parasites by virtue of being a nerve poison; it is too big to get past the blood-brain barrier of vertebrates hence is harmless to most of them (with the exception of collie dogs, which have a slightly more leaky blood-brain barrier).

    As I say, the molecule is huge, so no wonder it does other things apart from poison invertebrates.

    497:

    If you want decent protection, then a powered air filtration hood is the way to go. That has a powered fan pulling air through a filter, and blowing it down over your face, which is behind a transparent shield.

    498:

    Re: ' ... which flushed 90% of their best talent down the drain (and it ended up in the USA).'

    Agree - and that talent would have gone to some other allied country if the US hadn't agreed to do the Manhattan Project. Russia would have been the next best choice because Russia had something to prove to the rest of the world and a cultural history of having zero ethical problem with shifting resources to such projects including even if such shifting resulted in millions of deaths [see: string of Russian famines going back to Tsarist Russia]. So instead of satellites and a space program - or possibly in addition to - the Russians would have had the bomb. And within a decade or so would have had satellites with atomic bombs orbiting the planet. (Kazakhstan has the second largest uranium deposits in the world.)

    Even if the Russians ended up with only half of these physicists, the long term result would be huge in terms of scientific impact on Western society and 20th Century history starting with the post-WW2 land-grab, followed by Mongolia, Afghanistan, Alaska, parts of China (Gobi?), etc.

    Just looked up the MP in Wikipedia - apparently the Russians sensed something was up because they had spies specifically looking into this project. Suggests to me that Stalin would have jumped on this opportunity and promised these physicists anything to get them onboard.

    499:

    As I said:

    Gets way too complicated too quickly to make accurate predictions.

    The world was just a wee bit chaotic at the time. Way too many variables to model much of anything accurately.

    Which is somewhat where we seem to be now.

    I keep thinking back to the 60s, my childhood into mid teens, where in the US we had these 2 parallel history tracks going on. Apollo and Viet Nam. And my memories of them are somewhat independent. As if they were not happening at the same time. Just how did that happen?

    Now we have Trump, Boris, SpaceX, Apple, Google, Covid-19, Putin, and more all happening at once. And each seems to be running in a different reality.

    500:

    Turtledove also has you covered with "Stalemate on the Eastern Front". He wrote a short story "Ready for the Fatherland" in which Hitler came to a sticky end in 1943, before the Battle of Kursk. One of his generals took over and it was implied that he started fighting smart and was able to secure a negotiated peace with the USSR.

    The bulk of the story is set in Croatia in the 1970s, as agents from the UK, sent from South Italy (a separate country from North Italy, under German control) make contact with some partisans.

    501:

    I'm very much on the side of the theorists here, I don't think observable reality has any place in discussions of the brilliant handling of the pandemic by the USA.

    Would it be fair to tar the Australian Government with what is currently happening in one state, when it appears (from the other side of the world) that the other Australian states are doing better?

    Same thing with the US - yes, the feds under Trump are missing in action and the southern GOP Governors are as inept as Trump. But the North East have done well after their initial slow reaction and the NY/NJ/?? grouping are doing well at the moment - and there is no real indication they won't going forward given they are relying on science to guide their decisions.

    Your ideals are very different to mine. I have read about the unschooling movement, but I think imposing it on everyone without preparation and in the middle of a pandemic is unlikely to work.

    I think you're reading far too much into what I said - I never mentioned nor implied anything about an unschooling movement - in fact I went on to say that the potential for losing an entire school year of in person classes would be damaging for the kids.

    But it doesn't change the fact that the best way to stop Covid in it's tracks is for everyone to isolate until it dies off or we come up with options - which was what I was talking about.

    But we don't live in an ideal world, which means accepting compromises and choosing from next-best (or sadly even worse) options.

    In an ideal world I think the schools would be open, people would be free to move round; systematic testing and track'n'trace programmes would be combined with taxpayer-funded quarantine and regional border control so that 90%+ of the population were living much as they did before the pandemic.

    And others would say that the government tracking it's citizens is a nightmare to be avoided.

    You could look at a country like Vietnam where they are desperately trying to contain their first outbreak as one example of how this could be done.

    Oh, you mean by a complete lockdown of the area where the outbreak happened, like what most sane Western governments are doing?

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53606917

    What Vietnam is demonstrating is that while early action can have benefits, in the end Covid doesn't care and will force the issue.

    more sane and competent than whatever is happening in your country.

    It really is getting annoying to be repeatedly called an American when I have made it clear in numerous posts that I am not.

    502:

    Suggests to me that Stalin would have jumped on this opportunity and promised these physicists anything to get them onboard.

    The US not entering the war in Europe would also mean Stalin would have been able to grab all of the German scientists - like von Braun - which would have offered the potential of making the Soviets the dominant player in the world post-WW2.

    503:

    But the North East have done well after their initial slow reaction and the NY/NJ/?? grouping are doing well at the moment

    There are signs that the party hearty folks in NJ are starting an upsurge there.

    504:

    the online schooling experiment last spring was a complete failure - it is clear from most reporting that little education happened and parents suffered the most

    Looking at Ontario, not surprising given the way it was done.

    Any lead time wasted by policy-makers discussing what to do, leaving those responsible for actually doing something scrambling to get anything implemented — only to be told what they had done was wrong and they had to do it over, multiple times. So teachers and students were changing directions every week*.

    Government set limits for time requirements to be no more than 1/3 those of FtF classes. No surprise that not as much was learned with only 1/3 the time spent learning it.

    Government also announced that nothing mattered because doing a task poorly (or not doing it at all) wouldn't lower a mark. All the colleagues I've talked to say student participation plummeted after that announcement.

    Add in the fact that virtually none of the teachers had any experience in online learning. We all know that it takes a couple of years to get your feet under you as a teacher, even when you have a thorough grasp of your subject, and we were all effectively first-year teachers again. I know I was working 60-80 hours a week (and I wasn't the only one) trying to figure out how to accomplish online what I did in the classroom.

    TLDR: situation was set up for failure — no planning, no resources, no accountability, and constantly shifting objectives.

    *With changes in direction announced at 5:30 Friday afternoon, effective immediately. Which basically meant weekend time had to be devoted to planning new lessons/activities.

    505:

    It really is getting annoying to be repeatedly called an American

    Which is a very Canadian thing to say…

    506:

    That lot of wankers calling themselves America's Frontline Doctors that had the press conference spamming Republican reopen-style talking points? Not front line at all. https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/87797

    Key extract[- "none of the most vocal members have practices that would place them on the actual front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some don't currently practice at all.

    Two of those appearing at the Monday event are ophthalmologists, one of whom is no longer licensed"

    What a shock.

    507:

    JReynolds @ 468: Would the US even have bothered with the Manhattan Project if they were only fighting Japan? Or if they weren't involved in either war at all?

    That's a good question. When did the British share the "Tube Alloys" research with the U.S.? Was it before or after Pearl Harbor?

    If it came after Pearl Harbor, do you think the U.K. would have shared it with the U.S. if the U.S. had turned its back on the war against Germany?

    How might a Manhattan Project have progressed without the kick-start from "Tube Alloys"?

    508:

    My S O experienced online learning on behalf of her Granddaughters, I think it's safe to say it was at least as bad in the Kansas City area. I suppose the next thing to try would be powered filter hoods* for the students.

    *At minimum, plastic face shield, air mattress inflator, a plastic box cut to accept a HEPA or automotive cabin air filter, hair dryer hose and duct tape.

    509:

    If COVID only spreads through aerosolized droplets in the air,and not off surfaces, why do I need hand sanitizer to sterilize my hands after I touch the surfaces that the droplets landed on, because it doesn't spread from surfaces, right? The fact that im supposed to sterilize my hands implies that it DOES spread off surfaces. [You're asking for a rant. :-)] Initially, dogma, with little or no scientific backing. More recently, dogma combined with pride as the lack of evidence for indirect contact transmission (through fomites) of SARS-CoV-2 continues to persist. To be clear, the WHO in particular deals with regions and diseases where hand hygiene is extremely important, and the same is true to a lesser extent for developed-world broad disease prevention agencies, so the guidelines rolled out at the beginning of a pandemic are generic because not much is known about transmission initially for a new disease. Here's an example: Transmission of COVID-19 (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, last updated 16 Jul 2020) Indirect transmission through fomites that have been contaminated by respiratory secretions is considered possible, although, so far, transmission through fomites has not been documented. Six months into a global pandemic with millions of trained observers, no documented indirect contact transmission. (One or two(perhaps more) suspected cases, where inhalation was also a possibility.)

    Here's the WHO: Transmission of SARS-CoV-2: implications for infection prevention precautions (WHO, Scientific Brief, 9 July 2020) Despite consistent evidence as to SARS-CoV-2 contamination of surfaces and the survival of the virus on certain surfaces, there are no specific reports which have directly demonstrated fomite transmission. (Plus some blather about why this lack of evidence can be ignored.)

    Here's the CDC (language for public consumption): How COVID-19 Spreads (CDC, June 16, 2020) It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes. This is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads, but we are still learning more about how this virus spreads.

    Focus on minimizing sharing of unfiltered recently-exhaled air.

    510:

    This whole damn thing is all Reagan's fault (and Thatcher's). Think about it.

    Because of the "greed is good" mentality that has pervaded both sides of the Atlantic since Reagan/Thatcher, we've raised up two whole generations of GREEDY SELFISH ASSHOLES!

    And now they're going to kill us all.

    511:

    RE: Alt-WWII

    Let's see: the US does get into the Pacific theater, doesn't get into the European theater. Why? Who knows. Perhaps the German-American/Lindbergh arm is just enough more powerful that FDR covertly supports the anti-Nazi fight, rather than overtly.

    Thing is, Germany and Japan were allied, so the lend-lease would be flowing to the UK, even if there were no American boots on the ground. D-Day? Yeah.

    So anyway, the US Navy (which at that time included the Marines) gets to be the dominant player in the first five years of the war, and their job consists of pulverizing the Japanese in the Pacific and CBI theaters. That job presumably gets finished with nuking Japan, because Operation Downfall was almost precisely mirrored on both sides, so the nukes were the only surprise. Absent that, the US Army gets really blooded (bloodied) in taking Japan.

    Then the US turns to China, and this is where it gets interesting.

    There's a lot of information that's still classified about the CBI theater of the war (that's the China/Burma/India theater, which you likely forgot about). I was trying to fit that into a story years ago, so I dove in, but what little I found suggests that it was a bloody mess, and not just Bridge Over The River Kwai.

    The prize in this theater is the Malaysian rubber plantations. Without rubber, industrial warfare grinds to a halt. There's also something [redacted] about British opium production, and something [redacted] about the Golden Triangle production of the poppy products, which I don't understand at all, but which may be why so many of the American records from this theater haven't been released.

    But getting back to the main thrust of the story: the US was covertly/overtly supporting the Republican Chinese forces against the Japanese, while the commies were of course supporting Mao and Kim. With Japan gone, the US can then turn its attention to fighting the Nazis.

    If the Nazis are gone already and the USSR is dropping the iron curtain on the French border (or in France), then the most likely scenario is that a nuclear-armed US opens up a front against the USSR in Manchuria.

    And turning the Great Game into a shooting war, with only one side being armed with nukes, would be a great big bloody mess indeed.

    As for novel zoonoses coming out of the eastern Himalaya, of course it's possible. But thing is, the European troops suffered and died out there anyway. One example was one of those special operations groups (can't find the name at the moment). Their contributions and successes in fighting are...questionable, as with so many spec ops campaigns. But many of the European members of the group went naked between their jacket and their boots. They had such trouble with dysentery that is was simpler, on the march, to just drop out of line and crap on the ground, without having to worry about getting their pants down first. And that's reportedly how they fought.

    While it's interesting to speculate about a novel coronavirus getting out of the CBI theater, due to some troops hiding in the wrong cave, it's unfortunately likely that they would have died in the field before transmitting it to the rest of the world. But don't let that stop anyone from putting Covid19 in place of the Spanish flu at the end of an Alt WWII.

    512:

    mdlve @ 475: That isn't a restaurant - there is no way a restaurant would allow a table to be occupied by a single sitting for "hours and hours" - restaurants rely on turning tables over as fast as possible.

    You're right. It's not a restaurant. But that doesn't stop the owners of a bar from calling it a restaurant to evade orders that require bars to close.

    Bars are not allowed to open, restaurants are ... therefore it's a restaurant.

    513:

    Re: 'Focus on minimizing sharing of unfiltered recently-exhaled air.'

    Agree - it's definitely much easier for me to not touch something (and then my face) than it is for me to not breathe.

    re: Picking up COVID-19 from surfaces

    Based on what I've read/seen, the results are pretty consistent that this virus can stay transmissible for anywhere from hours (cloth) to days (plastics/metals) therefore cleaning surfaces on a regular basis is still important.

    My above comments probably sound vapid, redundant or obvious however I do have a point to make: whenever a statement about COVID-19 is made esp. by the media or scientists, the public (anyone who isn't an expert virologist) needs to have all the dots identified and neatly linked. We run our lives on narrativium.

    And since most humans have crap memories, we also need regular reminders of what something means and what links with what.

    514:

    JBS AFTER "Pearl" Tube Alloys project Based at various sites in the UK & Canada.

    Heteromeles The one thing that was good about prime arsehole Vinegar Joe Stillwell ( Apart from his epic escape from the Japanese, whilst not losing a single man ... ) was that he had zero time for Chiang & wanted to come to an accomodation with Mao. If it hadn't beeen for the ultras back in Washington & his own cancer, that would have been a very alternate history. The name you are looking for is: "Chindits" - maximum publicity, v. questionable value. For first hand accounts of that war see both Geo Macdonald Fraser & John Masters ( A private & a Brigadier, respectively ... )

    515:

    mdlve @ 502:

    Suggests to me that Stalin would have jumped on this opportunity and promised these physicists anything to get them onboard.

    The US not entering the war in Europe would also mean Stalin would have been able to grab all of the German scientists - like von Braun - which would have offered the potential of making the Soviets the dominant player in the world post-WW2.

    But would have all of those Nazi "German" scientists been up for grabs if the absence of the U.S. from the European war had allowed Hitler to concentrate forces eastward & maybe fought the USSR to a stalemate, possibly securing a separate peace? Would Stalin have survived in power in that case?

    516:

    Robert Prior @ 505:

    It really is getting annoying to be repeatedly called an American

    Which is a very Canadian thing to say…

    Thing is, Canadians ARE "American", as much as anyone born here in the USA. Mexicans too, but don't anyone tell Trumpolini.

    517:

    Uncle Stinky @ 506: That lot of wankers calling themselves America's Frontline Doctors that had the press conference spamming Republican reopen-style talking points? Not front line at all.
    https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/87797

    Key extract[- "none of the most vocal members have practices that would place them on the actual front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some don't currently practice at all.

    Two of those appearing at the Monday event are ophthalmologists, one of whom is no longer licensed"

    What a shock.

    I am not a doctor, but I do play one on YouTube!

    518:

    Szilard (Jewish German exile), Teller (Hungarian, exile), Von Neuman (Hungarian, exile), Oppenheimer (ooh! An actual American!) all pitching in.

    FWIW, all four were Jewish. There’s member of my synagogue, a woman in her late 90s, who was a secretary with the Manhattan Project when it was still in Manhattan. Unfortunately, I only learned about it a few years ago and I haven’t had a chance to ask her about it for various reasons.

    519:

    ...and just looked up Fermi and found his wife was Jewish.

    520:

    hair dryer hose and duct tape.

    Apollo 13?

    521:

    If it came after Pearl Harbor, do you think the U.K. would have shared it with the U.S. if the U.S. had turned its back on the war against Germany?

    Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#Origins

    There was a lot of British sharing before Dec 7, 1941.

    522:

    I guess my point being that if 1920/30s Europe hadn’t been full of anti-Semitism, no one would have built The Bomb.

    523:

    Suggests to me that Stalin would have jumped on this opportunity and promised these physicists anything to get them onboard.

    Given the number of folks with Jewish heritage in the early days of nuclear research, I doubt many would take that offer. They likely had too many friends or relatives with ties to the pogroms earlier in the century and before.

    524:

    Sorry, last thing, just looked up Szilard—he was also Hungarian, didn’t think he was German.

    525:

    Having been to one, in downtown DC about a month ago (I'm old, and high risk, though not as high as my SO), at least 3/4s of the people were wearing masks, as is true in most pics I've seen of other demonstrations.

    526:

    Thank you very much for the link to the story. I've passed it on....

    527:

    The politics of supporting the communists versus fighting them in WW2 gets really interesting.

    On the espionage front, on one side J. Edgar Hoover was rabidly anti-left. He got his start hunting anarchists. The FBI was limited by FDR to acting in the western hemisphere. On the other side was Wild Bill Donovan, founder of the OSS, who worked with communists, and whose organization was almost certainly penetrated by communist sympathizers if not agents. He was anti-fascist.

    Hoover won that battle, which is why the OSS disappeared.

    Now even the OSS, which supported the Chinese fighters, knew that Chiang was corrupt, but they worked with him because...choices.

    If FDR died and the war turned from fighting fascists to fighting communists, then there would have been a big ol' hairball in Washington. Probably Hoover would have ended up in charge of civilian/counter espionage via a globally expanded FBI, and so forth.

    In the bigger picture, I suspect that instead of having a cold war with Korea and Vietnam, we'd have an ostensibly western-oriented China, Korea, Japan, Indochina, and India, with a cool war front on their very long borders with the USSR. The corruption we associate with, say, the South Vietnamese government would be magnified in the Chinese Republic and elsewhere, and the US would create a fortress Japan with outposts on the mainland.

    Could be interesting......

    528:

    George Macdonald Fraser's book is excellent - one of the last of the war memoirs, and one of the best.

    However! Don't forget General Slim's own account! Highly readable. He was probably one of the best generals Britain produced in WWII. Too bad he wasn't in command in the Desert with Monty in Burma. The Japanese would have made it a bit farther into India, but the Brits would have done far better in the desert. IMO, of course.

    529:

    A little, thinking more along the lines of an old motorcycle column, "The Duct Tapes". I figure a plastic box with a HEPA filter mounted in a cut out, a USB powered fan inside, Lith-ion portable USB power pack and a hair dryer/vacuum cleaner hose feeding filtered air to your headgear of choice, for instance a toy Darth Vader helmet... basically anything that moves that filtered air where it needs to be.

    530:

    Indeed, as OGH said in his last blog entry; this is a world-changing moment and we have no way of predicting how it will pan out.

    I agree entirely with JBS at #510 - I'm hoping that at least some of that will not be in the CoViD-Revised World Order.

    531:

    Heteromeles @ 511: RE: Alt-WWII

    Let's see: the US does get into the Pacific theater, doesn't get into the European theater. Why? Who knows. Perhaps the German-American/Lindbergh arm is just enough more powerful that FDR covertly supports the anti-Nazi fight, rather than overtly.

    The impetus to pursue a war on Japan alone was already there within minutes of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Doesn't have anything to do with the "German-American/Lindbergh arm". It was just an extension of the then normal "American" isolationism. There were important constituencies who wanted to use ALL of our resources to go after Japan. The Pacific was the "American Ocean", the Atlantic was not.

    Thing is, Germany and Japan were allied, so the lend-lease would be flowing to the UK, even if there were no American boots on the ground. D-Day? Yeah.

    There would have been no Lend-Lease. It would have been cancelled so those resources could be committed to the war against Japan.

    So anyway, the US Navy (which at that time included the Marines) gets to be the dominant player in the first five years of the war, and their job consists of pulverizing the Japanese in the Pacific and CBI theaters. That job presumably gets finished with nuking Japan, because Operation Downfall was almost precisely mirrored on both sides, so the nukes were the only surprise. Absent that, the US Army gets really blooded (bloodied) in taking Japan.

    Would the U.S. have developed the atomic bomb without the assistance of the British "Tube Alloys" program? Even if they had, would they have been able to develop it within the necessary time frame? Or might the program have been as lackadaisical as was the German research?

    Then the US turns to China, and this is where it gets interesting.

    There's a lot of information that's still classified about the CBI theater of the war (that's the China/Burma/India theater, which you likely forgot about). I was trying to fit that into a story years ago, so I dove in, but what little I found suggests that it was a bloody mess, and not just Bridge Over The River Kwai.

    The prize in this theater is the Malaysian rubber plantations. Without rubber, industrial warfare grinds to a halt. There's also something [redacted] about British opium production, and something [redacted] about the Golden Triangle production of the poppy products, which I don't understand at all, but which may be why so many of the American records from this theater haven't been released.

    Opium is the source of morphine. Before synthetic opiates, morphine was the pain medication of choice - despite it's addictive qualities
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphine#History

    But getting back to the main thrust of the story: the US was covertly/overtly supporting the Republican Chinese forces against the Japanese, while the commies were of course supporting Mao and Kim. With Japan gone, the US can then turn its attention to fighting the Nazis.

    The U.S. was supporting Mao as well. Randolph Scott has some nice, kind words for Mao's "Long March" in the 1943 film Gung Ho. Evans Carlson the actual real life Marine on whom Scott's character is based did in fact travel with Mao's guerillas to study their tactics and did in fact bring the spirit of Gung Ho to his Marine Raider Force.

    Whatever happened to Randolph Scott anyway?

    But that presumes that the war in Europe would have not already been decided by the time the U.S. defeated Japan, which would have included defeating the Japanese invasion of China. If the European war had ended in armistice, there would have been no war for the U.S. join in to begin "fighting Nazis".

    If the Nazis are gone already and the USSR is dropping the iron curtain on the French border (or in France), then the most likely scenario is that a nuclear-armed US opens up a front against the USSR in Manchuria.

    That's the most unlikely scenario. The most likely scenario is the U.S. returning to pre-war isolationism regarding Europe.

    It's also quite unlikely the USSR would have joined the war against Japan even as late as they did in our world (on the day the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki). The Soviet-Japanese "war" lasted 3 weeks & 3 days, 9 Aug 1945 - 3 Sep 1945. There's no alliance with the U.S. for them to take advantage of.

    Without the atomic bomb, the U.S. would have had to deploy forces into China to drive the Japanese out; possibly in concert with British & French governments in exile operating out of India & Australia to drive the Japanese out of SE Asia. In that case there would have been no power vacuum in Japanese occupied Manchukuo for the Soviets to exploit.

    No Soviet invasion of Korea for the same reasons.

    The Chinese civil war would have likely resumed after the defeat of Japan, but I don't know if the communists would have prevailed in the face of the massive U.S. troop presence that would have been required to drive the Japanese out and would have still been in the country for some time after.

    And turning the Great Game into a shooting war, with only one side being armed with nukes, would be a great big bloody mess indeed.

    Probably wouldn't have happened, even if the U.S. had developed the atomic bomb prior to defeating Japan.

    As for novel zoonoses coming out of the eastern Himalaya, of course it's possible. But thing is, the European troops suffered and died out there anyway. One example was one of those special operations groups (can't find the name at the moment). Their contributions and successes in fighting are...questionable, as with so many spec ops campaigns. But many of the European members of the group went naked between their jacket and their boots. They had such trouble with dysentery that is was simpler, on the march, to just drop out of line and crap on the ground, without having to worry about getting their pants down first. And that's reportedly how they fought.

    The brunt of any fighting would have been borne by "Native" troops as it was in our history. So, negligible effect on the Europeans in theater. And most of those "Europeans" were ANZACs.

    While it's interesting to speculate about a novel coronavirus getting out of the CBI theater, due to some troops hiding in the wrong cave, it's unfortunately likely that they would have died in the field before transmitting it to the rest of the world. But don't let that stop anyone from putting Covid19 in place of the Spanish flu at the end of an Alt WWII.

    Considering how the "Spanish Flu" epidemic came about after the Great War & how it spread from the U.S. to Europe and back to the U.S. again, it's not that far fetched an idea.

    532:

    Re the Alt-WWII:

    Not convinced that there would have been a British government-in-exile. Sealion would be just as difficult in this scenario as in the history we know. So the probability is that France falls to Nazi German forces but the push west stops there.

    I was reading some family history last weekend and it's noted there that there was a flu epidemic, in Wales at least, in 1946 - it rather fell from public memory due to the awful winter of 1947. Some of that may have been spread by returning servicemen, just as in the 1918 pandemic.

    533:

    I have and, no, it wasn't. That's unjustifiable personalisation because, if they had died before they took office, similar events would have occurred.

    Raygun was almost entirely a symptom, not a cause - and, as was said at the time and he admitted over the contra affair, didn't have much of a clue what his administration was doing. I would acquit him on the grounds of mental incapacity.

    And I had been expecting something along the lines of a Thatcherite reaction to our previous political fossilisation for a long time, though she WAS a semi-dictator in her cabinet and was worse than I was expecting. Yes, she deserves a lot of the blame, but not all.

    534:

    Might think about checking your timing a bit. For example, FDR was assisting the British against the Nazis long before 12/7/41, so there's no reason for that to stop.

    Second, the Nazis and the Japanese were close allies as part of the Axis, so it's hard to declare war against one and not the other Axis states. While it's possible to get a USSR/Japan issue where they decided to not declare war until the closing days of the war, so there's likely some weird angle where the US would not enter the war against Germany immediately. For example, there was a big German-American population, some of whom were pro-Nazi, so conceivably, for maintaining a coalition against Japan, soft-pedaling the German part of the war would be necessary. Regardless, aid would still flow to our close ally, Britain. That, in turn, would probably mean we'd get the tube alloys and eventually nukes.

    As for getting the US to pivot to fighting commies, that wouldn't be hard: as now, left-wing radicals were more feared in the 20s and 30s than were right wing terrorists. Part of this was the still-current American supremacist problem. Part of this was anti-anarchist bias (still current) caused in part by the assassination of McKinley, the start of WWI by an anarchist assassination, and so forth. So having leftist radicals (Stalin and Mao) looking like they're taking over the world would be a reason to keep fighting. After all, fighting commies was the raison d'etre of the entire Cold War, so saying that it wouldn't happen in an alt-world also takes a really good explanation.

    Last, the Spanish Flu hit during WWI, not after. One reason it got so deadly was the way infections were handled on the Front favored evolution of a more virulent form, that in turn caused increased mortality in the second and third waves of global infection.

    535:

    JReynolds I have already read "Defeat into Victory" & Uncle Bill Slim was simply the best we had. I suspect that the next best was Horrocks.

    Tim H Not a Darth Vader helemt - a Plague Doctor mask, please - I note some now have Steampunk Goggles as well ....

    536:

    Because coumarin has been mentioned here, morphic resonance caused this to appear:

    https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/tonka-beans The tonka bean, which gives off notes of vanilla, cherry, and almond, infuses desserts, drinks, and even perfumes around the world. British chefs mix it into cocktail syrups and grate its shavings over pastries, while pâtissiers in France whip up tonka bean–infused ice creams and custards. In fact, the French love the bean so much, they’ve dubbed their obsession fièvre tonka, or “tonka fever” (a play on fève, the French word for “bean”). And yet, if you’re in the United States, stocking these wrinkled, raisin-looking beans in your spice cabinet could get you raided by the Food and Drug Administration. Tonka beans, a product of the South American cumaru tree, contain a naturally occurring chemical known as coumarin. Since coumarin can cause health problems such as liver damage, the FDA has enforced a ban on tonka beans since 1954. However, it would take eating 30 whole tonka beans to experience any negative effects from this toxicity. And no one eats the beans whole. Due to tonka’s potent flavor profile, a sprinkle of its shavings is enough to create a rich and heady aroma.

    I confess that this is the first I've heard of tonka beans.

    537:

    Totally unrelated question, but we're well over 300: does anyone know what the Norse, or from that region, version of the name "Jack" would be?

    Extra points if it tends to be used for someone who's not real bright.

    538:

    A plague Doctor mask would be an excellent choice, after all, who wishes to be mistaken for Dick Cheney?

    539:

    @538: I'll see your Dick Cheney and raise you a Duck Vader.

    540:

    I've come to wonder whether something like the Residents mask could be worn in as a face shield in conjunction with a cloth face mask to provide adequate protection.

    Actually, there's quite a bit of room for creativity with the face shield part of the ensemble.

    541:

    Sealion might have worked if a bunch of different dominos had fallen Hitler's way first.

    First, the Battle of Mers-el-Kebir needs to go the other way, and the French battleships in Plymouth and Alexandria on July 3rd need to put to sea and surrender to the KM, thereby leaving Hitler in possession of the (large, modern) French battle fleet.

    Secondly, U-boat blockade of the Straits of Gibraltar and the Western Approaches in late summer 1940. (Not feasible as things stand, but if Hitler had 3x as many heavy warships to back them up, who knows?)

    We want the RAF to lose air superiority over England during the Battle of Britain. Goering came close but lost his nerve in the face of heavy losses and switched tactics to bombing London and other cities -- the 1940 Blitz -- which gave RAF fighter Command time to recover. Maybe if someone figured out what the CHAIN HOME towers were a bit earlier, or persuaded Goering to keep pounding them a bit longer?

    Roosevelt sold 50 destroyers to the Royal Navy in 1940 in the Destroyers for Bases deal. If that is blocked, the RN would have had significantly fewer ships suitable for defending against a Channel invasion force.

    So: a shattered RAF Fighter Command, a drastically weakened Royal Navy (where it counts -- fast destroyers for inshore defensive work), less supplies getting through from the far east and North America, and a Kriegsmarine augmented by half a dozen battleships.

    Is that enough? Nope!

    What's needed is something better than Rhine barges for carrying troops. Ideally the LSD class of ship, or their civilian counterpart, the Ro-Ro ferry, would be available. The British Army in England had a number of armoured divisions available, with rested and trained tank crews fighting on their home turf: the Rhine barges had no room for anything bigger than 75mm towed guns and horses/mules. Given temporary sea superiority and protection from RAF tactical bombers, though, and some wholly atemporal Ro-Ro ships carrying tanks, and then (and only then) Sealion might have stood a hope in hell of not imploding by day 3.

    How do you get Ro-Ro ferries in 1940? Well, modern Ro-Ro train ferries go all the way back to 1849. Train ferries saw widespread use on the Channel for resupply during the first world war. Which makes it weirdly inexplicable that it took until Dunkirk for the British to realize that something like this might come in handy, and to fund a pilot program to convert three second-hand tankers into LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks) with bow doors and ramps in 1941-42.

    There is in principle no reason why Germany couldn't have had LSTs ready by 1940 ... except nobody came up with the idea.

    (This weird idea-blindness crops up elsewhere in history. The spinning wheel wasn't invented until the 14th century, despite being much faster than the drop spindle, and it took another 4 centuries to come up with the spinning jenny, which was essentially a gang of spinning wheels turned by a single drive belt from, e.g., a water wheel. Again: the wheelbarrow was a 10th century invention, despite being something you could hack together from 5th century BCE chariot parts.)

    Anyway, I call this my "a series of unfortunate events" theory for how a Nazi invasion of GB might have succeeded in 1940-41: several rolls of the dice come up in Hitler's favour, and one of his general staff with a bee in his bonnet about amphibious landings gets permission to convert a couple of RoRo rail ferry ships to carry road-borne freight and a ramp.

    Caveat: I don't think it's likely. Logistics aren't sexy, RoRo ferries/LSTs are pure logistics, and Hitler would rather have spaffed the reichmarks on jet fighters or new uniforms for the Waffen SS vitory parade or something -- anything -- instead of boring stuff like bulldozers, wooden pallets, fork-lift trucks, and jeeps (which as we know turned out to be what really won the war, charismatic megafauna like B-29s and atom bombs notwithstanding).

    543:

    Actually, if we want to actually help the little ones attain an education, well, it is entirely possible to put together a computer learning system substantially superior to traditional learning. It just takes.

    Uhm. Rather substantial amounts of effort to make, and quite a bit of server time to run, but have a look at this little gem.

    https://www.ida.org/~/media/Corporate/Files/Publications/IDA_Documents/STD/D-5358.ashx

    Step one: Locate the best one-on-one subject matter tutors you can find, and some high grade ai coders.

    Step two: Follow the tutors through tutoring some actual pupils. Record EVERYTHING.

    Step three: Have the tutor worth with the code team to turn the tutoring sessions into an AI system that duplicates the teaching.

    This.. worked. They managed to put together a 16 week course that turns out navy IT personnel with superior skill to active duty navy IT techs with a decade of experience (And ridiculously superior to fresh graduates from a much longer traditional course)

    So if you want to reform education to be remote and computer driven, sure you can. Just, you know, be prepared to spend some quite considerable effort setting up the courses

    544:

    Drive by about Beirut. And, kinda gonna break teh link limitation a little but kinda not, if that makes sense.

    Anyone saying nuke / AFB is blowing smoke (literally). Not fireworks, that was electric fizzle btw (you can tell by the lumens kicked out). Probably someone should pull up the locations of power routing to all those automated unloaders and so on.

    1 grep discussions about cranes. Epicenter is @ nexus of single non-Syrian side trade entrance / port they have - for an accident, that's one spot-on one if you wanted to further cripple the country. Onsite photo, confirmed Real.

    https://twitter.com/PsychologyDoc/status/1290705761467801601/photo/4

    1.5 Reports are that some kind of cargo (sodium nitrate has been floated - UK MoD via Telegraph is already pushing it) was impounded recently and that's what the red stuff is likely to be. Getting hold of that manifest (since, well: CN is a usual source for that type etc) is hoooot right now. 2 The currency has collapsed and trial about assassinated PM was about to go live[0], so expect the usual war-drums over iRAN. Hez may be many things: actively destroying their country? Dubious. 3 The larger sphere of things (such as major moves in Libya and N.Syria[1] and the interesting fact that the major oil people who dodged the 2020 quantageddon swim there), an unkind reading would be that 'raze and burn to save teh central castile' was in play. These young ones lack any sense of real danger. 3.5 It's always about oil.

    ~

    Anyhow. Prediction - you've got roughly 24 hrs before some genius claims the usual. Trying not to spam and break our link sanctions, but tough. Lot of data flowing atm.

    [0] NOLINK:haaretz. com/middle-east-news/15-years-later-crisis-weary-lebanon-braces-for-hariri-tribunal-verdict-1.9044467 - Note: trusting IL sources on LB is not smart, so immediately assume the opposite of such claims. IL is pretty much documented as running some of the 1980's destabilizing car bombings in the country while pinning it on Islamic / Christian radicals, for example.

    [1] Egypt announces international anti-Turkey alliance NOLINK:al-monitor. com/pulse/originals/2020/05/egypt-anti-turkey-alliance-libya-mediterranean-waters.html

    Interesting one that - check out Sudan water (again).

    Libya: Haftar's LNA says blockade on oil will continue NOLINK:aljazeera. com/ajimpact/libya-haftar-lna-blockade-oil-continue-200712072528393.html

    Shell and Total escape underlying losses on strong oil trading NOLINK: FT 29th July

    Heck, knock yourself out spotting Oil Giant Vitol Handed Record $2.2 Billion Payout to Its Traders Bloomberg, Aug 1 2020 for how the pros cleaned up.

    545:

    Actually, if we want to actually help the little ones attain an education, well, it is entirely possible to put together a computer learning system substantially superior to traditional learning.

    Perhaps.

    But your commentary ignores (apologies to the teachers who were thrown in at the proverbial deep end) getting the lessons to the kids.

    Too many families have thoroughly inadequate Internet access, insufficient hardware, and the inability to supervise the kids (because remember, the parents are supposed to be working from home not acting as teacher's assistant).

    546:

    Drive by about Beirut.

    We had multiple live video streams from different angles, and I saw some of them.

    There are multiple stages to the explosion. Initially, a low warehouse building where either fireworks or small munitions are cooking off. Fireworks are extremely plausible on the basis of what I saw (it looked very similar to other firework factory blazes).

    The second, much larger explosion came from across the road ... in the giant grain and bulk produce silos alongside the docks in the Port of Beirut. One option is a powder explosion in a grain store -- those are actually pretty energetic and can resemble fuel-air explosives (because you've got powdered starch/cellulose dispersed in an oxidizer -- air -- and all it takes is a spark). But the reddish cloud suggests something with amines or nitrates in it: possibly sodium or potassium nitrate (which: not just an explosives precursor, but fertilizer).

    I don't know if it was intentional, but if it was, whoever lit the blue touch paper was feeling a mite suicidal. The evidence points towards clusterfuck.

    UPDATE/EDIT (because I can): Derek Lowe, a usually trustworthy source, is passing (via twitter) reports of 2700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse.

    That'd do it.

    (As he notes, it's on the same scale as the Texas City disaster of 1947.)

    547:

    He wrote a short story "Ready for the Fatherland" in which Hitler came to a sticky end in 1943, before the Battle of Kursk. One of his generals took over and it was implied that he started fighting smart

    Colour me skeptical...

    The problem is that by the end of 1942, the Soviets have already taken out the Romanians and encircled the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad with Operation URANUS; and taken out the Italians and Hungarians with Operation SATURN.

    The Germans had nowhere near the force densities that they needed, even to defend what they had; the Soviets know this, and already outnumber them three to one. Over the next year, that climbs to six to one; by 1945 it's ten to one. Why settle for an Armistice and give them time to rearm?

    548:

    Also: school is less about lessons and more about socialization through mixing and enculturation with peers. And you can't deliver that through actually-existing AI.

    549:

    OH, and off-the-cuff comment:

    That explosion, if not chance, was definitely designed to be much larger. A lot of that red material in the updraft was probably meant to go boooom. The human side of LB were probably lucky that the gaseous 'cloud' part seems to have prevented tertiary ignition. (Initial fire - electric spike - secondary ignition --- probably supposed to create a third).

    Lucky, lucky. Or people playing around are too used to .mil spec stuff. Docklands bombing - you can get a lot of bang for a small buck with similar materials if you don't over-prime it.

    The second, much larger explosion came from across the road

    As stated: allegedly someone impounded a cargo from X, stored it next to initial point (not fireworks cough check the lumens cough). We also have seen the videos, the explosion doesn't happen in the storage facility. The epicentre is off. [Also, if you pull it up, you'll notice multiple flash explosions in the explosion - that's not how dust / nitrate explosions happen).

    It's a 1-2-3. Only 2 didn't spike 3. (#1 is initial firepoint. #2 is explosion that you saw. #3 is explosion that could / should have happened if all that material had gone critical).

    Still: #2 was still pretty big.

    p.s.

    Ammonium Nitrate is not red. And that's not what 2700 tonnes of it exploding looks like anyhow. Texas was 2,200 tons (less) and leveled up to 1/4 mile away etc etc.

    Those cranes are still standing.

    All we're saying is: it is very lucky that the tertiary explosion (that might have included all 2.700 tonnes) did not occur.

    550:

    Eh, that is not happening right now anyways, unless you start them playing MMOs or the equivalent.

    And even post-covid, superior instruction in actual skill means you can set aside more time for other purposes if so desired.

    That said, I was mostly having fun trying to work out the social consequences that will ensue when someone deploys this little gem on a society scale. That paper demonstrates some seriously accelerated learning.

    So, what is the world going to look like when the kids are not just alright, the public school system had a paradigm shift, and the average ninth grade graduate speaks 3 to four languages and 3 A levels implies equivalent skill to 3 bachelors or better?

    551:

    Re: the Beirut explosion. Yes, 2700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored in barely-adequate conditions for at least seven years (it was supposedly unloaded from a cargo ship in 2013 after it was arrested for being unseaworthy and its owners were being sued for debts) is a disaster looking to happen. However as a valuable seized cargo it should have been auctioned off long before now. Dockside warehouse space is also valuable real-estate that isn't usually used for long-term storage of anything which leaves me scratching my head a little.

    552:

    Roosevelt sold 50 destroyers to the Royal Navy in 1940 in the Destroyers for Bases deal. If that is blocked, the RN would have had significantly fewer ships suitable for defending against a Channel invasion force.

    Small nit to pick. This sort of started by talking about what would happen if things went different on Dec 7 and the days immediately after. Lend lease was over a year before Dec 7, 1941 so it was a done deal by then.

    Which makes Sea Lion even less likely to happen/work.

    553:

    a plastic box with a HEPA filter mounted in a cut out, a USB powered fan inside,

    I have a similar thing powering my bedroom. 12V because I have 12V in the room from the solar setup, and I use the HEPA filter off an air purifier because it's designed for low flow. Pulls about 3W minimum, 10W max using two 120mm "high back pressure" computer case fans ($AUS40 the pair!). Replacement filters are about $AUS20 each, but they last 100+ hours if the air is reasonably clean.

    Making a portable one would be easy enough, you won't want the high flow end of my setup so a single 100mm fan to match the hole on the end of the filter, 5V if you can get it (good luck) and just whack that on top of your helmet :)

    554:

    Vaccine Trial.

    Was supposed to go in tomorrow early for 3 hours for physical and first shot. (Placebo or does unknown.)

    Got a call around end of business today that said wait, we'll get back to you. The explanation given was a "technical issue" with the study that needed to be fixed.

    So, are people who are getting the real vaccine winding up with toenails that grow 3" in a day if you eat fries at McD's? People falling over dead if they watch too much Downtown Abby? Computer glitches in the software systems tracking everything?

    Who knows. I'll report back if they bring me back and/or tell us what happened.

    This was definitely a last minute thing as yesterday I got an email and text message. Plus a phone call this morning. All making sure I was going to show up.

    555:

    We're talking at cross-purposes: as Sealion was a plan for a 1940 invasion of the UK, I assumed we're discussing how it might have worked (turns out to take a lot of butterflies all flapping in unison, and maybe a pteranodon).

    556:

    There's fairly good evidence that Pearl Harbor was bait, only those involved didn't expect quite the actions that occurred. They certainly didn't expect the losses, although later actions (Midway) showed they were perfectly happy to sacrifice material / men to bait larger strategic goals.

    Wasn't it part of Bush senior's mythology that he survived shark infested waters on a secret mission that no-one rescued due to secrey or similar? Or was that bullshit tying him into the Enola Gay mission?

    Ooooh... did you see what we did there?

    Or, some fantastically corrupt officials had been selling off said cargo on the QT and replacing it with some cheap red colored mineral and it hadn't quite made the computer data entry part.

    The cranes are still standing.[0]

    If you want to play hypothetical, we're sure you can imagine a situation where someone fires one of those new fancy missiles you have to prevent the actual disaster unfolding. That cloud was weird (not as weird as some of the Yemen strikes, but close) and certainly doesn't fit the profile of a nitrate based explosion.

    Hey, spin it as the good guys[tm] save the day: spot potential mega-Texas, throw a strike in there that causes some damage, but not the 2.700 mega one.

    Cause that really really really wasn't 2k+ of nitrates exploding

    [0] And those things are easy to crumple / push over with the right forces.

    557:

    Would it be fair to tar the Australian Government with what is currently happening in one state,

    Yes, and we are. Scotty from Marketing* is currently running scared because he was all big manly man "open the borders, stop being pussies" and the oops damn never you mind. He's no Trump but he has definitely made a hard U turn from his early approach.

    The Murdochracy have gone from full "it's just the flu" to "save us!" now that they are personally at risk (the underlying theme of "whatever a Labour premier does is wrong" remains).

    558:

    Re: 'So, what is the world going to look like when the kids are not just alright, the public school system had a paradigm shift, and the average ninth grade graduate speaks 3 to four languages and 3 A levels implies equivalent skill to 3 bachelors or better?'

    They're going to get bored as hell if they have to settle for currently available jobs. Bored teenagers equals big problems or big tech advances. Much depends on their level of socialization and the extent to which they've internalized social/psychological values.

    A few economists have said that the birth rate is likely to dip because of COVID-19. Major concern is that this means fewer working (tax-paying) adults to look after seniors. Given that seniors are living much longer and healthier lives vs. the 1950s when retirement became a thing, I've been wondering whether retirement age shouldn't be made voluntary and done in some sort of step-wise fashion, i.e., switch to 4 days/week or part-time between 65 & 70.

    https://www.brookings.edu/research/half-a-million-fewer-children-the-coming-covid-baby-bust/

    559:

    Even with your Ro-Ro ships, you have the problem that the Channel ports were rigged for demolition. Once the bells start ringing for CROMWELL, There just isn't any way to get the necessary supplies over the beach, and into the hands of the German first echelon forces, before they run out of ammunition and fuel.

    Where do the Ro-Ro ships dock? How long before they're spotted, and identified as a High Pay-off Target? How good is their decontamination procedure (the UK was busy fitting mustard gas dispensers to second line aircraft, in order to saturate any and all German invasion beaches).

    Even if the Germans, with their entire naval force of six destroyers and a cruiser (because the rest was sunk or damaged after Narvik) manage to get the whole French fleet - who, exactly, is going to crew them? And while 50 ex-USN destroyers is significant loss, there are still 50 more British destroyers in home waters; not to mention the Home Fleet (all those battleships and cruisers) who will Engage the Enemy More Closely.

    The German Army was never fully motorised - SEELOWE called for the transport of several thousand horses in the first wave, to pull their resupply wagons and heavy artillery. There was some terrifying statistic about how much of their Op BARBAROSSA vehicle fleet was ex-BEF vehicles repaired and taken into service after Dunkirk; and how many different sizes of tyres that the German divisional quartermasters needed to carry, in order to keep their trucks running.

    Don't make the mistake of underestimating the Home Guard; these are the soldiers who invented combined-arms warfare in 1916-18, and destroyed the German Army in the field in the summer and autumn of 1918. And they're fighting for their homes. Meanwhile, the Auxiliary Units will be creating mayhem in any German rear area.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_anti-invasion_preparations_of_the_Second_World_War

    The invasion will always fail. The only chance for Germany is a political victory - a non-interventionist like Vandenburg or Taft wins their party's nomination and presidential election in 1940, Operation DYNAMO isn't particularly successful, the King is killed in a bombing raid, his brother takes over as Regent, Lord Halifax takes over as Prime Minister, Churchill falls, the right-wingers and Imperialists manage to rally around Armistice. Even that's a stretch - but a top-down defeat is far more likely to succeed than any invasion.

    560:

    others would say that the government tracking it's citizens is a nightmare to be avoided.

    I suspect only some of them... because not doing that kills a lot of people. I am somewhat surprised at how few places in the US have taken to shooting (at) visitors.

    a complete lockdown of the area where the outbreak happened, like what most sane Western governments are doing?

    I wouldn't limit it to western governments, and if you want real sanity in America you have to look to Argentina

    The problem Canada has is proximity to the US, meaning you get political contamination as well as actual US citizens roaming round wreaking havoc.

    561:

    Re: Beirut

    A question because I've zero knowledge of how explosives work ...

    Why is there something that looks like a mushroom cloud/balloon before the major blast/explosion? (Third Tweet time stamp :01 - right at the very beginning.)

    562:

    I have no idea how one would sell 2700 pounds of ammonium nitrate in a small country with a very militaristic neighbor on one side and a civil war on the other. What could possibly go wrong with such a sale?

    What I would have suggested is mix the stuff up with enough other things that it became fertilizer rather than explosives, and sell it in batches to the local farmers. That would have gotten it out of the warehouse in a less destructive form. If done properly, farmers throughout the region could have bid (or simply bought) without upsetting the local balance of terror.

    563:

    The problem Canada has is proximity to the US, meaning you get political contamination as well as actual US citizens roaming round wreaking havoc.

    Canadian Government has started to act on the problem of Americans playing games with the transit to Alaska exception - they can now only enter Canada through certain border crossings, having to check out before crossing into Alaska, and are given a time limit.

    https://www.canada.ca/en/border-services-agency/news/2020/07/covid-19-stricter-rules-for-foreign-nationals-transiting-through-canada-to-alaska.html

    564:

    Heteromeles @ 534: Might think about checking your timing a bit. For example, FDR was assisting the British against the Nazis long before 12/7/41, so there's no reason for that to stop.

    Just so you know, I consider your dismissive attitude that I don't know anything about history is pretty damn offensive. Check your own fuckin' timing.

    IF those who wanted the U.S. to turn its back on the war in Europe to pursue a Japan only war had gotten their way, Lend Lease and other aid to the U.K. would have ended. Those resources would have been diverted to the U.S. war against Japan.

    Second, the Nazis and the Japanese were close allies as part of the Axis, so it's hard to declare war against one and not the other Axis states. While it's possible to get a USSR/Japan issue where they decided to not declare war until the closing days of the war, so there's likely some weird angle where the US would not enter the war against Germany immediately. For example, there was a big German-American population, some of whom were pro-Nazi, so conceivably, for maintaining a coalition against Japan, soft-pedaling the German part of the war would be necessary. Regardless, aid would still flow to our close ally, Britain. That, in turn, would probably mean we'd get the tube alloys and eventually nukes.

    It's not so hard for the U.S. to declare war against Japan and not against Germany. In fact, that's EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. The U.S. immediately declared war on Japan (on Dec 8 in Washington DC) but didn't declare war on Germany until AFTER Hitler declared war on the United States (Dec 11).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States

    Hitler's declaration of war came as a great relief to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who feared the possibility of two parallel but disconnected wars – the UK and Soviet Union versus Germany in Europe, and the US and the British Empire versus Japan in the Far East and the Pacific. With Nazi Germany's declaration against the United States in effect, American assistance for Britain in both theaters of war as a full ally was assured. It also simplified matters for the American government, as John Kenneth Galbraith recalled:
         When Pearl Harbor happened, we [Roosevelt's advisors] were desperate. ... We were all in agony. The
         mood of the American people was obvious – they were determined that the Japanese had to be
         punished. We could have been forced to concentrate all our efforts on the Pacific, unable from
         then on to give more than purely peripheral help to Britain.
    It was truly astounding when
         Hitler declared war on us three days later. I cannot tell you our feelings of triumph. It was a
         totally irrational thing for him to do, and I think it saved Europe.

    As for getting the US to pivot to fighting commies, that wouldn't be hard: as now, left-wing radicals were more feared in the 20s and 30s than were right wing terrorists. Part of this was the still-current American supremacist problem. Part of this was anti-anarchist bias (still current) caused in part by the assassination of McKinley, the start of WWI by an anarchist assassination, and so forth. So having leftist radicals (Stalin and Mao) looking like they're taking over the world would be a reason to keep fighting. After all, fighting commies was the raison d'etre of the entire Cold War, so saying that it wouldn't happen in an alt-world also takes a really good explanation.

    In that case why wouldn't the U.S. have joined the war on Germany's side in the first place? Why didn't the U.S. go to war with the Chinese Communists when the Chinese Civil War broke out again in 1946? Why didn't the U.S. send troops into Manchuria to drive out the Red Army in 1946 when we had the bomb and they didn't? Why didn't the U.S. just go ahead and declare war on the Soviet Union as soon as VJ day was over (or why wait for VJ day, why not the day after VE day)?

    You ignore isolationist sentiment in the U.S. which was just as strong, if not stronger than American Anti-Communism.

    And maybe the U.S. would have gotten the bomb first and maybe it would not have ... but in any case, without U.S. participation; if the U.S. had turned its back on the U.K. and Europe, the war in Europe would have likely been over on terms that allowed the Nazis to remain in power, with control over most of western Europe. The U.K. might or might not have survived, but it would have been all over but for the shouting by the time the U.S. finished with Japan.

    Last, the Spanish Flu hit during WWI, not after. One reason it got so deadly was the way infections were handled on the Front favored evolution of a more virulent form, that in turn caused increased mortality in the second and third waves of global infection.

    The "Spanish Flu" went over to Europe with the AEF where it became an epidemic. It came back to the U.S. from Germany with the return of the victorious dough-boys of the AEF; completing the circuit. The pandemic began sometime in February 1918 and "ended" in April 1920. The Armistice was November 11, 1918. By July 2019 over 3 million soldiers had been demobilized in the U.S. The "Spanish Flu" pandemic began during WWI, but WWI ended before the peak of the pandemic raged through the U.S. civilian population.

    565:

    There's form for that kind of stupidity (storing 2700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in a warehouse, for six years).

    Take the Cypriot government, who in 2009 impounded a shipload of munitions on its way to Syria. Then stored the resulting 98 containers of heavy weaponry in a big heap, in the sun, at their main naval base. Next to the island's primary electricity generating station.

    Oh, and they turned down offers of assistance from the British Army's ammunition technical officers in the Sovereign Base Areas (they're the subject matter experts on the safe storage, maintenance, and if necessary disposal of things that go bang and boom - and they were worried).

    Eventually, two years later, the Cypriot Navy made its bid for the 2011 Darwin Award, with a 2 to 3 kiloton explosion.

    566:

    Allen Thomson @ 536: Because coumarin has been mentioned here, morphic resonance caused this to appear:

    https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/tonka-beans

    Coumarin and Coumadin (Brand Name for Warfarin) are not the same thing.

    The one you want to be careful of is Castor Beans

    567:

    @523: Given the number of folks with Jewish heritage in the early days of nuclear research, I doubt many would take that offer. They likely had too many friends or relatives with ties to the pogroms earlier in the century and before.

    Antisemitism was the essential motivator for the migration of European scientists of Jewish descent to the UK and the US prior to WWII.

    In particular The Martians, a uniquely talented cohort of Hungarian scientists, were initially moved to leave Hungary in the early 1920s due to the antisemitic violence of the White Terror in Hungary after the collapse of its short-lived Communist Government in 1919.

    As noted, many moved to Germany due to the quality of the universities there and the concentration of fellow physicists. Having seen anti-Semitism in action early in their lives, they were motivated to move again with the rise of the Nazi government in 1933.

    Leo Szilard left Germany early in 1933 and helped establish the Academic Assistance Council, helping relocate over 2,500 refugee scholars.

    Szilard, Edward Teller and fellow Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner were all in the U.S. by 1939, in advance of the Nazi invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. They were all intensely aware of the implications of the report of the discovery of nuclear fission in Germany by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, with a closely following theoretical explanation by Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch. Enrico Fermi, who had just emigrated to the U.S. due to Italian Fascist anti-Semitic policies affecting his wife, was lecturing at Columbia University.

    The confirmation of nuclear fission ignited intense discussion in the U.S. physics community, leading to the visit of Szilard and Wigner to Alfred Einstein to persuade him to dictate the letter to FDR warning him of the potential for development of a fission bomb by Germany. This letter was delivered to FDR by Roosevelt acquaintance Alexander Sachs in person on 11 October 1939.

    All the brainpower was in place prior to the start of WWII; given the Russian history of anti-Semitism, there was never any likelihood that Einstein and the Martians would have emigrated to the Soviet Union.

    568:

    Nojay @ 551: Re: the Beirut explosion. Yes, 2700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored in barely-adequate conditions for at least seven years (it was supposedly unloaded from a cargo ship in 2013 after it was arrested for being unseaworthy and its owners were being sued for debts) is a disaster looking to happen. However as a valuable seized cargo it should have been auctioned off long before now. Dockside warehouse space is also valuable real-estate that isn't usually used for long-term storage of anything which leaves me scratching my head a little.

    I heard some speculation on the BBC/PRI co-production "The World" that it was a Hezbollah ammunition storage. If Hezbollah had acquired it, that might explain why it was still there & hadn't been auctioned off.

    569:

    David L @ 552:

    Roosevelt sold 50 destroyers to the Royal Navy in 1940 in the Destroyers for Bases deal. If that is blocked, the RN would have had significantly fewer ships suitable for defending against a Channel invasion force.

    Small nit to pick. This sort of started by talking about what would happen if things went different on Dec 7 and the days immediately after. Lend lease was over a year before Dec 7, 1941 so it was a done deal by then.

    Which makes Sea Lion even less likely to happen/work.

    I don't think Lend Lease matters much one way or the other with regards to Sea Lion, but Lend Lease was still in progress on Dec 7, 1941.

    It could have been in jeopardy, with U.S. aid to the U.K. abruptly cut off if the U.S. had NOT gone to war with Germany; if we had pursued a war ONLY with Japan. And that WAS a real possibility before Hitler declared war on the U.S.

    And my point remains - it was not in Germany's interest to bring the U.S. into the War in Europe on the U.K.'s side, so why did he do it?

    I think it had a lot to do with his personal animosity to Churchill.

    570:

    Beirut Fireworks factory/storage RIGHT NEXT TO warehouse with fertilser - read POTASSIUM Nitrate in it. KNO3 is asking for trouble - it's explosive in its own right, never mind mixing it with toluene ( Amatol ) or Aluminioum ( Ammonal ) Gross human stupidity & carelessness strikes again - to 2.7 kilotonnes, yeah.

    Charlie@ 548 In which case my schooling was an utter failure from 1951 through to 1964 .... Yes, I wonder about that, too!

    @ 549 Polite response not possible - eff off. IT WAS STUPIDITY Cranes will stand - they are thin, with empty spaces on their insides - buildings, now ... solid walls & galss frontages against a preesure wave. Forget it. More stupidity - & ignorance, too.

    Nojay has it correct.

    Martin & others, especially you-know-who... GErman Ammonium Notrate explosion, down to strupidity & ignorance Oh ffs ... # 557 is conspiracy paranoia at it's loopiest.

    [ Yes, I know, Ishouldn't feed the troll, but: My father was a professional explosives expert - he made & tested the stuff, through WWII ... People are idiots & do stupid things & wipe themselves out OK?

    571:

    Well, at least we now know it was by the port. And I haven't watched the video... but it's clear to me, from the still from twitter, that there were TWO explosions. One you can clearly see the fires to the left of the tall building... and, based on the destroyed houses in the foreground, the other must be somewhere between half a klick and a klick to the right of the tall building.

    I'm having issues seeing one setting off the other.

    572:

    The spinning wheel wasn't invented until the 14th century, despite being much faster than the drop spindle

    Well, drop spindles are eminently portable (can even be used while walking, as shown in woodcuts) and are very easy to make.

    Spinning was also women's work, which has been historically undervalued.

    the wheelbarrow was a 10th century invention

    1st century in China, actually, as shown in tomb paintings in Sichuan. Looked rather like European wheelbarrows, with a wheel at one end and the operator carrying half the load. The balanced wooden ox design with all the load carried by a central wheel dates from the 3rd century.

    573:

    SFReader @ 561: Re: Beirut

    A question because I've zero knowledge of how explosives work ...

    Why is there something that looks like a mushroom cloud/balloon before the major blast/explosion? (Third Tweet time stamp :01 - right at the very beginning.)

    Looks like smoke from a large fire with some small explosions in the fire before the main blast. Smoke from large fires seem to take on that mushroom shape even if there isn't a big explosion.

    Compare it to the cloud from the 1988 Pepcom fire that preceded the big blast there.

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

    574:

    ...and at the time, no serious commentator thought it wasn't sabotage / deliberate..."Alexa: show me how to assassinate a major .mil NATO figure"

    I don't normally bother replying to your posts, but this is both utterly ignorant, and well into tinfoil hat land. Please, don't imply insider knowledge when you really don't know what you're talking about.

    Every serious commentator thought it was incompetence, plain and simple - especially the British ATOs who apparently made several attempts to persuade the Cypriots that they really needed to think about separation, stocktaking, maintenance of fUSSR weaponry (the USSR's risk appetite for ammunition safety design was... higher... than that of NATO). A pile of ISO containers exposed to direct Mediterranean sunlight for two years, do not come close to being a properly-designed ammunition storage area.

    The head of the Cypriot Navy (all of 460 sailors and eight patrol boats) is far from a "major .mil figure". He was there, along with the base commander, because it started as a fire outside his office.

    Note that the Russians and Ukrainians have had major ammunition dump explosions this century, after similarly-unwise storage of the same weaponry. Neither are stupid - far from it. Just underfunded, and as a result, occasionally underexperienced / undercompetent.

    575:

    There's a reasonably wide collection of various Tweets and video in the Army Rumour Service thread on the subject (that link comes with the usual warnings to those of a sensitive disposition).

    Amidst the occasional bigot, failed attempts at dark humour, and wild guesswork from conspiracy theorists - there are some comments from a very well-trained person who I know IRL, and others I know to be similarly qualified and experienced.

    The conclusion from the assembled footage is: it fits a nitrate fire / explosion. There's also local evidence of a ship that broke down, and whose cargo of 2700t of nitrates was offloaded into a warehouse. Where it was left for seven years.

    There's a fire, giving off a column of smoke; higher-quality video clearly shows small explosions within the smoke, before the big one. The brown smoke indicates burning nitrates. There's a surface detonation; the white cloud you see spreading quickly is just the effect of a compression / decompression wave passing though very humid air.

    It's not dust from the grain silos, or someone chucking around FAE or thermobaric weapons. Just a straightforward "it's only fertiliser, what could go wrong? It's not as if we'll ever store fireworks next to it, then have an accidental fire..."

    576:

    https://www.24x7mag.com/medical-equipment/patient-care-equipment/ventilators/man-dies-unplug-ventilator-air-conditioner/

    Two days later, the man was transferred to an isolation ward as a safety precaution since another ICU patient had tested positive for coronavirus, the newspaper reports. The man’s relatives then took an air conditioner to the hospital – as daytime temps reportedly topped out at 106 degrees — and allegedly unplugged the ventilator after not finding an open socket to cool down the room, according to the report.

    🤦

    577:

    Some additional Battle of Britain points. A major reason the the Luftwaffe swapped to London was to 'force' the RAF to engage with them (things you learn when you look at German evidence rather than only looking at the RAF self-justification during and after the war). The Luftwaffe thought the RAF was in a worse state than they were (didn't scale back their over-claiming enough), while the RAF thought there are around twice as many aircraft deployed against them as there actually were (assumed too many aircraft in a staffel). This is important when they were thinking about leaving the SE England bases. By the way, the Royal Navy was (quietly) conducting amphibious exercises in the Indian Ocean between the wars.

    578:
    Or possibly the report author knows what he’s talking about and uninformed internet commenter is an idiot.

    Tetlow is expressing surprise that "Poles, Romanians, Iranians and Syrians" are not applying for German citizenship in large numbers. So how does that show that he knows what he's talking about.

    Poles and Romanians and any other EU residents can still benefit from German nationality, starting with the right to vote, as well as everything just being that bit simpler with a German passport.

    Splendid. So if we accept that please provide an alternative theory to explain why they are not applying for German citizenship in large numbers, according to Tetlow.

    stateless people or refugees can apply for German naturalisation early.
    Stateless people? We're talking about refugees.

    Applicants must have stayed legally in Germany for 8 years without interruptions.

    You consider that "early"?

    And once again, if it's so easy and quick for refugees to get German citizenship please explain why, according to Tetlow, they are not getting it in large numbers.

    579:

    Actually, if we want to actually help the little ones attain an education, well, it is entirely possible to put together a computer learning system substantially superior to traditional learning.

    A huge amount of the skill and work of teaching young kids is about motivating them. And most kids are socially motivated.

    I'd guess that teaching techniques that work with self-motivated navy IT personnel are about designing the tutoring to give them the information they need. Whereas teaching techniques that work with the average 9-year-old are about encouraging them to learn.

    This has always been the big bugbear that educational research in remote learning worries about: how to get people to engage as much as they would with a real tutor and real class.

    580:

    Wow you're getting angry.

    Check out the 1940 Tripartite Text, between Germany, Italy, and Japan. Article 3 reads: "ARTICLE 3. Japan, Germany, and Italy agree to cooperate in their efforts on aforesaid lines. They further undertake to assist one another with all political, economic and military means if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Japanese-Chinese conflict. "

    While this does not compel Germany to declare war against the US once the US declared war against Japan, Germany would have been compelled by the act to declare war once the US attacked Japan.

    That Roosevelt's advisors were in an agony...well, perhaps they thought Germany wouldn't keep its treaties?

    This leads to an even more interesting counterfactual: Hitler throws Tojo under the bus at the first opportunity he gets, so therefore the US doesn't go to war in Europe immediately. Not sure why a would-be conqueror would do this while he's on the march, but whatever.

    Then we get to the Lend-Lease Act of March 11, 1941, (voted 260-165 in the House, 59-30 in the Senate). Per Wikipedia, this allowed FDR to "'sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of, to any such government [whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States] any defense article.' In April, this policy was extended to China, and in October to the Soviet Union. Roosevelt approved US$1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to Britain at the end of October 1941."

    So the second counterfactual would be that, despite tossing US1941 $1 billion at the UK, along with 50 destroyers from 1940, the US would suddenly cut all these (except aid to China) as "losses" and go it alone against Japan.

    I think these two point out the counterfactual gyrations that would have had to have gone on for Germany and the US to not end up at war in 1941, and the US to stop aiding the UK.

    Then we've got this long interlude about maybe the bomb, maybe not. Feel free to elaborate further if you need to. I'm here for you on that.

    I'll point out that Japan was hoping to get peace by making Operation Downfall so ugly that the US would rather sue for peace than invade Japan, thereby saving the monarchy. US polling at the time had about 25% of the American public against the invasion of Japan in August 1945 (after Europe). That's when Truman dropped the nukes and ended the war.

    If the counterfactual US was in a fight with Japan where they didn't have nukes, they would have invaded (25% is not a majority), and if they did have nukes, they would have used them and won. If the allies and the remaining axis powers were still fighting in Europe, I'm hard-pressed to see how the US wouldn't enter the war and end it by nuking Berlin.

    As for the Spanish flu, here again is ol' Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu), about the timing of the second wave, which was the deadliest part of the pandemic:

    "The second wave began in the second half of August, probably spreading to Boston and Freetown, Sierra Leone by ships from Brest, where it had likely arrived with American troops or French recruits for naval training. From the Boston Navy Yard and Camp Devens (later renamed Fort Devens), about 30 miles west of Boston, other U.S. military sites were soon afflicted, as were troops being transported to Europe. Helped by troop movements, it spread over the next two months to all of North America, and then to Central and South America, also reaching Brazil and the Caribbean on ships. From Freetown, the pandemic continued to spread through West Africa along the coast, rivers, and the colonial railways, and from railheads to more remote communities, while South Africa received it in September on ships bringing back members of the South African Native Labour Corps returning from France.[36] From there it spread around Southern Africa and beyond the Zambezi, reaching Ethiopia in November. The Philadelphia Liberty Loans Parade, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 28 September 1918 to promote government bonds for World War I, resulted in 12,000 deaths after a major outbreak of the illness spread among people who had attended the parade.

    ...

    "The second wave of the 1918 pandemic was much more deadly than the first. The first wave had resembled typical flu epidemics; those most at risk were the sick and elderly, while younger, healthier people recovered easily. October 1918 was the month with the highest fatality rate of the whole pandemic. In the United States, ~292,000 deaths were reported between September-December 1918, compared to ~26,000 during the same time period in 1915. Copenhagen reported over 60,000 deaths, Holland reported 40,000+ deaths from influenza and acute respiratory disease, Bombay reported ~15,000 deaths in a population of 1.1 million."

    That's the article you cited, incidentally. The peak of deaths in the UK coincided with the Armistice (that's the chart in the Wikipedia article), and I'm not digging deep enoughto see the total US figures. The closest I can come is this chart (https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=228841) shows New York hit its peak deaths at the end of October, 2018, before the Armistice.

    Again, please check your timing.

    581:

    "Fireworks factory/storage RIGHT NEXT TO warehouse with fertilser - read POTASSIUM Nitrate in it. KNO3 is asking for trouble - it's explosive in its own right, never mind mixing it with toluene ( Amatol ) or Aluminioum ( Ammonal )"

    Amatol and ammonal are mixtures with ammonium, not potassium, nitrate - that's why they begin with "am" :)

    Similarly the stuff in the explosion was ammonium, not potassium, nitrate.

    (Aside: Something weird is going on here. The very first link in the very first post on this subject is to a cbc.ca article which states very clearly, quite near the start, that there were 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored in the area. End of story, as far as I'm concerned. But then we get lots of posts from various different people wondering what it was, or speculating about other explosive substances like different nitrates or dust/air mixtures. What is this? The article tells you what it was before it tells you pretty much anything else about it. Why are people acting as if they have to guess that for themselves?)

    I knew about the event your link goes to already, of course. I mean, fuck on a stick...

    "We've got this ruddy great pile of ammonium nitrate and it's gone all hard and crusty, how are we going to get bits of it off?" "Dig it out with pickaxes, of course!" ('sake) ...a bit later... "Pickaxes are too much hard work, let's blast lumps off with dynamite instead." (HOLY FUCKING SHIT) (And they even got away with it for a while because the raw substance is not very predictable as an explosive. Predictable enough though.)

    What's really amazing is that that was not just one isolated group of unusually stupid people. An enormous number of accidental explosions, mine disasters and what have you are caused by people doing equally incredibly fucking stupid things. As at Oppau, they even get away with it for a bit, because the probabilities are often quite low. But not low enough that you can consider them insignificant. And they never fucking learn; things like this have happened since explosives were invented, and we have hundreds of years of oh-shits to learn from, but there's still a regular procession of random bangs that never stops.

    582:

    Thanks. I make one minor point here; as I understand it, the Luftwaffe *did know what the CHAIN HOME towers were, and hit them; but when one was replaced by (the only) "mobile" spare unit, and the RAF response didn't get any less well coordinated, the Luftwaffe decided that CHAIN HOME wasn't a vulnerable point and stopped hitting it.

    That at least is what I've read. I can't remember where, though.

    583:

    Also: school is less about lessons and more about socialization through mixing and enculturation with peers.

    My mother's area of research was distance learning - starting when that mostly meant physically mailing in assignments up until recent times - and she'd agree.

    People are social. They learn socially. That's why our world has classes and not just textbooks.

    The trick to make distance learning work for most people is to get the social side working. Which is really, really hard.

    There are things you can do - eg setting up small group work that makes the remote learners engage with each other about the material - but it takes both a lot of prep and a lot of experience to do well.

    Without that you tend to get a flattening of the bell curve. The best learners will do okay but the average will go down and the bottom third will just log off and play computer games.

    584:
    GErman Ammonium Notrate explosion, down to strupidity & ignorance

    CF AZF.

    Hell, the wiki page links to Ammonium nitrate disasters.

    It appears that people never learn.

    585:

    I'd point out, on this Alt-WW2 timeline, that it's really not worth investigating, because the key ingredient it needs to work seems to be that the US and the UK behave as they do now. To put that more plainly, this scenario works best when FDR behaves like Trump, Churchill behaves like Johnson, and their respective legislatures behave like the sad messes we have now.

    It says something about how far we've fallen, when it turns out that despots like Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo were more willing to honor their treaties than are the current leaders of the US and UK.

    We've got a long, hard fall ahead of us. And hopefully I'm only talking about the season.

    586:

    The CHAIN HOME stations were only the front-end to the air defence director operations that used the valuable data the radars provided to conserve fighter efforts and avoid expending them in dealing with diversionary attacks. The Germans didn't have any need for such an integrated defence system themselves at the time because they were on the attack, not (yet) defending the Homeland from air assault and they didn't realise what the combination of the two could achieve until the Battle of Britain.

    A few of the CHAIN HOME stations were attacked by Stuka Ju-87 aircraft since they required pin-point bombing, being quite small targets. The Stukas lasted short when they came up against the Hurricanes and Spitfires of the RAF alerted to the raids by, guess what? so the Stukas were eventually pulled back from attacking the UK mainland. The damage to the antennas in the transmitter and receiver towers which were attacked was easily repaired. The radar equipment sheds positioned some distance from the towers were armoured against bombs so they suffered no damage at all, I believe.

    587:

    it is entirely possible to put together a computer learning system substantially superior to traditional learning

    The navy training program assumes responsible, motivated adults. Not children. A good chunk of what happens in school isn't content-based, it's applied psychology. Creating motivation. Monitoring for neglect or abuse. Socialization* — learning to play with other kids, learning that one doesn't always get one's way**… When I started I thought that knowing the subject and being able to explain it were enough, it took me a long time to realize that that is only a small part of the job.

    From what I can tell, they were designing a training course for maintaining IT systems.

    Years ago at a physics conference I was chatting with a university professor who was bemoaning the tendency to view physics as a collection of word problems, and the ability to solve them as proof that the subject was understood. He said that under traditional problem-based physics teaching you can get all the way to a masters program without doing more than learning various means of solving problems, without actually understanding the concepts. See this problem, use this equation. Why use that equation? Because it gives the right answer. No room for out-of-the-box solutions (or problems).

    I fear computer learning systems would end up like that — especially if they are implemented on-the-cheap (so that more money can flow to profits and project managers).

    *I know Greg (and others) had horrible experiences years ago at school. Things are different now. Not perfect, but better. A lot less bullying, for example.

    **A big problem with home-schooled kids, in my limited experience, is that they tend to do what they want rather than what was assigned. Which is great for creativity, but when your boss wants the accounting report for the last quarter and you give her an illustrated poem on the beauties of organic mathematics because you found it more interesting, things will end in tears.

    588:

    "Ammonium Nitrate is not red."

    No, but the fumes from its explosion are, due to the large amounts of unreacted NO2 it gives off. (O2 as well, but of course you can't see that.) This is one reason that when you're trying to deliberately make an explosive with it, you usually mix it with some kind of fuel to react with the surplus oxidising ability and get more energy out of it, like diesel fuel, or aluminium, or TNT, which has the opposite problem and leaves behind a lot of unoxidised carbon when it goes off. Indeed a "proper" ammonium nitrate explosion doesn't look red, because the added fuel eats the redness, or the redness kills itself eating the added fuel, however you like to look at it; but an accidental one, where you haven't put fuel in it, does.

    Dunno about the rest of it. My own reaction was to read the bit about 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate near the beginning of the cbc.ca article and consider that to be all I needed to know, as in "oh fuck, some divot's done this again". I'm well aware of the extremes of stupidity people exhibit when dealing with explosive substances, and the unthinking casualness with which the next person disregards all the times it's happened before; the reason events this big are comparatively rare is because most people don't have the opportunity to be stupid on such a large scale, not because they're not that stupid.

    Besides, everything beyond that article seems to be all videos, and me and videos do not get on. So I have no comment to make about the sequence of events or the nature and extent of the destruction, etc. as regards this specific event. Maybe someone did discover that there was a fucking huge bomb in this warehouse and decide to set it off: it's possible, but I don't know. I'll hold off forming an opinion until I've got something more to base it on. I can make only the general remark that ground bursts are kind of tricky, and even sodding huge ones have a strong tendency to surprise their perpetrators by doing a lot less damage than they look like they should have done.

    589:

    And, your normal wibble begins. No, I'm nothing to do with 77 Bde, and never have been. Just a former reservist infantryman, who gave it up fifteen years ago. I very much doubt that they're anything to do with this or the messaging around it (no matter the fantasies of the Catina-centred Universe).

    Safe to say, you're back onto "ignore as utterly irrelevant, with nothing useful to add".

    But meanwhile, you're going to love this bit: the probable reason that the result doesn't look like 2700t of ANFO, is that only some of the material went BANG. Perhaps some of it burned off in the initial fire, or much of it was pushed away and didn't detonate, whatever. It's rather hard to achieve 100% efficiency in making things explode, unless you're trying very hard to achieve it - and it's reasonable to assume that this was cockup, not conspiracy.

    It's still a tragedy for all involved; and someone else has pointed out that the potential for lung injury, if not damage from the nitrates involved, is high...

    ...reassuringly, the neighbouring nations (including Britain and Israel) immediately offered help. Maybe some small good can come from this.

    590:

    "The resultant shit-show of all of you DEMANDING that it be recognized that 2.700 tons of nitrates DID ACKTUALLY EXPLODE shows us one thing."

    If it was there and there was a great big explosion with reddish fumes, then I think that question is pretty conclusively answered. As I said, accidental ammonium nitrate explosions don't look the same as ones where it's been deliberately formed into a dependable explosive for civil or military deliberate use.

    "They don't know who did it. It was supposed to be 'Biblical'. RU doesn't know. CN doesn't know.

    It's all a bit mysterious.

    nose wiggle"

    I'm not arguing with any of that. Certainly I think the cause is most likely to be nothing more than utter stupidity involving quite a lot of people, because that's what it usually is. But I have no reason to rule out foul play - at any point in the sequence, from setting the stuff off all the way back to having it stored there in the first place. After all, the prevalence of stupidity does make it rather easy to do dodgy things and have it considered normal activity, and if you do get challenged you can just go "duh?"

    591:

    [disambiguation needed]

    Also, what era Norse? Most of the names that "Jack" can expand to would have arrived only with Christianity.

    592:

    The trouble with "admixtures that prevent explosions" is that they basically don't. They just make the explosions less powerful, less predictable, less complete etc. Probably one of the reasons the Oppau bunch got away with it for a while is that their heap was mixed with (inert) ammonium sulphate.

    It is of course necessary, if not all that hard, to remove such substances if you're trying to make a proper explosive. But another thing about them is that the bigger the heap you have the less effective they are, so while it may be harder to set it off in the first place, and the reaction may not spread to the whole lot, it still makes a big bang when it does go.

    I find it strange that people are still so ready to regard ammonium nitrate as "just fertiliser" when it does have restrictions and regulations festooned about it because of its explosive properties, but they do, it seems.

    593:

    Yes, I know, Ishouldn't feed the troll

    You really shouldn't — they can manage quite well on their own.

    12 posts by the Seagull so far today, and it's only 02h15 GMT. Thought there was a daily limit but obviously not.

    594:

    Posts crossed. That's one of the features that makes certain varieties of foul play more feasible. It's not actually possible to make a 2750 tonne wodge of it "inert", unless you dilute it so far that it's basically not much use for anything at all. If people are making excessive extrapolations of the properties of a treatment that makes it harder to make small (comparatively) bombs with it, then they are less likely to recognise the real danger.

    595:

    "5V if you can get it (good luck)"

    You can probably get away with running 5V fans off a single lithium cell; depends on the particular fan, so worth testing first, but most of them will still run on the 3V discharge end point voltage.

    Similarly with using 12V fans and the lithium batteries (three cells in series) they use for model aircraft. Looking at ebay, those batteries seem to be quite a good way of getting a reasonably large amount of capacity for a reasonably small amount of money.

    596:

    I have a "12V" pack that has a basic BMS in it and a common DC plug for input and output. IIRC ~500mAh, is slightly bigger than an 18650 cell but not much more expensive. Will charge off 12V or so and does current limiting in the BMS but will charge very slowly due to thermal throttling if you go too far over 12V (the one 5cm square page "manual" is very clear on that).

    I use it for some of my bike lights because it's easier to find 12V christmas tree light strings than 5V or 3V, at least here. And yes, that's purely for the festive season bike lighting needs :)

    597:

    There's a crossed wire somewhere, or something. For sure what you say is possible: to have the output from the fertiliser factory in the form of ammonium nitrate in some inert matrix. The question is over the properties of that combination. It has to be rich enough in ammonium nitrate that it's still more useful as fertiliser than some other source of nitrogen (ie. pretty rich, even if you do care about the difference between oxidised and reduced nitrogen). It also has to be either insoluble or one of a rather small number of soluble compounds in order not to be more use as weedkiller. With these restrictions, what you get is basically a substance that you can be reasonably sure will not blow up if you don't have too much of it and don't hit it too hard. Extracting pure ammonium nitrate from it is still a kitchen level operation, and it still follows the general trend of explosive substances that the more of them you have in one place the dodgier they are. 2750 tonnes of it in one pile is absolutely going to still be able to go bang, and you won't stop that except by splitting it up into lots of little smaller piles that aren't all on top of each other.

    Someone fires a little missile into the heap? Yeah, that would do it. Or a shell, if you're accurate enough. Have enough delay on the fuse that it penetrates well into it before it goes off. A big enough fire engulfing it also stands a good chance of setting it off; fire and some explosives are a bit funny, but again, enough of a heap and enough cooking time and they're not as funny as all that. It's what I would call a good high-gain target, although I don't know if that's what the military call things like that.

    I gave up on Martin's forum link after a few pages because all I was seeing was a remarkable number of blank iframes interspersed with guff. I did see one still image that showed what could well have been the cloud from a pile of impure ammonium nitrate going up, but not a truly massive amount of it. Maybe most of the pile blew itself apart before it could react. Maybe it was in several piles and they didn't all go bang. Or maybe that photo was taken somewhere else entirely and has nothing to do with it. It's not like I know the place well enough to recognise the street.

    As I said, I'm not disputing the overall direction of your explanation, since I don't have enough information to form an opinion. I'm basically saying that it's not valid to exclude some set of possibilities on the basis of some hypothetical non-explosive form of ammonium nitrate, because such a form does not exist; and that misunderstanding the nature of some approximation to such a form is a persistent component of the reasons people get caught by things like this.

    598:

    I saw them live during the Mark of the Mole tour. It was one of the most amazing nights of my life, maybe only exceeded by seeing Einstein's Secret Orchestra live - I think they were the greatest space band ever!

    599:

    "these are the soldiers who invented combined-arms warfare in 1916-18"

    Nitpick: copied it off the Germans, more like. I find it annoying that English-language historians don't seem to have a lot to say about where various ideas came from, as if there was something shameful about the British army not having originated the whole concept entirely from scratch. Very often some important idea came out of some other army, which generally meant either straight from the Germans, or from the French, or from the Germans via the French. The correct use of artillery is another example. This isn't to say that the British army was devoid of its own ideas, but simply to point out that many successful ideas were developments from someone else's origination.

    600:

    I'm not going to disagree about WWI combined-arms, because I don't know much about that.

    But combined arms has been, to my knowledge, invented in the Late Middle Ages in multiple places, in Ming China, and by Alexander the Great, among others. Heck, IIRC the Kiribati worked in two-weapon teams IIRC (think lance and trident, except made from coconut wood and covered with shark's teeth).

    I'm rather fond of combined arms, even if these days my favorite example leaf blowers and hockey sticks batons and less lethal munitions. But it does get invented rather often.

    601:

    The thing about the space programmes was that they basically came out of ICBM research, and provided a way to make it respectable. Without the interest in ICBMs there would have been a lot less urgency about developing space rockets. And the interest in ICBMs came first out of Germany making them during the war (hence the race to capture the ICBM researchers at the end of it, which was close IIRC), and then out of their usefulness in combination with nuclear warheads. It seems that the launch of Sputnik is mostly seen nowadays as "hey wow, they put a satellite up!", but at the time it was seen as "this could be a nuke, ner ner ner", which was basically correct.

    602:

    There is a bright white flash consistent with a ... bright flash at the south end of the southern supposed ammonium nitrate storage building, 0(ground) to 20 meters up. Beirut explosion screencap from CNN video. At about 3 seconds in this The Guardian copy of same video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93tV6-0Ugwk (Is there any good video that shows the other side of that tall building? (Silos?) And once, when I stepped through that video at 0.25 speed, I thought I saw an earlier flash.)

    The investigation's story will need to be consistent with all the videos and photos. Site map https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9010305,35.5183816,372m/data=!3m1!1e3

    FWIW, Jeffrey Lewis found a data sheet that estimates that the efficiency (TNT equivalence) of a explosion of explosives-grade ammonium nitrate caused by fire is about 20 percent. Higher efficiency means a proper detonation (e.g. as you suggest with a missile or shell). Poorer grades (or with additives) of ammonium nitrate would be less efficient or wouldn't (easily) explode. So 20% is an upper bound if that's what it was and it was initiated with a fire. (Biggest explosion I ever saw was a ammonium nitrate blast to remove/break up a rock hillside, about 200kg. Father wanted me to see/feel it. Education.)

    Here are two fact sheets. 15 percent is described as conservative for safety purposes, which means that 400 tons is an upper limit, not a best guess. pic.twitter.com/BcDwMPGp46

    — Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) August 4, 2020
    603:

    Minor point for applying for German citizenship, for non-EU citizens there is also the question what happens with the non-German citizenship; quite often you'd have to give it up.

    It's quite complicated, and there was (and is) a heated discussion in relation to people born in Germany to Turkish parents.

    Also, Iran is a complicated case, you can't easily give up its citizenship, and citizenship is inherited from the father, so I guess most of the Germans of Iranian descent I know (quiet a few) have dual citizenship. According to wiki, there is a treaty from 1929(!) according to which both states have to give their permission before a citizen takes up the other one's citizenship; let's just say I guess that's going to be somewhat complicated with refugees from whatever authoritarian regime is in power in one state applying for citizenship in the other one; Germany's record has been quite good since 1945, well, the DDR dissolved in 1990, but as for Persia/Iran, hm, let's just say SAVAK, and even before that, Mosaddegh reacted quite harsh to the CIA-backed plans to dispose him, apparantly the 1953 referendum was not a secret election. In practice, wiki says this treaty is ignored in Germany since around 2000.

    604:

    The problem Canada has is proximity to the US, meaning you get political contamination

    Canada gets a LOT of movies and TV from the US. Back in the early 80s when I was in Toronto a lot the locals would joke about drunks (and others) getting arrested and demanding the police read them their rights. As seen on TV.

    Ah, nope. At least not then. Things may have changed in 35 years.

    605:

    Citizenship and the relinquishment thereof is a tricky business, as Australia found out not so long ago when the High Court decided that "no foreign allegiance" meant citizenship, some forms of eligibility for citizenship, but not religious faith (no matter how professed, when at the time we had the example of a Catholic Prime Minister who explicitly said that Papal law overrides Australian law!!!*)

    We have specific examples of Jewish parlimentarians who have the right to Israeli citizenship and that's ok, but people born in NZ or Canada who thereby have the right to citizenship of those countries are required to formally renounce that right. The Irani MP was eventually given an exemption, although as far as I know the kiwi government doesn't recognise the "renunciations" as having legal effect but doles them out on request to satisfy countries like Australia have stupid requirements (incidentally, Australia has the same birthright setup and does the same thing eith renunciations... they have not looked in the mirror on this one).

    There's some other fun ones: Hungary gave either citizenship or the right thereof to a bunch of Jews and their descendants who were deported/lost in WWII, for example, which embarrassed an Australian MP who was affected. So you could be happily wandering through life then suddenly at age 40 you're Hungarian... :)

    • Australia also has the recent Prime Munster who said that Australian Law overrides the Laws of Mathematics so ... fuck knows what the Liberal Party does to get leaders but it's not good.
    606:

    We have similar issues here in Australia. There is a trend now for people to demand their constitutional rights while filming themselves.

    The Australian constitution is basically all about state rights and not much else. There's certainly nothing about freedom of speech or bear arms.

    607:

    You could argue Caesar was working out combined arms at Pharsalus, where he had his cavalry withdraw through his (previously hidden) reserve infantry, who there went at Pompey’s cavalry using their pilae like pikes. “Aim for their faces, boys”, based on the premise that the socially prominent eques would shrink from this sort of brutal thing.

    608:

    "But I have no reason to rule out foul play - at any point in the sequence, from setting the stuff off all the way back to having it stored there in the first place."

    This explosion has a lot in common with the small-arms explosion on Cyprus on july 11 2011.

    Neither Lebanon nor Cyprus wanted to store the potential hazard, but because of the way Maritime and International law works, they were stuck with it, until it exploded.

    In the case of Cyprus, USA/NATO put a lot of pressure on Cyprus to interdict the illicit cargo, then let them stew in the political pressure from Syria once they had done so, instead of having the UN Security Council ask/demand that Cyprus hand over the loot to somebody who could safely deal with it.

    Yes, it needed to be UN who asked that, because Cyprus.

    Beirut got stuck with 2750 tons of sub-standard moldovian fertilizer feed material, because the owners of the ship just absconded when it was found unseaworthy.

    The crew sent home and the protoexplosive eventually got unloaded into the harbour-stores, where it just sat while lawyers wrangled over who owned it and what could be done with it.

    On Cyprus the trigger was a wildfire, in Lebanon a fire on a ship carrying fireworks.

    609:

    Even before that, we can wonder how chariots and infantry interacted in Late Bronze Age warfare; sadly, descriptions of the Battle of Kadesh center on the chariots. And the Ilias was composed much later.

    Minor note, the Old Vedic term for "chariot" is "ratha", related to German "Rad" for "wheel"; ancient chariots were more akin to race cars than tanks in durability, so there was a vedic term for a cart used to transport it into battle. It shows how limited they were concearning the terrain and circumstances where chariots could be used.

    I guess I'll contact a friend who knows the term in the next few weeks, I'd already planned to write him, maybe I'll do a short visit. ;)

    610:
    when at the time we had the example of a Catholic Prime Minister who explicitly said that Papal law overrides Australian law

    Well, in his personal life, he is free to do so; if anybody kidnapped Henry Kissinger and inflicted the Ludovic Technique on him concerning his "Greatest Hits"[1], German law would call that "Freiheitsberaubung" (false imprisonment) and "Körperverletzung" (bodily harm); my overriding personal law would call it, well, you can guess...

    It just shouldn't necessarily show in his official life, if there is an conflict that can't be mitigated, he should step back.

    [1] I used to greet semi-state visits by Old Henry with a "where is a suicide bomber when you need him", though that would be him getting of lightly. But then, the guy is getting old. Hm, Maybe I should start to compile a list of graves to piss and shit[1a] on when I'm in the vicinity. [1a] Also, a modest proposal for the controversy concerning statues and other monoments; just put up a pedestal near to them, you can even collect a fee so their maintenance can be privatized.

    611:

    Apology & correction [ Typos "R" us ... I wrote this section before I opened the comments, so I'm only now noting Pigeon @ 590, for instance. ] For some reason, I ( & others ) were talking about Potassium Nitrate, KNO3 - which actually is both a fertilser & an explosive component - in Gunpowder. The modern equivalent is Ammoniuim Nitrate NH4NO3 - as used in Ammonal, Amatol, Torpex & as "released" at the Oppau explosion I referenced earlier. Right - let's keep this straight, shall we...

    [ And posts 574, 576, 578, 579, 581, 565, 586, 593, 597, 601, 602, 604, 608, 609 And I will re-quote Martin: Please, don't imply insider knowledge when you really don't know what you're talking about. ]

    John Hughes "It appears that people never learn" - yup, spot on ... depressing isn't it?

    Robert Prior The odd thing is ... I had a very good school education, as an education. ( By modern standards: 2xA*, 1xA, 1xC at A-level, 11 O-levels ) Oh & @ 606 Not only that, but insulting, ignorant & paranoid utter twddle with it.

    Pigeon @ 599 Don't bother, she won't be told ...

    612:

    You'll be lucky if anything like that is in stock. You'd be better off with something like this:

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=plague+doctor+mask

    Cheaper too, and more to the point (so to speak).

    Yes, a plague doctor mask is very topical these days. I got this one, which will just barely accommodate glasses (but not very well and they fog up a lot if I wear another mask under that one). There was a bit of learning to move, as there's a lot more nose than I'm used to.

    I'm a little disappointed that the weather is too warm for the full costume.

    613:

    copied it off the Germans, more like

    Nope. The Canadians get more credit than the Germans. Modern “combined arms” is the use of infantry, armour, artillery, air support. And the logistics to keep moving. Name one time the Germans achieved more than limited tactical success with tanks in WW1 (their entire tank force was 20 vehicles). And remind yourself who invented the modern tank.

    Look at how “moving barrages” developed; how the command of indirect fire was managed (until WW1, most field artillery was direct-fire); throw in the invention of the tank. Add the ability to throw down light and heavy rail lines to keep the offensive resupplied.

    During the Hundred Days campaign, the Allied forces broke the German Army, and travelled across Europe at the same speed they did in 1944...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Days_Offensive

    614:

    Ammonium Nitrate can be remarkably stable, up to the point where it goes bang.

    My engineering school is a descendant of the "école des poudres", so when the AZF disaster struct a chemical engineer did an article in the school paper recounting a number of similar disasters.

    ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters )

    The one that struct me, as I remember it was somewhere under german control during the war, where a train had derailed in a railway station following a bombing, then it had rained over it, making the content rock solid.

    They broke the content into chunks using explosive, and it eventually went off causing a major disaster.

    The operating word here is eventually, they where able to use about 100 dynamite cartridges before it blew up .

    Ammonium Nitrate is in a way so stable that you can do stupid things for a loooong time before it catches you, allowing bad practice to go on and on up to the point there is enough of the stuff for some of it to be contaminated in the right way. And then you are dead.

    615:

    Gave in and actually purchased some paper books like some kind of cave-dwelling primitive.

    The Biggest Estate on Earth The Gay Agenda Born A Crime (Trevor Noah) Dark Emu

    It began to seem easier to enrol in the local university and use my student card to borrow Gammage directly. Not cheaper, but easier. Definitely easier than my original strategy of tailgating into the library and reading it in situ.

    616:

    [Papal law overrides Australian law] Well, in his personal life, he is free to do so;

    Specifically he let an accused paedophile flee the country and refused to even attempt extradition from Vatican City on the basis that that church should be free to break Australian law.

    Personal in that he considers the paedophile a friend and visited him in prison when a later government had a different opinion about the law.

    617:

    The Australian constitution is basically all about state rights and not much else.

    Right now two things: there is a flat ban on restricting travel between the states (those restrictions are in place) and the high court found an "implied right of political speech", but it does not extend to threats or profanity. So I can call the Prime Munster a lackwitted bellend but not a fuckwit.

    Likewise I have an absolute constitutional right to travel to Victoria from NSW, but unfortunately the NSW government won't let me try. Luckily Big Clive is suing to overturn those restrictions because he's that sort of idiot (Titanic II).

    618:

    Suggest reading Biggest Estate on Earth before Dark Emu as I did. Pascoe refers to Gammage extensively anyway, but the effect you get is: yes, I think we already demonstrated this, yes we can reach those conclusions, oh, now you mention it we can probably reach those too, and heck I hadn't thought of that, that's awesome.

    619:

    Wasn't it part of Bush senior's mythology that he survived shark infested waters on a secret mission that no-one rescued due to secrey or similar? Or was that bullshit tying him into the Enola Gay mission?

    Sounds like you're conflating GHWB being shot down with the sinking of the USS Indianapolis while returning from a secret mission (because it was secret, nobody realized the ship was missing until some days after it had sunk: 75% of the entire crew survived when the ship went down, but only 25% of the crew were still alive when they were rescued three and a half days later (a routine patrol flight spotted them in the water by accident and raised the alarm).

    620:

    Re: 'Ammonium Nitrate is in a way so stable that you can do stupid things for a loooong time before it catches you, ...'

    Dumb question time ...

    How long can I safely keep fertilizer in my gardening shed before it becomes a fire/explosive risk? Picked up extra this Spring because it was at a very attractive (low) price. For some reason I had assumed that consumer grade bagged fertilizer was 'safe' and could be kept for at least a couple of years. Now I'm not so sure. Thanks in advance!

    621:

    Moz @632:

    The Australian Constition is primarily designed to ensure that trade between the states is not impeded.

    Which is usually taken to mean, "no taxes on border crossings".

    So Palmer would have to somehow prove that preventing him from entering W.A. is somehow a "tax" on something, and if it's on him then he has declared himself a "chattel slave" which is illegal under Australian Law and he can't cross the border.

    The smart money is on him losing (the High Court is aware that he has some legal problems floating around, and they don't like to look like they can be bought), the really smart money is on, "almost anyone other than Palmer," possibly winning, if they'd tried first!

    622:

    In the UK, it's almost certainly ammonium sulphate if sold to the hoi polloi - the gummint hasn't forgotten 1381, you know. You can keep it indefinitely if you keep it dry, and it won't explode under any plausible circumstances.

    623:

    Well your fertilizer may be mixed with stabilizing products, specially if it is sold to non professionals in a reasonable country.

    Here is a safety sheet, in case you have the pure stuff :

    https://www.austinpowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Ammonium_Nitrate.pdf

    TLDR : keep it well sealed away from heat, fire and a large list of other contaminants (specially chlorides and organics).

    It's mainly an oxidizer, it needs some sort of fuel (or a lot of heat) to go critical.

    624:

    It's mostly about setting out the powers of the Commonwealth versus the states in considerable detail, though some might argue that the bits written by (or at least attributed to) Barton and Griffith aboard the Lucinda up the Hawkesbury that fateful season were influenced by the sherry in the saloon more than anything else.

    625:

    Revisiting the original topic briefly, today I learned about World of Warcraft's Corrupted Blood incident, in which a virtual plague spread through their virtual population.

    In many ways the 2005 event was illustrative for anyone curious about epidemic response. Most of the population response was encouraging, showing that many people would self-organize to help or at least isolate and not make things worse, even before the authorities formulated advice telling them to do so. It also showed that some people would disregard the advise or even intentionally spread the plague.

    In the end the WoW sysops tweaked the local laws of physics to eliminate a transmission vector and restored the entire world from backup, turning back time several weeks. Neither of these solutions is applicable to our current situation.

    626:

    In the end the WoW sysops tweaked the local laws of physics to eliminate a transmission vector and restored the entire world from backup, turning back time several weeks. Neither of these solutions is applicable to our current situation.
    Well, obviously, !@##!@!#

    627:

    So how did by olde-fashioned NO CARRIER get edited out of that?

    628:

    Yeah, I'd hate to go on a date with them. You give them a clear boundary, and the response? Stomp all over it.

    629:

    Yeah ... I mean, that's my minimum laundry list for stuff you'd need to have a snowball's chance in hell. And it still doesn't look terribly promising, does it?

    I think a big chunk of the "why didn't Operation Sealion WORK?!?" chorus we get these days is down to most people not understanding that the logistics, technology, and tactics for forcing an amphibious invasion in the face of a modern, mechanised defensive force simply didn't exist before about 1943, when the allies began learning it the hard way (thinking of Italy here, not just D-Day).

    Previous invasions hadn't really required that stuff. The wooden ships era led into a long period of such profound RN dominance at sea, globally, that most developments in land warfare took place on the continent, where the biggest obstacles were rivers and mountains (and in South America, e.g. the War of the Triple Alliance, which had a big component of jungle warfare).

    630:

    Re: Fertilizer

    Thanks for the link - much appreciated! (Thanks also to EC!)

    Apart from the blast which probably structurally damaged very many buildings (homes & biz) within at least a couple of miles' radius, based on the comments on this blog it seems that much if not most of the 'fertilizer' was probably sent up into the air. This means another disaster is about to happen because one of the major problems is that this compound can literally destroy one's blood.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methemoglobinemia

    ' ... an overall reduced ability of the red blood cell to release oxygen to tissues, with the associated oxygen–hemoglobin dissociation curve therefore shifted to the left. When methemoglobin concentration is elevated in red blood cells, tissue hypoxia may occur.[14]

    Nitrates are suspected to cause methemoglobinemia.[9]

    In otherwise healthy individuals, the protective enzyme systems normally present in red blood cells rapidly reduce the methemoglobin back to hemoglobin and hence maintain methemoglobin levels at less than one percent of the total hemoglobin concentration. Exposure to exogenous oxidizing drugs and their metabolites (such as benzocaine, dapsone, and nitrates) may lead to an increase of up to a thousandfold of the methemoglobin formation rate, overwhelming the protective enzyme systems and acutely increasing methemoglobin levels.[citation needed]

    Infants under 6 months of age have lower levels of a key methemoglobin reduction enzyme (NADH-cytochrome b5 reductase) in their red blood cells. This results in a major risk of methemoglobinemia caused by nitrates ingested in drinking water,[10] dehydration (usually caused by gastroenteritis with diarrhea), sepsis, or topical anesthetics containing benzocaine or prilocaine. Nitrates used in agricultural fertilizers may leak into the ground and may contaminate well water. The current EPA standard of 10 ppm nitrate-nitrogen for drinking water is specifically set to protect infants.[10] Benzocaine applied to the gums or throat (as commonly used in baby teething gels, or sore throat lozenges) can cause methemoglobinemia.[11][12'

    631:

    the feds under Trump are missing in action and the southern GOP Governors are as inept as Trump

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/04/politics/six-governors-3-million-covid-tests-rapid-antigen/index.html

    Mississippi is in this group.

    Basically if they Trump will not allow the feds to do this they are going to do it on their own but jointly so as to not be a cross purposes. And are inviting other states to join in.

    What a total mess our fearless leader has gotten us into. (Apologies to moose and squirrel.)

    632:

    To be fair, various people in the Allies had been thinking about the problem since the Dardanelles campaign in 1915. Germany only just started, and even then most of the staff were tactics/operations guys who'd rather plan dashing lunges that elegantly encircle entire armies than deal with the logistics to power said lunges.

    633:

    Well, yes, but people are still blinkered both by what actually happened, and by thinking that warfare is a purely military matter.

    If Hitler had been half sane, Dunkirk would have led to only a minority of troops rescued, and much more naval damage. Establishing air supremacy over the Channel and Kent would probably have been possible, as would taking over (some of) its airstrips and establishing a beachhead (by landing paratroops).

    Militarily, it would have been untenable, but there would have been panic, and the main roads would (probably) have clogged with cars, vaguely moving, stopped and abandoned (often out of petrol or broken down), and possibly (especially if prodded by enemy propaganda) including an exodus from London. Any British heavy vehicles moving from the north would have had to push those off - and that takes TIME, especially if you want to avoid killing the people who are still in the cars. Churchill might have ordered that, but it would have weakened his position further.

    If Hitler had offered an armistice immediately after that sort of Dunkirk, and reiterated it after the beachhead, my understanding from people who were adults at the time (and reading) is that there might well have been a revolt in Parliament, a new Prime Minister and an acceptance of the armistice.

    It would also have strengthened the hand of the isolationists in the USA, which is where this came in.

    634:

    re: Transmission of SARS-CoV-2: implications for infection prevention precautions (WHO, Scientific Brief, 9 July 2020)
    Despite consistent evidence as to SARS-CoV-2 contamination of surfaces and the survival of the virus on certain surfaces, there are no specific reports which have directly demonstrated fomite transmission.

    It's actually worse than that. Almost all of the testing of surfaces detects presence of RNA rather than presence of active virus, i.e. virus that can be grown. This is because the only way to detect that is to try to grow it, which is quite dangerous. And RNA tests are relatively easy.

    635:

    re: Actually, if we want to actually help the little ones attain an education, well, it is entirely possible to put together a computer learning system ...

    Sorry, but you're confusing unlike materials. Grade school children, especially in the early years, are very dependent upon establishing a personal bond with the teacher. If they don't have it, expect them to have learning difficulties. It's less the material than them seeing any purpose in it. As they get older they're more interested in what the other kids are doing. It's probably (my guess) their teens before they start seriously thinking about how this will help them as adults.

    Yes, I accept that computerized learning can (in principle) present the material much more effectively. But the material isn't what makes them willing to learn.

    636:

    Re: ' ... i.e. virus that can be grown. This is because the only way to detect that is to try to grow it, which is quite dangerous.'

    Considering that one of the sources of the original SARS epidemic was people pushing elevator buttons, the safest bet is to not touch surfaces even if they appear clean. Yeah, I know SARS2 is somewhat different but 'once bitten, twice shy'.

    637:
    And sigh: what we didn't link to was the President of the United States of America, live on air, declaring that (paraphrasing) the US military top brass had told him it was an attack.

    Well, that ties it all up. A totally convincing explanation from a credible source.

    638:

    This whole "I don't believe in things I can't see" is very depressing, really. I thought we'd got rid of that in the 1920s. (Not snarking at SFReader.)

    639:

    Your nitrate bomb is equal to 500 of the largest bombs dropped in WW2 that knocked out entire cities, industrial zones and harbors.

    "Hey, Siri, explain the inverse square law to me?"

    What you're missing is that the destructive radius of an explosion scales as the square root of the yield: a 2700 tonne explosion is not 1000 times as powerful as a 2700 kilogram explosion, it's only about 32 times as powerful.

    (There's a reason nobody builds nuclear weapons with yields over about 5Mt these days: you get more bang for the buck by throwing a bunch of significantly smaller warheads at the target, for exactly the same weight of explodey gadgets.)

    640:

    My goodness that thread was hard going. Does that forum always have such a low SNR?

    641:

    Martin @ 580: Every serious commentator thought it was incompetence, plain and simple - especially the British ATOs who apparently made several attempts to persuade the Cypriots that they really needed to think about separation, stocktaking, maintenance of fUSSR weaponry (the USSR's risk appetite for ammunition safety design was... higher... than that of NATO). A pile of ISO containers exposed to direct Mediterranean sunlight for two years, do not come close to being a properly-designed ammunition storage area.

    I do actually have some experience in the area.

    When we went to Iraq in 2004 we were issued a large number of those 40' shipping containers to transport equipment and personal gear. When we arrived at our final location HQ set up a "container farm" so the containers could be used to store whatever the various units didn't need to use at the time. They were left exposed to direct sunlight.

    One of the units had several cases of 1 pound Propane cylinders stored in theirs. Along about mid-July the inevitable happened. I was tasked with conducting "accident" investigation afterwards.

    We used those ISO containers to set up our ASP (Ammunition Supply Point), but there each container was surrounded by an individual earth berm, with a canopy overhead creating an air gap to reduce heating from insolation. The berms would also provide a barrier to horizontal blast if one of them did happen to catch fire.

    Martin @ 582: There's a reasonably wide collection of various Tweets and video in the Army Rumour Service thread on the subject (that link comes with the usual warnings to those of a sensitive disposition).

    Amidst the occasional bigot, failed attempts at dark humour, and wild guesswork from conspiracy theorists - there are some comments from a very well-trained person who I know IRL, and others I know to be similarly qualified and experienced.

    My first take without doing any "internet research" (I do have a small amount of training in the field) was it looked like a straight up industrial accident. That's why I referenced the PEPCO fire to explain the "mushroom cloud" that was visible before the blast. "Mushroom clouds" are what smoke from large fires does.

    The conclusion from the assembled footage is: it fits a nitrate fire / explosion. There's also local evidence of a ship that broke down, and whose cargo of 2700t of nitrates was offloaded into a warehouse. Where it was left for seven years.

    There's a fire, giving off a column of smoke; higher-quality video clearly shows small explosions within the smoke, before the big one. The brown smoke indicates burning nitrates. There's a surface detonation; the white cloud you see spreading quickly is just the effect of a compression / decompression wave passing though very humid air.

    It's not dust from the grain silos, or someone chucking around FAE or thermobaric weapons. Just a straightforward "it's only fertiliser, what could go wrong? It's not as if we'll ever store fireworks next to it, then have an accidental fire..."

    The white cloud is water vapor condensing out of the air in the low pressure behind the shock wave from the explosion. It's the same phenomena you see in those videos of aircraft going supersonic during a fly-by at an air show.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCXRRuSod78

    I mentioned the speculation that it was Hezbollah material only as one possible explanation for why it was still sitting there after seven years. It's not like the Lebanese government has an OSHA/EPA that's going to be able to tell them they're storing it all wrong & have to get rid of it ... although seven years is kind of "Biblical".

    But, yeah, I agree this looks like the result of plain vanilla industrial negligence.

    See also: West Fertilizer Company explosion in West, TX.

    642:

    Heteromeles @ 589: Wow you're getting angry.

    Yes I am. Glad you noticed.

    Again, please check your timing.

    Fuck you and the white horse you rode in on.

    643:

    If Hitler had been half sane, Dunkirk would have led to only a minority of troops rescued, and much more naval damage. Establishing air supremacy over the Channel and Kent would probably have been possible, as would taking over (some of) its airstrips and establishing a beachhead (by landing paratroops).

    You seem to be falling prey to a couple of myths: That it was Hitler who called the halt, and that the German army was capable of reducing the resistance at Dunkirk. You may find this answer illuminating: Why did Hitler not crush the British army when he had it surrounded and cut off at Dunkirk?

    TL;DR version, Hitler/the Germans did not crush the British army while he had it surrounded and cut off at Dunkirk, because in the sheer impetus of the blitzkrieg into France, his infantry hadn't caught up to his tanks/armour, and the tanks/armour needed rest, repair, and refueling. The Germans then got hit with a counterattack by Allied forces trying to break out of the German encirclement, got scared, and decided to halt and catch their breath. Once they were regrouped and recovered, the Germans did their best to crush the British at Dunkirk, but ultimately failed due to the valiant yet doomed French forces fighting a rearguard action and the bravery of both the British Navy and the Air Force coming to the rescue of the trapped Army.

    In short, if the commanders had let their panzers keep advancing, they were liable to get themselves encircled and worn away. Remember that the German army was a very schizo-tech affair. You had a small group of highly trained, well-mechanized combined-arms teams that would do the lightning dashes and encirclements. Then you had the horse-drawn infantry who moved at a walk that curiously didn't appear much in propaganda films. Break the former, and you break the Nazi's ability to conduct future offensives. Like, say, Operation Barbarossa or Operation Sealion.

    644:

    From what I have heard from authors who have looked at the Nazi documents of that era, that was only part of the reason, and his senior generals were strongly advising Hitler to order the advance to proceed.

    The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

    645:

    re: Considering that one of the sources of the original SARS epidemic was people pushing elevator buttons, the safest bet is to not touch surfaces even if they appear clean. Yeah, I know SARS2 is somewhat different but 'once bitten, twice shy'.

    And that's quite plausible. The thing is, the evidence is lacking...so it's only plausible. (Also, elevator buttons tend to be touched frequently. Many other surfaces have a much longer latency. Which may matter.)

    If COVID survived 15 minutes on a surface, then elevator buttons would be a reasonable transmission in many circumstances. But tabletops generally wouldn't be. But if it survived 2 hours, tabletops would often be very dangerous. And we really don't know which it is. (It probably isn't a couple of days to a week, which is the estimate for detection on plastic surfaces.)

    646:

    Bill Arnold @ 617: The investigation's story will need to be consistent with all the videos and photos.
    Site map
    https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9010305,35.5183816,372m/data=!3m1!1e3

    A few thoughts off the top of my head ...

    If you've got 2700 (long) tonnes of fertilizer where are you going to store it? Since I don't see a pile of it there in the satellite view, those "Beirut Port Silos" look like they might be a convenient place.

    https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/08/05/opinion/05itani/05itani-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp

    The fact that at least part of those silos are still standing suggests to me that the entire 2700 tonnes didn't detonate. I wonder if that semi-pile of reddish material just to the right of the remaining silos might be what's left of the ammonium nitrate?

    Looks like another industrial grade fuck-up producing an industrial "accident".

    647:

    Actually, that would be a hilariously short alt-wwII. The nazis attempt an unsupported assault on the forces at dunkirk, the forces at dunkirk have nowhere to run, fight like a cornered army and annihilate the spearhead, at which point the french armored forces chew the rest of the german army to bits and the entire offensive gets rolled back all the way to Berlin. Game Over.

    Only shorter scenario I can think of is Blum personally getting on a tank during the invasion of Poland and going all "FORWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRD" (The german fortifications across from the maginot line had been stripped utterly bare, so that ends with everything west of the Rhine in french hands)

    648:

    Poul-Henning Kamp @ 623: On Cyprus the trigger was a wildfire, in Lebanon a fire on a ship carrying fireworks.

    Was it a ship? What I've been able to see in the videos, it looks like a fire in this building:

    https://www.google.com/maps/place/33%C2%B054'04.8%22N+35%C2%B031'08.2%22E/@33.9013424,35.5167413,985m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x0:0x0!7e2!8m2!3d33.9013376!4d35.5189302

    649:

    If you've got 2700 (long) tonnes of fertilizer where are you going to store it? Since I don't see a pile of it there in the satellite view, those "Beirut Port Silos" look like they might be a convenient place.
    No, the fertilizer wasn't in the silos, it was in the warehouse next to the silos, you know, the one that has been replaced by a big crater in the "after" pictures.

    You wouldn't store poisonous fertilizer in grain silos that are used for importing 85% of Lebanon's grain,

    650:

    Was it a ship? What I've been able to see in the videos, it looks like a fire in this building
    Which is the one that has been replaced by a big hole in more recent photos.

    651:

    Charlie Actually, earlier than that - the avoidable mistakes ( Faling to learn from history ) were shown up in the utter fuck-up that was The Dieppe Raid - August 1942

    EC No ... the Nazis were virtually "Out of supply" by the time that Dunkirk happened - they needed the time to re-group & there were still considerable French forces loose eleswhere in France ... As I see Rabidchaos has also noted - HORSE-DRAWN supply lines - OK?

    Charles H specially in the early years, are very dependent upon establishing a personal bond with the teacher. And if, even at 7 years old the child holds the supposed "teacher" in contempt? I managed to learn a lot between the ages of 5 & 11, but in don't think any significant part of it came from my primary/junior school. Hence my lifelong contempt for such people, they are licencesd child-minders, from my experience.As opposed to my senior school, where the shock of finding that theTeachers ACTUALLY KNEW THEIR SUBJECTS-_ & could actually impart information, was profound & a good wake-up call. The first 3 years of hell were due entirely to some of the arseholes I had as fellow-pupils who were actually not interested in a Grammar School education.

    LASTLY @ 652 [ In addition to: posts 574, 576, 578, 579, 581, 565, 586, 593, 597, 601, 602, 604, 608, 609 ] You do not know what you are talking about, it's 150% bollocks. And I thought there was a limit on these posts, anyway?

    [ P.S. JBS/Heteromeles - please knock it off? ]

    652:
    Only shorter scenario I can think of is Blum personally getting on a tank during the invasion of Poland and going all "FORWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRD"

    Well, since Blum left office in April 1938...

    653:

    SFReader @ 635:

    Re: 'Ammonium Nitrate is in a way so stable that you can do stupid things for a *loooong* time before it catches you, ...'

    Dumb question time ...

    How long can I safely keep fertilizer in my gardening shed before it becomes a fire/explosive risk? Picked up extra this Spring because it was at a very attractive (low) price. For some reason I had assumed that consumer grade bagged fertilizer was 'safe' and could be kept for at least a couple of years. Now I'm not so sure. Thanks in advance!

    No answer, but additional question ... What's the percentage of Ammonium Nitrate? Can you get 100% Ammonium Nitrate from the Garden Center? (I don't garden, so I don't know.)

    My guess (and it is purely a guess) is that it should be OK for as long as you store it properly to keep the bags from deteriorating. It's apparently contamination that makes it unstable.

    My other question is how long will it last before breaking down and losing its effectiveness as fertilizer if you do store it properly?

    654:

    There's at least one photo circulating from before the explosion (date uncertain) of the dockside warehouse where the ammonium nitrate was stored. In the photo the warehouse door is open and you can see the large sacks of fertiliser, labelled as ammonium nitrate. Each sack is approximately a cubic metre in size with straps at the top so they can be lifted by forklifts or small cranes. They are stacked two or three on top of each other in untidy piles and packed in tight, pretty much the perfect conditions for a blast shockwave to propagate through the entire warehouse within a few hundred milliseconds.

    Given the likely temperature conditions inside the warehouse during the Middle Eastern summers I'm not surprised it went off when provoked. I doubt very much there was any attempt to control the environment inside the warehouse to prevent the fertiliser degrading in storage.

    655:

    You are trolling, again. That's not what I said, not what I meant, and almost certainly not what was Hitler was advised to order. The long and near-complete delay did allow the supplies to catch up, but it ALSO allowed the French to regroup in a defensive position, which then gave time for the evacuation. It is possible to do something between two extremes, you know.

    656:

    In the photo the warehouse door is open and you can see the large sacks of fertiliser, labelled as ammonium nitrate. Linked upthread, and also mentioned by the one with many names, so here are some relevant tweets just as a joke (about putting people on ignore; I'm easily amused). (I agree with your comment, noting that there are broad possibilities for "provoked" so the investigation will be interesting and conclusions constrained by a large amount of available evidence.)

    This photo is making the rounds this evening on Telegram. Appears to show numerous parcels of bagged Ammonium Nitrate.

    Was going to write this off as horse shit, but those are the exact same warehouse windows.🤔 pic.twitter.com/RLEe3XWawA

    — The Intel Crab (@IntelCrab) August 4, 2020

    The bags say "NITROPRILL HD," which may be a knock-off of Nitropril made by Orica.
    Orica sets the TNT equivalence for fire at 15 percent.
    .15 x 2750 = 412.5
    One more data point that suggests the explosion was a few hundred tons. https://t.co/ucuHdpazm3

    — Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) August 4, 2020

    If it checks out, then this was explosives grade ammonium nitrate (albeit probably a knock-off, somewhat decayed), and if set off by a fire, maybe 15 percent efficiency relative to TNT, less if it was stored in both the buildings. The grain silos absorbed much of the explosion for about 60 degrees and some for 90 degrees, depending on how much of the southern building went off, probably most of it.

    657:

    The best source for information on the 1918 Influenza pandemic is amigo John M. Barry's The Great Influenza: The story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History (2004; frequent reprint editions). In his Prologue he tells us:

    [ "The lowest estimate of the pandemic's worldwide death toll is twenty-five million, in a world witha population less than one-third today's. That estimjate comes from a contemporary study of thedisease and newspapers hve often cited it since, but it is almost certainly wrong. Epidemiologists today estimate that influenze likely caused at least fifty million deaths worldwide, and possibly as many as one hundred million.

    Yet even that number underestimates the horror of the disease, a horror contained in other data ...." (p. 4). ]

    For more -- and really fascinating information -- concerning this pandemic, mask, public health, public reactions, read this recent piece in the NY Times:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/us/mask-protests-1918.html

    It begins like this:

    [ "The masks were called muzzles, germ shields and dirt traps. They gave people a “pig-like snout.” Some people snipped holes in their masks to smoke cigars. Others fastened them to dogs in mockery. Bandits used them to rob banks.

    More than a century ago, as the 1918 influenza pandemic raged in the United States, masks of gauze and cheesecloth became the facial front lines in the battle against the virus. But as they have now, the masks also stoked political division. Then, as now, medical authorities urged the wearing of masks to help slow the spread of disease. And then, as now, some people resisted.

    In 1918 and 1919, as bars, saloons, restaurants, theaters and schools were closed, masks became a scapegoat, a symbol of government overreach, inspiring protests, petitions and defiant bare-face gatherings. All the while, thousands of Americans were dying in a deadly pandemic." [Much More]

    658:

    Charlie Stross @ 644:

    Yeah ... I mean, that's my minimum laundry list for stuff you'd need to have a snowball's chance in hell. And it still doesn't look terribly promising, does it?

    I think a big chunk of the "why didn't Operation Sealion WORK?!?" chorus we get these days is down to most people not understanding that the logistics, technology, and tactics for forcing an amphibious invasion in the face of a modern, mechanised defensive force simply didn't exist before about 1943, when the allies began learning it the hard way (thinking of Italy here, not just D-Day).

    Previous invasions hadn't really required that stuff. The wooden ships era led into a long period of such profound RN dominance at sea, globally, that most developments in land warfare took place on the continent, where the biggest obstacles were rivers and mountains (and in South America, e.g. the War of the Triple Alliance, which had a big component of jungle warfare).

    I understand why Sealion would have failed (and technically did fail since it was cancelled after the Luftwaffe failed to gain air superiority in the Battle of Britain) but I don't see its failure being relevant to the course of the war in Europe IF the U.S. turns its back on the U.K. & Europe after Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

    By that time the Battle of Britain was over (even if you accept German historians point of view of the battle "as a single campaign lasting from July 1940 to June 1941, including the Blitz"); Operation Sealion had been indefinitely postponed for over a year (Sept 1940) and Germany was already engaged with Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union (June 1941).

    IF the U.S. had pursued a war only with Japan, would Sealion II or some similar invasion plan have then become possible? I think not. The reasons why it couldn't succeed in 1940 are still in effect in 1942.

    It's obvious to me that before Hitler declared war on the U.S., the U.S. was preparing to do exactly that; turn it's back on the U.K. & Europe to pursue a "Japan only" war in the Pacific.

    I think the most likely outcome IF that had happened, would have been a stalemate that left Hitler & the Nazis in control of Western Europe with the U.K. eventually starved into accepting an armistice not on beneficial terms & possibly the U.K. might have been forced to withdraw from the war with Japan.

    But I don't see how it could have resulted in an actual invasion of the British Isles, for all of the same reasons Sealion did not come about.

    659:

    Nojay @ 670: There's at least one photo circulating from before the explosion (date uncertain) of the dockside warehouse where the ammonium nitrate was stored. In the photo the warehouse door is open and you can see the large sacks of fertiliser, labelled as ammonium nitrate. Each sack is approximately a cubic metre in size with straps at the top so they can be lifted by forklifts or small cranes. They are stacked two or three on top of each other in untidy piles and packed in tight, pretty much the perfect conditions for a blast shockwave to propagate through the entire warehouse within a few hundred milliseconds.

    Given the likely temperature conditions inside the warehouse during the Middle Eastern summers I'm not surprised it went off when provoked. I doubt very much there was any attempt to control the environment inside the warehouse to prevent the fertiliser degrading in storage.

    Do you have a link to the photo showing how it was stored in the warehouse? I've found a bunch of before & after of the port itself & I can see the giant crater it left, but I haven't found one that shows that detail of the warehouse (or inside the warehouse) "before".

    660:

    OK, he could say Catholic ethical teachings trump secular law, and I could at least accept that stance, though if they say abortion is murder I'd likely ask some questions about teratogens, work conditions, global warming etc.

    In the case you mentioned, well, child abuse would most likely be positive civil law, not canon law.

    Problem is, the Vatican AFAIK has no extradition treaties, but since Italy has, you most likely could use this loophole.

    (Please note Roman Catholicism IMHO is quite a legalistic religion, the established hierarchy makes is quite similar to Shia Islam).

    In other news, back from the proctologist today, I mentioned I'm somewhat with bleeding in that area because one of my favourite authors died from intestine cancer. Sadly, he didn't know HPL, and when I explained he wrote horror it didn't help; well, I guess we already had at least one thread about HPL as literature.

    661:

    FYI, I have met Martin IRL. I really strongly doubt he's actually current in the Army in any capacity, but -- like most such -- he's plugged into the grapevine.

    Remember, not everything gets on the internet: indeed, not everything gets written down when it can be passed about via word of mouth down the pub.

    662:

    Actually, that would be a hilariously short alt-wwII. The nazis attempt an unsupported assault on the forces at dunkirk, the forces at dunkirk have nowhere to run, fight like a cornered army and annihilate the spearhead, at which point the french armored forces chew the rest of the german army to bits and the entire offensive gets rolled back all the way to Berlin. Game Over.

    While I can see EC's point about the problems with this, I should point out that this is at least as probable than the US abandoning Britain and Germany not declaring war on the US in December 1941. JBS aside, when there are large majority votes on Lend-Lease and binding Axis treaties involved, going against our reality involves Trumpian levels of treachery. Whatever FDR's many sins, that kind of treachery is not one of them. Nor was it one of Churchill's failings.

    So, let's try this alternative: --The German advance in 1940 turns horribly wrong due to the valiant British defense at Dunkirk and the suicidal heroics of the French Army.

    --Then Poland invades a lightly guarded Germany from the East and takes Berlin. Hitler does his thing in a bunker, and Poland owns Germany, aside from a rather large and confused insurgency. This happens about August 1940.

    At this point Italy's entangled in the hairball in France, but mostly armed along the French border, and facing British invasions in North Africa.

    In our timeline, Japan did not even join the Axis until September 1940, and the Tripartite Treaty was aimed at defending against the US, not Europe. So they're still expanding through Asia and trying to figure out how to take the US, British, and French possessions in the region.

    So what happens with Japan, Italy, and the other parts of our Axis if Nazi Germany bites the big one due to a epic FUBAR in France?

    I can believe some version of Pearl Harbor happening and the US going to war with Japan. I can believe Italy not wanting to deal with a UK that no longer has to defend its homeland, and Mussolini making peace to save his skin. But the rest of Europe? I'm unclear about that. Would Stalin attack Poland while Poland was invading Germany?

    Then there's the wars in Asia. China's fighting for their lives, Korea's a colony of Japan, the USSR is sheltering communist anti-Japanese insurgents on the north side of the Siberian border, and Malaysian rubber is under threat of Japanese expropriation.

    New scenario for me, but I'd be shocked if Harry Turtledove hasn't at least thought this one through for at least a long outline.

    I also suspect that this would give JBS the America-goes-it-alone that he wants.

    663:

    Sorry, but it was not just nukes - they don't have to be in orbit, an ICBM does just fine.

    HOWEVER, as noted in, of all things, a Disney comic book when I was little, it's unblockable observation ("curses, they can see us moving our troops up to invade!" is, I think, a direct quote from the comic), and, of course, weather forecasts, so you don't need to send people to islands that the enemy may inhabit (have you ever seen the movie of South Pacific, where that's what leads to the climax?)

    664:

    Used to be no such allegiance just to immigrate.

    As I recall (sorry, my idiot got the copy, so I have no idea what happened to it, she never sent me a copy of the copy), on the form filled out for my grandfather, coming into Ellis Island, "I renounce all allegiances, fealty to, or other titles to any ruler, king, emperor or potentate, and especiall [rubber stamp] Czar Nicholas II, Emperor of all the Russias....

    Which made it, of course, official that he was a deserter (he was an Officer in the Tsar's Army! (he played trombone in the band....)

    665:

    "There's a reason nobody builds nuclear weapons with yields over about 5Mt these days: you get more bang for the buck by throwing a bunch of significantly smaller warheads at the target, for exactly the same weight of explodey gadgets."

    Actually, the disappearance of the MegaTon class weapons is mostly about targeting precision, and 'ground penetrating' delivery vehicles.

    The MegaTon designs were made in response to the "mineshaft-gap", ie: for use against the buried bunkers in USSR where all the apparatnicks where supposed to be hiding.

    The problem with that idea, is that even if you do a "laydown" where it literally rests on the ground before it explodes, the larger the yield get, the less coupling to the ground you get, and the worse your aimpoint of course, the larger your bomb needs to be.

    Once the CEP was squeezed under 200m, and the ground penetrating versions had been proven in, a hundred kilotons would do more damage buried one meter into the ground, 100 meters away, than 15MT laid down in the bulls eye.

    Above approximately 10MT there is very little additional damage, you just lift increasingly large slices of atmosphere out of the way.

    666:

    And a dumb question back at'cha: why do you use/need fertilizer?

    I don't, and my grass is just as nice as next door's, who has a service, and they do fertilize.

    For the (small) garden (which we did nothing at all with this year, dammit), I work in compost every year, plant, and then mulch heavily.*

    • Warped, early in life, by Ruth Stout's "How to Have a Green Thumb Without An Aching Back"**

    ** Mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch....

    667:

    Can't we restore this world from backup, and change a vote count in 2016?

    668:

    Can't we restore this world from backup, and change a vote count in 2016?

    You're sure this hasn't happened already?

    Alternatively, things could get really bad if they don't do a thorough wipe of the current timeline, and reinstall a backup that leaves remnants of both timelines floating around here.

    669:

    Child-minders vs teachers who know their subjects.

    I've been screaming for years that by high school, if not middle schoo/jr high, NO ONE SHOULD TEACH A SUBJECT THEY HAVE PERSONALLY NOT HAD COLLEGE_LEVEL COURSEWORK IN.

    And then there's the other problem, esp. with younger children: in Toldkien's essay, "On Fairy Stories", he rails against people who think that because children are younger and ignorant, they are stupid, and talk down to them.

    670:

    "How long can I safely keep fertilizer in my gardening shed before it becomes a fire/explosive risk?"

    In general it will not explode unless you hit it with a shockwave of a power which are not ordinarily found in gardens.

    If your shed catches fire, do not inhale, there will be nitrous gasses.

    "My other question is how long will it last before breaking down and losing its effectiveness as fertilizer if you do store it properly?"

    As long as it does not get wet, it stays potent, both as fertilizer and fire/poisoning hazard.

    It can however become lumpy and unwieldy, particularly if humidity/temperature cycles in the wrong sequence where you live.

    671:

    why do you use/need fertilizer?

    Not all of us live in areas with much if any loam on top. So you truck it in or apply "stuff". Many just sod for grass.

    Gardens are harder.

    Then in my area we have all these pine needles[1] which in many situations are the biggest portion of dead vegetation on the ground. And it is not conducive to anything growing at all. At least that you might want.

    [1]Cue fight over "don't take down the natural trees" vs those of us who have noticed that almost all these insane lob lolly pine were planted 100 years ago. So someone made a decision or stopped plowing or something across 100s (1000s?) of acres. Maybe they were intentionally planted or they were the most opportunistic local tree when pasture is ignored here at the time. And of course no one really knows what it was like in much detail here in 1500. Or 10K years prior to that. But it was likely somewhat teraformed by the locals at the time. For 1500 that is.

    672:

    Extradition and arrests.... I'm not sure there are any members of law enforcement, anywhere, who are NOT FUCKING COWBOYS.

    Example off the top of my head: in 1985, the Philly cops wanted to arrest this group called MOVE. They *KNEW that some of the guys took children to the park for exercise. They're living in a multi-house row house combination, so not exactly a compound.

    Arrest the guys when they take the kids to the park, hold the kids, and arrest more when they come to get the kids? Arrest them while shopping?

    NO, start a seige situation, start firefights, and finally, I am not making this up, DROP A FUCKING BOMB FROM A HELICOPTER, BURNING DOWN BLOCKS OF WEST PHILLY.

    In your case, surely the cops could arrest him if he were to go outside the Vatican for a nice dinner....

    • MOVE, btw, were a bunch of assholes. They'd show up at demonstrations, and be against the demonstration, because we weren't demonstrating for the right reasons, with the right analysis.
    673:

    Lebanon - & Brexit: QUOTE] Although no one could possibly say our experience is anything like that in Lebanon, however I have to say there are some similarities in the above article which do relate to our present day government, such as the blatant corruption of Johnson and some government ministers. Also the deliberate running down of all social services, lack of access to food, money and gainful employment, outsourcing of essential services to corrupt organisations (leading to prices going up and pockets being lined). We should all learn lessons of what inevitably follows corruption at the top of government - them leaving and taking as much as they can stuff their pockets with on the way out. EDNQUOTE] From Jan 2021 & onwards, it's going to be really bad, unless, of course, BoZo does what he has done every time so far & betrays his supportes & makes a "deal" of some sort. Odds?

    whitroth Even worse ... At one point, when I was actually teching, my Head of Department - did not actually have a Science Degree of any sort .... And, yes, of course, she & I disagreed ....

    674:

    "In your case, surely the cops could arrest him if he were to go outside the Vatican for a nice dinner...."

    That is not how Italy and italian police works.

    To arrest somebody at that level of social status against their will, takes a direct order from the prime minister.

    Arresting an subject of the Holy See, without clear signals having been given that it would be OK or even appreciated, would cause more trouble than any Italian PM would want.

    In many ways the Italian government has the same sort of relationship with the Vatican as Westminster has with the City of London.

    675:

    As someone who was a bored teenager, the people in HR will have to loosen up job requirements, because bored teenagers aren't necessarily going to have pieces of paper from colleges - but they may very well have skills that will fit perfectly in some job where a college graduate won't stay any longer than needed for a promotion or another job elsewhere. (I have more than enough hours for a BS, but not the exact ones required. However, I can read maps of various types better than most people with geography/GIS degrees, and in my job, that was what was needed.)

    676:

    Hence my lifelong contempt for such people, they are licencesd child-minders, from my experience.

    I will point out that your experience is 2-3 generations ago.

    I have been teaching for three decades. Despite a crazy degree of counterproductive churn, not to mention funding cuts, the system I teach in is currently better than it was back when I started. Much more tolerant of diversity, both in theory and in actual practice. Much less tolerant of bullying. More emphasis on higher-order skills vs. rote memorization. The world turns and times change.

    677:

    The MegaTon designs were made in response to the "mineshaft-gap", ie: for use against the buried bunkers in USSR where all the apparatnicks where supposed to be hiding.

    The problem with that idea, is that even if you do a "laydown" where it literally rests on the ground before it explodes,..

    Mostly true, and it's why the B53 airdropped bomb was as corpulent as it was. It was designed to allow low-level laydown delivery against the CPSU leadership bunkers near Chekhov and Sharapovo south of Moscow and need some extra crushable structure to protect the actual physics package. That was a smaller cylinder nestled inside the fat envelope.

    See https://fas.org/blogs/security/2010/10/b53dismantlement/ for a diagram.

    678:

    The world turns and times change.

    Yep. I know the education models I got in the 60s is not longer used. And my kids left the US public systems in 2009. So I know things are different even now.

    But politics (internal in the schools and staff) seems to exist forever.

    679:

    There were stories that got passed around at work by word of mouth - they were mostly cautionary tales. The one I remember was about a new employee being run through driver training, who took the van, with 8 passengers including the instructor, went around a closed crossing gate at the railroad crossing less than 100 yards out of the company gate, and was fired that afternoon, after they stopped shaking and got back to the facility. Everyone else got rescheduled. (People are more valuable than hardware, or were at the time.)

    680:

    Grain silos tend to be built for sturdiness, as explosions due to dust aren't unknown. You can see grain on the ground where it spilled out.

    681:

    @JBS 674 It's obvious to me that before Hitler declared war on the U.S., the U.S. was preparing to do exactly that; turn it's back on the U.K. & Europe to pursue a "Japan only" war in the Pacific.

    I think the most likely outcome IF that had happened, would have been a stalemate that left Hitler & the Nazis in control of Western Europe with the U.K. eventually starved into accepting an armistice not on beneficial terms & possibly the U.K. might have been forced to withdraw from the war with Japan.

    Eh I think that's a lower probability than the Red Army steamrollering all the way to the Rhine (and beyond perhaps).

    Pearl Harbor happened a week after the Nazis (in the form of a reconnaissance battalion) got as close to the Kremlin as they ever did and just a few days before Zhukov's winter offensive forced them to pull their armies back into defensive lines, removing the immediate threat to Moscow and Tula.

    The wehrmacht were dead men walking by then, it just took another four years for the corpse to stop twitching.

    The UK wouldn't be able to stage a full dress show in the WTO without the US, but the British Empire was well practiced at stubbornly holding on while they choked out a continental rival with economic blocades and paid another European power to raise an army - it's basically what they had been doing it since the War of Spanish Succession.

    682:

    Sorry, excuse my laughing. HR is not going to make changes for bored teenagers. You won't even get a callback.

    Hell, 1996 or so, I interviewed a guy when I was working for Ameritech (my director and managers had me do the technical part of the interview), and this guy was really on the ball.

    Not hired, because he lied about having a degree.

    If I was out of work for literally years, and then not hired becuase I wasn't "fresh" when I had a B.Sc and many years experience, what chance do you think a bored teenager has, and whether HR will change?

    683:

    It also depends on the schools, the neighborhood, and the school district. I let my son pull out of a Chicago high school at the end of 10th grade, to go into a distance learning program (accredited, trust me), because the school he was in was about at least 80% Black and Hispanic, and they treated them that way.

    684:

    From Jan 2021 & onwards, it's going to be really bad, unless, of course, BoZo does what he has done every time so far & betrays his supportes & makes a "deal" of some sort. Odds?

    Sadly, 10%.

    It has become apparent since his Covid adventure, and the attempts by certain people to position themselves should he have not made it and the media games, that Boris is a dead man walking as PM. They will keep him for now as long as he does what is wanted (Brexit), let him take the blame, and then dump him.

    Thus the members of the Conservative Party won't let him to a deal, they will dump him early if necessary.

    Now it is possible he may attempt to pull a rabbit out of the proverbial hat, go for a deal, and hope that enough MP's will be willing to support him going back on their essential campaign promise of "get Brexit done" - and the first sign of him attempting this will be the firing of Dominic Cummings.

    685:

    If the USA was neutral in in the UK-Germany conflict, we might well have lost the battle of the Atlantic, and an invasion would have been feasible. We were within a fortnight of running out of fuel at one point. It would then be easy to land paratroops, and the hard part would be getting heavy material and supplies across. One trick would be to mine the Channel (densely) at both ends and have lots of submarines, denying the Royal Navy its control.

    And, as you say, while Roosevelt was supportive of the UK, he had considerable difficulty in maintaining that position. According to all I read, if he had tried to get Congress to declare war against Germany (before Pearl Harbor), he would have lost. If Hitler had had any sense (again), be would have broken the Axis after Pearl Harbor, saying that it was intended to counter the USSR (as it was), not the USA, and possibly even declared war against Japan. The time was very tight, but he might (just) have beaten Churchill to it, and that could have changed the USA's alignment. Remember also the Irish question; a promise to reunite Ireland would have had a major effect in the USA.

    None of that would have changed the fact that the USSR would have defeated Germany, though it might have delayed it slightly. The USA allying itself with Germany would have changed that, of course.

    686:

    But when they do... I was a little kid, and the three-story brick house that was my grandmother's shook, 8-10 mi away.

    .http://www.gendisasters.com/pennsylvania/13827/philadelphia-pa-grain-warehouse-explosion-mar-1956

    687:

    If Hitler had had any sense (again), be would have broken the Axis after Pearl Harbor, saying that it was intended to counter the USSR (as it was), not the USA, and possibly even declared war against Japan. The time was very tight, but he might (just) have beaten Churchill to it, and that could have changed the USA's alignment. Remember also the Irish question; a promise to reunite Ireland would have had a major effect in the USA.

    Not true, unfortunately. The Tripartite Pact of 1940 reads as follows. I've highlighted Article 5, which is relevant.

    ARTICLE 1. Japan recognizes and respects the leadership of Germany and Italy in the establishment of a new order in Europe.

    ARTICLE 2. Germany and Italy recognize and respect the leadership of Japan in the establishment of a new order in Greater East Asia.

    ARTICLE 3. Japan, Germany, and Italy agree to cooperate in their efforts on aforesaid lines. They further undertake to assist one another with all political, economic and military means if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Japanese-Chinese conflict.

    ARTICLE 4. With a view to implementing the present pact, joint technical commissions, to be appointed by the respective Governments of Japan, Germany and Italy, will meet without delay.

    ARTICLE 5. Japan, Germany and Italy affirm that the above agreement affects in no way the political status existing at present between each of the three Contracting Powers and Soviet Russia.

    ARTICLE 6. The present pact shall become valid immediately upon signature and shall remain in force ten years from the date on which it becomes effective. In due time, before the expiration of said term, the High Contracting Parties shall, at the request of any one of them, enter into negotiations for its renewal.

    In faith whereof, the undersigned duly authorized by their respective governments have signed this pact and have affixed hereto their signatures.

    Note specifically the formation of the Axis was precisely not aimed at Russia (Article 5). Instead its goal was mutual solidarity in the face of a "Power" (Article 3) "They further undertake to assist one another with all political, economic and military means if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Japanese-Chinese conflict."

    And the Lend Lease Act is available on line, if you want to see the actual relationship between the US and UK prior to the US officially entering the war.

    688:

    You do not know what you are talking about, it's 150% bollocks. Greg, 652 was the most (or one of the most) interesting long comment in this entire thread. Yeah, technical violation of Charlie's rules (not quite 24 hours). But it had content, in particular about the political and economic contexts and about approaches to looking at this sort of incident. (Still looking up/reading about some of the context.) Irritated, quite.

    689:

    The bit about everyone involved 'blowing smoke' because they're all scared that they don't have a handle on the situation got deleted, along with some cold-eyed actual data. Being hyper-silly about various narratives being shifted by various factions gets us labelled the weird ones but not deleted. We're just taking the piss out of multiple agencies concurrently. "Is that the Seagull spouting rubbish, or is it us?" is a valid 2020 question.

    Martin is no doubt a decent man, but expecting the grunts not to be lied to is a bit much.

    Or you know, could have been giving directions to the civilized ones.

    shrug

    Was it the IMF bit or the Bush cannibalism stuff that was too strong? Or the note that Hez have been touting ANFO port-side retaliation for ages? Or the fact that it's allegedly all a long game from 2014? Please don't say it was the oil traders, that'd be depressing.

    And sigh: what we didn't link to was the President of the United States of America, live on air, declaring that (paraphrasing) the US military top brass Well, that ties it all up. A totally convincing explanation from a credible source.

    That was the point. It's doubly depressing you think we cannot see it, either.

    Anyhow, we keep it mild for you: SNR ratio, check out Ukrainian Maro Egyptian wheat freighter being labeled secret arms shipments (not helped by the two Syrian Nationals hurt onboard), the fact that the Orient Queen sunk (CN investment - reality wyrd thrums), Rods from G_D, and so on.

    All we're saying is: when storing 'contraband' nitrates from a 'random' RU national (since when did single people run shipping companies anyhow?) living in Cyprus whose son goes to school in Scotland, don't store them next to your major grain storage depot that you use to secure the nation's well being in case at some future point it blows up and derails the nation at a point when your IMF loans come due. Or you could check out Lloyds of London shipping or The Siberian Times for their takes.

    not everything gets written down when it can be passed about via word of mouth down the pub.

    Yeah. We know about Pubs. Bad choices in Pubs have cost the Anglosphere approx $30 trn so far.

    ~

    Like, seriously. There's a proper reason for not going full on ANFO angle, and 90% of Brits don't know why. Unless you want / need the bloodshed, then sure: knock yourselves out.

    690:

    It just struck me, perhaps someday SotMN will publish a her-speak to English dictionary.

    One of the hardest things a writer can do is to create aliens. You don't want them to be humans in a rubber suit, but if you make them too alien, your readers won't be able to understand their logic, or why they do what they do, or, in some cases, what they're doing.

    She may be packing information extremely densely... but I'm too old and tired to sift through it without the equivalent of a program to read a .jpg and display it as a graphic.

    691:

    Rbt Prior I will point out that your experience is 2-3 generations ago. Correct: 1950/1 - 1958 to be hopefully correct. BUT - from mpre recent exam[lles I have met - not that much - it's amazingly depressing.

    whiroth @ 682 And my extremely bitter experience of: "We can't get the trained staff" & me with a 1994 MSc in Engineering & not getting ONE DAY of paid work out of it, between than & me truning 65 in 2011? eah, right.

    mdive I do hope you are wrong - but I'm not betting on it - I will be carefully stockpiling through Decemeber ....

    EC OH FFS! Hitler declaring war against Japan? What are you smoking? Heteromeles rightly shows what complete & utter bullshit you are promoting.

    Bill Arnold PLEASE stop making excuses for someone who appears to be insane? As in EVERYTHING is a BIG CONSPIRACY - it cannot possibly be incompetence or greed or corruption or most of all ... stupidity, can it? See also the next post & the utter self-excusing rubbish.

    692:

    Unrelated .... Another good reason to eat your fruits & veg

    Since we're now familiar with drug trials, here's a potential Alzheimer's drug candidate.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200804165119.htm

    'A drug candidate developed by Salk researchers, and previously shown to slow aging in brain cells, successfully reversed memory loss in a mouse model of inherited Alzheimer's disease. The new research, published online in July 2020 in the journal Redox Biology, also revealed that the drug, CMS121, works by changing how brain cells metabolize fatty molecules known as lipids.

    "This was a more rigorous test of how well this compound would work in a therapeutic setting than our previous studies on it," says Pamela Maher, a senior staff scientist in the lab of Salk Professor David Schubert and the senior author of the new paper. "Based on the success of this study, we're now beginning to pursue clinical trials."

    Over the last few decades, Maher has studied how a chemical called fisetin, found in fruits and vegetables, can improve memory and even prevent Alzheimer's-like disease in mice. More recently, the team synthesized different variants of fisetin and found that one, called CMS121, was especially effective at, improving the animals' memory, and slowing the degeneration of brain cells.

    In the new study, Maher and colleagues tested the effect of CMS121 on mice that develop the equivalent of Alzheimer's disease. Maher's team gave a subset of the mice daily doses of CMS121 beginning at 9 months old -- the equivalent of middle age in people, and after the mice have already begun to show learning and memory problems. The timing of the lab's treatment is akin to how a patient who visits the doctor for cognitive problems might be treated, the researchers say.'

    And here's some background on the active compound 'fisetin' which is found in fruits & veg, esp. strawberry, apple, persimmon, grape, onion, and cucumber which as per below is already being investigated as a potential anticancer compound. (And it's also an anti-inflammatory.)

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3689181/

    693:

    If Hitler had been half sane, Dunkirk would have led to only a minority of troops rescued, and much more naval damage.

    Perhaps not... the Dunkirk evacuation was possible, because the French and British rearguards basically stood and fought until they ran out of ammunition. If you look at the Le Paradis and Wormhoudt massacres, these happened after the rearguard held up an SS Regiment; the SS (being a bunch of thugs, even this early in the war) decided to do what they did best, namely murder the unarmed.

    The few remaining Kriegsmarine ships, or the U-boat fleet, can't interfere with Op DYNAMO because of the minefields that the RN laid at the Eastern end of the English Channel at the very start of the war. Three U-boats were lost in 1939 trying to get through, so they gave up for the rest of the war.

    If you look at the Battle of Dunkirk, with air cover, the Germans had real problems actually sinking RN ships - the RN only lost 3 destroyers, while the RAF lost over 100 fighters defending the area; even at Crete, without air cover, the RN didn't start losing ships until they ran out of ammunition.

    The key problem for Germany was that Goering didn't cooperate with the Kriegsmarine; the Luftwaffe wasn't a naval striking force, and didn't really have air-dropped torpedos, torpedo bombers, or the training to use them (unlike the Japanese, who caught Force Z without air cover).

    Once the RN Home Fleet gets among the invasion fleet, it's all over.

    Establishing air supremacy over the Channel and Kent would probably have been possible, as would taking over (some of) its airstrips and establishing a beachhead (by landing paratroops).

    Again, not really. The Bf109E was a short-ranged fighter, and didn't gain a drop tank until October 1940 - it could only reckon on spending ten minutes over British targets.

    Meanwhile, either on the hardest day, or the climax of the Battle of Britain, only 11 Group was fully committed. The RAF fighter groups to the north (10 Group), and to the west (12 Group), would still have been able to maintain air superiority over southern England from their own bases. While CHAIN HOME was a key part of the UK air defence picture, the Royal Observer Corps were still providing visual indication of aircraft.

    Achieving air supremacy over the invasion area just isn't going to happen. Brief local air superiority / occasional air parity, perhaps.

    ...as would taking over (some of) its airstrips and establishing a beachhead (by landing paratroops).

    Bear in mind that the Germans never really solved the problem of airborne operations.

    If you look at what happens when the Luftwaffe dropped paratroopers onto Norway, Holland or Crete, they were often defeated or nearly wiped out. And that's without effective fighter cover and limited AA defences - if they put Ju52 anywhere near fighters or massed AA, it's a slaughter. If they keep them away from massed AA, they can't drop forces anywhere useful.

    Look at what happened in Norway, in April 1940 - the surviving half of the Fallschirmjager surrendered to the Norwegian Army. At Ypenburg airfield in May 1940 during the invasion of the Netherlands, poorly-trained and lightly-equipped Dutch troops still managed to beat them. Or Maleme airfield in May 1941, held by a single NZ infantry brigade without fire support - one of the three Fallschirmjager battalions lost 400 out of its 600 men; a company from another battalion lost 90% killed.

    The Allies developed the skills to drop airborne forces in Divisional or Corps strength (18,000 on D-Day; 34,000 for Arnhem; 16,000 across the Rhine), with support weapons, during periods of air superiority. AIUI the Germans never dropped in more than Regimental strength (groups of 2,000 or so), they just didn't have the aircraft and gliders to do it.

    694:

    Can you get 100% Ammonium Nitrate from the Garden Center? (I don't garden, so I don't know.)

    During the Troubles, the UK took an interest in Ammonium Nitrate - because until Colonel Gaddafi sent across a few tonnes of Semtex on the MV Eksund, it was the explosive of choice for the Provisional IRA.

    IIRC, fertiliser products of greater than 40% concentration of Ammonium Nitrate was illegal in Northern Ireland; that was presumably the level at which you've got a nearly-useful explosive. PIRA thus had to get into the messy (and injury-prone) business of purifying the stuff in bulk. Typically, they would use a large amount of ANFO with a small Semtex booster charge to set things off. This wasn't guaranteed to work; someone from my first platoon (30 or so soldiers) went from the reserves to the Regulars, managed to sit down on a buried bomb - fortunately only the detonator / booster went off; shredding his rucksack, which he'd put down over it by accident. But the main charge didn't, making Curly a very lucky man...

    695:

    from mpre recent exam[lles I have met - not that much

    I have colleagues who've gone to teach in the UK. None of them will repeat (or recommend) the experience. UK schools seem a lot rougher than Canadian schools — but this is anecdote not data.

    A survey published on Wednesday questioning teachers on the idea found more than a third would be willing to wear a body camera in the classroom, with many wanting the technology available to help combat bad behaviour from pupils.

    Among those who were not willing to use the technology, reasons included concerns about their own privacy and that of the children, as well as feeling spied on, or the potential for misuse by management.

    Around two-thirds of the teachers polled - more than 600 in total - said they would feel safer in the classroom if they knew there was a camera recording everything, while 10.9 per cent said they could foresee a time when bodycams are compulsory.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/teachers-wear-body-cameras-record-pupils-bad-beaviour-video-trial-education-schools-a7568646.html

    What I do know is that none of the worst practices I remember from my own school days would be tolerated in Canada today. They do happen, and those responsible lose their licenses when proven to be breaking professional guidelines.

    696:

    ": Can you get 100% Ammonium Nitrate from the Garden Center? (I don't garden, so I don't know."

    In the us, not since Timothy McVeigh , an associate of a self described "White supremacist Christian militia", blew up the Oklahoma Federal building with a truck load of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel 25 years ago.

    697:

    fertiliser products of greater than 40% concentration of Ammonium Nitrate was illegal in Northern Ireland

    In the us, not since Timothy McVeigh , an associate of a self described "White supremacist Christian militia", blew up the Oklahoma Federal building with a truck load of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel 25 years ago.

    Yeah, that's not how it works. Sensible people producing it curb the levels via admixtures. It's done in factory now-a-days.

    This is accurate: PIRA thus had to get into the messy (and injury-prone) business of purifying the stuff in bulk.

    When you look @ sheet that says 15% and so on, you're looking at reduction from base % (which is like 42% base 1:1 tnt equivalent or close enough for pure). AN just is not an explosive without ANFO (which at 6% required Xcelerant sounds small but come back to us when you need 10,000 kg seeded) without severe tweaking / pressure / heat stuff.

    Which when you wake up, you'll notice that that initial fire didn't have, the white smoke was indeed the stuff we're talking about, but hey-ho, big red cloud ain't that son.

    Like, entire zones of manufacturing (including RU) have to meet these standards to ship it anywhere[0]. What it is simpler: making ANFO these days is not easy. (You need licenses and to be permitted to ship industrial grade / mineral only usage, can't use general AG stuff, there's specific grades and Lebanon is under sanctions anyhow you utter simpletons, couldn't get that through customs). A 10 second search will show you who runs it.

    As Martin said: it's a 30+ yr old issue that doesn't exist anymore.

    ~

    Again: you bring up West, Texas, and that cute video. Literally not how it works.

    Why we spamming?

    Oh, you got a couple of years before this is required, don't want people raiding innocent farmers for shit that's never going to work.

    ANFO these days? WELL THEN, HUDDLE ROUND...

    [0] Shit we shouldn't know: Pakistan / CN illegal routes for pure AN.

    698:

    I do hope you are wrong - but I'm not betting on it - I will be carefully stockpiling through Decemeber ....

    That about sums up 2020 - the year of stockpiling.

    I hope I am wrong too, and someone can turn the HMS UK around and away from either Brexit, or at least the no-deal Brexit that seems likely. But the performance so far this year does not inspire hope.

    699:

    Roosevelt was supportive of the UK, he had considerable difficulty in maintaining that position. According to all I read, if he had tried to get Congress to declare war against Germany (before Pearl Harbor), he would have lost.

    He would have been crushed. Public polling up to Dec 7, 1941 had the country around 70% "stay out of it". He won the 1940 election based on promising to keep the US out of the war.

    The only reason the navy wasn't in as pitiful shape as the army was that it was pushed as a program to keep all the other countries away from us. So they got the new ships (carriers) planes and such. If that hadn't been going on while we might have had 4 carriers in the water the F6F Hellcat (or similar) might not have appeared until years later.

    700:

    mdive IF we crash out on 31st Dec ... then it's going to be a disater & we know that the ultras & the ERG will continue to blame "the evil EU" for everything ... how long will it take before everyone ( except the Daily Hate-Mail readers, of course ) puts the blame where it's due? Then what? Remebering that we are stuck with this load of greedy incompetent tossers until Dec 2024?

    701:

    Prediction: The believers will never put the blame where it belongs, because doing so requires them to accept some of it themselves.

    It's the EUs fault, your fault and my fault but never theirs.

    702:

    Bellingcat has a rather good writeup about what just blew up in Beirut. TL;DR: they find that the evidence clearly supports an accidental discharge of ammonium nitrate.

    703:

    Bellingcat has a rather good writeup about what just blew up in Beirut.

    That is informative and well done. Thank you for sharing that.

    704:

    That's more of an observation IMO, there have been a number of profoundly negative events where people changed their minds. What's left of the Brexit supporters are people who have already proven resilient in the face of contrary information. Predicting that they'll stay that way isn't much of a risk.

    Predicting that more will die before the actual exit than change their minds is more adventurous.

    705:

    Yesterday, Beirut, tomorrow, Newcastle (New South Wales).

    706:

    Bf109 tanks:
    IIUC there were appropriately-sized drop tanks in the Pas de Calais in August 1940, but not in the Bf109 Staffeln. Probably on Stukas, which used a similar tank (Ju-87R, longer-range anti-shipping variant) - I think Bf110s were not using them at the time.

    So I think that's not insuperable, given a bit of ingenuity and a motivated and flexible Bf109 engineering officer and Staffelkapitan.

    707:

    It just struck me, perhaps someday SotMN will publish a her-speak to English dictionary.

    One of the hardest things a writer can do is to create aliens.

    You've read "A Fire Upon the Deep", right?

    Think in terms of Twirlip of the Mists repeating endlessly, "Hexapodia is the key insight!" via machine translation.

    708:

    "Hexapodia is the key insight!"

    And it was, though I think it took me three or four readings of the book before I got it. I should probably read it again, but the book is still in storage.

    709:
    You've read "A Fire Upon the Deep", right?

    Twirlip was in a book? I remember interacting with it on usenet back in the day. How did it get into a book?

    710:

    Twirlip was in a book? I remember interacting with it on usenet back in the day. How did it get into a book?

    Sandor at the Zoo didn't have a problem moving from Usenet to the book...

    711:

    Think in terms of Twirlip of the Mists repeating endlessly, "Hexapodia is the key insight!" via machine translation.

    Or the woman who told the city council "I have two boobs — not six. But I have six butts." (Link to article containing a link to video of this.) She's been my mental avatar of SotMN for a while now. She had much to say, it was well prepared, and it was delivered in a dense dadaist style.

    "Here is a monkey, and no, you don't get it, okay?"

    712:

    IF we crash out on 31st Dec ... then it's going to be a disater ... Then what? Remebering that we are stuck with this load of greedy incompetent tossers until Dec 2024?

    What happens first is probably SCexit and NIexit, in no particular order.

    Polling in Scotland in 2020 -- really, since the November '19 GE -- has shown support for Independence running at 54%, and voting intentions in the May 2021 Scottish Parliament election running at roughly 55% SNP, 18% Tory, 16% Labour, and the rest among smaller parties (e.g. about 4-6% Scottish Green).

    That election will be the first test, UK-wide, of the public reaction to the end of the Brexit transition. And it it's a cliff-edge no-deal with the resulting chaos we all expect, it's going to be a catastrophe for the Tories. (They just dumped one non-entity leader in favour of a new non-entity and gave Ruth Davies a one way ticket to the House of Lords. The tenuous popular semi-recovery she managed in the 2010's was personality-driven rather than a party-wide phenomenon: she was their hole card, and ... there's no love lost between her and Boris. Indeed, that's reportedly why she quit as leader, shortly after Boris was appointed PM by the Westminster party.)

    Anyway: unless something utterly bonkers happens between now and May 5th, Nicola Sturgeon is going to be re-elected as First Minister, leading an SNP government with as big a majority as the Conservatives in Westminster, and pre-Brexit polling indicating a plurality for independence. She's cautious, but there's never been a better time to call a snap "consultative" non-binding referendum, which doesn't need an enabling act in Westminister, whatever Boris thinks. (A Binding referendum like 2014 would be another matter, but post-2016 and the Brexit referendum, that doesn't matter.)

    Her goal will be to push for a 60% vote for independence, or 50% + 1 of the Scottish electorate. And if she can continue to communicate about COVID19 policy more clearly than Boris (even if she isn't handling it significantly better) she will walk it, on the basis of public perception of personal competence (plus a chunk of Scots being extremely pissed off with the state of the Union, and being dragged through a hedge backward by Brexit on top).

    At which point, "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander". Either Boris surrenders to the inevitable, or ... well, a constitutional crisis ensues either way.

    A point nobody talks about much is that all the economic objections that apply to Brexit apply, in miniature, to the question of Scotland leaving the UK. There will be damaging fallout and probably a recession and drop in general prosperity lasting for years. But that's not going to look so bad in event of a cliff-edge Brexit: the question people will be asking is "why not get all the pain over with at once, and cut ourselves free of these self-destructive numpties?" And I don't see BoJo, Cummings, et al having any kind of answer to that, because all their arguments for Brexit make the case for Scexit, too.

    The NI question is a bit more ambiguous but if there's a land border in Ireland there will be a collapse in public confidence in UK-level institutions (which isn't that high already) and quite likely progress towards holding the obvious referendum over Irish unification. And? With Boris and his junta pandering to Little Englander sentiment, that's not going to go the unionist way. I'd expect the DUP and the UUP to cut a deal, otherwise things will go to hell in a handbasket.

    713:

    ANFO slurry is used regularly in quarrying operations since it's cheap, especially in large quantities where you are looking for a lot of blast effect like calving off an entire cliff face.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHwo02KaJtU

    The engineers drill holes down from the top face of the quarry behind the edge then fill them with ANFO slurry pumped from tankers. The initiator is usually a few kgs of gelignite sunk to the bottom of each hole to get the ANFO mix over the hump (it's actually quite stable by itself assuming nobody drops a fag-end down the hole after the fill). The result is a low/medium explosive that ruptures rather than shattering as a "fast" plastique like SEMTEX or Compound-4 would.

    The ammonium nitrate stored in the Beirut warehouse was almost certainly a dual-purpose product, it could have been reprocessed as fertiliser or used for general-purpose civil engineering and quarrying work.

    714:

    The NI question is a bit more ambiguous but if there's a land border in Ireland

    And a border down the Irish Sea between the UK and the island of Ireland including the North ... that's going to reinforce the feeling that they've been cut adrift, so why not reunite? Much of the reasons against that used to be the Unionist side's fear of the South's institutional Catholicism, but the South's been steamrollering that in recent decades.

    Yeah, if you were trying to persuade Ireland to reunite, I couldn't imagine a more effective way.

    That assumes that NI doesn't go for independence itself, or union with Scotland, or perhaps a two state federation with the South.

    715:

    NITROPRIL (note spelling) is explicitly sold as an explosive.

    Nitro Prill the Brazillian company makes explosives, although there is noting on their website about selling big lots of ammonium nitrate (and why would their be, do people typically sell 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate on the web? Free delivery with Amazon Prime?)

    716:

    Thank you for a local's perspective - it seems to be what I suspected but always nice for either confirmation or finding out assumptions are incorrect.

    And I don't see BoJo, Cummings, et al having any kind of answer to that, because all their arguments for Brexit make the case for Scexit, too.

    Boris will come up with something - he is Boris after all - though it may not make sense.

    My guess is that Boris doesn't want to be the one to be holding power when the UK breaks apart.

    But I think the key is that Boris to a large extent isn't running things - he is merely a useful idiot to take the blame when the gullible public finds themselves in a mess post-Brexit.

    My understanding is that Brexit is primarily being driven by the 0.1% to keep London (and the money) away from EU regulations, using nationalism and other things to con the public at large to commit self-harm.

    And as much as it is satisfying to dismiss much of the right wing as a bunch of idiots (Grayling anyone?) there is somewhere an inner circle of competent plotters.

    And if I am plotting Brexit my biggest fear will be that while I enjoy the benefits of Brexit the masses, paying the price, have buyers remorse and are open to rethinking Brexit in the next election (whether it be 2024 or earlier) - or worse have a left wing government implement EU style laws in the UK anyway.

    One way to prevent that threat is to allow Scotland to leave - no Scotland, no large block of left-leaning voters to support (directly or indirectly) a left-leaning Labour Party in England. No Scotland and you likely prevent a left-leaning government in England/Wales for at least 30 years - long enough to get what the Brexiters want well established as "normal"

    Enter (again) the useful idiot called Boris, who can be manipulated to be the one taking the blame for both Brexit and the loss of Scotland and Northern Ireland, with a new leader (Gove?) to lead the Brexit Party into the next election with a much better chance of winning.

    717:

    Something I am sure that you have thought of is that a conclusive consultative referendum result for Scexit would be grounds for judicial review of refusal of a binding one.

    As you say, the arguments for and against are identical. It's a stupid idea, but many people (including present company) believe that it's marginally less stupid than going down with England.

    However, I am not sure that things will get that far before the current fiasco implodes, and I really don't have a feel for what will come out of THAT. We might well start with a nationwide imposition of the Civil Contingencies Act to a degree so far not seen, and go on from there.

    Or Brexit might go more smoothly than the people working on it (and, no, I don't mean Gove etc.) expect. In which case, we in England continue our steady slide into fascism.

    718:

    Greg, as other commenters said before - do not try to self-medicate with warfarin. This drug is a vitamin K antagonist and it interferes with synthesis of several coagulation factors in the liver. Therefore its effects are significantly delayed, sometimes you have to take it for several days to achieve desired anticoagulatory effect. More than that - it interferes with synthesis of proteins C and S - important endogenous ANTICOAGULANTS. And because plasma half-life of those is measured in hours (not in days, like coagulation factors), there is a well known complication - early warfarin thrombosis caused by actual hypercoagulation spike associated with the beginning of warfarin therapy. They prevent it in hospitals by co-administering heparin injections for the first 3-5 days of warfarin. Then there is that crazy pharmacokinetics of warfarin. One word - UNPREDICTABLE. Patients beginning that drug (I mean, in their initial 3-4 years of treatment) have to monitor INR (international normalized ratio, I think, a blood test for coagulation) very frequently. There is no one-dose-fit-all schedule of drug administration - and drug interactions with basically everything will give a trained professional a nice headache. If you REALLY want to self-medicate - we have some alternatives, had those for years. First - dabigatran. Orally active direct inhibitor of thrombin, with stable dosing regiment. Then a family of Xa factor inhibitors: rivaroxaban, apixaban, edoxaban. Same advantage - stable pharmacokinetics, so the dosage can be calculated, not experimentally determined for each patient. But even taking those is an invitation for complications and side effects, the chief one - bleeding. You have been warned, though.

    719:

    the question people will be asking is "why not get all the pain over with at once, and cut ourselves free of these self-destructive numpties?"

    Turns out that while most people TALK about getting pain over with all at once, in practice they rarely do it that way. When the moment occurs most opt for slow and steady. Even when shown getting the pain over with is the best way.

    Shankar Vedantam (https://www.npr.org/people/137765146/shankar-vedantam) has talked about this in his radio podcasts.

    720:

    Scott Sanford @703: That is informative and well done. Yet I wish they could at least spend more time aligning the maps comparing destruction. It's good that they did not get all that hard on assumptions, because I would instantly try to call them out on bullshit.

    I disliked the whole narrative about "conspiracies", but on the other hand, it is too much for a coincidence that a shipment of mil-grade chemical has been sitting for years unsuspected right in the middle of the port. Relatively small port, not a big Chinese one, if this thing is powerful enough to erase THE ENTIRE PORT by itself. Can't be just incompetence, can it? Epicenter is located right in the center of the warehouse, so if anything, you can deduce that there was nothing much except the stockpile itself. By Occam's razor it means that it was the "target". Maybe to cover the contraband routes and terrorist support. Very convenient if you just need to blow it up sky-high to cover your traces.

    I dredged some news posted right before the incident and they did not bring much. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/the-american-moment-creating-a-new-balance-of-power-in-syria/ https://www.arabnews.com/node/1713456 This and that, looks like the city had it coming, but nothing too concrete. Although this provides an alternative version that certain somebody has seen the port as too much opportunity for Syrian government. These are mad times, so anything is possible and there are no brakes and safety railings for idiots.

    Also some surprising photo session turned bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxzwFPJBwR4

    721:

    Allen Thomson @ 677:

    The MegaTon designs were made in response to the "mineshaft-gap", ie: for use against the buried bunkers in USSR where all the apparatnicks where supposed to be hiding.
    The problem with that idea, is that even if you do a "laydown" where it literally rests on the ground before it explodes,..

    Mostly true, and it's why the B53 airdropped bomb was as corpulent as it was. It was designed to allow low-level laydown delivery against the CPSU leadership bunkers near Chekhov and Sharapovo south of Moscow and need some extra crushable structure to protect the actual physics package. That was a smaller cylinder nestled inside the fat envelope.

    See https://fas.org/blogs/security/2010/10/b53dismantlement/ for a diagram.

    I've always wondered why they didn't continue development of Barnes Wallis's Grand Slam bunker buster design with a small nuclear warhead in place of the high explosives? I think that would have reduced the radioactive contamination problem resulting from surface burst, and with the penetration & camouflet warhead with a much smaller yield would have still produced results.

    Of course delivery to the target would have become a problem in later years after the Soviets developed extensive SAM capabilities, but they abandoned his designs right after the war long before ICBMs & SAMs made high-altitude Strategic Bombing "obsolete".

    OTOH, those old fat H-bombs had pretty good earth penetration if the lay-down parachute didn't open. When the B-52 broke up over Faro, NC in 1961, two Mark 39 weapons were ejected somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 feet (300 and 610 m) altitude. The parachute on one of the weapons failed to deploy and it buried itself approximately 180 ± 10 feet (54.9 ± 3.0 m). in a farmer's field.

    There are varying accounts of what happened with the weapons & how close we came to having an H-bomb detonated in North Carolina; ranging to it couldn't have gone off because it was not armed to 5 of 6 safety devices (or 3 of 4 safety devices - take your pick) failed leaving only one critical safety device preventing detonation.

    And I was told during training (the Nuclear part of a Nuclear, Biological & Chemical warfare MOS) that ALL of the safety devices failed & they don't know why it didn't go off.

    Close up of the Mk 39 whose parachute DID open:
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Goldsboro_Mk_39_Bomb_1-close-up.jpeg

    Air Force guys trying to dig the other one out of its deep hole:
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Goldsboro-B-52_buried_bomb.jpg

    State Historical Marker in Eureka, NC:
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/%22Nuclear_Mishap%22_marker_in_Eureka%2C_NC.jpg

    722:

    There's the old rule about not assuming malice for things that can be adequately covered by stupidity.

    It's also possible that someone thought that stockpiling the ammonium nitrate in the port was "safe" because everybody could see if someone started moving it.

    It's equally (if not more) possible that it needed to be held for reasons, and this was the one place that caused the least angst for all the different parties who might care about that much explosive floating around.

    723:

    What the actual hell...

    NY attorney general has announced a lawsuit aimed at dissolving the National Rifle Association over alleged financial mismanagement.

    "We've come to the conclusion that the NRA unfortunately was serving as a personal piggy bank to four individual defendants." - including Wayne LaPierre.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53684033

    Talk about wild cards...

    724:

    Which it can't be. Incompetence, negligence and corruption, yes, but not mere stupidity. What's more, Bellingcat is a highly suspect site, and both Lebanon's southerly neighbour and several terrorist groups have 'form' for such actions. But, in THIS case, people I respect for their knowledge of the area are in agreement about it not being deliberate.

    725:

    I disliked the whole narrative about "conspiracies", but on the other hand, it is too much for a coincidence that a shipment of mil-grade chemical has been sitting for years unsuspected right in the middle of the port. Relatively small port, not a big Chinese one, if this thing is powerful enough to erase THE ENTIRE PORT by itself. Can't be just incompetence, can it?

    Except there is a paper trail over years of people telling the authorities that this was dangerous and it should be removed, with nothing done

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/05/floating-bomb-disclosed-documents-reveal-path

    Epicenter is located right in the center of the warehouse, so if anything, you can deduce that there was nothing much except the stockpile itself.

    All that tells us is that the epicenter of the massive explosion was the warehouse - something of a given with the amount of explosive material.

    It does not tell us where the fire started, as the fire (and it's damage) would have been minor and likely obliterated when the material in question went up.

    By Occam's razor it means that it was the "target".

    So a conspiracy to destroy the warehouse of material, that requires active planning, is simpler than an accidental nearby fire?

    726:

    I've always wondered why they didn't continue development of Barnes Wallis's Grand Slam bunker buster design with a small nuclear warhead in place of the high explosives? I think that would have reduced the radioactive contamination problem resulting from surface burst, and with the penetration & camouflet warhead with a much smaller yield would have still produced results.

    I don't know why the earth penetrator nuke idea lay fallow (apparently) for a while after WW-II, but it did revive in the US with the B61-11 bomb, the Pershing-II warhead and the cancelled RNEP (repackaged B61 or B83 bomb). Turns out that effective containment doesn't happen with any feasible penetration depth, but effective coupling of energy into ground shock only needs 10-ish meters or so.

    The National Academies did a study on this back in the first Bush II administration: https://www.nap.edu/download/11282

    727:

    Correction noted - it wasn't at all certain - but TPTB in the UK were NOT expecting Dunkirk to go anything like as well as it did. Continuing the push would have made it harder for those troops to regroup, as well, and the whole affair would have been a lot messier and probably bloodier. It is irrelevant to what I was saying whether that would have increased German losses, as long as it led to the evacuation being abandoned early enough.

    My point was that, if Dunkirk had been an apparent debacle (rather than an almost complete 'snatching victory from the jaws of defeat') AND Hitler had offered an armistice, Churchill would have refused, and the appeasers (who were still strong) would probably have succeeded.

    As far as the points of capability are concerned, yes, I know that's what they had. But Germany had ample technology and industrial capability to resolve those defects. Luckily for us, the combination of micromanagement and incompetence (a common combination) at the political level avoided that.

    728:

    Good one... but one thing I still don't understand: the next to the bottom picture: what the hell is that fire about half a klick to the right of the grain silos?

    729:

    I have to reread it - I read it when it came out.

    Actually, I was thinking of early Caroline Cherryh - consider the Calibans of 40,000 in Gehenna, or the Regul of the Faded Sun series.

    730:

    Not too surprising, given how weird and wild the NRA's finances were getting.

    For example, about a year ago, Talking Points Memo cited a WSJ report that the NRA was funding private jet trips for La Pierre and family (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/nra-private-jet-rides-lapierre-family) and Faux News was slamming La Pierre (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/fox-news-host-wayne-lapierre-corruption) and the NY AG was suing the NRA to allow their long term/incestuous PR firm to testify in the AG probe without violating their non-disclosure agreement (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/fox-news-host-wayne-lapierre-corruption) (Yes, I regularly read Talking Points Memo, acknowledging that they veer into muckraking).

    So it looks like, after a year of ingesting and processing,the NRA excrement is finally hitting the NY judicial fan. Just in time to make it even harder for the NRA to participate in the fall election. This may actually be coincidence, given that most of the links above are from last August, and a year to investigate and file doesn't strike me as odd at all.

    Not so oddly: NRA finances have been known to be wacko for years. Since they didn't do the honorable thing and fall apart on their own, I'm not really surprised that the NY AG has moved to actively dissolve them. Political visuals aside, that's what I'd hope would happen for any nonprofit that gets in this kind of (apparent) trouble, anywhere on the political spectrum.

    731:

    This has been in the works for many months. As in, months ago, I saw news reports of LaPierre using it as his own bank account....

    Yesssss....

    732:

    The National Academies did a study on this back in the first Bush II administration

    From that. Emphasis in Conclusion 3 in original.

    Conclusion 2. Nuclear earth-penetrator weapons (EPWs) with a depth of penetration of 3 meters capture most of the advantage associated with the coupling of ground shock. While additional depth of penetration increases ground-shock coupling, it also increases the uncertainty of EPW survival. To hold at risk hard and deeply buried targets, the nuclear yield must be increased with increasing depth of the target. The calculated limit for holding hard and deeply buried targets at risk of destruction with high probability using a nuclear EPW is approximately 200 meters for a 300 kiloton weapon and 300 meters for a 1 megaton weapon. Conclusion 3. Current experience and empirical predictions indicate that earth penetrator weapons cannot penetrate to depths required for total containment of the effects of a nuclear explosion. Conclusion 4. For the same yield and weather conditions, the number of casualties from an earth penetrator weapon detonated at a few meters depth is, for all practical purposes, equal to that from a surface burst of the same weapon yield. Any reduction in casualties due to the use of an EPW is attributable primarily to the reduction in yield made possible by the greater ground shock produced by buried bursts. Conclusion 5. The yield required of a nuclear weapon to destroy a hard and deeply buried target is reduced by a factor of 15 to 25 by enhanced ground-shock coupling if the weapon is detonated a few meters below the surface.
    733:

    Thanks to whitroth and Heteromeles for input. I saw it and wondered about a Reichstag-level triggering incident. I hope that's just paranoia.

    734:

    Elderly Cynic @ 685: If the USA was neutral in in the UK-Germany conflict, we might well have lost the battle of the Atlantic, and an invasion would have been feasible. We were within a fortnight of running out of fuel at one point. It would then be easy to land paratroops, and the hard part would be getting heavy material and supplies across. One trick would be to mine the Channel (densely) at both ends and have lots of submarines, denying the Royal Navy its control.

    The battle of the Atlantic is why I think the U.K. might have been "forced" to accept an Armistice on German terms. But even if the Germans had managed to deny the Royal Navy control of the channel; for all the other reasons given, I just don't see how an invasion of the British Isles becomes feasible.

    One of those terms might have been the U.K. withdrawing from the war with Japan, but I expect the Empire would have carried on with their part of that war.

    And, as you say, while Roosevelt was supportive of the UK, he had considerable difficulty in maintaining that position. According to all I read, if he had tried to get Congress to declare war against Germany (before Pearl Harbor), he would have lost. If Hitler had had any sense (again), be would have broken the Axis after Pearl Harbor, saying that it was intended to counter the USSR (as it was), not the USA, and possibly even declared war against Japan. The time was very tight, but he might (just) have beaten Churchill to it, and that could have changed the USA's alignment. Remember also the Irish question; a promise to reunite Ireland would have had a major effect in the USA.

    Hitler would have been within his treaty obligations if he had pointed out to the Japanese that his treaty required him to come to the defense of Japan IF THEY WERE ATTACKED, but since Japan was doing the attacking there was no treaty obligation. I certainly don't see any way that leads to him declaring war on Japan.

    And even if he had, I don't see it swaying the U.S. to his side in the European war. We're still on the U.K.'s side in that conflict even if we are no longer actively assisting them.

    At best, he gets a hostile neutrality out of the U.S. (the undeclared U-Boat war the U.S. Navy was already fighting would have continued).

    None of that would have changed the fact that the USSR would have defeated Germany, though it might have delayed it slightly. The USA allying itself with Germany would have changed that, of course.

    I'm not so sure about that. I don't know how significant a role U.S. support for the Soviets played in their war effort, but it was not negligible. Without the requirement to hold western Europe against a possible invasion from the U.K. (or up from Africa through Sicily & Italy), Hitler might have been able to fight them to a standstill.

    The U.S. allying with Germany to fight the Soviets is some kind of post D-Day Battle of France Wehrmacht pipe-dream. If the U.S. hadn't joined the U.K. against Germany, there wouldn't be a post D-Day Battle of France. The U.S. wouldn't have been involved on either side of that conflict, but certainly not on the side of Germany.

    But whatever happened, the war in Europe would have been over one way or another before the the U.S. finished a separate war against Japan.

    735:

    At which point, "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander".

    Except it never is.

    Separatists are distinctly unwilling to let parts of "their" territory separate from the separate state they want.

    736:

    There's the old rule about not assuming malice for things that can be adequately covered by stupidity.

    In what should be a case study of a failed state. Not quite as bad as Libya or Somalia but still ....

    737:

    dpb Yes, I know that, & you know that - but - for how long will they be able to get away with it? And what proportion of "true believers" will continue to believe those lies? Because that's important. - Same as they are total fuckwits, in huge numbers in the USA who still believe in the DT. And the cases ar relevant & parallel, after all.

    Charlie YES - but ... In spite of all that, BoZo is PM until December 2024, continuing to mismanage & fuck-up what WAS the UK ... Unless we get an actual (soft) revolution or coup. Um. ... well, a constitutional crisis ensues either way. Agree with THAT.

    If the UK breaks up & can see Brenda, or Chaz or even William, calling a Special Meeting of the Privy Council, which ends with BoZo under arrest - effectively for sedition & treason ( Suitable, offical matching charges which WILL stick will be found ) A general election is also called, on the spot, to ask for the people's mandate on the disaster ....

    mdive Boris will come up with something - he is Boris after all - though it may not make sense. Correct: It will be wall-to-wall lying bollocks. Um, no: My understanding is that Brexit is primarily being driven by the 0.1% to keep London (and the money) away from EU regulations, using nationalism and other things to con the public at large to commit self-harm. 0.01% please & London doesn't want any part of this, we voted "Remain" remember - we are the much derided "Metropolitan Elite" - a meme that is STILL playing to the stupid & gullible.

    Plausible, but, I suspect it will get so bad that even after that, Starmer will win in 2024 ( Unless we get a collapse & an election sooner than that, of course.

    EC We might well start with a nationwide imposition of the Civil Contingencies Act to a degree so far not seen, and go on from there. And that's the GOOD option - the bad one being the slide into fascism ...

    Darth Elephant Oh do grow up - you missed the implied sarcasm, I'm afraid!

    waldo Don't get your hopes up ... but - can we buy the popcorn now?

    738:

    Relatively small port, not a big Chinese one

    Reminder that Beirut is the capital of Lebanon, a nation with less than half the population of Moscow! Beirut itself is the size of one of your suburbs.

    However ... 2700 tonnes of bagged AN isn't very large, physically. It can be approximated to a 5-6 metre deep stack 20 x 20 metres along the edges. I've been in smaller cattle barns on family farms.

    If it was taken off a ship that was impounded due to legal action over ownership, and stored under seal by court order, it could very well be forgotten while proceedings dragged on for years and the warehouse staff turn over. The lawyers don't know what the hell it is -- they're paper-pushers dealing with a property/licensing lawsuit. The warehouse staff don't know what's in there -- they're not being paid to move stuff in or out of that bonded warehouse.

    (And yes, there are bonded warehouses a kilometre or so down the road from me that stay locked for years because they're full of highly inflammable casks of whisky, which is taxable on sale, and it's not ready for sale for many years, or even decades. Not ammonium nitrate, but making a point that not all supply chains run on just-in-time.)

    This says nothing about whether somebody remembered and targeted it deliberately, but explains why it wasn't properly secured/maintained.

    739:
    In other news, back from the proctologist today

    In that case, you might find this funny.: the colo-rectal surgeon song. First verse:

    we praise the colorectal surgeon misunderstood and much maligned slaving away in the heart of darkness working where the sun don't shine

    whitroth @667:

    Can't we restore this world from backup, and change a vote count in 2016?

    William Gibson's Agency postulates just such a world - Brexit is rejected, and HRC wins in 2016.

    Of course, there's the problem of a looming nuclear war in the background - apparently things went bad in Syria, and sabre-rattling got to the point where both sides wanted to back down, but neither could see how this was possible without loosing too much face. 1962 all over again.

    740:

    Er, no. If we get the CCA scenario, it won't be a slide into fascism, it will be a jump most of the way into it. There's nothing so permanent as a temporary measure, remember - vide income tax.

    742:

    Mallen @ 696:

    Can you get 100% Ammonium Nitrate from the Garden Center? (I don't garden, so I don't know."

    In the us, not since Timothy McVeigh , an associate of a self described "White supremacist Christian militia", blew up the Oklahoma Federal building with a truck load of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel 25 years ago.

    My only experience with Ammonium Nitrate is as an explosive. The Army doesn't let you just blow shit up, you have to be trained how to do it properly.

    Since my MOS included "field expedient" demolitions, I had to go to school. The stuff we used on the training ranges was clearly marked as an explosive.

    https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/5-102/Ch6.htm

    Fun school, but not likely anything I'm going to be able to use in every day life.

    743:

    tarkeel @ 702: Bellingcat has a rather good writeup about what just blew up in Beirut. TL;DR: they find that the evidence clearly supports an accidental discharge of ammonium nitrate.

    Say rather a "negligent" discharge. Something on this scale takes a long chain of negligent actions to produce, so it's hardly an "accident". It wasn't intentional, but was no accident either.

    An accident is when someone walks around a corner & slips on a banana peel they didn't see lying there. And even then there's negligence on the part of whoever dropped the banana peel there.

    Producing this "accident" took a whole lot of negligent actions one after another by many, many people. That "banana peel" was laying there for a long time and there are a lot of people who should have picked it up & disposed of it properly.

    744:

    EC "The CCA" - depends on who calls it & how & how many people tell the "authorities" to go fuck themseleves & lots of other circumstances. Agree that a Gove/Francois axis (shudder) would be a jump well towards fascism, especially if they "appoint" Scummings as Reichsprotektor SD - but you would find a lot of people just sitting down & refusing to act, if nothing else. The jails can only hold so many people, after all ....

    745:

    Of course, there's the problem of a looming nuclear war in the background - apparently things went bad in Syria, and sabre-rattling got to the point where both sides wanted to back down, but neither could see how this was possible without loosing too much face. 1962 all over again.

    If anyone wants to write the ironic SF time travel story where Brexit, Trump, and COvid19 were necessary to save the world from a nuclear holocaust, go right ahead...

    746:

    You DO know that the Home Secretary has the power to hire the rentathugs that provided 'security' in Afganistan and Iraq, don't you, AND allow them similar armament, AND give them immunity against prosecution or being sued (especially if they are USA-based)? And I hope that I don't have to describe the current incumbent to you.

    747:

    In spite of all that, BoZo is PM until December 2024, continuing to mismanage & fuck-up what WAS the UK ..

    As the last several years, and 2020 in particular, have shown predicting the future is problematic.

    That said unless things work out very different I don't think Boris lasts until 2024 - my guess is the Conservatives will want a fresh untainted leader by late 2022 if not sooner.

    If the UK breaks up & can see Brenda, or Chaz or even William, calling a Special Meeting of the Privy Council, which ends with BoZo under arrest - effectively for sedition & treason

    So, I'm not up on the ins and outs of that aspect of the UK ruling/government system. That said, I would be surprised if the Royal Family did anything. Going against the wishes of the people of Scotland from a democratic referendum would cause all sorts of problems (which, as was pointed out several times this time last year, the Royals avoid those sorts of messes even in efforts to prevent Brexit).

    0.01% please & London doesn't want any part of this, we voted "Remain" remember - we are the much derided "Metropolitan Elite" - a meme that is STILL playing to the stupid & gullible.

    Note I made no mention at all of the people of London wanting Brexit - I said the rich wanted to keep "London" - as in the financial business just like "Wall Street" doesn't normally refer to the physical street - away from the EU regulators.

    Plausible, but, I suspect it will get so bad that even after that, Starmer will win in 2024 ( Unless we get a collapse & an election sooner than that, of course.

    While I think in part the jury is still out on Starmer, as several on here make clear Starmer (like Blair) isn't left-wing but more centrist - something that is necessary to get enough seats in right-wing leaning England.

    At this point, without decades of work re-educating the people of England (or alternately getting the people of Scotland to again support Labour) there does not appear to be any way for a left-wing Labour leader to get sufficient seats to form a government.

    The best a left-leaning Labour Party could hope for is a minority government that could be supported by the left-leaning SNP on a bill by bill basis (because any formal agreement would be too toxic for Labour).

    A toxic Conservative Party in 2024 though could open up enough seats for a more centrist Labour Party to form a government, as a centrist Labour Party wouldn't scare away the right-leaning English voters.

    Thus the reason why the Brexit masterminds would be quite happy to see Scotland leave - it removes the one apparent way for a left wing UK government and instead leaves a "safer" centrist alternative for when the Conservatives can't win - an alternative that will be less likely to do things that annoy those powerful people.

    748:

    to mdlve @725: Except there is a paper trail over years of people telling the authorities that this was dangerous and it should be removed, with nothing done Papers can be forged. More than that, papers can be forged beforehand, or recycled to be more convincing for cover story. Perhaps, these papers appear too fast to match the story, because in the ensuring chaos usually it is not even easy to determine what belongs to whom - yet the backstory is already complete in a single day with some minor details. This is utterly suspicious and at this point I write it off as a mainstream media bullshit (maybe they will prove to be useful to investigation if it ever starts).

    So a conspiracy to destroy the warehouse of material, that requires active planning, is simpler than an accidental nearby fire? This sounds does like a conspiracy, but under normal circumstances you have to actively try to "accidentally" set fire to a warehouse full of explosives. Like, you have to maybe open it for free visiting, ignore all and every safety procedure and maybe name it "dihydrogen oxide powder" to anybody involved. Anybody would comment how many regulations were breached to even acquire this cargo, not to talk about depositing it in the port.

    to Charlie @738: However ... 2700 tonnes of bagged AN isn't very large, physically. It can be approximated to a 5-6 metre deep stack 20 x 20 metres along the edges. I've been in smaller cattle barns on family farms. Well, it is not impossible to do it in the first place, especially in country with rampaging economical disaster, foreign involvement and corruption. So I will stay away from oversimplifying it until it will be proven otherwise - just because I don't believe in coincidences.

    JBS @734: I'm not so sure about that. I don't know how significant a role U.S. support for the Soviets played in their war effort, but it was not negligible. Without the requirement to hold western Europe against a possible invasion from the U.K. (or up from Africa through Sicily & Italy), Hitler might have been able to fight them to a standstill. It was significant, at times even crucial, but here's couple of things that obstruct many people even from calling it "help" - notably, the fact that it was paid in gold despite taking a brunt of fighting in hopeless situation. For all I know, there was only one country that actually gave USSR real gratuitous help - Mongolia.

    The U.S. allying with Germany to fight the Soviets is some kind of post D-Day Battle of France Wehrmacht pipe-dream. If the U.S. hadn't joined the U.K. against Germany, there wouldn't be a post D-Day Battle of France. The U.S. wouldn't have been involved on either side of that conflict, but certainly not on the side of Germany. One of the primary concerns of USSR was to prevent this alliance even before the war, and I am talking about Munch agreement, ofc. It clearly was in the area of political possibility, with all these right-wing parties roaming around at the time - not necessarily a military alliance, just a convenient one. It should be noted that Germany decided to go for a war with USSR at the peak of their economic power, because after that moment they would start to stall in development, and by the middle of 40-s USSR would be able to roll over them confidently. Which wasn't in interest of anyone around, too.

    749:

    John Hughes @ 715: NITROPRIL (note spelling) is explicitly sold as an explosive.

    Nitro Prill the Brazillian company makes explosives, although there is noting on their website about selling big lots of ammonium nitrate (and why would their be, do people typically sell 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate on the web? Free delivery with Amazon Prime?)

    This doesn't appear to be the brand name article from Brasil, but a shady knock-off from the Republic of Georgia that was destined for Mozambique (industrial explosives for the mining industry?).

    The vessel carrying the cargo put into port in Beirut with engine trouble & was retained there as unseaworthy at which point the vessel & cargo were abandoned by their respective owners & the cargo has been in legal limbo since then. It had to be somewhere, and at some point someone decided it was less dangerous to unload it into that warehouse instead of leaving it on an abandoned, leaky, sinking ship.

    I read an interview with the ship's captain (read courtesy of Google Translate) where he claims the vessel did sink a few years ago because there was no one on-board to periodically pump out the water that was leaking in.:
    https://www.sibreal.org/a/30767538.html

    Other reports suggest the ship is still being used, but those are behind paywalls I'm not bothering to pay for access.
    https://maritime.ihs.com/Account2/Index
    https://maritime.ihs.com/Account2/Index

    This one is not behind a paywall, and says the current location of the vessel is unknown:
    https://www.fleetmon.com/vessels/rhosus_8630344_46589/

    Which I guess does not conflict with the former captain's claim it sank a few years ago.

    750:

    both Lebanon's southerly neighbour and several terrorist groups have 'form' for such actions.

    Not for procuring kiloton-range explosions in the middle of densely-populated cities, they don't.

    Would Israel drop bombs in Lebanon? Absolutely -- but generally only on hard/military targets. For general shit-stirring they'd be more likely to simply assassinate someone, then sit back and play "let's you and him fight". The blowback from deliberately detonating a shitpile of explosives in downtown Beirut isn't something they'd risk without a huge pay-off: remember the Sabra and Shatila massacre? That's still within living memory of their current leadership.

    (The same objection goes to the USA, or Syria, or Russia, or Turkey, or any of the other regional players: before assuming it's an attack, it pays to ask cui bono?)

    751:

    I had a dig about , it turns out that sodium/ potasium nitrate can make ammonium nitrate so agitated it spontaneously catches fire...

    752:

    Heteromeles @ 722: There's the old rule about not assuming malice for things that can be adequately covered by stupidity

    There is a point where sufficiently wilfull stupidity is itself malicious.

    It's also possible that someone thought that stockpiling the ammonium nitrate in the port was "safe" because everybody could see if someone started moving it.

    It appears not so much a case of keeping it safe as rendering it less dangerous (than leaving it on a sinking ship)

    It's equally (if not more) possible that it needed to be held for reasons, and this was the one place that caused the least angst for all the different parties who might care about that much explosive floating around.

    It seems to have been lost in bureaucratic limbo. Those who wanted something done about it (primarily due to safety concerns) didn't have the authority (power) to do anything & no one else who might have had the authority (power) was willing to take on the responsibility. Passing the buck has barely started.

    753:

    In spite of all that, BoZo is PM until December 2024,

    I think he'll be gone by January 31st, 2022.

    Why?

    He's a front man, he's obviously incompetent at actually governing, he's only there to drive the bus over the Brexit cliffs. Nobody wants to take over the steering wheen right before the inevitable crash, because the passengers will lynch them if they turn away from disaster -- but once there's a messy pile of blood and bones at the foot of the cliffs, his backers will need someone to carry the can. Boris is the perfect scapegoat, and we've got Gove, Hancock, Hunt, Patel et al all queueing up to go stabby on his arse.

    Note that if Scotland leaves the UK it'll remain a constitutional monarchy headed by the crowned Queen of Scotland, Elizabeth the First (aka Lizzie Windsor). Unless she dies first and it's Charles I of Scotland. (The question of whether Scotland becomes a Republic isn't part of the question of whether Scotland resumes independence.)

    754:

    waldo @ 723: What the actual hell...

    NY attorney general has announced a lawsuit aimed at dissolving the National Rifle Association over alleged financial mismanagement.

    "We've come to the conclusion that the NRA unfortunately was serving as a personal piggy bank to four individual defendants." - including Wayne LaPierre.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53684033

    Talk about wild cards...

    Kool! The financial scandal is an outgrowth of things that were turned up during the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Apparently they used the NRA to channel funds to favored candidates. But the investigation also revealed NRA insiders were using it for private gain (against the law for a "non-profit" organization.)

    755:

    mdlve @ 725:

    I disliked the whole narrative about "conspiracies", but on the other hand, it is too much for a coincidence that a shipment of mil-grade chemical has been sitting for years unsuspected right in the middle of the port. Relatively small port, not a big Chinese one, if this thing is powerful enough to erase THE ENTIRE PORT by itself. Can't be just incompetence, can it?

    Except there is a paper trail over years of people telling the authorities that this was dangerous and it should be removed, with nothing done

    Plus, this was NOT "mil-grade" material. Industrial explosives yes, "mil-grade" no.

    756:

    whitroth @ 728: Good one... but one thing I still don't understand: the next to the bottom picture: what the *hell* is that fire about half a klick to the *right* of the grain silos?

    Just a SWAG, but there appear to have been numerous fires started by the blast.

    The image was taken from this tweet:
    https://twitter.com/AuroraIntel/status/1290701994131443714

    Here's another image someone stiched together showing the multiple fires:
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EemNB4YWsAELD1k?format=png&name=900x900

    757:

    JBS @ 743: I think the word I meant to use is unintentional. I completely agree that this was negligent, but I don't think anyone intended it to go off.

    758:

    But the investigation also revealed NRA insiders were using it for private

    And we have a second round of legal action, this time by the DC Attorney General, going after the NRA Foundation for allowing itself to be used to financially prop up the money losing NRA.

    https://www.washingtonian.com/2020/08/06/dc-attorney-general-is-suing-the-nra-foundation/

    759:

    to 5 of 6 safety devices (or 3 of 4 safety devices - take your pick) failed leaving only one critical safety device preventing detonation. And I was told during training (the Nuclear part of a Nuclear, Biological & Chemical warfare MOS) that ALL of the safety devices failed & they don't know why it didn't go off. It was Luck, and it was ... close. The [Black Chamber] didn't figure it out until late 1962[1], after a deep probabilistic analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis and other data including the Goldsboro incident[3], at which time they put up an expensive, very big, very arcane "Do Not Disturb" sign. It was, alas, disturbed by aliens(from a distant timeline) several years ago.[2]

    Heteromeles 745: If anyone wants to write the ironic SF time travel story where Brexit, Trump, and COvid19 were necessary to save the world from a nuclear holocaust, go right ahead... Well, global heating is another increasingly urgent ... constraint. Talk to the scriptwriters about it, redshirts. :-)

    [1] This rewords/revises/extends an excellent microfiction piece; author might lurk so credit given. [2] Playing here. (Yes, it resembles Gibson's The Peripheral/Agency. It is different.) [3] See also Why No Mushroom Clouds? (Michael Krepon, December 16, 2019)

    760:

    Not in detail, no, but the form includes sponsoring and even supporting extremist groups who might well do such a thing - you mentioned the most egregious such example. In this case, there was a small explosion, or at least outburst of smoke, followed by the big one, and the former MIGHT have been intentional and the latter one unexpected. Such a cock-up does not of itself exclude a terrorist action.

    But, to repeat, there is NO reason to believe that even the first explosion was intentional, and still less that it was externally-sponsored (by anyone).

    761:

    This is the problem. I don't believe anyone important will tell them to go fuck themselves. The evidence from history suggests that people never do.

    People will bitch and moan and talk about how irregular things are but important necks will never be stuck out until it's too late. For similar reasons I wish Scotland well in independence but have a horrible suspicion that the people likely to be running Westminster will attempt to apply the Bosnian solution.

    762:

    I completely agree that this was negligent, but I don't think anyone intended it to go off. On the other hand, there were 6 years of a tempting target. I wonder how much surveillance video records are(were) kept at this port. There are differently moral people who would do this for a quite small personal gain, so the investigation will need to be quite thorough and be consistent with available evidence and with the possibility of new video/image/other evidence emerging.

    Now's the time to be downloading papers on ammonium nitrate explosive science. (I am not an explosives person, and did not lose any fingers during childhood.) This is a study that investigated the detonation of pure ammonium nitrate. Experimental study of the detonation of technical grade ammonium nitrate - Étude expérimentale de la détonation du nitrate d'ammonium industriel (November–December 2009) It can easily be done: The initiation of the charge is obtained by means of the detonation of an explosive booster containing pentrite (FORMEX, detonation velocity ≈ 7000 m/s), fixed in top of the tube.

    763:

    EC Actually no: They would be foreign mercenaries - contra to English Law - would make a very interesting court case.

    sleepingroutine @ 748 TROLL & lying with it. Sorry, but your pay from Putin is a little too obvious in this scenario.

    Charlie @ 753 I am horribly, fearfully persuaded that you might be correct. However, having blamed it all on BoZo - who do the conservativesfascists appoint as their tinpot fake Fürher?

    dbp Attempt an internal civil war, you mean? That really would have the Monarchy telling the politico-idiots to fuck off - not that they aren't stupid & arrogant enough to try, of course.

    764:

    Getting Boris out of Number 10 requires the Conservative Parliamentary Party to turn against him and a large majority of them are True Believers. A lot of them were selected at the constituency level to support him personally because he said he would get Brexit done. A lot of old hands "retired" from Parliament at the last election, what he's got standing him up as PM is the right-wing version of Blair's Boys that flooded into Parliament after the 1997 landslide election. Even after the Iraq fuckup Blair was supported whole-heartedly by the Progress wing of the Party and he was never under pressure to resign as leader, eventually walking away from Number 10 on his own terms. I can't see Boris facing any real pressure to go for the same reasons.

    765:

    What's going to really twist your noodle is viewing the deleted stuff (long one, footnote: [2]) and then noticing who did a PR jaunt in LB today. IMF are hard-fuckers when you get down on it[0].

    Deleted posts, oh well. Snatch n Grab the data.

    Papers can be forged. More than that, papers can be forged beforehand, or recycled to be more convincing for cover story.

    Yeah, we can see that angle. For example: two ships in the same dock having the same cargo, one vanishes, one is stuck due to legal woes, only one cargo remains. Neither ship materializes anymore.

    Transponders are also another one: 1 = small fishing boat, 2 = oil tanker, 3 = HELLO BOYS.

    That's common.

    Or MZ never gets notified of cargo. Or halt. And the guy responsible? Turns out he's living in Cyprus and has bad taste in motorcycles (you can always tell the easily bought, RU standards: cheap taste for American Luxuries. And you probably know what we're referencing there) but his son is in Scotland. Really think that's not a Klept op?

    It's Klept: no-one important in RU didn't send their children to the UK for schooling in the last 20 years, we love them all. Want to play dirty? Ask how many IL scions sent their children to the UK (CN - we got you covered). They chose the USA, and weeeellllll: look at the quality produced, eh?

    Bari fucking Weiss levels of dumbness.

    YAAAR.

    It's all The Great And Secret Show[tm].

    Anyhow

    If your analysis of this EVENT doesn't include IL - CN port sales (come on, calling it M.A.G.I.C like that, with zero tangible freight link-ups) against the US 6th Fleet, you need your head examined.

    What's that you say? IL is a bad ally? 1967 is telling you: no shit.

    ~

    What's actually happening:

    EG / GR sea deals, TR lira is toooooasssst, Macron been doing (TOTAL) deals with Haftar, now touring as proxy for IMF.

    IL likes to puff it up (btw, that Leib troll of 1995 speech by Bibi showing all the newbies how ignorant they were was gold), IMF are Hard Clout.

    What's that?

    CTRL+F "#3.5 It's always about oil"

    And so on.

    Depressing thing is about Authoritarians, they can't create, only destroy.

    [0] Anyone remember that FR guy done for molesting maids in NY?

    766:

    Getting Boris out of Number 10 requires the Conservative Parliamentary Party to turn against him and a large majority of them are True Believers. A lot of them were selected at the constituency level to support him personally because he said he would get Brexit done.

    The Conservative Party has already started to turn against him - his illness with Covid gave opportunity for a couple of people to tip their hands (with the enthusiastic support of the media), and the fact that none have been punished since he returned is a strong indication that Boris isn't as powerful as he was in January.

    The grumblings about his poor performance against Starmer, combined with his poor polling, are further evidence that he is currently a weak leader.

    Yes, many of them are True Believers - to Brexit, not Boris. Once Brexit is done in 6 months then Boris is no longer needed as a scapegoat for what goes wrong, though they will likely keep him for say another 12 months to allow all the bad things to be attached to him personally (including Scottish independence and the loss of Northern Ireland).

    So with Brexit done and the true believers no longer have any loyalty to Boris, the fun begins - it only takes 15% to put in to the 1922 committee to get a confidence vote (current parliament that is 55 MPs) - and then only a +1 majority can remove him as leader. That won't be difficult to achieve(*), particularly as those same MP's start looking 2 years into the future and the 2024 election - because the ultimate loyalty most MPs have is to themselves and getting re-elected. With Boris dragging the party down, and Labour with a competent leader, even most Boris supporters will be eagerly looking forwards to a new leader to attempt a reboot of the party in an attempt to improve poll standings to hope for a win in 2024.

    • the wildcard in all of this is if somehow Boris manages to turn his fortunes around and people forget Covid and forget Brexit and he is high in the polls.
    767:

    There is a point where sufficiently wilfull stupidity is itself malicious.

    Comes down to intent in the end, doesn't it?

    768:

    dpb: For similar reasons I wish Scotland well in independence but have a horrible suspicion that the people likely to be running Westminster will attempt to apply the Bosnian solution.

    Official party position at the moment remains forbidding another referendum and keeping the UK whole.

    But the people in charge will have noticed the polls in the last year or so of Conservative Party members that showed they were quite happy to see Scotland (and others) leave so England could get rid of the "freeloaders" and enjoy its new glorious place in the world order as an independent country once again. (yes, I know, all a fiction - but they believe it).

    So like I said, I suspect the chance to get rid of 5.5 million left wing voters will eventually be eagerly accepted.

    Greg: who do the conservativesfascists appoint as their tinpot fake Fürher?

    Well, we know from the Boris hospital stay that Gove still wants it, and appears to have some media support at the moment.

    But anyone making a prediction today is a fool - it will depend largely on who comes across in 2022 as popular with a chance of winning in 2024 - and so to a certain extent who can wear a teflon suit to ensure none of the Brexit muck sticks to them.

    769:

    Stross: "a 5-6 metre deep stack 20 x 20 metres"

    I saw a photo on twitter which was labeled as a picture of the ammonium nitrate in this warehouse a while ago. A few guys standing in front of an open warehouse door, looked like they were working on the door itself for whatever reason (maybe just trying to close it). Behind them were two layers of big industrial dry goods bags, like giant cloth buckets with handles for a forklift, about 1 m^3 labeled :ammonium nitrate". Two layers of them. Sports-field sized building. Looked like some of the material was out of the bags just on the ground. It looked... uhm... well settled in. As if it had been there a while.

    770:

    Yeah.

    You'd be shocked by similar pictures from Lincolnshire, UK, wouldn't you?

    This is how shit gets stored, universally, in freight cargo depots, (Ok, so LB is a bit shit, but it's not far off "Western Standards") let alone the end-point where pictures of OSAHAHAHAA failures are common.

    The people who you pay peanuts to shift and store this shit are deliberately not informed about the dangers of what they do in case (shock, horror) they might complain and agitate for better salaries / work environments.

    Guess what the IMF / USA has been against for the last 20 years.

    771:

    You need to bear in mind that people are not rational.

    This is worthless anecdata but in my experience it is fairly common to find people who simultaneously believe that Scotland MUST NOT gain independence, and that they should be kicked out of the UK for the crime of possibly wanting it.

    On the occasions that I have been masochistic enough to dig further it has become obvious that the idea of the UK is far more important than the nasty Scottish communists who happen to infest part of it.

    This from outwardly normal people in an outwardly liberal city.

    Honestly, I have no confidence in people acting reasonably at all.

    772:

    Sigh, and check this out:

    https://twitter.com/jannahutz/status/1290666010228514824

    No, go read it. Due to MS / EXCEL bullshit, apparently it's Science that's wrong and everyone needs to change in case someone can't push little button.

    Yeah.

    Re-labeling the entire DNA 50+ years of stuff to make a US Corporation happy isn't entirely weird or dystopic, is it? Not like Gates is up to his fucking eye-balls in dodgy DNA altering mosquito stuff, is it?

    Sure, praxis: who gives a shit about gender pronouns when YOU CAN FUCKING RE-WRITE FIFTY YEARS OF DATA BECAUSE YOUR PISSIE LITTLE DB IS INCLUDED FOR SCIENTISTS AND NO-ONE MADE THEM ANYTHING BETTER.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ancestry-m-a-blackstone-group-idUSKCN2512ES

    Yeah.

    100% fuckwits.

    The answer we gave when they demanded to get on our knees: "AntiChrist!" "Babylon!" "Only Black Person in this tale""... "Ok, honey-bun, we're going to do this OOOLLLLD STYLE".

    Snap, Crackle, POP!

    "Immanentize the Eschaton"

    Lol.

    COVID19 is a plant: OnE eYE cLoSeD lol.

    We'll show you how it'd done. Pissant AN craters. You pray for Genocide my little pawns. And it's not fucking cool.

    [0] Like: if any Western press was as hard-core about banning people for genocide language, probably gonna have to tap entire IL legislature here. No: G_D's love is NOT FUCKING SEEING INNOCENT PEOPLE DYING YOU UTTER UTTER TRASH FILLED CUNTS.

    ~

    See enough?

    "Children of the Light"

    Hint : "HE cannot see the World anymore".

    Well: there you go. Your children are psychopaths, sociopaths and the worst of the worst. Do what you want with it.

    773:

    This gets better and better... esp. since a single conviction or jury finding for the prosecutor... means EVERYTHING THE GOP AND THE HAIRBALL HAVE SAID ABOUT THE Russian investigation IS A LIE.

    774:

    Yeah, I've seen that picture with the workmen several times... and the last time, I did a double take: they've got several heavy hammers on the ground, and that might be a chisel, and it looks like they're trying to do something on concrete where the door closes.

    A chisel, hit by a hammer, cutting into concrete, has been known to throw sparks....

    775:

    Comes down to intent in the end

    In a British court, sure. But you have to be able to prove that intent.

    On the internet? Doesn't matter, all you need is a mob of angry morons and those are a dime a dozen on the internet (no, really, it's a song).

    776:

    Silly question: come Jan, and it's crash out, and after a week of disaster, people dying without meds, etc... what's the chance of Liz calling BoJo in, and telling him she has no confidence in his government?

    777:

    I mean, wouldn't the public see this as her literally riding to the rescue?

    778:

    ...Russian Investigation... ....Apparently they used the NRA to channel funds to favored candidates.

    Sometimes the surreal nature of this still slaps me in the face.

    I mean, imagine approach an editor in 1995 with that as a plan for a novel. "It's set in 2016, when the Russians are pumping election money through the NRA to get the Republican candidate Trump elected, so the Republicans try to undermine the authority of the FBI by painting them as a bunch of liberals, and they've beefed up the Border Patrol to be better funded than any law enforcement agency so they bring them into Portland to... Uh, no, it's not satire, why do you ask?"

    We're obviously in the wrong leg of the trousers of time. Should've hung to the left.

    779:

    Silly question: come Jan, and it's crash out, and after a week of disaster, people dying without meds, etc... what's the chance of Liz calling BoJo in, and telling him she has no confidence in his government?

    On January 1st 2021 not much will change.

    On January 4th (first weekday after holiday) still nobody dying as a result of Brexit, but perhaps you start to get the backups at the border crossings as everyone figures out the paperwork, etc.

    Probably won't see medical issues for a couple of months, given that the drug companies will likely be stockpiling.

    So then the question becomes whether they can get the new supply chains working during the period or not.

    This is why Boris is, barring something coming up, good until 2022 - because Brexit is going to be a slow motion crash as the various things take time to cause issues (like the extra costs making UK stuff too expensive, so some UK companies gradually go under). Or the Japanese automakers gradually shift European production to Europe or Japan. etc. etc.

    780:

    I suspect you're wrong: there are a lot of folks, esp. of the pro-leavers, who are not stockpiling their meds (or food).

    They're the ones who'll start dying.

    781:

    what's the chance of Liz calling BoJo in, and telling him she has no confidence in his government?

    It would take a really serious disaster. The UK is not some hapless former prison colony that no-one gives a shit about... the Whitlam Dismissal is still a sore point for many Australians.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-14/sir-john-kerr-queen-whitlam-palace-letters-released/12452616

    I'm going to guess that since clear evidence that the Brexit referendum was heavily influenced by foriegn powers didn't get her to intervene it would take something like, I dunno, Boris inviting Putin or Clearwater to provide "security" on the streets of Britain for her to get out.

    782:

    Well, anything to lighten things up is appreciated, though I'm on my way to work.

    Everything is more or less fine, I postponed the sclerotizing the 'rhoids to September, though the risk of an allergic reaction when doing it seems low; there is a story from last December when a colleague had a allergic reaction to betalactams, it was in her file, but the medical database system borked it[1].

    As it is, I might mention HPL again in September, being parodied by Nobel laureate Borges feels the need to parody you is high-brow for getting spoofed by Weird Al.

    [1] She had an abusive one-off boyfriend studying to become a lawyer who couldn't comprehend our work contracts and according to her hacked her phone, and she was 1 month pregnant from a short intermittent relationship and lost the embryo; the other attention deficit/autism guy, a tutor in treatment for depression since her late teens and me had quite a few discussions about it. Details on request. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

    783:

    A chisel, hit by a hammer, cutting into concrete, has been known to throw sparks.... Tech note. Not an explosives person(a few here are), but from various papers skimmed in the last day, ammonium nitrate is not easily detonated. (It is reported to have survived 6 years in crappy hot conditions.) Not sure how easy it is to get it burning with sparks; anyone? Never tried. :-) See #762 for the usual approach: "The initiation of the charge is obtained by means of the detonation of an explosive booster containing pentrite (FORMEX, detonation velocity ≈ 7000 m/s), fixed in top of the tube." Usually with 6 percent fuel oil, but that paper describes near-pure NH4NO3.

    784:

    mdive & whitroth I suspect, if we get to mid-Dec & there is still no deal at all ( i.e. Crash Out ) then certainly Jaguar/Land-Rover & Mini will simply shut theor factories, sack everyone & walk away... At which point "reality" just might start to bite. Presently, my money is on BoZo "Getting Brexit Done" by betraying the TrueBelievers & cobbling together a "deal" of some sort. It will still be a shit sandwich, of course ...

    Bill Arnold Ammonium Nitrate USUALLY requires fairly serious detonation. Note the qualifier ....

    785:

    ammonium nitrate is not easily detonated

    I vaguely recall that it can be done by packing it round a couple of sparklers (as sold for birthday cakes etc) and a bit of magnesium powder which I suspect sets off a cascading reaction where things burn but are initially contained.

    The more common outcome of that is a fire, but a pile of burning ammonium nitrate is only good in comparison to the explosive outcome. Someone in Christchurch managed to set fire to a bucket of the stuff in a one storey off the ground concrete flat and IIRC afterwards there was a hole in the concrete floor where the bucket started out. There may have been sugar and/or cooking oil mixed in the the ammonium nitrate in the bucket (I got the "someone who knew someone who knew the guy who started it" version).

    786:

    You haven't looked at the damn legislation recently (i.e. post Blair), have you? No, they wouldn't be. AS I SAID, The Home Secretary has the powers to authorise ANY person or organisation for policing and do the same for armament.

    787:

    Quite. But I am firmly convinced that irrelevant and minor Russian connections are being used as smokescreens to hide the real situation. Yes, of course, Russia is trying to cause trouble in the USA and UK - we are, after all, doing the same to them and have been for some time - but the EFFECTIVE attempts to subvert the elections came from elsewhere.

    788:

    The videos clearly showed a white cloud shooting up just before the ammonium nitrate went up. Obviously, something happened, though that could have been nothing more than a minor fire - which would probably be enough. So what was THAT?

    789:

    "So what was THAT?"

    A shipment of fireworks caught fire, that fire and or missiles from it, set of the ammonium nitrate.

    790:

    "Yes, of course, Russia is trying to cause trouble in the USA and UK - we are, after all, doing the same to them and have been for some time - but the EFFECTIVE attempts to subvert the elections came from elsewhere."

    Hate to be the one to tell you this, but the EFFECTIVE subversion came from inside, as a second order effect of the owning class dismantling the power of the state.

    791:

    Silly question: come Jan, and it's crash out, and after a week of disaster, people dying without meds, etc... what's the chance of Liz calling BoJo in, and telling him she has no confidence in his government?

    No chance whatsoever.

    The Queen is a ceremonial head of state, not a proactive chief executive like a US POTUS.

    (She's also 95 and sheltering in a cotton wool bubble because if she gets COVID19 she will probably die or be severely debilitated for the rest of her life.)

    The Tories have a roughly 80 seat majority; there are no constitutional grounds for dismissing the government he has been elected leader of.

    About the only thing that might happen would be the Privy Council having a quiet glass of claret with the Chair of the 1922 Committee and suggesting that it's time for a change, and there might be a gong in it later for whoever plucks up the courage to write the round-robbin letter recalling the head of the Parliamentary Conservative Party. Which requires about 20% of the Tory MPs to sign it, but they're True Believers at this point, so it's basically political suicide unless and until one of the other brexiteer factions decides he's outlived his purpose.

    792:

    Probably won't see medical issues for a couple of months, given that the drug companies will likely be stockpiling.

    Nope, the stockpiles got used up because of COVID19, and apparently global medicine supply chain problems (already existing, aggravated by the pandemic) mean there isn't enough time to rebuild even a 2 month stockpile before January 1st.

    793:

    I'm going to guess that since clear evidence that the Brexit referendum was heavily influenced by foriegn powers didn't get her to intervene it would take something like, I dunno, Boris inviting Putin or Clearwater to provide "security" on the streets of Britain for her to get out.

    Probably not even that. Remember she's still queen of a bunch of countries, delegating via a governor-general. If the Crown starts meddling in politics in one country, what's to stop it meddling in the politics of others?

    The Crown will sit on its metonymic hands right up until there's a threat to its constitutional position, and even then it will try to keep out of the spotlight.

    (Note that Scottish independence isn't a threat, because England borrowed/shared a Scottish monarch back in 1607 and if Scotland secedes, it'll still be a monarchy -- pending a further public referendum on becoming a republic, which would on current polling lose badly, although not as badly as in England.)

    794:

    Yes, of course, Russia is trying to cause trouble in the USA and UK - we are, after all, doing the same to them and have been for some time

    Since, oh, 1853 or thereabouts? Remember the history of the Great Game, British military interference in the Russian civil war, etc. The British Empire consistently saw the Russian Empire as a threat to its slave plantations dominions in India; the Russian Empire wanted access to a warm-water port via Persia or India to link up its eastern and western territories by sea (the north-east passage being rather tricky prior to global warming).

    795:
    A shipment of fireworks caught fire, that fire and or missiles from it, set of the ammonium nitrate.

    Source?

    I see lots of speculation about fireworks, based on "that looks like fireworks to me", but no actual information about there being fireworks on scene.

    796:

    If the Crown starts meddling in politics in one country, what's to stop it meddling in the politics of others?

    You're hair-splitting on that. Her secretary and GG meddled on her behalf to get rid of Whitlam in Australia. Even her defenders here don't bother to argue that there's no evidence of impropriety, they instead argue about whether it meets some standard before it really counts. But the mere fact that she can dismiss a sitting prime minister has been established by divine fiat.

    Would she do the same poking behind the scenes in the UK? Has she already done the same in the UK? Would she declare that she has the right, and the power, to dismiss the Prime Minister?

    Somewhere along the line from Charles meeting MPs to discuss politics to Liz whacking the PM's head off with a sword we start to get increasing agreement that she's crossed the line. But where?

    797:

    Presently, my money is on BoZo "Getting Brexit Done" by betraying the TrueBelievers & cobbling together a "deal" of some sort.

    Which won't get through Parliament, which is irrelevant because he can't negotiate a deal in total secrecy so 1922 committee will call the vote of no confidence long before a deal can be done.

    At which point he will be removed, and a new scapegoat put in place - easy this time because they don't need to win an election, they just need someone to take the blame and be replaced in 2022.

    And in the meantime Gove today announced £355m to help Northern Irish business community afford to trade with the rest of the UK after that "not going to happen" customs border appears on the Irish Sea January 1st.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/07/brexit-uk-government-pledges-355m-to-cushion-northern-ireland-businesses

    798:

    so 1922 committee will call the vote of no confidence long before a deal can be done.

    At which point he will be removed, and a new scapegoat put in place - easy this time because they don't need to win an election, they just need someone to take the blame and be replaced in 2022.

    Nearly all of the New Boys and Girls, 30% of the total bums on the Government benches in Parliament are personally loyal to Boris and think the sun shines out of his arse. This attitude on their part is not surprising since his leadership got them their win in the election. That sort of fanatical belief in Dear Leader takes at least one Parliamentary term to wear off, if it ever does -- there are plenty of Blair supporters still around in the Labour ranks more than a decade after The Vicar slithered off to find a rock to hide under.

    Sure, the lustre of Boris will wear off but 2022 is way too early for that to happen. There might be a sea-change in support as Brexit starts hurting people who didn't think there would be a significant downside to wielding the wrecking-ball on our trade and other international commitments but nothing CAN happen to him until 2024 and the next election.

    799:

    Nearly all of the New Boys and Girls, 30% of the total bums on the Government benches in Parliament are personally loyal to Boris and think the sun shines out of his arse.

    The vote of no confidence only requires 15% to trigger.

    Losing the vote only takes 50%+1, at which point he can't run again as leader.

    30% loyalty cannot protect him.

    800:

    Much of it, but I don't know if it was even the majority.

    You DO know that almost all of the media (based on readership) except for the BBC (which is pretty thoroughly muzzled) is controlled from outside the UK, with the largest chunk from the USA, most of it has been running (often false and malicious) anti-EU propaganda for at least 25 years, and it got really extreme in the run-up to Brexit?

    They were also viciously anti-Corbyn in the last election, and there are grounds to believe that the malicious (and, from the actual quotes I saw, false) claims of anti-semitism were at least sponsored from outside. What the proportion of internal and external control was there, I can't say, though I suspect internal.

    801:

    mdive Really? See right here what greasy untrustworthy crawling little slime Gove has to say on the subject ....

    EC PLEASE stop it.... Corbyn handed the election, on a plate to the right-wingers & crypto-fascists, because he's an idiot. Oh & the ant-semitism was, from the admittedly v small sample I've encountered all too real OK?

    802:
    Corbyn handed the election, on a plate to the right-wingers & crypto-fascists, because he's an idiot.

    Which, while it may be true, is completely irrelevant to what EC was saying.

    Oh & the ant-semitism was, from the admittedly v small sample I've encountered all too real

    Some of it, lots of it was clearly made up.

    And, of course Labour is nowhere near the most anti-semitic major party in the UK.

    803:

    Correct. I looked up almost all of the high-profile accusations, to see what the MP actually said. In the vast majority of cases, it was very mild criticism of Israel. As you indicate, in the world of UK politics, genuine anti-semitism is more acceptable than support for its victims.

    804:

    Her secretary and GG meddled on her behalf to get rid of Whitlam in Australia

    Yes, 45 years ago -- and she got badly burned by that. Reportedly it wasn't QEII who dismissed him, but Privy Council, and she is rumoured to have been furious after the fact because it caused serious and permanent damage to her credibility as an impartial constitutional arbiter.

    Indeed, the Whitlam affair is precisely why I think she'd be very unlikely to intervene in a no-deal Brexit crisis. (And ditto Charles III if she's dead by then, because he's old enough to remember the crisis, too.)

    805:

    I've read that. However, please look at the picture... and riddle me this: how dry, and flammable, are the huge sacks the ammonium nitrate is stored in?

    806:

    I have issues with that. 1. Which ship, that we can see in pre-explosion satellite photos, had the fireworks? 2. Enough of it them are, in fact, going to get off the ship and through the windows or skylights of the warehouse with the ammonium nitrate?

    807:

    Murdoch. Sheldon Adelson. Koch bros.

    808:

    British military interference in the Russian Revolution? You mean, like the British Expeditionary Force... and the American Expeditionary Force?

    809:

    No, Liz wouldn't whack his head off with a sword.

    Let me quote the Duchess Vorkosigan: "Kill me this traitor" (to her armsman).

    810:

    See right here what greasy untrustworthy crawling little slime Gove has to say on the subject ....

    There is a difference between the UK/EU coming up with a trade agreement and Boris unilaterally caving in to the EU to avoid no-deal.

    As for Gove, he was today in Northern Ireland handing out a large amount of money to Northern Ireland business so they can continue to trade with the UK without suffering the penalty of the Irish Sea border regime.

    But at the same time he was denying that the Irish Sea border regime exists under Brexit.

    https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/gove-denies-355m-brexit-support-for-ni-firms-is-admission-of-irish-sea-border-39431485.html

    So the fact that Gove is now claiming that talks with the EU are going well doesn't install confidence - though the EU haven't disputed it (yet).

    Despite that, it is possible the reality is starting to sink in to many in the Conservative Party. They have conceded that there will be no US trade deal, that the demands by Trump were something that the UK public would not accept. In fact it appears the only trade deal they may yet announce prior to the end of the year is with Japan, and they have also conceded on that one that it is "underwhelming".

    This is putting them between a rock and a hard place. On one hand they have the .1% who want to protect London from regulation so they can continue playing with all that money, on the other hand the masses who are already primed for trouble with the job losses from Covid.

    811:

    According to the latest reports I've seen, the fireworks were brought ashore a decade ago, so that ship has sailed. And they were being stored in the same warehouse as the AN.

    It certainly jibes with the initial phone-cam footage that seemed to show fireworks cooking off before the big explosion.

    812:

    Y'know, C-19 has completely and utterly derailed their original plans (for a value of "plan" approaching "what's that?") on Brexit. I suspect they're all desperately looking for a way to avoid a guillotine set up across from Parliament.

    813:

    I am not sure. A significant minority actually WANT a deal on the USA's terms, and it wouldn't be the first international agreement that was kept secret until after it was ratified. If 'they' think that they can ride out the reaction (from both the sheeple and industry), my guess is that they will try a no-deal Brexit and that.

    814:

    Poul-Henning Kamp @790: Hate to be the one to tell you this, but the EFFECTIVE subversion came from inside, as a second order effect of the owning class dismantling the power of the state. This man probably summed up the situation more than anyone I've encountered on this blog in last 2 years. A question of effective subversion. USSR did collapse under the effects of subversion, but did it come from the outside sources like CIA and other foreign involvement? "Why, yes, of course" - says every average US affiliate, because why not, it is an honor and privilege and not a liability. While in reality it should be clear to any "democratic" force outside the country that they contributed about as much as a pack of vultures, ex post facto.

    Similarly, current-phase US politics is too thick for anyone to even begin any activity, much less harmful one, unless the politicians themselves are fully devoted to the cause. Most people I read these days, agree, that there's simply no problem that can be observed by this system without attempt to gain political influence within. People are fighting China and Russia not because there is actual infiltration, attack or even attempt thereof, but because it will score them points. Mainstream media are pushing campaigns the scale of crusader invasion for the same reason. This degree of stupidity is impenetrable from outside by the virtue of being offensive for intelligent mind.

    Even staying on the same stage with this bunch is actively dangerous for anyone involved, so the smart people mostly figured out to pull back, but there aren't many of them around. Somebody dropped this item this week: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/evgeny-lebedev-lord-peerage-boris-johnson-a9648701.html Seriously, run. It's not too late, dear sir.

    icehawk @778: Sometimes the surreal nature of this still slaps me in the face. This indeed most surreal thing I see. It's not that any attempts to counteract involvement of foreign forces in my country's internal affairs is viewed by them as an outside attack on their interests. You can get used to it, if you are dealing with people lacking self-awareness for so long. It is the fact that at this point the same people cannot distinguish the allies from enemies. They start to attack their allies, whom trust they've intended to use to influence their enemies. They befriend people and gain their trust only to throw them under the train.

    Here's a shining example of such intelligence, and it was only the beginning back then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Butina Under normal circumstances, US would have surrounded a promising and active person with connections and started to use her for influence at hear homeland. But US does not give a xxxx about influencing anyone anymore, if only cares about winning elections from Trump. So everything else must be and artifact of the past and an aberration.

    815:

    EC Yes-&-no There are a minority, even within the 0.1% who want a Crash Out ... but ... whitroth is nearer the mark. Being able to ride it out with an 80-seat majority until 2024 looks all very well until you get not so much non-stop rioting, but complete refusal of the rest of the public & many "public bodies" simply refusing point-blank to co-operate. Very much what is happening on the USA right now, in fact.

    OTOH Nightmare scenario: Trump wins, or is really close to appearing to win. In which case it's 1913 & we are playing Öesterriech-Ungarn to DT's Zweite Reich.

    Best-case: Trump crashes & burns, BoZo, being BoZo, changes tack really sharply ( looking after No.1, remember? ) & we get a sweetened, with extra nice dressing version of the Shit snadwich... [ Just noticed the typo - but it's such a lovely word ... can someone define a "Snadwich", for future use? ]

    sleepingroutine NO Some people are fighting China, because their government is racist, fascist, oppressive & colonialist - that do for (sufficient) justification? Many people are also (shall we say?) very wary of that nice Mr Putin, because he knows that Russia is failing - falling population, failing internally, but slowly - & he ( like DT) wrongly believes politics is a zero-sum game. Which can have very bad effects on evryone else, as we have seen, yes?

    816:

    "The Tories have a roughly 80 seat majority; there are no constitutional grounds for dismissing the government he has been elected leader of."

    This is why I think that you guys are sooooo screwed right now (and I'm writing this from Trumpland).

    As I understand it, the Tories don't have to hold a general election until Fall, 2024. The more that they screw the UK up, the less they'll want to rock the boat - not only not calling an early election, but also (IMHO) not replacing BoJo and his crew.

    You guys are locked into this plane for four and a half years. Scotland and NI have the option of parachuting, and hoping that they don't land in the ocean or the Arctic.

    817:
    Let me quote the Duchess Vorkosigan: "Kill me this traitor" (to her armsman).

    "Will no-one rid me of this troublesome buffoon?"

    [BoJo is messily gotten rid of]

    "Hey, when I said that, I never meant for my goons to kill him!"

    Worked for Henry II, didn't it? [ignores history]

    818:

    As I understand it, the Tories don't have to hold a general election until Fall, 2024. The more that they screw the UK up, the less they'll want to rock the boat - not only not calling an early election, but also (IMHO) not replacing BoJo and his crew.

    Yes, no mandatory election until 2024.

    But, as somewhat covered yes they want Brexit but they also want to win in 2024 - if nothing else than to protect the Brexit they have implemented.

    Thus why I and (I am guessing) OGH think Boris gets dumped in 2022 by the party - he takes the blame and the party "reboots" under a new clean leader who can have a better chance of winning in 2024.

    819:

    I am not sure. A significant minority actually WANT a deal on the USA's terms, and it wouldn't be the first international agreement that was kept secret until after it was ratified. If 'they' think that they can ride out the reaction (from both the sheeple and industry), my guess is that they will try a no-deal Brexit and that.

    Does a large part of the Conservatives want a no-deal Brexit? Absolutely, because they fear Boris giving away London's freedom or taking away the freedom to treat the peasants like peasants.

    But a US/UK trade agreement needs to go through the US Congress and that simply isn't happening at the moment. It took a long time for Congress to ratify NAFTA 2.0 and that was both relatively boring and wanted by everyone, there is no way something as contentious as US/UK gets done until at best probably 2 years from now.

    Oh, and a word of warning - despite that fact that Trump's NAFTA 2.0 got ratified he is yet again ignoring it and has yet again imposed illegal tariff's on Canada (this time aluminum) - part and parcel of being the mouse next to the elephant but not something the UK appears anywhere close to being ready to accept.

    820:

    Whitroth: 1. Which ship, that we can see in pre-explosion satellite photos, had the fireworks?

    Beirut explosion: former port worker says fireworks stored in hangar

    the hangar housed a quantity of fireworks, Shehadi said, which customs had confiscated in about 2009-10 and which he said he had personally seen delivered on a forklift. “There were 30 to 40 nylon bags of fireworks inside warehouse 12,” he [Yusuf Shehad] said.
    “They were on the left-hand side when you entered the door. I used to complain about this. It wasn’t safe. There was also humidity there. This was a disaster waiting to happen. The port workers did not put the chemicals there in the first place. That outrage rests with the government.”
    The claim that fireworks were being stored in the same warehouse as the ammonium nitrate appears to be confirmed by phone footage, apparently filmed by a port worker from the roof of the grain silos that overlooked the seat of the biggest blast – now a 150-metre-wide crater of seawater.

    Upshot: a big warehouse where they stored stuff they'd confiscated off ships. One year: ammonium nitrate. Another year: fireworks. Confiscated by different organizations, stored in the only place in the port for storing such crap ... with no adequate safety precautions, despite lots of complaints over the years.

    As I keep saying: Hanlon's razor applies -- never attribute to malice that which can be explained by carelessness and stupidity.

    821:

    British military interference in the Russian Revolution?

    You misread: I said "Russian civil war". And yes, that expeditionary force was part of it: but also the spying and active sabotage MI5 was conducting against the Bolsheviks.

    822:

    Greg Tingey @815:

    Some people are fighting China, because their government is racist, fascist, oppressive & colonialist - that do for (sufficient) justification? Can't refrain myself from noting that it is mostly opposite - people are being scared of China and are turning racist, oppressive and fascist, because they can't admit their own mistakes. A typical symptom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection Best illustrated by HK protests, Eastern Europe and pretty much every other puppet nationalistic regime US supports all over the world.

    because he knows that Russia is failing - falling population, failing internally, but slowly - & he ( like DT) wrongly believes politics is a zero-sum game. Which can have very bad effects on evryone else, as we have seen, yes? He knows better than that, because he rules this country 20 years. https://www.newcoldwar.org/us-economy-suffers-worst-quarter-since-the-second-world-war-as-gdp-shrinks-by-32-9/ The US is failing - although it has not failed completely, it acts like a wounded animal. And so it is unable to admit a simple fact that this is happening because of their own fault, so better go and blame everyone around instead. It's so easy, like, "we definitely not doing anything like that, you are mistaken, blind and stupid" or "they started it first, we have no choice but to respond in kind", and whoever says it first seems to get moral superiority regardless of circumstances. (No they do not.)

    Although recently not even that anymore, it reached the absolute bizarre proportions. And I really doubt they can just write it off as Trump's antics this time. https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-2-us-senators-threaten-german-port-with-crushing-sanctions/a-54473119

    823:

    I saw that photo also. It looked like a lot of bags were in there - they might even have been closer to 1.5m cubes. The size that they were using for dumping rocks on the side of the Oroville Dam, when the spillway failed a few years back (Helicopter loads. A bit over 1.5 metric tons - a cubic yard of concrete is about 1.5 US tons.)

    824:

    Many people are also (shall we say?) very wary of that nice Mr Putin, because he knows that Russia is failing - falling population, failing internally, but slowly - & he ( like DT) wrongly believes politics is a zero-sum game. Which can have very bad effects on evryone else, as we have seen, yes?

    I think something less obvious is at work.

    Great powers rise, great powers fall -- and it's usually relative advantage that counts: if empire A has GDP growth of 4% per annum you'd think they'd be happy, but if rival empire B has GDP growth of 5% per annum, residents of A think "we're falling behind".

    What's now happening (China aside) is that both Russia and the United States are failing -- at different points on the curve, though. The USSR peaked in the 1960s and imploded in 1991, what's happening now is consolidation/rearrangement of the wreckage. The USA probably peaked in the 1990s and is either on the edge of a precipice, or at the top of a steep hill and about to come tumbling down -- it's not yet obvious how it's going to fall, but as Sleepingroutine observes, "this degree of stupidity is impenetrable from outside by the virtue of being offensive for intelligent mind".

    US politics is now entirely narcissistic and inward-directed, as the practice of politics is impossible without winning an election and the game's been rigged so that victory can only be achieved by throwing mind-numbing amounts of money at marketing/advertising. Basically the folks with money bought themselves a pay-to-play system which systematically locks out change.

    As for China ... they're decaying too, but differently: Xi is a symptom that the CPC is deeply sick, any internal checks and balances it had have now failed, and when Xi goes there's going to be a horrible power vacuum and a demographic time bomb (as the first generation born during the one-child-per-family era hit retirement age).

    The UK? Is also decaying. But it's now fairly obvious the British Empire was in sunset mode before 1945, and faded fast thereafter. What's new this decade is that the UK itself is decaying, as the rulers of the former empire and their home counties supporters can't comprehend that not only have the overseas empire territories departed, but their near-abroad is getting fractious. Much as happened with the breakup of the Warsaw Pact being followed some time later by the breakup of the USSR itself.

    The EU ... has defied every skeptic's prediction that it would collapse/implode/detonate after the UK took its toys and walked, or after the GFC of 1008, or after the Greek crisis, or after Hungary and Poland went quasi-fascist. It's remarkably durable, for a patient that's been on intensive care for two decades. Frankly, I think the EU in some form may well outlast the decomposing empires -- although the era of climate change is going to fuck all the existing national boundaries over the next few decades.

    825:

    [hits head] Yeah, that is what I was referring to, given the two forces went in after WWI ended.

    826:

    This is why I think that you guys are sooooo screwed right now (and I'm writing this from Trumpland).

    You are correct.

    827:

    The medical system doesn't always pay attention to information like that.

    When I went in to have an IV port installed, the admission form asked, and I told them, and I wear an ID bracelet that has that information, and they gave me one - fortunately I didn't react. But the next time I went in (a few months later), I gave them the same information, and they asked for the first time what kind of reaction I had. They went a bit pale when I said "anaphylactic" - but I'd already made sure that the surgeon's office knew that I knew what I was talking about, and they'd already ordered an antibiotic that wasn't a betalactam. (I've heard other stories about people, and had it happen to me, where they were about to give someone something they were allergic to, and it was caught in time.)

    828:

    The big cloud just before the AN went up was probably wood or paper catching fire, going by the color. Petroleum would be blacker than that, and brush and wood fire tends to be brownish-gray (brown when light shines through it). It looked like fireworks going off before that - you could see them detonating at fairly low altitudes, and in various colors.

    829:

    And I saw a phone camera video from some distance away, more or less from the south, where you could see the fire/smoke next to the grain elevator. Definitely looked like fireworks going off.

    830:

    "Fire/smoke"? Look again: I see flames, and we're talking at least 6m high, and maybe half again that or more sideways/left/right. That's a HUGE fire. By itself, that's about a 50 alarm fire.

    (And yes, I do know about that: for almost four years, I was a subcontractor, supporting the City of Chicago's 911 system. Around '99? 2000? a few months after we'd just upgraded the hardware and software, a transformer under the sidewalk in downtown Chicago blew, and the flames were 30'-60' in the air... and it was a 51 or 52 alarm fire.)

    831:

    tarkeel @ 757: JBS @ 743: I think the word I meant to use is unintentional. I completely agree that this was negligent, but I don't think anyone intended it to go off.

    I'm probably overly anal about how that word is used. It's a long story I won't go into regarding my time as the "Safety Officer" in Iraq.

    832:

    sleepingroutine Utter fucking lying bollocks I have a closely-known-to-me personal witness ( In a supposedly "priveliged"tour group, looking at Silk Road antiquities ) who was somewhat distressed by the (even then) obvious persecution & suppression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang. The Han are being oppressive, colonialist to-all-intents-&-purposes facsist oppresive bastards RIGHT NOW .... Putin - right, you go on telling yourself that, OK? USA - proably close to correct - see "mirror image" SEE ALSO Charlie @ 824 What's now happening (China aside) is that both Russia and the United States are failing -- at different points on the curve, though. The USSR peaked in the 1960s and imploded in 1991, what's happening now is consolidation/rearrangement of the wreckage. The USA probably peaked in the 1990s and is either on the edge of a precipice, or at the top of a steep hill and about to come tumbling down -- it's not yet obvious how it's going to fall

    I hadn't spotted Charlie's ananysis of the Han empire's problem(s) - but he might well be correct. Hopefully Hungary/Poland will be internally reformed, or bow to EU pressure?

    833:

    Robert Prior @ 767:

    There is a point where sufficiently wilfull stupidity is itself malicious.

    Comes down to intent in the end, doesn't it?

    It's possible to be maliciously, willfully stupid without intending to be. Lack of "Intent" seems to be a way of dodging responsibility. I don't buy it.

    834:

    If you're being willfully stupid, that's intentional as far as I'm concerned.

    835:

    Thank you, Charlie. That's an elegant and concise summary of an understanding I've been groping towards for some years. I've been describing the ongoing collapse of the UK as "the end of the English empire" on Facebook (yes I know), but that's deliberately politically-charged language.

    836:

    Jeff Fisher @ 769:

    Stross: "a 5-6 metre deep stack 20 x 20 metres"

    I saw a photo on twitter which was labeled as a picture of the ammonium nitrate in this warehouse a while ago. A few guys standing in front of an open warehouse door, looked like they were working on the door itself for whatever reason (maybe just trying to close it). Behind them were two layers of big industrial dry goods bags, like giant cloth buckets with handles for a forklift, about 1 m^3 labeled :ammonium nitrate". Two layers of them. Sports-field sized building. Looked like some of the material was out of the bags just on the ground. It looked... uhm... well settled in. As if it had been there a while.

    Y'all might want to check my math (and or reasoning), but if instead of 6 meters high it was only stacked 2 meters high, it would cover 20 x 60 meters (??)1 ... or 30 x 40.

    Using "measure distance" in google maps I come up with 39.89m x 130.97 m for that warehouse. So, figure it filled maybe a quarter of the warehouse? That crater may show more or less the footprint of where it was stored in the warehouse?

    Also, it keeps getting referred to as "fertilizer". That doesn't appear to be correct.

    It was industrial explosives originally being shipped to Mozambique (probably for mining) before the ship was impounded in Beirut. The bags appear to be labeled with the brand name. It's been suggested it's a "knockoff", but I'm more inclined to believe the manufacturer is a multi-national and it WAS brand name material manufactured at a subsidiary plant in Georgia (or one of the other former Soviet Republics).

    1 IF it was stacked 6m high, 20m x 20m = 400m2 floor space. Stacked 1/3 that height would give 3 times the square, so at 2m high it covers 1200m2 of floor space. 1200m2 ÷ 40m (depth of the warehouse) = 30m, so it would fit in 30m Wide x 40m Deep x 2m High.

    837:

    The bags in the picture are marked "1000" i.e. a thousand kilograms == one metric tonne. It's a convenient package size for logistics, transportation (a standard pallet load is a tonne, the bag will fit in a medium-sized van or pickup truck, it can be handled by a normal forklift by the straps on each bag etc.)

    I think the density of ammonium nitrate is about 0.8 kg/litre i.e. slightly less dense than water so the bags would be just over a cubic metre or so given bulging and loss of shape.

    From what I understand stuff like this is basically pipeline freight i.e. it's intended to be manufactured and then used in short order. It's not meant to be stored for long periods and certainly not for a decade or more in poor environmental conditions -- the temperatures in that warehouse must have exceeded 50 deg C on many occasions. Ammonium nitrate by itself is a fire hazard but not explosive, at least in its freshly produced form. Polluting it with oxidisers like diesel fuel or similar can make it explosive but it still requires substantial energy to make it explode even then. If a lot of it has degraded through time and temperature into something else that's unstable and touchy then that could have set it off.

    Recrystallisation is my initial thought, I've worked hands-on with a certain explosive material that we kept very tight records on to ensure it was not used after its expiry date due to expected crystal formation. I don't know what happened here yet, I expect greater minds will tell us eventually.

    838:

    icehawk @ 778: We're obviously in the wrong leg of the trousers of time. Should've hung to the left.

    At Albuquerque.

    839:

    _Moz_ @ 785:

    ammonium nitrate is not easily detonated

    I vaguely recall that it can be done by packing it round a couple of sparklers (as sold for birthday cakes etc) and a bit of magnesium powder which I suspect sets off a cascading reaction where things burn but are initially contained.

    The more common outcome of that is a fire, but a pile of burning ammonium nitrate is only good in comparison to the explosive outcome. Someone in Christchurch managed to set fire to a bucket of the stuff in a one storey off the ground concrete flat and IIRC afterwards there was a hole in the concrete floor where the bucket started out. There may have been sugar and/or cooking oil mixed in the the ammonium nitrate in the bucket (I got the "someone who knew someone who knew the guy who started it" version).

    We used C4 & electric blasting caps, but that's just the Army's way of doing shit.

    In the West Fertilizer Company explosion the Ammonium Nitrate was just piled in bins, where it was contaminated over time. If Ammonium Nitrate gets heated enough (169.6°C) to become molten then even a small shock is enough to detonate it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate#Safety,_handling,_and_storage

    840:

    At Albuquerque.

    Could use Bugs right about now - I wonder if any of the streaming services have him.

    841:

    Poul-Henning Kamp @ 789:

    "So what was THAT?"

    A shipment of fireworks caught fire, that fire and or missiles from it, set of the ammonium nitrate.

    You left out the welding work being done on the warehouse roof that apparently started the fire in the fireworks.

    842:

    John Hughes @ 795:

    A shipment of fireworks caught fire, that fire and or missiles from it, set of the ammonium nitrate.

    Source?

    I see lots of speculation about fireworks, based on "that looks like fireworks to me", but no actual information about there being fireworks on scene.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/07/beirut-explosion-former-port-worker-says-fireworks-stored-in-hangar

    The video mentioned in the Guardian article
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCJIA56O5kc&feature=youtu.be

    Another video I found of the fire fighters
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95Pacbzpy1w

    I think the burning fireworks setting off the Ammonium Nitrate is pretty well established by the video evidence.

    I've read in other places the fireworks fire was started by workmen repairing the roof of the warehouse, but I don't insist on it.

    843:

    Y'know, esp. over the last five or so years, I've seen a lot of folks from around the world saying they wished they had a vote in the US Presidential elections, given how it affected them.

    Well, since the current story is, according to intell, Russia is against Biden, while China and Iran are against the Hairball, so we've got competing sides gaming the system.

    This may be the beginning of the rest of the world getting in....

    844:

    I think the rather silly thought is that countries haven't been interfering in each other's elections since forever.

    The good news, at least in the UK and the US, both of which have form for harebrained electioneering, is that it's fair to have us on the receiving end of it for a change. Goes around, comes around.

    I suspect most countries would settle for a US (or, ahem, a UK) with stable rules that they could do business with, and perhaps a ease off a bit on the greenhouse gas emissions too.

    845:

    whitroth @ 806: I have issues with that.
    1. Which ship, that we can see in pre-explosion satellite photos, had the fireworks?
    2. Enough of it them are, in fact, going to get off the ship and through the windows or skylights of the warehouse with the ammonium nitrate?

    According to a "former port worker" the fireworks were not on a ship. They had also been confiscated by Lebanese authorities and stored in the same part of the warehouse as the ammonium nitrate & had been there for some time, possibly even predating the storage of the ammonium nitrate.

    A former port worker, Yusuf Shehadi, told the Guardian he had been instructed by the Lebanese military to house the chemicals in warehouse 12 at the port despite repeated protests by other government departments.
    “We complained a lot about this over the years,” said Shehadi, who worked at the port until emigrating to Canada in March this year. “Every week, the customs people came and complained and so did the state security officers. The army kept telling them they had no other place to put this. Everyone wanted to be the boss, and no one wanted to make a real decision.”
    In addition, the hangar housed a quantity of fireworks, Shehadi said, which customs had confiscated in about 2009-10 and which he said he had personally seen delivered on a forklift. “There were 30 to 40 nylon bags of fireworks inside warehouse 12,” he said.
    “They were on the left-hand side when you entered the door. I used to complain about this. It wasn’t safe. There was also humidity there. This was a disaster waiting to happen. The port workers did not put the chemicals there in the first place. That outrage rests with the government.”

    Going by what Charlie posted regarding the cubic volume (6m-H x 20m-W x 20m-W), the photo showing it stacked ~ 2m-H & the dimensions I calculated from "measure distance" on Google Maps, the ammonium nitrate probably filled a quarter of the space in the warehouse.

    I'm beginning to think that warehouse was being used as a catch-all for anything seized at the Port of Beirut without regard to the hazard. Maybe the authorities decided to put the explosives (removed from the ship in 2013?) in that warehouse because it was already being used to store the fireworks (seized in 2009 - 2010)?

    846:

    I suspect most countries would settle for a US (or, ahem, a UK) with stable rules that they could do business with

    Which aligns with China and Iran wanting Biden and Russia wanting Trump.

    The first two want stable so they can do their stuff without crazy interruptions. Russia wants the Western order to break down so they can play a bigger role.

    In incredibly over simplistic terms.

    847:

    P J Evans @ 823: I saw that photo also. It looked like a lot of bags were in there - they might even have been closer to 1.5m cubes. The size that they were using for dumping rocks on the side of the Oroville Dam, when the spillway failed a few years back (Helicopter loads. A bit over 1.5 metric tons - a cubic yard of concrete is about 1.5 US tons.)

    I read somewhere, maybe here, maybe somewhere else, that those bags were a standard 1,000kg of Nitroprill HD - 1 "metric" ton each (if I understand metric tons). You can see one of the bags has the number "1000" printed on the front.

    848:

    Robert Prior @ 834: If you're being willfully stupid, that's intentional as far as I'm concerned.

    I concur, but apparently it's a thing in our legal system.

    849:

    David L @ 846:

    I suspect most countries would settle for a US (or, ahem, a UK) with stable rules that they could do business with

    Which aligns with China and Iran wanting Biden and Russia wanting Trump.

    The first two want stable so they can do their stuff without crazy interruptions. Russia wants the Western order to break down so they can play a bigger role.

    In incredibly over simplistic terms.

    Not quite the way I read it.

    Russia is actively hostile to Biden because of Obama & Clinton standing up to him and Biden being their public face vis-à-vis Russia screwing over the former Soviet Republics. Russia favors Trump because he's Putin's patsy. They play him like a whorehouse piano. Plus the "Trump Organization" appears to be the world leader in Russian Organized Crime money laundering and they still have "billions & billions" to move. I think Putin still hopes to install Trump permanently as President for life or something so he'll have a permanent puppet in the White House.

    China doesn't really favor Biden, they're just tired of Trump's capricious bullshit and expect the U.S. to go back to its pre-Trump complacency regarding China's industrial espionage if the Democrats win. Not that Trump has actually done anything to counter Chinese espionage, it's just a pain in the ass (arse) trying to screw the U.S. when they never know what direction he's going to hare off into next.

    Iran doesn't favor either Biden or Trump. Iran wants them both to lose in the most humiliating way, crashing the U.S. into chaos, because "fuck you, that's why!". They want to amplify the mistrust in American institutions; doesn't matter to them which institutions, they're happy to see any and all of them destroyed.

    Of the three, I expect Iran will come closest to achieving their goals.

    850:

    David L @ 846: JBS @ 849:

    After reading this, I had a thought - as they say in poker, "If you're in a game of poker and you don't know who the sucker is, you're the sucker." I guess in this scenario, Trump, Biden, Bojo, Putin, Xi, Trudeau, Macron, and i don't know how to stretch this allusion any more than Buffett did when he made this famous-along with Khamenei are in a trillions-dollar poker game with the fate of human civilisation at stake. I shudder at the possible bluffs, folds, raises and outcome (in this metaphor, i guess it's an infinite game till eternity-with players being replaced and particular rounds even subject to being suspended or concluded abruptly.)

    I'm poker-blind (or politics-global events-blind); I'm unable to verify the sucker. There are arguments for it being Trump, but he's making out like a bandit so far, Biden may be it-somewhat; but he hasn't really been dealt in this round. He was an adjunct in previous rounds, but that was 4 years ago. Boris might be the sucker, then. Putin, Xi and the others seem obvious to me Not to be the sucker. But as an observer, I'm not sure.

    851:

    Negotiating a trade treaty takes 2-4 years, and that's without the US's tendency to then renegotiate the deal internally, and the need to then settle that new version of the deal with whoever they're making a treaty with...you can avoid that part if the Prez gets authorisation from Congress to make a deal in advance (Trade Promotion Authority/TPA), but arranging that takes time & political investment too.

    Biden's political energy will be going into a bunch of other things ahead of a trade deal with the UK IMO. You can look forward to a trade deal about the end of his first term at best I think.

    852:

    Xi and the others seem obvious to me Not to be the sucker

    Xi looks to be in the best shape personally. And China with it. Until he dies. Then, as someone up thread mentioned, all bets are off. Benevolent dictators are great. Until they aren't.

    Benevolent is used here to match the saying. Competent dictator may be more like it.

    853:

    IF Biden wins, I can't seem him putting much political capital into propping up Boris, one of Trump fav best buds.

    854:

    David L IF, as you say, Biden wins, expect BoZo to do a reverse-ferret so fast you won't even see it happen. He has form on this. Again, if that happnes, expect him to sell the "True Believers" down the river & conclude (as previously mentioned) some sort of just-acceptable "deal" with the EU.

    855:

    David L

    I wouldn't know how to characterise Xi accurately, given that his predecessors were Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin; who were both also competent autocrats. Maybe bureaucratic dictator, given how he purged all his rivals totally but within somewhat legalistic means. Which he seems to be trying to do the same both regionally and globally, everything in his purview done within legal means. YMMV.

    856:

    "I read somewhere, maybe here, maybe somewhere else, that those bags were a standard 1,000kg"

    ISO standard 21898 Flexible Intermediate Bulk Containers aka "FIBC" aka "bigbag".

    They are used to move all sorts of particulate matters around, inside but in particular outside shipping containers.

    Last time I ordered gravel for my driveway, it came in a bigbag.

    857:

    Which he seems to be trying to do the same both regionally and globally, everything in his purview done within legal means.

    Reminder: if your faction controls the legislature you can change the law to suit your ends. Just like Nazi Germany, where anti-semitic discrimination (and later, murder) wasn't just approved of by the government, they were baked into the legal code.

    (This is why the Hungarian and now Polish and British ruling parties moves to curb the independence of the judiciary are so terrifying: they can redefine the law, and once the courts are under their control as well, there's no shelter from oppression.)

    858:

    Unfortunately, while China has experimented with judicial independence, since Xi this has been wound back and the the rule of law has been denounced as an "erroneous Western concept". The experiment had a concrete goal to make investor sentiment in China less nervous that really egregious corruption would make various sorts of development untenable, the way of the lawlessness Russia which has led to "normal" investors simply finding it impractical (and dangerous) to do business there. And Xi is still using anti-corruption programs as a political tool to purge his opponents. But in practice China has all the investors it really needs domestically now, and above a certain level the corruption is solved by dealing directly with the party leadership.

    Which is a way of suggesting that this trajectory is a worldwide one at this point in history.

    859:

    ISO standard 21898

    The title of which is, with fine irony,

    "Packaging — Flexible intermediate bulk containers (FIBCs) for non-dangerous goods"

    860:

    @Charlie Stross I drafted a long comment which timed out. Not going to reconstruct it. Because from it I realised:

    I was wrong; 3 examples-Tibet, Uighurs and India border scuffle run counter to my argument, so I'm conceding that they use the law only when it suits them, since they control it within their own borders anyway.

    Outside it, however they try lawful means, vis-a-vis the Belt and Road Initiative and various other efforts in Africa, Eastern Europe, S.E.A. and maybe others I'm unaware of.

    Uh-oh, maybe the South China Seas is a fourth counter-argument, i feel stupid and will stop here. Feel free to cite other points that also run counter to my 1st comment here. (I'm resigned now that I didn't think it through enough.)

    861:

    I'm conceding that they use the law only when it suits them, since they control it within their own borders anyway

    If you were an American Indian that would do quite nicely for describing the American government for more than two centuries.

    Indeed, since inception, as one of the several grievances the colonists had with Britain is that the British got stroppy when colonists broke treaties signed with local Indian tribes…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLMpnoIyZGk&frags=pl%2Cwn

    862:

    If y'all were wondering what happened to that ship, the New York Times has an article I found in Google News this morning:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/world/middleeast/lebanon-explosion-ship.html

    TL;DR - After the the cargo was unloaded it got towed away from the dock & parked up against the breakwater in Beirut harbor where it later sank. It's still there.

    You can barely see the shadowy outline of it under water in Google Maps satellite view if you know where to look:

    https://www.google.com/maps/place/33%C2%B054'20.7%22N+35%C2%B031'06.1%22E/@33.905748,35.5178218,247m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m15!1m8!3m7!1s0x0:0x0!2zMzPCsDU0JzA0LjgiTiAzNcKwMzEnMDguMiJF!3b1!7e2!8m2!3d33.9013376!4d35.5189302!3m5!1s0x0:0x0!7e2!8m2!3d33.9057482!4d35.5183693

    or plug 33.905833, 35.518507 in to whatever mapping application you use.

    I tried to make a TinyURL, but it doesn't like Google Maps Alias format.

    863:

    Hmkay, short sitrep.

    Borrowing a transport to move part of my room into storage on what is most likely already the hottest day of the year in my part of Germany wasn't the brightest idea to start with; I already had a few close brushes with total failure before I borrowed it, I thought I forgot my glasses at my parents, went to my parents and realized they were in my room all along, fetched my brother's old glasses in case the police stopped me because my driver license says I need them[1], on the way back I realized Deutsche Bahn is doing work on the railway when we stopped for 8 minutes between two train stations, oh, and the guy who lent the transporter to me wasn't to keen to lent it again next week when I asked him if we could do it next week, thankfully everything worked out, and the police didn't catch me when my bike crossed a few red traffic lights when I did a short race with the bus.

    When approaching the appartment, I realized why I don't want a car, there was no parking space left, so I asked a shop if I might use their customer parking space after they close (it's OK) and in the meantime parked the transporter next to an appartment house a few blocks away.

    The guy living in one of the appartments I asked if it's OK if I park the transporter next to his house was, err, interesting, after a short chat he mentioned nanotechnology and Peter Singer, according to him a neurologist kidnapped him to do brain experiments on him, it's OK according to Singer because it's for the Greater Good, you know.

    It was at this point I asked if we were speaking about a forced hospitalization, he agreed they called it that, he was deemed a danger to himself after he had threatened to kill, because, well, there was already a conspiracy against him, and he wanted to force them into the open. In retrospect, well, mission accomplished.

    I somewhat ditched the usual discussion about quantum mechanics and free will, please note that as usual he mistook quantum randomness for free will, resisted the urge to explain Libet to him and hope he believed me when I told him I wasn't another one of those "anti-biologists". It's funny what people remember from binge-watching Harald Lesch when being unable to sleep due to psychosis or antipsychotics (I resisted the urge to ask him which one it was, haloperidol, clozapin, risperidone, quetiapine, whatever...).

    After venting my frustration by describing the incident to two innocent bystanders I went to the supermarket and fetched an empty cardboard box, because, well, moving. This lead to some guy thinking I worked for the supermarket, so he asked if the supermarket had Baileys Original Irish Cream; I answered with "well, no idea, I don't work here, but the alcoholics are over there." He got a little upset and said that no, he wasn't an alcoholic.

    At least I ran into an friendly acquaintance of mine, I she's still friendly after the incident, well, we'll see.

    Hmkay, I hope I'm gonna survive this day without any other catastrophe, on my way to the shower[2], sorry for the boring intermission. It's just too hot.

    [1] Actually, I drive worse WITH glasses, because I can't stand sweaty glasses... [2] We're only at the second one, and it will be at least three till today evening...

    864:

    I'm conceding that they use the law only when it suits them, since they control it within their own borders anyway.

    When we talk about an independent judiciary (and the rule of law) we mean something slightly different though. Usually you talk about the difference between the rule of law and the rule of man, that is the idea that the law should be applied even-handedly to everyone, and not arbitrarily by a despot according to whim. The Xi leadership has taken a firm stance that this concept is contrary to the principles of socialism with Chinese influences, that is the official governing ideology, and that the interpretation of the law is in the purview of the Chinese Communist Party. There were a series of steps in recent years where China's Chief Justice equivalent role has been brought under the party. The anti-corruption campaign, which is maybe better characterised as a sort of inquisition rather than a purge as such, is supposed to replace the need for rule of law as we understand it.

    In the general case, if it's possible for someone to be above the law, you don't have rule of law. In pratice this has always been a bit muddled (see Charles I). There are gradations, and the situation may be different at the local level than at the national level in many places, but also depend on who you are. In Western democracies, generally well-off middle-class people do enjoy rule of law, albeit things might be different in individual cases where the interests of some elite/aristocrat conflicts with this (see college rape cases in the USA just as one class of example). If you're poor and working class, your experience may differ, and likewise if you're a member of a persecuted minority, or a woman.

    At the end of the day most people find the political situation bearable if life is predictable enough that you can live life and make plans for the future; if you can be detained arbitrarily for no apparent reason, if your property is subject to seizure, if contracts are not enforced, if you can predict what will happen to you when you go out for groceries. The premise is that the everyday workings of the state, even if they are harsh, should at least be fair. This is basically what rule of law is supposed to provide, but you'll note that quite a bit of despotism can be fit around the edges of a world like that.

    865:

    MixMat @ 850:

    David L @ 846:
    JBS @ 849:

    After reading this, I had a thought - as they say in poker, "If you're in a game of poker and you don't know who the sucker is, you're the sucker."

    I do know who the sucker is. That's why I rarely play poker, and never more than penny ante. 8^)

    866:

    Robert Prior @ 861:

    I'm conceding that they use the law only when it suits them, since they control it within their own borders anyway

    Indeed, since inception, as one of the several grievances the colonists had with Britain is that the British got stroppy when colonists broke treaties signed with local Indian tribes…

    Indeed, since inception, as one of the several grievances the colonists had with Britain is that the British got stroppy when colonists broke treaties signed with local Indian tribes…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLMpnoIyZGk&frags=pl%2Cwn

    Sad irony is that before you can listen to her song there's a YouTube Ad for one of Trumpolini's reich-wing fake-newz scumbags. Most of the time you can skip it after 4 seconds, but it's still there, and it's still goddamn offensive! ... doubly so considering the video it's attached to.

    If I could "use the law only when it suits" me. I'd have that smarmy, lying m****r f****r taken out and shot first thing.

    867:

    In Western democracies, generally well-off middle-class people do enjoy rule of law, albeit things might be different in individual cases where the interests of some elite/aristocrat conflicts with this (see college rape cases in the USA just as one class of example).

    There is rhetorical saying in the US legal system. Would you rather be innocent or have a good lawyer. Then "correct" answer is not necessarily the best answer.

    "Rule of law", while operational in many countries/areas, many times requires coin of the realm to operate.

    868:

    Sad irony is that before you can listen to her song there's a YouTube Ad for one of Trumpolini's reich-wing fake-newz scumbags

    You are obviously seeing different ads than I see.

    869:

    In Western democracies, generally well-off middle-class people do enjoy rule of law

    The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

    • Anatole France
    870:

    Re: ' ... they can redefine the law, and once the courts are under their control as well, there's no shelter from oppression.)'

    This is where international bodies esp. the UN come in except that they can operate for only as long as they are funded.

    Once the US pulls all of its funding and there's no apparent harm done to the US economy as a consequence then other historically major powers might also pull out. If however these other powers stay and continue to support the UN, then the US (assuming DT stays in) would probably push to have them evicted saying that they're all spies, anti-Americans basically not recognizing their rights as legit foreign diplomats.

    871:

    Re: ' ... there's a YouTube Ad '

    Forget who it was here that recommended it, but I've been using Ghostery for a while now to block ads. That said, a few YTers do allow ads to be embedded right into their content.

    872:

    Robert Prior @ 868:

    Sad irony is that before you can listen to her song there's a YouTube Ad for one of Trumpolini's reich-wing fake-newz scumbags

    You are obviously seeing different ads than I see.

    Lately for me it's been all Trumpolini's Lies all of the time. YouTube is supposed to have a way you can flag individual ads that you never want to see again. It doesn't work. In fact, trying to use the procedure seems to make you a target to be bombarded exclusively with the ads you object to.

    873:

    Damian Actually, nothing changes at all does it? "The Xi leadershipSon-of-Heaven has taken a firm stance that this concept is contrary to the principles of socialismConfucianism with Chinese influences, that is the official governing ideology, and that the interpretation of the law is in the purview of the Chinese Communist PartySon-of-Heaven." [ And said Son's appointed advisers, of course. ]

    874:

    I too rarely play poker, but then only ‘strip & forfeits’. So much more fun than playing for money.

    876:

    mdive We shouldn't be growing bloody Sugar Beet, at all, nor should anyone else in Europe - apart, perhaps for Cyprus - where Sugar Cane was first grown commercially in the "modern sense in late-Medieval times (!) We should be commercially helping the W Indian island economies that depend on Sugar for foreign currency balances. This Mapp shows the historical spread of "cane" sugar cultivation. Wiki Article

    HINT: "T&L" Only backed Brexit, because of the EU idiotically "supporting" the growing of "Beet" inside the EU - completely bonkers - & discriminating against the W Indes producers. It was one of the few bad ahngovers of the early EU - like the "Wine Lake" & Butter Mountain" - neither of which exist any more........

    877:

    Um, what? Pay some plantation owner to hire a bunch of poor local people to manufacture your addictive substances, including sugar? How very colonial of you.

    Hell, even in Mendocino County, the north end of California's wine country and the southern end of the Emerald Triangle cannabis country, there's a move on to teach locals how to grow crops other than "inebriants," so that they can actually feed themselves, as opposed to getting impoverished through relying on the wild gyrations in wine and cannabis prices.

    Given the mess I've seen in Hawai'i, where even though they have Covid19 under control, their economy is in shambles because it transitioned from sugar and pineapples to tourism and depend(ed) on that now-absent money to feed themselves on imported food...I'm increasingly for telling the "economies of scale" boffins to go stuff themselves (back into books) until they understand that the utility of resilience trumps the profits of efficiency right now. And to everyone else: start growing the stuff you need locally and stop gibbering about maximizing income.

    For all I know, with climate change you'll be able to grow tea anywhere you can grow Camellias now. Plus beets to sweeten it if you must and cows to provide the milk.

    878:

    Heteromeles I strongly suggest you read the wiki article Sugar Cane is, apparently a nitrogen-fixer & if done properly, its cultivation does not degrade thw soil & also privides non-fossil fuel (bioalchohol) Whereas Sugar Beet is horribly inefficient & uses up a lot of the soil's resources.

    879:

    Hah! Greg, you're a better gardener than that. Sugar cane can harbor cyanobacteria in their leaves, and these do fix some nitrogen, as they do in a bunch of other species, including cycads and one corn cultivar. Beans these ain't. If it was easier to go to Hawai'i, you could see first hand a lot of degraded farmland where they used to grow sugar cane. It's really no better for the soil than growing corn.

    Biofuel wise, you can get more gallons of ethanol out of a sugar beet field in France than you can from a cane field in Brazil (https://grist.org/article/biofuel-some-numbers/). And we're only talking 600-700 gallons/acre/year, so basically an acre is about enough to keep a car running if it uses a bit over 10 gallons/week.

    If you want to power London with ethanol, perhaps the better way to do it is to turn Kent into an enormous sugar beet plantation and feed it the processed sewage from the City. Kind of suck for the local ambience and all, but that's on order how many millions of acres you'd need to fuel the autos.

    880:

    One more thing: I take it as seriously getting even with the West for the destruction of the USSR, primarily through economic warfare, as well as propaganda.

    881:

    Or, as I saw a dozen years ago or more, from a pic in Africa (forget where): why hire a lawyer when you can buy a judge?

    I point you to the SCOTUS Heller decision, along with Bush v. Gore.

    882:

    Ah, yes, going from pineapples and sugar to tourists: going from duoculture to monoculture.

    https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/

    In Philly, we used to get most of our produce, all summer and fall, from out beyond the 'burbs, and New Jersey. Now? goddamned motherfucking urban fucking sprawl wiped them out.

    883:

    In Philly, we used to get most of our produce, all summer and fall, from out beyond the 'burbs, and New Jersey. Now? goddamned motherfucking urban fucking sprawl wiped them out.

    This is why what's been happening in Detroit for the last decade should hearten people on the East Coast.

    884:

    ... Okay, lets go over this again. The human body has an energy consumption of 100 watt resting, 300 peak effort. Approximately. Call it 150 on average, and that is generous. To supply this, we have put enormous amounts of the world under plow. Consider just how much more of the world we would have to plow under to supply even a minute faction of our non-metabolic energy uses.

    Once you have internalized the scale of this, you too will want to hit anyone that brings up biofuels as a good idea with a clue stick. Possibly one studded with nails.

    885:

    The only problem is that's subsistance, if you're luck, farming (see the link I posted, above about "bread"). The small farms were orders of magnitude larger (acres)....

    886:

    We shouldn't be growing bloody Sugar Beet, at all, nor should anyone else in Europe - apart, perhaps for Cyprus - where Sugar Cane was first grown commercially in the "modern sense in late-Medieval times (!)

    While that may be true, we also shouldn't be randomly shipping our food around the world for convenience, contributing to global warming, either.

    Case in point, the celebrity chefs in the US have convinced a lot of people that the American grown canned tomatoes are junk and that they should only cook with Italian grown canned tomatoes - great for the Italians but stupid for the planet.

    Now it may well be the sugar is something that should be shipped, though given it's weight locally grown would need to be really bad environmentally.

    We should be commercially helping the W Indian island economies that depend on Sugar for foreign currency balances.

    Noble sentiment, but it isn't up to us to help destroy the planet so people can live in the tropics - a place that is sadly likely doomed by climate change anyway.

    887:

    Oh for. Ocean freight is entirely trivial to make carbon free, and both options that spring to mind would actively make it cheaper.

    1: Naval reactors. These cost less, over the life of a ship, than the fuel use of a freighter does. (The economics are, hilariously, much, much better for civil than military use, because military ships spend much less time cruising)

    2: Ammonia fuel cells exist, and while the state of the art is not suitable for cars nor aviation, you could stick them in a ships engine room and have the resident master mechanic baby them just fine. Ammonia - > power -> electric propulsion would also work out cheaper than fuel oil, because anhydrous is both cheap and also something every port on the planet is already equipped to handle.

    Zero carbon ammonia production is not currently standard, but since hydrogen production can accept intermittent power just fine, it will be as soon as someone pulls their thumbs out of their behinds and sets up a production facility in an high-solar-irradiation location.

    888:

    Ads on the Internet.

    Lately for me it's been all Trumpolini's Lies all of the time.

    The more you block ads, when they do show up, they will tend to be the ones where the supplier is the lease picky as to who gets it. Since you are mostly blocking ads and search results and whatnot you're profile is bare.

    890:

    There are a couple of problems with ammonia. One is that the energy density isn't great (ethanol range or lower). The bigger problem is that N2O is 298 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. If you screw up your ammonia fuel cell, that's what you get coming out the pipe. So in many ways, it's worse than gas.

    If average container shipping speeds get much slower, then wind power will be competitive again, and that's definitely carbon neutral. Wave power would be fun (Google Suntory Mermaid II for the most recent example), but it only work at the 3-5 knot range, so it's slow-speed shipping. Wonder if cargo-carrying underwater gravity gliders would work...

    Naval reactors? Let's get the land-based next gen mesoreactors working first, then I'd maybe go for it.

    891:

    Thing about subsistence farming is this trade off of resilience versus efficiency. They tend to be inversely related.

    I won't disagree that some places grow stuff better than others do. Problem is, when trading networks break down (as now), efficiency becomes irrelevant, because you can't get the good stuff no matter how cost-effective it was.

    That's where Hawai'i is now. They basically depend on getting a cargo ship arriving once per week from the mainland to keep from starving. Prior to 1800 or so, they managed to feed hundreds of thousands of people on the islands entirely from the islands and surrounding waters, so this is a pretty big drop (yes, I know the current population is about three times larger, but I don't think they're currently even 30% food secure now).

    We're stuck with similar problems with medicines and PPE, too, and not just in Hawai'i. This is one of the few areas where I kind of agree with Trump, a little: our supply chains are too long and too fragile right now. We do need more resilient systems, because we're going to deal with a world that's increasingly unpredictable in proportion to how badly the climate has changed.

    As for sugar beets, eating less sugar is one really good solution. A reasonably good solution is to grow sugar beets more locally, because tropical sugar cane isn't as good as it sounds. Cane sugar is kind of #3, especially if you're producing it on an island where fertilizer and fuel need to be imported is a really bad choice.

    892:

    Naval reactors? Let's get the land-based next gen mesoreactors working first, then I'd maybe go for it.

    Mesoreactors? Google Google... something about catalyst mixing chemical reactors. Is that what you meant, or did you mean small modular vapourware reactors?

    As far as small nuclear reactors providing electrical power, the only ones recently built and supplying electricity anywhere on the planet are a couple of KLT40-derived Naval reactors on board the barge Akademik Lomonosov, together generating about 65MW of electrical power and some district heating energy via pressurised hot water. There are a few small power reactors around dating from the 1970s still operational in places like Bilibino but they were never designed to be "modular". The rather odd CAREM-25 reactor in Argentina (25MW output) is taking longer and longer to complete, being overtaken in terms of time to commercial production by reactors like the KPR1400s being built in the UAE (each of which will produce 1400MW).

    893:

    Yep... except he has no idea whatsoever to fix the "move it back here".

    Actual answers: 1. Anyone moving something like IT or whatever out of country will pay 75% of the salaries of the people they put out of work until the people either get a comparable job with comparable pay, or until they retire. AND IF THAT'S 20 YEARS, TAKE IT OUT OF YOUR CEO'S BONUSES AND STOCK OPTIONS.

  • In 1972, 24% of the federal revenue stream was from corporate taxes, and 16.67% from individual income taxes; now, it's 10% from corporate taxes, and 44% from individual income taxes (source: irs.gov). Triple corporate taxes over 3 years, and give them a 5% break on the money spent IN THE US on capital plant development and US hires.
  • 894:

    For all its faults, relying on TWO sources of income ( Tourism & Sugar ) is better than relying on ONE ... I only use sugar for two purposes ... in v small amounts in some "sweet" bread-like recipes ( Like Not-Cross Buns, or Rock Cakes ) AND for making ... "jam" Just this year, I have made: Strawberry / Goosberry / Raspberry / Greengage & "Lime Marmalade" ... X weight of fruit + 80% weight of sugar + heat & bottle .... { If fruit does not contain sufficient Pectin I simply add either whitecurrants or redcurrants to the mix - THEN it sets ] OINK

    TJ The Ammonia fuel cycle is well-known, but no-one seems to want to take it up - WHY? Ah - Heteromeles ...

    Um ... sugar Beet is horrible as a crop, certainly in England, where it is taking land away from: WHeat, Oats, Barley, Parsnips, Turnips, Beans, Peas ... - or almost bloody anything, actually.

    895:

    The fuel-cell part is obligatory to make the economics work - In a fuel cell you can recover north of 80% of the energy content as ultimate kinetic energy. If you burn ammonia, which you can, you get far, far less back, and at that point, the lower energy density and not-that-low price makes the whole thing not very appealing.

    Ammonia fuel cells are large and fussy. So it is a fuel cycle which only currently sees use for stationary applications. Given the reported dimensions and maintenance requirements, a ship run on ammonia should work fine - They are not so large as to over tax a panamax freighters engine room, nor more fussy than a ships machinist with a bit of relevant training can deal with. This is one of those things that will likely spread like wildfire once someone builds the first one, because, well.. No more exposure to the oil market, no more horrific exhaust fumes from engines burning the dregs of refineries.

    896:

    This is one of the few areas where I kind of agree with Trump, a little: our supply chains are too long and too fragile right now.

    My totally voted for DT for lower taxes and free market capitalism friend just seem to be in a total cognitive dissonance about this as they also want the US to NOT be dependent on any outside countries for anything.

    Ugh.

    897:

    Mesoreactors

    I was being obnoxious. There's been a little buzz about making another generation of power generation nuclear reactors that are smaller, cleaner...and untested. Since they're not submarine "micro" nukes, nor are they last-gen commercial nukes, the middle ground is "meso." Hopefully no one else is silly enough to actually call them that. Making them sound cute and harmless, rather than awkwardly medium, is better PR.

    898:

    It's not that we can't be totally independent, because that kind of thing doesn't scale with a civilization of billions of people. The problem is we've got too many just-in-time global supply chains, people are dying when they break, and we know we need to be more resilient.

    Two very different examples.

    One is the El Cheeto Administration's deal with Kodak Pharmaceuticals "to produce up to 25 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients used in non-biologic, non-antibacterial, generic pharmaceuticals..."

    Kodak does produce fine chemicals right now: somewhere around $5 million/year. The idea that they can scale up production to do one quarter of what the US pharmaceutical industry needs, erm, rapidly? This being a British blog, I think the polite response is that I'll bet on John Powell's Airship to Orbit program, since he at least has a business plan and is working towards it.

    The link (to Derek Lowe's In The Pipeline Blog) details how hard it is to figure out where APIs come from. A lot of them seem to have multiple sources, but when someone starts digging, those suppliers mostly have warehouses, not chemical factories: they're middlemen, and there's a single factory (maybe in China, maybe in Puerto Rico) actually making the entire world supply. In pharmaceutical land, this means that if there's a contamination problem, or if a hurricane trashes a factory, all of a sudden every source for a drug is equally contaminated, or equally, suddenly no one has any more IV saline bags of the regular size.

    This is the kind of mess that legitimate onshoring and multiplying of production facilities helps. It's not perfectly economic in ordinary times, but it protects necessary production during crises, and we'll having a lot more crises for the foreseeable future.

    A very different example is that, if California stopped growing almonds and alfalfa for export (to China and Saudi Arabia respectively), we'd likely have almost enough water to grow food for our entire state. Sustainably. While I suspect we'd have to import some grain from the Midwest, it's hard to argue that feeding 38 million people is less economically viable than feeding rather fewer almond snackers or race horses. But the politics of farming and water rights skew towards a few farm-owners (rich and/or transnational) making investments that in the long run destroy the resources they own. Again, on-shoring the California food supply, and promoting truck gardens nationwide instead of suburban sprawl, would make everything a lot more sustainable.

    Note that the only thing I kind of a little agree with El Cheeto on is that things are screwed up, and cutting transportation miles could be a useful strategy. What gets cut and who gets the investment is where we entirely part ways. Investing in Kodak? Only a guy with billions to waste would assume they could scale-up to meet that kind of production volume.

    899:

    And for more fun, we have excitment in Washington where Trump, seeing the GOP Senate's failure to agree on a plan to help Americans threatening his election hopes has instead decided to do it all by executive order (and of course blaming the DNC House instead of the GOP Senate).

    Problem 1: of the decreased amount ($400) he wants to provide he is expecting the States to pick up 1/4 of the cost - except most of the States are currently broke and thus have no way to come up with the money

    Problem 2: allocating money is not in the President's powers, it belongs to Congress - thus watch those court filings Monday morning...

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-executive-order-coronavirus-1.5679693

    900:

    sound cute and harmless

    I prefer to call them "air droppable nuclear power plants" because it helps people think about what a portable nuclear plant would actually look like. It doesn't matter that the real thing will likely be assembled from multiple truckloads, making it about as portable as a substation. What matters is that we already have thousands of users of medical isotopes and very few problems with the nuclear material going missing. Adding a few thousand more shouldn't cause too many more problems, as long as we have the same restrictions on them as we have on medical isotopes (ie, large professionally run institutions with multiple layers of supervision).

    Of course, the proponents of SMRs say the whole point is to get second hand nuclear reactors into the hands of any muppet for a million in cash...

    901:

    I needed this evening.

    WSFA meets the first Friday of the month, and BSFS the second Sat. So, this month, that was yesterday and today.

    With my new rebuilt computer, zoom actually works. Yesterday was good, but today - two meetings (Balticon and BSFS, and in between those two meetings, and for over an hour after the second, maybe half a dozen the first time, and a dozen the second time, just sat around and talked, the first real fannish time since the beginning of March.

    902:

    1: Naval reactors. These cost less, over the life of a ship, than the fuel use of a freighter does. (The economics are, hilariously, much, much better for civil than military use, because military ships spend much less time cruising)

    It probably doesn't help that the first example was a commercial flop.

    [[ link repaired - mod ]]

    903:

    Keep dreaming about your nuclear niravana Moz, because it aint gonna happen.

    There may be a role for small nuclear reactors, in remote regions where solar and wind are not realistic for one reason or the other, places like scientific bases on Antarctica or remote islands like Jan Mayen.

    But there is no way to make them even remotely profitable where they have to compete against wind and solar while being handicapped by the cost of "large professionally run institutions with multiple layers of supervision".

    I suggest you do some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and suggest you do them in units of "Msc or Phd per GW".

    904:

    Your link is borked. I think you meant this.

    And PHK, if you reread Moz's last paragraph, you may come to think he's not as pro-nuclear as the rest of his post suggests.

    JHomes

    905:

    It probably doesn't help that the first example was a commercial flop.

    Of course it was. It was a prototype.

    All attempts to turn the US nuclear navy systems into commercial use run into at least 2 huge issues.

  • They expect the ocean to be there as a heat sink. Sailing up and down rivers and coasts may not be an option.

  • They are made with bomb or nearly bomb grade Uranium or similar. And without the chain of command of something like the US Navy and a protocol that cost be damned in a situation of the moment it just ain't gonna happen.

  • And in the back of my head I have to wonder if the proliferation issues are resolved, just how much waste will all of these reactors generate. As long as it's limited to subs and carriers with 25 year fulling cycles I suspect the navy is just sticking the old fuel in some remote location. (No research done by me on this.)

    906:

    I drafted a long comment which timed out.

    I figured out how to deal with this.

    Immediately open a new tab and sign in. Switch back to the tab with timeout message and go back a page. On my Mac with Firefox I am now logged in and my typing is in the window. And submit now works.

    907:

    Modern nuclear power isn't meant to be profitable, it's a way to transfer large amounts of taxpayer money into big construction companies. There's a huge number of companies and people deeply wedded to megaprojects and centralised control over infrastructure. Nuclear is a way to keep that in an age where for the price of a car you can take your house off the electricity grid, and there's a real threat that mesh networking could do the same for internet. For people that specialise in building big things those are not trivial problems, and for people who want to be able to control infrastructure both are very real threats.

    SMRs are a way for techbros to get on that gravy train, and a way for countries that don't currently have nukes to get access to radioactive isotopes in quantity. Whether you think it's a good idea to literally Uberise or Amazonify nuclear power plants is obviously a decision you need to make for yourself. Personally I am sure that nothing bad would happen if there were thousands of small nuclear plants operated by cheap casualised labour paid starvation wages and vigorously policed every second of their working lives to make sure they have no access to toilets, medical care or unions.

    908:

    3: they required highly skilled staff to operate them, and they need a lot of those staff. Modern merchant ships are very carefully designed to need the minimum number of crew (one, I suppose (that never gets old)) and least possible amount of maintenance. Adding even one post-grad engineer to operate the reactor would be a huge impost, especially if you couldn't use former Soviet engineers from poor countries (ie, had to pay first world salary). The ship would have to be awesome to compensate for the extra cost of just that one crew member... assuming it was just one.

    The refuelling and maintenance staff would likewise need to be carefully looked at, as well as that maintenance barge that the US decided they needed. If they really did need that "nuclear waste barge" available to offload wastewater that would be a really tricky thing for a commercial operation to manage. Even just carrying a few hundred tons of used water would be problematic (unless they just discharged it in international waters and hushed it up).

    There's also port access, a ship that can't go in to certain ports (German ones, say) or can't use certain waterways (the Suez Canal, say) is less useful than one which can go anywhere it will physically fit. If Rotterdam wouldn't accept a nuke ship then the whole market for them might not be viable (because obviously for a commercial endeavour you need series production).

    Obviously once Greenpeace take to hanging people off the things in whatever ports they use the profit becomes questionable. They may end up limited to the China-USA route (or other locations where protest can be suppressed).

    909:

    I'm not going there again myself, but maybe some admin would like to consider @873 above. It may not quite include finger-stretched slanty eyes and a silly accent, but it might as well for all the self-awareness evident. I'm kind of appalled because clearly in his mind he thinks he's just riffing on my comment that he's replying to, so I'm complicit in facilitating this efflorescence of Victorian-era ideological matter.

    910:

    OK. Just how long?

    Let's look at a company with $billions on the line. Not at politicians trying to keep from getting lynched or not loose an election.

    Qantas

    Retired all 747s. Parked all A380s Now parking it's 787s. Location: Victorville California. Plus a few others Totally they are parking 100 of 126 aircraft. Some locally I'm sure.

    Putting all of these big planes in Victorville means they are not expecting to fly them for maybe a year. Maybe more.

    Anyway a company that wants to survive this and has $billons on the line is betting things will not get much better for a year or more.

    Now Australia is not "typical" in terms of flight routes compared to the Americas or Europe this still is an interesting projection of the near term outlook.

    911:

    "OK. Just how long?"

    I've been sounding out people I know for how long they expect covid19 to be the top item on any strategic agenda in their organization.

    The answers range from "months" to "middel of the decade" with a big peak and median for various variations of "summer 2021".

    The clear outlier is commercial passenger air transport, their answers are all variations of "we wont be around by then anyway".

    912:

    Nuclear power on commercial ships? Yeah .. Like THIS ONE? Maybe not ...

    Damian @ 909 WELL DONE - for missing the whole fucking point.

    Is Russia, now, different from the way it was, administratively & as regards criticism of the "management" compared to, say Tsar Alexander II? The Central Kingdom is IMHO exactly the same - only the names have changed. How on earth you managed to shoehorn imagined racism into it is beyond me ... Except, of coure, now I've typed that out .... I remember when I was screamed at for being an "evil racist" after someone read out a late-Victorian/early-C20th account of how the children in (part of) Africa seemed as bright & alert as anywhere else ... but as they got to 10 -13 years old, sluggishness & inertia set in ... "This was obviously racist" - except that description was an almost perfect match for the symptoms of Bilharzia Needless to say, facts were not important & I was still an evil racist.

    913:

    https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/07/sciadv.abd3083

    Interesting droplet count study comparing different masks. Looks like the valved N95 ones I use are worse for other people than a few layers of cotton, but I expect my mask+cotton handkerchief does better.

    914:

    That's it. I previewed my comment before posting, but I completely forgot links could get borked like that. -_(o.o)_/-

    It would be interesting to see a new attempt, but I suspect the economics won't work out unless the reactor can be made completely NUSPI.

    915:

    At current oil prices a large freighter burns 150 tonnes of bunkerfuel a day. Even at super-slow steaming, north of a hundred tonnes. At Rotterdam prices, this comes to 314000-417000 thousand dollars per day. Assuming a freighter spends 80 % of the year under way, that is 137 million a year. That will pay for quite considerable staffing overhead. And 314 dollars per tonne is a very low price - bunker fuel has spent years and years north of 600 dollars per tonne before, and will again.

    916:

    Yeah whatever, mate. I've said what I had to and like I said I'm not going there.

    917:

    hum.

    Strike the thousand. Obviously not hundreds of million/day. As for Greenpeace, at this point I have just started referring to the organization as EarthKiller Inc, since.. well, they are the enemy of the world.

    Fully general problem actually.

    Anyone have a clue how to get people to get off their high horses when those horses turn out to be Kelpies from Hell?

    Anti-vax, Anti nuclear activists, Brexit, hell, global warming denial, A whole lot of these people are idealists who have accepted a premise which is just not true, but backing down would mean admitting to themselves that they have been supporting an Evil cause, and their self-image will not support that, so error becomes a one-way door into Evil.

    918:

    Yeah, I realised the same thing after, at the start of the outbreak, setting my mother-in-law up with a webcam and my mother up with an LTE-WiFi router wearing one (and vinyl gloves), not touching, glopping hand sanitiser on everything, etc. To be fair it was what I had at home already, from a box of P3 masks I had bought specifically for bushfire smoke a couple of months earlier.

    So then I bought surgical masks, when Aldi had boxes of 50 for $75 for a little while. Currently we're not wearing masks regularly in public in Queensland, but it will come. I have done so on a few occasions as a sort of trial, it's becoming more common (I counted 8 people with masks in Bunnings earlier today). Still zero new cases here, for a few days now.

    919:

    Yeah, but the NS Savannah had the stupendous bad luck to be designed and built to government order just as the container ship (for cargo) and the wide-body airliner (for people) came along. It was an old-school freighter designed to carry break-bulk cargo and a surprising number of passengers, and would have been a brilliant ad for civil maritime nuclear propulsion if it had shown up 30 years previously.

    But it's not the only civil nuclear ship out there: I'm pretty sure the Soviet (now Russian) nuclear icebreaker fleet are non-military, and they've been in service for decades. (Although I suspect there won't be any more built once the north-east passage is ice-free all year round, within another decade at this rate.)

    920:

    Currently we're not wearing masks regularly in public in Queensland, but it will come.

    Don't count those chickens just yet. Masks are still a minority hobby in Melbun from what I'm told, and they're definitely not the done thing in the inner city parts of Sydney that I visited on Saturday. The hipster market had about 20% masks in the punters and less than 10% from the vendors, suggesting that when they find a popular kid who's infectious half of Newtown will be done. The Betoota Advocate may have failed to write satire again with "Crowds Flock To Sydney’s Bondi Beach In Effort To Catch Up On Melbourne".

    I think people are focussed on the cheerful "we've had the pandemic let's get back to normal" messaging from the governments, rather than the "this might last as little as 18 months, or it could be with us forever" from the epidemiologists. Ditto the "when we get a vaccine" vs "if a vaccine is possible, and if it's effective, and if it's affordable" messaging from the vaccinologists*. According to the friend I visited there's more masks in the CBD during the week, but weekends are awful.

    • apparently the field doesn't have an official name, so I'm going to dub them Salkspurts.
    921:

    Another handy hint via Hacker News: using a rice cooker to dry heat N95 masks seems to work for sterilising them. https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/143865832

    The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign study found that 50 minutes of dry heat in an electric cooker, such as a rice cooker or Instant Pot, decontaminated N95 respirators inside and out while maintaining their filtration and fit. This could enable wearers to safely reuse limited supplies of the respirators, originally intended to be one-time-use items.

    They verified that one cycle on their model's rice-cooking preset, which maintains the contents of the cooker at around 100 degrees Celsius or 212 Fahrenheit for 50 minutes, decontaminated the masks, inside and out, from four different classes of virus, including a coronavirus – and did so more effectively than ultraviolet light. Then, they tested the filtration and fit.

    “We built a chamber in my aerosol-testing lab specifically to look at the filtration of the N95 respirators, and measured particles going through it,” Verma said. “The respirators maintained their filtration capacity of more than 95% and kept their fit, still properly seated on the wearer’s face, even after 20 cycles of decontamination in the electric cooker.”

    The researchers created a video demonstrating the method. They note that the heat must be dry heat – no water added to the cooker, the temperature should be maintained at 100 degrees Celsius for 50 minutes and a small towel should cover the bottom of the cooker to keep any part of the respirator from coming into direct contact with the heating element. However, multiple masks can be stacked to fit inside the cooker at the same time, Nguyen said.

    Time to start cooking towels in our rice cookers!

    922:

    Sigh, had written this up and hit the dreaded content submission error and no tricks helped. Sigh. But anyway.

    Your Rotterdam price ($314 per tonne) is a bit low both internationally and historically, it looks like a reasonable international price per tonne for bunker fuel to take as an average is $500 for this point in time. Taking your 150 tonnes a day that gives a little more than $27 million a year, which is in the same ballpark as your figure (within around a factor of 5 less, which isn't that badly wrong for this stuff).

    But it isn't just crew, this needs to incorporate the plant costs, the cost associated with the lifecycle and waste disposal and all that. Amortising development and so on. Not saying it can't cover it, just talking it through.

    I find it interesting because the same cost differential applies for other versions of freight that don't require burning all that bunker fuel. Ever since sail gave way to power, people have been talking about a price point for fuel where sail makes sense again, although the world has changed a lot in that time. Leaving aside outre esoterica like kite sails and fresnel rotors, people have been talking about computer controlled modified square riggers since at least the 80s (a prototype of such a ship features in a Geoffrey Jenkins novel). The only real world implementation in an actual working vessel that I'm aware of is a rich man's yacht, the Maltese Falcon.

    There are real limits on what sail can do versus what the world has become used to. The question would really be whether modern JIT logistics is still viable, whether it can be accommodated by a model where sail is used. I think the sticking points we've discussed are weather independence and the ability to transit the Panama and Suez canals. The ships that used the tradewinds were able to perform in an era when they were all there were: could modern trade adapt to the same limitations? Even given superscale solar powered towpaths in the canals?

    The topic seems to be a strange attractor here, people have talked about using solar generated ammonia to power ships that export the ammonia to energy markets. There's a company in Canada that claims to make a diesel substitute from carbon extracted from the air using solar power. There are a lot of alternatives to the bunker fuel out there, the question is how the other costs stack up and how it fits into the broader scenario of a warmer world with more sea routes and maybe challenges with high technology supply chains.

    923:

    Atmospheric Carbon to jetfuel has been lab benched. Estimates for the cost of full scale production are very peppery, however.

    Ammonia is a better choice because it is already the chemical we produce the most of. Very mature process, and the input that drives cost is hydrogen, which means doing electrolysis with power produced in an equatorial desert, or on the coast of Chile (Best wind resource) should make it cheaper than it already is, because beating the cost of producing it by cracking natural gas is entirely doable with cheap enough power.

    And for once, it really just does not matter that production is at the whims of the weather - You can buffer the output before the rest of the process with a big dumb tank of steel, and there you go.

    924:

    Dmaian Some time / several threads back ... there was mention of "nations" that were really racist ... IIRC the Han just beat the Japanese to the, erm, "top" spot. Given their current treatment of the Tibetans & Uighurs ..... Also the historical treatment of ideological ideas that ran across whatever the then-current Son of Heaven wanted, tended to result in serious massacres - with figures easily running into the tens of thousands killed. Hand Sanitser can present problems for people with skin allergies & sensitivities, apparently - but the person I know who has this problem gets round it with a small bottle of an (upmarket) skin cleanser & small cotton wipe-pads.

    TJ Albert Speer? Ex-Governor Geo Wallace? Such people are thin on the ground

    TJ & damian [ Atmospheric Carbon to jetfuel has been lab benched. Estimates for the cost of full scale production are very peppery, however. ] This &/or "Ammonia" Everybody is TALKING about both of these - have been for years & demonstrators produced ... And still nothing actually happens. Or is it "simply" because, at present, Oil is ridiculously cheap?

    925:

    I suspect it is why oil is currently cheap. Opec saw the writing on the wall, and is trying to pump and sell it all before it becomes technically obsoleted.

    926:

    The existing pair of working nuclear icebreakers have a crewing level of about 170 or so each but they were designed back in the 1970s before large-scale automation of ship operations was introduced. The new Project 22220 nuclear icebreaker (also called Arktika, just to be confusing) has a crew of 75 for a ship that weighs 33,000 tonnes fully ballasted, half the displacement of a QE-class aircraft carrier (crew complement 700). I would say, based on those numbers, that commercial nuclear Naval ships don't need large numbers of expensive specialist engineers to operate their reactor power plants.

    The new Arktika was undergoing trials this year but it burned out a drive motor and they're trying to decide if it could still be used this winter with reduced icebreaking capability while a new motor is manufactured for it.

    927:

    Oil is cheap right now thanks to the pandemic. However production, refining and transportation costs have been driven down and down over the past few decades making oil production profitable even in very difficult and previously marginal circumstances and that low cost of production helps to buffer the industry in times like these.

    People have been saying oil is yesterday's energy source for decades now, it's about to die and disappear from the world like whale oil and the like. In the real world oil production and consumption has doubled since the 1990s and is still on an upward trend today. See also coal for a similar "dying" industry that's never been so productive or so profitable worldwide.

    If oil remains cheap or gets even cheaper then demand for instant-on gas turbine electricity to cover dropouts from renewable energy generators will absorb that cheap oil, displacing cheap gas which currently supplies a lot of this demand to keep the lights on worldwide. It's not that difficult or expensive to convert natural-gas turbines to burn kerosene or other refined oils, hell they could even burn bunker oil at a pinch although the pollution controls would be a nightmare.

    928:

    All this about Oil being cheap, reminds me: Another "populist" bastard crapping on his own people for profit & grandstanding - Narendra Modi - this time.

    929:

    If oil remains cheap or gets even cheaper then demand for instant-on gas turbine electricity to cover dropouts from renewable energy generators will absorb that cheap oil, displacing cheap gas which currently supplies a lot of this demand to keep the lights on worldwide. It's not that difficult or expensive to convert natural-gas turbines to burn kerosene or other refined oils, hell they could even burn bunker oil at a pinch although the pollution controls would be a nightmare.

    Problem with this scenario is that they've already cancelled to natural gas powered peaker plants in my area, because battery plants of the same scale are cheaper. Moreover, the battery backup can respond to power deficits in a matter of minutes, while it takes hours for a petroleum-powered generator to fire up and start producing power.

    And batteries are getting cheaper too.

    As for the supply, I'm aware of three US fracking companies that are in bankruptcy at the moment. So, as with the old growth forest industry in the Pacific Northwest, if the infrastructure for exploiting the resource falls apart, that resource is no longer available.

    930:

    "I would say, based on those numbers, that commercial nuclear Naval ships don't need large numbers of expensive specialist engineers to operate their reactor power plants."

    You do know that those Russian icebreakers are navy vessels, right ?

    How many of those 75 do you think are a direct consequence of the nuclear populsion ?

    For comparison: Mærsk's tripple-E class has a total crew of 13.

    931:

    mdlve @ 875: Brexit - Winner: Tate & Lyle - Loser: British sugar beet farmers

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/08/brexit-backers-tate-lyle-set-to-gain-73m-from-end-of-eu-trade-tariffs

    I guess that means the U.K. will soon be open to importing other currently restricted "food" items.

    “Ditching tariffs on raw cane sugar will boost imports from a handful of countries, all of which use pesticides banned in the UK for being harmful to wildlife and humans.”

    Chlorinated chicken anyone?

    932:

    timrowledge @ 874: I too rarely play poker, but then only ‘strip & forfeits’. So much more fun than playing for money.

    You'd never want to play for those stakes again if you ever saw me nekkid.

    933:

    Meanwhile, the "Weekend FT" strikes again ... Their "lunch with ... " series has done an interview with Mary Trump. Her final comment was the scary one. To the effect that, if he really does lose, he will almost-certainly try to take everybody & everything else down with him.

    Tell me again, how much could he wreck, internationally, never mind inside the USA, between November & January? ( Assuming he is NOT allowed near the football ... ) Is there a procedure for "preventive detention for his own good" that could be applied? Would the "R's" go for removing him, if the wrecking got too bad, or would they follow their, erm "guide"?

    934:

    I'd estimate only a few of the crew of the new Arktika are engaged in nuclear-specific jiggery-pokery. It's an icebreaker, not a cargo ship so it has things like an air wing embarked (okay, a search helicopter but that needs pilots, copilots, mechanics and refuelling crew) as well as specialist icebreaker operations crew, navigation/command and general engineering crewmembers too. There will be medical staff on board since icebreaking is not risk-free. In addition the big icebreakers usually travel in convoy supporting other cargo and military ships following in the channel they create.

    The big Maersk ships could be operated unmanned, pretty much -- I recall some fanciful ideas being put forward about convoys of robot ships travelling in close formation across the oceans, with a crew moving between them via helicopter when necessary, but it hasn't eventuated for various reasons.

    935:

    David L @ 888: Ads on the Internet.

    Lately for me it's been all Trumpolini's Lies all of the time.

    The more you block ads, when they do show up, they will tend to be the ones where the supplier is the lease picky as to who gets it. Since you are mostly blocking ads and search results and whatnot you're profile is bare.

    That would be true if I was blocking ads indiscriminately. I'm not. I'm looking to block a few (less than 5 in the last decade or so) ads that I find particularly offensive.

    According to YouTube's "help" there should be an option to "Never show me THIS ad again". I've followed the instructions they gave & it doesn't work. The option is not there.

    In fact, it appears to work quite the opposite. If you some way try to block an ad from Trumpolini's campaign, you are subsequently bombarded with nothing but ads from Trumpolini's campaign.

    I've looked at my profile and it's not bare. It also bears no discernible relationship to the ads I receive.

    936:

    Link? I'm curious.

    (Haven't finished her book yet. I need to take frequent pauses to read something less depressing, so it's taking a while.)

    937:

    Coal? Really? In the US, a lot of coal companies are going to bankruptcy*, and it's not going to go up.

    • Partly a setup, to be able to break union contracts, and avoid paying into the miners' health and welfar funds.
    938:

    He'll flair wildly. How much he succeeds at is another story. Right now, the relief executive orders he signed yesterday are literally illegal, and everyone expects a zillion court filings tomorrow morning. While it's in court... nothing happens.

    You may have missed that he's just killed himself: he says he's going to kill the payroll tax for social security... which means killing social security... and alllll the folks who were voting for him who are retired will scream.

    939:

    David L @ 905: All attempts to turn the US nuclear navy systems into commercial use run into at least 2 huge issues.

    2. They are made with bomb or nearly bomb grade Uranium or similar. And without the chain of command of something like the US Navy and a protocol that cost be damned in a situation of the moment it just ain't gonna happen.

    Savannah's reactor was designed to civilian standards using low-enriched uranium with less emphasis on shock resistance and compactness of design than that seen in comparable military propulsion reactors, but with considerable emphasis on safety and reliability.

    Basically the "problem" with the NS Savannah was operating costs were not competitive with then current costs of conventionally powered cargo ships. Larger nuclear powered commercial ships would likely have been more competitive, especially after the 1974 OPEC oil embargo.

    As a result of her design handicaps, training requirements, and additional crew members, Savannah cost approximately US$2 million a year more in operating subsidies than a similarly sized Mariner-class ship with a conventional oil-fired steam plant. The Maritime Administration placed her out of service in 1971 to save costs, a decision that made sense when fuel oil cost US$20 per ton. In 1974, however, when fuel oil cost $80 per ton, Savannah's operating costs would have been no greater than a conventional cargo ship.

    The sponsoring governments would have had to take care the ships didn't end up like RHOSUS. Wouldn't want nuclear powered shoddily maintained piles of junk wandering around the world's oceans.

    940:

    David L @ 906:

    I drafted a long comment which timed out.

    I figured out how to deal with this.

    Immediately open a new tab and sign in.
    Switch back to the tab with timeout message and go back a page. On my Mac with Firefox I am now logged in and my typing is in the window. And submit now works.

    That's why I keep a separate "Notepad" (but any text editor should do) window open for composing my responses. If I get a timeout, I've still got what I'm writing & can copy/paste into the new session.

    Plus, because I use the same document all the time, I have all of my HTML hints & templates handy.

    941:

    Tell me again, how much could he wreck, internationally, never mind inside the USA, between November & January? ( Assuming he is NOT allowed near the football ... )

    Alas, such an assumption goes against a considerable amount of evidence.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/opinion/nuclear-weapons-trump.html

    One could hope that someone in the military chain of command would say, "nope, not gonna do that" or that NSA might play some trick with the parts of the system that they provide crypto for. Hope is a beautiful thing.

    942:

    Rbt Prior Unfortunately, the "FT" is behind quite a solid paywall - I was reading the actual paper/dead-tree edition. This: https://www.ft.com/content/4861bcdd-4381-434e-b316-b77e9a71314d Might work ... Or this one good luck! LURVED the bit where she says "At least the Borgias supported the Arts" (!)

    whitroth @ 938 He's hoping/expecting that to go to the courts, so he can then blame the courts & the Dems, yes? A lot of them will swallow it ( As in "It's all the evil EU's fault" - even when they have done it to themselves ... )

    943:

    _Moz_ @ 921: Another handy hint via Hacker News: using a rice cooker to dry heat N95 masks seems to work for sterilising them.
    https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/143865832

    I wonder if a crock-pot would work?

    944:

    Worldwide, coal has never been in better shape. Total production and consumption of coal has increased from about 5 billion tonnes a year in 2000 to 8 billion tonnes a year today. That figure has plateaued recently but that's mostly due to the decreasing cost and explosive (sometimes literally) increase in natural gas production and consumption eating into coal's market share of providing electrical power generation.

    945:

    "Tell me again, how much could he wreck, internationally, never mind inside the USA, between November & January?"

    I think a most people view through the wrong lens.

    Trump's mindset is that of a CEO, the only way the election maps to that mindset is an attempt at a hostile takeover, and the way any self-respecting CEO reacts to that is to lay out poison-pills, mine-fields, and self-destruct mechanisms.

    If you have studied hostile takeovers, you will notice that part of the deal is always a fresh CEO, nobody is stupid enough to let the loosing captain run the ship for another couple of months.

    So the answer is: He can and will do ALL the damage you can imagine, up to and including plundering and vandalizing the White House, until Congress has enough and invokes the twenty fifth amendments clause 4.

    That again depends a LOT on the election result.

    Members of Congress has a general tendency to "Do The Right Thing At Last", so if a lot of republicans get voted out, they might want to be able to say "we tried to/did stop him".

    If the polls show a landslide for the opposition, they may even attempt it as an October Surprise, in order to save their own hides in the election.

    Either way: USA is f**ked.

    946:

    P H-K He can and will do ALL the damage you can imagine, Well THAT is a lot worse than you have listed.. He could easily try to start a Civil War, or try to use the "football", just to bring everything down ... A flight from Spa to Doorn, or "Der Untergang" ???

    You may have to go Amendment 25 cl 4 for all our sakes, though it may not save the USA.

    947:

    Sorry, a little US-centric here. The DoE says that coal production's estimated to drop 20% this year over last, and even next year, it will be down; ditto for energy production from coal.

    948:

    "Well THAT is a lot worse than you have listed.."

    I guess it could be a lot worse than most people can imagine.

    Even ignoring the football, the US President has staggering freedom to do things, as long as he can point to some "Threat against the union".

    Have you heard the recent news about packets of seeds from China arriving randomly in USA ?

    Trump use them to issue an presidential order, citing "credible intelligence" and effectively shut down the US postal service, by requiring all mail, nation-wide to go through full FBI bio-terror screenings.

    (I suspect somebody saw the "8-10 weeks delivery time" and started early ?)

    If you want to get a feeling for how surreal the next months will become, you should study corporate poison-pills in the face of hostile takeovers: They can be amazingly creative and/or devastatingly blunt.

    The one thing to understand is that nobody in that game plays fair.

    949:

    Have you heard the recent news about packets of seeds from China arriving randomly in USA ?

    Correction - the now months old news of packets of unknown seeds likely from China that have been arriving in numerous countries around the world.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/01/mystery-seed-parcels-world-biosecurity-china-uk-us

    950:

    This (N. Taleb et al) is worth a read, using how to manage risks of pandemics as an example. (Accepted paper) A bit dense (and TBH I have not given it a deep read and while this aligns with my mental models of such matters, I'm not familiar enough with Taleb's viewpoint of the field.) On Single Point Forecasts for Fat-Tailed Variables (July 27 2020?, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Yaneer Bar-Yam, and Pasquale Cirillo) Abstract—We discuss common errors and fallacies when using naive "evidence based" empiricism and point forecasts for fat-tailed variables, as well as the insufficiency of using naive first-order scientific methods for tail risk management. We use the COVID-19 pandemic as the background for the discussion and as an example of a phenomenon characterized by a multiplicative nature, and what mitigating policies must result from the statistical properties and associated risks. In doing so, we also respond to the points raised by Ioannidis et al.(2020) ... The fact is that some classes of (systemic) risks require being killed in the egg, also from an economic point of view. The good news is that there are not so many–but pandemics as we said fall squarely within the category. ... Because network models tend to follow certain patterns to generate large tail events, in front of contagious diseases wisdom in action is to kill the exponential growth in the egg via three central measures 1) reducing super-spreader events; 2) monitoring and reducing mobility for those coming from far-away places (via quarantines); 3) looking for cheap measures with large payoffs in terms of the reduction of the multiplicative effects (e.g. facemasks). Anything that "demultiplies the multiplicative" helps.

    951:

    I think you mean the Dem House. The DNC is a committee in the Democratic Party.

    952:

    Three memoranda, and an executive order on evictions and loans that won't apply to a lot of people, and won't help anyone, since it's deferral, not forgiveness. The memo on unemployment amounts to creating a new program, which will take months to get off the ground. The memo on payroll taxes is also a deferral of actual payment; the betting is that most companies will continue to withhold their portion. (Another red-herring proposal that will help no one, since people who work aren't the ones who need the money most.)

    953:

    I think you mean the Dem House. The DNC is a committee in the Democratic Party.

    Most people in general use don't get that specific - they use DNC/GOP as convenient 3 letter shorthands for the 2 parties.

    954:

    The DoE says that coal production's estimated to drop 20% this year over last, and even next year, it will be down; ditto for energy production from coal.

    Yep. See

    https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/coal.php

    also workforce effect

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES1021210001

    955:

    @932 - It has always been the case that one should be careful with whom one plays poker.

    956:

    mdlve wrote: Most people in general use don't get that specific - they use DNC/GOP as convenient 3 letter shorthands for the 2 parties.

    I've been meaning to ask you about this for a long time now, because I'm wondering. As far as I can see you are the only poster here to use these shorthands this way, and I'm wondering why. In my view this is an imbalance. You're referring to one party by a nomer for the party (GOP), but to the other party by an acronym for one specific body in that party's org chart (DNC–which could incidentally stand for either 'Democratic National Committee' or 'Democratic National Convention'). I guess you mean to refer to the committee. But why? You seem to imply that you're not really talking about the party as such, but only about one specific body within the party. I find that odd, particularly because on the other hand you never refer to the RNC (which would be the DNC's correct counterpart, I believe).

    This can come across as an attempt to ridicule the Democratic Party by not taking it seriously as a political party. It looks like this: On one side of the isle we have a whole party with a lot of gravitas—it ist described as 'grand' and 'old', after all. On the other side of the isle we don't have a whole party at all (and no gravitas as well), but only some committee that (to a first approximation) nobody knows the members and the legitimacy of. That makes it sound somewhat shady, in my opinion.

    What I want to say here is: to me as an outsider (I'm German) the use of these (and only these!) acronyms looks like a telltale sign of pro-republican (and anti-democratic) propaganda, just like the refusal of republicans and right-wing media to use the correct adjective for the Democratic Party (it's 'democratic', not 'democrat') with the same intent of ridiculing democrats.

    I am reasonably certain that you're not a pro-republican and/or anti-democratic propagandist and you don't intend to ridicule the Democratic Party. Thus I'm really wondering why you're using their loaded language so consequently.

    957:

    Ah, yes, the second, the real "War on coal (miner)". Most traditional mines have been closed, and the went to mountaintop removal, etc, decades ago. In the sixties, it was about 780k miners; now it's about 78k - one-tenth, and the other jobs will never come back.

    But the Hairball "bring back coal jobs!!!"....

    958:

    A couple things: I'm US, and I refer to the Dems for short, not the DNC. Another is for the last year or two, I will NOT refer to the other party by their official name, the Republican Party, because they are vehemently anti-republican government. So it's the GOP, the Grand Oligarchic Party.

    959:

    Re: ' ...kill the exponential growth in the egg via three central measures 1) reducing super-spreader events; 2) monitoring and reducing mobility for those coming from far-away places (via quarantines); 3) looking for cheap measures with large payoffs in terms of the reduction of the multiplicative effects (e.g. facemasks). Anything that "demultiplies the multiplicative" helps.'

    Also in-home inexpensive self-tests performed daily as per Mina - see below.

    TWiV 640: Test often, fast turnaround, with Michael Mina (1:46:04)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDj4Zyq3yOA

    MedCram has since also interviewed Mina and below is the short version of this strategy:

    How to Beat COVID-19 with At-Home, Rapid Result Testing: 5 Min. Summary by Dr. Mina (Antigen Tests)

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

    Both TWiV and MedCram have also posted links to sample letters for people to use to contact their gov't reps to help get such testing in use. The full interview version of the recent MedCram interview included a longish discussion of the red tape issues for getting such a test approved by the Feds because this type of test - specifically its intended usage - doesn't readily fall into the existing niches. How this could play out at the State level, I'm not sure.

    Would be interesting to know how other countries handle this: how-to screw up a pandemic via rigid bureaucratic boundaries. Doesn't really make sense to me: if the Feds can allow novel usage of a drug or a new drug under extenuating circumstances, why not a new type of test.

    Anyways - Mina's got an interesting research background and approach.

    https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/people/michael-mina/

    'Michael’s research combines mathematical and epidemiological models with high-throughput phage-display based serological laboratory investigations, including development of new technologies and statistical pipelines to better understand the population and immunological consequences and patterns underlying infectious diseases. Much of the work towards new technology development is performed in close collaboration with Steve Elledge at HMS. Major themes of his lab include (i) development of new approaches (laboratory and statistical methods) to enable extremely high-throughput serological surveillance of infectious pathogens; (ii) use of high-complexity antibody profiling and epidemiological data to understand the pathogenesis of vaccine preventable diseases, with a specific focus on measles infections and vaccines; (iii) elucidating broad unintended / heterologous effects of vaccines to alter transmission patterns of unrelated infectious pathogens – using serology and dynamical models; and (iv) understanding the life-history of infectious pathogens across ages, genders, geographies and times. In addition to his interests in infectious diseases, his research also explores more fundamental questions of immunity and immune repertoires: how they form, how they persist, how they are passed on and how they become perturbed during natural life-events.'

    960:

    a thought about using ammonia as a fuel- its screamingly toxic.

    961:

    Fortunately for all of us the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere generated by fossil carbon combustion always stays in the country it is produced in and doesn't affect the rest of the world. (Sarcasm in case no-one noticed). Last figure I recall, the US burned about 16 tonnes of fossil carbon per capita, compared to somewhere like nuclear-rich France where the figure is 5 tonnes per capita.

    US consumption of natural gas has been increasing year on year -- there's been a hiccup as the pandemic has hit economic activity but that will pass. Sadly what won't come down is the CO2 level in the atmosphere, currently 413ppm, up about 3ppm from this time last year and up a stonking 50-odd ppm since 1997 and the original Kyoto Protocols announcement.

    962:

    "bring back coal jobs!!!"....

    It's been pointed out before that there are lots more "coal jobs" than just the dudes doing the digging. Everything from trucks moving that coal through to the palliative care assistants changing bedpans of cancer or black lung victims. There's a possibly surprising number of brown-skinned women employed in the coal industry, is what I'm saying.

    Somehow I think that "we need more Mexican nursing aides" is not the message Trump wants to get across.

    963:

    If you want to get a feeling for how surreal the next months will become, you should study corporate poison-pills in the face of hostile takeovers: They can be amazingly creative and/or devastatingly blunt.

    Well, the American right-wing has been saying for two generations that government needs to be run more like a business. Not surprised to see the end-game…

    964:

    "Most people" don't - and it's wrong. (The Republicans have an exact counterpart, the RNC.)

    965:

    the US burned about 16 tonnes of fossil carbon per capita

    Putting them second only to us Australians IIRC. Not helped by our burning of bituminous earth for electricity, or the giant coal-fired aluminium smelters in WA (they ship the ore to the coalfields not the other way round).

    But it says something important about nuclear power that the socialist, government-run nuclear programmes (France, China) succeeded where the capitalist, privately-run nuclear industry (US) comprehensively failed*. Which is another reason why you're not going to see that idea go anywhere, the days when even the US government could say "we're going to spend $10T on this government infrastructure project over the next 20 years and flatten anyone who disagrees" are long gone. The US can't even fund the maintenance of the infrastructure they already have.

    • both were subsidised to hell and gone, of course, and had ties to the military. But they were largely civilian programmes for all that.
    966:

    Bear in mind that the "SCROTUS" doesn't have the work experience of a typical CEO, before his Government job, he never had to answer to a board of directors.

    967:

    Sigh, no-one ever gets the jokes.

    Haifa is main IL focus now, for reasons that include a certain speach by a certain LB man that referenced AN in it (as he did in 2017). Like, dudes: we can see this happening before it happens. Wake me up when IL nationals aren't wetting their pants over nonsense threats of "aluminum tipped missiles" and wake up to the fact that trading off the private ownership deal parts of Haifa to CN rather that NATO/IMF friendlies is a bit naughty. As in: stupid.

    For sleepingroutine, Liveamap did this:

    Sea ports administration of Ukraine says that almost 10 000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that is being stored at pier 1 and 2 of Yuzhi port near Odesa is totally safe cause of "Big-bags"

    https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1291649885809319937 - Aug 7th. That's 10,000 ton(nes)[0], but it's all 34% AG stuff, so it's just a fire risk, really. But, point taken: RU can play PR games, and is a mature trade partner and doesn't store their stuff like Ukraine has been. Everyone got the notes, everyone played their hands, everyone gets that there's not massive trade bollocks from T.RUMP coming down.

    EM markets are screwed anyhow, last thing they need are Atlantic Muppets attempting to switch off the import markets for AG staples.

    Although renaming the boat TRUMP on Jun 22nd was a bit of a "fucking hell, disrespect registered" moment.

    Note Liveuamap are covering Belarus heavily atm (and fairly honestly, tbh) - it's the usual amateur "INTEL" front end with fairly off-set links who don't care much as long as the main policy points get pushed - same setup as IL does with various groups (IntelCrab, Aurora etc) and the US just is fucking lazy on the internet front, tbh. The common theme is that information is usually correct, if a little biased and/or late.

    Like IL planes flying to Georgia[1] days before it happened. My dudes: these are causal weapons now, not your shitty little plans. $15 bil, 140 people, entire IMF plan of slow revolution upended - to cut out a potential trap you probably knew about already and were counting on.

    If you were all grown up and mature, you'd put the %probability of explosion not on Hez since that was a massive honey-pot sitting there for years for them, which they've been steadfastly ignoring and trolling about, and not for many others (USA sweeps for what 1-2 day prior? Are those Sub spotters in the air?), but on something else.

    "It has been harder for me than you" "Leave the Note by the Door" "Return to the party of insults"

    Ever seen the great dark squid-eye?

    They're only Humans: what you're not counting on is who in the [redacted] are noticing that those singing on High their praises are actually psychotic maniacs.

    And they're a little bit disturbed by it.

    Anyhow: fires in France, fires in various MENA countries, fires in South LB (come on: try not to be psychotic cunts for like 10 mins already : the IMF shattered their economy, you're little fucking beans and acting like psychos and everyone can see it: stop for some semblance of self-respect). Not feeling it.

    [Redacted] & I need something a little bit more spicey.

    [0] Sigh, not KG. But yes, do a CRTL+F for 10,000 to get the foreshadowing.

    [1] Or if you want to go higher up, the UK Klept who recently (2016) sued/is suing for ~£1 bil of lost profits on forced sale. It's UK Klept - he was in control when the deal went down, Industrial AN isn't that important when you can grab proper .mil stuff and so on. Knew this 20 mins after the EVENT occurred.

    968:

    No. You are almost the only one I have come across who does that. There is no counterpart to GOP. The counterpart of DNC is RNC and both are specific institutions, not synonyms for their respective parties in any way.

    969:

    It's understandable to use DNC and GOP, but here's what's going on (for MDive):

    The two parties are known as the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, period, if you're being official or officious. The Republicans are also referred to as the "Grand Old Party" (GOP). However, the Democrats do not have a corresponding TLA, and so they're the Dems. The DNC and the RNC are legal money-laundering institutions for the political operations of their respective parties, at least notionally. Oh, and sarcasm aside, they do make the rules.

    970:

    Nits (but annoying): Last figure I recall, the US burned about 16 tonnes of fossil carbon per capita, That is the figure for CO2 emissions per American person, not carbon.. 4.39 tons(metric) per capita in 2018. [1]

    Ammonium nitrate by itself is a fire hazard but not explosive, at least in its freshly produced form. This is not true. Ammonium nitrate can be detonated. See the link at 762.

    Polluting it with oxidisers like diesel fuel or similar can make it explosive but it still requires substantial energy to make it explode even then Fuel oil is not the oxidizer, the NH4NO3 is. "A common example is ANFo, a mixture of ammonium nitrate, which acts as the oxidizer, and fuel oil (the fuel source)." [2]

    [1] List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita - 2018 US figure is 16.1 tons CO2 per capita (I've seen slightly higher numbers elsewhere). Divided by 3.67 == 4.39 tons(metric) carbon per capita. [2] IED AttAck ImprovIsED ExplosIvE DEvIcEs - A fact sheet from the National Academies and the Department of Homeland Security (That was their capitalization.)

    971:

    Newish paper in Nature Climate Change: Current and future global climate impacts resulting from COVID-19 (06 August 2020, Nature Climate Change, Piers M. Forster, et al) 1. Four scenarios are explored: two-year blip, fossil-fuelled recovery, moderate green stimulus and strong green stimulus.

    Extended Data Fig. 2: Two-year blip scenario. Which (if I'm reading it correctly) says a 2ppm reduction in CO2 for the 2 year blip scenario.

    Fig. 5: Longer term climate response. Is the key chart, saying that if humans focus some of COVID-19 economic recovery stimuluses on green techs, the trajectory can change meaningfully.

    972:

    Actually, if you want to invest in the future, figure out a way to grow high-grade balsa wood outside Ecuador. Here's the scoop:

    --Ecuador grows 95% of the world's balsa wood supply --With the Covid19 pandemic, they've locked down, so balsa is increasingly hard to get. --The main industry suffering: wind turbine manufacturers. Turns out that those huge wind turbine blades have cores of balsa. Who knew? --Also turns out that, on a per-weight basis, balsa is stronger than oak or hickory (read that again: per weight, not per volume).

    Anyway, figure out a way to grow this tropical, fog-loving lowland tree somewhere else, and you'll get rich beyond all dreams of avarice. It's a bit of a weed in Ecuador, but like most tropical trees, it's hard to grow on plantations.

    973:

    Meh, yawn. #689, already figured in.

    FBI raided a UA oligarch recently, loads of dodgy IL-UA-USA stuff is all over the place at the moment[0] so everyone is tying everything in. Heavily pushed by pro-TRUMP factions etc.

    You'll see a slew of 'suicides' and 'unfortunate boat accidents' and 'LB financiers who bought US starlet's NY pad tragically fell from roof' soon enough. The Americans are snide enough to point it out (she did have to fuck Wein ffs for the YA roles, isn't that bad enough) just before it happens.

    Not fireworks.

    What you do is interlace a net of primers across the top and sides of the square with a large precursor in the middle - you need to get the temps up across the entire stuff or it doesn't work. Look at the videos (the real ones) - the real crackles (lumens) all fire across the front windows of storage within 1-2 seconds uniformly. That's ~50 M uniform. If you've time, you'd spear down plastic rods (same stuff used in mineral / land surveying) between as many of the spaces you could.

    Prep time? 48 hrs if you've a boat near-by.

    Pro-job.

    What does FO in ANFO do? Allows burn across material. It's really just a surface issue (same for all non-nuclear explosions). Aka: how to get all material to burn at same time?

    That's the only way you're getting 1kt out of 2.7 tonnes of badly stored AN (yeah, it's industrial 90%+ stuff) with 6 years of degradation and water retention. (Bags are open: this leads to crusting and solidification, both of which preclude explosion).

    ~

    Anyhow, BBC is already referencing tunnels and bunkers (HELLO BIN LADIN AND HIS MAGICAL SUPER-BASES COURTESY OF THE NYT / THE TIMES UK), so you've got about 48 hrs before insanity about hidden super secret Hez bunkers under the grain silos (actually built in 1960's by Polish engineers, we think?) go live.

    The US bond market is just insane atm - negative rates!

    [0] BIIIIIIDEEEENNN. But, no, really: UA - USA stuff is 100% corrupt. Did you think the Klept were some kind of uniform tribe? Lol, no: they just agree not to do various actions without proxies being spent, it's the same as Nations, really. (SAME BORING MODEL)

    974:

    Yeah, us model aircraft types would quite like to see an improvement in the supply of Balsa too.

    975:

    [Redacted] & I need something a little bit more spicey. More spice might make Charlie howl. :-)

    Ever seen the great dark squid-eye? Just gonna leave that there.

    (Well, for rationalists who are Afraid of the Dark: the "27 cm with a 9 cm pupil in a giant squid" - to see in very very very low light conditions.)

    And thanks for some things, political and otherwise, to poke at.

    976:

    Which is a major barrier for personal transports, sure, but it will just not matter for nautical purposes - again, every port worth the name already has facilities and training in place for handling it. It is the very definition of "Not an exotic chemical"

    977:

    Sigh, no-one gets the jokes.

    You're going to have to look up the commonly used FR model (it's only like 2-4M long, thin and with capped explosion design) which they use in their own country. It's like easily obtained and not under arms controls / import sanctions. Common seismic tool (unless you spice it up a bit and put some interesting stuff in the pipe).

    Fireworks?

    "OK"

    "Sprinkle some crack on the top"

    What no-one has noted is the burn elements. Sheds are shit tier aluminum. There's no foliage. Plastic bags 6+ years old? Tiny. Sand or concrete floor. Fireworks? Ok, fine: instant burn, no fuel. 6 years of pigeon shit? Meh.

    YOU GOT NO FUEL FOR YOUR FIRE TO SET IT OFF MY MANS.

    Q:What's splashy but will not set fires? A: Fireworks - they burn hot, then out, with no other precursors near them, they don't cause fires Q: What's the AN requirement? A: Not. Fucking. Fireworks. Not even close.

    Literally you need a FireMan to tell you some tings.

    Ever seen the great dark squid-eye? Just gonna leave that there.

    It's not a good thing.

    "You can be anything you want, there is good, let me show you the world"

    Turns out she didn't want us.

    978:

    Well, that's your latest scam: figure out how to make it grow, because there actually is a huge and growing demand for the stuff.

    I'm just in awe that someone can splice together a turbine blade that's 150 (50m) or so long out of trees that at most stand 30 m tall and are generally harvested much shorter than that. That's an interesting laminating job.

    979:

    It's old school, depending on how you define it even very old school. With modern machinery for laminate cutting and finger jointing there's a whole range of options for pumping engineered timber out at great speed. Youtube even has videos with titles like "amazing high speed woodworking machine" where they just splice together clips of random machinery.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glued_laminated_timber

    There's a lot of work being done on alternatives, but price continues to be the issue. Balsa is (was) cheap!

    https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/core-for-composites-winds-of-change

    This discussion is also happening in the fibreglass boat world for the same reasons, but with somewhat more bullshit in it (especially leisure boats where at least 50% of what is said is pure marketing). The foams used in boats can be almost as expensive as the fibreglass, not least because they're a variable-density perforated product rather than just a simple extruded slab. There are many options (at many price points! With many different engineering characteristics!)

    980:

    Fine! Spoil the mystique for me! See if I care.*

    *(thanks)

    981:

    There's a lot of old men relying on young blood to keep them going right now. That's immoral. We'd suggest giving them a decent death before we get involved. R. Murdoch is one such, or he is using some other elixer. You've said more than once that he's your's. (Read/cached)

    What you do is interlace a net of primers I was thinking about 4 nodes/boosters, or 8 just to be sure, balanced against the risk of being observed during placement, with the fireworks to divert blame. I was hoping the people here with real explosives experience would keep it honest. Black powder is not sufficient, yes. Though there isn't any(?) published experimentation about attempting to detonate tons of NH4NO3 with bags of fireworks, and measurements of probabilities of same.

    982:

    Heteromeles An even more interesting mass-laminating job was the production of the "Termite's Dream" a.k.a. the De Havilland Msoquito. The Nazis couldn't get any Balsa & the aircraft was manufactured, in bits, all over the country & then assembeld - as well as conventional manufacture ...

    Oh yes, any possibility of DT doing a Lukashenko & simply lying his way out of the vote? Meanwhile, I'm wondering if Belarus will go the Rumanian route, given the open suppression & reports of some police ( NOT in Minsk ) siding with the protestors

    983:

    any possibility of DT doing a Lukashenko & simply lying his way out of the vote?

    Well first off states run elections. So he'd have to corrupt a lot of them. Overtly.

    Second in every state where I've lived or noticed such things every polling place has people there from both parties that validate who is voting and so at the end of the day they know how many Ds, Rs, and others have voted in total at each voting location.

    Then each ballot here (and more and more most everywhere else) is bar coded so a ballot is tied back to a vote (not sure about how they anonymize it but) which allows for tracking duplicate voters and such. When you vote it is registered. Not your vote but the fact that you did.

    Anyway, to rig the totals and not be apparent about it you'd have to really rig 10s of 1,000s of voting places. Oh, and (not that I like it but) a few 100 different voting systems feeding into over 50 state and similar registries.

    My point is that neither party or any federal branch of government has authority over the details of how ballots are counted.

    And to say that things in states that just might take DT over the top are being watched closely is a total understatement.

    984:

    Anyway, figure out a way to grow this tropical, fog-loving lowland tree somewhere else, and you'll get rich beyond all dreams of avarice.

    Careful what you wish for, you might get it in a way you don't like.

    When the demand for cork out stripped the production one or more bright fellows came up with a substitute. It results in most all wine corks in the world being made out of petroleum. If you buy a bottle of wine that costs under $100 you can almost guarantee that the cork in it isn't real. And for a bit above that price point there's a good chance it's made of cork bits glued together. Basically made up of the left overs from the things actually made of real cork.

    If you are a small boutique wine maker you typically buy them from a wholesaler and the amount you pay is based in many ways based on how real it looks, feels, and smells. If you're a big producer you buy direct from one of the few companies in the world who actually make these fake corks.

    985:

    With modern CNC, plywood and glues it's remarkably easy to build plywood aircraft, especially "model" ones (they fly just like the real thing). Wood has the advantage that it rots so if you lose one there's less persistent pollution.

    I don't envy the air defence types having to build systems to detect and intercept everything from 5cm across plastic drones with only a few tiny metal parts, EPS or wood-and-plastic gliders etc right up to supersonic missiles. I do wonder how structural you can make your plastic explosives as well. It would be kind of disturbing to see a lump of plastic explosive with three tiny rotors and a battery fly past.

    986:

    a ballot is tied back to a vote (not sure about how they anonymize it

    To a large extent by not looking. It really is that simple.

    Generally the electoral roll is marked off with the ballot ID in some way, so that in case of duplicate votes or other problems they can locate and remove that exact ballot. But the people doing that are not the ones doing the counting, and the people who do the counting don't have the rolls.

    In straya and enzed when I've scruted they after re-sort as well as recount the ballot when auditing so there's not even a real way to track a single ballot through the process (I can't guarantee that they always do it, because I've never worked for the election people and haven't paid that much attention).

    Ideally the rules they use would be freely available from an obvious place. In both countries I've voted that's the case, but in the "if you care you can work it out" sense rather than every voter being sent the relevant 100 pages of legislation.

    987:

    I'm just in awe that someone can splice together a turbine blade that's 150 (50m) or so long out of trees that at most stand 30 m tall and are generally harvested much shorter than that. That's an interesting laminating job.

    Riffing on what others have said, that's just a little step up from what lumber mills now do as a standard process.

    In a modern mill that is turning a profit most of the people labor is gone and replaced by computerized milling systems. Logs are analyzed as they come in to determine the most profitable cuts/lumber pieces. The odd pieces that are too small to be cut into full pieces are automatically finger jointed into smaller pieces. Typically for moldings and such. Next time at Home Depot/Lowes visit the mill work area and notice the paint grade pieces. They tend to be made up of short bits glued together.

    Longer bits but not very thick are gathered up and run through a system where they are trimmed then glued together into laminate beams of various sizes. GlueLams. Which are typically much stronger that raw wood of the same size. Smaller chips wind up being turned into OSB (Oriented Strand Board) and saw dust into particle board. Anything left many times is fed into the boilers/heaters as fuel.

    Typically there is NO waste wood product going out the back door. The bark is even bagged and sold as mulch.

    The people in these operations are there to get the logs into the process, watch over the process with computers, load finished products onto trucks and rail cars, and fix things when they break.

    988:

    "I do wonder how structural you can make your plastic explosives as well."

    Not very.

    In very general terms, a plastic explosive is a mechanical contraption where particles of the actual explosives are suspended uniformly in a plasticizer, typically a waxy substances, which primarily acts as shock-absorber.

    Since nobody are keen on heating RDX or HDX too much, the plasticiser usually have as low a melting-point as can be made practically useful.

    The best way would probably be to use a very thin-walled metal tube, stuffed with plastic explosive and capped at both ends without any voids.

    989:

    An even more interesting mass-laminating job was the production of the "Termite's Dream" a.k.a. the De Havilland Msoquito. The Nazis couldn't get any Balsa & the aircraft was manufactured, in bits, all over the country & then assembeld - as well as conventional manufacture ...

    I'm not sure why you mention Nazis there as the De Havilland Mosquito was a British plane, used by the opponents of Nazis.

    990:

    Moz @920:

    In my part(s) of Melbourne - the South-East - mask-wearing is pretty much at 100%, not that I really travel anywhere except the local supermarkets and up the highway to Mum's to do her shopping.

    I can't recall seeing a face outside a car for weeks!

    991:

    In Nelson where I grew up we have the "Trafalgar Centre", a big hall in a park. Built in the 1970's with big glue-lam beams so it's got a nice big clear space in the middle. Has survived at least one decent quake. It's a bit boring as all good infrastructure should be, but there's some links below :)

    FWIW wind turbine blades actually use "balsa core" which looks like floor tiles made from end sections and is normally sold as big sheets on a roll. So it's not really structural, it's just cheap low density filler.

    Back in the early 2000's a friend of mine was making structural wooden blades but they never got much past prototypes before the scale defeated them (they made a 100kW turbine but the industry was at 500kW and climbing). A company in Sweden is looking at wood for the towers though.

    http://www.isarchitects.nz/projects/trafalgar-centre-reinhabitation/ (scroll thru for pics inside)

    http://www.nelson.govt.nz/recreation/venues-and-grounds/trafalgar-centre-2

    992:
    . I do wonder how structural you can make your plastic explosives as well. It would be kind of disturbing to see a lump of plastic explosive with three tiny rotors and a battery fly past.

    You wouldn't want use plastic explosives because they're plastic -- in the original sense of the term.

    But you can make explosives with some structural strength, as in caseless small arms ammo (e.g. for HK G11).

    993:

    It's probable that Greg was referring to the Focke-Wulf Ta 154, a late-war German attempt to emulate the DH98 Mosquito - mostly in order to diversify resource consumption away from aluminium.

    One difficulty Focke-Wulf had (and I think their Arado subsidiary) was related to substitute glues which rotted the wood. This may (I forget) have been the same issue which caused the loss of one of the Heinkel He-162 prototypes, which shed a leading edge due to gluing issues and crashes.

    994:

    Good video from Beirut showing sparkles immediately before explosion, fireball, condensation cloud.

    https://www.newsflare.com/video/371810/unseen-footage-shows-moment-of-beirut-explosion-in-4k-slow-motion

    995:

    The Nazis couldn't get any Balsa & the aircraft was manufactured, in bits, all over the country & then assembeld - as well as conventional manufacture ...

    Wood laminates were the best thing available for aircraft before carbon-fibre laminates turned up in the late 60s/early 70s. Not quite as good as exotic metal alloys (magnesium, titanium), particularly on heat resistance, but strong and light and available during WW2 conditions.

    Not just for piston-powered planes: early jets were made of wood, too -- notably the Messerschmitt 262 and the De Havilland Vampire, both 1943-45 designs, the Vampire showing up just too late for service in WW2. (I'm not sure how much wood there was in the Meteor.)

    996:

    I don't envy the air defence types having to build systems to detect and intercept everything from 5cm across plastic drones with only a few tiny metal parts, EPS or wood-and-plastic gliders etc right up to supersonic missiles.

    Supersonic probably isn't practical with wood/plastic, unless you're talking about carbon fibre. You run into thermal effects around Mach 2 and by the time you're pushing over Mach 2.5 you're in danger of melting aluminum, never mind charring/setting fire to the woodwork, and that's at high altitude. Nobody's going to make a supersonic sea-skimming anti-shipping missile out of plywood, let's put it that way.

    997:

    Since nobody are keen on heating RDX or HDX too much

    And then there are the happy fun newbies, like Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane, aka CL-20, which is stabilized for transport by dissolving it in TNT (which is somewhat less violent). However you have to keep it below 136 degrees celsius lest "the cocrystal may separate into liquid TNT and a crystal form of CL-20 with structural defects that is somewhat less stable than CL-20."

    Seriously, making this stuff is the chemistry equivalent of running with scissors, if by "running" you mean "100 metre sprint with hurdles while wearing a blindfold" and by "scissors" you mean "with a freshly sharpened katana duct-taped to each hand".

    998:

    I've just been reading a history of the development of rocket fuels. There are 2 pictures in the prefix that say it all. One shows an engine test "going right", a blue flame cone with mach diamonds in it; the second, from the same camera location shows the result of a test going wrong, and the test cell has "gone away".

    999:

    Mikko I THINK you have got it exactly backwards & missed the point. YTes, "we" made the Mosquito, because we could get the Blasa - the Nazis couldn't make an equivalent - no blasa, nor the curious glues we needed, either.

    1000:

    Lots of computer games have 'things' throwing flaming projectiles - you have just described how to make them :-)

    1001:

    The bit you might find surprising is that the balsa used for core material in laminations is generally end-grain. That is, the grain direction is orthogonal to the plane of the veneer laminates, whose grain directions might also vary a bit. You can buy pre-fab end-grain balsa composite panels with veneers already applied, with the massive shear strength that entails. But the downside is that it doesn't bend, at least not non-destructively.

    Plywood, even though the veneers are laid at right angles to each other, can usually be bent around any shape that can be developed as a conic section. Boat designers (and designers of other engineering structures) since the emergence of plywoods have known about this and even with pen-and-paper design it's achievable to make up complex shapes form conic sections, though when you have to do the projections by hand it's a bit cumbersome. Computers came to the rescue fairly early on and I recall a DOS program called PlyBoats doing the rounds from the late 80s or so.

    Anyway panels with end-grain balsa cores are completely rigid and don't bend in this way. To develop a complex shape you need to laminate it in place. I wouldn't be surprised if your wind vanes with balsa cores use this method, that is an end-grain core machined to shape and the monocoque laid up with thin veneers. In this case, the length of the balsa is not relevant because its grain is laid across the flat cross section.

    The basic raw material products are in the link Moz provided above, it's the sort of thing that can be quite affordable at a small scale but as soon as the size increases it gets expensive faster than you expect.

    1002:

    It wasn't just aircraft, either - boats were similar, and it was (and, rarely, is) used for the very light bicycles and many other purposes. I lost track of how many times I tried to explain that to the aluminium and (later) fibreglass fetishists. Even with carbon fibre, it's only the best that beats it - the gimmicky products are little better than good fibreglass. And, as you say, the same applies to magnesium and titanium.

    1003:

    Yes. The sequence is clear. There was a (probably wood or paper) fire, which ignited the fireworks which made the fire much worse, which ignited the ammonium nitrate, which exploded. In addition to the negligence (etc.) issues, what caused the initial fire? Probably more negligence, but I doubt we shall ever know.

    1004:

    I understood that you do actually get some strength benefits from the end-grain balsa versus foam cores, and not just the mechanical strength of the glue join. The grain direction adds stiffness and shear strength, making certain kinds of stress delamination less likely and increasing the overall rigidity.

    I have no idea where this understanding comes from and it could be entirely wrong, of course. There are lots of wives tales in boatbuilding, especially in technology areas that have grown as much through amateur builders as anywhere.

    1005:

    Had a similar thought with a co-worker a few years ago when he was showing off his new carbon fibre bicycle, one that he'd paid more than the going rate for a decent used hatchback for. Sure, the fact he could hold it up with his little finger was slightly impressive, but it's an area of achievement where the question "why?" must surely come up often. I can understand the obsession that overtakes some people with going faster, but it just doesn't generally strike me that commuter-cycling is an area where that would really come up so readily.

    1006:

    I've just been reading a history of the development of rocket fuels.

    Back in 1967, when I was 13, I found this booklet about do it yourself rocketry. Booklet was 10 years or more old.

    Interesting read. Wish I had held on to it. All about using surplus scuba tanks or similar as test engines. Some possible fuel mixes to avoid. Advice on making an observation bunker. And so on. More of a primer on how to die or live the rest of your life with someone else wiping your butt.

    Of course this was back when a drug store pharmacist could order most anything you wanted in terms of chemicals. The better ones would at least get in touch with your school chemistry teacher to make sure you were not planning an attack or similar.

    1007:

    It's engineering nonsense, EVEN for road-racing. The effort uphill and for VERY slow cyclists is pro-rata to all-up weight, and it makes very little difference at speed on the flat. Overall, 1 Kg extra will slow a cyclist down by between less than 0.1% and c. 1% with the higher figures being only for slow riders in hilly going.

    1008:

    My understanding is that the only wooden part of the Vampire was the support beam for the guns, made of oak - which flexed better under recoil than a metal structure of the same weight. This was the only element which de Havilland retained from the Mosquito design.

    The Me 262 was almost entirely metal. The He 162 certainly had wooden elements (the wing being the main one).

    1009:

    Ah, my bad, I read it wrong. Sorry!

    1010:

    to Selene's Love With Orange Hue @967: Sea ports administration of Ukraine says that almost 10 000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that is being stored at pier 1 and 2 of Yuzhi port near Odesa is totally safe cause of "Big-bags" Seen this on the news almost immediately, but it is simple to observe that conditions are vastly different. Bags seem to be separated in piles, sorted and insulated against moisture, at the clean and maintained seaport. AN is normally granulated to prevent detonations, but the specialists say that if it is stored long enough and exposed to water, it tends to cake into layers that are susceptible to detonation.

    Protests in the capital after such huge disaster seem to be not just coincidental, but other opinion I've heard declared that it is hardly possible to worsen the situation even more than it is now. Beirut's only reliable connection to outside world has been only through the port, and most of the other routes are sanctioned or closed. So, IDK, let this smoldering pile burn a bit more, I guess?

    Meanwhile most news have blown over Belarussian election, particularly over cock-up just before the elections. https://www.rt.com/russia/497371-belarus-arrest-russians-ukraine-intel/ Which is to be expected because our guy Luka is really getting old and sloppy and his policy of balancing between sides has been failing for many years. But trying to actively drive a wedge between two countries is good enough cause for strong actions. And these actions require good preparation. https://intpolicydigest.org/2020/08/09/arrest-of-wagner-mercenaries-in-belarus-foiled-coup-or-political-theater/ As a side-note: every time you see anything about "Xxxner" is a direct pointer towards Ukrainian Bullshit Security, but also because they are too stupid to do anything useful on their won volition, it always leads directly to their curators in US embassy.

    It comes to no surprise that ABSLOUTELY EVERY US-affiliated Russian-speaking news agency presented in my country and ex-USSR has been trying to synchronously interfere with these elections, not to talk about all the support from "people of free will", "hurr durr revolution". These people, naturally, has nothing to do with revolutions and freedom, rights movement and peace, they want to overthrow the country leadership and expand their influence. Most of them are openly nationalist activists. Most of the more active ones are even exported from Ukraine for the lack of hands. https://eng.belta.by/society/view/over-170-people-denied-entry-to-belarus-for-the-past-24-hours-132424-2020/ After all, this circlejerk is much wider than one country or one nationality. We have so many of these people in our country too, but actively purging them is a risk to fall down into very harming witch hunting - instead these people are perfectly capable of exposing themselves on public.

    I mean, it's been 6 years since start of Ukraine civil war, and 12 years since Georgia conflict. For Nazi Alliance this is a work as usual, and no amount of warnings, words and preparations can put a dent into their resolve to fuck up everything they touch. Because this is their only reason for existence, after all. If there was any lessons picked up during the last war, they would rather get destroyed than stop and surrender by themselves.

    1011:

    sleepingoutine Get stuffed Lukashenko is an old-fashioned smei-brutal dictator. As fro Ukraine, I'm not sure if any "side" is the "good guys" - but Putimn deliberately sending in troops, oops Little Green Men, is not a freindly gesture.

    1012:

    "Obsession"? Never heard of the MAMIL (MiddleAged Man In Lycra)?

    Here in Stockholm Sweden there are entire stretches of inner city biking lanes that are infamous for being reenactments of Tour de France every rush hour.

    And quite lethal for poor unsuspecting pedestrians...

    1013:

    A couple of decades ago when I was shopping for a decent commuter bike my brother-in-law told me that all bicycles weight the same. The lighter the bike, the heavier the locks you need to deter thieves.

    Given that, at the time, Toronto was the bike theft capitol of North America, he wasn't really kidding.

    1014:

    P J Evans @ 952: Three memoranda, and an executive order on evictions and loans that won't apply to a lot of people, and won't help anyone, since it's deferral, not forgiveness.
    The memo on unemployment amounts to creating a new program, which will take months to get off the ground.
    The memo on payroll taxes is also a deferral of actual payment; the betting is that most companies will continue to withhold their portion. (Another red-herring proposal that will help no one, since people who work aren't the ones who need the money most.)

    The "payroll tax holiday" is part of a long running scheme by the Greedy Oligarch's Party to break Social Security and turn the so called "Trust Fund" over to Wall Street Banksters. It fits right in with Trumpolini's history of screwing people he owes money to (like the contractors & investors in his Atlantic City casinos).

    The Greedy Oligarch's Party said Trumpolini would run the government like a business, and that's exactly what he's doing, running it like he ran his own businesses - as a Con & a Swindle, looting the assets and driving the country into one of his fraudulent bankruptcies.

    1015:

    The memo on payroll taxes is also a deferral of actual payment; the betting is that most companies will continue to withhold their portion.

    So a worker will still get taxes withheld, but the government won't collect those taxes (yet)?

    So it's basically a loan to businesses, then.

    1016:

    Bill Arnold @ 981:

    What you do is interlace a net of primers

    I was thinking about 4 nodes/boosters, or 8 just to be sure, balanced against the risk of being observed during placement, with the fireworks to divert blame. I was hoping the people here with real explosives experience would keep it honest. Black powder is not sufficient, yes. Though there isn't any(?) published experimentation about attempting to detonate tons of NH4NO3 with bags of fireworks, and measurements of probabilities of same.

    Well, we've tried, but y'all just don't want to accept the truth. Y'all are as bad as the 9/11 controlled demolition idiots.

    They stored Ammonium Nitrate explosives in the same warehouse with confiscated fireworks. Over time, both the fireworks & the Ammonium Nitrate explosives deteriorated. A fire started in the fireworks & got out of control to the point of detonating the unstable Ammonium Nitrate explosives.

    I ran across a new term of art over the weekend that I think applies quite well: malicious incompetence.

    There was no conspiracy. It's all plain vanilla STUPID compounded by greed and just not giving a shit about how your actions (or failure to take action) might harm others.

    1017:

    Elderly Cynic @ 1003: Yes. The sequence is clear. There was a (probably wood or paper) fire, which ignited the fireworks which made the fire much worse, which ignited the ammonium nitrate, which exploded. In addition to the negligence (etc.) issues, what caused the initial fire? Probably more negligence, but I doubt we shall ever know.

    I've read the initial fire was caused by some kind of maintenance/repair work involving welding. The Beirut fire brigade was on site fighting the fire before the explosions. They probably have a good idea how the fire started, even if they haven't readily shared that information with the rest of the world.

    I've also read housekeeping inside the warehouse wasn't very good so there was an abundance of combustibles (in addition to the fireworks & ammonium nitrate stored there).

    The packaging for both the fireworks & the ammonium nitrate was deteriorated (possible mechanical damage? & spillage?), allowing the ammonium nitrate to be contaminated, which makes it even more unstable.

    1018:

    Yeah, that's why I kept my bottom-of-the-line steel frame bike all those years. It wasn't worth stealing.

    Oddly enough, I got rid of it when I got here, not because I love cars all that much, but because I had to deal with all the damage the local mountain bikers cause, and didn't want to bike any more, anywhere.

    1019:

    Thanks Damian!

    Now I know who to bug about laminated wood questions.

    1020:

    Large umbrellas can be appropriate, if carrying a big stick/cane is too obvious an anti-cyclist deterrent. Carrying one makes you look like an entirely different kind of spokes-person.

    1021:

    Tech note: early air conditioning used ammonia until the 1950s, when synthesis of CFCs, life Freon, made them cheap.

    See wikipedia on refrigeration.

    1022:

    “Nobody's going to make a supersonic sea-skimming anti-shipping missile out of plywood, let's put it that way.” Charlie, it’s 2020. Let’s not tempt fate quite so vigorously, eh? If Seanan McGuire gets wind of it and uses it as a plot point We Are Doomed.

    As for Balsa in laminates - usually it (like foam) is there to keep two surfaces of glass or carbon apart. The distance between two stressed surfaces is a major determinant of the stiffness. One of my most loved models has fully moulded wings; they use CNC’d moulds for the outer surfaces, layup the carbon, add a typically 3mm thick spacer of balsa or spiderfoam, another layup of carbon, a big fat pultruded carbon spar, bolt that all to the mould for the other surface and cure. It makes a wing that can handle many G and a couple of hundred mph. As an aside, the very fastest models are gliders built this way that hit near 600mph when doing DS on a slope.

    1023:

    Yeah, that's why I kept my bottom-of-the-line steel frame bike all those years. It wasn't worth stealing.

    My father told us about his bikes when stationed in England with the 8th Air Force in WWII. He had to buy 3 bikes before he figured out the secret to them not being stolen. Don't clean them. No one ever stole the crappy looking ones.

    1024:

    There was no conspiracy. You're mistaking what's going on here; laying out the (viable) fringe possibilities is not the same as believing them. (Also, that's an over-confident statement.)

    Well, we've tried, but y'all just don't want to accept the truth. Y'all are as bad as the 9/11 controlled demolition idiots. LOL (bold mine:-). My father (project manager for construction of large buildings) told me as a kid about the WTC design (perimeter tube and core), including the blown-on insulation. It was clear within a few seconds, before the pancaking completed what had probably happened: airliner impact and a noisy(windy) jet fuel initial fire knocked off some of the insulation on the steel beams and, they (and the joints) got unevenly hot and weak in the subsequent office fire, and stresses including buckling caused a failure starting the pancake. So no. (Also the probability of being observed/caught(/confessed) placing demolition charges would have been unacceptably high, and the plot absurd because there would have been an unacceptably high probability that the airplanes never hit.)

    There is also a key prior; this was not some warehouse in rural Texas, it was a warehouse in a busy port in a city very familiar with explosions. The stockpile was well known, and was a continuous source of temptation for the 6 years that it was there, including to those with explosives knowledge and means. One can reasonably argue that the odds of it being deliberate were higher than in most such incidents.

    Wikipedia has a surprisingly long list of ammonium nitrate disasters. (Some of them fires but not explosions.) The historic detonations imitated by fires all involved a fire fuel source of some sort. If indeed the Beirut warehouse had enough combustibles within to feed a hot fire, and no evidence of skulduggery turns up in the large amount of available surveillance data including ad-hoc citizen-surveillance, then the investigation will probably reasonably conclude that it was probably an accident due to malicious incompetence. Particularly if it is determined (by explosives scientists) that heated NH4NO3 is easier to detonate (e.g. with black powder), or that there is some similar effect.

    TL;DR The investigators will investigate, the investigation(s) will be political, but their conclusions will need to be consistent with the available data, much of it public. The investigation(s) may not be able to entirely rule out the possibility that it was caused deliberately. A large self-sustained fire (you say there were reports of bad housekeeping in the next comment) would shift the probabilities very much towards accident.

    1025:

    The Beirut fire brigade was on site fighting the fire before the explosions. They probably have a good idea how the fire started, even if they haven't readily shared that information with the rest of the world.

    Just how many of these folks still exist as more than organic aerosol?

    1026:

    to Greg Tingey @1011: Lukashenko is an old-fashioned smei-brutal dictator. That much anybody can admit, even Russian Foreign Ministry. People have been quite tired of his shenanigans for a while, and would prefer him to relinquish quite a bit of his personal power to develop ties between neighbor states under the same threat. https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2020-08-10-zakharova-assessed-the-actions-of-the-security-forces-of-belarus-against-journalists.Sy0_spAZD.html

    However, most people also admit that he is better than his alternative, an American-controlled inflatable Fuhrer for his personal micro-Reich, made out of a literal retired clown. Recent years has seen too many of such personas.

    1027:

    There will be call logs to the emergency despatch service.

    1028:

    “Nobody's going to make a supersonic sea-skimming anti-shipping missile out of plywood, let's put it that way.” Charlie, it’s 2020. Let’s not tempt fate quite so vigorously, eh? If Seanan McGuire gets wind of it and uses it as a plot point We Are Doomed.

    Oh heavens no. Who needs a sea skimming missile when you can build a supercavitating torpedo at least partially out of plywood?

    If you really want fun with flimsy things going counter-intuitively fast, I recommend reading John Powell's Floating To Orbit. Now that I've read it, I'll put his three stages to orbit way above a beanstalk any day.

    This is the one that starts with a 900 ft long A-shaped (almost exactly) airship taking off and heading up to 140,000 feet over the course of a couple of hours. This ship carries maybe 20 people and a few tons of cargo. There it rendezvouses with a "dark sky station" made of five mile-long semi-blimps in a star shape, with most of the station weight being in the center frame. This is a multi-use facility, part lab space, part hotel, part shipyard and part warehouse. The last stage is the orbital airship, which is V-shaped with a hypersonic airfoil cross-section, but each wing is two miles long. This one doesn't have high altitude propellers, it's carrying solar panels on the back and electric propulsion on the insides of the V (ionic drives, VASIMR, who knows?). Most of it's made out of nylon and mylar, with a carbon fiber truss as keel and supports for the solar panels. This thing, which has to be assembled at the station because it's too flimsy for the lower atmosphere, accelerates to escape velocity over 5 hours to a few days, again carrying around 20 people and a few tons of cargo. It's what goes to orbit. To come back, it tilts the nose up and aerobrakes to slow down (it changes orientation by moving gas around in the bags), to make rendezvous with the station and do the trip again.

    It's not a bad system. The things are apparently ridiculous sizes are really because 24 miles up is a respectable vacuum, so to get any lift at all, the wing/blimps have to be enormous. Each segment of the system is built with a carbon fiber truss as a keel, lifting bags attached to that, and a shell around them for protection, to provide an aerodynamic shape, and to hold solar panels. Heck, at really high elevation, they can get away with using hydrogen for lift because there's not enough oxygen around to burn.

    It's not stupid, just really, really weird. And balloons have already gone hypersonic (Project Echo, etc.), so who knows? Powell's airships seem to be far more civilized than riding a beanstalk up to geosynchronous orbit over the course of a week, because unlike the airships, the beanstalk will vibrate laterally, and that will make for a really interesting ride.

    Even though Powell's's shoe-stringing it with his company, he's building and flight-testing the parts of the system right now, and he's flown them up to 100,000 feet. That's waaay ahead of the beanstalk crowd.

    1029:

    Perhaps... but a) the huge coal trucks are counted, while people supporting the "they're not working for us any more/retired/disabled" aren't counted.

    1030:

    I dunno, my single malt Balvenie, I think, has real cork, and it's well under $100US.

    1031:

    I am reminded of an incident, 10 or 20 years ago - or was it longer? -where the US authorities were sure these people were smuggling hash, but couldn't find it, even searching suitcases in the airport.

    Turned out that, instead of cardboard for stiffening the suitcases, they'd taken them apart, and replaced the stiff part with pressed hash.

    1032:

    Now, my frame, when I take off the lock and chain I have wrapped around the seat stem* and maybe change out the seat* to the original cheap nylon, weighs about 22 lbs. It was a late eighties racing bike (not a touring**). Believe it has thinner tubing in the middle of the tubes.

    Lovely bike. I need to get back on it.

    • Think of a lock and chain suitable for a motorcycle, maybe 2kg or more.

    ** I replaced that with a lovely quilted leather hung seat, immensely comfortable.

    * The front fork is 75 degrees, not 72. Wish it was a touring.

    1033:

    It matters for racers. The summer of '75, I lived in a collecting house where there were more bikes than people. One couple, that was in the midst of splitting up, were actual amateur racers, with big trophies to prove it. He had his TITANIUM track bike, and we're talking about $1k in 1975 money: frame, wheels, seat, handlebars, cranks, chain, and one speed: HIGHER. No brakes. No nothing.

    Can't remember if he rode that, or the Cinelli, which he'd been riding 35 a number of days a week to practice, he was in the open/invitational Fairmount Park race - which preceded the big one that's been running for 30+ years, and we were incredibly proud when he came in sixth. The first five were all in training for the olympics, you see....

    1034:

    My preferred backronym is Gaslight Obstruct Project.

    1035:

    985 , 988... nipolite... the Nazis managed to make an explosive structural enough to make Panzerfausts out of. 1016- ammonium nitrate can be rendered capable of spontaneous combustion if it comes into contact with other nitrates.... sodium / pottasium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_disasters no conspiracy needed, just incompetence

    1036:

    my single malt Balvenie, I think, has real cork, and it's well under $100US.

  • Not a wine.
  • Are you sure? They really do look real unless you know how to look at them. I am close to an engineer (degree and all that) who works at such a plant. Their products range from obvious plastic stopper to "wow, that's a fake?". He looks at every cork he encounters just to see who made it and if one of theirs which product line.
  • Europe maybe be a bit different in that they continue to use real cork instead of artificial at lower price points. The market between Europe and the Americas is a bit different per my contact. They have factories on all 3 continents.
  • 1037:

    1 Kg extra will slow a cyclist down by between less than 0.1% and c. 1%

    You understand that those bikes are for racing? So the relevant question is not "does this make me 1% faster?" but "does this get me across the finish line 1ns sooner?" (or whatever the resolution of the finish line system is).

    Bicycle racing, especially the group events (the grand tours etc) are largely about tactics within the peleton which means constant acceleration and that's when every gram counts. You're in a field of similarly classed athletes all working as hard as you can over the course of the race, and the finish can be decided by centimetres at 20m/s. If a wheel with 0.00001% less rotational inertia means you are 1cm ahead at the end of the final sprint... that's a win, my friend.

    1038:
  • Of course it's not a wine.*
  • I just went down and opened it and looked and smelled. Are you saying that the imitation cork will, in fact, absorb the aroma? And have all the small holes and grain?

    • My SO can't drink wine, though we're going to try one of these sulfite-oxidisers. She so allergic that she does have an epipen, and when we do try the stuff for sale with a glass, she'll have the epipen ready, just in case.
  • 1039:

    Also, this carries over to civilian riders mostly in technology. These days a barely UCI-legal road bike can be bought ex China for a couple of thousand dollars, and similar things in different categories for about the same price. Which means that if you are commuting you can buy a "gravel bike" (unsuspended mountain bike) or cyclocross bike (robust version of a racing bike) and dress it up as you wish for about the same amount of money.

    That may seem utterly bonkers to those of you saying "I could keep a cheap car on the road for more than a year for that much, and fuck your stupid planet anyway". But to those of us who aren't thinking the latter, the former makes perfect sense. A nice bike that performs well is a pleasure to ride, and that means it's likely to get ridden more*. Normally that's a good thing: more exercise is better for almost everyone living in a rich country.

    A couple of links if you want to look at bike porn: https://rinascltabike.com/chinese-carbon-bike-guide/ https://www.yoeleobike.com/black-friday-sale/road-db.html

    • even for "transport cyclists" like me - the marginal likelihood of me going out rises if the travel is more fun.
    1040:

    I pretty much agree with all this, BTW, my remarks above notwithstanding, I was really using the hatchback comparison as a point of reference. Also, I learned a new word, "gravel bike", which describes the 41xx steel (aka CrMo or chromoly) mountain bike I got new in the mid 90s and still occasionally use for commuting. I'm currently dithering whether I want to put an electric motor kit on it or just buy a new ebike. Still no commuting due to COVID, which means it's currently an academic question. In the Olden Days it was my main form of transport around Canberra... I even added pannier clips to a hard guitar case so I could take the latter to parties. Brisbane is more MAMIL friendly but less transport cyclist friendly.

    Mind you the most recent modification I made was to add a front carrier/basket that can take a carton of beer. The previous was a slung leather seat with springs. So maybe that's not just all about commuting... it's a strange time.

    1041:

    Are you saying that the imitation cork will, in fact, absorb the aroma? And have all the small holes and grain?

    They look pretty close. I've seen some that seem to have a veneer of natural cork over a synthetic core.

    Don't know about absorbing aroma. The reason for the "sniff the cork" thing in restaurants is that 1-2% of real corks contaminate the wine with trichloroanisole, which is detectable at 2 parts per trillion, so sniffing the cork was a chance to avoid drinking wine with just a hint of mould in the bouquet*.

    *And snobbery, as any waiter will tell you. Especially when young yuppies are trying to impress their dates.

    1042:

    sleepingroutine Oh do FUCK OFF The replacement is a female ex-housewife who feels compelled to step up { THIS is your "Americam-controlled inflatable fureher? FUCK OFF AGAIN ) Lukashemko is singing from the same HYMN SHEET as the aresholes in Poland & Hungary - "women can't hold power" - straight out of the christian(ity) books. The programme is: Release all political prisoners, stop muzzling the press, have an election in 6 months ... Not exactly "Nazi" is it? Now then, I hope you are happy with what Putin is paying you but some of us are not convinced ...

    whitroth/David L Lots of really drinkable vinos, these days have SCREW CAPS ... plastic corks are on the way out, I'm glad to say. Ditto the (Cork-stoppered) Dalwhinnie I was drinking about 30 minutes back ... {David L - yes - I'm sure ... ]

    1043:

    Bags seem to be separated in piles, sorted and insulated against moisture, at the clean and maintained seaport. AN is normally granulated to prevent detonations, but the specialists say that if it is stored long enough and exposed to water, it tends to cake into layers that are susceptible to detonation.

    Yes, that's why it ran, and why US sided nations ran it too and why we cheated a bit there (cough foreshadowing? totes innocent there, 10,000 was a RNG number!). $15 bil is pricey (if you want to build a medium sized metro in a 1st world city): the global AG market is worth a lot more than that if you figure out supply chains and resource dependency paths (and is also fundamentally attached to billions of lives keeping, er.. being alive).

    That's 10,000 ton(nes)[0], but it's all 34% AG stuff, so it's just a fire risk, really. But, point taken: RU can play PR games, and is a mature trade partner and doesn't store their stuff like Ukraine has been. Everyone got the notes, everyone played their hands, everyone gets that there's not massive trade bollocks from T.RUMP coming down.

    Search term: EXIAR.[0]

    Anyhow: check out Volgograd - small boom, but N. of Georgia.[1]

    Anyhow: LB's gov just quit on masse, would you kindly stop fucking around with tinker-toy levels of small wars and focus on the important stuff? Oh noes, a few balloons. My friends:

    Just how many of these folks still exist as more than organic aerosol? There will be call logs to the emergency despatch service.

    Yes: pictures were released of the photogenic woman who was part of the team approx ~18 hrs post EVENT. We will remind David L of similar pictures of young woman medics in a place not so far away who was killed by a sniper.

    The people of the Hajj / MENA nations have a rather warped view of how disposable the West considers women. Photos of bride (non-Hajj) being interrupted. Too many Pepsi Ads, not enough reality[2]. Then ask yourself what certain members of various Western news agencies (FT, WSJ etc) were doing there apart from covering the IMF paddling[3].

    ~

    Meh, so dismal.

    -points for IL media slowly running towards stuff we've mentioned because they're so irritatingly gormless.

    [0] If you want to blow ~$20k buy reports here: https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/kq6x44/ammonium_nitrate?w=12 ... or YAAAR be a pirate, there's no ethical reason not to since it doesn't seem to be available to UNI sources. This is what a Bloomberg desk and various Corporate Agencies get you for "free".

    [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/i76j96/another_angle_of_the_gas_station_explosion_in/

    [2] Childbirth, for instance.

    [3] Note: Hiz are bad dudes, but the majority of the banking fraud was done by Christians, eh.

    1044:

    Lots of really drinkable vinos, these days have SCREW CAPS

    Yes, I don't have lots of experience with such, but have noticed that several screw-top wines are comparable to cork ones at their price points. And was somewhat surprised recently to come across a Chilean wine-in-a-box (Clos de Pirque Cabernet Sauvignon(*)) that was in the quite drinkable category. Research discovers that it costs USD 3.60 for a one liter box. What's the world coming to?

    (*) That's what it calls itself. Don't blame me.

    1045:

    1. Of course it's not a wine.*

    Well my comment was about wine prices. :)

    2. I just went down and opened it and looked and smelled. Are you saying that the imitation cork will, in fact, absorb the aroma? And have all the small holes and grain?

    They can be pretty convincing. https://us.vinventions.com/configurator And this is not comprehensive. If you want to make a big enough order they will make whatever you want/need. No real cork is involved with any of their products as far as I know.

    1046:

    That's got to be one of the most obnoxious, unfriendly websites I've come across. I could only find a picture of a "vegetable" one.

    What can I say, other than (you knew this was coming) whine, whine, whine....

    1047:

    I didn't design it. I just pointed you to a link with some pictures. Only the 2nd or 3rd time I've been on the site. My friend isn't involved with the "business" side of things so complaints to me don't go anywhere either.

    But the corks do look very real. My friend spends a lot of time making sure that they look and feel real and perform better than organic material. Err, cork.

    And the quantities they generate are immense. The world drinks a lot of wine.

    1048:

    Likely required Flash. (This I WILL mention to him as Flash is officially dead in 5 months.)

    Do an image search on the company name and you'll see some pictures. Or a search in Amazon.

    1049:

    Re: 'I've read the initial fire was caused by some kind of maintenance/repair work involving welding.'

    I'm guessing someone unthinkingly threw their cigarette butt into the shed area*. But I would also believe the welding scenario: every few years I read headlines about how a fire swept through and destroyed several houses under construction and the cause is usually some welding mishap.

    • Smoking prevalence is about 55% over there.

    Although I haven't read all that much about the Beirut blast the article below made most sense to me in terms of describing and analyzing what happened based on whatever info was currently available to the general public at time of publishing.

    https://www.wired.com/story/tragic-physics-deadly-explosion-beirut/

    1050:

    YAAAR be a pirate Not particularly interested in that report, but my attempts are bouncing so far. Usual approach if it resists basic google (with the right keywords :-) is google with various unusual search operators, and sometimes meta search engines, private browsing behind VPN(+Tor sometimes if it might raise flags). Need to upgame.

    Ordinary but relentless piece by William Saletan. A Q&D script counted 350 visible links (if it was written correctly) in the body of this piece, not counting sidebar links. The Trump Pandemic - A blow-by-blow account of how the president killed thousands of Americans. (William Saletan, Slate, Aug 09)

    1051:

    Your friendly reminder that there are at least 4 internets out there. Heck, there's even a hidden sub-section where Corp / Bank reports (of that same nature) get shared. Alongside the old style "Subscribe to our newsletter" which despite failson propaganda has always been the FinLit side of things.

    Or the actual diplomatic channels and so on.

    Anyhow, catch the chatter on #4 deleted?

    It's the last communications from some [redacted] who are the "good guys", and it's not going well. why? Because most of you are happy with death, slavery and pain / humiliation defining your societies. nTrust me: that's not the internet there.

    "But we survived" may resonate with some older Religious Human Minds, but trust me: we're using it in a rather different light.

    You're not going to make it: anyhow, check out UK lightning ("War of the Worlds") tonight.

    THOR: RAGNAROK (2017) Movie Clip - God of Thunder | Marvel Studios HD [legal promo clip]

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mHaq88BAV4

    ~

    Hey, that 10,000 gag was funny...

    1052:

    Re: 'I've read the initial fire was caused by some kind of maintenance/repair work involving welding.'

    Could be a cig.

    Just to provide another option, I'm guessing that Dufus the Unintentional Arsonist was using an angle grinder to clean up the edges of whatever it was he was supposed to weld. Sparks sprayed, as they do, and things (dust, wood shaving, fireworks boxes, small furry mammals) ignited. Dufus, being as thoroughly prepared as you might expect him to be, had a Mark I bucket of water available for extinguishing fires. When that volume of water was exhausted, he ran for it, possibly all the way to a Jordanian refugee camp or similar. Someone else noticed when it was too late to do anything about it.

    This, incidentally, was the scenario that started the 2007 fire on Catalina Island. The dufus in that case would have got away with a misdemeanor, except he left the island and immediately bought a plane ticket to Indiana. There he was nabbed, returned to California, and convicted of felony something-or-other, with a stint in prison to convince him to follow the effing law next time and at least have a fire extinguisher on hand.

    1053:

    Anyhow, since #4 got deleted and apparently no-one can tell the difference between internet nonsense, Diplomatic Channel, Corp Bloomberg Flow and [redacted] we're kinda amused right now.

    Look: it boils down to a single thing. "The Mind is a Garden, it is thus to be treated: a single entity, nourished and created"[1] (you'll not have the attached Zen garden sand Omega swirl images, but they weren't complex).

    grep 'Zen Doctrine of No-Mind'

    Only, you can't claim that when you've spent 7+ years attempting to break a Mind, trash the garden, shit on the furniture and just generally be 100% Brain-Scramble-Mind-Death units when said Mind just shakes it off and says:

    "HELLO WORLD"

    The actual discussion is about Mirrors: now you've done this (and failed), what's the push-back and see how many of yours succeed?

    Hint: fucking none of them, mass insanity, fucking little gremlin twats.

    p.s.

    Shit that will get you in trouble, knowing who said this: "There's a Bomb in your liver"

    [1] And if you know who said that, well. Not Human No More. OMM.

    1054:

    It's engineering nonsense, EVEN for road-racing.

    Carbon-fiber bike frames are partly about flex and stiffness. They feel nicer to ride than aluminium frames.

    Not a big enough deal for me to spend the extra dosh, but a road race fanatic who is spending a thousand hours a year on their bike has different priorities than you or I.

    I actually like the feel of riding bikes with steel frames. But either they weight a notable amount more, or the tubes are quite thin which again gives a bit more undesirable flex.

    1055:

    Your friendly reminder that there are at least 4 internets out there. Tx. I was asking; that helps a bit.

    Anyhow, catch the chatter on #4 deleted? Yes, I did. (Rest of today's posts saved.)

    Odin: "Are you Thor, the God of Hammers?" One of my favorite lines from that movie.

    pressed her hands to the contract with no doubts, then came back and tried to harvest it Mmmmmm. (There are certain Americans that I've avoided loathing (even though they thoroughly deserve it), for reasons.)

    1056:

    Did not expect to see this. Lots of references. Relevant because it's from the US Military Academy, and increasing numbers of US (Republican) candidates for office, and elected officials and others in government are QAnon cultists. The QAnon Conspiracy Theory: A Security Threat in the Making? (July 2020, Amarnath Amarasingam, Marc-André Argentino, "Combating Terrorism Center at West Point" (United States Military Academy)) pdf, that includes other articles Abstract: The QAnon conspiracy theory, which emerged in 2017, has quickly risen to prominence in the United States. A survey of cases of individuals who have allegedly or apparently been radicalized to criminal acts with a nexus to violence by QAnon, including one case that saw a guilty plea on a terrorism charge, makes clear that QAnon represents a public security threat with the potential in the future to become a more impactful domestic terror threat. This is true especially given that conspiracy theories have a track record of propelling terrorist violence elsewhere in the West as well as QAnon’s more recent influence on mainstream political discourse.

    1057:

    Bill Arnold PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE TROLL

    However - @ 1058 ... scary - really? These people swallow Qanon rightwing/fascist/libertarian nonsense ( I don't call it "lies", because it's so utterly shambolically inconsistent ) What's the best short descriptor for them? "Mad christian Nazis?

    1058:

    Sleepyhead said:

    However, most people also admit that he is better than his alternative, an American-controlled inflatable Fuhrer for his personal micro-Reich, made out of a literal retired clown. Recent years has seen too many of such personas.

    "Literal retired clown"? Is it confusing Ukraine with Belarus?

    As for "American-controlled", it is to laugh. The Americans aren't "controlling" anything these days.

    1059:

    The Soviet Union had no balsa wood, but learned to make laminate for fighter aircraft production. The Lavochkin fighters were mostly made of wood, and the Yakolev fighers were made from a mixture of steel and wood. It was not until the late war that aluminium became available in amounts that allowed all-metal design for all aircraft. Yak-3 and Lavochkin La-5 made a very good account of themselves despite an all-wood design. . The laminate was not trouble-free: many aircraft were lost because pieces came loose. But as the aircraft (and pilots) were not expected to last long, this was not a major issue. . Sweden also learned how to make wooden panels for its FFV J22 single engined fighter. With a 1050 hp (pirated) Pratt & Whitney and a size like Bf 109 E or Spitfire Mk.1 it had almost identical performance to those early-war fighters. So wood was not an inherently bad material, even wood from northern forests.

    1060:

    So wood was not an inherently bad material, even wood from northern forests.

    Nobody said it was: are you familiar with the De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito, probably the best fast bomber of the war (and also deployed in other roles: photorecon, night fighter, fighter-bomber)?

    1061:

    I remember reading a bit about that aircraft in Churchill's WW2 history, he noted that the Mosquito cost approximately as much to build as a V2 missile and delivered as much high explosive as the V2, and could fly about 12 missions on average. The V2, like Daffy Duck, could only do that performance once.

    1062:

    Pilots.

    Talk to the Japanese about their pilot situation after Midway.

    1063:

    Re: '... increasing numbers of US (Republican) candidates for office, and elected officials and others in government are QAnon cultists.'

    I wonder where they find the time to become cultists since most GOP pols and wannabe pols need to spend hours per day on the phone soliciting donations for their election campaigns although I could see them leveraging these and any other cultists/fringe groups to help distribute their anti-everything-but-us messages.

    About the phone solicitations ... These pols are probably putting in even more hours on phone solicitations than in previous election years because thanks to COVID-19 there are fewer $$$K-per-plate A-list handshake-with-photo fundraising opportunities. Also guessing that because it's likely that more regular-folk (not-wealthy) donors are using the Internet to donate that some pols or their professional campaign management teams may be scraping donors' website visiting history*. Then based on size and frequency of donations, it becomes easy to thank/reinforce that donor segment by publicly posting some in-group reference/phrase as DT has been mentioned doing re:QAnon.

    • They might even be doing this legally if the permission to do so is buried in page 203 of the donation site's T&C. And this is entirely consistent with the GOP's modus operandi: Legal - yep! Ethical - who cares!
    1064:

    Yes, if they'd had access to a ballistic missile the motivation to use it would be understandable. The third Reich's use of the V2 was maybe less about pilots than evading British air defense.

    1065:

    COVID-19 recent info

    Masks

    Thought folks here might be interested esp. wrt which types of masks to avoid.

    'The most effective mask was the fitted N95. Three-layer surgical masks and cotton masks, which many people have been making at home, also performed well.'

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/08/us/duke-university-face-mask-test-trnd/index.html

    Reality check-in ...

    Watched the most recent TWiV over the weekend which provided really useful info on two aspects of this pandemic: clinical reality & FDA red-tape/legal procedures.

    Clinical - Dr Daniel Griffin's personally overseen/treated at least 1,500 NYC patients so even if he's not done any systematic stats testing, I figure he's got a good handle on this virus. Basically: you really, really want to avoid catching COVID-19 because even if the hospital discharges you as 'cured', there are some serious long lasting effects.

    FDA - Denise Esposito is a lawyer specializing in the drug/medical devices approval process from both perspectives: internal - gov't agency and external- pharma industry.

    TWiV 651: FDA rules with Denise Esposito (2:42:12)

    Yeah, it's really long but you might want to invest the time on this one.

    ' ... former FDA Chief of Staff to the Commissioner Denise Esposito joins us to explain the challenges in approving vaccines, antiviral drugs, and diagnostic tests during a pandemic,...'

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR1tyPANwC8

    1066:

    I had some laminated birch skis - lighter AND more robust than fibreglass ones.

    1067:

    Remember that Nazi Germany was also running low on pilots, for a similar reason. (Don't forget the Poles)

    1068:

    I am also reply to whitroth, Moz and possibly others. A lot of common falsehoods have been posted; here are some corrections (re carbon fibre bicycles):

    No, they are NOT sold primarily for the very top racers, but for people with surplus money who like gimmicks, and often aren't actually going to use them much. That's been true of 'high end' bicycles for a long time.

    Except for those top racers and cyclocross riders, the odd pound of weight on the frame is neither here nor there, especially as those people are usually carrying 10 pounds or more of surplus fat, and are very rarely more than 90% fit. There are bigger gains in both areas.

    Flexibility is almost always harmful, and is marginally beneficial ONLY if it matches the rider's ergonomics (*); carbon fibre may be stiffer than fibreglass, but is still a flexible material (in this context). In terms of efficiency, that's the potential of a couple of percent gain against the much higher likelihood of tens of percent loss (I have measured 30%).

    Flexibility in the control linkage (and the frame IS part of that on a bicycle) is a standard engineering no-no, on safety grounds if nothing else. The people who ride such fancy bicycles account for a disproportionate number of accidents and injuries to other people - around Cambridge, 'lycra louts' are THE most loathed class of road user - BY OTHER CYCLISTS.

    Carbon fibre is not very robust (especially against knocks, whether in accidents or bicycle sheds) and is almost irreparable. Aluminium is similarly hard to repair but, while 1970s aluminium frames were crap, modern ones are extremely robust. The top racers have no problem with scrapping a frame after the first significant incident - other people do.

    'Niceness' is a personal matter, but most cyclists do NOT find what the fanatics call 'nice bikes' at all pleasant. That relates to my previous point (*) - if they match the rider's ergonomics, fine, if not, they vary from unpleasant and dangerous to unridable. Yes, I have had one and ridden others.

    I stand by my point. It's a damn-fool material for what in any sane universe would be a mainstream form of transport, used by the majority of people.

    1069:

    SFR Something I've commented on before ... The utterly INSAE amounts of money spent on politcal advertsing in the USA. Simply not allowed here, or any other European country AFAIK. The ex-tories, now "The Brexit Party" have been skirting round the edges of this & have had their wrists slapped ( Not nearly hard or often enough, IMHO ) a few times....

    EC As a cyclist, still ... agree with comments on Lycra Louts ... In terms of frequency ( BEFORE C-19 ) I was: walk, train, cycle, car .... In terms of distance per year: train, car, cycle, walk.

    1070:

    A V-2 or a V-1? I would have to imagine that a V-2 cost considerably more than a wooden airplane.

    1071:

    Rockets are pretty simple things, and the Mosquito was a very advanced aeroplane for its time, and was bigger than is often realised. Also, the cost of wooden construction is in the skilled labour, at all stages from (growing,) selecting and seasoning the wood onwards.

    1072:

    to John Hughes @1058: "Literal retired clown"? Is it confusing Ukraine with Belarus? There's nothing to confuse because the method is pretty much the same. Only this time the candidate has the political career that can be measured in weeks instead of years or at least months. Funniest shit I've ever seen. But oh wait, there's a difference, Belarus, in contrast to Ukraine, does not have American embassy. Lithuania, however... https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/11/europe/belarus-opposition-leader-flees-intl/index.html

    As for "American-controlled", it is to laugh. The Americans aren't "controlling" anything these days. Well, well, unfortunately, a lot of people in Eastern EU are incapable of controlling themselves in the first place, so it will suffice for them. As history teaches us, US are always glad to provide every possible help to most genocidal fanatics to let them screw with everyone.

    to Greg Tingey @1042: THIS is your "Americam-controlled inflatable fureher? It is to the tee. A housewife, of a "famous bloger". Whoever chose her as a figurehead of opposition, did not care a moment for such a person to have even slim chance of winning, every part of scenario has already been set in stone. Not that Luka did allow any real alternatives, but this is the opposition's independent decision after all. You are probably are wandering what other examples can I add to this picture. Do you know who was the first president of "independent" Ukraine in 2014, I mean, before the elections? This man. Do you know, HOW he got in his position? Why, simple, by walking in parliament and rewriting a law by his own hands.

    Lukashemko is singing from the same HYMN SHEET as the aresholes in Poland & Hungary - "women can't hold power" - straight out of the christian(ity) books. Ah, you completely missed that part of the deal - so called "opposition" wants the country to join Europe. As a subservient state, of course, and for the solid purpose of pillaging, because nothing else can potentially happen in current state of EU. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/police-protesters-clash-after-belarus-presidential-election-2020-08-09 Now if we compare to this, we can pretty much see what these people represent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Lithuania

    The programme is: Release all political prisoners, stop muzzling the press, have an election in 6 months ... Not exactly "Nazi" is it? Well, for starters, we have already been there 6 years ago. A spineless "dictator" Yanny, after ignoring calls from his allies, agreed to release prisoners and let people decide for themselves. So these "prisoners" proceeded to loot military bases for weapons, burn the government and shoot everyone who disagreed with them, plunging the country into civil war. Those who support riots right now, are not similar people with similar ideas, they are exactly the same people with the same ideas.

    1073:

    OK, just a few of the stories I've been looking at the last few days. What's informing my world-view.

    I'll be back later (I hope), but right now I got to go out and cut the damn grass before it starts raining again:

    What It's Like When COVID-19 Lasts For Months
    https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/900710151/what-its-like-when-covid-19-lasts-for-months

    Two decades of pandemic war games failed to account for Donald Trump
    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02277-6

    Our own Delirium Brief - Trumpolini's war on the U.S. Postal Service
    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/usps-leadership-in-disarray-ahead-of-key-mail-in-election.html

    Steve Jobs is dead, but Apple is still bent on world domination
    https://9to5mac.com/2020/08/09/apple-pear-logo-dispute/

    Light pollution from satellites affecting Astro-Photography
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/science/amazon-project-kuiper.html

    Security cameras Beirut shows some of the human toll
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avgBgc210bg

    'Evil Geniuses' Looks At 'How Greed Was Unleashed' | Morning Joe | MSNBC
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-IL6VBL0l0

    Shooting near White House that interrupted Trump briefing is under Secret Service review;
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/11/shooting-near-white-house-under-review-suspect-did-not-have-gun/3342734001/

    There doesn't seem to be much information about what happened. NO GUN FOUND.

    It's starting to look like the same ol' Officer Involved Shooting Qualified Immunity No Coverup Here Nothing to See Move Along Tango

    Later.

    1074:

    Bill @1056: Thanks for the link. Downloaded the CTC Sentinel; I haven't done much CT reading since I left USEUCOM.

    Re: V-1 and V-2. They weren't really about replacing pilots; they were "vengeance weapons" (Vergeltungswaffen) meant to terrorise the (British) public. At that they failed, but the Wiki article notes that the V-1 and V-2, primarily targeted against London, killed "18,000 people, mostly civilians."

    Not to praise its developers, but the V-2 was truly a revolutionary weapon, and such a successful design concept that many theater ballistic missiles, especially the R-11 Zemlya, aka SS-1b/Scud (NATO designation), owe much to the original Nazi design.

    1075:

    Odin: "Are you Thor, the God of Hammers?"

    ???

    That's got to be one of the stupidest lines I've ever heard, esp. if it's Odin asking. Now, if it was Beavis and Butthead, or Bill and Ted....

    And Thor is a redhead, with a bushy beard.

    1076:

    I swear, for years I've wanted to sue the Supreme Court for $1B US, so since "money is free speech", I have the same "free speech as Koch and the Waltons.

    1077:

    Yes. About that shooting.... Excerpt: Shortly before 6 p.m., according to an agency statement, the man allegedly approached a Secret Service uniformed officer standing post about a block from the White House grounds, telling the officer that he had a weapon.

    "The suspect then turned around, ran aggressively towards the officer, and in a drawing motion, withdrew an object from his clothing," the agency said. "He then crouched into a shooter’s stance as if about to fire a weapon. The Secret Service officer discharged his weapon, striking the individual in the torso. --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/11/shooting-near-white-house-under-review-suspect-did-not-have-gun/3342734001/

    So, at what point did the guy walk away, BEFORE he "turned around and ran"?

    1078:

    Hello, All. I'm a long-time lurker that appreciates the thoughtful discussions around here.

    I'm in the USA, in a state that isn't doing as badly with COVID-19, but that is breeding complacency, lack of empathy,and conspiracy theorizing among many people with whom I interact. Yesterday, I was awaiting a package delivery from the mail,and as the mailman worked,a neighbor was complaining about he himself cannot work because of some item that is so far delayed in the post,and how it's just Leftists wanting to bring down Trump with the flu, and when I mentioned to the postman about the forthcoming "Black Widow" film - he and I share a love of the Marvel Cinematic Universe - this neighbor started in :how there won't be many movies because the blood-drinkers and paedophiles in Hollywood" are being arrested, and how they "worship Molech" and honestly, it was disturbing to me.

    I had a friend, a very dear young man whom was a physician in his residency die of COVID-19,and without digging too deep, I have "Me Too" issues from childhood, so the hateful rhetoric, dismissal of the suffering of others,and the whinging wanna-be-victimhood of the QAnon types is simply beneath contempt.

    1079:

    They probably have video of the incident, though we might never see it.

    1080:

    sleepingroutine You are in Putin's Pay & I claim my £5 DO STOP IT. Lukashenko is a n other version of Orban or Duda - only even worse. Oppresses any (especially "sexual" minorities - his comments on women are worthy of about 1832.

    You are as unbelievable as the Seagull, but at least she has the excuse of being mad - you are actually bad, not mad. ( As for "dangerous to know" I haven't a clue ... )

    JBS Depressing, isn't it?

    Dave P My father always siad that the V-2 never bothered him ( He cam back to London on leave from explosive manufacture, for a short spell after D-day ) If you heard the bang, you were alive - if you didn't hear the bang ... But the V-1's scared him witless - this from a man who had been his road's ARP warden at the height of the Blitz.

    Anna Elizabeth Commiserations, but, no the QAnons are dangerously mad, as mad & dangerous as readers of Der Sturmer - remember, they had an all-enveloping conspiracy, as well ....

    1081:

    Thank you. His name was Treg. He was a beautiful young man, inside and out. Treg was not even 30,such a bright light lost.

    And,agreed 100%. I plan on avoiding that neighbor. Crazy and no empathy are a dangerous combination.

    1082:

    Re the ever-lighter bicycles... For the Tour de France at least, isn't there a minimum weight? I seem to recall watching bikes that were rejected as being too light going back to the big trailers where the mechanics would swap the weight-marked seat post for one enough heavier to pass. I thought the push into synthetics, at least for non-rotating parts, was to get more stiffness, so less energy going into frame flexing.

    1083:

    Greg @1080, Re: V-1s

    I forget the movie, but I've seen at least one depiction of a V-1 attack - when that pulse jet cut out, you knew it was headed down. Londoners were rightfully scared, but terrified, in the sense of petrifying, unreasoning fear? Nope. Dog bless ya.

    1084:

    Except for those top racers and cyclocross riders, the odd pound of weight on the frame is neither here nor there

    Only partially relevant story...

    I got the chance to hang around with some top-level cyclists in my yoof - I was competing in a different sport, and every four years you had the Commonwealth Games. For y'all, it's like the Olympics, but with much smaller teams (GB teams compete as individual nations - e.g. Scotland, Wales, Guernsey, Isle of Man, etc) and in many sports a far lower standard of competition (otherwise I'd never have got near it). It also has different events - the best chance for St.Helena (pop. 6600) or Norfolk Island (pop. 2100) to generate a national team is in sports where your lifespan as an athlete is long - hence lawn bowls, or fullbore target rifle.

    The tricky thing when you walk into a hangar-sized athletes' dining area is whether you aim for people in the distance wearing the same tracksuits, or whether you sit down next to people from your own sport but different teams (because you know them from your single-sport events). You soon discover that certain sports in your national team are a bit insular; womens' hockey being all "team" (occasionally amusing; watching them face down the boxing squad over the communal TV room's remote control was fun), the track and field types either being well-known and keeping to themselves, or not at all well-known, and really sociable.

    The cyclists, however, were really welcoming - as in, "come and join us", non-insular types - including their top performers. Twitchy at the airport, because £26K of track bicycle is a rather critical item of gear (we'd find ourselves hanging around at outsize luggage - them for their bikes, us for our rifle cases). But training? They were utterly committed to the pursuit of marginal gains. If it gave them 0.1%, they'd take it, because in a two-minute race, the winning margin can well be 0.1 second. Physical monsters, but clean with it (they got tested as often as the weightlifters - after hearing the 1990s comments of those b*ggers rattle when they walk, it was reassuring).

    Sir Chris Hoy is a genuinely, spectacularly, nice bloke - after his most recent (fifth?) Olympic gold medal, he went back to his old school and spent the entire day meeting kids from Primary 1 up to Senior 6. The kids loved it (they had one of his pieces of P3 work framed and hanging on the wall of the lower primary school - he was into BMX as a kid).

    1085:

    A V-1 killed my great grandparents in London. They were Russian Jews who had fled the pogroms before the revolution, only to still be killed by anti-semites. I don't know what else to say after that!

    1086:

    Re: bicycles

    It's my understanding that in the last ten years somebody did a bunch of experiments to figure out where the energy goes when bicycling in real world conditions and the answer is largely three places: Aerodynamic Drag, Jiggling the big pile of meat on top, and Tire Flex.

    Previous understanding failed to account for meat jiggling and mostly assumed unrealistically smooth roads (they did experiments on things like steel rollers, almost perfectly smooth). This lead people toward stiffer bikes and harder narrower tires optimizing to reduce tire and frame flex.

    However once you become aware that the choice you have is between having the bike tire absorb a small bump and having the big pile of meat absorb it it's pretty clear you want the tire doing the job. Tires are bouncy, so a lot of the energy is recovered on the bounce back. Piles of meat are not bouncy, so it all goes to heat. It's also more comfortable for the meat pile.

    Even racers are using somewhat wider tires and optimizing for softer, bouncier, lower pressure tires than before.

    For regular humans, who are far jigglier than bike racers, don't put nearly so much power through their bike, and aren't being paid for their suffering the new trade off is a larger improvement.

    1087:

    Me @1083: Found the movie - Operation Crossbow, 1965. Good cast (Sophia Loren, George Peppard, Trevor Howard, Anthony Quayle), bad history. Entertaining if you run across it on cable.

    1088:

    And here's your 1-2-3:

    Fire - 1st explosion (fireworks / small arms) - 2nd explosion -- not 3rd if you were doing a proper arms depot / rocket fuel factory.

    A new video of the #Beirut Port Blasts has appeared online. The intense roaring of initial explosion can be heard as it gains intensity into the secondary larger blast.

    https://twitter.com/AuroraIntel/status/1293093366020923392 11th Aug. Aurora are US/IL backed little amateur outfit, so hey-ho. They really should be able to translate the language commentary if they're pumping out 'intel' information though.

    4th - 11th.

    Week's lead in time.

    nose wiggle

    1089:

    It's a meta-joke about the dismal state of play that the UK media (BBC / SkyNews) have taken over the past few days since they're desperate and need some 'get out' clauses once the real Brexit pain begins.

    The PR flacks running the show are getting ragged, and more than a little desperate.

    "Brain Drain" we think you call it.

    Immigrant Song

    We come from the land of the ice and snow From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow How soft your fields so green Can whisper tales of gore Of how we calmed the tides of war We are your overlords On we sweep with threshing oar Our only goal will be the western shore So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins For peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing

    Farage and others are desperately hyping 'all male soldier age' angles, trying to replay 2005-15 playbooks, discounting that's exactly who[0] is filtered through for other reasons[1].

    "But the music has stopped"

    Having seen various cold-hearted, steel-eyed, "just sold your Grandmother's soul" Banker types visibly break down and cry knowing what's about to unfold recently, having the sister of her austere serene highness the grand poo-bar of Huxen-Saxonberg-De-Ville-Pierre-La-Terre fronting it is just suicidal.

    And yes: when everyone works out media is Elite PIP for those whose genes aren't as burnished as their titles, steel will follow.

    ~

    Hey.

    We can do Rainbows. The proper old Bifröst kind, not your happy-clappy unicorns shitting colored icecream.

    Sigh: Abrahamic religious types. Such bad bad bad losers.

    You cheated then attempted to blame an innocent

    [0] grep for Morocco fences, ffs. [1] Anyone forgotten that Manchester bombs had ties to UK proxies in Libya?

    1090:

    isn't there a minimum weight?

    Yes, the UCI have set rules for various types of bikes (that's what they do) and minimum weight has proved necessary to cut down on failures. Related to this is that lightweight bikes (should) come with a maximum rider weight limit and you violate that at your peril (even with steel bikes). The MAMIL crowd are well used to this, ever now and then someone will take a risk that doesn't pay off, sometimes dramatically. Watching a whizzy carbon wheel fail is kind of scary.

    But as EC says, that's completely irrelevant to anyone except top racers because all those whizzy bikes are bought for mantelpieces, so I must be imagining that I see them every day when I'm out for a ride.

    1091:

    I try to do my bicycle upgrades in order of "Most helpful per Euro spent", and on that metric, a carbon frame is so distant I would need binoculars to spot it.

    Priority I used: 1: Buy an alu frame that fit my build. This came with some very economy conscious.. Everything else. But the frame was good, and fit.

    2: Build new wheels. I had to do this myself, because nobody damn well builds wheels optimzed for someone north of a hundred kilos that likes to go fast. Alu rims aimed at the e-bike market.

    Because I wanted some strength without going overboard on weight, and that was the only decent rim set I could find with a sane spoke count. Weight weenies and the silly idea that fewer is better. This also meant I ended up with a considerable excess of sapim cx-ray spokes because they get sold in packages of 20. This is me rolling my eyes. 16 or 32! 20 is not useful to anyone. 16 is one side of a sane weave, 32 is both sides of a symmetric weave. Fortunately, you just cant spend excessive money on hubs either, because the really over the top stuff also assumes you are a weight weenie, so I ended up with some very nice shinamo hubs for not very much money.

    Next when I have collected surplus funds for another upgrade, I am going to buy a proper drive train.

    1092:

    Even racers are using somewhat wider tires and optimizing for softer, bouncier, lower pressure tires than before.

    That's largely an effect of technology. Back in the 1930's racers used silk-wall tubulars and they did not have enough strength plus flexibility to run large tyres at low pressure. There was active argument about how much pressure, and some experimentation, but the balance ended up tilting toward higher pressure. But at a resolution of 2-3 significant digits - you put someone on a velodrome and use a stopwatch it was hard to see the fine print.

    These days we can measure more things more accurately so experiments are easier to carry out, and we have more wealth, especially concentrated wealth, available to feed into those experiments. So it's been practical for, say, the US Post team to build a bike with fat tyres (frame, wheels, tyres all custom one-offs) and compare that to what they're using now to 6 or so significant digits. They're using a moving track in a wind tunnel with 100's of different measurements being taken every millisecond.

    These days tubeless tyres are popular because they have more flexible walls, and modern compounds have more flex cycles with lower losses. We also have lightweight (low viscosity) puncture-repairing fluids for inside the tyre. So you can run lower pressures and still (mostly) finish your race. Bump the pressure up and you can run your daily ride that way. The few punctures you notice are likely to be tyre-destroying, but most riders still carry a (spare?) tube and pump so if they do lose air or have to repair a tyre they can.

    Mountain biking takes that to the extreme - many are back to gluing tyres to the rim so they can run ludicrously low pressure without burping (when the bead pulls away from the rim and the air comes out) or slipping (the rim rotates relative to the tyre). Sometimes on 100mm+ wide tyres (fat bikes).

    1093:

    Well I upgraded my bicycle by adding an electric motor - for a few hundred dollars it's the best upgrade. Now I can turn it on if there's a headwind or a long uphill. I like riding to work, or riding around for pleasure, and I really, really hate sports cyclists racing bikers in lycra on their carbon frames, or mountain bikers belting down narrow track running walkers off the path. They agitate for more to be done for cyclist, then when the council puts in cycle paths they ride on the road anyway going up and down and getting in everybody's way. They've resulted in bringing in stupid helmet laws (who needs a helmet riding 15kph on a cycle path or quiet road?) and basically discouraging every normal person from cycling by turning it into a sport. I hate sports!!!! Ok rant over - everyone have a nice day now!

    1094:

    nobody damn well builds wheels optimzed for someone north of a hundred kilos that likes to go fast.

    My lazy bike is off the road for this reason. I broke a spoke on the rear wheel, then discovered that my LBS has changed hands and the new owners are capital-poor so they don't stock spokes any more and I'm not inclined to trust the new guy to fix my wheel for the same reason you build your own. But I really don't want to buy a box of 20 spokes when I need one. Well, three, coz spares are good.

    I'm kind of waiting for my next trip to the office because there's a half decent bike shop out there (90+ minutes ride, so I'm not going out for one thing). It's that or go into the CBD to a friend's shop.

    FWIW I have the wheel problem twice in slightly different ways: I'm only ~90kg, but I ride fast and hard on rough roads so I have to use quite solid wheels on my fast bike. That's where I am breaking bits as I work towards the best compromise between light and robust.

    But on my load bike somehow my expectations of 90kg of me plus 100kg of load, all on the rear wheel, apparently exceed what ebikes hit so the ebike wheel I was using failed. As a former bike mechanic I don't think that's the components, it was the shoddy build. So I grovelled my brand new wheel home, put a cable tie on the frame as an alignment indicator, and used my cheap tensiometer to crank every spoke up to the max tension the components allowed (~5% variation to keep the wheel straight and true). ~10,000km later the wheel is still fine, no further work needed.

    1095:

    really, really hate sports cyclists racing bikers in lycra on their carbon frames, or mountain bikers belting down narrow track running walkers off the path. They agitate for more to be done for cyclist, then when the council puts in cycle paths they ride on the road anyway

    So you hate that they ride fast on the paths but also hate that they refuse to use the paths and ride on the road?

    Just so we're clear.

    1096:

    David L @ 1025:

    The Beirut fire brigade was on site fighting the fire before the explosions. They probably have a good idea how the fire started, even if they haven't readily shared that information with the rest of the world.

    Just how many of these folks still exist as more than organic aerosol?

    The articles I've seen say 10 firefighters were killed (a crew equivalent to a couple of trucks here in Raleigh) including Beirut's first female EMT/paramedic.

    Raleigh, NC fire department had 607 employees in 2015. Raleigh has a population of (depending how it's counted) approximately 403,000 in the city; 1.2 million in the Metropolitan Statistical Area and 2.2 million in the Combined Statistical Area.

    Beirutt has/had a population between 361,366 and 2,200,000(again depending how it's counted). That's similar to Raleigh, so I expect their fire brigade is at least the same size; maybe larger because we haven't had wars going on here in Raleigh since 1865.

    Losing 10 firefighters here in Raleigh would be a devastating disaster, but the Fire Department would remain functional. I expect the same obtains in Beirut.

    I know they've recovered some bodies from the port area, including those of at least some of the firefighters.

    1097:

    So you hate that they ride fast on the paths but also hate that they refuse to use the paths and ride on the road? Absolutely! I hate mountainbikers riding on walking tracks, and I hate racing bikers riding on roads when there is a cycle path available. But mainly that they turn cycling into a sport, rather than transport or recreation. When you have to put on your special clothing and your helmet to pop down to the shops, people just don't bother. I loved the cycling in Holland when I lived there. Everybody on bikes - old fashioned uprights, not going too fast. Lawyers in suits, mothers in jeans with several kids onboard. But here in NZ you see far more idiots riding up and down Tamaki Drive in their stupid peletons shouting "hup, hup" then people riding to work.

    1098:

    Bike tires: I want tubes, so I can patch them. I do use kevlar ribbons, though.

    I get really annoyed with freakin' fads. I want a street tire. Not an ultra-skinny tire (no, I don't care that they have those slots to let rain go out, they are not good enough, and I don't want fat tires on my Miyata. Last time I bought tires, I got "cross training" tires, which were decent for street riding.

    I do not want to ride up hills, or or trails. Why would I? If I'm on a trail, I want to go slow, and look around me, not worry about smashing the wheel.

    And I agree - a lot of the lycra-clad jerks are: they ignore traffic codes (you're REQUIRED to pay attentino to stop signs, and use turn signals, and you don't try to race past a slower biker or a walker, without even a sound to let them know you're coming up on them.

    Real Programmers do not play any sports that require them to change clothes, as the old list said.

    1099:

    SFReader @ 1049:

    Re: 'I've read the initial fire was caused by some kind of maintenance/repair work involving welding.'

    Although I haven't read all that much about the Beirut blast the article below made most sense to me in terms of describing and analyzing what happened based on whatever info was currently available to the general public at time of publishing.

    https://www.wired.com/story/tragic-physics-deadly-explosion-beirut/

    Yeah, that seems pretty good. The only thing I question is the conclusion the explosives were a "knockoff". And that really isn't of any importance. It was Ammonium Nitrate Explosives destined for a mine in Mozambique whether it was the brand name or not.

    Since, AFAIK, the cargo was legit, I see no reason why it wouldn't be what it was purported to be. Brand name or knockoff wouldn't make any difference in the outcome. The longer it sits there in those conditions, the more it's going to deteriorate and the more unstable it's going to become.

    The problem appears to be directly related to the UN-seaworthy condition of the ship and the Government of Lebanon not being able to properly handle/dispose of the cargo once the ship and cargo were abandoned by their respective owners. So the cargo ended up stuck in limbo in that warehouse until the chain of negligence finally came together to produce the accident.

    I do wonder why another ship couldn't have been contracted to take on the cargo & deliver it to the original consignee in Mozambique? If that had happened, it wouldn't have still been in that warehouse.

    1100:

    Dave P My father was on train, in St Pancras station, heading for Kilmarnock, rather than Glasgow, when a V-1 went over ... & the engine cut out .... NOT GOOD.

    Toby OH SHIT - is all I can say. Oh yes, Local memorial About 4 minutes from my front door .... ( The map plot says 400 metres )

    @1088 PISS OFF It was venal gross incompetence, or isn't that sexy enough?

    TJ REynolds 531 is good enough for normal mortals ( like me )

    Eric de Rode YESSS! And guess who are pushing our local council [ London Borough of What the Fuck? ] to "improve" things for cyclists? And why I'm against evry single thing they are doing? Also: But mainly that they turn cycling into a sport, rather than transport or recreation. Ah yes, so ... which is why, for many years I, quite deliberately refused to be taught how to swim & managed to fail at it, compeletly ... because it was "SPURT" ... ops, I mean "sport" & "made a "MAN" of you & all the othe complete & utter SHITE ... I only learnt to swim properly, once I was about 25 & actually enjoyed it - AND ALSO REALISED that it's a vital survival skill.]But they never push that, do they, becauss SPURTS are so much mor eimprtant, bah.

    [ "Spurts" as in hand / penis / empty space ]

    P.S. Kamala Hrris Will she make a good POTUS in 4 years time?

    1101:

    You are as unbelievable as the Seagull, but at least she has the excuse of being mad - you are actually bad, not mad.

    You're going to want to look up what "Treg" actually means, my man.[0]

    And, actually, he's not: It is to the tee. A housewife, of a "famous bloger". Whoever chose her as a figurehead of opposition, did not care a moment for such a person to have even slim chance of winning, every part of scenario has already been set in stone. Not that Luka did allow any real alternatives, but this is the opposition's independent decision after all.

    The "sudden explosive quick" flight to Lithuania is all scripted.

    It's sloppy, it's being pushed hard by US/IL fronts (who ... didn't quite expect LB booooms) and none of it pans out.

    1 Genuine revolution is a thing 2 Then look for who spent $$$$ mega on getting it there 3 The entire "WAGNA mercs arrested by Lush" narrative was always whack - that's how everyone gets to MENA frontlines, derp. 4 It's a cute split/sprint via Kremlin.

    No, really. First moment you noticed WAGNA (lol, taking the piss there, not going to do it in cyrillic) mercs getting 'nabbed', it's a setup.

    Poor CIA front end on a budget of less than $5 mil having to make this shit fly.

    ~

    Hints: it's not even about any of this btw. And SleepingRoutine actually hit the target on a lot of that there.

    Greg, here's the thing:

    You are as unbelievable as the Seagull, but at least she has the excuse of being mad

    Our Kind Do Not Go Mad.

    Your system? Utter banana land psychosis fruit fantasy if you don't play Capital's Rules.

    The logical conclusion to this is that your entire system / World View is insane, you just can't grasp it yet. (UK - lol. Fucking dark the lack of talent running it).

    Look: Queen Dies.

    Then: REGAL VENTURES ARRIVE.

    [0] tregur (comparative tregari, superlative tregastur)

    reluctant slow-witted

    Then look a little harder:

    Oppslagsord Ordbokartikkel treg

    treg a1 (norrønt tregr eigenleg 'fast, hard') 1 som verkar dårleg; langsam, sein som adverb: arbeidet går tregt treg mage forstopping 2 som er vanskeleg å setje i rørsle; seig, trå (III) treg masse fysikk: masse som ikkje endrar rørsle el. retning utan påverknad frå noko anna 3 dum, seintenkt vere treg i tankegangenM

    https://ordbok.uib.no/perl/ordbok.cgi?OPP=treg&nynorsk=+&ordbok=nynorsk

    Weird, eh?

    Wikipedia turning 'Hard, Fast' (or 'Merchant' in the sense of 'hard/fast bargaining') into an insult.

    Who knew that the entire Noosphere is all lies, eh? Who knew that basically people use Wikipedia as an intel front and lie constantly and have no respect for Truth using it?

    Jimmy does. Ask Blair and his ex-aide, now wife. Wikipedia is spook-orgasm mode.

    And they never did stop Philip Cross editing everything so that history will only remember Murdoch's favorites.

    1102:

    But mainly that they turn cycling into a sport, rather than transport or recreation.

    Oh no, you have to see people who are not exactly like you! That's terrible!

    I wish you could live in a world where everyone was just like you. Mostly so that I wouldn't have to put up with that hatred in the world I live in.

    1103:

    Hi Moz, please don't take it personally. I don't expect everyone to be like me, and I don't really hate racing cyclists (some of them are my friends, we just disagree) , I just find some of the things they do very annoying. I live in a country where rugby is the meaning of life and just because I don't like it myself I don't hate every fellow Kiwi. I always enjoy your comments and generally agree with your point of view. BTW I grew up in Nelson too so we may have met IRL.

    1104:

    I do have to agree with him somewhat. You can't be just someone riding, it's expected that you're doing it as a SPORT.

    It's the same as Ellen and I were discussing the other week: either you're a FOODIE, or you're not... which, I guess means, you live on crap fast food, and you're putting on aires if you're a FOODIE.

    1105:

    Oh, and my recent ex insisted I wear a helmet. After we broke up, nope. I wear a hat, which is a lot more comfortable.

    I've gone down twice, and run into a car head on. I never went near going head first. Hip, hands, yes.

    1106:

    Bike fall stories? When I was 21, and spending 2x2 hours a week in a dojo, I had a fall that would have made a hilarious tik-tok video. Got a branch stuck in the front wheel going full tilt down a farm road, which resulted in the front wheel coming to a very abrupt stop, while I continued forward at the same velocity.. into a text-book perfect forward roll fall, including coming out of it facing my bike.

    In horse stance.

    With my fists up.

    Wheel was dead beyond all recovery, no scratch on me, though I must have looked like the biggest weeabo this side of the Atlantic. No part of the whole fall had anything to do with my conscious mind, it was all reflexes. Heck, in retrospect, it was a cleaner fall than I ever managed in practice. These days, I wear a helmet.

    1107:

    whitroth @ 1077: Yes. About that shooting....
    Excerpt:
    Shortly before 6 p.m., according to an agency statement, the man allegedly approached a Secret Service uniformed officer standing post about a block from the White House grounds, telling the officer that he had a weapon.

    "The suspect then turned around, ran aggressively towards the officer, and in a drawing motion, withdrew an object from his clothing," the agency said. "He then crouched into a shooter’s stance as if about to fire a weapon. The Secret Service officer discharged his weapon, striking the individual in the torso.
    --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/11/shooting-near-white-house-under-review-suspect-did-not-have-gun/3342734001/

    So, at what point did the guy walk away, BEFORE he "turned around and ran"?

    It just keeps getting weirder and weirder. WABC-TV has a video on YouTube showing the shooting happened at 17th St NW & E St NW. But other reports I've seen say the shooting happened at 17th St NW & Pennsylvania Ave NW. Don't they even know where the shooting happened?

    No firearm was found on the suspect, said a law enforcement official who is not authorized to comment publicly.

    I wonder why he would say that? Crisis re-enactor from QAnon? John QAnon Citizen exercising his Constitutional Second Amendment rights to carry an invisible gun?

    The suspect/victim is an inactive Professional Heavyweight Boxer from Dayton, Oh (with a 3 & 11 record)
    https://www.journal-news.com/local/report-man-shot-by-secret-service-outside-white-house-has-dayton-connection/ERF32525B5HHVJO66GV65LTJSY/

    Why isn't there a photo of the guy anywhere on the internet? I also notice NONE of the stories I have been able to find about the guy says whether he's black or white? If it's a white guy, why wouldn't they mention that first thing?

    Until PROVEN otherwise, this is another Cop shoots an unarmed man and lies about it story.

    More than anything else, it pisses me off you can't believe what the police say; that they lie about everything.

    1108:

    FWIW, I agree with him. I really dislike cyclists who ride fast along shared pathways expecting everyone else to get out of their way, leaving bruises on those of us who are just out for a walk and don't jump into the bushes fast enough for them.

    I like to go walking in a local regional forest, where the rights-of-way are clearly posted: cyclists yield to hikers, horse riders yield to everyone. In practice this means riders order everyone off the trail because "you're making my horse nervous" and cyclists yell "coming through" as they careen round blind corners.

    1109:

    TLDR: a lot of the conflict is designed in from a combination of ignorance and stubbornness.

    I can't be bothered getting that agitated about it, but you do you.

    I get irritated by cyclists on the shared path who leave their really bright flashing lights turned on, and will turn mine on in return while I'm heading towards them if it's convenient for me. Hopefully they get the idea.

    But mostly I just ride along in my own happy world, binging my bell at pedestrians as I come up behind them so they don't have that "suddenly a cyclist" experience, and occasionally slowing to walking pace when there's an obstruction.

    Very rarely I yell "please share the path" at a group of people who've congregated over the entire thing because it seems rude to just ride through as though they aren't there.

    But fundamentally in Australian and Aotearoan cities the problem is that the facilities are not designed for the users, they're designed to fit the money and space budget first, with accommodation for the users second if there's time. So you get major through routes with 1.5m wide paths that twist through vegetation and stop at every possible obstacle; but you also get lovely scenic routes with 3m wide straight paths that stop for nothing. Round Sydney we get a lot of people involved in the design of shared paths who say "commuters, joggers, dogs, kids, walkers, this path is designed for everyone" but then whenever they have to consider an actual concrete part of the path go "everyone travels at 1km/hr and is happy to stop, step aside, go up a couple of steps, and wait for a gap in traffic on a busy road". Then they get all grumpy when people don't stick to the stupidities they've built into their paths (bare strips worn into the grass where people cut corners, people "jaywalking" because there's no pedestrian crossing, cyclists refusing to get off and walk etc etc).

    1110:

    It was Ammonium Nitrate Explosives destined for a mine in Mozambique whether it was the brand name or not.

    Actually a major explosives factory. Among the many, many documents hastily leaked after the event is MV Rhosus's bill of lading, which gives the final customer as

    Fabrica de Explosivos Av. Samora Machel, Parcela 10 Matola-Mocambique

    That, I think, would be

    https://www.fem.co.mz/language/en/about-us/

    1111:

    Agreed. But mostly I just ride along in my own happy world, binging my bell at pedestrians as I come up behind them so they don't have that "suddenly a cyclist" experience, and occasionally slowing to walking pace when there's an obstruction. If only everyone was as courteous. Yes shared paths are great for an amble, sightseeing , on your bike, but separate bike paths for commuting would be good. These seem to be coming in Auckland, but it's a slow process.

    1113:

    Sorry, but I see no relationship between talking about bike riding and WAP.

    1114:

    Despite (or probably because) of a governor's executive order mandating face covering masks in all public places, I'd say based on the last week's shopping expeditions that only about 75% of people actually wear masks in any position, despite kiosks offering masks at the entrance for free, and of those wearing masks about 50% deciding to pull them down so they don't cover their noses, making the mask more or less useless.

    This is in Virginia, in a fairly close-to-DC suburb.

    I despair of this pandemic ever being properly resolved.

    1115:

    Confused about who this is to, and what the question is.

    Maybe if it was unpacked, without external references....

    1116:

    Actually, if you're so sure that we're so ignorant, several questions arise: for one, why are you bothering to talk to us? Another would be if you're so much more knowlegable, you should be able to talk to us such that we understand you.*

    And really, are you so sure that various military and civilian intel agencies are reading your posts here, that you need to obfuscate them?

    I've got my Famous Secret Theory... and that's all I mention of it online.

    1117:

    If you want to be depressed, darkly amused, annoyed, or interested (or some combination thereof), the US Space Force published its first doctrinal document, SPACEPOWER, aka "Space Capstone Publication."

    Instead of Ye Olde Star Trek, we have Space, the next non-recyclable consumable device frontier... These are the operations of the lean, nimble, digital, cognitive US Space Force, Our five-year mission to attain relevance, to not be reabsorbed, and to make the final frontier another authoritarian conflict zone..." Cue music.

    1118:

    These are the missions of [insert 10 of the currently most popular buzzwords for the military-industrial complex].

    Nible, capable... are they talking about a young gymnast? Above the atmosphere where effects....

    I think they learned everything they wrote from bad Hollywood movies.

    1119:

    Well, I was mocking their early pages. I'm currently reading it to see how Trumpian it is (simple concepts, simple words), how much bureaucratic buzzword bingo it is, and how useful it is.

    So far, it's not bad (as in not too blatantly counterfactual), but I think militarizing space and polluting near earth orbits with increasing amounts of debris, as well as weapons, is another expression of our current civilization's basic pathology.

    1120:

    I've read that someone in Lebanon still had hopes of extracting a payment from the original owner of the nitrate, and that was more iffy under Lebanese law if the cargo was sent on. Presumably that person wasn't responsible for the cost of warehousing - seven years worth will set you back a bit.

    1121:

    (who needs a helmet riding 15kph on a cycle path or quiet road?)

    Talk to the medical people in the hospital emergency rooms. Even at that speed you can turn your brain to jelly. Or at least a concussion.

    1122:

    Moz Nothing (usually) wrong with cycling as a spurt ... but DO NOT ASSUME that all cycling is spurts, any more than all swimming is spurts, rather than a vital survival skill ...

    I see the seagull is off insulting people, again ... after all, the mad can never be wrong, can they?

    1123:

    "Beirutt has/had a population between 361,366 and 2,200,000(again depending how it's counted). That's similar to Raleigh, so I expect their fire brigade is at least the same size; maybe larger because we haven't had wars going on here in Raleigh since 1865."

    This is one of the things USAnians are always surprised by when they go abroad:

    The structure of fire brigades depend on the fire risk, and fire risk depends on where you are.

    As far as I know, Beirut is mostly concrete, brick and steel, there isn't much wood around in the first place, and the climate probably makes tar-based roofing a bad idea.

    Raleigh seems to be full of cookie-cutter plywood&plastic houses with combustible roofing in a combustible landscape.

    1124:

    "I've read that someone in Lebanon still had hopes of extracting a payment from the original owner of the nitrate, and that was more iffy under Lebanese law if the cargo was sent on. Presumably that person wasn't responsible for the cost of warehousing - seven years worth will set you back a bit."

    There was a decision to be made, a responsability to be taken, namelly someone had to decide to eat the cost of disposing of the stuff, whatever the means.

    This is something deeply unpleasant for the management of an administration. Taking responsability. Phew.

    A decision won't happen unless a catastrophic situation is really obvious even for a non technical administrator, and the problem with nitrates is that they can be stable for years before things go bad.

    See this quote "114. Making a decision, or standing by a decision once made, exposes carefully nurtured images of competence and know-how to the judgments of others, particularly of one’s superiors. As a result, many managers become extremely adept at sidestepping decisions altogether and shrugging off responsibility, all the while projecting an air of command, authority, and decisiveness, leaving those who actually do decide to carry the ball alone in the open field. (Location 1774)" from this book : "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers"

    The book is about big businesses, but it applies equally well to administrations, because the golden rule to be promoted and a "team player" is the same : "don't rock the boat, be subservient, show deference to your betters".

    ( The quote above comes from here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/45mNHCMaZgsvfDXbw/quotes-from-moral-mazes#I__Avoiding_Decision_Making )

    1125:

    Raleigh seems to be full of cookie-cutter plywood&plastic houses with combustible roofing in a combustible landscape.

    As a resident I know a bit. Most dispatches are NOT for fires. The fire fighting trained folks also function as medical call outs. Plus they get to show up at auto wreaks for medical and fire prevention. Plus to clean up the spilled fluids. And their trucks are great at blocking traffic from hitting the people waking around.

    City of 1/2 mil, county of a mil. We get maybe 1 house fire a day. If that. Based on the news I suspect it's more like 2 or 3 a week. Or less. They are rare enough that they make the local TV news when they happen.

    They last time I personally saw a call out was when I called around 10 years ago. Carpenter ants had eaten out one of our tall pines and a breeze snapped it about 20' up. The top hit the pole with our transformer and started burning. Like a poorly made torch. So I called. Tree didn't go up in big flames and burned out quickly. Likely no sap due to carpenter ants. So the fire guys sat around waiting for the power guys to come out and remove the tree. Then everyone went home and I got my power back. Rough day for the fire folks. Around 95/100f with high humidity and their outfits were great for that sweat lodge feeling.

    1126:

    Er, not really. The knowledge of the losses and experiments confirming them date back a century and more, much of the work was done between the wars, myths had become established by 1950, and became dogma shortly after.

    Narrow and higher-pressure tyres actually waste MORE energy on real roads, unlike in the laboratory, because the vibrational losses often dominate the true rolling resistance (hysteresis losses). That has been known in an automotive context for nearly a century. I discovered that in the 1970s (more by accident than intent) but it was heresy until Schwalbe did some actual RESEARCH and produced the Big Apple. The research you mention was identifying where that vibrational energy ended up - scientifically interesting, but of little practical import.

    What has NOT had any decent research since before WW II is on the ergonomics, except for people who are self-selected and highly adapted to UCI-style road racing - i.e. on a atypical 0.01% subpopulation. As I say, I have both measured and observed huge losses and limitations in more typical people, and it's well-known in other fields.

    It doesn't help to have a bicycle that is 10% more efficient as a machine, if its engine is 30% less efficient - and those are fairly typical figures!

    1127:

    You DO know that helmets (a) may protect your head in the case of a crash, but also (b) may increase your chances of being hit by a car and (c) may increase the risk of brain injury if you go over?

    The helmet regulations are effectively designed to protect you against bricks dropping on your head, whereas most cyclists land on their hips and shoulders and roll. The most modern helmets are CLAIMED to protect against rotational brain injury (the most serious sort), but the regulations and testing are still only on unrealistic impacts.

    The statistics quite clearly show they are PROBABLY a benefit for very high-speed riding, the more acrobatic forms of off-road cycling (e.g. fast downhill over rocky paths), but there is damn-all evidence they either help or harm for any other form of riding.

    1128:

    Yes. I do a fair amount of riding over such going, and there really isn't a problem if people are considerate. In the UK, psychle farcilities are a disaster, there are very rarely any cycle routes that are any better, and cyclists should be on the road (including bridleways and similar 'off-road' routes) - we simply do not have the room for separate pedestrian, cycle and motor lanes.

    Interestingly, I probably own the most expensive cycle of anyone on this forum: c. $8,500. But that's because recumbent trikes are hand-made, and it's a very high-quality one, with components chosen for maximum functionality (e.g. a gear range of 13.5:1). And, no, it's got no carbon fibre anywhere on it :-)

    1129:

    Beirutt has/had a population between 361,366 and 2,200,000(again depending how it's counted). That's similar to Raleigh, so I expect their fire brigade is at least the same size; maybe larger because we haven't had wars going on here in Raleigh since 1865.

    Reminder that they haven't had a war going on in Beirut for nearly thirty years.

    That's like expecting the London fire brigade of 1970 to be over-strength because of the Blitz (1940).

    1130:

    Err, not really. Lebanon was attacked by Israel in 2006, including a large number of strikes on its infrastructure, including near Beirut. It has several times threatened to do that again.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_war_crimes_in_the_2006_Lebanon_War#Targeting_of_civilian_targets_by_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiyeh_Power_Station_oil_spill

    1131:

    I'm getting a bit grumpy about all the cycle neepery because it's reminding me that I can no longer ride one -- it's not safe.

    Firstly, my sense of balance is increasingly wobbly: I could probably stay upright but I lack the fine balance to steer a course to within +/- 50cm, which of course is not terribly compatible with other road users.

    Secondly and more seriously, the tunnel vision in my right eye gives me just a 22 degree field of vision. So I'm effectively blind on the side cars, buses, and trucks overtake on in this country.

    Yes, this is my problem, not yours. But I am still thinking about moderation.

    1132:

    I am sorry, and will desist. I have a similar problem to the first, but I doubt you have space to adopt my solution, and I cannot offer any suggestions to resolve the latter enough to use in Edinburgh traffic.

    1133:

    Militarizing space is just asking for a debris cascade. If there are guns and missiles up there, sooner or later someone will think it is a good idea to kill of somebodys sattelites, and while I am not that worried about a kessler cascade happening due to normal operations, "Those weather satellites can see where our carrier groups are, kill them" is going to do it if anything will.

    1134:

    ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE

    (Nothing personal to see here, no need to panic)

    I'm head-down working on edits for a deadline at the end of the month. Normal blogging will be scant for at least the next week.

    Once I get through this death march I will be taking at least a week off work and will have time to poke my head above the parapet and blog again.

    Meanwhile, today's WTF news is: Ruth Davidson has suddenly been appointed leader of the Conservatives in Holyrood (the Scottish parliament), despite having resigned last year over her personal antipathy for Boris Johnson, and being on her way to retirement and a cosy seat in the House of Lords. This news breaks the same day as a new YouGov Scottish Parliament poll, 6-10 August (changes since 24-27 April):

    [FPTP] SNP 57% (+3) CON 20% (-3) LAB 14% (+2) LD 6% (-2) [PR] SNP 47% (+3) CON 21% (-) LAB 14% (+2) GRN 6% (-2) LD 6% (-1) [seat estimate] SNP 74 (+4) CON 29 (-1) LAB 18 (+5) LD 5 (-1) GRN 3 (-7)

    Holyrood has a mixed system -- a bunch of first past the post seats (where the SNP is now polling 57% of the total vote), and a number allocated via D'hont party list (a form of proportional representation).

    On this basis the SNP is on course to win a historic majority (in a system specifically designed by Donald Dewar circa 1998-2000 to prevent the SNP ever winning a majority).

    The election is due to take place on 6 May 2021, five months after the UK crashes out of the post-Brexit withdrawal agreement without a trade treaty with the EU, and in the middle of COVID-19 (it's unlikely a vaccine will be rolled out before the election).

    Oh, and to add to the fun, as of this week the UK is officially in the worst economic recession since records began, with GDP down 20.4% in three months -- the worst in Europe, and it's on the Tories.

    In separate polling on Scottish independence, support hasn't dropped below 53% this year. So it looks like support for independence is now the baseline in Scottish politics, compared to the roughly 30% support for the position at the start of the 2014 referendum campaign (rising to 45% at the vote, and remaining there until Brexit).

    This is an outside context problem for Boris Johnson, who has spent the past several years ignoring Scotland and the economy (remember his "fuck business" quote).

    In particular, the SNP may calculate that while they'll lose a couple of percent of their vote in the election they'll still take >50% of the entire vote if they add a binding commitment to independence to their election manifesto -- or at least a commitment to a consultative independence referendum, which is within their power.

    Anyway. If you wonder why Johnson, Gove, et al are randomly love-bombing hand-picked audiences in private places in Scotland to prove their interest in what the uppity Scots are doing, and handing the highest post in the Scottish parliamentary Conservative party to a woman they personally loathe, this is why: there's a chance that by this time next year the UK as we currently know it will be riding a greased rail to dissolution.

    1135:

    Charlie I am horribly afraid you are correct. Who will then put a price onBoZo's head for TREASON He will have deliberately destroyed the UK - that's treason

    1136:

    Hmm. I wonder if Davidson is ruthless enough to arrange that she splits the Scottish party off from the English one (i.e. going back to pre-1965).

    And I can't find out whether peers can stand in the Scottish Parliament (or House of Commons, for that matter) since the Blairite buggeration.

    1137:

    The Scottish Parliament is, at the moment unicameral since it was intended to be a toothless talking-shop by the British Parliament. After independence (if it happens) a new Scottish nation will require a revisioning second chamber and what better than an unelected and politically-appointed House of Scottish peers to carry out this necessary work? (hits the mute button before Charlie's explosion wrecks my headphones...)

    1138:

    She can't. She doesn't have the leverage, nor the desire (she's a unionist).

    The only circumstance under which I can see her doing that is if she has to lead the Conservatives in a newly-independent Scotland. And there are other, younger, more energetic potential leaders with less obvious unionist baggage. (I predict that in event of a "Leave UK" vote, there will be some extremely ugly anti-Scots sentiment from the English nationalist press and public, plus the Tories in Westminster. Unionism in Scotland will then be tarred by association.)

    1139:

    I understand that that was tongue-in-cheek, but there are a lot of countries with unicameral parliaments and they seem to be working quite well.

    I'd also argue that Scotland might do an election reform and go full D'Hondt, but that's from my quite D'Hondtian perspective (it's the system in Finnish municipal and parliamentary elections).

    1140:

    Re: '...the chain of negligence'

    Could also be fear of a chain of lawsuits.

    Seriously wonder whether there's a correlation between number of lawyers in private practice per capita and rate of civic infrastructure erosion.

    The 'chain' part starts with the first case win to establish precedent which becomes more and more entrenched as the norm unless a 'supreme' court overturns it -- hard (unanimous decision). Would also be interesting to see whether there's a correlation between where such cases are initially won and level of graft/corruption within the local legal system - police included.

    1141:

    COVID-19 ... SFish nano-aerosol

    This pre-print looks right up this blog's readership's alley: lab designed nano-particles that stop COVID-19!

    The media/PR piece for the paper which does a better job of plainly describing what this substance is and its medical significance is here: (It's pretty long for a PR piece.)

    'AeroNabs' promise powerful, inhalable protection against COVID-19

    Scientists have devised a novel approach to halting the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The researchers engineered a completely synthetic, production-ready molecule that straitjackets the crucial SARS-CoV-2 machinery that allows the virus to infect our cells. In an aerosol formulation they tested, these molecules could be self-administered with a nasal spray or inhaler.'

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200811234951.htm

    The pre-print is here:

    'An ultra-high affinity synthetic nanobody blocks SARS-CoV-2 infection by locking Spike into an inactive conformation/

    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.08.238469v1

    Looking forward to seeing some lay language level discussion on this esp. the ability of this aerosol to exclusively target COVID-19 without screwing up the body via 'side-effects'. Also - if this aerosol proves successful and benign in clinical trials, I'm guessing that it could soon become a mainstay for fighting off seasonal flu and especially useful in nursing homes and hospitals where aerosolized virus transmission can be deadliest.

    1142:

    Before his retirement, my father was a psychologist, and a major psych testing maven who routinely did testing on people who claimed brain damage. Back in the 1980s he told me that a brain-damage case averaged 1,000,000 in costs. He tested a lot of people who'd been riding motorcycles without helmets, and the consequences were never good.

    And it's not a matter of bikes vs. motorbikes, but the absolute speed in the collision; if your bike is moving at 15 mph and the car you hit is doing 45 mph, that's still a 60 mph collision.

    So just wear a fucking helmet. You ex was absolutely right.

    1143:

    Nano-particles! Wow! If it only had blockchain then it would definitely work for sure, no doubt about it!

    I didn't have nano-particles down on my COVID-19 bingo card, oddly enough -- most of the spaces were taken up with Vitamin D, zinc, Himalayan salt and masks.

    1144:

    The former is a solid reason, but not the latter; I was envisioning her leading a conservative, pro-union and pro-EU party (i.e. back to pre-1965, with added EU). There are going to be important votes in the near future that will force us to choose between the EU and USA, and she is going to be forced to either defy the whip or swallow what seem to be her principles.

    1145:

    Oh wow, nanoparticulates via inhalation!

    Obviously a magic bullet: just watch out for the black lung/asbestosis/COPD like other shoe dropping.

    1146:

    Allen Thomson @ 1110:

    It was Ammonium Nitrate Explosives destined for a mine in Mozambique whether it was the brand name or not.

    Actually a major explosives factory. Among the many, many documents hastily leaked after the event is MV Rhosus's bill of lading, which gives the final customer as

    Fabrica de Explosivos
    Av. Samora Machel, Parcela 10
    Matola-Mocambique

    That, I think, would be

    https://www.fem.co.mz/language/en/about-us/

    A wholesaler at least. So, who do you think they would be selling to? I still think it was intended for mining in Mozambique or adjacent countries even if it was being shipped indirectly to a supply chain middle-man.

    1147:

    Re: COVID-19 ... SFish nano-aerosol

    Just noticed they've also made a short YT video (02:29).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjhbexLtYts&feature=youtu.be

    1148:

    That wasn't my point. It was whether she could accept a peerage AND sit in the Scottish Parliament. But you also raised a second issue.

    While there are countries with unicameral parliaments, I don't think that there are any which give them the absolute powers it has in the UK; I believe that most have formal constitutions and courts with jurisdiction over those. The MAIN purpose of a second chamber in countries like the UK is to provide checks and balances, especially on 'constitutional' issues, which becomes critical when the courts have no jurisdiction over parliament.

    You are probably unaware of the dark days of Thatcher, when our nominal leader of the opposition was a Welsh windbag, who was SO ineffectual that I honestly thought he might have been a sleeper for the right wing of the Conservatives. The unelected peers stood up for the common people and restricted were the ones who restricted her moves towards fascism. Blair, of course, wanted none of that, emasculated the upper chamber, and took us further towards fascism than any Prime Minister I can think of (and certainly since 1900).

    1149:

    Charlie Already happening ... the semi-facsists who have perpetrated a coup inside what was the tories are already badmouthing Scotland & the Scots as a collection of freedoading whingers, relying on English money - the smae people, incidentaly who deride the "metreopolitan elite" of London, which is where said money comes from. No, it's ever so slightly inconsistent - what a surprise that wasn't.

    SFR Seriously wonder whether there's a correlation between number of lawyers in private practice per capita and rate of civic infrastructure erosion. Um - you ARE in the USA are you not?

    Err - BREATHING IN nano-particles? Like, oh say Carbon-Black, or "blue" asbestos, what could possibly go wrong? ... ... as I now see Chrlie has also jumped on.

    1150:

    I wonder how much unintentional havoc those nanoparticles might wreak on the receptors the virus uses?

    1151:

    Yeah, big major doubts on whether this one's going to make it out of Phase II trials. (And only about fifty-percent likely to make it out of Phase I.)

    1152:

    Nanoparticles can be anything from completely harmless to seriously harmful - it all depends on what they are made of. It might not even make it INTO phase I, if they discover some nasty interactions in mice (or even just cells).

    On a related matter, Russia is getting a bad press, as usual. Yes, they are using their population for what is really a phase III trial, but is that a bad bet in their current situation? It's not clear, and Russia hasn't released the data(*), so we can't even guess. It's like my comment about many countries deciding to do nothing - that IS a sane strategy under some circumstances, though not in countries like the USA, Brazil or UK.

    (*) Which, to be fair, was/is also the SOP of many of the Western drug companies - hence a lot of the high-profile scandals.

    1153:

    It might not even make it INTO phase I, if they discover some nasty interactions in mice (or even just cells).

    That wouldn't surprise me in the least.

    1154:

    What I wanted, back in the seventies and eighties, was a four-wheel bike.

    Take a TR-6, rip out the engine and trans, and put in pedals for both driver and passenger....

    1155:

    A team led by a postbac, not a postdoc... and I have on question: what's it's effect on NSAIDs that use the same receptors?

    1156:

    Fucking no. As I said, I've gone down twice, and right onto a car's hood and windshield once. I've always gone to the arms or body, never head first.

    I will note that my automatic reaction is to his my brakes REAR FIRST, NEVER FRONT FIRST....

    Oh, and I wear hats, as I noted. With brims. Which means less sun in my eyes, and less precipitation.

    1157:

    US. Lawyers. Y'know, thirty years ago, the US was graduating more lawyers every year than practiced in all of Japan. Actual production here was dropping.

    Then, in '95, Japan allowed US-trained lawyers to practice there, and their productivity dropped, and they went into a recession, as I recall....

    1158:

    Western drug companies? Should I expect them to act any differently than M$, using consumers to beta test their software?

    1159:

    On a related matter, Russia is getting a bad press, as usual. Yes, they are using their population for what is really a phase III trial, but is that a bad bet in their current situation? It's not clear, and Russia hasn't released the data(), so we can't even guess. It's like my comment about many countries deciding to do nothing - that IS a sane strategy under some circumstances, though not in countries like the USA, Brazil or UK.() Which, to be fair, was/is also the SOP of many of the Western drug companies - hence a lot of the high-profile scandals.

    Per Derek Lowe, In The Pipeline: "Many will have heard Russia’s announcement that they have approved a coronavirus vaccine. I’ve already had several people ask me what I think of it, so let me be clear: I think it’s a ridiculous publicity stunt. If it’s supposed to make Russia look like some sort of biotechnology powerhouse, then as far as I’m concerned it does the opposite. It makes them look desperate, like the nation-state equivalent of a bunch of penny-stock promoters. The new airliner design prototype just got off the ground – time to sell tickets and load it full of passengers, right?"

    This gets to your second point: there haven't yet been any scandals around the US vaccine manufacturers with SARS-CoV2 vaccines so far. Yes, there's been a lot of frustration, that some (not all) vaccine companies have been using press releases to tout findings long before the data come out. These tend to be the smaller companies with more bleeding edge products, and they're trying to promote their stocks because they're closer to do or die than the big players are. That's why they're taking chances. Oddly, this is one case where Big Pharma is doing a better job, releasing studies and pacing through the whole process the way they're supposed to, with appropriate oversight.

    From what little I know, I agree with Derek and some of the commenters on this post (link at top). So far as anyone knows, there's nothing wrong with Russian immunological research. This vaccine might even work quite well: other researchers in Europe are using a similar approach. What's shabby is the regulatory process that rushed approval. That says that we cannot trust the Russian government to be honest about the Covid19 situation in Russia, either how bad the infections are or how well the country is dealing with it.

    The sad part is, the US is already further down that road, and we're now a pariah state on par with North Korea, if you look at which other countries you can enter with a US Passport. We can't even get into Canada, let alone most of Europe, Asia, Africa, or Oceania.

    It's stupid for Russia to follow the US down. Better to be transparent now, take what lumps the pandemic data dish out, and get through it faster. That the government can't/won't do that isn't good. Oh well. This is how we get a new world order that much faster.

    1160:

    I strongly suspect Russia is rushing the vaccine super hard because they are, in fact, lying about the severity of their epidemic.

    Sending a barely tested vaccine live only really makes sense if you anticipate that if you do not do that right now, everyone will get the real thing, and there goes five percent of your population.

    And Putin is not Trump. He has some contact with reality, so I presume that scenario holds: Russia went into full production because their covid epidemic is just entirely out of control.

    1161:

    Poul-Henning Kamp @ 1123:

    "Beirutt has/had a population between 361,366 and 2,200,000(again depending how it's counted). That's similar to Raleigh, so I expect their fire brigade is at least the same size; maybe larger because we haven't had wars going on here in Raleigh since 1865."

    This is one of the things USAnians are always surprised by when they go abroad:

    The structure of fire brigades depend on the fire risk, and fire risk depends on where you are.

    As far as I know, Beirut is mostly concrete, brick and steel, there isn't much wood around in the first place, and the climate probably makes tar-based roofing a bad idea.

    Raleigh seems to be full of cookie-cutter plywood&plastic houses with combustible roofing in a combustible landscape.

    It doesn't surprise me that "USAnians" might know as little about other countries as those in other countries seem to know about cities in the U.S.

    Beirut might have fewer wood frame construction fires, but they also have a lot more explosions & what not continuing from the days of their civil war. And while "concrete, brick and steel buildings might be less flammable than wood frame construction, the furnishings & contents are likely to be just as combustible as those in any urban area.

    Their fire brigade may be organized differently than Raleigh's, but Beirut still needs firefighters.

    And, given the known consequences of the last half century of conflict from unresolved factional differences, Beirut may, despite their superior methods of construction, require MORE firefighters per capita than similarly sized Raleigh, NC.

    It's not enough to tell me 'muricans are all ignorant about the rest of the world world without providing any necessary corrective information. How many firefighters does the Beirut Fire Brigade have? I couldn't find that out when I looked.

    1162:

    AVR @ 1120: I've read that someone in Lebanon still had hopes of extracting a payment from the original owner of the nitrate, and that was more iffy under Lebanese law if the cargo was sent on. Presumably that person wasn't responsible for the cost of warehousing - seven years worth will set you back a bit.

    Payment for what? And which "original owner"?

    1163:

    I fully agree. But my point stands. In such a case, it is NOT a ridiculous publicity stunt, and is a calculated gamble - whether a well-calculated gamble or not, I can't say. One of the things that Russians do a hell of a lot better than people from the USA and UK is to accept heavy losses, when the alternative looks to be worse.

    Time will tell whether Putin's gamble has paid off, or not.

    1164:

    Here's a thought: since Putin actually really knows what's going on, though he may have been stonewalling on how bad it is, they might has started working on a vaccine sooner.

    Consider this: the US got it from Europe, not from China - NYC, not LA/SF. One would suspect it would be a lot easier and faster to spread east... if it hadn't spread from China directly.

    1165:

    You could be right, but this is where the "taking the lumps" matters.

    My minimal understanding is that 902,000-odd cases and 15,000-plus deaths. If that's accurate. I have no idea how many surplus deaths from heart attack, stroke, pneumonia, or kidney failure are out there. If they're not being counted under Covid19 (the correct cause in this supposition), then the situation is much worse.

    Does Putin know this reality? That's one question. If he does and he's keeping it from Russians, why?

    It's quite likely, though that he just knows it's worse than reported (as in the US), but not how much worse.

    So his/his government's solution is to rush out a poorly vetted vaccine. Yay! Hopefully it gets produced to spec and works as well as it did in Phase II trials.

    How much does it help the situation? NO DATA, because the before-vaccination numbers were screwed up to begin with.

    Does this help Russians? NO, because no one knows if someone who's been vaccinated in Russia is no longer a health risk.

    This is where going transparent on the medical data and taking the lumps helps out. If a treatment is working and people are no longer either risks or at risk, then you can start reopening the economy and the borders. Doing otherwise is what we've got here in Trumplandia, and it's costing us trillions.

    1166:

    Totally on a tangent, but you might find this enjoyable, either from a Lovecraftian perspective, an interstellar voyaging perspective, or just because it's cool biology: 'Zombie' Microbes Redefine Life's Energy Limits.

    Some cells can survive on a zeptowatt of power. That's cool.

    1167:

    Charlie Stross @ 1129:

    Beirutt has/had a population between 361,366 and 2,200,000(again depending how it's counted). That's similar to Raleigh, so I expect their fire brigade is at least the same size; maybe larger because we haven't had wars going on here in Raleigh since 1865.

    Reminder that they haven't had a war going on in Beirut for nearly thirty years.

    That's like expecting the London fire brigade of 1970 to be over-strength because of the Blitz (1940).

    I'm not saying the civil war is ongoing still in Beirut, only that Raleigh has not experienced that level of strife since 1865 when our own civil war ended.

    Beirut's experience with that intensity of civil strife is more recent. Since the Lebanese civil war ended Beirut has still had to deal with all the shit going on between Hezbollah & Israel as well as spill over from the civil war in Syria. So my money is on:

    "I expect their fire brigade is at least the same size"

    ... as Raleigh's Fire Department based solely on the similar population size suggesting similar manpower requirements.

    I bet the London Fire Brigade has more personnel in 2020 than they did in 1940 even if it's fewer per capita in this age of automation, cutbacks & privatizations.

    And while I would NOT expect the London Fire Brigade to be over-strength in 1970 based on the 1940 "Blitz", wasn't 1970 kind of in the middle of "The Troubles"?

    How did IRA activity at that time affect London's Fire Brigade manpower requirements?

    1168:

    "Does this help Russians? NO, because no one knows if someone who's been vaccinated in Russia is no longer a health risk."

    So?

    If, as we speculate, COVID is out of control, the ONLY criterion that really matters is whether it reduces the number of deaths, disablements and/or hospitalisations. I have had a lot of vaccinations where I was still a health risk afterwards - just a lesser one.

    1169:

    There are 6,000 employees now, but many will be administrative or managerial. There were 2,700 in 1939, but 23,000 auxiliaries were recruited.

    https://www.firerescue1.com/fire-attack/articles/firefighting-and-the-london-blitz-5WafeDUZn5FRrggF/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Fire_Brigade

    I am pretty sure that the IRA's bombing campaign never caused enough damage to need a significant increase in the number of firefighters.

    1170:

    Charlie Stross @ 1134: "Oh, and to add to the fun, as of this week the UK is officially in the worst economic recession since records began, with GDP down 20.4% in three months -- the worst in Europe, and it's on the Tories."

    Does "since records began" include the world-wide economic crash that's now remembered as the "Great Depression"?

    I can understand why nobody, especially nobody in government seems to want to make that comparison even if it turns out it's not quite as bad now as it was then. But I have wondered. I wondered back in 2008 when the banksters crashed the global economy.

    1171:

    Charlie Stross @ 1145: Oh wow, nanoparticulates via inhalation!

    Obviously a magic bullet: just watch out for the black lung/asbestosis/COPD like other shoe dropping.

    Isn't that what those PM2.5 filters that go in the pocket inside the mask are supposed to be for?

    1172:

    Tim H. @ 1150: I wonder how much unintentional havoc those nanoparticles might wreak on the receptors the virus uses?

    Wouldn't finding that out be one of the primary purposes of the clinical trials the inventors are proposing?

    1173:

    The Atlantic has "How the Pandemic Revealed Britain's National Illness" https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/08/why-britain-failed-coronavirus-pandemic/615166/

    The part I don't get is how a conservative party who disbelieve in the utility of government hope to improve it.

    1174:

    PM2.5 filters would do nothing to stop NANOparticles! NOTHING can stop nanoparticles!

    Ahem. PM2.5 filtration stops particles bigger than 2.499 micrometres (aka microns) or 2499 nanometres. Nanoparticles are in the range of 1 to 100 nanometres, at least 25 times smaller than the PM2.5 standard.

    The nanoparticle approach to virus suppression seems to involve sticking bits to the virus mechanically to disrupt them rather than messing with them chemically as drugs and biological immune reactions do. That rather assumes the nanobits are smaller than the virus which is already small enough to weasel its way through a PM2.5 filter. The "masks will save us! Burn the non-mask-wearing heretic!" types are relying on the virus being embedded in large gobs of snot and mucus in aerosolised droplets and the masks stopping said goblets getting into their nasal passages and lungs. This sometimes works.

    1175:

    Well, yes, I was just thinking about it from a science fiction perspective. I do like the concept of outfitting each corona virus with it's very own molecular condom.

    1176:

    Re: 'nanoparticulates via inhalation!'

    Yeah - although the researchers have already filed for patents, I don't see what form of testing has been done on any living, breathing critters to ascertain safety.

    In my (non-scientist) mind, I really don't see what the difference is between a nano-particle and a molecule given that some 'molecules' (e.g., hemoglobin) are damned large. Hoping folks here might provide insights, analogies, metaphors, examples, etc.

    And if these nanoparticles are more similar than not to molecules, does this mean that the same rules apply re: drug/drug, food/drug interactions. Lots of unknowns but still worth figuring out.

    1177:

    Given the massive drop in the US economy, I think I saw a mention that records started being kept during? after? WWII.

    1178:

    whitroth @ 1164: Here's a thought: since Putin actually *really* knows what's going on, though he may have been stonewalling on how bad it is, they might has started working on a vaccine sooner.

    Here's a thought: Maybe he doesn't, and maybe they didn't. I ain't swallowing that without a lot better proof. Not even with a spoonful of sugar.

    Consider this: the US got it from Europe, not from China - NYC, not LA/SF. One would suspect it would be a lot easier and faster to spread east... if it hadn't spread from China directly.

    New York got it from Europe. The Western U.S. (Snohomish County, WA & Chicago, IL) got it directly from China. The first local transmission case in the U.S. was in Chicago where a woman recently returned from Wuhan China infected her husband.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States#December_2019_to_January_2020

    1179:

    And while I would NOT expect the London Fire Brigade to be over-strength in 1970 based on the 1940 "Blitz", wasn't 1970 kind of in the middle of "The Troubles"?

    How did IRA activity at that time affect London's Fire Brigade manpower requirements?

    It didn't: the Troubles didn't spill over onto the mainland until 1972-73. And even when they did spill over, it was primarily seen as a policing/military bomb disposal problem: at their peak the pIRA tried to carry out one bombing or other attack per week. There just weren't that many of them -- per Martin McGuinness, about 10,000 people passed through the ranks of the Provisional IRA over its lifetime of roughly 36 years (and about that number imprisoned at various times) -- at its peak it had over a thousand in Belfast alone, but from the late 80s onwards had a strength of around 300-400 total, 100 active, and about another 500 supporters providing assistance.

    The Provisional IRA simply wasn't very large. And they were by a wide margin the biggest paramilitary group during the troubles.

    By way of comparison Hezbollah is a lot bigger -- but is mostly pointed south, at Israel, and hasn't been engaged in fighting within Beirut for many years.

    Hezbollah has more of the attributes of a government than a guerilla group, despite its international reputation: they have seats in the Lebanese parliament, their own social services department, and a TV station, and alliances with some Christian maronite enclaves in Lebanon. (They also fight ISIS, so framing them as unambiguous "bad guys" is to impose a damagingly reductive western view of them.) Last time they were engaged in serious warfare was during the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which they successfully put a brake on (that is: the invasion went into reverse when Benjamin Netenyahu discovered that the sight of conscripts coming home in body bags was not winning him public support).

    Anyway, diversion over -- it seems unlikely that the Beirut fire brigade would be geared up to repel an invasion by the armed forces of a large chunk of the Lebanese parliament who have only actively engaged in warfare on Lebanese soil in this century against a foreign invasion.

    1180:

    Does "since records began" include the world-wide economic crash that's now remembered as the "Great Depression"?

    They began keeping directly comparable records in 1955. It's the worst recession since then.

    I can't find figures for an overall contraction in the UK economy during the great depression, but the British share of world trade dropped by 50%(!), heavy industry manufacturing output fell by 30%, and shipbuilding output (the UK was then the world's main shipbuilding industrial power) fell by 90%.

    So this probably isn't as bad as the great depression, but it's in the same ball park.

    For comparison the 1979-82 recession caused by Thatcher only shrank the economy 10%, and speaking as someone who lived through that, it was awful.

    1181:

    SFReader @ 1176:

    Re: 'nanoparticulates via inhalation!'

    Yeah - although the researchers have already filed for patents, I don't see what form of testing has been done on any living, breathing critters to ascertain safety.

    In the video someone linked to the narrator mentions clinical trials the scientists hope to begin soon.

    Don't they usually conduct animal trials before moving on to clinical trials involving humans? If so, that suggests they are already conducting them or have conducted them.

    I wonder if this might be something that could be sprayed on a surface, like the outside of a face mask, to intercept the virus before a person could breathe it in?

    1182:

    Re: 'If, as we speculate, COVID is out of control, the ONLY criterion that really matters is whether it reduces the number of deaths, disablements and/or hospitalisations'

    This vaccine might reduce initial deaths but could double deaths from 'other causes' later.

    My guess based on overall Russian demos is that they're seeing most of their deaths in segments that elsewhere have the lowest mortality rates. Related to this is the reduced sperm count reported. Very problematic in a country where males have much shorter life expectancy and suicide is a leading cause of death apart from 12 years of declining net migration. Current net migration rate is 1.001, i.e., -11.18% growth rate.

    1183:

    Re: '...number of lawyers in private practice per capita and rate of civic infrastructure erosion. Um - you ARE in the USA are you not?'

    As tempting as it might be to use n=1 (US only) for this, it really wouldn't answer the question. Several years back I read a news article about some young lawyer in the PRC who sued the gov't for their very biased hiring practices. He won his case and apparently this helped other young people get considered for better gov't jobs. Plus, know of a (UN) civil rights lawyer who's accompanied refugees fleeing various countries. And this lawyer's spouse is a doctor with MSF which in some Western countries is another profession often associated with caring more about money/social status than helping people. Maybe this type of analysis should be expanded to include more variables: types of clients, types of cases/problems, average fee/client, nuisance* vs. 'real harm', etc.

    • According to one of John Oliver's shows, DT apparently has personally launched something like 1,500 law suits, i.e., lawyer = major financial threat.
    1184:

    So this probably isn't as bad as the great depression, but it's in the same ball park.

    Meanwhile, for a thrilling few minutes an hour or so ago, the S&P 500 was at a historical high.

    1185:

    One thing to note is that any large docks complex will have its own specialist fire and rescue brigade trained up to deal with the non-standard fire and rescue threats such locations present -- fuel bunkerages, combustible material stockpiles etc.

    There's a large fire station in MacDonald Road in Leith, not far from the Leith Docks in Edinburgh. In the back of the station there is (or at least was, the station is now being refurbished) a full-sized ship structure for fire training. It was possible the fire brigade crews based at that station might be called out to assist fighting a fire on board a ship in the docks. The "ship" at the fire station is a bit like the fire training aircraft structures you see at airports, but, well, bigger.

    1186:

    Re: 'Don't they usually conduct animal trials before moving on to clinical trials involving humans?'

    I looked at the paper again: so far it's only plaque assays.

    Animal testing would be the next stage and since there are now a lot of labs producing mice/rats with human-like ACE2 sites, it probably won't take too long for this team to run initial efficacy and safety tests. That said, I'd really like to know how this nano-tech (because the lab tests show that it's ultra 'stable') might affect at least the next 2 following generations. Lab mice reach reproductive maturity fairly fast - by about 8 weeks - so looking at three generations wouldn't be an outrageous delay considering that this therapy is a complete unknown.

    1187:

    Because it, along with the Dow, is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, and has zip-all to do with everyone else.

    1188:

    Actually, let me get really nasty.... In '08, I was trying to spread what money I had saved around, and was under the impression that bonds were a lot safer than stocks. So, I asked my bank, who sent me to their investment arm... and they weren't used to dealing with bonds(?!) A friend had told me of some AAA-rated bonds, but by the time these yahoos had it figured out, it was two days later, and all of the AAA bonds were gone. "But there are these AA-rated bonds".

    So I did. And lost half my money in months. Can you say "Lehman Bros."?

    It was maybe 5 or 6 years later, listening to a news report, that I found out that the Dow, etc, no longer just rated, they were PAID BY THE COMPANIES BEING RATED TO RATE THEM.

    If I ever catch up to the former CEO....

    1189:

    Lebanon - not the happiest place on earth.

    I was very briefly in Beirut in 2010, consulting with AMEBASSY Beirut on non-crisis planning for the possibility of conducting an evacuation of American citizens from the country similar to what happened in 2006 (nearly 15,000 U.S. citizens evacuated to Cyprus and points onward during the Israel-Hizbollah conflict). It was a surreal experience, getting "expedited" through customs via the diplomatic line and driven to the embassy in an armored Cadillac with two armed escorts.

    Beirut was - different. It's an example of what happens when you mix striving business with sporadic violence with a pathetically weak national government. Construction everywhere, with new concrete and glass buildings next to bombed-out shells. Bustling Middle Eastern style traffic where it seemed every other vehicle was an armored something or other, many with sirens and lights. A city divided between sectarian enclaves (the airport neighborhood is Hizbollah territory, BTW).

    Lebanon has very complicated politics, with competing sectarian groups comprising the Maronite Christians, Sunni and Shia indigenous Muslims, and a large, restive Palestinian "refugee" (hey, they've been there since 1948 - how long are you a refugee?) population. Balancing these political forces required a complex power sharing arrangement, where The President has to be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, the Speaker of the Parliament a Shi’a Muslim, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament Eastern Orthodox.

    Palestinian attacks on Israel drew an increasingly violent response by the IDF, and helped trigger a civil war that started in 1975, included Israeli incursions in 1978 and 1982, and only ended late in 1990. Since then the Lebanese maintained a fragile peace, attempting to limit the influence of Hizbollah, the PLO, and Syrian occupation forces, until another series of Palestinian attacks triggered a third Israeli invasion in 2006.

    All this tumult has led to a continually weak Lebanese government, often deadlocked. Hizbollah has been represented in the Lebanese government since 2005, making an ongoing political balancing act even more fraught. There have been multiple assassinations of political leadership by multiple groups, reaching back to at least 1975.

    The point of all this is that Lebanon is barely a state. It's no surprise to me that lackadaisical enforcement of laws and regulations led to this miserable accident.

    1190:

    Because it, along with the Dow, is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, and has zip-all to do with everyone else.

    Not sure what the Because is referring to, but

    Yes, they may well be Ponzi schemes, but they involve large numbers of people who have their retirement money invested in the stocks involved, and they in turn affect the functioning of the surrounding economy.

    1191:

    In the 20th Century, the stock market was linked to the means of production, so the economy tanking usually took the value of shares with it. They're now almost entirely unlinked, which may be why Wall Street likes Trump. *

    It's not exactly a Ponzi scheme now, because there aren't many more suckers coming into it. In my inexpert view, it has more in common with a bubble or Tulipmania, where the value of stocks are whatever you can sell them at. It's also abetted by the whole fiat money thing, which allows them to declare how valuable it is. The thing that makes it really interesting is that a good chunk of the market is now traded autonomously by very complex systems. I'm not sure how they distinguish price and value, and whether an inability to do so makes them the cons or the suckers.

    Or perhaps it's yet another example of a self-created reality. I'm reminded of the putative Amazonian shaman who opined that the most powerful sorcerers in the world controlled the western economy. Or perhaps it's procedurally generated instead of created?

    Or, if you want a more pungent take,here's a comment by a San Diego real estate speculator in 1888: "I lost a million dollars in the crash. Worse, $500 of it was in cash!" I suspect the fortunes we see now have similar leverage levels.

    *It's also conceivably possible that the whole thing's being floated by billionaires at the moment, with the idea of bringing the economy down on Joe Biden's head in January.

    1192:

    to Elderly Cynic @1152: Which, to be fair, was/is also the SOP of many of the Western drug companies - hence a lot of the high-profile scandals. I think the reason for this is the actual method of application of vaccine, which, ofc, not even mentioned anywhere where it is necessary - it takes longer to apply the vaccine because it is two-stage. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-russia-vaccine-testing Using two adenoviruses instead of one is unusual, but may help solve a potential problem, says Daniel Kuritzkes, a virologist and infectious diseases doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Because the body may develop antibodies to the adenovirus carrying the spike protein, a booster shot with that same virus might be rendered useless. The two-step inoculation with different adenoviruses may sidestep that issue.

    If, as we speculate, COVID is out of control, the ONLY criterion that really matters is whether it reduces the number of deaths, disablements and/or hospitalisations. I do believe this is the reason behind development of vaccines in the first place, but otherwise it also means that if Russian companies are late to the party with their testing they are going to lose upwards 90% of their profit from foreign sales and who knows how much from domestic, rendering the entire development a moot point. For Russia this also means more available, cheap and widespread vaccine. This is called "competition", that is supposed to be a reason for improvement in the first place.

    The initial call for delaying of registration was petitioned by these people: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-10/russian-covid-19-vaccine-is-pandora-s-box-industry-body-warns ACTO represents a group of multinational companies that conduct clinical trials in Russia, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Novartis AG. No wonder that they want their piece, they would first ask somebody to delay registration, to conduct more tests, to await for response from more sources, so to whomever was promoting registration on government side (there are more vaccines in development inside the country), this announcement essentially is a big "fxxk off" towards the self-appointed "regulator".

    Rest of the commentators can go kick dirt anyways, because they've been spewing bullshit about "secret vaccine to Russian government" and "stealing the data from the other countries" for months now.

    Heteromeles to @1165: My minimal understanding is that 902,000-odd cases and 15,000-plus deaths. If that's accurate. I have no idea how many surplus deaths from heart attack, stroke, pneumonia, or kidney failure are out there. But pneumonia and associated problems ARE the reasons for COVID deaths, though pneumonia comes first, of course, as well as testing. For months after initial inquiries, nobody has been able to find any flaws in current system, so I really doubt that anything more concrete is even possible. As I mentioned in last thread, statistics is all over the place, the only place I can be sure about is big cities with more than million people (but OTOH they are suffering the most).

    1193:

    While there are countries with unicameral parliaments, I don't think that there are any which give them the absolute powers it has in the UK

    Aotearoa. Parliament has over the years done just about all the absolute stuff you can imagine, from introducing then repealing the death penalty to changing the electoral system and could probably introduce a republic. Examples are the imposition of Thatcherism by surprise and "changing the god-given definition of marriage" (twice! Divorce and same-sex marriage!)

    1194:

    Allen Thomson @ 1184:

    So this probably isn't as bad as the great depression, but it's in the same ball park.

    Meanwhile, for a thrilling few minutes an hour or so ago, the S&P 500 was at a historical high.

    You know, there have been some days recently when I wouldn't have minded being historically high myself.

    1195:

    @1191: It's also conceivably possible that the whole thing's being floated by billionaires at the moment, with the idea of bringing the economy down on Joe Biden's head in January.

    Biden is reputed to be business-friendly (note the commercial environment that makes his home state of Delaware particularly favored for incorporation). Big business would have had a lot more to worry about had the Democratic ticket been more left-leaning; the billionaires might prefer a business-friendly, rational Democratic administration to the chaotic mess we have now.

    1196:

    Note NZ has three-year terms as a limit on power. Many also think that the current 5% barrier for List seats is too high, and the effective barrier in the current Scottish system is sort-of higher due to the regional lists.

    1197:

    ...are relying on the virus being embedded in large gobs of snot and mucus in aerosolised droplets and the masks stopping said goblets getting into their nasal passages and lungs. This sometimes works. "Sometimes" is doing some heavy lifting, since it applies to nearly every intervention, both ones that are 1 percent and those 99 percent effective. Mask mandates and recommendations are primarily because masks seem to provide some useful level of source control, preventing goblets from leaving nasal passages and lungs and polluting shared (indoor) air. Droplets are larger when they leave the nose or mouth and shrink rapidly (depending on humidity).[1] The population-level RCTs of mask wearing vs pandemics in panopticon dictatorships to verify adherence to rules and any other behavioral changes have not been done. Lots of natural experiments being done though, and results starting to trickle in. Though masks do appear to provide some protection to the wearer, as the observational study of the USS Theodore Roosevelt incident strongly suggests: SARS-CoV-2 Infections and Serologic Responses from a Sample of U.S. Navy Service Members — USS Theodore Roosevelt, April 2020 Service members who reported taking preventive measures had a lower infection rate than did those who did not report taking these measures (e.g., wearing a face covering, 55.8% versus 80.8%; avoiding common areas, 53.8% versus 67.5%; and observing social distancing, 54.7% versus 70.0%, respectively).

    [1] See this for a model of how droplets shrink after leaving a person: The airborne lifetime of small speech droplets and their potential importance in SARS-CoV-2 transmission (Valentyn Stadnytskyi, Christina E. Bax, Adriaan Bax, and Philip Anfinrud, May 13, 2020)

    BTW, if anyone is tempted by pieces by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, please be suspicious. E.g. a piece called "Mask Facts (June 1, 2020)" that I won't link is very uhm selective about the papers it references, as a quick search using e.g. google scholar will show. And the organization (the members swear not to work with government healthcare systems or private insurance) have a history of dubious medical takes, e.g HIV/AIDS denialism: (wikipedia, with backing refs) Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. There are a few other such selective "reviews" opposing masks, and of course a bunch of junk advocating for various anti-COVID treatments and measures.

    and just since Nojay asked nicely, I see no significant new research on Vitamin D(some clinical trials in progress though) and/or Zinc vs COVID-19, and no research at all on "himalayan salt" covid.

    1198:

    "The part I don't get is how a conservative party who disbelieve in the utility of government hope to improve it."

    The first thing to remember is that they are not conservatives, but rather radical right-wing revolutionaries.

    The second, of course, is that they consider truth to be an interesting but ultimately revolting thing, to be avoided.

    They want tailored government:

    Big enough to give them lots of money; Small enough to help nobody else.

    Big enough to oppress others; small enough that it can't restrain them.

    etc.

    1199:

    Tim H The part I don't get is how a conservative party who disbelieve in the utility of government hope to improve it. The same way said party & guvmint expect to get "The best deal ever" out of Brexit, of course!

    Charlie So this probably isn't as bad as the great depression, YETbut it's in the same ball park. ... if we are lucky ...

    Barry Precisely The so-called "Conservative Party" no longer exists. There was a BoZo-led coup & it is now half-way to fascism, floating ona sea of lies & inconsitencies ....

    1201:

    A little fun lashing together a few Linux (debian) tools to go through that twitter Beirut explosion video linked by Selene'sLWOH (AuroraIntel) frame by frame. Instructions if anyone wants to try:

    I used an online twitter video downloader (http://twittervideodownloader.com/) in a jailed browser to download the tweet's video; need to find something that works locally; browser plugins require added trust. Make sure download is good with a Linux video player. (e.g. VLC (apt-get install vlc), which can also slow down to 50%)

    The initial very bright flash (much brighter than the sun), then the orange cloud (not clear if it is obscuring a continuing bright white fire light), then some hundreds(?) of milliseconds later the detonation: ffmpeg -i ../beirutAuroraIntel2.mp4 -vf fps=60 -ss 50 -to 52 thumb%05d.png Also to see the fireworks bake-off, lots of day-light visible pops (followed by a black cloud that looks like the clouds after fireworks display finales): ffmpeg -i ../beirutAuroraIntel2.mp4 -vf fps=60 -ss 15 -to 24 fes_thumb%05d.png

    then ristretto . and adjust the size of the thumbnails on the left via the pulldowns, then use the up/downarrow to go through the thumbnails at desired speed.

    Notably, there is a very bright flash at about 50 seconds that lights up the clouds, followed by a billowing reddish cloud (that might be blocking a continuing bright light, dunno), followed by a detonation, what might be low hundreds of milliseconds later. (The pros will have better tools and timings.) The fireworks bake off is about 25-35 seconds previous to the flash.

    1202:

    Old news, but cool.

    Suggest you might enjoy Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer.

    Also note a similar parasite in one of the Laundry novels*, although it wasn't the tongue that was replaced…

    *Not giving title because spoilers…

    1203:

    Actually, I think the tongue was replaced in one iteration. Silver-tongued, and all. The other one was more of a Sacculina-type issue, and yet another reason why we should be very happy that vertebrates use keratin in place of chitin.*

    *Although I don't think it's proven, I suspect that one reason why invertebrates tend to have more spectacular parasites is that both fungi and other inverts use chitin for various body parts, and it's rather easy to modify.

    1204:

    Re: 'BTW, if anyone is tempted by pieces by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, please be suspicious.'

    Agree - it is NOT the AMA.

    Wikipedia:

    'In 1966, The New York Times described AAPS as an "ultra-right-wing... political-economic rather than a medical group," and said some of its leaders were members of the John Birch Society.[2]'

    1205:

    Sigh.

    You're not, that's the joke. We just process 10.050 gig of data a bit faster than you do. It's like coffee (covefee) making: you'll get there in the end, but watching your collective efforts to parse it is boring as fuck. Analogy: if you've ever worked in an office waiting for the coffee to be made.

    And really, are you so sure that various military and civilian intel agencies are reading your posts here, that you need to obfuscate them?

    Two things:

    1 Yes, some do. [Host's audience has some very very weird little nooks n crannies] 2 Our Audience is [redacted], not human, if you want to play it rude.

    WAP - now, that's ironic. Actually something we care about, post went poooof.

    See?

    Forcing us to use our limited resources on shit that the 77th should be able to do but need their bum's wiping vrs actual care. 4th August: that's your line. Seven days later: 11th, US/IL get with the program, print the tapes.

    Fucking head-fuck levels of stupidity in the Biz.

    WAP post, now that's something we care about.

    Irigaray, mucosity. grep it.

    It's fucking hilarious how scared men are about even basic levels of "how shit works" like "snail trails" in panties.

    RETROGRESSIVE FUCKERS.

    1206:

    Sure, it's a Ponzi scheme. There are new libertarians and other suckers getting drawn in, sure that they'll make a mint.

    Meanwhile, the big fish are the house, and the house always wins.

    1207:

    When the so-called Tea Party (actually, the Koch bro-funded party) got in - what was that, around '10? I looked, and compared their program with the Constitution of the Confederacy, and other than explicitly talking about slavery*, it's EXACTLY THE SAME. They are, therefor, neoConfederates... which is really what they want.

    • wage slavery is so much cheaper and more efficient - you don't have to house, clothe, feed, or provide medical care for your slaves.
    1208:

    What's amusing by countless "scholck" horror stories about parasites (be in oral insertion, tongues, snail's wiggling eyeballs or so on).

    Mammal pregnancy is so, sooo much worse.

    Literally entire biological network gets re-worked, massive damage to host (cognitive, physical, hormonal, resource) and so on.

    AND YOUR RESPONSE TO THIS IS: MAKE IT EXPENSIVE AND HARD AND BETTER ADD SOME METAL FORCEPS.

    100% convinced the entire psychosis about killing everything is based on people not being able to deal with being mammals.

    "Snail trail".

    Hint: your culture doesn't not only already denigrate female biology to the level of common garden pests, it can't even conceive of the issue in a non-sexual way.

    "WAP"

    "MY WIFE SAYS BEING WET IS DISEASE"

    20-fucking-20

    Kids. Start on the obvious stuff, like not imagining mucous emissions are not normal as you blow your fucking nose.

    RETROGRESSIVE FUCKERS.

    p.s.

    More interesting take on this: Universalialization of WAP is just boring colonial politics. "WASP women don't get het up n wet" is like 1950's levels of RETROGRESSION. "Only the BLACK WOMEN get WAP" is a stand in for boring shit about "lower subspecies primal lust" angle that is still, like... a major fucking fetish for these people. "BBC BULL SEEDING MY WIFE".

    If you want to get nasty and honest: Honey. Wild Ride time.

    1209:

    The right wing party in Aotearoa appears to be targetting the Qanon vote:

    I can’t really put into words how frustrating this was to watch: a politician essentially saying the conspiracy-mega-catchphrase “I’m just asking questions”. As in: “Was 9/11 really a terrorist attack or were bombs planted to bring it all down? I’m just asking questions…”

    That's a respectable journalist in his blog, BTW. Even if it does read like some random who's just been smacked upside the head with a 2x4.

    1210:

    Note NZ has three-year terms as a limit on power.

    Meaning anything that takes longer than three years to do runs the risk of being undone if there's not enough popular support to win an election, yes. But as we see in former democracies it's perfectly possible for an unrestrained parliament to wiggle out of the requirement for an election. AFAIK the kiwis can simply legislate to extend their term, or as they have just done "allow the electoral commissioner to delay the election" ("opinion" by an actual professor of laws).

    Many also think that the current 5% barrier for List seats is too high

    To use my favourite quote completely out of context "one, I suppose". As in anyone who has the votes to put a single MP into parliament should get that MP. That's what democracy means, innit?

    But I'm also a believer in the universal franchise so you can put me over in the corner with the other unrealistic extremists...

    1211:

    Friendly reminded that the prior World Trade Centre NYC attacks were indeed not only sponsored by the FBI, but actively aided and munitions supplied by them, and they did the planning and not only did they do all of this, they then got caught out in court because one of the patsies like... recorded it.

    And in the time between 2000 and 2020 there were approximately 17 'foiled / active attacks' that had active FBI involvement, including the Boston Bombing.

    And, of course, the Boston Bombing was one of the first REALITY TRY-OUTS for a certain Merc group who are owned by .... Eric Prince.

    ~

    Q stuff is just weaponizing people's obvious disbelief at the shit you've fed them with a different narrative.

    grep christchurch and waht we type then.

    Mainlining into his Brain then.

    1212:

    as they have just done "allow the electoral commissioner to delay the election" Most of the potential delay without a Parliamentary super-majority is down to the intended election date being three months earlier than is allowable under current law, so that aspect isn't of concern IMO.

    1213:

    "Babylonians were more progressive about this than you". I've only known one human female, a childhood/young adult friend, who demonstrated skill at Touch. (Yes, a bit witchy. We mutually kept it mostly non-sexual; friends.) The existence proof was a simple very sensual touch of a hand. It took me years to work out how to do something like that (and related close-contact things) reliably. (Writing as a male autodidact: Mind wide, with a joyous empathic[1] (and so partly-female if M-F[2]) mind state, perhaps navigating to maximize partner's pleasure/wellbeing. Also, knowing the various erogenous zones is a prerequisite.)

    Interactive empathy is clearly key. This is something societies should be teaching children, when they're young enough to easily learn it. Maybe something like Pushing Hands (t'ai chi ch'uan) but with much more emphasis on empathy and with the martial aspects entirely or mostly rewritten to be focused on increasing the well-being of the other. (Perhaps this is done in some healthier human societies/subgroups. E.g. push hands, loser/winner laughs first. :-)

    [2] Memories of such states helpful for other things. [1] Not a good sign that "empathic" was not in my browser dictionary.

    1214:

    Tai chi is a good way to learn empathic touch.

    A better way is by petting a lot of cats. They're very good at feedback, and the best ones are very good at getting you to pay attention, too.

    1215:

    Twitter thread:

    1/ There are various tweets misinterpreting COVID-19 “pre-existing immunity” and making dangerous claims about herd immunity. Since many of those claims refer to our scientific papers, we will reiterate the facts. @SetteLab @ljiresearch @ScienceMagazine @CellCellPress pic.twitter.com/gCZwFMW1iU

    — Shane Crotty (@profshanecrotty) August 12, 2020

    If you look at the twitter thread (pretty dense and good), these CD4+ memories do not prevent infection; they can reduce the severity, but an infected person could still spread the virus (and might be more ikely to if they're asymptomatic). Preventing infection (e.g. masks) is still important.

    This is their new paper: Selective and cross-reactive SARS-CoV-2 T cell epitopes in unexposed humans (04 Aug 2020) We demonstrate a range of pre-existing memory CD4+ T cells that are cross-reactive with comparable affinity to SARS-CoV-2 and the common cold coronaviruses HCoV-OC43, HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, or HCoV-HKU1. Thus, variegated T cell memory to coronaviruses that cause the common cold may underlie at least some of the extensive heterogeneity observed in COVID-19 disease.

    1216:

    For those interested in the intricacies of viviparity, there's a nice article at https://www.quantamagazine.org/egg-laying-or-live-birth-how-evolution-chooses-20200518/. Turns out there's even an Australian lizard that is both oviparous and viviparous, sometimes in the same clutch. I not surprised that this lizard lives in Australia. I am mildly surprised that it is not poisonous.

    Then for those for whom pregnancy is a body horror, there's the pilidium. Enjoy adulting.

    1217:

    BTW that was via Pinboard, worth following:

    Excellent thread from someone sciencing hard to end the pandemic. This stuff is subtle so I will not summarize, but it's important. https://t.co/JyyoJnQroT

    — Pinboard (@Pinboard) August 12, 2020
    1218:

    Very few Australian lizards are poisonous or indeed venomous. But there are a couple that might virtually be: if you don’t die of wounds or blood loss, infection from the claw and/or tooth biome very possibly will.

    1219:

    A better way is by petting a lot of cats. They're very good at feedback, and the best ones are very good at getting you to pay attention, too. This is true. (I taught the cat of the house cat-combat because he didn't have a mom or siblings to learn from/with. He got frustrated a lot, but learned.)

    1220:

    Very few Australian lizards are poisonous or indeed venomous.

    ... which is great consolation when you find yourself being dragged up a tree by one. "oh good", you think, "I'll die of thirst, or blood loss, but I won't be poisoned".

    1221:

    The specific example isn't a concern, I was merely pointing out that the kiwi government has the power to delay elections.

    It's not about St Jac, it's that we could elect another Robert Muldoon, Roger Douglas or Ruth Richardson and then ... "isn't it great that the Qanon conspiracy theorists duly elected government ... can postpone the next election until they have proved that QEII is not a lizard wearing human skin"

    1222:

    Really? This is the one that's mates with the Drop Bears that managed to survive the bush fires? Or is this the non-dwarf mainland form of the Komodo Dragon I keep reading about?

    Actually, I'm fairly aware of which Australian phyla are venomous, but it's fun to needle y'all about the vagaries of biogeography that you got stuck with. Anyway, Australian skinks are neat. So are the monitors, actually.

    1223:

    We have tree kangaroos, I don't see why we can't have tree crocodiles.

    Australian skinks are neat

    Yes. There are quite a few round my house. Or possibly only one, they move so fast it's hard to be sure.

    1224:

    1205 Appears to be a long sneering insult ... 1211 is some mad conspiracy "theory" or other & WRONG 1212 - more insults

    Moz ( 1209 ) Well, that's easy .. "Yes"& "Eff off, of course not, you idiot!"

    Bill Arnold @ 1214 PROOF, please, otherwise this is mystic/religious fake bollocks

    C-19 VERY interestin Imperial College study, suggesting actual "have-been-infected-because-antibodies" numbers are MUCH higher - about 6% of population. Um.

    1225:

    Meanwhile, for a thrilling few minutes an hour or so ago, the S&P 500 was at a historical high.

    Much to the consternation of the various talking heads both Powell (head of the Fed) and the lady who is the President of the NY Stock Exchange both repeat to anyone who will listen that the stock market is NOT the economy or a very good proxy for it.

    As to why they are so high, well. Congress dumped $1200 per person to most of the US adult population. To prop up the economy. It did somewhat but guess what? For the majority who still had their jobs most had no need or interest in spending the money on necessities or entertainment given the situations. And that vacation across the ocean? Yeah right. So now we have all this excess money in bank accounts earning 0.05% to maybe 1% and what do people do? Hold that thought.

    The Fed, to also help keep the economy flowing cut interest rates to near 0%. So those 2% to 4% CDs you could get a year or few back are just not there.

    So two big things (and I'm sure there are more) are slurping up that excess cash. Real Estate (mortgage rates are at record lows so if you are in a secure job why not buy from a distressed seller? That might take a down payment but if you're selling an existing home not so much cash is needed.

    Or put it into the stock market. Just avoid those airline, car rental, hotel, etc... stocks unless you have a real strong stomach.

    So housing sales are doing well and the stock market is at record levels. All while the economy is in the tank.

    1226:

    John Quiggin (australian economist) has written a little on this topic: zero interest is another way to say zero return on capital, and it's hard to see how capitalism works in that situation. Also, most tech companies and many other "successful" companies are monopolies rather than capitalist enterprises (many have little to no capital invested, for example).

    1227:

    ACTO are a self-interested trade group, agreed, but the way the Sputnik-V vaccine is reportedly being railroaded into production without adequate human trials is really disturbing. There is a reason we test vaccines extensively before deployment: if it turns out the immunity conferred is short-lived, then mass-vaccination can lead to complacency and then a follow-on pandemic. Worse, it may lead to sensitization of vaccinated folks so that a follow-on pandemic is much more lethal than one burning through an un-immunized community.

    There is an argument for starting mass production and stockpiling even before you start stage III (mass human) trials: it's wasteful if the vaccine turns out to be a bad choice, but if it's good you can get it rolled out much faster. But it's a gamble.

    What I mostly don't like about this is evident political pressure on the medical research establishment to cut corners. That's going to end in tears: even if they get lucky this time and Sputnik-V works, then they set a precedent for tearing down our precautionary methods for preventing some classes of truly horrible medical disaster.

    1228:

    I happened across a large skink the other day which appeared to be living in a (human) grave, albeit an old* one. It disappeared into its hole in the masonry before it happened to the little dog, who was convinced he'd smelled something, anyway.

    And yes, as Frank noted I was thinking of the lace monitor (aka solid rock, standing on sacred ground, living on borrowed time, etc). You want a go, Anna? Not ostentatious at all...

    • "Old" in Brisbane means mid-19th-century at the earliest, and I happily accept that is a "quite recent" by AngliEuro standards. This was actually more likely 20s or 30s.
    1229:

    Also note a similar parasite in one of the Laundry novels*, although it wasn't the tongue that was replaced…

    Ahem: that mode came up twice in different Laundry novels: first in "The Apocalypse Codex" (where it was, indeed, a tongue-eater: the same tongue-eater plays a minor role in this October's "Dead Lies Dreaming"), and a different version in "The Delirium Brief".

    1230:

    Re 2011 and the original WTC bombing, I don't believe this is a conspiracy theory. The FBI actually supplied the bomb maker, an Egyptian army officer. They were going to arrest everyone, but didn't and the bombing happened. Some of the other stuff is actually a very funny story. It's about Ben Shapiro, a right wing Internet personality. He was commenting on the Cardi B track WAP(wet ass pussy). He said his wife, a doctor, said a wet pussy(p-word to him!) was a sign of infection!

    1231:

    Right. And, while that MIGHT be the right solution for a disorganised country facing disaster, it assuredly isn't for SOP in an organised one. Despite official claims, vaccination is NOT necessarily a safe procedure - though modern ones are pretty safe, and a HELL of a lot safer than not vaccinating. But letting the drug companies release such things without external constraint fits horribly well with the 'regulation is harmful' dogma :-(

    As far as the UK goes, the evidence is clear that the incidence of COVID is close to static, overall. I suspect that it is starting to rise, slowly, but the data are inconclusive.

    https://imgur.com/a/xgcd1O3

    1232:

    Weather in the UK (reverting ) Been "orrible" ... 4 days with temps well over 30, yesterday was down to 33, but humidity of 69% - this morninfg was actually worse ... temp only 26/27 but humidity 75% ( Or so my greenhouse hygrometer said ) We are predicted to have thunderstorms ....

    1233:

    Welcome to southern Ontario, Greg.

    You can expect the tornado warnings shortly… :-/

    1234:

    Possibly in the category of long-term effects of COVID-19:

    Because I follow plague-related events in Texas' Lower Rio Grande Valley for reasons, I noticed this yesterday. If the new WiFi repeaters are left as permanent infrastructure, it could make a bit of difference.

    https://www.themonitor.com/2020/08/12/mcallen-begins-wi-fi-installation-throughout-city/ Beginning Wednesday, the IT department from the city of McAllen will install Wi-Fi equipment in 16 city neighborhoods, according to a news release. With the Development Corporation of McAllen providing the funding for the equipment, city officials say it will be eligible for CARES grant funding from Hidalgo County. City officials say because McAllen students’ school session will be virtual for the majority, the installation will provide free internet access. “As the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect our schools and the way our children will be educated, we as a city commission realized that a virtual learning environment would hurt the most vulnerable in our community without access to affordable or reliable internet,” McAllen Mayor Jim Darling said in the release. “That is why we decided we needed to invest in the infrastructure to be able to bring fast and free WiFi throughout McAllen so that none of our children will fall behind.” Although the equipment will provide high-speed internet access, McAllen city officials note the Wi-Fi signal may not enter homes, but will be available outside. In order to create a broad range coverage for internet access throughout a school day, city officials say the Wi-Fi equipment will be mounted on existing light poles in neighborhoods.
    1235:

    I suspect the truth goes something like this: A pussy which is aroused or menstruating is not showing signs of illness when it is wet. Otherwise, you may wish to consult your physician. Also, pay attention to the color, odor, and consistency of anything that comes out of a pussy during non-horny, non-menstruating times, as these factors will tell you something about the state of the vagina in question.

    Perhaps one of the female participants would like to educate us?

    1236:

    I think the key takeaway is that Ben Shapiro is so unfamiliar with female genitalia whose owner is sexually aroused that he mistakes it for a symptom of disease.

    1237:

    That's not really the point. The point is the guy is a right wing idiot who made him self look like a fool. People do not look to him him for advice on vaginal health!

    1238:

    Agreed. But could we also agree on the vaginal facts?

    1239:

    to Charlie Stross @1227: Worse, it may lead to sensitization of vaccinated folks so that a follow-on pandemic is much more lethal than one burning through an un-immunized community. But then we don't even know how long the "naturally" acquired immunity lasts for the virus.

    they set a precedent for tearing down our precautionary methods for preventing some classes of truly horrible medical disaster. The danger isn't really there - it was approved by a government agency and not by larger WHO organization, so it's decisions are effective only on territory of Russia, regardless of phase 3. There will be more trials, other countries expressed a desire to have their own testing before letting in millions of samples. So unless everybody else would rush into approval(which is highly unlikely since they don't even believe it is worth it), it is at best results in long-expected shakeup of the whole situation.

    After all, phase 3 is mass-testing, it is entirely voluntary the same way the official law declares any vaccine out there can be refused. The only difference is who will pay the damages if the phase 3 fails - and this is up to debate anyway. The bad things may happen if the local governments and other corrupt officials start to enforce vaccination with the powers they posses, which always causes to problems in some way eventually.

    The epidemic caught everybody by surprise anyway, and the worst part of it is that everybody can expect the same situation to pop up again at any time. My worst interpretations are even more grim than that - Ministry of Health is working closely MoD (in prevention and testing) and they are actually preparing not only for naturally-born pathogens and diseases, but also for the biological warfare in general. This can explain why and how they've been able to hastily build new hospitals (even though they were not in priority initially) - they've had a contingency plans for exactly that situation. https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-05-21/U-S-deployed-over-200-military-biological-laboratories-worldwide-QFtLkqhuVy/index.html Yes, I am looking at them.

    For something different, here's a particular specimen, "Cancer & Immunology Lecture": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsRVQWfqjms This guy is fairly famous, he does some spicy reviews of video games, but he also turned to be an educated biologist with a background he is not allowed to disclose. He also has his own just-below-the-radar style, so proceed with caution.

    1241:

    To be fair, they are almost all fairly weak ones, but a lot of weather differences between the USA and UK are like that; comparing the number of whatsits in a country of 9+ million km^2 with the number in a country of 240,000 km^2 makes no sense (*). We rarely get hurricanes, and almost never get strong ones, but many individual places in the UK get hit by storms or worse several times a year, every year.

    (*) Which makes me pissed off when the media is comparing the number of cases or deaths from COVID, ignoring the populations.

    1242:

    Just so y'all know life isn't always all trials & tribulations all the time.

    Aldi has bagels on special this week and some cold smoked salmon, just enough for a couple of bagels & of course cream cheese, so I had bagels with Lox & cream cheese for breakfast today

    ... and the little doggy hovering right under foot all the while to make sure I knew if any of it just happened to fall on the floor he'd clean it up to make sure none of it would go to waste.

    1243:

    Robert Prior @ 1202: Old news, but cool.

    Suggest you might enjoy Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer.

    Also note a similar parasite in one of the Laundry novels*, although it wasn't the tongue that was replaced…

    *Not giving title because spoilers…

    It was the tongue. That's why I thought y'all might find it amusing. The similarity to Charlie's plot device was what caught my eye in the first place.

    It's exactly the same, sans mind control, as the parasite Charlie used in the book ... well, except the one in the news article is a parasite in fish, and the book had it being used on humans.

    1244:

    You can't have tree crocodiles because the Ents don't like them.

    1245:

    Or maybe it's because you can only have two crocodiles, not t'ree.

    1246:

    I suspect it's also the same disease that's pandemic among the white wing: no interest in anything that's not about gratifying themselves.

    We do have the Hairball's ex saying that he never managed to satisfy her....

    1247:

    SFReader @ 1204:

    'In 1966, The New York Times described AAPS as an "ultra-right-wing... political-economic rather than a medical group," and said some of its leaders were members of the John Birch Society.[2]'

    Cue the Chad Mitchell Trio ... hit it!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWCYSVZhPoU

    1248:

    Boy, did I get that wrong. It's the Ent-wives, and they hate having to comb the tree crocodiles out of the trees' hair, er, leaves.

    1249:

    Whereas my wife often objects to the amount of tree in my hair.

    1250:

    "bagels with Lox"

    WHOOMPH.

    (Yes, I do know, but it's irresistible.)

    1251:

    And shadows fight with men of straw In pockets of derision While Mother checks her bonds and stocks Denies her intuition And sends young Julie-Anne to school To learn an empty vision That's full of paper tiger-rats To pass to her own children Welcome to my nightmare I'm the father, son, the whole polluted system It's 1984, 1984, 1984, The one we've all been longing for...

    1252:

    Damian @ 1228: And yes, as Frank noted I was thinking of the lace monitor (aka solid rock, standing on sacred ground, living on borrowed time, etc). You want a go, Anna? Not ostentatious at all...

    I saw a BIG lizard while I was in Iraq & I've always wondered what kind of lizard it was.

    I was driving at the time, so I didn't get any photos. It kind of sprang out of the weeds at the side of the road and darted across. It stretched from just a little over the center line to the edge of road (a little over 3 meters maybe?). Just as it got to the other side, a much larger lizard jumped out and gobbled it down in a single gulp.

    1253:

    humidity 75%... We are predicted to have thunderstorms

    Came through here last night. It then rained all day without thunder. 75%? Luxury. Every surface in the house is damp and clammy. My bed is disgusting because all the sweat from the past few nights is still in it and won't dry out. The table top is damp. Even the tea cosy is clammy, and that's with a hot teapot inside it. It's like living in a submarine, except not so smelly and the views are better.

    Still, in view of the major attractor in this thread, I think I ought to repeat your book recommendation from the previous thread: A LINE IN THE SAND - You said it was about Sykes-Picot, and it is, but it isn't just about that; it goes on well beyond the WW1 period that I've studied quite a lot, through the interwar period and WW2 and beyond which I don't know so much about. And it's pretty fucking horrific. It's not just one piece of moral filth after another, it's a whole stew of them all going on at the same time and nobody has any fucking honour whatsoever.

    1254:

    It's exactly the same, sans mind control, as the parasite Charlie used in the book

    Where do you think I got the whole idea from? Cymothoa exigua just trips off the tongue, like another parasite of note: Placobdelloides jaegerskioeldi ...

    1255:

    Pigeon @ 1250:

    "bagels with Lox"

    WHOOMPH.

    (Yes, I do know, but it's irresistible.)

    Yes they are ... although I think that other kind of LOX is usually written in ALL CAPS.

    1256:

    Sacculina, as I've mentioned before, is something I've been familiar with for a long time, thanks to "Strange Compulsion" by Philip Jose Farmer, which is here: http://archive.org/stream/Science_Fiction_Plus_v01n06_1953-10_-_Gernsback/Science%20Fiction%20Plus%20v01n06%201953-10%20-%20Gernsback_djvu.txt

    The fish tongue one is certainly one I associate strongly with Charlie, although I had heard of it before and didn't believe it until I looked it up.

    Charlie: I remember the weird and awful behaviours but I can never remember the biological names; I see I've got some more looking up to do...

    1257:

    Ah, a typical summer day here in the US east of the Mississippi. Maybe east of the Rockies but I've not lived on the plains.

    Thunderstorms are not something they predict or not. They occur most every day late in the afternoon for 2 months. It is just a mater of over your head or 5 or 10 miles away.

    1258:

    Charlie Stross @ 1254:

    It's exactly the same, sans mind control, as the parasite Charlie used in the book

    Where do you think I got the whole idea from? Cymothoa exigua just trips off the tongue, like another parasite of note: Placobdelloides jaegerskioeldi ..

    I thought that might have been the source, but I didn't think it was my place to be putting words into your mouth ... so to speak.

    1259:

    If we got them over here I'm pretty sure I would agree... but we don't. There's a semi-apocryphal tale that a British reporter in the US telegraphed a report home during a period of poor catches and consequent oversupply of bagels with the headline "Lox lag brings bagel boom". The British office replied "Your message hopelessly garbled it reads lox lag brings bagel boom." Of course, in the other sense, it is the wrong way round...

    1260:

    Re: '... it's decisions are effective only on territory of Russia, regardless of phase 3.'

    Russia's decisions might be effective only within Russia but the consequences of those decisions are not. Travel between Russia and the rest of the planet is still happening therefore unlike what the ads say about Vegas: what happens in Russia does not stay in Russia.

    Plus, Russia borders 14 other countries and I'm guessing that every mile of these borders is not patrolled therefore people can and do enter and leave to pick up local supplies/treats which now includes virus. FYI - the border countries are: Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Norway, Poland, Ukraine. That's a lot of other nations' populations to put at risk.

    COVID-19 has already been genetically analyzed and its 'family tree' published so it's now incredibly easy to identify where a particular variant came from. If the untested vaccine somehow allows for a random, new, more virulent variant to survive and cross the border into China all bets are off as to political and economic consequences.

    China is Russia's major trade partner/importer: not a good idea to tick them off.

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/1003171/russia-value-of-trade-in-goods-with-china/

    1261:

    "Mammal pregnancy is so, sooo much worse.

    Literally entire biological network gets re-worked, massive damage to host (cognitive, physical, hormonal, resource) and so on."

    I quite agree. Simply the idea of a 4kg neoplasm is bad enough, without all the other stuff that happens because this particular kind of neoplasm is expected.

    Pigeons have it much better. Just do a couple of shits and then sleep on them for a bit over two weeks. They're not even particularly big shits; when they're on the nest they don't shit overnight and all the night's shits come out when they get up in the morning, in a lump which is at least as big as an egg but without the rigidity.

    And their external genital arrangements are the same both for WZ and WW, so they don't have this annoying asymmetry that mammals do. They can do it either way up with equal facility. Similarly there are no physical awkwardnesses involved if they are gay or trans, which they quite often are.

    What they don't get to miss out on is behavioural stuff like the male partner being an arsehole to the female one, but then that's a consequence of sexual reproduction with both partners taking an equal share in caring for the young, irrespective of how the reproduction bit actually works.

    1262:

    "I think the key takeaway is that Ben Shapiro is so unfamiliar with female genitalia whose owner is sexually aroused that he mistakes it for a symptom of disease."

    Several months ago the entire Internet paused for an afternoon. That was due to a US right-wing twitter columnist/commenter stating that in his experience, women don't like sex much.

    Everybody on Twitter just turned and looked.

    1263:

    Twitter videos from the command line are easy.

    If you don't have the link to the actual twitter post, but only one of those bastard t.co things, you can resolve that safely using wget. t.co has the interesting property that if you hit it with a user-agent string that it recognises as a browser, it doesn't do the redirection itself, it just sends an http meta redirect with javascript backup to make the browser redirect. So you don't get the target page itself, you just get a short snippet of HTML containing the target page's URL, which you can extract with a regex or simply by inspection. This gives you a link in the form twitter.com/$username/status/$biglongnumber/video/1 or similar.

    youtube-dl can handle twitter videos as well as youtube. In fact it can handle bloody nearly everything, it's a super piece of code. It gets updated like every other week and you generally need the updates, but the Debian sid repository is rarely far enough behind the upstream to matter.

    So you can wget the t.co URL, extract the twitter status link from the output, and pass that to youtube-dl to get the actual video. Something like this:

    (I set $ua to a real browser user agent string in my .bashrc so that I've always got one handy for using wget on sites that bitch about user agents. "Opera/9.80 (X11; Linux i686) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.16" works.)

    youtube-dl $(wget 'http://t.co/1hAv3aN1TcHy4r53' --user-agent "$ua" -O - | sed -e 's/^.URL=([^"])".*$/\1\n/')

    Or just do the steps separately by hand, it's not much more hassle.

    Alternatively, if you use hootsuite, the tweets it fetches come as javascript objects with all sorts of useful stuff in them - including all the REAL URLs for everything, bypassing all the fucking t.co shite entirely. So it's possible to hack hootsuite's javascript to make it display the REAL URLs directly in the tweets instead of the shitty ones. However, this isn't really a solution unless you're also prepared to hack it extensively in other ways as well; in its standard form it's absolutely stuffed to the gunwales with ads and tracking and analytics and fuck knows what other shite, and there's so much of it it's a fair old exercise to get rid of it all.

    You may also be able to do the same thing with the twitter website itself, but that's even worse so I don't bother with it at all these days. It's basically how youtube-dl works, though, so the possibility does exist.

    1264:

    IIUC, the conditions for the release of the Russian vaccine are such that, however it is advertised, it is actually a poorly supervised Phase 3 test. It's limited to medics and teachers and for them it's optional. Presumably records will be kept, and supply will limit the total number of vaccinations.

    So in practice it's not a vile as it's being advertised. And if they keep careful records it may even be good procedure.

    1265:

    Two words for you: Crop Milk.

    1266:

    Re: ' ...limited to medics and teachers ... And if they keep careful records'

    Okay - so right off the bat you've got skewed demos in your Phase 3. As for the records - depends on what they bother to measure/track. Russia does not have a good history re: medicine/biology.

    'Teaching Evidence-Based Medicine in The Former Soviet Union: Lessons Learned'

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4112671/

    1268:

    So I came across this post on fark, in a thread about WAP: "A couple of hot female rappers, at least one of whom used to be a stripper, made up some funny stage names and then they made some music videos, one of which refers to how easily they're able to self-lubricate their genitals without the use of any male participants. Some guys with under-confident penises who probably have not discovered lesbian porn find this offensive."

    sigh And the Whole Internet Is Abuzz... Right. My reaction is "it's the white wing, who are terrified that anyone isn't falling over them in their sexiness might be having... FUN without them.

    Whoop-de-do. SotMN, would it have killed your self-image to explain it in a couple sentences, like the above?

    1269:

    Clearly the next Miracle Health Food.

    1270:

    Oh, and if my PoV isn't pellucidly clear, I'll buy you a drink, if we ever meet in person, if the rappers' intent was to piss off all the guys who got sooo upset.

    Mmm... I see someone named Brad Anderson, I think it was, is all upset. Well, anyone who's seen The Show knows the correct response when he shows up on screen.

    1271:

    as Frank noted I was thinking of the lace monitor

    I've seen examples that are big enough that a cat would be more of a snack than a problem. But I haven't seen a big one move fast enough to catch a cat so I don't know if they actually prey on them. I suspect not.

    Random facts about lace monitors:

    monitors actually produce mild venom similar to rattlesnake venom. While this toxin has only a slight effect on people, it is may help subdue small prey animals.

    Cat == small mammal? Hmm.

    1272:

    S&P stock index reaching new highs despite economic weakness is no surprise. Assume for sake of argument what I suspect to be true, that several times the worth of US annual product in dollars to be covertly sloshing around world markets seeking safe investment opportunities. This represents the assets of billionaires which are protected (hidden) from taxation by various schemes, built up over decades.

    Usually they'd favor predictable returns from bonds, which tend to be lower than what stocks typically generate, but more reliable. Only now there's an order of magnitude more target seeking money from rapid wealth concentration, chasing a roughly steady supply of bonds worldwide, so the interest rates naturally go way lower. Because any time they're lined up begging to shove pitchforks full of cash at you, you don't have to offer much in the way of interest payments to sweeten your bond sales deal.

    Rates are in fact so low that in many examples it's a negative return after inflation, and occasionally even without considering inflation, like in Japan. So there's a lot more willingness now to take the plunge into riskier asset categories like stocks, especially if you can hire the best talent, brains and computer power available to do your stock picking. That's who you compete against when you're trying to decide how to cushion your life savings nest egg. No guarantee you might not get lucky, but over time the odds favor the house. Counter intuitively, high stocks during a pandemic mean the market anticipates an "extended period" of low returns, i.e. recession or worse. Decreasing returns mean the market is indeed a zero sum game, so as in poker, if you can't find the designated loser, look in the mirror.

    What Biden might try as an exit from the slow motion train wreck, is to conjure up a few trillion out of thin air like the CARES act did, borrow like never before at unprecedented low rates in the bond market, and spend it on economic stimulus programs. There's a slew of spending targets long neglected, Congress can pick their favorites. Spending would increase, economic activity pick back up, rates rise back to historic averages and the overinflated S&P would spew cash back to bonds. So stock prices right now are a contrary indicator of the overall national state of wellness, it figures Trump chose it as his preferred metric for government performance.

    1274:

    This is also a small genre on twitter:

    Penelope, reading Odysseus' diary: "What does WAP mean? It shows up a lot in here..."
    Odysseus, without blinking: "Wrathful, Angry Poseidon"

    — Classical Studies Memes for Hellenistic Teens (@CSMFHT) August 11, 2020
    1275:

    Cat == small mammal? Hmm.

    House cats (as opposed to wildcats or other feline species) are smallish: my hairy officemate weighs 2.5kg, a big male Maine Coon or Norwegian Forest cat may be up to 10kg ... I'm 94kg.

    We assess the effective dose of a drug (or poison) in units of weight per kilogram body mass: if a drug has an effective dose of 10mg/kg, it'd take almost a gram (think in terms of two paracetamol/tylenol tablets) to affect me, but 2-10mg (the size of a few grains of salt) to have a similar pharmacological effect on a housecat.

    1276:

    There are tens of millions of businesses in the US, the various S&P indexes represents a tiny number of them.

    It measures those component companies performance and not the larger economy. In bad times, not everyone does poorly.

    Ex: The top5 by index weight are doing very well Apple Microsoft Amazon Facebook Alphabet(googl)

    1277:

    Tai chi is a good way to learn empathic touch.

    As I've discovered over the last five years, so is judo*... there are warmup and training exercises designed to get you to concentrate on balance, and the breaking of balance (similar to the descriptions I've seen of "pushing hands", AFAICT, but without the formality or jargon).

    The whole "training as a pair" (tori / uke) definitely encourages empathy, if only because what goes around, comes around - you've got a vested interest in making sure that throws and holds are done with suitable consideration for your partner, because in two minutes they're going to be practising it on you...

    • For all that it's "the gentle way", it's a full-contact, full-strength sport; just without blows. It's the only reason I can cope in my fifties - that, and considerate partners in the class, some of whom I'm related to**

    ** Once free training starts, if I'm working with my nearly-black-belt son, I can only delay the inevitable outcome via treachery, deceit, and a thirty-kilo weight / strength advantage... :)

    1278:

    whitroth No, she couldn't ... because that would be speaking in something resembling, erm "Plain English" - rather than mountains of obscurantist bullshit.

    moz Cats are FAST The still-lamented Ratatosk could strike so fast that my eyes couldn't follow the strike. There's aslo a very ancient YouTube of a bobcat vs a big rattler ... The rattler didn't actually stand a chance, either. See also: "The Game of Rat & Dragon"

    Martin Sorry, but - & - W T F is "empathihc touch"? And "training as a pair" is absolutely fuck-all use if/when you have to do it for real on j random criminal/insane mugger/assaulter/rapist. Though, I must admit, my extremely ancient fencing training has got me out of trouble a couple of times - a v. quick belly-poke ( Thrust in quarte? ) to my would-be-assailant, followed by me legging it as fast as I could whilst they tried to get their breath back.

    1279:

    Fortunately I don't think we have anything bigger than domestic cats here. I hope that's because no idiot introduced them. We have bigger predatory mammals, just not felines.

    Wandering round the rewilded parts of Australia I appreciate that anything over 10 grams doesn't regard me as prey, with extremely rare exceptions. It's mostly the sub-gram ones that make life unpleasant - leeches, ticks, mosquitoes, bull ants etc.

    Anything big enough to eat is well used to the idea that being eaten is what will happen if it gets close to me. They've had evolutionary time to make that connection.

    1280:

    Getting enough of it to count as food would be the miracle!

    1281:

    Doesn't quite scale, because cat livers and kidneys don't work as well as humans. TL;DR is that cats are more sensitive to a bunch of things per kilo than humans are. This includes chocolate, celery, sarcasm...

    1282:

    Speed of cats... my late ex - this is in Florida, on the Space Coast, told me that she came out onto the screened-in patio, to find a couple of the cats playing with a copperhead (very poisonous). She said they looked up with an "oh, phoo, it's mom", and faster than she could see, killed the snake.

    1283:

    And "training as a pair" is absolutely fuck-all use if/when you have to do it for real on j random criminal/insane mugger/assaulter/rapist.

    (My experience with martial arts is primarily Aikido, which is related to the Judo that Martin referred to.)

    Using a martial art in combat generally has a high skill floor. If your primary goal is self defense, look for self defense classes. Instead, the benefit from martial arts is learning about how the human body can move and be moved. What sort of movements depend on the martial art in question.

    For example, in Aikido (I suspect Judo places a similar emphasis on this), the first thing one learns is how to fall. Everything comes back to falling properly, because practitioners fall a lot. Later one starts focusing more on redirecting another's momentum, which brings us back to falling, because if you do things properly, that's what said other is now doing.

    While there are immediate benefits, I would not count combat readiness among them. Even the more martial ones tend to derive more from dueling practice (like fencing) than combat.

    1284:

    If you buy a bottle of wine that costs under $100 you can almost guarantee that the cork in it isn't real.

    I was wrong. Talking to my contact today, the cut over is around $30 to $50 depending.

    But to whitroth's questions, they work hard to make you think it's real. And most people never notice.

    1285:

    You DO know that helmets (a) may protect your head in the case of a crash, but also (b) may increase your chances of being hit by a car and (c) may increase the risk of brain injury if you go over?

    I DO know that this is a belief of yours and strongly held. I also know a lot of medical people who would strenuously disagree.

    For now I'll go with the medical people.

    1286:

    For example, in Aikido (I suspect Judo places a similar emphasis on this), the first thing one learns is how to fall. Everything comes back to falling properly, because practitioners fall a lot. Very much this. As a kid I took a community 8-week Judo class. Largely, it was about learning how to fall, mainly basic back breakfalls. At least that's what I remember. Decades later, I fall very rarely, but when I do, the judo breakfall slap always happens, turning a potential bone-breaking fall into a light bruise or two and a reminder to pay attention. Got a couple of black belts in a hard style later in life, but that style did not teach falling.

    Cats are FAST Cats are quick.[3] Part of their "speed" is predictive; they model prey behavior, IMO with a sort of empathy(but not proven scientifically). (Also, big pupils seem to mean faster reaction time, personal experience.) A fun aspect of playing with a cat is surprising them. (E.g. go around a corner, stop, holding breath, and wait for curious cat to look, then pounce. Young cats will sometimes jump straight up into the air.) There are other small vertebrates that are faster. Some shrews and moles are super fast. Hummingbirds are also super fast. Flight mechanics and control of escape manoeuvres in hummingbirds. I. Flight kinematics (5 Sep 2016?) Reaction times were 21±1.4 ms for magnificent hummingbirds, 22.5±8.3 ms for blue-throated hummingbirds, 28.5±8.1 ms for black-chinned hummingbirds and 53.5±10.7 ms for broad-billed hummingbirds. Except for broad-billed hummingbirds, all the birds had reaction times much lower than those reported for the visual feedback of insects. For example, hawkmoths have >50 ms delays in responding to moving flowers (Sprayberry, 2009),

    [3] Note: if I boost into a low-grade tachypsychia[1] I can sort of keep up with most of them[2], though their visual systems seem faster and small size (vs humans) and flexibility help them too. [1] This guy is right, IMO: Time slows down during accidents (Valtteri Arstila, 27 June 2012). Except the effect can be trained to some extent. [2] I observe human reaction times; some people are faster than I am. (E.g. kids generally have a reaction time advantage, at least 15 ms, depending on age difference can be much more.)

    1287:

    I think cats are pretty good at predicting trajectories. Pigeons are better, but that's to be expected (I've had both as pets).

    What's interesting is that some cats seem to have trouble modeling other cats' mental states. I've got new (to me) cats who've been living with each other for years, and I'm pretty sure one reason they're happy to be here is that I'm faster at sorting out their inter-feline disputes than they are, so I stop stuff from escalating.

    1288:

    Ah, takes me back to my misspent childhood. (My mother got that as a single. Failed to go through twice; the third time they got smart and ordered using the B-side ("Golden Vanity"). I still know most of the words to both, more than 50 years later.)

    1289:

    My parents' cat Harry would get eyes as big as saucers when she went into hunting mode. It was a sure sign that she was going to be very quick and the claws were going to be out. (Harry and her sister Sammy were capable of catching and killing young jackrabbits.)

    1290:

    I think the key takeaway is that Ben Shapiro is so unfamiliar with female genitalia whose owner is sexually aroused that he mistakes it for a symptom of disease.
    To be more exact, Ben Shapiro is so unfamiliar with female genitalia that he asked his wife, a doctor, why a pussy might be wet and she said that it was probably caused by disease. The implication being that little sexual arousal is going on in the Shapiro household...

    1291:

    The wine industry in general wants to get away from cork, which brings with it nothing useful and spoils a percentage of bottled wine. In Aus these days, the only thing you can say about a bottle of (non-sparkling) wine that has a real cork in it is that it comes from overseas. There was a time when buyers thought that a real cork meant the wine was higher quality, and this led to winemakers with crappy vintages shipping them with cork to take advantage, but that's largely petered out as consumers have learned. TLDR is that a basic metal screw cap is the most practical top for a wine bottle and gives the best results. Sparkling wines that follow a traditional method might be different, though I suspect it persists with those simply because people like the experience of popping the cork. There's more or less renewable cork these days, so it really isn't a sustainability to cost thing.

    1292:

    why a pussy might be wet and she said that it was probably caused by disease

    I'm thinking about her past interactions with Ben Shapiro and why she might want to tell him that.

    But on the other hand I still recall the 16 year old son-of-a-doctor who was absolutely certain that girls can't masturbate. At the time I just put it down to his parents leaving sex education to the school (our school "sex education" barely mentioned sexuality, it was more about periods and wet dreams). And the slightly horrible line I came up with "I want your body... will you leave it to me when you die?"

    1293:

    I prefer screw caps for non-sparkling wine, but they're still rare for French wines.

    What I really don't like are the plastic 'corks' - those still need corkscrews, but they're harder on the screw. At least they seem to be disappearing as producers and consumers come to terms with the screw caps.

    1294:

    Re: Time perception

    Interesting article - thanks!

    Time perception has been looked at among children and adults with ADHD, esp. duration estimation - both passive/idle as well as while completing a task. Not sure what the sentence below is supposed to mean considering there's also been some MRIing done.

    'While there has been little empirical research on the phenomenology of time passing by, there is a considerable amount of research on our performance in various duration estimation tasks.'

    The few times that I've experienced time slowing down in the midst of an accident my attention was hyper-focused and my speed and strength also was more focused (increased) wrt to whatever movement I needed to do to get out of harm's way. Based on personal experience the paragraph below seems an apt description. Okay - I have no idea which parts of my brain lit up during any of these events but this narrative 'makes sense' of what happened and how I felt while it was happening.

    'As regards the function and effects of the activation of locus coeruleus and noradrenergic neurons that originate from it and release norepinephrine, converging evidence nowadays suggest that this system plays a complex role of “mediating shifts in attention and in promoting optimal behavioral performance” (Sara, 2009, p. 220). In more detail, the most important effects of locus coeruleus norepinephrine system for the topic at hand are the following. First, the increase of norepinephrine has the result that our attention becomes more focused (Berridge and Waterhouse, 2003), the shifting of attention to new targets is facilitated (Aston-Jones and Cohen, 2005; Yu and Dayan, 2005), and the functional integration of brain systems related to attentional tasks improved (Coull et al., 1999). Second, the increase also facilitates our working-memory performance (Arnsten et al., 1996; Ramos and Arnsten, 2007), task-related decision processes, and associated behavioral responses by increasing speed and accuracy of responses (Clayton et al., 2004; Aston-Jones and Cohen, 2005; Grefkes et al., 2010), and speeding up our behavioral adaptation to the environment (Devauges and Sara, 1990; Bouret and Sara, 2005). In addition, our clarity of thoughts possibly improves (Berridge and Waterhouse, 2003). Finally, with the increase of norepinephrine our sensitivity to sensory surrounds becomes enhanced and our perception is affected as neurons respond to stimuli faster and more accurately than in usual conditions (Berridge and Waterhouse, 2003; Aston-Jones and Cohen, 2005). Note that this does not mean that the temporal resolution of perception would improve, just that when a new stimulus appears, it is processed in less time than it would under normal situations. Altogether, the previous effects mean that the activation of locus coeruleus norepinephrine system speeds up our internal processes concerning the relevant features of the situation at hand and subsequently improves our behavioral responses to the environment.'

    I've very little understanding of AHDH and have read very little on this topic but some research notes that people with ADHD undergoing therapy report a change (normalization) of their time perception/attention. No idea which meds cause this but such a result suggests that it is possible to regulate our time perception chemically therefore it's likely we could regulate our time perception on an as-needed basis. (Could see some real-life applications here esp. prototype jet test pilots, Formula 1 drivers, military ops, teachers/TAs grading exams/midterm papers, authors, etc.

    1295:

    Another possible win for Brexit:

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-11/diseased-chicken-for-dinner-the-usda-is-considering-it

    The UK can get in on the ground floor of another cancer causing virus when Avian Leukosis crosses over into the human population.

    1296:

    Cats are quick.[3] Part of their "speed" is predictive; they model prey behavior, IMO with a sort of empathy...

    Reminds me of a passage I read in a recently-read book:

    The fiercest animal on the prairie, and therefore my boyhood symbol of wild nature, was the red fox. The sporty, lolling, yipping red fox. It's an extraordinary animal. An adult red fox is able to run at seventy kilometres per hour. They've been observed trying to race airplanes down runways, the way dogs will chase the wheels of a car. When hunting, a fox can leap eight metres and land with enough precision to pin a mouse beneath its forepaws, meaning that at takeoff the fox has accounted for its own speed and trajectory, the speed and trajectory of the mouse, along with other factors such as wind and ground cover, all without ever actually seeing the prey. Such a pounce is so carefully controlled that a fox will, at times, beat its tail to one side or the other in mid-air to adjust its flight path. There were always fox dens on my home prairie.

    MacKinnon, J.B. The Once and Future World.

    Worth a look if you want an ecologist's view of how degraded our current ecology is. He tries not to be depressing, and gives examples of successful rewilding and species brought back from the brink of extinction. However, it's hard to take any message out of the book other than "we are screwed, and getting more screwed with every passing generation."

    1297:

    I quite like wine corks. You can use them for all sorts of things.

    Sealing bottles of wine isn't the job they are most effective at though.

    1298:

    Getting rid of wine corks destroys much of the economic value of cork trees. That, tied to a rampaging insect/fungal disease might mean the destruction of cork tree plantations.

    Replacing them will result in increased use of petrol based plastics, or diversion of prime agricultural land to growing more sugar for "plant" based plastics.

    I like real corks, but I'd rather have screw tops than plastic corks, which have broken two of my fucking leathermans.

    1299:

    Circling back to sort of where I started this.

    There is not enough cork in the world to come close to being able to use it to stopper all the wine bottles in the world. And due to geographical and climate contraints there it might not be possible to actually grow enough cork to handle the need for every wine bottle to be "corked".

    But there is enough "snob"appeal to a real cork that there is now a huge market in faux corks. They look and act like real cork but are made from plastic resins. Which is not the same as the obvious plastic corks. Both tend to be made by the same companies. The one I personally know about has a sample case with their products ranging from obvious cylinder of plastic to not really real looking imitation to "seriously, this is not real?".

    This company has factories in the Americas and Europe so my contact doesn't know as much about the Asia/Pacific market.

    1300:

    I quite like wine corks. You can use them for all sorts of things.

    Turns out a lot of people are using faux corks for things like heat pads for pans when they think they are using real cork corks.

    1301:

    sigh Too damn many "good Upright Moral Christians".

    When my twins started college, what, 20-some years ago, they were required to take a sex-ed class (and this was the last class that came in girls only). First day, they told me, the instructor said, "Ok, who here has had, for sex ed, only your mother taking you aside when you turned 16, and being told 'don't do it, but if yuo do, use protection'?"

    My twins were the only ones not to raise their hands.

    1302:
    They look and act like real cork but are made from plastic resins.

    Yes, yes, Nomacorc

    Hate the shit. Far harder to pull than a real cork. Like I say, broke two of my leathermans. (Broke the assist-bottle/canopener on one, broke the corkscrew on the other).

    1303:

    That.. is not helpful? Seriously, my parents never bothered with the talk at all, because Danish schools can be generally be trusted to a very good job on this point. Half the class was relationship advice, and still generally some of the best such I have ever seen.

    Re: Martial arts and self-defense. This depends a lot on the art, and even more on your specific dojo. The one I went to in my twenties was fairly hard-line on "It must work on non-cooperating opponents, and not get you in more trouble than it prevents". Which meant the basic advice was a lot like Gregs experience. The pithy formulation was "Rabbit tactics. Kick them in the legs, then run". Because nobody is going to catch you in a 400 meter sprint while nursing a huge bruise or dislocated knee.

    1304:

    Re: Martial arts and self-defense. This depends a lot on the art, and even more on your specific dojo. The one I went to in my twenties was fairly hard-line on "It must work on non-cooperating opponents, and not get you in more trouble than it prevents". Which meant the basic advice was a lot like Gregs experience. The pithy formulation was "Rabbit tactics. Kick them in the legs, then run". Because nobody is going to catch you in a 400 meter sprint while nursing a huge bruise or dislocated knee.

    Bingo. So far as I understand it, in the US, the profession that gets assaulted the most is....nurses, especially in psych wards and emergency departments. Patients and relatives often get extremely distraught, or are in altered states of consciousness and radically misperceive the situation.

    What they teach nurses is nonviolent self defense. This is a system created by Bill Paul, an Olympic silver medal judoka who also got seriously into tai chi, and got his PhD in psychology from Harvard. He designed the system because of what he saw in the psych wards. The nurses had little awareness of the body signals the patients were giving off and no training in de-escalation, so they often got into fights that he, as a very aware judoka, easily avoided with a bit of redirection or de-escalation. I should point out that his PhD was on the psychology of self-defense, something he knew a bit about.

    NSD has no strikes or kicks*. It's a lot of de-escalation and psychology, coupled with distance management, disengagements, ducking, and footwork. The closest thing it has to an attack is an arm bar to take people down gently from behind (you often see two or three cops using it, because they get trained in NSD too).

    Paul claimed it worked better than the Karate he also taught. While it needs a lot of practice, you can learn the principles and basic practices in a day.

    *This actually is true on barehand situations. Against guns, they give the standard active shooter advice.

    1305:

    John Hughes Euuuwwww.....

    Paging sleepingroutine More Nazi agents of ... somewhere or other ... Somehow, I think not. If Lukashenko is sensible, he should run for it, right now, otherwise he could end up like Ceaucescu

    1306:

    If your first cmt is about lack of sex ed, this is the US, where, since the late seventies, the white wing self-proclaimed evangelicals have attacked everything that happened since the fifties, and fight tooth and nail against sex ed.

    Meanwhile, in the early nineties, there was a study showing that, of unwed teenage mothers, four to three asserted they were evangelical Christians.

    1307:

    Pigeon @ 1259: If we got them over here I'm pretty sure I would agree... but we don't.

    Hmmmmm? That's interesting. Where exactly is "over here"?

    I've only visited the U.K. once back in 2004, but I'm pretty sure I saw Bagels in a Tesco store. Stirling the day I photographed the double rainbow over the castle. First place I went after I got off the train from Glasgow. It was raining & I wanted some big zip-lock plastic bags to make an ad hoc weather proof for my camera. While I was in the store I indulged my curiosity to see how much like or unlike it was to the supermarkets back home.

    I remember they had a bakery department (and maybe a deli counter) & I think bagels were one of the items on offer. It was quite like the supermarkets here, although the brand names were different.

    And I remember a Costa Coffee inside or near the Queen Street Station in Glasgow had breads & pastries & I think maybe bagels?

    1308:

    Far harder to pull than a real cork.

    Lots of wine bottlers don't use the right size when they switch from real to faux. Which typically causes the issues like you've had.

    1309:

    It will almost mean the extinction of the Iberian lynx, at least in the wild.

    1310:

    Look on the bright side. Mine was mainly on the evils of masturbation.

    1311:

    JBS & Pigeon OF COURSE we have Bagels/Beigels in the UK! If only from the jewish immigration wave during the C19th mostly from Tsarist Russia Though the oldest still-working synagogue is, needless to say in inner E London See HERE And there is the world-famous: Brick Lane Beigel Bake My grandparents & some of their antecedents came from that area - Huguenots. Maybe that's why I could never get my head around anti-semitism This landmark building is the marker for the area. Note the photographer (!) - there was a project to record all the "Listed" buildings & structures in England - a friend told me about it - & I'm glad I got the chance to do this one. Orignally on 35mm film, taken with a 21mm lens ( VERY wide-angle ) to get it all in. Absolutely perfect winter lighting, I'm glad to say.

    EC What! Not getting enough of it, produces repression & high blood pressure? 😈

    1312:

    I've just been reminded, by an expert .... You've all heard of the Great Jaffa Cake Dispute, yes? ( Charlie will explain, if you really need to know! ) There is also the Toasted Bagel controversy Same idea as the "Jaffa Cakes" - subjecting food to a process - is it or is it not subject to V.A.T?

    1313:

    And "training as a pair" is absolutely fuck-all use if/when you have to do it for real on j random criminal/insane mugger/assaulter/rapist.

    Errrr.... rubbish. How do you think you develop the skills and timing that you need in order to knock someone to the ground, or avoid being knocked down yourself? Or develop the awareness of how unskilled you actually are, rather than a mistaken belief that a stiff jab to the chin will sort out the rather rude chap to your front?

    If you want to learn how to do a hip throw or a leg sweep, you start out by practising it with a cooperative partner. As your skill improves, your partner injects progressive amounts of resistance, and movement; and you learn to feel how much you have to push/pull/move to get them genuinely off-balance, and thrown. Eventually, they are trying their hardest to avoid being thrown. Being "a good uke" is about helping someone to learn how to do a throw/hold; if necessary, planting your centre of gravity onto their hip, or back, so that the throw actually works. It's far better to learn by doing it correctly, than repeatedly doing it badly. And trust me, once you get on to elbow locks and strangles? If you aren't aware of your partner, someone is getting badly injured (I confess that having my wife practice her strangles and chokes on me in a class was slightly surreal; but it's made me intolerant when I see choke holds used by the Police - eight minutes was murder).

    During each class, rather than just the "tori/uke" pair training where one practices a technique with the other's assistance, you move onto "free practice" - where you're both trying to throw, or hold, the other. Again, this is done with progressive levels of effort, and an awareness of your partner's weight / strength / experience - beginners tend to try it full-force for a rammy (testosterone, eh?) but after a while, and with the tender guidance of your coach, you realise that it's actually about training in your desired techniques, while still being fit for work the next day. Half of our class are (or have been) Scotland juniors, and the coach is an Olympian - how else would the duffers among us improve?

    I've managed to make it this far in life, fight-free and with my skull intact, because I'm a huge fan of situational awareness :) And once you've got a few basic techniques to the point where you don't have to think about it, then they might be useful in a real fight. Even your Krav Maga types will train as a pair to understand how a technique works in practice (as opposed to theory).

    Until then, AIUI, the best rule (once the avenues of "talk your way out of it / walk your way out of it / run your way out of it" have failed, and things are Heading South Fast) is "maximum violence in the minimum time", with the aim of breaking contact and legging it. But in real life, as in air combat, most people who lose didn't even realise that they were in a fight - they were punched out from behind. As one of my wiser (and harder) Corporals once pointed out, "There's not a ninja on the planet who's harder than a glass ashtray"; alternatively (for the street as much as the infantry), "If it's a fair fight, you're doing it wrong"

    The nearest I've been to getting a kicking in the street was avoided thirty years ago. It was a summer or autumn evening, a group of lads were walking towards my girlfriend and I, and the trailing lad was obviously spoiling for a fight, did the full into-my-face "are you looking for trouble?!".

    So I said "Merry Christmas!" with an air of confidence, and in the second or two that the wheels were spinning in his little skull, we'd carried on walking and were meters away, with the distance opening quickly...

    Still, for those who want to see the reality of English Martial Arts, this short clip may amuse. And here's a video currently doing the rounds on UK social media, demonstrating both the limitations of single-crewed police cars in South Wales, and skill in judo and taser... (note: the officer holds up the arm of the lad, removing the risk of a life-changing head injury; but I can verify that hitting hard ground from an altitude of three feet will take the wind out of nearly anyone).

    1314:

    I have a button: Abstinance-only sex ed is like pedestrian-only driver's ed.

    1315:

    For now I'll go with the medical people.

    Strong agreement. Over the years, having seen two or three friends end up on the wrong end of a car / ground impact, I always wear a helmet when cycling. In over a decade of Edinburgh commuting, I never had to rely on it (come close a couple of times), but then I've never had to rely on my car's seatbelt or crumple zones either.

    After all, do the professional road and track cyclists wear them? Yes? Then I'll do what they do.

    1316:

    Way back 30 years ago there was someone my wife and I were interacting with while both were looking for new jobs. He seemed to vanish. Pre cell phones / email days. We were friends but not close. We thought he decided to move on and we were not a part of his new life.

    After 2 months he showed up. Had been in the hospital for most of that time. He had been found beside the road with his bike nearby. And with no memory of what happened. Or of the entire day. Maybe more. No helmet.

    1317:

    Interesting situation in nz: a Samoan MP from a very Christian (ie, Samoan) area supported decriminalisation of abortion on the basis that :

    “When you see the stats of [the number of] married women who have abortions, and you see young women abandon their newborn babies, you have to ask yourself what is going on is not right. I know there’s some problems in our communities, and in the role I have, I need to speak out about that and allow our communities to better to understand it.”

    He got elected before, hopefully he'll get elected again. Pragmatic MPs of any stripe are worthwhile.

    https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/07-08-2020/abortion-became-legal-in-march-but-it-still-divides-labour-in-south-auckland/

    1318:

    Can I remind you all that you are mostly reporting anecdata to support the position "if you hit your head it is better to be wearing a helmet" rather than anything about whether always wearing a helmet makes riding a bicycle safer.

    Especially when it comes to mandatory helmet laws, it's important that we use proper evidence rather than anecdote, and focus on whether the proposed solution addresses the problem, and on what other effects the solution might have. So, for example, if we banned bicycles we would largely eliminate bicycle-rider head injuries. Any suggestions should ideally be better than that, while also being better than banning helmets.

    It's worth remembering that on the road cyclists are a persecuted minority in the USA and many other countries. So ideally your solution would also avoid making that problem worse.

    1319:

    to Greg Tingey @1305: More Nazi agents of ... somewhere or other ... Since you are not that strong at history or at basic politology in general, it can't be helped to explain to you, but for other people out here I would remind something. Nazi agents should be known for their anti-communist propaganda, which of course includes blaming everything possible on communists (and of course Yews), including their own crimes. Spewing bullshit that something can be worse than Nazis in Belarus of all places is the clearest indication for lying, dodgy narrative of a Nazi agency.

    https://www.thesundaily.my/world/reuters/lithuanian-president-gitanas-nauseda-s-office-says-he-told-belarus-opposition-leader-sviatlana-tsikhanouskaya-he-supports-her-plan-to-create-council-i-XN3483653 It is really simple by that point. Those who attack Belarus right now are Nazis, and they have Nazi flags and Nazi demands, and those who support the attackers are Nazis too. Most of them are also well aware of their own nature hidden under thin disguise of "freedom" and "democracy". Current Belarus scenario is an attempt to repeat the same story that happened on Ukraine, point by point, because the people are just that dumb and can't learn from their mistakes.

    If Lukashenko is sensible, he should run for it, right now, otherwise he could end up like Ceaucescu Lukashenko is much more sensible than a bunch of corrupt oligarchs, it's just his age is over. He does know that he has nowhere to run, and if he runs, that would discredit him more than he is willing to. As for opposition leaders who already ran away, there's nothing to discredit in the first place, so nobody is surprised.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/belarus-releases-protesters-eu-discussion-sanctions-200814080637874.html What this release of detained people shows very well is that absolute majority of them are young, or middle-aged, healthy individuals, who at best poorly imitate tired looks on their faces. And anybody without attention deficit should have noticed that. Unfortunately, we have already seen that even if they will start killing and burning in the name of their Nazi ideology, the press will just turn blind eye as it always did.

    You probably also missed another Nazi demonstration of power, this time within Twitter realm. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/08/10/twitter-us-state-media-ads-voa-persian/ You are going to live these people, not me. Your problem, not ours. We have our own problems, thank you very much.

    1320:

    Ah, anecdotes....

    Did I ever mention that I spent the summer of '74 and three months of the summer of '75 as a bike messenger, in downtown Philly? And they wouldn't let us ride our own bikes, we had to ride theirs. Esp. the second summer, when they had enough high school kids, they'd keep me back at the office, since I was also a bike mechanic, and those bikes.... They told me they got 10 Korean bikes for, I think it was $85. No, not each, ALL 10 OF THEM. For a start, after two weeks, with the idiot kids riding them over curbs and up steps, I would have to replace the cotter pin on the crank, because it was aluminum. Really.

    Worry about the bikes that people ride, first.

    1321:

    I used to share a house with a DI corporal, a Fusilier with Velcro stripes who had completed the Commando course and was transferring to 3 Para when we parted company. He got into fights occasionally, never lost one or so he claimed. He got bottled in a Portsmouth pub once, the modern non-returnable bottles don't do anything much these days, or so he said.

    1322:

    I can verify that hitting hard ground from an altitude of three feet will take the wind out of nearly anyone

    My favourite saying on that: if you're going to hit someone, don't use the flimsy sack of fragile bones on the end of your arm, use the bloody big rock you're standing on. With the side benefit that I don't think any criminal law regards the planet as a weapon.

    1323:

    reporting anecdata to support the position

    My anecdotal was an addition to what the trauma medical people I know tell me. And they work with the results. And have some data.

    To hear some interesting stories talk to a nurse from the ED ICU department. Anyway they HATE it when someone from a bike (powered or not) is on the way in.

    1324:

    You're still stuck at "if you hit your head it's better to wear a helmet". And I suspect you are merging motorbikes and bicycles, but you're not specific so I can't be sure.

    1325:

    You can also look at the relative cost of a cheap helmet versus the relative cost of a cheap concussion times the probability of getting the concussion per biker-hour, or some such. Since I had a concussion, I had no quarrel with wearing a $15 helmet, because it was considerably cheaper, even if I never took a header.

    1326:

    I wonder how much effect unified government has on pandemic response? Saint Jacinda doesn't have anyone to share the blame, but Scotty from marketing is in full on "I'm sorry that the premier from the other party has let you down" mode. The federal system apparently discourages cooperation but has lots of shared responsibilities. I'm not sure any of those work very well, especially with budgets where the federal government does the taxing but the states have the spending responsibilities. Aged care is just one more item on the "federal government gives money to the states for...".

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/15/scott-morrisons-coronavirus-mea-culpa-was-barely-disguised-score-settling-with-daniel-andrews

    1327:

    If I were riding a motorcycle, there's no way I would not wear a helmet. And long pants. And a jacket.

    I had a friend, an actual member of a motorcycle gang, who agreed with what I'd read in motorcycle mags in the seventies: it's not if you go down, it's when.

    A bike isn't the same animal.

    1328:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/14/vladimir-putin-claims-ebola-virus-vaccine-has-been-developed-by-russia https://tass.com/science/919498 Definitely not the first time history repeats itself. Doesn't seem like this pushed system to its limits. More like, nobody bothered to notice.

    to SFReader @1260: That's a lot of other nations' populations to put at risk. No, you don't get it, it's the other way around. That is a lot of countries that put Russia's population at risk, and a lot of them are also less than neutral, so border guards are looking for the signs of diversion as well. The problem scales up even further as these countries will not accept Russian help in epidemics and probably too poor to afford proper vaccination programs by themselves.

    @1266: Okay - so right off the bat you've got skewed demos in your Phase 3. As for the records - depends on what they bother to measure/track. Russia does not have a good history re: medicine/biology. Bullshit. Absolute garbage. Medicine in USSR, as all academician disciplines, was not just good, it was excellent - for its's time. Unfortunately this time is long gone and current academic circles and government structures did not develop as fast for decades. They are severely maimed by liberal reforms, consequences of defunding and constant corruption, which includes, but not limited to foreign influence by NGOs. Adverts on radio and TV are full of "advanced", "natural" or "magic" items which would cure all aliments - something that would be impossible to imagine back in the good old days, is that also a fault of government healthcare then?

    Only liberal cretins think that USSR legacy should not be reconstructed, preserved and expanded. By liberal logic, everything that comes from USSR is communism, communism bad, and therefore should be erased from the face of Earth regardless of casualties. Because, after all, casualties can be written off as victims of "communism". And this has been continuing for 30 years.

    If there's a specialist who is good at his "evidence based medicine", let him do his job, teach people good things, because then some other practitioner of "facts-based" medicine will come in and try to teach his own knowledge. He must understand that his purpose is to construct and improve and not destroy, and it seems that he understands this much by the end of the article, if you would read it carefully. For myself, I believe that trying to teach principles of EBM to physicians with different educational backgrounds and different cultures has made me understand a little more about how to communicate with my patients. Nevertheless, in the long run, I also believe that our own country has to make sure that all secondary educational institutions teach the principles of the scientific method, logic, and human biology in a competent manner if we are going to succeed in providing our patients with the opportunity to make good choices about their health care.

    1329:

    And, of course, the US healthcare system is Bestest of All!!!

    Excerpt: US health insurers doubled profits in second quarter amid pandemic

    The enormous medical response in America to the coronavirus pandemic has not put a drain on US health insurers, which doubled profits in the second quarter of 2020 compared with the same time last year.

    The US fight against the virus has been marked by overwhelmed hospitals, testing delays and personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages, but the high profits reported by some insurers have underlined concerns about America’s for-profit healthcare model.

    The country’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, reported its profits were $6.7bn in the second quarter of 2020 compared with $3.4bn in last year’s. Anthem’s profits rose to $2.3bn from $1.1bn for the same three-month period in 2019. Humana reported last week its earnings rose to $1.8bn, compared with $940m in 2019. --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/14/us-health-insurers-coronavirus-pandemic-profit

    1330:

    In Aus these days, the only thing you can say about a bottle of (non-sparkling) wine that has a real cork in it is that it comes from overseas.

    Ditto in NZ. It's rare to see a fake cork as well, certainly at the price point the vast majority of people drink. I occasionally get a case from a direct importer, so it is worth the space to keep a lever-corkscrew in a kitchen draw.

    1331:

    I'm personally a fan of wearing a helmet when I ride a two wheeler, even on bike paths, because I live in a country where bicycles are officially scum to be discouraged.

    BUT I also live in a country where the highest rate of no-helmet fines is in Blacktown police command, a suburb named the Australian way, it's where we put the blacks. But compliance surveys suggest Bondi Beach is actually our scofflaw central. The difference in policing is that at Bondi the cops ignore the problem or give "verbal warnings" while the much poorer, browner folk get fines. Are helmet laws a social good?

    There are also major issues with when a helmet helps. If I'm using a bike lane next to a divided highway the major risk is someone hitting me from behind with a collision speed of 80kph or more. A helmet isn't even decorative at that speed. Likewise when I'm cycle touring on open roads. On my three or four wheel bikes. When it's 40 degrees. The law still requires me to wear a helmet.

    I'm not really interested in motorbike discussions, I'm mostly chiming in because idiots want to conflate bicycles with motorbikes and argue that users of both are morally inferior.

    1332:

    Both. If they are headed to the hospital in an ambulance things are not good. No matter what kind of non enclosed conveyance they were on.

    1333:

    To add a comment or few.

    I don't ride bikes. Of any kind. Bad knees don't make for pedaling and motorized bike look like all kinds of fun till they are not. But I'm all for folks who want to co-exist with the rest of us when they ride.

    And yes the best thing to wear at speed on any bike is leather. Giving up the leather to the road beats the same for skin is what bikers tell me.

    I'm all for adding dedicated bike lanes when roads are rebuilt. And if reasonable as add ons to existing street. Especially major arteries around our city. Much to the consternation of my suburban neighbors who want the 50s/60s to stay around forever. In their minds bikes are for pre-teens only.

    I also think the pedaled folks who ride at speed on the greenway walking paths and who ignore all traffic rules when on the streets need to be forced to ride bare assed through a briar patch. Repeatedly till they get it.

    And in my city over the last few years we have added line art to the streets to better allow pedaled bikes to share the streets with cars. But of course since this wasn't in the original plans for the street the line art can be abstract at times to say the least. I've yet to get anything from the city saying how to interpret some of the more interesting cases that have been drawn. I try and just be more aware when in the midst of such. A biker I know casually was on the city committee to better communicate such things. They were supposed to start meeting earlier this year. I think they are on hold.

    1334:

    sleepingroutine YAWN Your Putin-paid propaganda simply will not wash - as fpor "jews" I suggest you read my # 1311 It is really simple by that point. Those who attack Belarus right now are Nazis, and they have Nazi flags and Nazi demands, and those who support the attackers are Nazis too. Deliberate, public, & liar. Lukashenkp COULD run to Moscow, or possibly Turkey ...

    Call to moderators to watch "slr" posts for propaganda & lies - almost as dangerous a QAnon's. maybe ...

    & @ 1328 Well,that's a load of more bollocks, too.

    1335:

    To me, arguments against bicycle helmets can sound a lot like anti seat belt arguments, both involve uncommon, but real circumstances where someone was better off without, and ignore more common situations where one's better off protected.

    1336:

    Well, at the moment I've got no argument with the notion that the users of mountain bikes are morally inferior. There's a rash of new trails strewn with trash in a local reserve I tend. It's an ecological reserve because it's kind of a last-of-its kind stand. They happen to be building a shopping center next door to it, and the two-wheeled jackasses who had been trespassing on that parcel decided they needed more trails on the parkland, because some of their favorite loop trails got bulldozed.

    While I can intellectually acknowledge that bicycles are valuable in many parts of the world, it's the behavior of these pro-extinction assholes that made me get rid of my previous bike and not buy another one. And note, these are not commuters, these are upper-middle income boys of all ages (16-60+) who are over-privileged scofflaws. I hope the lot of them get chronic orchitis from their rides and get laughed at by their spouses.

    1337:

    Thumbs up.

    We have similar situations here. Big legal fight over trails that have been made on airport property and lawsuits to keep airport from removing them and putting up legally required security fencing. This is all tied up with:

    Airport security Local watershed rules (trails and fencing both impact this) But we've been doing it so let us keep doing it. Breaking wilderness park rules next door. With a side order of stopping airport from construction that has been on the books for years.

    1338:

    [shakes head] Back in the eighties, a close friend who at the time was living with his folks around Cooperstown, PA (outside of Philly) would walk the property line (this was a number of acres), because, in spite of being posted, assholes on ATCs would ride onto their property and crash through to make trails.

    Trust me, he and I both thought of wires....

    1339:

    Perhaps going totally off the current topics of viri and two-wheeled vehicles and whatever else, this turned up and slightly reminded me of the quantum realities of the Merchant Princes stories(*):

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2587-z "Here we experimentally demonstrate a method for the generation and stabilization of Schrödinger cat states based on the interplay between Kerr nonlinearity and single-mode squeezing in a superconducting microwave resonator."

    I love it when they talk like that. And was amazed that, after a couple of look-ups, found it somewhat comprehensible.

    (*) My favorites of the oeuvre, overall.

    1340:

    Lukashenko is much more sensible than a bunch of corrupt oligarchs, it's just his age is over. He does know that he has nowhere to run, and if he runs, that would discredit him more than he is willing to.

    I suppose if he did run, the narrative from Moscow would be that Belarus has suffered "a coup", like they claim happened when the Ukrainian leader ran. Then insist that the "coup" means that any treaties or agreements are now invalid, and that they can invade "because it was always part of Russia"?

    As for opposition leaders who already ran away, there's nothing to discredit in the first place, so nobody is surprised.

    If you "run away", it's generally caused by fear. You're not suggesting that Belarus is so undemocratic that score-settling is performed against those who dare to oppose the President, are you?

    It might be almost as dangerous as being an opposition politician in Russia; it's amazing how quickly they get arrested for "illegal gatherings", or fatally mugged like Boris Nemtsov. Even moving abroad is no guarantee of safety, you might end up with Po-210 in your tea or Novichok on your doorhandle.

    1341:

    Trust me, he and I both thought of wires....

    Every year, I have to remind myself of two things: 1. It's really hard to set up effective anti-trespassing devices that are non-lethal, and B. Trespassing is not a killing offense, no matter how annoying it is.

    That said, it takes a lot of community work to turn the tide against this kind of crap, and the pandemic has made things more volatile.

    1342:

    Ok, Greg (since now most of this has hit mainstream sources and/or is 'being handled')

    What you could do is run the Beyrut story (AN - industrial - Georgia shipment via UK/Cyrpus Klept) and run all the various 'oddities' of placement of our words that looked random against another story running just after (well, in public) we were flicking noses.

    Look up Mozambique (MZ), TOTAL $60 bil LNG (ok, not oil, replacement for green 21st century), ISIS (not really, tracing their funding leads you to some rather beautiful architecture, but same types) capturing the supply port, the Mercs in-zone whose efforts have been laughably bad (not Wagner, Prince's lot), the USA seizing (some might call it piracy) four tankers shipping IR oil to Venezuela (not how the rules work - once you've sold a produce, unless it's on various .mil lists not your problem), UAE/IL/USA 'Abraham' accords (mere formalization of largely biz deals kept private unless you're like 95% of the Lobby biz tbh) and so on. Oh and throw in various response to UK Navy non-.mil ship docking in Beyrut (vaguely positive) vrs US / FBI offers (bad vibes regionally), with various 'biggus dickus' missile tests (Arrow? IL) and Hamas (? think? a rocket, not a missile, anyhow), a lot of sub searching (cough is that a TR one, an IL one or RU? Or just a bit crowded) and GR/TR ships bonking each other with one going off to exercises while the other limped back to port. Oh, and IL limiting fishing rights (agaaaain) due to balloon fires (rain helped, no-one spots the south LB / N. IL rains, our work is wasted).

    Like: sooooo much more many data points to flag up, but here's the thing: you gotta see the liminal ghost side pinging at the same time as it all being true.

    Like: throw in FR nationals (NGO? Tourists? Weird in COVID19 times to travel cough) being killed, Belarus crowd control being via Polish / CSK supplies (and unlike stuff the USA is using, looks in-date and also under arms control non-resale agreements, not that anyone can actual enforce those).

    So.

    You gotta see the mirror from 2014 to 2020 that was being shown. Feel free to ask.

    Fair warning: searching for some of those will get you various nasty vidoes of bodies in ditches, human trophy taking, bombs going off and so on.

    ~

    But, no, really: mirror the 2014 story with the 2020 actions. Heck, you might see how we see things for once (but you all get really upset if it's not revealed through 'proper channels', so hey, we tried to be subtle (as a brick they scream).

    Ask Martin to verify if FR just stepped up Med Ops to counter-balance TR aggression or not, or if GR has asked for (Oct so no-one is really taking the sabre rattling that serious) NATO level discussions about ship dings. It's true.

    ~

    Or, you know: know about the '7 countries in 5 yrs' New American Century, and how IR arms embargoes just went 2-2 11 abstain (just now, if we wake up a bit, was busy) as this strongly Abrahamic desire to immanentize the eschaton via certain things (Chabad, for instance, getting 'representation on every Nation' type stuff and wafting red beef under the noses of Christians is preeeeety naughty if you're old skool) might get a bit frisky for 2020.

    As for the FBI stuff? 100% true. Want the docs?

    1343:

    Ugh, slipped (don't count as post, guv!) Oh, and check out SA sending CY formal notifications of respecting airspace / naval stuff and when it was done. Was probably just a tiny bit after our snippy comments about treating them as serious partners.

    For Belarus, you have to note that RU are probably a bit bored of Lush' old style stuff and see relaxation / lift of citizens within their sphere as a counter to whatever the IMF is cooking up for LB and others now that CN has expressed severe annoyance that ports are being removed from their plans.

    Oh, and those pipelines... always about pipelines.

    [this is part of prior post]

    1344:

    to Martin @1340: Then insist that the "coup" means that any treaties or agreements are now invalid, and that they can invade "because it was always part of Russia"? Not until a self-declared government starts it first (which is certainly going to do because this is the only thing they are really capable of). Which was the case of Crimea, when they pretty much said "we are breaking the agreement and will take territory it by force, if necessary". And so the answer was: "Well, you've said it".

    I suppose if he did run, the narrative from Moscow would be that Belarus has suffered "a coup", like they claim happened when the Ukrainian leader ran. Then insist that the "coup" means that any treaties or agreements are now invalid, and that they can invade "because it was always part of Russia"? The legal basis can be established relatively easy, you can as well say that country needs to restore "constitutional order" on behalf of "government in absence". Both sides can play this game.

    It might be almost as dangerous as being an opposition politician in Russia; it's amazing how quickly they get arrested for "illegal gatherings", or fatally mugged like Boris Nemtsov. How many more "opposition" figures you know? Most of them are doing perfectly well in the government despite supporting liberal movements and media. See, when you are dealing with enemies, security can be established. But what about your... "friends"?

    1345:

    Trespassing is not a killing offense

    At one point I owned the obvious way to get off the top of a ridge that started in what's now a national park. I'm guessing at least 50 groups a year would walk down through the pass, down the valley then out to the driveway and follow that 5km-ish out to the road. No motor vehicles, at least then - Aotearoa had a strong community pressure against motorising wilderness. It was one of the surprises when I got to Australia.

    I had very little damage (a few seedlings), but I did have to emphasise to the pest control hunters that they needed to pay close attention. If you accidentally shoot a dog that's one thing, but a boy scout?

    One less fun thing was the need to post pest control notices way the fuck up the back of the property. Instead of one by the gate and done, it was bush bash four hours up and put tape, arrows and signs in three places, then start placing bait/poison or shooting.

    1346:

    I like real corks, but I'd rather have screw tops than plastic corks, which have broken two of my fucking leathermans.

    Yikes! That's not supposed to happen, certainly not twice. The good news is they should be still under warranty. The bad news is they've retired the Juice line so finding a Leatherman corkscrew is no longer easy.

    Disclosure: I'm not unbiased and briefly worked at Leatherman, for about six months and years ago.

    1347:

    "Bad knees don't make for pedaling"

    It quite thoroughly sorted out my damaged knee cartilages. I worked out that the physiotherapy exercise I had been given to perform as a tedious supernumerary activity could quite straightforwardly be incorporated into the everyday actions of pedalling and going up stairs. (At the time, I lived in a top floor flat and went everywhere by bicycle, so those two actions came together.) So instead of having to put up with spending the allotted time doing this incredibly boring thing, I was able to spend considerably more time doing it as a part of doing stuff I did anyway. It didn't completely fix the damage - wouldn't expect it to - but it did make things a heck of a lot better.

    The purpose of the exercise was not so much to try and repair the unrepairable as to strengthen various muscles so that the knee was more effectively held together during flexing and didn't get loose enough to allow the damaged cartilage to get where it shouldn't be and get damaged worse or jam things up. It worked a treat for several years until I went up Wetherlam having not been up anything for ages and kept wandering about on it well beyond the point where the muscles were too tired to maintain that tension, which kind of buggered the rest of the holiday, but by that time the habits of the exercise seemed to have become well enough ingrained that it fixed itself again eventually.

    1348:

    1342 Oh do STOP IT You simplly cannot/will not accept that the Beirut explosion was down to termninal repeated incompetence, corruption & laziness, will you? YOU ARE WRONG I'm going to re-post someone else's link THIS ONE Now, run away & take your Dried Frog Pills, there's a good little loonie?

    sleepingroutine TWO countries which DO HAVE something appraoching Nazis in them, to everyone else's embarassment - are both in the EU. Poland & Hungary But, unlike Ukraine or Belarus, they have something else in common, that "Uk" & "Bl" do not have ... A very powerful, very corrupt, utterly evil organisation, that had a very close relationship with the actual Nazis ( Even though some individual members wanted nothing to do with it ) But, as you will see, this does NOT apply in Belarus or Ukraine or for that matter Georgia .. The Roman Catholic Church There used to be a site called: "Nobeliefs.com" - but it seems to have vanished - if anyone can find their material, I would be grateful - I had the old site bookmarked.

    But - Belarus & Russia & Georgia are, erm "Orthodox" .... Lukashenko, however, has something in common with Orban & Duda ... His contempt for half the Human Race ( The females ) & anyone at all percieved as a "minority", especially "sexual" In fact they are all like Trump, oops.

    1349:

    Don't really see the problem. To be sure, I have no experience of feeding human babies, but I have plenty of experience of feeding pigeon babies, from the point of hatching onwards, and it seems to be a lot less hassle than all the arsing around with bits and pieces that feeding human babies seems to take. Doesn't seem to matter that I've got totally the wrong organs; they're versatile enough to avoid the need for tools and equipment to replace them that arises in the mammalian case, and also that I can mimic the fast-charging procedure that the adult pigeons use. It probably helped that I shared enough of the usual pigeon gut flora that I began making the same kind of smells, but that kind of goes without saying if the situation's going to arise much.

    The difficulty is getting suitable ingredients from Western human food shops. Not a lot of things have a sufficiently concentrated protein and fat content to make an adequate substitute, and the obvious things that do have enough are unsuitable in other ways. Dairy products are right out, because they go off in the crop and you get this kind of self-sustaining tendency for everything else to go off too; the little pigeon has to be kept on nothing but lots of water for a day or two to flush the acid and the microbes that produce it out of their system, which is a long time for a baby pigeon.

    The solution I found that works is to carefully examine the lists of ingredients on the various different versions of "I can't believe they think people won't realise this shit's not butter" to find one that has absolutely no dairy content, and use that for the fat, along with dried unflavoured soya mince from the local Indian corner shop for the protein content. Plus a tiny crumb of a multivitamin pill and a few crumbs of chalk or concrete or other mineral substance with plenty of calcium. Mixed in suitable proportions to make a good sludge by chewing them up together with a sip of water, in a size of mouthful appropriate to the size of the pigeon, or maybe two when they start to get big. No tools or messing with lab equipment required as with feeding human babies, and a fair bit less messy and gross than doing the latter naturally, too. In any case, adult pigeons get off on simulating the procedure with each other, so they can't think it's too bad.

    1350:

    The Seagull has you hooked again, has it? Another notch on the keyboard, another shout of triumph rings out. Was it because they used your name right up front in the posting?

    I suggest you do what you were doing before, do not reply, do not acknowledge their posts. I personally do not respond to anyone who engages with them either but that's something you might want to make your own mind up about.

    1351:

    "A bike isn't the same animal [as a motorcycle]."

    Agreed. I've fallen off both, several times, and the big difference is speed. A bicycle you're going slow enough that you just more or less stop. A motorcycle you're going a lot faster and tend to have to come to a halt gradually by sliding along the road, and it's a lot better to slide on dead cow skin than your own live stuff.

    I remember one exception to the sliding rule: losing a bicycle cornering at about 30mph resulted in quite a slide. But all the abrasion was taken on the end of the handlebar, the end of the pedal, and the end of the rear axle. I remained in a normal riding position without contacting the road until the bicycle had come to a halt, and the only pain was that the abrasion had severed the chain to the hub gear so I was stuck in top until I replaced it.

    Similarly with the being launched through the air thing. I don't actually know what happens because my awareness vanishes after I've gone two or three metres and doesn't return until I'm on the ground again, but I presume I must do something suitably acrobatic because I'm not damaged afterwards. I've done that both from a motorcycle and from a bicycle, thanks to dickheaded car drivers, and I've done it in what was probably a much more spectacular way if only I had a video of it, from one of these things: http://st.mascus.com/imagetilewm/product/bb6fc563/benford-mbr-71,1e1013be.jpg

    Those things kick. The long handle jerks up in the air and launches you; you're pretty much wrestling with it in any case so you have a good firm grip, and when it kicks it happens so fast you don't know what's happening until it's too late. It happens to everyone sooner or later. It happened to me while trying to get the thing off the back of a Transit flatbed, so I was some way off the ground to begin with, and I remember approaching the peak of my trajectory a bit below the level of the roof of one of the site cabins, which was itself up on blocks, so maybe 4 or 5 metres up in the air. Then it all goes black until I'm picking myself up off the ground afterwards, a bit shaken but not actually hurt at all. I guess that what happens is the sudden flying experience causes a momentary were-pigeon transformation; it might be nice to investigate further, but it probably wouldn't happen if I was expecting it.

    The thing with bicycle helmets as I understand it is that a proper helmet like a motorcycle is quaite beyond the pale, and because it's a bicycle the only permissible option is a kind of polystyrene toupee that makes you look like a complete penis. These are good enough for protecting you against having tortoises dropped on your head, but the typical impacts from coming off a bicycle are often from a direction that they don't protect against much, and may even make matters worse by catching on things and levering your head round to an unnatural angle. Or so I understand from people who've actually done tests of coming off a bicycle instead of just ordering everyone to wear a book on their head because that solves everything.

    1353:

    Nojay Possibly But ... she is determined to stick to her mad conspiracy fever-dream, because - otherwise - she would have to admit to being ... um ... wrong.

    Pigeon The problem with bicycle helmets is that (some) motorists believe that they can get much closer to or destabilise a pedal-cyclst, if they are wearing a helmet ... Chances / risks / balances. Um. In summer, I wear nothing on my head whilst cycling, in cooler comditions I do wear a hat.

    1354:

    Getting advice on bicycle riding from some here is like getting relationship advice from Catholic priests.

    Mind you, I do like the idea that every doctor is an epidemiologist who only ever expresses options that are solidly backed by peer reviewed research. Although I fear the consequences for our medical systems if that were actually the case, because it already takes a frightfully long time to train the non-epidemiologist doctors we have now. Adding a PhD in maths to the list of requisites might not work well at a population health level.

    If I was inclined to getting a PhD that's something that would interest me, a public health - exercise - cycling sort of doctorate. I wonder if my existing publications would help or hinder that?

    1355:

    Apologies to OGH for the continued peddling of cycleganda...

    because it's a bicycle the only permissible option is a kind of polystyrene toupee that makes you look like a complete penis

    Nope. I wear a mountain-bike helmet that looks more like what a canoeist would wear; continuous shell, offering protection against side impact. There are even versions which offer the "cutouts" of the polystyrene toupee, with the whole-head coverage of mine; IMHO more protection than a canoeing helmet, less than a climbing helmet...

    ...thirty years ago, when choosing a new bicycle for my city commute (I couldn't afford both a mortgage and a car) I picked up a cheap mountain bike rather than a road bike. Better gears, wider and thicker tyres that were less likely to puncture, and much better brakes (calipers were still standard on road bikes, mine had cantilevers). Harder to pedal, and not as fast, but those were a feature not a bug - forty minutes a day up and down Edinburgh's hills were my primary source of exercise. When I stopped commuting by cycle ten years later, my fitness dropped and my weight rose :(

    The Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative are brilliant, by the way ("The Revolution will not be Motorised!"); and we've occasionally used Glentress Forest with the kids. Hanging four bikes off a towhook rack is less challenging than trying to keep up with a fit 18-year-old on a hill climb :)

    1356:

    Getting advice on bicycle riding from some here is like getting relationship advice from Catholic priests.

    While I don't bike ANYMORE I did a fair bit in my younger days and some into my 40s. And I raised 2 kids who biked into their teens.

    We current non bikers are not all celibate for life.

    Now as to current equipment standards and such, I defer to the mob here.

    1357:

    ...that's never been our position. Stating false position then railing against it is precisely what we've shown you (if you bother to check who is claiming each piece) as not working as propaganda, btw.

    The fact you can't spot we've been saying it's accidental but causally interconnected with massive Power flows within the region is the issue. Then again, you've not bothered to go deeper into the story than that.

    In fact, the 'fact' it's accidental is actually causing a lot more panic between various parties (who would love to have X nicely placed on Agent Z to confirm their already existing biases).

    Then again, why bother giving you links to each and every one of the facts stated there?

    You've BBC brains - scrambled eggies. Or the opposite one: "Silence those who spot the levers".

    "We vote Judaism not Buddhism"

    Yes, that's nice dear: you can do both, you know? Exclusionary thinking is what got you into this mess in the first place.

    p.s.

    Go look up MZ + TOTAL + MENA + PRINCE for example. More corruption than you can throw a stick at within 10 seconds of searching.

    ~

    Anyhow, done with this for a bit. But look up the above, it's both True + Correct. "7 countries in 5 years" - fucking insanity.

    1358:

    The problem with bicycle helmets is that (some) motorists believe that they can get much closer to a cyclist

    That appears to be the result of some research; but for me, "how much closer" and "how often" are significant questions... it may be that empathic drivers just give an obviously-delicate cyclist a wide-enough berth to skew things. Repeat the experiment to control for different styles of bicycle, gender/age/physique/stability of the rider, experience of the car driver - and I suspect you'd see more interesting results.

    Certainly, Police Scotland have been running an advertising campaign around unmarked police bicycles ("Operation Close Pass") - pass too close, and the traffic car just up the road will pull you over to have a quiet word, with camera evidence. How many unmarked bicycles is conveniently unmentioned, but what matters is getting the possibility of unmarked police cycles into the heads of drivers.

    The three occasions where I was nearly taken off my bike in Edinburgh all involved long vehicles, and the driver failing to realise that the back of their vehicle hadn't finished passing me as traffic surprised them into pulling towards the kerb (a bus, an articulated lorry, and a small pantechnicon). Nothing to do with whether I was wearing a helmet, they'd forgotten me in the moment and were entirely focused on the wolf nearest the sledge...

    1359:

    In Denmark cars were taught to keep distance by "lollipops" like this one:

    https://image.1905.dk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/small_image/295x295/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/api/4485__1.jpg

    They made from soft-ish plastic, they are hinged, tear of easily, give a very disturbing sound inside the car hitting them, and leave a competent scratch in the paint-job.

    Highly recommended.

    1360:

    "Nope. I wear a mountain-bike helmet that looks more like what a canoeist would wear..."

    You've missed the sarcasm ;)

    (My own headgear is basically a compensation for not having any hair on the top of my head; it's intended to keep the rain and wind off my bald nut in winter, and to keep the sun off it in summer otherwise it goes red with white spots and I look like a fly agaric. It still makes me look like a complete penis, though.)

    "Certainly, Police Scotland have been running an advertising campaign around unmarked police bicycles ("Operation Close Pass") - pass too close, and the traffic car just up the road will pull you over to have a quiet word, with camera evidence."

    That would really get on my tits. They don't need any further encouragement not to "pass too close" over the propaganda they've had already, they need deprogramming to cleanse them of its effects. Cars passing "too close" is not a problem. What is a problem is cars sitting on my arse because they're convinced there's not enough room to pass. Six inches more width than the total width of the vehicles is buckets. It used to be just the divots who don't know how wide their car is anyway who did it (the types who slow down to go between truck-excluder bollards), but now there are diagrams in the Highway Code instructing everyone to do it and I wish they would take them out again.

    (Vehicles coming past and then cutting in too soon is a different problem. That's not because they're too close to the side of you, it's because they're suddenly too close in front. They do it to each other as well, and sometimes to lamp posts and walls and things.)

    It's a problem for two main reasons. One is that I am prevented from weaving out to dodge drains and broken glass etc. in case the pillock who is sitting on my arse for no reason picks that moment to realise that there is actually no reason to sit there. So I have to ride over all the drains and bits of missing surface and other crap in the gutter (setts, sometimes...), instead of only the ones I encounter when a car is actually coming past.

    Falling off or wobbling while a car is coming past just means I'll bounce off the side. Falling off when it's sitting on my arse means it's probably going to drive over me. Also, the most frequent reason for falling off is some other dick in a car driving into the side of me, and the sight of a car passing on the other side of me is one of the most effective things at persuading them not to.

    The other is that I'm perfectly well aware that other than in exceptional places like Cambridge, I'm being a pain in the bloody arse to the great majority of road users simply by being there and going a lot slower than them, and everyone just wants me to fuck off. So I try to keep as much out of everyone's way as I can in order not to piss them off more than I can help. It's both embarrassing and infuriating to be made into a much bigger pain in the arse by people being propagandised into imagining that I'm a much bigger obstruction than is actually the case.

    I don't have any time for people who blether on about "oh the law says all road users are equal" as if that somehow negates the physical facts of the situation. It also says that you should treat other road users with consideration, and I have even less time for the people who think that that only goes one way because not being in a car puts them above everyone else, and therefore they should be given every consideration and more, while they have no corresponding obligation to give any at all back. On a bicycle I don't have an engine or a protective cage, and therefore I am both unusually vulnerable in myself and fucking annoying to everyone else. For both reasons it behoves me to ride in accordance with the humble status that exists in reality, and not in accordance with some selective reading of the law that justifies arrogance and ignorance. On the other hand I am also very narrow, which can greatly mitigate both the annoyance and the vulnerability if people aren't being programmed to pretend it isn't the case.

    1361:

    I keep her blocked. It's quite a pleasure to know that I don't have to deal with the issue.

    1362:

    Looks as though Lukashenko is talking to Putin NOT GOOD Expect RU miltary take-over in all but name & brutal suppression - especially of the women, of course. Excuse from sleepingroutine NOT accepted

    1363:

    In Denmark cars were taught to keep distance by "lollipops" like this one...

    Some American cyclists have used pool noodles to mark out the necessary traffic space. Brightly colored sticks are highly visible in traffic. An empty foam tube is much too soft to harm anything that hits it - but a driver can't be sure it's soft until after committing to avoid the obstacle.

    1364:

    to Greg Tingey @1348: TWO countries which DO HAVE something appraoching Nazis in them, to everyone else's embarassment - are both in the EU. Poland & Hungary

    Good recollection, and I would like to note that Hungarians are less known for their post-war activities. Probably because USSR did a lot to pacify them in the afterwar period. Poland, however, was always very active in Eastern Europe, and invested quite a lot in current regime changes. Unfortunately for Poland itself, occupational regimes like Reich or NATO do not bother to indulge their subsidiaries, so currently again they receive very little of what they've hoped to get.

    OTOH, you conveniently forgot about 3 other countries that are also in EU and also share a lot of things with said organization. Probably because they are much younger, although you can count Lithuania as a remnant of the old power. In the light of recent protests, these guys are little more consistent than pocket regimes up north, and has been fed the revanchist propaganda for quite a while. https://www.heraldbulletin.com/news/nation_world/small-lithuania-has-outsized-role-as-eu-faces-belarus-crisis/article_e16db3ec-ae46-575a-987f-77f94b7d24af.html strong pro-democracy voice embraced democracy promoting democracy beacon of democracy a regional leader in democracy promotion people's democratic awakening Watch them long enough and they still slip their tongue with unfortunate implications.

    1365:

    MODERATION NOTICE

    Y'all didn't get the hint earlier when I said I was getting sick and tired of the b*cycle neepery, so I'm disabling comments for 24 hours.

    I'll allow comments again when folks learn to read the moderation comments.

    Update

    Comments back on again. Sheesh.

    1366:

    "Moderation Policy

    1: This is my soap-box. This is my soap box, not yours...I don't owe you anything. And by posting here you are tacitly agreeing to play by my rules. 2: Censorship Your freedom of speech does not compel me to publish your words..."

    I assume you extend this same privilege to big "evil" corporations(Ex: FB, GOOGLE) or do you frown upon the idea of corporate person-hood and thus any derived privileges?

    I came across this definition on free speech/censorship when I was young and found I agree with it. I had no clue who the author was and many years later after I did, I always made sure to omit the source. I've used in in many discussions with people harping about censorship of alternative ideas online.

    "Freedom of speech means freedom from interference, suppression or punitive action by the government—and nothing else. It does not mean the right to demand the financial support or the material means to express your views at the expense of other men who may not wish to support you. Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to agree, not to listen and not to support one's own antagonists. A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own effort. Private citizens cannot use physical force or coercion; they cannot censor or suppress anyone's views or publications. Only the government can do so. And censorship is a concept that pertains only to governmental action

    --The Fascist New Frontier, The Ayn Rand Column, 106"

    1367:

    Trump's younger brother dies... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53796429 First, if Trump walks out of the White House, to cheat at golf until a ripe old age, that's good enough. Second, you missed.

    1368:

    Re: Feeding baby birds - 'protein content'

    OOC why not feed the chicks macerated bugs and worms?

    1369:

    Re: 'Freedom of speech means ...'

    Again - zero tie-in between 'rights' and 'responsibilities'. Great for ensuring that we have plenty of future generations of narcissists.

    1370:

    I think Pigeon was talking about feeding baby pigeons. Pigeons eat a largely plant-based diet, so when they're not weaned, you've got to feed them an appropriate mix. The one time I had to do it, the vet who gave me the feeding syringe also gave me the mix to feed the bird. Never had to mix my own, but I like that approach.

    1371:

    Um, two things.

    One, you're posting on a UK blog, and freedom of speech is not a UK thing.

    Two, freedom of speech in the US Bill of Rights is about government censorship. This isn't an American government blog, and Charlie has no legal, ethical, or moral responsibility to publish your words.

    Well, three: I suspect this will stay up so that others can have a say about what you posted, but that's the freedom you get here.

    1372:

    Since we're no long talking about, erm, the politics of inline wheelbarrows, I've got a question for the hive-mind.

    It comes from me thinking about self-replicating interstellar probes. Yes, I know that's getting increasingly unfashionable, but here's the question:

    With advances in 3-D printing, AI, and automation, how close are we to getting any sort of clanking replicator that can refine raw materials and make copies of itself?

    More to the point, what are the key gaps, the places in the process(es) where magic has to happen to get the whole thing to work and spit out baby clanking replicators?

    I know some of you work in (semi)relevant fields, so this is a chance to wax eloquent about 3D printers and automated mining and manufacturing, if you're bored on a hot August day and looking for something to discuss. More to the point, I'm pretty sure it won't only have two wheels.

    1373:

    dmind-bender You are quoting AYN RAND ( ! ) You are therefore insane & probably a fascist sympathiser, though not necessarily so .... censorship is a concept that pertains only to governmental action Tell that to the RC church, or muslim clerics.

    In the meantime It looks a though the DT is trying to completely crash the US election, by screwing with the postal vote. He's missed something? If the election is invalid, he automatically ceses to be "president" on 20th (??) January ... then what? And, talking of elections .... It's getting interesting in Belarus. Oh, & let's just ignore sleepingroutine on that subject, because he'll only quote "Luk" They propose sending Nato soldiers our way: black, yellow-mouthed, and blonde hair. Uh?

    1374:

    "More to the point, what are the key gaps, the places in the process(es) where magic has to happen to get the whole thing to work and spit out baby clanking replicators?"

    Semiconductors for the control-system.

    The purity requirements for semiconductors are brutal and nobody has found a way to "3D-print" perfect (enough) single crystals.

    Using a simpler technology is not a short cut, relays require a lot of copper, a relatively rare metal, vacuum tubes are incredibly intricate 3D structures, requiring (not a lot of) even more rare metals.

    1375:

    The two big obstacles I'd see are these:

    First, how does the interstellar probe find the raw materials? This requires some kind of AI, plus a huge database of things like, "This radar return indicates a high probability of finding calcium." Essentially what's required is half-dozen-scientific specialities, ranging from mining-engineer to geologist to geophysicist to geochemist, etc. We're not remotely close to being able to put that in a box.

    Second: How is the interstellar probe going to refine all these materials? We frequently imagine a bunch of robots wandering around the surface of an asteroid, but we don't generally imagine an oil refinery, a ore sorting operation, multiple foundries, a hundred different chemical plants, a chip fabrication facility, infrastructure like roads and bridges, etc., the factory which builds automated cargo vessels to haul chips from the fabrication plant to the final assembly area... all the arguments OGH has made about how big a civilization has to be to to stay at our current level apply to one interstellar probe building a second interstellar probe.

    Furthermore, each interstellar probe will have to carry sufficient unobtanium (rare metals and such) to bootstrap the kind of operation I've described in the paragraph above. Then someone/something has to exert some kind of command-and-control over all this...

    Essentially, an interstellar probe has to found a civilization in order to create another interstellar probe. It's going to be a huge and ungainly operation. More likely, an interstellar probe will be a civilization all on its own. We're looking at a very hard problem here.

    1376:

    If Hayabusa 2 and OSIRIS-REx go well, we should have more information on the problem in just a few years. Possibly before Von Neuman machines we'll get something that builds a mining and manufacturing complex and churns out orbital habitat modules.

    1377:

    You seem to have mistaken me for an American?

    I don't hold with corporate personhood -- I think it's a perversion of law. And I don't hold with absolute free speech either -- for reasons we're getting a worked example of right now (hint: QAnon, anti-vaxxers, holocaust deniers, Trump).

    Finally, Ayn Rand was a thoroughly dishonest hypocrite who provided top cover for psychopaths and looters. Not a good choice of philosophical backstop.

    1378:

    heteromeles & ph-k Why should the replicators "clank"? Maybe they should squish, instead ... it's called ... biology. "The willow tree at the bottom of my garden is pumping out information" ( R Dawkins )

    1379:

    someone asked how long until back to normal...

    based upon open source materials I've WAG'ed it as optimistically 30 months!

    please! tell me where my math is wrong... I so want to be wrong!

    6m = candidate vaccine 3m = clinical trials 1m = expedited bureaucratic blessing by FDA 2m = shakedown manufacturing workflow 18m = manufacturing and distribution across North America (averaging 1m doses per day for 500+m people --> US=340m, MX=150m, CN=30m)

    ...and if anything is less than optimal, add 3 months 'here' and 6 months 'there' and real easily it extends out to 60 months...

    tell me where my math is wrong...

    1380:

    "First, how does the interstellar probe find the raw materials? "

    I doesn't, it simply keeps stuffing mass into the mass-spectrometer until it has the elements it needs.

    In all probability, there are a lot of random atoms in the interstellar "void" and there certainly is enough time to capture a lot of them.

    You'll have to do something like that anyway, to get enough hydrogen to get enough fusion to get enough speed to be in any way relevant.

    1381:

    "Maybe they should squish, instead ... it's called ... biology."

    IMO biology, in its current form, is not very well suited to the task.

    Unless you somehow find a way to ensure long term stability, whatever the probe you sent out was intended to do, it will have different goals after a few tousand generations with random mutations.

    Given the radiation environment, both external and from your source of energy, I do not see relying on covalent and ionic bindings between light atoms as stable enough for the job.

    Mind you, getting the level of sentience just right in such a probe is very tricky business, no matter what the substrate for it might be, any small surplus of creativity will be guaranteed to lead to attempts at self-improvement, and given enough time, energy and materials...

    1382:

    Re: 'How is the interstellar probe going to refine all these materials? ... a bunch of robots wandering around the surface of an asteroid, ...'

    Guessing that the first order of business is to build, power and maintain the robots out in space since that's where they're going to have to work. Also guessing that it's probably going to remain extremely expensive to keeping shipping replacements from Earth.

    As for locating elements ... My impression is that spectroscopy is already being used to identify at least the most plentiful elements on distant planets. Assuming that such tech follows the typical product development curve, wouldn't be surprised if in 10-20 years astro/xenogeologists (?) start publishing detailed maps of mineral deposits for all of the planets found.

    1383:

    Howard NYC ASSUMPTION That a workable vaccine is developed in the USA, rather than elsewhere. The Oxford & Imperial teams are also likely "winners", if there is to be one at all. Not as good, but an effective course of treatment, especially one that minimises the unwanted blood-clotting would also be "Nice to Have"

    1384:

    Manufacturing and distribution. That is (a) scalable (unlike the earlier stages) and (b) there is time to build the facilities. That probably won't happen, but it could.

    1385:

    On my belt I have a Swiss Army Knife. It's one made by the other manufacturer, Wenger. The model is "Perfect Cyclist", and is irreplaceable - they stopped making this model over 15 years ago.

    It's the only one that doesn't have 25 blades, and weigh 2kg that has both of the two blades I need: a Phillips head screwdriver, and a corkscrew.

    1386:

    Why I rarely follow your popsts/links: I pasted MZ + TOTAL + MENA + PRINCE into my browser, using google, and got a bunch of random hits, that seemed to lack much coherence, and didn't point me in any single direction.

    1387:

    Being an optimist, a chunk of your time line is parallelizable -- the 2M manufacturing shakedown, the 18M manufacturing/distribution. 1M doses/day would be too slow even for a winter flu vaccine season, and this is a screaming emergency: I expect that a Biden/Harris administration with the Dems holding both House and Senate (the latter is a big ask) will go full Manhattan Project on it and ramp up to 10M doses/day if possible, with the goal of selling the surplus overseas once the home market is saturated. Probably by underwriting commercial vaccine manufacturers, but hey: I note the UK government already slapped down an option to buy 60M doses from a couple of manufacturers, just to give you an indication that it's not only the US who're eager to see the back of COVID-19.

    My guess is that we will not have a vaccine proven to be safe until roughly April next year at the earliest, but once they exist -- and there will be more than one, for sure -- manufacturing will ramp up rapidly. The real question is whether governments will bite the bullet and make it compulsory, or if the anti-vaxxers/QAnon/denialists types kick up a fuss. But my guess is by next April there won't be many unbelievers left uninfected ...

    1388:

    Sorry, your mind bending is more of "follow the party line".

  • He's in the UK, actually, in Scotland. US law and Constitution DO NOT APPLY (or don't you understand that laws are different in different countries?)

  • "Freedom of speech" DOES NOT INCLUDE the right to shout "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, or lie under oath (and the US "President" and anyone in Congress or the Senate, speaking in official capacity is DEFINED as Under Oath.

  • If someone like google advertises that they're a general search engine, and then biases that, that's not freedom of speech, that's bias, and a breach of contract.

  • There are no such things as corporate personhood. After that last Supreme Court decision, an ad agency tried to file for the AGENCY ITSELF to run for office, and it was slapped down. Therefore, anything else is BS, and I see utterly NO REASON for a corporation to have any reasonable expectation of free (political) speech. Oh, and while we're at it, in any criminal complaint against a corporation, the CEO should go to jail, if convicted.

  • 1389:

    Radar? Huh?

    "Spectroscopic results show asteroids there, there, and there contain this, that, and the other that we need."

    Now, collect them, and mass spectroscopy to separate them....

    1390:

    There are no such things as corporate personhood. After that last Supreme Court decision, an ad agency tried to file for the AGENCY ITSELF to run for office, and it was slapped down.

    Reminder that children are clearly persons, but aren't allowed to run for office. Classes of person without the full set of rights and responsibilities are acknowledged. (This is Not A Good Thing, in my opinion: it's a legal camel's nose for undesirable policies such as indentured servitude, slavery, and removal of civil rights from people on the basis of ethnicity, belief, age, or gender.)

    1391:

    Barriers to the creation of galaxy exploring Von Neumann machines are immense - right now. That being said, so is the time in which to resolve them. There are likely several issues we have not yet thought of as well.

    More interesting in our time frame is what would be involved in bootstrapping the creation of manufacturing facilities outside of Earth's gravity well.

    Earth Orbit or a Lagrange point seem like a good idea until you consider the risks inherent in pulling an asteroid anywhere near Earth's gravity well - not too hard to imagine a slight error or apocalyptic malice causing a big rock to drop into the well.

    There might be steps - start with some gravity and a lunar facility, then expand outwards into predictable orbits.

    1392:

    Charlie You forgot the throughly evil, corrupt, twisted trick some US states' use ... Anyone convicted of a "felony" is barred from voting, even after they have served their senetence/paid their fine. This grim farce is currently re-playing in Florida IIRC

    1393:

    The thing to remember is that in US law, corporate personhood is so that corporations can be sued, make contracts with each other and other persons, and so on. Otherwise, our logic is that if they aren't persons, then you have to sue whatever person is responsible, and contracts have to be made between people. Hard to do things like phone service under that system.

    Now, the easy work around is to define in law that these forms of "personhood" do not get such a "person" rights, that most such rights (life, liberty, property, participating in politics) only accrue to biological persons. That's been a push for a decade in the US to make this law. We'll see how well that works.

    Before anyone toots a horn on how superior UK law is, please review the huge damage the peculiarly English legal institution of the trust is causing in the world at the moment. Arguably it's worse than US legal personhood right now.

    1394:

    If you can get enough photons, you can figure out what they last bounced off of. Over interstellar distances, that's the problem.

    Changing the subject very slightly, I realized that there's an argument for replicating interstellar probes to carry life from star to star. Not sentient life, bacteria.

    First, it's possible to do so: microbes in sediments and rock under the ocean can get by (in the sense of stay in hibernation) on a zeptowatt of power (https://www.quantamagazine.org/zombie-microbes-redefine-lifes-energy-limits-20200812/) (tl;dr quote: "They found that for individual cells, this power minimum hovers around a zeptowatt, or 10−21 watts. That is roughly the power required to lift one-thousandth of a grain of salt one nanometer once a day. (For reference, a human body uses on average about 100 watts, the power of a reading light.) The new model suggests that cells living in sub-seafloor sediments are drawing only slightly more power than that."). And some of the cells in suspense may be up to 100 million years old. So it certainly looks like it's possible to move bacterial cultures between stars. Humans? Not so much, probably: we're not built for that kind of thing.

    The second, more important point is that a biosphere has powerful interactions with a planet: gas, oil, limestone, coal, an oxygen atmosphere, rain, and so forth are fairly obvious. What's less obvious is that bacteria play a big role in forming ore bodies of a number of elements. Heck, with an oxygen atmosphere there's also a lot of radiation shielding, although corrosion is a bigger hazard than on an asteroid.

    Unless an asteroid is big enough to have differentially melted and sorted itself into crust and core, it's likely to be a melange of materials, very similar to a human garbage dump. It will take a lot of energy to sort through it and concentrate the elements needed. So a probe's going to have to make a space-going civilization and carry it around as a seed, precisely as Troutwaxer noted. That might be hard.

    Getting back to ye olde interstellar songlines, interstellar travelers might do well to seed any habitable zone planet they come across with life. It won't be for them, it's for whatever comes that way millions to billions of years later. Similarly, there would be good reason for a galactic probe culture to foster life, because it would make replication that much easier. On the flip side, probes would stay away from any high powered civilization like our own, because we're in the middle of using up all our resources in a big hurry. Earth isn't going to be all that good as a probe nursery for millions of years, unless we really do a better job of cleaning this place up and living not just within our limits, but with a big surplus.

    1395:

    Radar, Lidar, Mesar, mass spectrography, whatever. The big problem is that the infrastructure to simply figure out what's in an asteroid and extract it is bigger than everything humans have sent into space combined, plus we don't have the ability to give it anything like the smarts it needs.

    And that's before you try to build something out of all that stuff you've extracted. Just for starters, how big a factory do you need simply to build all the different sizes of rivets you need? Nuts and bolts? And so on.

    1396:

    Re: '... manufacturing will ramp up rapidly.'

    Apart from the vaccine itself, what else is going to be needed ... all I can think of is what I typically see when I get a flu shot: vaccine in vials, syringes, disinfectant pads, cotton balls, band-aids. Would not be a good thing if the vaccine was ready but couldn't be distributed because they ran out of some small item ... along the lines of 'For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost ...'

    Speaking of flu shots ... how are the authorities that will be providing these vaccine shots going to ensure that everyone gets their vaccine shot safely? Any time I've gone for a flu shot at the seasonal community flu clinic it's been packed: people sitting shoulder to shoulder either in a church or indoor arena waiting for upwards of an hour. Definitely not at the standard required during COVID-19. Even if the vaccine is distributed in waves based on need/risk assessment, that's a lot of people to process.

    1397:

    "Barriers to the creation of galaxy exploring Von Neumann machines are immense[...]"

    I read Aspray's Von Neumann book this summer (recommended if you are it-archaeologically minded) and it gave rise to a question about vira in general.

    Has anybody created a "real" virus in a "Game of Life" ?

    Ie:

    We have a population of A patterns, which reproduce themselves in some amount of time, and then another pattern B comes along and subverts As to produce Bs instead ?

    It would be interesting to know what the lower bound of complexity of A and B are for that.

    1398:

    So when, how and why did the USA fuck it up? The concept of a body corporate dates from the 15th century in English law and, UNLIKE corporate personhood, it is a largely sane concept.

    1399:

    My understanding is that the current notion of corporate personhood came from a Supreme Court ruling.

    Said court ruling cited a court document from California. That document had a notation by a court clerk who was a bit...pro-corporate...that implied that corporations were people because they could be sued.

    Anyway, annotations by clerks are not law, but the Supreme Court chose to use this notation as the basis for their ruling. In other words, it's a house of cards, but it's easier to pull it down with an act of congress than anything else.

    Problem is, of course, most of the money for political campaigns comes from corporate persons, so there's a need of a bit of a revolution to clean out the layers of problems this is causing.

    1400:

    Dunno, but it's an interesting topic. A long while back, Conway gave a talk which ended by him saying that he had been given access to a massively parallel computer, and wanted to know if anyone had any ideas of how to tell if a pattern evolved into a living organism.

    Or, at least, he asked the question. Being a traditional academic, he may have been trying to get his audience to actually do some serious thinking. I have thought of it several times since, and it's beyond me.

    1401:

    Re: 'microbes in sediments and rock under the ocean ... interstellar travelers might do well to seed any habitable zone planet they come across with life'

    Okay - but now that we know about extremophiles that means a lot of poking and testing that (if we're being ethical) we need to do first before any seeding.

    Ever since COVID-19 ramped up I've been watching virus related videos and am now considerably less inclined to have us mess with any ecosystem. We don't know enough about viruses on our planet - which ones pose risk vs. which are vital to us, animals, plants, etc. We also probably don't understand all of the dynamics involved in a growing, healthy and self-sustaining ecosystem.

    1402:

    3m = clinical trials

    I have enrolled in a trial. Was supposed to get my physical and first shot (booked for 3 hours) of vaccine or placebo first week of this month. Got a call at close of business the day before saying don't come by, we have a technical issue and will be back in touch. Have yet to hear from them. Lots of people seem to confuse the term "vaccine trial" with "next step of easy process".

    Around the first of April I was telling people 12 to 18 months. 99% of the people I talked to then thought I was nuts. Now I'm thinking I was overly optimistic.

    Oh, well.

    1403:

    but hey: I note the UK government already slapped down an option to buy 60M doses from a couple of manufacturers, just to give you an indication that it's not only the US who're eager to see the back of COVID-19.

    One of the few things the Trump admin has done right is to pre-pay for similar quantities for several vaccines that have gotten to phase 2 or 3 trials.

    1404:

    Our bad there - forget that everyone's browser is auto-info-bubbled these days, or you can't access a terminal or other sources.

    For a background:

    Erik Prince’s FSG quits Mozambique oil and gas logistics venture

    https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/africa/214279/erik-princes-fsg-quits-mozambique-oil-and-gas-logistics-venture/

    Bloomberg spin-off, Dec 2019. Energy Voice is PR, essentially, so find May 2020 Amendment 'report': EXIM tweaks terms for Mozambique LNG loan

    Then type a combination of: LNG, EXIM, MOZAMBIQUE - Exim are the US version (kinda) of the RU outfit we said to search earlier (only... a lot more $ behind it). The deal is EXIM - Exxon / Total expertise + MZ government (S.A. + .mil politics + AFRICOM all got oars in there as well, major drama going on behind the scenes, right at the moment as it happens, esp. regarding .mil stuff[1]). Just as it finally is about to start (pretty fast-tracked, tbh - L'Orange's biz friends move fast even in turbulent times, Exxon got burnt on the entire oil trading flush out we skipped over recently), 'ISIL' (they're really not) rebels (complicated internal politics discussions that include a lot of mass graves, recently too) take the supply port (but don't touch the facilities which there already many of, sound like Libya / Syria? It should). Then go find the sources for the new Heroin import scare along that very coast (been to Vietnam / Afghanistan, this stuff always rhymes).

    A quick video on this (chosen because of the sources they talked to - interesting choices, one ex-BBC (why? who knows. Probably because Brexit means UK no longer 'does' proper foreign coverage or something): https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2020/08/fighting-northern-mozambique-destabilise-region-200814181109963.html

    Fairly superficial, but provides context, and it's miles better than US / UK coverage. Or, in other words: two sides of the globe, like scales of balance, the geopolitical see-saw does its thing. EXIM are US / IMF / FR side of things, couldn't imagine who is competing there. Or you could imagine that Qatar (currently propping up TR as well) has an interest in making sure the Truth about the situation comes out (hello UAE, hogging all that limelight). See?

    Oh, and since (since deleted) we promised that 'pulling up a heat-map of the wealth of Beirut' would be handy, here it is:

    Beirut Zone 10 ​​​​​​Social Justice and the City Program - slide 6 in particular

    https://www.aub.edu.lb/ifi/Pages/sjc-beirut-zone-10.aspx

    American University of Beirut - because you freaks, soft power does matter (so, yeah: it has essential bias locked into its' core, but hey-ho. Pretending Lebanon isn't deeply tied to US/EU elite power structures is just bizarre, they like slaves as well - search term is "Kafala", there's been big pushes by various parties to get it out into the light, very carefully not mentioning that the people who usually use it are... the more pro-Western elements, but we digress).

    Local social justice source, data looks clean, can you guess the real issues? Local corruption (IMF, Central Bank, heeeelo) means that post 2000 a single person/outfit essentially got ownership of roughly 90% of the coastal properties on the West part (insert long traceback to public/private licenses and so forth and why only the west bit is up for sale but politics). You could (if you wanted) then overlay that where IL claimed various illicit things were being held as .mil targets (near the airport, no-where near the AN storage, as another data point) then look at the ownership and note something about the owner. Spoiler: it's not what you get told on BBC.

    That enough context? We know nothing about the areas, but some people do.

    p.s.

    We didn't mean to scare you.

    [1] As China deepens its ties to African militaries, including through training and education initiatives, Beijing brings its perspective on party-army relations. The venues through which it does this have been growing steadily in the past decade. For example, under its China-Africa Action Plan 2018-2021, China receives 60,000 African students annually, which surpasses both the United States and United Kingdom. China provides an additional 50,000 professional training opportunities and 50,000 government fellowships to African public servants. Around 5,000 slots go to military professionals, up from 2,000 under its 2015-2018 Plan.

    https://africacenter.org/spotlight/china-promotes-its-party-army-model-in-africa/ AFRICA, July 28, 2020. Africa Centre is DoD $$$, ctrl+f 'scions' #765 to spot who is copying whose models.

    1405:

    "it simply keeps stuffing mass into the mass-spectrometer until it has the elements it needs."

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Y-12_Calutron_Alpha_racetrack.jpg IN SPACE!!!

    In due course, every time a supernova goes off you get a swarm of these things accumulating to eat its shit. A bit later, you start finding the mutant ones that hang around to eat the others because they've already done the refining and concentration but don't have significant gravity wells. The ones being eaten respond by getting bigger and bigger to put off things that don't want to be trapped in a gravity well. The ones doing the eating respond in turn by not caring any more. And you get some extremely peculiar planets turning up.

    Do these things have the ability to exchange bits of code with each other like bacteria do? They have to have some ability to edit their own code because with the timescales and particle energies involved you can't just rely on having the code immutable, even if you make the ROM out of 12/13 diamond or something. Also, copying errors in reproduction. And you can hardly suppose they won't encounter some set of conditions that the original programmers didn't think of.

    1406:

    Classes of person without the full set of rights and responsibilities are acknowledged. (This is Not A Good Thing, in my opinion[...])

    The concept of personhood is itself a bit problematic.

    Just to start with, I'll draw an analogy with languages that have and don't have certain colour words and the conceptual background in the cultures from which they emerge. There are many cultures where "blue" and "green" are just treated as different shades of the same colour (which we can refer to as "grue", since it has a different cultural resonance that works for me). We (that is, the modern West) are like a "grue" culture when we use "person" and we associate things with it that people from blue/green cultures would regard as distinct concepts. It means that we rely on an entity being green, and in order to do so prove that it is blue. Because we are only thinking of grue in both cases, we think we've done the job.

    We actually have many different concepts of personhood and concepts for properties we think are associated with personhood. Our use of "person" in everyday language is subtly different to legal personhood (something lawyers will define in excruciating detail) and that's different again from moral personhood (something ethicists will define in excruciating detail). We have corresponding concepts like sentience, capacity, agency, intentionality and intersubjectivity, and we think you need some of these to be a person, often along with other things like uniqueness, continuity over time and bodily distinctness. There are also some odd questions of timing if we want to treat entities at certain stages of development as persons: blastocysts may divide into distinct embryos for instance.

    Anyhow, we generally think that to be a person an entity needs certain of these attributes, and because they are a person they have full moral status. I agree there are serious problems with granting moral status on some sort of sliding scale and this should be avoided. But I'm not totally convinced that personhood is a binary, and certainly the way we use it has issues. And more to the point, I'm not sure about the intermediate use of "person" in the link between the attributes we think accord moral status and moral status itself.

    1407:

    Completely irrelevant to your actual point, but I do find it amusing that I've got an MZ in my shed and Exim on my mail server :)

    1408:

    Footnote - 4 links, bugger. Very trashed Mind-state recently, too many videos of what you do to each other.

    Anyhow, you'd need to read "The Management of the Beast" إدارة التوحش: أخطر مرحلة ستمر بها الأمة‎ to get any kind of handle on if these 'ISIL linked' comments were valid, then note that the basic premise would be to immediately start blowing up expensive LNG machinery (or hostage taking, Libya, was it the Dutch or French who paid out there?) ASAP unless a) they weren't following the manual (lol - 'The Base' had a magazine, ORLY?) or b) someone was paying them in materiel to avoid the big $$$ cost stuff. (And then you'd have to wonder why Western translators miss the overt linkage of المسيح الدجّال‎ - "Wild Animal" (i.e. non-Human) / Xian "The Beast" eschatology but hey. We didn't write it, take it up with the CIA).

    Now then: knowing that will get you on a list.

    Good (B movie) film recently: Sputnik / Спутник. It's a typical tale with the usual overly traditionalist heart tweaks you need these days, but hey: RU can do Netflix type stuff as well, and it's not all bad. It also rather squashes the myth that RU can't do self-critique, it's explicitly obvious with its critiques of the CCCP culture & the bit with the TV was funny (let's just say: astronaut hacking TV to get foreign broadcasts was kinda a thing).

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11905962/

    Notes to Simulation: Moar good RU SF please. Geniuses since the beginning, let them make movies (nuke Disney if required).

    Completely irrelevant to your actual point, but I do find it amusing that I've got an MZ in my shed and Exim on my mail server :)

    Ok... this is a joke you're going to need to have watched both the Matrix and John Wick for. You just admitted you worked for the Illuminati and we claim our ₺5 .

    Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJA1LC7Npdk

    Quick explanation: the Super-Secret-Society of Assassins (that have like, more members than golf clubs) have a beggar king who doesn't use electronic communications because (NSA) so uses pigeons. He's in all of them (so far.. making two more because bankrupt studio needs quick cash) and is consistently funny / incredibly good at survival.

    We do jokes, not war.

    1409:

    Apart from the vaccine itself, what else is going to be needed ... all I can think of is what I typically see when I get a flu shot: vaccine in vials, syringes, disinfectant pads, cotton balls, band-aids.

    That's the front-of-house stuff.

    What you don't see is the logistics and QA tail: the cold chain, the distribution logging and batch recall system in event of a QA failure or unexpected side-effects, the patient records interaction to ensure that if a batch is recalled then every patient who received a shot from the suspect batch can be identified, and so on.

    As far as getting a shot safely goes, I will note that my GP surgery has rapidly switched to a minimum-contact protocol: telephone screening, then precise five minute appointment slots and no hanging around, social distancing in the waiting room if there's more than one patient present, full PPE for staff, and so on. I'd expect patients will be scheduled for shots and then pulled through: 5 minutes and no more than 2 patients waiting in the room means 40 patients/hour for 10 hours/day, so 400/day, or about 10-20 weeks to process the entire catchment area ... without going onto extra hours or weekend working (both of which are likely once sufficient vaccine supplies show up).

    1410:

    40 patients/hour for 10 hours/day, so 400/day, or about 10-20 weeks to process the entire catchment area...

    Once your staff has been immunized is there a way to make things run faster? Also, what is the average time to immunity once someone has had a vaccine?

    1411:

    Heteromeles has already answered this - pigeons are basically seed eaters, so you need to feed them appropriately. The usual ideas of "what do baby birds eat" seem to be based around the kinds of birds that are likely to fall out of their nests and turn up in your garden, which mostly are insect eaters, at least as chicks, but not all birds are like that.

    Which reminds me: it really is a terrible shame that whoever made the cartoon "Valiant" knew absolutely fuck all about pigeons. The ones in the cartoon don't move anything like pigeons, they don't act like pigeons, and right at the start Valiant's mum gives him a parting snack by regurgitating a large and wriggling larva - wrong kind of thing entirely, and you shouldn't even be able to see what it is anyway.

    1412:

    I think I get the joke already, but that does actually look worth watching. Thank you.

    1413:

    Branching off from pigeons, there's some work going back years now in the US, that having yards filled with mostly non-native plants (especially ones treated with lots of herbicides) produce "food deserts" for songbirds. The adults may be able to get by with seeds from the bird feeder, but they need moth caterpillars and spiders to grow their chicks. So without those, the birds disappear. Audubon and my group (presumably among many others) are now advocating for people to plant more local natives in their yards to keep the songbirds around (https://www.audubon.org/news/yards-non-native-plants-create-food-deserts-bugs-and-birds).

    The other advantage of this is that if there are lots of songbirds, outbreaks of non-native pests that are edible by said birds become a non-issue, not something that needs massive pesticide treatment.

    1414:

    The smaller the shooting galleries the better, I guess. My local pharmacy does flu shots (as do they all, I think); they have a little room off to the side for doing things like that, and the shop is a small enough outfit that it's not usually a problem to wait outside until there are no other customers in there (something I was doing even before the plague hit, because they never remember that just because they are addressing their words to me it doesn't mean that everyone else in the shop can't hear them as well). I'd far rather have a plague shot there than at the doctor's.

    1415:

    It's somewhat similar over here; I don't think it's so much down to too many non-native species as to too much concrete and tarmac and the general orc-like tendency to exterminate nearly everything green and hack all but the first couple of inches off what's left. The disappearance of the dawn chorus is distinctly sad, but I do wonder how many people nowadays realise what's missing.

    1416:

    Here's a snippet from the (whole?) transcript. (The John Wick clips are fun. TMI probably to say that one doesn't work for me but found it elsewhere.) Oh, my dear. Tell me, do you know what the Bowery is, Adjudicator? Do you know what happens when I wave my hand? No, there will be no replacement for me on the throne. Because I am the throne, baby. I am the Bowery! I am all that you deign not to look at when you walk down the street at night. The Bowery is mine. Mine alone.

    Couple of informal pieces on masked/unmasked "natural experiments" vs new SARS-CoV-2 cases in the US. Not proof, since they are not RCTs. There are other such observations turning up. Coronavirus Cases Drop 46% In Parts Of S. Carolina With Mask Mandates Compared To Areas Without (Aug 12, 2020,0, Nicholas Reimann)

    Kansas counties with mask mandate show steep COVID-19 drop (ROXANA HEGEMAN, August 5, 2020) Norman pointed a graph showing the seven-day rolling average of cases per 100,000 people comparing counties with the mask mandates with those counties that abandoned it. The favorable trend line down was entirely in the counties that required the use of masks, while the trend line for those without one was flat, he said. “Do masks work? Here in this natural experiment called Kansas where we have essentially — not due to any great design, but it has worked out that way — some counties have been the control group with a no mask mandate and some have been the experimental group with masks,” Norman said. “The experimental group is winning the battle. All improvements in case development comes from those counties wearing masks.”

    1417:

    Pigeon pigeons are basically seed eaters BOLLOCKS They eat any Brassica in sight & my Japanese Spinach & any other leafy green or my PEAS as soon as the greedy bastards can ...

    @1415 ... I do not have a sound-only recoding device on my phone - it needs an "App" & there are so many of them I really can't decide [ Got to be easy to use & be abke to be easily transmitted & used by others... ] But, in the middle of deepest lockdown ( early May ) I was on the plots, listening to the Robin's terratorial singing, against almost complete silence ... I really wanted to record it. Too late, now. { Oh yes, recommendation .. Radio 3 Sunday AM, after 08.10 "Sounds of the Earth" collage tape, interspersed with suitable music ... ]

    1418:

    Ever since COVID-19 ramped up I've been watching virus related videos and am now considerably less inclined to have us mess with any ecosystem. We don't know enough about viruses on our planet - which ones pose risk vs. which are vital to us, animals, plants, etc. We also probably don't understand all of the dynamics involved in a growing, healthy and self-sustaining ecosystem.

    Let me clarify a bit. Like you, I'm not interested in dumping new microbes in existing biospheres. That stuff happens regardless on this planet, but there's little point in doing it on an interstellar scale, because it's likely impossible to carry enough biomass of anything to make an appreciable difference in inoculating a living planet.

    Instead, I'm thinking about the origin on life on Earth. There are microfossils in some of the oldest rocks we've looked at, but the best we can say (as far as I know) is that life evolved a few hundred million years after the planetary crust cooled enough to support liquid water.

    That phrase "a few hundred million years" is a very long time. Vertebrates have been on land a few hundred million years.

    Were I interested in making the galaxy traversable for STL ships, even robot ones moving slowly from star to star, I'd make a concerted effort to initiate biospheres on every suitable planet as soon as it had surface water cool enough to take the inoculation. Yes, such a seeded biosphere would take tens of millions to billions of years to become completely useful, but even a biosphere that's only bacteria will do things like concentrate certain ores, get iron out of solution in the oceans, and produce an oxygen atmosphere (with cyanobacteria, which are quite ancient).

    This also provides a useful conservation ethic. The progeny of interstellar probes are likely to come that way again and need an oasis to replenish and perhaps build more probes. A living planet may well be a better place to do that than an asteroid that's pulling in 150 w/m2 of sunlight, as Ceres does (Earth gets 1361 w/m2 at the top of the atmosphere for comparison). If so, there's an incentive for any probe to take no more than it needs to get to its next stop, and to leave the planet largely as it was found, just as travelers in the desert don't trash oases, especially ones they intend to revisit.

    While not every biosphere is useful, this provides a different take on the "Zoo hypothesis" solution to the Fermi Paradox. Right now, our biosphere isn't a great place to land, restock, and build more starships. That would conceivably explain why no aliens have (officially) stopped by in the last 100 years or so.

    Note I tend to believe that interstellar flight of any sort is more likely to be impossible than not, and that terrestrial life most likely evolved on this planet. I just think this is a fun idea to play with, and that physicists haven't done a great job thinking through the Fermi Paradox.

    1419:

    “tell me where my math is wrong...” Too optimistic?

    1420:

    You're in the UK? Start by planting more oak trees, at a guess. Oaks and cherries were what Tallamy found were the best insect hosts on the US east coast (it's willows and oaks in California, apparently).

    I agree that a dearth of green stuff is important, but I've heard Tallamy speak and have his book. His point is that, even in a putatively green suburb, songbirds are dying out because the only food available is seeds in the bird feeders and nothing edible for the chicks. The reason is that trees like gingko and Bradford pears support fuck-all in the way of caterpillars. Without those little breakfast sausages, the birds can't raise their chicks.

    As for those who whine about insect damage in their trees: Tallamy advocates the "12-step solution": if you take 12 steps back from most trees, you're not going to see the damage. More to the point, the insects he wants to foster are the little moths and small spiders that most people don't notice anyway.

    1421:

    The reason is that trees like gingko and Bradford pears support fuck-all in the way of caterpillars. I have a working notion that I can distinguish between a non-native and native plant species by looking at the leaves/plant in late summer (August here) for fungus and insect(&mite) damage (inc galls). Is this a useful heuristic? Obviously it's better to actually do species ids. The summer evening/night insect chorus has started in my area. At least as loud as it's ever been, excepting periodic cicada emergence years. (Also a fair number of monarch butterflies; was getting worried.)

    1422:

    D0n't people use anything but seeds in their bird feeders in the USA? I put up different bird feeders in the winter and spring containing seed, peanuts and mealworms in suet. The mealworms in suet disappear faster than the others and at times there are queues of birds waiting for their turn and others on the ground picking up the fallen morsels. I live in the countryside and there are a much less diverse group of birds that I used to see in my garden in Leeds. This applies to mammals as well. In my twelve years in Norfolk I've seen four or five foxes but we saw foxes on our lawn and under the hedge in suburban Leeds almost every night. So the gardens full of non-native plants in the suburbs had a richer and more diverse wildlife than the countryside. We do see the occasional deer but it's usually a muntjac which is an introduced foreigner. That also applies to the occasional pheasants which are reared by the local farmers from eggs and intended to be targets for shooters.

    1423:

    1M doses/day would be too slow even for a winter flu vaccine season,

    Reportedly Russia is starting vaccine mass production in September, at several 100k doses/month, with an eventual increase to several million by start of 2021. This for about 150M people.

    1424:

    It might be possible to substitute time for complexity in some places, depending on just how fast you expect to move. If we rule out FTL your probe is already capable of surviving almost indefinitely. Which means it can use a solar-powered mass spectrometer to refine whatever it seeds and just pile up the bits in the shade while it works out what to do with them.

    But since it's already working at the atomic level, it might well assemble many parts as it goes. Anything made of a single material, for example, could be 3D printed as the atoms become available. That alone is going to seriously cut down the part count - why bolt something together when you can print it as a single part, inserting other parts as the print progresses? I suspect even more complex parts like magnetic bearings could be "grown" by putting "permanent" magnets with their refresh/boost coils in place then dropping the rotor in once complete. You could well end up with a completely non-servicible "one piece" hydraulic pump that way (viz, the classic "machine with one moving part").

    On that note, much servicing might end up being "feed machine into mass spectrometer, rebuild using newly available atoms".

    Data storage might be similarly atomic-scaled, where you pick a couple of stable atoms with non-intersecting decay chains and build crystals out of them. "that's Hg, Hg, Au, Hg, Hg, Au, Au, Hg so 00100110 = 0x26"... (assuming that HgAu doesn't have major migration issues at ~0K) and just go wild with error correction and duplication.

    1425:

    It also occurs to me that it might be possible to build a battery via fission/fusion - you add neutrons to a block of some suitable material, then stimulate fission to get the energy back when you need it.

    1426:

    I will note that my GP surgery has rapidly switched to a minimum-contact protocol

    Here in my bit of US suburbia/non major urban area, you are told to stay in your car, call them when you get there, and they will come get you when they are ready. And for simple things like nasal swabs they do it with you in your car.

    I've done 2 drive through nasal Covid-19 tests lately. They hold up signs for the simple instructions, you crack your window for any talking needed, they slip things through the crack as needed, and anything you give back to them gets slid into a zip lock bag without them touching any of it. Plus they have gowns, masks, AND face shields. Oh, yeah, you get to stick the swab up your nose yourself. But they don't require you to swab the back of your skull.

    1427:

    Quoting the thinking sociopath's sociopath isn't a hugely convincing.

    She didnt believe in altruism and professed rational egoism - which can be nicely summed up as "Screw you, I'm okay.".

    I've a dim recollection that she ended up living on the benefits she so despised.

    If she lived now in the UK we would probably have to call her Home Secretary. Mind you, she might be a bit left win for this Cabinet.

    1428:

    The disappearance of the dawn chorus is distinctly sad, but I do wonder how many people nowadays realise what's missing.

    Some of those who realise are happy about it.

    One of the problems with noisy urban environments is that when natural noises do break through some people get really grumpy about it. Perhaps more obviously in Australia where we have fucking abominably noisy birds (The dawn and dusk "chorus" of cockies can be deafening). Bin chickens also make an ugly croaking noise.

    Yep, I've been at community meetings where this has been brought up, and if someone poisons the waterfowl in the local park I'm pretty sure I know who will be getting a visit from the cops.

    Australia also has a lot of concrete gardens, people who just hate everything that grows and the insect pests that infest it, so they cover their entire section with concrete. That's just a small step up from the many more people who cut down trees because they drop leaves etc.

    1429:

    the dawn chorus

    You mean the two stroke one? It's Saturday so everyone fires up their lawnmowers, string trimmers and leaf blowers! "ahhh, the sound of nature being put right".

    1430:

    Yet interestingly, those felons that can't vote still as residents when allocating voting districts…

    Shades of the 3/5 compromise, all over again.

    1431:

    Once your staff has been immunized is there a way to make things run faster?

    Way back a year or few before 1960 I have a memory of going to a grocery store to get a polio shot. I think this was a Sunday afternoon when such were closed. Multiple assembly lines.

    Now back then record keeping was a bit thin compared to today.

    But I can see us using the now mostly empty indoor sport arenas to do similar. Not hard to setup one way paths in and out and through the concourses so you have everything on one level. And since they are set up to handle 10K to 30K people it shouldn't be hard to have 100 in process at a time in a continuous flow fashion. I could see our local biggest arena doing 2 to 4 flows at once.

    Lots of refrigeration, power, folding chairs, plus wheel chair access, etc... And they have doors where fulled sized tractor trailers / lorries can enter and exit without impacted other flows. Vast parking for spreading people out in the burbs.

    1432:

    D0n't people use anything but seeds in their bird feeders in the USA?

    Some of us do. My mix is varied enough to attract maybe 10 to 20 different bird types a day. And many of them toss their first bite or two on the ground till they get something they like. The squirrels, chipmunks, and pigeons appreciate that aspect of it.

    1433:

    how are the authorities that will be providing these vaccine shots going to ensure that everyone gets their vaccine shot safely?

    Was talking about that with my doctor last week (for flu shots). His office is looking at holding an outside clinic. Good thing we don't need to worry about who pays as the flu shot is covered by OHIP.

    1434:

    "You are therefore insane & probably a fascist sympathiser, though not necessarily so ...."

    Perhaps, now you know why I usually omit the source, it usually leads to poor reading comprehension. It's just a definitional position of free speech & censorship(legally & morally) that I came across and thought was the correct stance, nothing else.

    "censorship is a concept that pertains only to governmental action Tell that to the RC church, or muslim clerics."

    If your local "church" have that power then they are the government. The underlying meaning of the governmental action part, the power to silence you when you are on your own property or in public. Any entity with that power is essentially the government in any organized state, else they would be criminals.

    1435:

    Careful, You're making the argument against counting anyone but citizens. Which is a fight that comes up every now and then. The SCOTUS slapped the last one along those line down hard. The constitutions says count persons and that galls so many.

    Now the current Pres is trying similar again so we get to, again, have law suits to slap him down and stir the pot.

    1436:

    Frankly, if they are counted for drawing riding boundaries (or whatever you folks call them) then they should be able to vote. Otherwise it's another gerrymander that gives ridings with high (non-voting) jail populations more representation than ridings without.

    But I don't see the point of depriving a felon of the vote. (Or rather, I do see the point: it's another way of keeping black citizens away from the polling booths.)

    Speaking of gerrymandering, you might enjoy this game: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1639370584/mapmaker-the-gerrymandering-game

    I backed it on Kickstarter and quite enjoyed it (although I've consistently lost all the games I played).

    1437:

    Once your staff has been immunized is there a way to make things run faster?

    That would be one way to test the vaccine, I suppose. Slightly inconvenient if it turns out to make things worse because you'll be preferentially removing the medically trained part of the population (that haven't already been sacrificed).

    Some parts of Australia are currently grinding through some of the second-order consequences of our various fuck-ups. Like the reputational damage from telling international students etc that they are SoL if they want any help at all during the pandemic. That's a correct approach in the sense that most don't have any choice but to stay and try to survive as best they can.

    One consequence is that a lot of internationals are willing to take any work they can get regardless of danger or legality (this is apparently a good thing to the far right). This is putting (even more) downward pressure on wages and conditions, at the same time as our government is changing the law to do the same thing. Yay us, we're the smart country.

    https://theconversation.com/i-will-never-come-to-australia-again-new-research-reveals-the-suffering-of-temporary-migrants-during-the-covid-19-crisis-143351

    1438:

    "And I don't hold with absolute free speech either -- for reasons we're getting a worked example of right now (hint: QAnon, anti-vaxxers, holocaust deniers, Trump)..."

    But would you grant a corporate owned website the same absolute authority you rightfully wield over your own fiefdom? The despicable stuff is always easy, morally & legally, are they permitted to be as arbitrary as you're allowed to be if you so choose.

    "Finally, Ayn Rand was a thoroughly dishonest hypocrite who provided top cover for psychopaths and looters. Not a good choice of philosophical backstop."

    The only thing I subscribe to are the words on speech & censorship within the quotes. I have no philosophical knowledge or interest in Ayn Rand beyond skimming her wiki entry long ago after I discovered the provenance of that quote which I've used most of my life.

    1439:

    Sure, if you assume some kind of currently non-existent tech it's all easy. But we don't have a way of feeding interstellar dust into a mass spectrometer and separating it molecule for molecule, do we? If we had working general nanotech the probe could be fairly small - Charlie's laser-launched coke-can if you'd like... Drop a cargo of nanotech on an asteroid, come back in a hundred years and it's spare parts.

    Lacking that you've got to launch the equivalent of the industrial zone of a major city into space. Lacking magical tech what you're looking for are some interesting way to cut corners... build the frame of your daughter-ship out of the local rock or something, then assume accelerations of .1 G or less. Maybe use an orbiting mirror to launch your daughter-ship rather than a laser - that sort of stuff. What's probably needed is a really cool simulation game, where the object is to create an interstellar probe which can be built with very low energy and a few parts as possible - have a bunch of smart people play it for a couple hundred years and you might get something interesting.

    To mention one problem only, how do you SUCCESSFULLY build the electronics boards for the brain of your daughter-probe? We're talking about a resinous substrate (the board itself) doped with copper to carry current to the capacitors, transistors, etc. You need to find or make some kind of plastic or resin or a suitable substitute* and refine it to better than milspec. You need an acid to etch the copper. You need to find copper in sufficient quantities then refine it until it's higher than milspec. You need a testing device to sufficiently stress the resulting product to prove that it meets specs. And what if it doesn't meet spec? How do you debug the production line? Do you have an expert available? How about an expert system? And how much space/mass does your expert system take up and what kind of tools does it need? Do you have a good supply of copper in close proximity to your supply of substrate, or do you have to import it from some asteroid 100,000,000 kilometers away?

    What's that you say? You're going to use 3D printing? You still need raw materials at higher than milspec. How are you going to maintain your 3D printer? Are there problems in laying down molten copper on top of a plastic or resin surface? How do you plan to solve those? Can you 3D print at higher-than-milspec? You still need a testing device. You still need to debug your production line if your failure rate gets too high.

    And so on.

    Notice, writers, that there are a million stories here.

    • What is your suitable substitute? Be specific? How hard is it to find/make out of a population of asteroids?
    1440:

    Oh, yeah, you get to stick the swab up your nose yourself. But they don't require you to swab the back of your skull. I had in-car tests done for some inter-state travel (rules in destination state) recently, one swab each nostril, up about 3-4 cm, two swabs each for antigen rapidtest and for PCR test. (4 total.) The wait was about 15 minutes for the rapidtest (negative). The male nurse did them, though. When I asked about back-of-throat, he joked (I think) about missing the old method, because he could make "grown men cry" (true, technically; those long swabs make people tear up.) Oh, and the PCR test results were available (online) in exactly 2 days (negative). I was hearing 7-10 days, which would have been useless except for box-checking. Mask and shield on the nurse. This is a county (in NY) with about a 1 percent test positivity rate (7-day moving average).

    1441:

    Neutron enrichment battery: Use depleted fissionable elements as your shielding. Which IIRC is called a Fast Breeder, when encapsulated as a nuclear reactor.

    1442:

    if you assume some kind of currently non-existent tech

    Trouble is that when you don't assume new tech the answer is easy: no way. We can't, it's just impossible to get any machine at all to another star and have it still in working condition when it arrives.

    The list of reasons for that is enormous, raging for the futility of rockets to the tiny mass we've managed to get even into geosync orbit to the stupidly high maintenance requirements of our machinery and the ridiculous power consumption of it.

    So if we assume an interstellar probe exists at all, we are necessarily assuming many major technical advances.

    1443:

    The constitutions says count persons and that galls so many.

    The constitution also says you can own those persons, so perhaps it could be amended to be more in line with current sensibilities*.

    • or amended back, given the way current sensibilities are trending. Whatever.
    1444:

    Frankly, if they are counted for drawing riding boundaries (or whatever you folks call them) then they should be able to vote.

    That would be one small step on the way to no taxation without representation.

    Albeit the latter is a dangerous path, because many things the USA exports come complete with tax paid to a US government. It would be entirely consistent with previous legal mistakes by the USA that they would pass such a law then discover they had given the vote to everyone who has purchased something from the US.

    1445:

    Frankly, if they are counted for drawing riding boundaries (or whatever you folks call them) then they should be able to vote. Otherwise it's another gerrymander that gives ridings with high (non-voting) jail populations more representation than ridings without.

    Currently persons includes illegals, children, resident aliens (I think), etc... Anyone "living" in the area as of date "xx".

    You really want to restrict that?

    1446:

    "Charlie has no legal, ethical, or moral responsibility to publish your words."

    I never claimed that he did. He does not possess the power to silence me, not being able to post on his blog does not silence me.

    1448:

    Frankly, I think felons shouldn't lose the right to vote, with the exception of someone convicted of treason.

    1449:

    Notice, writers, that there are a million stories here.

    You noticed did you? That's kind of the point.

    The one thing that interests me is this obsession with asteroid mining. Why is everybody so sure that minimizing the local gravitational gradient is a good thing when it comes to resource extraction? Between prospecting, matching velocities, and shielding from space hazards, and transhipping resources from one asteroid to another, etc., at what point is this more work than landing on a planet once, using that planet as free reaction mass to move with (e.g. driving or walking on it) and then taking off afterwards?

    1450:

    I think the issue is what assumptions you make about what is possible in the future. I can imagine functional 3D printing that can make a milspec circuit board in space. I can't imagine generalized nanotech or a way to knock single molecules out of a mass-spectrometer in a fashion which is suitable to mass-production. So I'm fine with future-tech, but not with fantasy tech.

    Thinking about this a little more, all you really need is mind-uploading or sentient AI and everything else is simple, right? Because you have someone on site who can iterate starting with, for example, the equivalent of 1750s tech (adapted to space) and then move forwards from there. Maybe all you really need is primitive tech and intelligent users, which means you get by with a much smaller payload... and there's a completely different series of books.

    1451:

    It sounds like some combination of agreeing with Charlie and a clumsy attempt to change the subject.

    1452:

    Why is everybody so sure that minimizing the local gravitational gradient is a good thing when it comes to resource extraction?

    Let someone evolve solutions and iterate them for 6-7000 years and I'll get back to you on that one. A big part of the problem is that our low-gravity tech is very, very primitive. You're probably right, but let's give it a couple-thousand years at least before we reach a conclusion.

    1453:

    "It sounds like some combination of agreeing with Charlie and a clumsy attempt to change the subject."

    I recommend you read just the words i post, don't substitute other people's words or positions into my mouth.

    1454:

    Perhaps stimulating ingestion by possibly automated drow-analogs is a futile expenditure of resources?

    1455:

    I can't imagine generalized nanotech

    As Eric Drexler pointed out, one lower bound on what can exist is what does exist. E.g., whales and oak trees. Or us. Those are the emergent products of molecular-scale processes -- wet chemistry to be sure, but protein folding and what viri do is pretty mechanical in nature. It doesn't take too much stretching to imagine technologies that use such. Whether that counts as generalized nanotech I couldn't say, but it does suggest that we have quite a way to go before bumping into the limits of the physically possible.

    1456:

    Yep. "Nice Grue." Didn't work. I will bow to your superior wisdom.

    1457:

    Let's see... you come onto a blog, where if you had lurked for a while, you'd know that everyone on it ranges from liberal to socialist, and quote Ayn Rand. You assume that none of us knows anything about her, and have read nothing of hers. (She is a TERRIBLE writer.) That's on par with some stupid evangelical trying to tell anyone the "Good News"....)

    That says to me that either you're deliberately trying to start a fight, or "own the libs". In either case, it says to me that I should be sorry for you that your parents were so rotten at parenting that any attention, even negative, is better than no attention.

    And you clearly haven't cared to think through the idea since you're suggesting that it's ok for companies, or individuals to lie deliberately (oh, right, Kamala Harris is more of a socialist than Bernie Sanders, smoking doesn't cause cancer, there's no such thing as AGW, and, oh, yes, my cmt, which you ignored, shouting fire in a crowded theater).

    And yes, Rand used a guy to get herself to the US in the twenties, then dumped him, and continued this pattern through her life, adored by the ultra-wealthy.

    Who let her spend her last few years on SOCIALIST social security and Medicare.

    1458:

    The real issue I have to Von Neumann machines Conquering The Universe is... why?

  • You really hope they manage to make it to the nearest star, assuming STL.
  • You need to put a lot of them out, because accidents that break or destroy them.
  • That means, you're spending a lot of money and other resources... for something no one will see or use for decades, or hundreds or thousands of years.
  • Why do that?

    1459:

    Yeah, but if we're going to define life as a von Neuman machine then we're just letting magic-tech in through a back door. If we're able to grow a ship then we're dealing with ecology rather than technology, and that's a very different discussion.

    On the other hand, if I were going to extend tech a couple thousand years and do a Von Neuman-style probe I'd go with the bio rather than the cyber.

    And upload me into one, please. I volunteer to be Gaia.*

    *Varley reference.

    1460:

    Data storage might be similarly atomic-scaled, where you pick a couple of stable atoms with non-intersecting decay chains and build crystals out of them. "that's Hg, Hg, Au, Hg, Hg, Au, Au, Hg so 00100110 = 0x26"... (assuming that HgAu doesn't have major migration issues at ~0K) and just go wild with error correction and duplication.

    Or the old-time favorite C13,C12,C13,C13,C12... You don't even have to do this on a strictly atomic scale. Making the storage bit be a 10x10x10 "cube" of one or the other isotope gives Avogadro's Number/1000 bits per mole, or (6e23/1000)/12.5 = 4.8e19 bits per gram. Both isotopes are stable, fairly nonreactive chemically, and the 1000-fold redundancy should help correct damage from cosmic rays and such. Writing and reading might be a tad slow, but a sublight interstellar probe probably would have a lot of time available.

    1461:

    I was aiming for something a little less vulnerable to nucleus disruption. But that's something that would be pretty easily testable, just send a few test samples on the 5 light year round trip to our nearest star and you'll have a good idea of where the vulnerabilities are (keeping in mind the returning bomber paradox)

    1462:

    Let someone evolve solutions and iterate them for 6-7000 years and I'll get back to you on that one. A big part of the problem is that our low-gravity tech is very, very primitive. You're probably right, but let's give it a couple-thousand years at least before we reach a conclusion.

    Well said.

    I should note that I started this thread I was using Brin's story "Lungfish" as my reference point, and that has the war of the probes in the asteroid belt 65 million years ago as its baseline. It seems that many replicating probe stories involve asteroids though, so I don't know who got there first (Saberhagen?).

    Then today after I wrote that question, I started thinking about the argument I've made in the past, that planets are good because plate tectonics and differential heating cause some elements to concentrate. And I further started thinking about the microbial ecologists' point that biological structures (like those around hydrothermal vents) actively concentrate still other minerals into ore bodies.

    Then the penny dropped and I realized that living planets might be more valuable than asteroids to replicating probes, precisely because of biosphere processes and things like a carbon cycle, plate tectonics, and liquid water support them. The downside of a planet is gravity, but it's worth a storyteller considering the notion that even machines might find living worlds worth nurturing and protecting, even if it's only for their own reproduction. Revering "predecessor species" doesn't even need to come into the mix.

    1463:

    All this talk about AI probes reminds me of Bomb #20 in Dark Star. "Let there be light."

    1464:

    Why?

    That's an excellent question, asked by generations of realists to generations of explorers and inventors who have shaped this modern world and all the crazy non-sustainability therein.*

    Anyway, if you want a different answer, there's always the one Ted Chiang gave in "The Story of Your Life. I'll note that particular explanation would make the trip technology easier...

    *Thanks to the comments here, I'm now reading The Greatest Estate on Earth. Fun book! While I don't quite agree with everything he writes, the more I read about the Dreaming, the more I admire the sheer creativity and skill that went into it over all those centuries. I could see a probe cultural (eco)system developing something analogous to songlines (starways?) as a data and resource management system.

    1465:

    Niven's stage trees also spring to mind: why build a rocket when you can grow one? https://larryniven.fandom.com/wiki/Stage_Tree

    1466:

    Making the storage bit be a 10x10x10 "cube" of one or the other isotope gives Avogadro's Number/1000 bits per mole, This is suboptimal against localized(distance-wise) damage, but I'm not finding any papers in a brief search on (optimal or near-optimal) extremely low code rate error correction. Like .001, or .0001, or whatever is desired/needed. Has anyone published a design (or sketch) that would work for very deep-time (or very high damage rate) data storage? (There are a few obvious (workable) approaches, particularly if the system repairs damage promptly so that uncorrected damage is not accumulated.)

    Remember the planet Arachne in the On-Off star system in Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky? Specifically, the "cavorite", which is probably a unthinking-depths-proof high-technological artifact/system for doing a localized sun-powered zone shift. (I asked Vernor Vinge once whether he knew what the On-Off star was, and he just said yes. :-) If that's what it was, then it would need to be almost entirely error correction.

    1467:

    NO! NO! TEACH THE BOMB PHENOMENOLOGY!!!

    1468:

    I think you're missing my point. Not "do it a few times", but "build them such that they will eventually go through the entire universe"?

    Sending one to a system that you've probed, and want to prepare, sure. Sending them out in zillions, to reproduce themselves to take over the universe is what I'm asking.

    1469:

    If the notion is turning the entire exploitable galaxy into probe copies, I agree. If the idea is to send something to do some exploring, talk to the locals, and send information back home occasionally, perhaps that might be worthwhile to somebody.

    I have to agree that the cost of going interstellar distances makes "probably not" the most likely choice by a large margin.

    Then again, if I could upload a version of you and send it out to see the universe and maybe tell versions of yourself about the cool stuff yourselves found, whenever you are in the same system, would you do it, or not?

    Another possible answer actually is that someone really wants to understand vacuum in all its manifold variety. After all, the time in system is actually a minority of the lifespan of the probe. For most of its existence, it's in flight. Is there something about interstellar space that's really worth knowing?

    1470:

    Has anyone published a design (or sketch) that would work for very deep-time (or very high damage rate) data storage? (There are a few obvious (workable) approaches, particularly if the system repairs damage promptly so that uncorrected damage is not accumulated.)

    The problem is that most research appears to have been done for immediate error correction rather than long-term accumulation of many, many errors. The worked answers we have are plagued with all the lost or undecipherable content that we don't even know existed, because we are really shit at preserving information even for a single millenia let alone many of them. People somehow think it's remarkable that Australians* remember the recent sea level rise. To me it's remarkable that so few people remember it, because it would have been pretty fucking obvious{tm}. Right now some people are all chicken little because the place might warm a couple of degrees and sea level rise a couple of metres. 50 metres would blow their tiny minds, and yet somehow they've already forgotten last time that happened.

    • not-Australians, whatever you call the people here before it was Australia
    1471:

    It's somewhat similar over here; I don't think it's so much down to too many non-native species as to too much concrete and tarmac and the general orc-like tendency to exterminate nearly everything green and hack all but the first couple of inches off what's left. The disappearance of the dawn chorus is distinctly sad, but I do wonder how many people nowadays realise what's missing.

    Similar experiences from here, too. There are birds, but less than there used to be, and while even in our near vicinity in the suburbs there is "unmaintained" growth, there's more and more pressure to put apartment buildings in those areas. For some people, having those places nearby where there is plant growth which is not touched by humans is an abomination, and the lack of birds and insects is a good thing, apparently.

    I have lived all my life in a suburban area. There haven't been that many mosquitoes ever, but I remember more of them when I was a kid. Now it seems other insect life is not that common either. This year, there has been this drive to leave some of the lawns unmowed, for there to be flowers and stuff for insects to live in.

    Nearby we have birds, but ther morning concert is concentrated in April or May. There are flocks of seagulls which make the most noise, and that's not very ear-pleasing, but I still like the birds themselves.

    1472:

    I can't imagine generalized nanotech or a way to knock single molecules out of a mass-spectrometer in a fashion which is suitable to mass-production.

    To me, if you're willing to wait you don't really need a way to get mass production from a single-atom mass spectrometer, you just need a way to collect atoms from the bins. Right now it's ludicrous to suggest that if you want 10kg of steel you collect 40 iron atoms, 2 carbon atoms and one each of chromium and molybdenum and push them together, then repeat. Sure, that's annoying if you want to build 400 drop-forged hardened steel bolts, 400 ditto washers, a tube of silicone sealant and a gasket to attach the two halves of the pump housing together... but why would you 3D print that sort of nonsense in the first place? 3D print a pump housing, don't assemble the thing from parts*.

    But if your delivery date is 100 years in the future, that's fine. And if you can use the time to also arrange those atoms in a useful shape it might make a lot of sense to do it that way (we will pretend for now that crystal structure and internal stresses can be built in this way too).

    One advantage of space is that your atom-level arranging can be done in a relatively simple container because it only needs to keep a crappy vacuum away from the proper vacuum, rather than a bust atmosphere away.

    It might be problematic having the container sublimate onto the workpiece, but that's a whole other discussion :)

    • insert rant about wanting a faster horse, or complaining that your rocket capsule lacks windscreen wipers.
    1473:

    "But we don't have a way of feeding interstellar dust into a mass spectrometer and separating it molecule for molecule, do we?"

    That is actually the easy part, it's just a run of the mill mass-spectrometer and since it is operating in vacuum and near zero kelvin, a lot of the usually hard stuff is already done for us.

    "The problem is that most research appears to have been done for immediate error correction rather than long-term accumulation of many, many errors."

    That's not true, and it doesnt really make any difference in any case: You add redundancy enough for you expected error-rate plus margin and continuously regenerate new copies. That part is a solved problem.

    The big question is deciding on numbers for "expected error-rate" and "margin", for instance: What's it like in insterstellar space if there is a nearby nova, or for that matter: when there isn't ? The longer the Pioneers live, the more we will learn about the ocean a few meters from the coast.

    1474:

    "Every surface in the house is damp and clammy. My bed is disgusting because all the sweat from the past few nights is still in it and won't dry out."

    Buy a dehumidifier.

    I've lived in places like that and it's miserable. Dehumidifiers aren't expensive either to buy or operate. One will make your house warm and dry.

    I bought a Delongi one, but they're all similar.

    The pay off in terms of comfort per unit money is huge. The feeling of getting into bed with crisp sheets. The lack of mould. The comfortable feeling on your skin.

    Just do it. Really.

    1475:

    The contrast between Aotearoa and Australia gets starker every day. My tama was on an extended holiday when all this went down and he ended up stuck/safe in a town near Invercargill. Not a citizen, not there two years, hadn't applied for residency at the border. Yet the NZ government said "well we can't let the kid starve" and have him an unemployment payment just like a citizen.

    1476:

    Moz Here in London it's the Ring-Necked Parakeets ... fortunately in the evening

    Rbt Prior "3/5 compromise" ??? Uh?

    The churches ( In the widest sense ) censor what their brainwashed followers are supposed to be allowed to read ... they don't need to be a government. And they are criminals, since, certainly with xtianity & islam the whole thing is a giant blackmail scheme ...

    Allen Thomson Yes, like I said ... "biology" ( a.k.a. "squishy" )

    Moz ( again ) and yet somehow they've already forgotten last time that happened. - erm, err ... "Noye's Fludde" ??

    1477:

    Yes. The UK ecologies are almost entirely made up of recent invaders, so the origins of the plants is irrelevant, but north America is nothing like (say New Zealand) and so is not particularly sensitive to them. The manicuring and pesticides are FAR more of an issue.

    1478:

    Yes, some empirical methods were published in the 1920s and 1930s, and Shannon and others put them on a mathematical basis in the 1940s and 1950s. Basically, you can produce error correction codes for ANY error rate strictly less than one, but need a correspondingly higher redundancy. Note that this can be applied at all levels - up to and treating DVDs as 'bits'!

    Also, while isotopic carbon or silicon is neat, there is no need to go beyond glorified wax-disk technology :-) Lot of materials (e.g. iron, silicon oxides) are highly stable, pits will remain in them indefinitely - i.e. stable CD-ROMs. To get better resistance to particle impact, you might want to reduce the density below modern DVDs, but that would need calculating. They can also be covered in a protective coating, which would be melted off or dissolved for reading.

    So data storage really isn't a problem, either for slow inter-stellar trips or even for moderate fossilisation.

    1479:

    The AUS attitude to "life" ... my father, back in the late 1950's said: Australians attitude to it is - "If it moves shoot it, if it grows, chop it down" ... To which, I suppose one might add ... "If in doubt, concrete it over"

    1480:

    That all sounds entirely British to me. Maybe by "Australians" he meant the British petit aristocrate absentee landlords who still owned most of the largest stations back in his time.

    1481:

    Could you suggest where I would read up on error correcting codes that specifically do two things: gracefully degrade and cope with arbitrary levels of errors?

    My vague recollection of university study is that the codes used today are exact up to their threshold and then utterly useless. A side effect of that is that you need to know in advance what threshold you want. That's fine when your ping times are less than a human lifetime, but the irritation value grows worse than linearly as they increase.

    I recall doing fun stuff with noisy communications channels, and some playing round with adaptive error correction, but that was always in the context of being able to retry lost packets at low cost (resources and time cost) and regenerate packets/wrappers after every hop.

    Doing that with interstellar probes and century-to-millennia timescales is going to irritate the descendants of whoever didn't quite have enough error correction. Especially because there's unlikely to be much feedback unless the probe only just barely fails (ie, sets up its message home transmitter and beams back "I'm lost and I don't know what to do".

    1482:

    you might want to reduce the density below modern DVDs

    I have restored a few hundred gigabytes from DVD. Well, most if it, because it turned out that two copies of each DVD was not enough to get me through 3 years of storage. The idea of restoring yottabytes doesn't seem plausible to me, let alone after a century or two.

    Yes, you'd make them out of very stable materials and so on, but that technology is fundamentally unstable. And the data density is woeful, out of the 1.1-1.5mm think disk you have ~0.1mm of data and the rest is baggage. In the context of space travel mass matters. Like the Catholic Python sang "every gram is sacred, every gram is great" (and at relativistic speeds, even greater!)

    1483:

    Might be that developing means of manufacture and mining off-planet is the test we must pass to be anyone worth talking to. Release of a successful Von Neuman machine could result in the suppression of competing space-faring races, who'd reach their system's asteroids and moons, only to find them depleted and the remains of alien mining and manufacturing.

    1484:

    Regrettably not. When I did some work for the University of Southampton, I read a very interesting and 'mathematically accessible' book on exactly that topic, but that was 50 years ago now. I have just checked, and their catalogue is not openly accessible; Cambridge's is huge and has a God-awful interface. Since then, I have seen only the occasional paper, and nothing close to what you want.

    Most of 'computer science' is justly described as having nothing to do with computing and not being a science. It's better than it was in its nadir (1970s to 1990s), because more than 1% of university courses are better than total crap, but it's hard to be both accurate and more polite.

    1485:

    Once your staff has been immunized is there a way to make things run faster? Also, what is the average time to immunity once someone has had a vaccine?

    (a) Probably and (b) that's not known yet. Remember that the safety of (a) depends on time to develop immunity (b) -- you can't speed things up if you risk exposing folks attending for vaccination to an unattenuated strain before they develop immunity. (The Sputnik-V vaccine Russia is fast-tracking requires two shots six weeks apart.)

    1486:

    Greg @1479, and Damian et seq.

    My cousins, who own a fair swathe of the Wimmera, have spent the last fifty-odd years re-planting the trees that their great-grandfathers, grandfathers, granduncles, and so on cut down.

    A lot of the clear-felling on the property (it was separate properties, originally, but it inherited its way down to just the one) was started in the late 1800s, and went into overdrive after the Great War.

    They weren't absentee landlords or the like, most of them jumped ship in Portland or Melbourne to try their luck, and decided that farming was easier ;-)

    1487:

    It will also depend on how it can be delivered. If it can be by a nasal (or, better, oral) spray or even pill, it's much quicker than injections and can be done by quickly-trained people. Equally, it might be slower, if it turns out that there is a need to check for immunity, reactions to the first dose or it needs three doses. I was immunised against polio using the Salk vaccine, and it was a LOT more time-consuming than the Sabin one.

    As you say, we don't know yet.

    1488:

    "3/5 compromise" ??? Uh?

    In the horse-trading that settled how the American government works, the representatives each state had in the House was determined by population. The South insisted that slaves be counted, the North wanted them left out. The compromise was counting a slave as 3/5 of a person when determining representation.

    Thus, a large slave population increased the influence of the free voters of a state.

    The real gerrymander is removing the right to vote from, primarily, poor blacks. Like poll taxes, it's another form of voter suppression.

    1489:

    Here in my bit of US suburbia/non major urban area, you are told to stay in your car, call them when you get there, and they will come get you when they are ready. And for simple things like nasal swabs they do it with you in your car.

    Hah. My surgery is in a new, purpose-built building attached to a geriatric care home on what used to be a garden in the middle of a 200 year old crescent of tenements. There's virtually no parking whatsoever (kerb-side for residents with permits, basically): people generally walk there, because its catchment area is about half a mile in radius.

    1490:

    The disappearance of the dawn chorus is distinctly sad, but I do wonder how many people nowadays realise what's missing.

    I've got a dawn chorus and I hate it!

    Fucking seagulls, fighting in the street to claim their stretch of bins to loot.

    1491:

    Yeah, but if we're going to define life as a von Neuman machine then we're just letting magic-tech in through a back door. If we're able to grow a ship then we're dealing with ecology rather than technology, and that's a very different discussion.

    We may have different definitions of "technology" in mind. I tend to think of it as anything that can be done with matter (protons, neutrons, electrons) plus photons. Both bacteria and transistors, cats and computers count under that definition. Of course, we currently know how to build transistors and computers pretty much ab initio but not the bio things. But give it time -- we only caught on to DNA ~ sixty five years ago, Ramon y Cajal started in on the brain at the end of the 1800s.

    1492:

    Damian Bollocks One of my uncles, ahving lied about his age, fought at the battle of Cambrai, went out to AUS in 1922 & worked at all sorts of things - including 2 years on horseback out in the "bush". Stood him in very good stead, when his returning troopship put into Singapore in late 1941 .... able to survive on short rations & erm "tough" conditons. SEE ALSO grs1961

    Rbt Prior Thanks - I'd heard of that, but not by that reference ..

    Charlie Not here - the urban foxes would eat the seagulls ....

    1493:

    There are tradeoffs in asteroid mining -- the upsides are things like no requirement for ecological and environmental controls (unless we discover asteroidal lifeforms like the one Colin Kapp showed us at an SF convention I attended a long time back). There's no religious or archaeological hindrances to operations, something that's becoming more and more common from the BANANAs down here at the bottom of the local gravitational well. There's a lot of energy available for processing the raw materials, even far out from a system's prime illuminator, energy that can be relatively easily captured and directed by large lightweight mirrors. Absent that nuclear power can be used because even Greenpeace wouldn't object to running a reactor on an asteroid, would it? (Sarcasm intended).

    Lots of downsides, of course but they can be worked on until that sort of operational engineering becomes the New Normal, much like oil rigs in the Arctic and tar sands exploitation in Alberta.

    1494:

    If your local "church" have that power then they are the government.

    Reminder that Greg and I live in a nation with an official, established national Church.

    (The USA is rather unusual in not having one.)

    The underlying meaning of the governmental action part, the power to silence you when you are on your own property or in public.

    See also defamation/libel law and entities with enough money to use the threat of litigation as a threat. If you're unfamiliar with this, I suggest you google the terms "SLAPP" and "Devin Nune's Cow".

    1495:

    But would you grant a corporate owned website the same absolute authority you rightfully wield over your own fiefdom?

    I refer you to my 3C37 keynote speech about corporations as very slow AIs, and ask you to ponder the implications.

    I have no philosophical knowledge or interest in Ayn Rand beyond skimming her wiki entry long ago after I discovered the provenance of that quote which I've used most of my life.

    Hitler was an impressive orator and probably said some things that weren't inherently evil, but you won't catch me quoting him as a source for anything other than a horrible lesson in what not to do.

    1496:

    My GP has switched almost entirely to phone consultations. I have one booked for next month to review my type 2 diabetes. But since I need a phlebotomy appointment before that for the blood samples I was given precise instructions for the surgery appointment for that - exact time, DON'T come early and wear a mask. I've been getting free flu shots for several years due to asthma and even before COVID they were run in small batches with precise appointments 5 minutes apart to avoid clogging up the waiting room, so the techniques for managing that are already worked out. Of course they can also give flu vaccinations at pharmacies so they might roll out COVID vaccination that way.

    1497:

    My GP has switched almost entirely to phone consultations.

    My wife just switched GPs. (Prior one was now 1100 miles away so ...) He told her it was great they had gotten the office setup to where he didn't have to do telemed.

    And a friend who is a cardiologist spent 2 or 3 months doing telemed. (I go to finally upgrade his home system as the old 2010 laptop couldn't handle the graphics of the current video session softwares.) His life is still a bit crazy. His wife is taking drugs which make her immune compromised so when he does his ER rotation every 3 or 4 weeks he stays in the guest bedroom for that week.

    1498:

    "There are tradeoffs in asteroid mining -- the upsides are things like no requirement for ecological and environmental controls"

    Note that asteroid mining involves playing with serious WMD's, all the way up to Earth (surface) devastators.

    1499:

    Elderly Cynic @ 1398: So when, how and why did the USA fuck it up? The concept of a body corporate dates from the 15th century in English law and, UNLIKE corporate personhood, it is a largely sane concept.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852/

    So, with Field on the Court, still more twists were yet to come. The Supreme Court’s opinions are officially published in volumes edited by an administrator called the reporter of decisions. By tradition, the reporter writes up a summary of the Court’s opinion and includes it at the beginning of the opinion. The reporter in the 1880s was J. C. Bancroft Davis, whose wildly inaccurate summary of the Southern Pacific case said that the Court had ruled that “corporations are persons within … the Fourteenth Amendment.” Whether his summary was an error or something more nefarious—Davis had once been the president of the Newburgh and New York Railway company—will likely never be known.
    Field nonetheless saw Davis’s erroneous summary as an opportunity. A few years later, in an opinion in an unrelated case, Field wrote that “corporations are persons within the meaning” of the Fourteenth Amendment. “It was so held in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad,” explained Field, who knew very well that the Court had done no such thing.
    1500:

    The real issue I have to Von Neumann machines Conquering The Universe is... why?

    Because ideology (FSVO "ideology" which is barely distinguishable from religion).

    See also Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov and Cosmism, which is kind of a precursor to 1960s Timothy Leary/ life extension and then 1980s Extropianism and singularitarianism.

    It's basically a Christian heresy -- Russian Orthodox heresy at that, that reached America largely by way of the writings of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (pioneer of astronautics and inventor of the rocket equation: also a student of Federov) so the taproots aren't well understood by Americans who come across it without the background and think it's original and shiny and secular.

    It goes back to Genesis 1:28: "be fruitful and multiply" (with the end condition -- "fill the earth" -- left off).

    1501:

    Troutwaxer @ 1410:

    40 patients/hour for 10 hours/day, so 400/day, or about 10-20 weeks to process the entire catchment area...

    Once your staff has been immunized is there a way to make things run faster? Also, what is the average time to immunity once someone has had a vaccine?

    Does it even confer "immunity"? I'm pretty sure the flu vaccine doesn't. It provides you with pre-existing defenses if you DO get the flu; i.e. prepares your body to fight off the disease if you catch it.

    But you can still get the flu even after having the vaccine.

    1502:
    D0n't people use anything but seeds in their bird feeders in the USA?

    Depends on the person, but my wife has put out pretty much all the variants you mention and more. Including a Baltimore oriole feeder, which involves oranges and grape jelly.

    1503:

    Heteromeles @ 1413: Branching off from pigeons, there's some work going back years now in the US, that having yards filled with mostly non-native plants (especially ones treated with lots of herbicides) produce "food deserts" for songbirds. The adults may be able to get by with seeds from the bird feeder, but they need moth caterpillars and spiders to grow their chicks. So without those, the birds disappear. Audubon and my group (presumably among many others) are now advocating for people to plant more local natives in their yards to keep the songbirds around (https://www.audubon.org/news/yards-non-native-plants-create-food-deserts-bugs-and-birds).

    The other advantage of this is that if there are lots of songbirds, outbreaks of non-native pests that are edible by said birds become a non-issue, not something that needs massive pesticide treatment.

    I'm doing my part. With the exception of the mimosa seedlings that regularly sprout (which I try to dig out once they get about a foot tall), my back yard is ALL native weeds.

    Pigeons will eat roasted peanuts. Or at least adult pigeons will. There used to be a guy who had a cart down at the State Capitol who sold little bags of roasted peanuts to tourists (mostly school kids on field trip to Raleigh) so they could feed the pigeons on the capitol grounds. I guess that's been a while because the State Art Museum was still downtown then, and it moved decades ago.

    1504:

    That's because the flu virus is continuously changing. So your flu vaccine does confer immunity to "this year's flu" - if they get it right - and doesn't necessarily confer immunity to next years flu.

    1505:

    David L @ 1426:

    I will note that my GP surgery has rapidly switched to a minimum-contact protocol

    Here in my bit of US suburbia/non major urban area, you are told to stay in your car, call them when you get there, and they will come get you when they are ready. And for simple things like nasal swabs they do it with you in your car.

    I've done 2 drive through nasal Covid-19 tests lately. They hold up signs for the simple instructions, you crack your window for any talking needed, they slip things through the crack as needed, and anything you give back to them gets slid into a zip lock bag without them touching any of it. Plus they have gowns, masks, AND face shields. Oh, yeah, you get to stick the swab up your nose yourself. But they don't require you to swab the back of your skull.

    My last two regular appointments (Primary Care & Radiation Oncology) at the VA were handled by telephone. I did have to go into the lab for blood draws.

    At the VA hospital in Durham, they have wardens at the entrance who won't let you come in until 30 minutes before your scheduled appointment. They won't even let you go down the the canteen to get a snack & a cup of coffee and wait there (where they ARE set up for social distancing.

    I had to have a Covid19 test two days before my sinus surgery.

    Clinic #1 in Raleigh has a tent set up in the parking lot. You check in with the door warden & then wait in your car until they're ready for you. And they do stick the swab up your nose & it does feel like they're swabbing the back of your skull. It was the one part of the whole that episode hurt the worst.

    Ironically, one of the questions the door wardens ask you about symptoms is whether you've had any "nasal congestion" and I'd have to tell them "Yes, that's why I'm here to see the doctor."

    1506:

    _Moz_ @ 1428:

    The disappearance of the dawn chorus is distinctly sad, but I do wonder how many people nowadays realise what's missing.

    Some of those who realise are happy about it.

    One of the problems with noisy urban environments is that when natural noises do break through some people get really grumpy about it. Perhaps more obviously in Australia where we have fucking abominably noisy birds (The dawn and dusk "chorus" of cockies can be deafening). Bin chickens also make an ugly croaking noise.

    One of the benefits of having adequate insulation is it cuts down the noise from outside as well as keeping the interior from getting too warm or too cold.

    When I played that clip my little dog came running in from the other room to see what was going on. I think they must have sounded like his squeaky ball.

    Australia also has a lot of concrete gardens, people who just hate everything that grows and the insect pests that infest it, so they cover their entire section with concrete. That's just a small step up from the many more people who cut down trees because they drop leaves etc.

    Well, there's also the perception that all of Australia's native plants & animals are out to kill you.

    Hey farmer, farmer put away the DDT now
    Give me spots on my apples
    but leave me the birds & bees

    1507:

    David L @ 1435: Careful, You're making the argument against counting anyone but citizens. Which is a fight that comes up every now and then. The SCOTUS slapped the last one along those line down hard. The constitutions says count persons and that galls so many.

    Now the current Pres is trying similar again so we get to, again, have law suits to slap him down and stir the pot.

    The Supreme Court slapped it down, but not very hard; ruling only that the administration had not followed proper procedure in their attempt to add the citizenship question, but NOT ruling whether adding such a citizenship question itself was Constitutional.

    It's like the administration's Muslim Ban that took three attempts before they found a pretext the Supreme Court found acceptable.

    1508:

    Well, there's also the perception that all of Australia's native plants & animals are out to kill you.

    Don't know about Australia, but there places where that has more of an element of truth than one would like -- such as where I grew up, the Upper Sonoran Desert. If not kill, inflict agony and/or terror.

    Sometimes I really miss it.

    1509:

    Re: 'I realized that living planets might be more valuable than asteroids to replicating probes, precisely because of biosphere processes and things like a carbon cycle, plate tectonics, and liquid water support them.'

    For some time now I've been mentally comparing these scenarios in terms of which is cheaper, faster and less error prone (fatal) therefore the likelier course for human expansion into space:

    1- Find a rock and build an entire (complex and self-sustaining) ecosystem on it to support human life.

    2- Find a planet with a thriving ecosystem and adapt humans to live on it.

    Problem is that regardless of which alternative is pursued, we're still going to need a helluva lot more knowledge about biosystems from the teeny (viruses) to the huge (ecosystems) than we currently have. And because anything might interact with anything/everything in a biosystem, we'll need some really powerful AI/computing ability to sort this out into understandable and usable terms.

    Not directly related but have also been thinking about this for a while. The general public does not understand/appreciate the scale/complexity of biological systems including our own human genome. So what's the easiest way to best communicate the size, structure and complexity: build a complete human genome - all 23 pairs of chromosomes - using a multi-colored ball and multi-length rod 'Lego set'. Get a bunch of major corps (MSFT, Google, IBM,, etc.) to pick up the tab for the ball&rod parts which they would distribute to the invited approx. 20,000 universities (labs) around the globe so that each would build/contribute one gene and provide info about everything currently known about that particular gene: what it does, where it's found, known variants, which if any other critters also have it, medical conditions/diseases associated with it, etc. Google (most probably) via its searches of the 23&Me and similar data bases could then fill in the 'junk' DNA stretches. Ditto updates on other portions (e.g., introns) of the genome as info becomes available.

    The museum physically hosting this exhibit would be responsible to putting all of the genes into their appropriate chromosomes and correctly filling in all of the base pairs (e.g., 'junk DNA') in between. Although our chromosomes come in pairs, each one of the pair is different - so each uni/lab would be required to provide two models of their gene. (How they'd do this could also be part of the info.)

    The human genome is roughly about 3 billion (3,000,000,000) base pairs long. No idea how many atoms of each element constitutes a base pair, but there are probably about 10 or more. Then add in the rods to visually indicate the type/strength of bond between various atoms.

    Now imagine all of this housed under one roof with displays, videos, signage, etc. Would probably take more than a day to even walk through such a display. I'd have the last stop of the tour a view from the top of this museum so that folks would see all 23 chromosome pairs 'enveloped' together before they leave. Think this would be very impactful live, could also be impressive as a video tour with the right camerawork.

    Anyways - I'd visit this. Yeah, it's a fantasy/daydream.

    1510:

    Robert Prior @ 1436: Frankly, if they are counted for drawing riding boundaries (or whatever you folks call them) then they should be able to vote. Otherwise it's another gerrymander that gives ridings with high (non-voting) jail populations more representation than ridings without.

    Convicted felons do not lose their citizenship. In some states they regain their voting rights once they complete their sentence. In others (Florida) they can have their voting rights restored after they have paid any fines associated with their sentence. This is a back-door Poll Tax that has been held UN-Constitutional by the Federal Courts, although the Supreme Court has stayed enforcement for THIS ELECTION under their "Shadow Docket". Poll Taxes were outlawed by the Twenty-fourth Amendment.

    The Constitution doesn't say anything about "citizens" in the enumeration for apportionment clause (Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3) - it says "persons".

    Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

    They're supposed to count everyone whether citizen or not, and originally excluded only "Indians not taxed" and 2/5 of slaves.

    The Thirteenth Amendment outlawed Slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment along with the guarantee of "Birthright" citizenship and eliminated the 3/5 clause:

    Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,* and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

    That's the Constitutional justification for why felons can be denied the right to vote. They don't have to be, but they can be ... Also, the basis for enumeration was subsequently modified again by the Nineteenth Amendment (Women can vote) and the Twenty-sixth Amendment (Voting Age = 18 for Federal Elections).

    The debate about counting prisoners is not whether they should be counted, they MUST be, per the Constitution. The Debate is over WHERE they will be counted for the purpose of enumeration - at the location where they are imprisoned or at the location where they last resided before being imprisoned. I fall on the side that says they should be counted where they last resided.

    But I don't see the point of depriving a felon of the vote. (Or rather, I do see the point: it's another way of keeping black citizens away from the polling booths.)

    That's effectively how it's been used. It's something we have to change.

    1511:

    _Moz_ @ 1444: That would be one small step on the way to no taxation without representation.

    That's not the problem in the U.S. It's "representation without taxation" that's currently screwing the country over.

    1512:

    Robert Prior @ 1448: Frankly, I think felons shouldn't lose the right to vote, with the exception of someone convicted of treason.

    I think they should lose the privilege for the duration of any prison sentence (including the period of probation or parole).

    1513:

    _Moz_ @ 1461: I was aiming for something a little less vulnerable to nucleus disruption. But that's something that would be pretty easily testable, just send a few test samples on the 5 light year round trip to our nearest star and you'll have a good idea of where the vulnerabilities are (keeping in mind the returning bomber paradox)

    You put the additional armor where it protects the flight crew. Bombers never came back when the pilot & co-pilot died.

    1514:

    Troutwaxer @ 1504: That's because the flu virus is continuously changing. So your flu vaccine does confer immunity to "this year's flu" - if they get it right - and doesn't necessarily confer immunity to next years flu.

    Why wouldn't Covid19 do the same thing?

    1516:

    Because COVID-19 is not a quickly-mutating virus like the flu. It does mutate, but not at anything like the flu's speed (at least not so far.)

    1517:

    The train station near me has a couple of western redbuds in their plantings - native to the region. Every year the leafcutter bees come through and scallop the leaves - it's actually fairly pretty. (Western redbuds are soft-leaved shrubs rather than trees, like the eastern species. Much less conspicuous when they bloom, too.)

    1518:

    Imagine how much less hellish prisons would be if the prisoners had some representation.

    1519:

    Unless you live in DC or one of the US territories, where it's taxation without representation, and if some politicians have their way, no services either.

    1520:

    Six weeks apart, hmmm. around '61? I remember my family visiting friends, and the six of us (their son was my best friend) going somewhere, and all of us getting the first (or was it second) of the oral polio vaccine that EVERYONE was getting.

    1521:

    Covid-19 is an RNA virus, and they mutate much more slowly than flu viruses.

    1522:

    I think your DNA scale-up gets at the whole size-complexity issue with biochemistry and nanostructures. I've long said that reasonably intact temperate ecosystems of any size (like an acre or less) are basically cities running on a 1/1000 scale, this to give people used to human cities an idea of the complexity involved.

    The general problem with terraforming is that it took around 4 billion years to terraform our planet to where it had enough oxygen in the global atmosphere that a human wouldn't die rapidly. It takes a very long time to heat up something the size of an asteroid and get free oxygen into the air, let alone, say, terraforming Mars and getting all those perchlorates to turn back into useful salts.

    That leaves two (adapting humans) which is fairly stupid, because the genetic engineering aspect of re-engineering a human is a multi-decadal and costly process in and of itself.

    I prefer option 3 at least for SFF, which is where you leave the humans and other vertebrates alone, and concentrate on engineering microbes (bacteria and fungi mostly) to break down the local organic chemicals and synthesize them into things we need to stay alive. After all, if you can make a goat able to digest the local leaves and produce milk that doesn't contain anything too toxic, you can use the goat to make food for you. Note that there's magitech involved in engineering a rumen, as there are normally at least 20 different microorganisms in multiple domains in that gut, and it's not a simple system. Still, using engineered microbes as intermediates, and sterilizing the soil to make your own (probably temporary) ecosystem is about as good as it gets. Speaking of sterilizing, humans are pyromaniacs. While fires only burn above around 16% oxygen in the atmosphere, we shouldn't discount the human ability to re-engineer ecosystems by burning them. In an area that hasn't experienced a lot of fires (like a deep ocean volcanic island), burning an area intensively before inoculating the soil with fire-loving bacteria and fire-loving plants is probably the simplest way to make a settlement work. Unfortunately, this is a preliminary step, as the local pyrophilic species are likely to flock to burn sites and complicate the efforts to keep the fields going. But that's how I'd do it.

    Final note, since I was originally talking about Von Neumann machines and not human settlements: the good thing for machines is that on most planets the biosphere is likely to be microbial. This was true of Earth for its first four billion years. Such a planet is misery for a human settlement, but it may be reasonable for a space probe to land and use. Bacteria are an integral part of elemental cycles on Earth, so again, the advance to a clanking replicator of setting up on the equivalent of Proterozoic Earth is that there are likely ores already concentrated and waiting for mining. Thus, these planets are oases, and worth protecting if the probe has any notion of coming back that way in the future.

    1523:

    Wed, I'm having (BLEAHHHHH!!!) a colonoxcopy. Therefore, this morning, I went for a C-19 test. Had a half-hour drive - they don't do that at the Kaiser-Permanente* facility a mile away. Drive around back, up to the testing tent. Pull mask down over mouth, off nose.

    The good news (nose?) is, they tell me they're no longer doing the pharyngeal ones. This one was unpleasant enough, in both nostrils.

    • K-P, not in all states, is, in fact, an HMO the way they used to be in the seventies and early eighties: you go to a facilty, and they do everything. It's still into preventing you from getting sick/er.
    1524:

    Yes, jumping chollas are fun, are they not? My wife got tagged by a coastal one last week.

    1525:

    The same way Scienterrology is.

    They think they need to take a leak, like a dog, everywhere, to mark their turf.

    Y'know, there are some of us who liked to hike followed the saying, "take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints."

    1526:

    REALLY wish I could do that to all the GOP in the government....

    1527:

    Data storage might be similarly atomic-scaled, where you pick a couple of stable atoms with non-intersecting decay chains and build crystals out of them. "that's Hg, Hg, Au, Hg, Hg, Au, Au, Hg so 00100110 = 0x26"... (assuming that HgAu doesn't have major migration issues at ~0K) and just go wild with error correction and duplication.

    We've already got a pretty decent molecule-scale data storage device: DNA. It doesn't read or write all that fast, but it certainly lasts for millions of years under some fairly unpleasant conditions.

    In general, I'm in favor of systems at multiple scales for redundancy. It's not clear that you want a supercomputer running for a millennia-long trip at full capacity, because that kind of guarantees that rare failure modes will happen. At the very least, you probably want 3-5 or more computers running. Better still, have some high-speed sensors (for the x-ray bursts, incoming debris and similar important transients) and rugged mechanical digital or similar devices that can reboot the system if it catastrophically crashes or goes dead to save resources. Anyway, an interstellar probe in flight is probably going to be running lean, just because there's not a lot of energy around and disposing of a lot of heat just lets everyone know you're coming, assuming you can do it at all without badly degrading the radiators and power supply.

    Now if you want to get daft with an interstellar probe's brain, here's an idea, especially for the asteroid-mining fanatics: DNA data storage and 3-D printed vacuum tubes for data processing. And some *really interesting read/write devices for transferring data between the DNA memory and the tube processing array. Yes, DARPA's already working on 3-D printing vacuum tubes. But heck, if you want high-test vacuum for your tubes, interplanetary space isn't a bad place to get it at bulk discount rates. Probe wouldn't be too smart, but maybe if you made it as smart as a cockroach?

    Or if you prefer seriously-alt technology, you could probably run an interstellar probe with some descendant of that Rose Jar and Mary Engine setup that Ben Aaronovitch trotted out recently. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it.

    1528:

    whitroth The first polio vaccine was a Horse-Syringe ( Salk ) The second was sugar lumps ( Sabin ) - I got the horse-syrninge .... Wiki Link

    1529:

    I have far more experience with chollas than needed. Unfortunately, they sometimes lurk in hiding.

    BTW, it turns out that Gutenberg has a little booklet that was a childhood favorite because it was so relevant.

    Poisonous Dwellers of the Desert by Natt N. Dodge https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54548

    1530:

    The Supreme Court slapped it down, but not very hard; ruling only that the administration had not followed proper procedure in their attempt to add the citizenship question

    Different case. The one I'm talking about is a group in Texas trying to get congressional representation based on either citizens or eligible voters or something like that. SCOTUS said NO!

    1531:

    o your flu vaccine does confer immunity to "this year's flu" - if they get it right

    In the US the "flu" shot is really 3 or 4 different vaccines at once. They try and guess which ones will be the most prevalent and put them into the shot.

    Personally I came down with a terrible sore throat on Feb 29 of this year. Next morning felt just terrible. Went in for a strep test that afternoon. They also tested for flu and both were negative. (I had the flu shot for last winter's season.) But based on my symptoms they figured it was a flu variation not covered by last winter's shot. When Covid-19 blew up over the next week my doctor told me to come in for a Covid-19 test just to make sure.[1] I was negative and my symptoms only lasted a few days. So they figured it was the flu but again, one not in last winter's shot.

    [1] I was likely in the first 10 or so Covid-19 tests in North Carolina. A weird part of my brain wants to know if I was #1.

    1532:

    Administrative note

    Wooo-hooo!

    I have just completed an edit death-march. One day to go (during which I spell-check and use search/replace to enforce canonical versions of proper nouns in accordance with the series style sheet) and then I can hand in what should be the final draft of "Invisible Sun".

    Which means I can then take a couple of weeks off to lie flat on my back and pant, and maybe also blog once or twice, before looking for something new to work on (maybe a redraft of "In His House", or maybe a new short story, or get my teeth back into the long-shelved space opera ...

    1533:

    @1523: Mandatory link to Scottish comedian Billy Conolly's routine on colonoscopy prep. Definitely a blue performance.

    1534:

    Re: 'Wooo-hooo! I have just completed an edit death-march.'

    Congrats! Looking forward to seeing it on my bookstore's website. And, hope that you'll unwind fast enough to actually enjoy your time off/away from writing.

    1535:

    On my belt I have a Swiss Army Knife. It's one made by the other manufacturer, Wenger. The model is "Perfect Cyclist", and is irreplaceable - they stopped making this model over 15 years ago.

    It's the only one that doesn't have 25 blades, and weigh 2kg that has both of the two blades I need: a Phillips head screwdriver, and a corkscrew.

    Okay, that got my attention! On my belt is a Victorinox product, the Swisschamp. It does indeed have a zillion blades[1], including Phillips head screwdriver and corkscrew. Luckily it's still in production, though the 21st century editions have a minor change to the magnifying glass[2] that I don't like; it's my everyday carry toll but I don't want to ever replace it because it was a gift from my father. It's listed as 185 grams not counting the sheath.

    I looked up the Wenger Perfect Cyclist (articles for the curious here or here); that universal wrench looks useful.

    [1] Per the website, 33 tools. [2] Yes of course it has a magnifying glass. This is the 'everything but the kitchen sink' model.

    1536:

    @1532: Congratulations Charlie! Have a wee dram of the Talisker.

    Me @1533: NB, it's Connolly, not Conolly. My bad.

    1537:

    Warning: even if I successfully stuck the landing and this draft is final, it won't be out until September 2021. Publishers' schedules aren't exactly being sped up during the COVID-19 disruption.

    ("Invisible Sun" is a big novel -- if it isn't cut, it'll be my longest single volume book ever, by word count. After all, it's the end of a nine book series and there are a lot of loose ends to tie up.)

    1538:

    Re: ' ... the good thing for machines is that on most planets the biosphere is likely to be microbial.'

    First off - your alternative 3 (fiddle with the microbiome instead) makes a lot of sense.

    That said --- pretty sure that you're aware that there are some 'microbes' that are pretty big, right? And slimy. And reproduce like no one's business. And get into every nook and cranny. And seem able to eat almost anything. And have sex where they swap parts of their genome with their partner. Etc. The combinations/permutations possibilities are interesting.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caulerpa

    'Caulerpa is a genus of seaweeds in the family Caulerpaceae (among the green algae). They are unusual because they consist of only one cell with many nuclei, making them among the biggest single cells in the world. A species in the Mediterranean can have a stolon more than 3 metres (9.8 ft) long, with up to 200 fronds. This species can be invasive from time to time.

    Referring to its thalli's crawling habit, the name means 'stem (that) creeps', from the Ancient Greek kaulos (καυλός, ‘stalk’) and herpo (ἕρπω, ‘to creep’).[3]'

    1539:

    Earth Orbit or a Lagrange point seem like a good idea until you consider the risks inherent in pulling an asteroid anywhere near Earth's gravity well - not too hard to imagine a slight error or apocalyptic malice causing a big rock to drop into the well.

    What, you're imagining something Falling Down on New Jersey now?

    For those unaware of the filk song linked to, it describes exactly the scenario above.

    "We'll strike a spark that'll toast Newark And flatten Perth Amboy. It won't be pretty in Atlantic City. You should shade your eyes in Troy..."

    1541:

    Caulerpa's not a microbe, it's a perfectly decent algae that happens to be coenocytic. Lack of a cell membrane around every nucleus does not make something prokaryotic. That happens when there's no nucleus (with some exceptions, because life).

    The reason I'm so blase about it is the group I did my PhD on, the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, are a) coenocytic, and b) among the most common fungi on the planet. They basically made land plants (and hence us) possible, so they get my nomination for "god-fungi."

    That said, most of the genetic and functional diversity in life is at the prokaryotic level (aka bacteria and archea), and they were what was around for at least the first 3.5 billion years on Earth. They still run the place, really. We're just the equivalent of transnational megacorps throwing our weight around and inflated by our own importance.

    Anyway, caulerpa's bad news, not because of its anatomy, but because it's pretty toxic and extremely invasive. Not a good combination.

    1542:

    Sugar lumps for me.

    1543:

    Hallelujah, Charlie!

    1544:

    That's why I carry a Victorinox Super Tinker. No cork screw, but I rarely need one, and that phillips head driver in its place is nice. Also, it's easy to replace.

    1545:

    snicker

    I often hold it up, and get people to try to guess what it is. I'd say more than 50% have no idea.

    It looks useful, is the right way of putting it. However, it's too big, or too small, for almost everything. I think it's fit about five or six since 1979.

    However, when we had our Dearly Beloved Departed '86 Toyota Tercel wagon, it was critical - it was the only wrench that could reach the third bolt on the distributor, so I could set the timing.

    But I've done everything from cutting cakes to repairing servers with it.

    [holds it up] Man is a tool-using animal. Don't leave home without one.

    1547:

    build a complete human genome - all 23 pairs of chromosomes - using a multi-colored ball and multi-length rod 'Lego set'. ... Now imagine all of this housed under one roof

    Pretty big roof, my dude.

    Stretched out your DNA would be 2m long rather than 6 microns. But a display featuring a wound up ball of twisted up DNA would be hard to explain, so I'm betting it would be stretched out for display.

    A carbon atom has an atomic radius of about 70 picometres. Milli-micro-nano-pico-atto-femto... that's 10⁻¹². If we make our carbon balls 10mm diameter and round that to 7mm for ease of calculation, we have to scale up by 10¹¹ ... your 2m long DNA becomes 200,000,000,000 metres long. At 10,000m per quarter-of-a-circumference (the original definition!), we go roughly 5,000,000 times round the world.

    https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-long-is-your-dna/

    1548:

    I can then take a couple of weeks off to lie flat on my back and pant,

    Yay! A well deserved rest!

    Also, summer!

    1549:

    I hope you remembered to explain why colonel Smith is acting so irresponsibly. Why does he think he's playing chess, and why does he think Miriam is his opponent?

    1550:

    Man is a tool-using animal. Don't leave home without one.

    Oh, I don't. I like my man, he's very useful!

    1551:

    No. Not going to watch it. Not going to think about it....

    1552:

    Hmmmm.... I like the regular shape, not that. And why is there a sawblade on the main knife blade?

    I also don't see a file.

    Did I ever mention that back in the eighties, when Swiss Army knives were big, I was thining of writing - have to find an illustrator - the user manual for the Swiss Army rifle.... Sights double as a tweezers, the stock doubles as a seat, and, oh, yes, the bayonette is also a corkscrew....

    1553:

    Bruce Pascoe made a side comment in Dark Emu to the effect that western cultures are fundamentally nomadic - they find a resource, go there, exploit it to exhaustion, then move on.

    Kind of hard to argue against when the obvious question is "how many millennia have you been doing that" and the people asking the question have been where they are, doing what they do for at least 30, possibly more than 80. Saying "nearly 0.2" is not going to cut it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Emu_(book)

    1554:

    I seem to recall that the Army of Lancre was equipped with similar weapons. As you may imagine, Someone On The Web Already Thought of It, although I don't see the Rule 34 version yet.

    As for the skipper, it's a mariner's knife designed for working with rope, hence the serrated blade and shackle turner. That also explains the screwdriver AND the corkscrew, as normally you get one or the other.

    1555:

    Nope, because I thought of it in the early eighties. Prior art.

    And thirs isn't the same as mine.

    1556:

    Oh, yeah, you get to stick the swab up your nose yourself.

    Here in New Zealand that would not be considered acceptable.

    Our testing must be as accurate as possible, that requires accurate sampling, accurate sampling means done by someone who's trained, knows what they're doing (and won't be put off by the patient's discomfort).

    Not saying your locals are doing the wrong thing for your environment: the risks-vs-accuracy calculation comes out differently in different places.

    We've an outbreak on: someone in NZ tested positive last Tuesday. 6 hours later the Prime Minister was on TV announcing a lockdown for the city they're in and NZ ran 96,000 tests in the 5 days following (that's 2% of our population tested). A week in we think we've ring-fenced it as a cluster of 58 cases, almost all pre-symptomatic and most probably not yet very infectious when tested. They've all been moved into quarantine facilities. The city it occurred in is in a 2-week lockdown.

    So there's a 0.06% chance that someone being tested here in NZ has Covid. Compared with a 19% chance in Florida (to be fair most of the USA is not as bad as Florida).

    And we're pretty fucking serious about getting our testing as accurate as we can, because we are running a zero-tolerance policy.

    1557:

    Oh, after I hit send, I realized something: that looks like it's got one of each. Reminds me of what happens to a high-level wizard in D&D using my spell point system: EARTHQUAKE! Lightening bolt!... sleep!sleepsleep!!!

    1558:

    I'd expect patients will be scheduled for shots and then pulled through: 5 minutes and no more than 2 patients waiting in the room means 40 patients/hour for 10 hours/day, so 400/day, or about 10-20 weeks to process the entire catchment area

    There's nothing that says you need a doctor to administer the vaccine; practice nurse, nurse practitioner, paramedic, medical technician are all perfectly capable.

    I'd expect the vaccination rollout to be handled like the testing setup; the Armed Forces (or private firm, depending on which Party donor stands to earn some cash) set up tents and caravans in the various park and ride / car parks, you drive up, get the shot, wait for the required period for any immediate ill effects, drive home. Rather more than 400/day/catchment area should be achievable...

    1559:

    I have had one of Champ models in my pockets for a bit over 30 years (since father-in-law retired) and it does come in handy occasionally.

    I do like the look of the new CheeseMaster model though:-)

    And my old mate Jef Raskin used to point out that he had prevented a plane crash using his, back in the days before 9/11stupidity. Can’t recall details but it was something needing unscrewing and cutting on a sizeable airliner of some kind. Jef was like that.

    1560:

    Well, I was being nice about it, but Wikipedia has entries on combination weapon, Pistol-Sword, and Xun Lei Chong, and lantern shield, which take the idea back to the 1500s.

    Heck, I even thought of the gunstock turning into a seat back in the 1980s. I was thinking of a large defense shotgun for freefall, where you sit on the stock, blaze away, and the recoil takes you away from danger, as long as you've got your center of gravity aligned properly. An old Yosemite Sam cartoon inspired that idea for me.

    1561:

    My preference for leatherman-style tools comes from needing pliers way more than I need a knife. And also generally allen keys and a 15mm socket, so the kit ends up being a bit chunky regardless of what I do. The Swiss army thing hasn't ever worked for me for that reason (I've owned several, I may still have one or more in a box somewhere).

    I'm still getting over losing my handbag last year, because that had a Leatherman Skeletool and a Lezyne carbon-titanium multitool that had steel washers and bolts so it rusted anyway (FFS!). I lost my wallet and a bunch of other stuff at the same time, but it's the two $100+ tools that still nag me.

    I have dropped back to cheap generic multitools because I already had them, but I periodically look at what's around and if I see something useful might buy it. But not from Lezyne because the cheap muppets put rusting parts into their "rustproof" tools.

    1562:

    Personally, I'd like a Super Tinker without the knife blades, so that I could take it on the plane. I use the blades least of all tools on the knife, scissors and screwdrivers the most.

    1563:

    I used to see in dealers' rooms at cons, weapons dealers who had reproductions of sword/pistol. Coulda bought one for, mmmm, maybe $80, or $160, back in the nineties.

    1564:

    I use the knife most (open a box? sure), the Phillips head, the can opener (it works as a screw driver for small stuff, and other odd uses, besides opening cans).

    1565:

    Re: ' ... because life) ... most of the genetic and functional diversity in life is at the prokaryotic level (aka bacteria and archea), '

    Unfortunately we rarely hear/read about bacteria other than E.coli, Staph, Strep, Salmonella and a few other in our day-to-day lives. And apart from some folks being more careful about maintaining their microbial gut health, microbes are still mostly thought of something dangerous/unpleasant that they should avoid or too trivial and unimportant therefore can be ignored.

    Visual demos of life's diversity and which microbes do what would be useful for communicating this type of info because a bunch of zeros after a number is just a bunch of numbers (abstraction) whereas seeing a solid physical representation to scale makes that something 'more real'.

    I think kids especially would enjoy seeing something like this possibly as much as they enjoy dinosaur exhibits because the scale and differences are similarly beyond their ordinary daily life experience. Same reason for having a ball-and-stick genome exhibit - because 23 chromosome pairs sounds trivial and boring but seeing billions of tiny representations of groups of atoms all organized into groups would really help convey just how massive and complex our genetic program is.

    Moz:

    Re: '... 7mm for ease of calculation, ... we go roughly 5,000,000 times round the world.'

    Thanks for doing the calculation - that's much, much longer than I had anticipated. Guess we'll need a smaller sized bead like the 2.2mm glass beads sold in craft stores. Maybe use 3D printers to churn out small 'base pair' instead of individual 'atom' beads instead. Might have to use different scales to highlight different aspects though ... anyways, it's a thought/daydream.

    1566:

    I was thinking of a large defense shotgun for freefall, where you sit on the stock, blaze away, and the recoil takes you away from danger

    And then there's this, where you sit on something recoilless. Yes, it's an anti-tank scooter.

    1567:

    I have a leatherman squirt radioshack edition, with wire strippers, wire cutter, tweezers, etc. (Sort of a bombmaker's emergency toolkit. :-). In an event with TSA-style security a few years ago, the searcher found it, and I immediately asked if I could break the blade and then keep it, did so before he answered, and he then agreed. About 2mm blade left, enough to cut plastic packaging and string and slice box tamper detection seals/tape. Haven't tried to bring it through airport security yet; current one was acquired on ebay since they're no longer made.

    1568:

    On the subject of storytelling....

    I've been having trouble selling a second story. Yes, of course, it's going to take time, though less with one story sold.

    There's a problem, though: In the last three? six? months, I've read several online mags, and just read most of the current issue of Clarkesworld.

    The problem is that more of the current issue stories take place in people's heads, and the plot isn't as important.

    I take issues with this. This is what happened to Lit'rature, that lost it audience, to where some sf writers have referred to it as "lit-fic", its own genre.

    To me, a story tells me things that happened, and how it wound up (mostly). You could write volumes about something going through the heads of a few people, while they do nothing other than sit in chairs.

    What I'm writing is people finding themselves in situations, and how they deal with that. For them, it's (secondary) real world.

    I also find a lot of it being as dystopic or worse than cyberpunk, and I'd really like to see a way out of it, not just make myself more depressed.

    Have at it, folks.

    1569:

    an anti-tank scooter

    ROFL.

    I kind of want one so I can counter "sorry mate I didn't see you".

    "Who blew your car into chunks?" "I dunno, there was nothing moving when I entered the roundabout" {mwahahahahaaaaoaoaooo}*

    • dopplered laughter vanishing into the distance
    1570:

    On my belt I have a Swiss Army Knife. It's one made by the other manufacturer, Wenger.

    Interestingly, Victorinox has a model called "Wenger".

    https://www.victorinox.com/ca/en/Products/Swiss-Army-Knives/Small-Pocket-Knives/Wenger/p/0.6423.91

    I have a Victorinox Scientist, which is no longer made, which I purchased in Switzerland in the 1980s. Knife, magnifying glass, pen, corkscrew, eyeglass screwdriver, tweezers, can opener/screwdriver, philips screwdriver.

    1571:

    Try something like this, the interactive tree of life: https://itol.embl.de/itol.cgi or this: https://phys.org/news/2016-11-insights-comprehensive-tree-prokaryotic-life.html

    Really, learning to read phylogenetic trees is increasingly a foundational skill for biology.

    1572:

    That's... odd. If you read that page, you'll see that they mention that Wenger is the only other company with the rights to produce, and call their product, Swiss Army Knife.

    1573:

    Scissors can be enough for "You can't take it on the plane."

    JHomes.

    1574:

    I just got a work email announcing a BBQ to celebrate being in the new office for a year. Apparently gossip round the office is very excited at the idea of a BBQ.

    I sent a screen grab of the email to my mother and she said "are you sure that's real". My mother spent 20 years teching five year old kids who were struggling to read. And dealt with their parents. But even she struggled to believe my management did that.

    So... anyone still doubt that my "or we fire you" threshold for going into that office is justified? (also, yeah legal blah blah whatever they're still having a BBQ. And no, I am not going WTF are you mad?)

    1575:

    "Sorry, I won't be able to make it, as a BBQ doesn't really allow social distancing."

    Last (US) Labor Day, I had a BBQ and party, to celebrate my retirement (and the weekend Worldcon in the US SHOULD be on, before that scum stole it for Dragoncon). A friend had gotten me three whole beef briskets at a good price; one's still in the deep freeze.

    I did Texas-style BBQ (the best, of course, and yes, this is religion). Dry rubbed it on Thursday. Friday, around noon, I started the charcoal (and kept mesquite chips soaking). Put the two briskets on around 25 after noon.

    At 02:00 Sat, I took them off the bb1, double wrapped them in foil, and put them in a 220F oven. I pulled them out just before 07:00 - yes, that's 19 hours - and put them on a towel in a cooler, one on top of the other. And, of course, that meant they were still cooking.

    When I pulled the first one out around 15:00 Sat, they were both still hot. And damn they were good.

    I'm looking forward to when I can do it again.

    1576:

    Local airport lets me take a Leatherman PS on the plane. County Fair sells knives but won't let me take it in the gate. But otherwise I agree with you.

    1577:

    Housecats and drugs -

    learned from our vet during an open house: cats also are trickier to dose without poisoning because their liver is proportionally smaller in relation to their body weight.

    So, any drug given to them consequently takes longer to clear out of the bloodstream. Giving more time for unhappy side effects to rack up.

    It's been so long since I've delurked, I've forgotten how I've signed these things...

    1578:

    Not that odd: Victorinox owns Wenger. And Wenger no longer make knives under that brand - that particular one appears to be a standard Victorinox item, rebadged.

    We have Wenger luggage - Tesco did a voucher scheme back in 2012 where you collected vouchers and traded them for huge discounts on suitcases and the like from Wenger. Good quality stuff we've taken round the world.

    1579:

    It's all right now, it was just the exceptional weather conditions. The combination of lots of heat and lots of rain and quite exceptional humidity levels. Makes it worse that it was too bloody hot not to have all the windows wide open, so all the fug outside circulated indoors unobstructed. But round here it only ever gets like that for a few days a year, so it's not worth doing anything just for that little while. I'm glad I don't live somewhere that has a monsoon.

    (Because of the heat, the appropriate circulation for the heat pump device would be in two separate air streams, not blowing up its own arse - ie. an aircon rather than a dehum, that being the only essential difference.)

    I can't agree about them being cheap to run though. It would be a bigger continuous load than everything else I use put together.

    My previous place was basically a 5mx2m uninsulated oven on the corner of the top floor of a Victorian house, located right in the middle of the hottest part of the country (the isotherms on the weather maps being centred on it used to piss me off a lot). Humidity wasn't much of a problem but the heat was, so I did have an air conditioner, which ran more or less all the time and sucked quite a bit of juice. It also sucked quite epically in performance due to a horrific list of unbelievably stupid design failings and I had to hack it extensively to make it any use. As you say, they are all the same, and the experience makes me all the more determined to not give in to temptation for the occasional brief periods when conditions in my current place approach levels that would have been well short of the worst in the previous one.

    1580:

    Super stuff! I shall be spending the next year and a bit in breathless anticipation :)

    1581:

    Ah yes, wood pigeons. I see plenty of them hanging upside down in the huge tree out the back before the leaves come out trying their best to make sure that they don't. Fortunately, it doesn't work. I was talking principally of town pigeons, but the point is that plant matter, not meat, is what they want, and for both species the deal with feeding chicks artificially is the same.

    1582:

    Kererū in Aotearoa have been known to lie upside down on the ground waiting for the sky to stop spinning. Or fall out of the tree because {hic} the fruit is fermenting inside their crop. Honest, offisher, I hashint been dronking...

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10866998

    1583:

    threshold for going into that office is justified?

    And in the other direction, (thank goodness), my best client started a conversation with me yesterday of what can we do to leave the current office and assume they will not have people working in an "office" for at least a year. Why pay rent on space that is empty 99% of the time?

    1584:

    Our testing must be as accurate as possible, that requires accurate sampling, accurate sampling means done by someone who's trained, knows what they're doing (and won't be put off by the patient's discomfort).

    Supposedly the test being used local to me has been shown to be just as accurate with the swirl around each nostril as the scrape the back of the sinus.

    1585:

    Indeed.

    Which leads me to suspect that the UK - long overdue for one - may have a property price crash next year, just to add salt to our pandemic and Brexit woes. Especially if Johnson goes ahead with his relaxing of the planning process.

    1586:

    I think the question is more "can someone who really, really does not want a positive test result manipulate the process to obtain one", and having them wave the swab vaguely towards their face seems like a pretty obvious thing to try.

    Letting a highly trained professional jam a stick into your brain is much harder to play silly buggers with.

    To some extent it's a Caesar's Wife situation: it not only has to be done properly, it has to be seen to be done properly.

    1587:

    Probably "cheap" is an exaggeration, but a lot less than an aircon. Mine drew 500 W. A quick Google tells me that's typical. The smallest aircon I've ever seen drew more than twice that from memory. Compared to the cost of moving somewhere drier it was essentially free. And it was a case of moving, I was getting sick from the mould.

    1588:

    And most of what the public is told about those bacteria is bollocks. They usually imply (and often say) that E. coli is a lethal parasite whose presence is sure sign of infection!

    1589:

    it won't be out until September 2021

    Amazon is still showing it as "January 19, 2021". No idea where they get that.

    https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Empire-Games-Charles-Stross/dp/0765337584

    1590:

    It's long overdue for one, yes, but the property prices that are falling are office space. Yes, the gummint has allowed them to be converted into rabbit hutches for humans ("slums of the future"), but that won't cause trouble within their attention span.

    1591:

    Ah. Like testing. In which case, I would expect our tax money to be handed to one of the usual culprits (like Serco), which would outsource the actual testing to a (say) Moldovan company, which would use untrained people who spoke no English. How many of the vaccinations would actually be administered, and with what, is anyone's guess.

    1592:

    Scissors can be enough for "You can't take it on the plane."

    Last decade when my mother flew to England she almost lost her knitting scissors to security — they eventually decided that a geriatric grandmother with 2" scissors with a 1 cm blade wasn't a terrorist. She upgraded to 1st class on points, and was amused that they were given steel cutlery, including steak knives, with their meals.

    1593:

    Ayn Rand also supported abortion rights, and was not a Christian.

    1594:

    Oh, that gets explained reasonably clearly. Then the train-wreck of US/Commonwealth interactions catches fire and falls off a cliff when another high tech party intervenes ...

    1595:

    Timescale is the most pressing of the many things which I'm unclear about there.

    In the slightly longer term, the market for rabbit hutches may not be as good as it first seems. Much of the demand for city living space is driven by proximity to workplaces, after all. Also, rabbit hutches of this sort are hard to add workspace to.

    1596:

    Amazon are late updating their databases. Expect another round of cancelled orders.

    The final draft of INVISIBLE SUN is officially in my editor's inbox now, and is scheduled for September 2021.

    (Yes, it's been a long wait: you're getting 50% more book for your money, though.)

    1597:

    I recall an anecdote from a column written by an airline pilot during the early post-9/11 years, after the TSA materialized but also US congress legislated that pilots could carry handguns aboard: how the author carried a serrated plastic knife in his flight bag (to open his sandwiches) and had it confiscated ... even though he was about to take the controls of a loaded 767 and could legally have carried a gun on board.

    Really, security theatre would be hilarious if it wasn't so annoying.

    1598:

    Censorship was discussed here a few days ago and I got to thinking (which always leads to trouble) ...

    Censorship is when the government or some other agency has the power to forbid speech or writings (roughly speaking).

    But what is it when the government/other agency can COMPEL speech or writing? Is that also censorship? Or is there a different word?

    1599:

    Not only that, but it was an airline knife like the ones given to all first-class passengers…

    https://askthepilot.com/essaysandstories/terminal-madness/

    1600:

    Ongaku @ 1518: Imagine how much less hellish prisons would be if the prisoners had some representation.

    That's really not the issue. Prisoners WILL be counted, and they WILL be "represented" based on that count. That's in the Constitution (as amended).

    The question is where will representation be apportioned based on that count?

    Do you think giving extra representation to states that rely on the prison-industrial complex is actually going to look out for prisoner's interests better than would giving that extra representation to the communities the prisoners came from and will go back to once they finish their sentences?

    Should prisoners have the right to vote while they are incarcerated?

    I say no. They should have their voting rights restored once they have completed their sentence (including parole/probation & "suspended" sentences). Unpaid fines OTOH are a stealth poll tax and poll taxes are outlawed by the by the 24th Amendment.

    PS: I recognize the inherent racism in our so called "System of Justice" and that HAS to be corrected. But that doesn't affect the issue of where representation should be apportioned.

    1601:

    Ooooh! OoooH! Do the Space Book! I have perforce read some seriously poor Space Opera recently to assuage my SF jones. Something Proper would be good to look forward to.

    1602:

    whitroth @ 1523: Wed, I'm having (BLEAHHHHH!!!) a colonoxcopy. Therefore, this morning, I went for a C-19 test. Had a half-hour drive - they don't do that at the Kaiser-Permanente* facility a mile away. Drive around back, up to the testing tent. Pull mask down over mouth, off nose.

    The good news is the way they do it is a lot less onerous than it used to be (I've only had it done about 8 times). Even the prep is less unpleasant than it was for my first one. Now they do them under anesthesia, although I do kinda miss being able to watch on the monitor.

    1603:

    Dave P @ 1533: @1523: Mandatory link to Scottish comedian Billy Conolly's routine on colonoscopy prep. Definitely a blue performance.

    Nothing at all like my first one. They gave me a gallon of pre-mixed prep solution and told me to drink a full 8 oz glass every hour until the whole gallon was gone. "Oh, and BTW, you should probably already be sitting on the toilet when you drink the second glass." They weren't kidding.

    And my experience was nowhere nearly so refined as his was.

    1604:

    I give you the machine gun jetpack as calculated by Randall Monroe. https://what-if.xkcd.com/21/

    1606:
    Should prisoners have the right to vote while they are incarcerated?

    The ECHR says yes, so imprisoned criminals in France got to vote in the last European parliamentary elections.

    For simplicities sake their votes were all counted together and so we now know that French criminals vote for the Rassemblement Nationale and Les Insoumises in greater numbers than the rest of the population.

    https://www.lepoint.fr/elections-europeennes/en-prison-les-detenus-votent-rn-et-france-insoumise-27-05-2019-2315199_2095.php

    1607:

    Owns them? Crap.

    Ok, I see, it acquired it in 2017 (but will operate it as a subsidiary entitity) to "keep it in Swiss hands."

    1608:

    Ayn Rand was also an abominable human being, and of course not a Christian: she was a Mammonist.

    1609:

    Please!

    The amount of SF has declined massively (I'm NOT counting military porn, er, sf) in the last 20 years.

    Hell, I'm writing what I want to read, SF.

    1610:

    My first, about six years ago, was also under anesthesia.

    I am NOT looking forward to drinking 4l of crap this afternoon and evening. (And thanks to whoever for the warning about being near the john while drinking it.)

    I had... something. I thought was a colonoscopy, but maybe not, while I was being treated for cancer, 19 years ago. It went down my throat. And they didn't give me anesthetic, they gave me this stuff that was supposed to kill short term memory, so I wouldn't remember from second to second. 1. It didn't work. 2. It had the consistency of snot.

    1611:

    Bill Arnold @ 1567: I have a leatherman squirt radioshack edition, with wire strippers, wire cutter, tweezers, etc. (Sort of a bombmaker's emergency toolkit. :-). In an event with TSA-style security a few years ago, the searcher found it, and I immediately asked if I could break the blade and then keep it, did so before he answered, and he then agreed. About 2mm blade left, enough to cut plastic packaging and string and slice box tamper detection seals/tape. Haven't tried to bring it through airport security yet; current one was acquired on ebay since they're no longer made.

    I've got a Gerber M600 Multi-Plier (Army issue) and a Benchmade Auto Stryker (also Army issue). No way would I even attempt to take either one of them through Airport Security.

    I'd be leery of having either of them in my checked baggage. They'd probably be stolen.

    1612:

    whitroth @ 1610: My first, about six years ago, was also under anesthesia.

    My first was 44 years ago. No anesthesia & the monitor I watched it on was a B&W CRT.

    I am NOT looking forward to drinking 4l of crap this afternoon and evening. (And thanks to whoever for the warning about being near the john while drinking it.)

    I had... something. I thought was a colonoscopy, but maybe not, while I was being treated for cancer, 19 years ago. It went down my throat. And they didn't give me anesthetic, they gave me this stuff that was supposed to kill short term memory, so I wouldn't remember from second to second.
    1. It didn't work.
    2. It had the consistency of snot.

    Possibly a Sigmoidoscopy. I had a bunch of those too. They can be done in a doctor's office & don't require as much prep; just a Fleet's enema.

    1613:

    I am NOT looking forward to drinking 4l of crap this afternoon and evening.

    Get a few good books and plan to spend the time enthroned. And for listening, you might want this old Johnny Cash number…

    https://youtu.be/1WaV2x8GXj0

    And it burns, burns, burns, The ring of fire, the ring of fire.

    :-)

    On the bright side, my surgeon told me it was the worst part of the process, and he was right.

    1614:

    worst part of the process

    On the flip side was when I was told I looked so good that I didn't need to come back for 10 years. When everyone I know was told to come back in 3.

    1615:

    I bought my original knife in '79. The first time I flew, after 9/11, some sonofabitch handler stole it.

    The airline paid for a replacement, which I managed to find, but they were no longer making new ones of that model.

    So, this is literally irreplaceable.

    Oddly enough, I have a replacement. Around '10, I think, my recent ex and I had visited my Eldest and her husband in OR, and were on our way to US 101. Stopped at a shop for a rest... and found one with a wood, not plastic, "California Redwoods" it reads. Doesn't have the odd wrench, but everything else, including both the Phillips head and the corkscrew.

    1616:

    JBS @ 1598 It's called "Being a witness" ( In court )

    1613 Ring of Fire? TRY THIS - Wotan summoning Loge at the finale of Die Valküre. ( Bryn Terfel, which is also good ... )

    1617:

    I found playing sudoku on my phone passed the time while other things passed. It's not bad if you get told to wait a decade. If there's no family history of colon cancer and no indication of need, why suffer?

    1618:

    Jerry Pournelle's "King David's Spaceship" used a launch vehicle powered by a rapid firing cannon, I understand that he was a retired artillery officer, so the idea might've come easy...

    1619:

    I am NOT looking forward to drinking 4l of crap this afternoon and evening. (And thanks to whoever for the warning about being near the john while drinking it.)

    Bowel prep has the consistency of snot, although they add some sort of vaguely fruity flavor so it's marginally less disgusting than that sounds.

    When it comes out, it sounds like you're pissing out of your arse. Lay in extra toilet paper, and maybe put the second and subsequent rolls in the fridge ahead of time? Because your ringpiece will be on fire.

    The actual colonoscopy is anticlimactic after the at-home self-administered car wash.

    1620:

    @1619: You REALLY don't want to be dehydrated before or during the process, either. Drink plenty of water along with the nasty stuff. (been there)

    1621:

    Done this before, but don't remember all the liquid. At any rate, it seems to just be a liquid, not thick.

    Unless it's not as shaken up as I think it is.

    And, to cheer me up, I just got the mail. And in it, the ConZealand program book.

    1622:

    I'd be leery of having either of them in my checked baggage. They'd probably be stolen.

    FWIW, Although not a frequent flyer, I've put my Victorinox Spartan in checked luggage > 100 times US domestic and international since 911 and never had a problem. Probably isn't sexy enough.

    Actually, I've never had anything stolen from checked suitcases.

    1623:

    you're getting 50% more book for your money, though

    If I survive current events, I'm going to order the hardback. If not, I'll gift the order to the grandkids.

    1624:

    Ongaku @ 1518: Imagine how much less hellish prisons would be if the prisoners had some representation.

    That's really not the issue. Prisoners WILL be counted, and they WILL be "represented" based on that count. That's in the Constitution (as amended). Glad you put 'represented' in quotes. Someone is being represented, but it's not the prisoners.

    The question is where will representation be apportioned based on that count? I have a easy answer--where the prisoners live.

    Do you think giving extra representation to states that rely on the prison-industrial complex is actually going to look out for prisoner's interests better than would giving that extra representation to the communities the prisoners came from and will go back to once they finish their sentences?

    I don't. And largely immaterial. The representation should go to the prisoners, where they live now. Not where they came from or might go back to.

    Should prisoners have the right to vote while they are incarcerated? Absolutely.

    I say no. They should have their voting rights restored once they have completed their sentence (including parole/probation & "suspended" sentences). Unpaid fines OTOH are a stealth poll tax and poll taxes are outlawed by the by the 24th Amendment.

    PS: I recognize the inherent racism in our so called "System of Justice" and that HAS to be corrected. But that doesn't affect the issue of where representation should be apportioned.

    1625:

    Insert obligatory "Every time I listen to Wagner I get this irresistible urge to invade Poland..."

    1626:

    Gezzer-with-a-hat FUCK RIGHT OFF If Adolf had had any sense at all, he would have lsitened to Wagner's message & warning - consider what happens to Wotan & the old gods in the Ring cycle, or to Rienzi ... The Ring confers absolute power, but it is also cursed ... Even at the end of "Das Rheingold" it is apparent that, it's not going to end well. Your ignorance & bullshit are showing.

    1627:

    Sorry, but I loathe what Wagner did to Norse myth, twisting it into something to say what he wanted... which I have issues with, anyway.

    Siegfried, for example, is a thug. Let's see, mother taken in, raised by dwarf, does nothing but curse the dwarf, then beats him up and takes his greatest achievement, Gram, I think it is.

    Then, walking through dangerous wild forest, won't step out of the way for an old man, instead, beats up the man and breaks his only weapon.

    Grrrr.

    1628:

    On top of that, the Wabbit Dies!

    1629:

    It's PEG. Bleecchhh. I don't think the prep stuff is significantly different from the stuff they give you as a normal laxative, they just give you more of it. It does need a good deal of mixing to get it to disperse in the water. I guess it would come out sludgy if you didn't put enough water in, but they tell you to mix it using loads of water to help with not getting dehydrated because otherwise they aren't convinced that people won't.

    The ordinary stuff tastes thoroughly vile because it has enough bicarb in it to taste thoroughly alkaline, and orange flavour on top which makes it even worse. It helps to neutralise the bicarb with citric acid, but the bloody orange taste still remains.

    It also makes me furious and want to kill people, messily. Horrible stuff. I get on much better with senna.

    I loathe PEG. I hate the diarrhoea variety and I hate the fog stuff they use in discos and I hate the release agent variety you spray on moulds for injection moulding expanding polyurethane foam. I don't care what chain length it is, it can all get fucked.

    1630:

    Yes, you need to keep hydrated. Trouble is, you need to do it with clear, white liquids. Stuff that's red (especially artificial reds, like gatorade) screws up the colors inside the colon so that they've got to do it again. IIRC, I drank white grape juice or something like it.

    Now, all we've got to do is combine multi-tools, two-wheeled human powered vehicles, and colonoscopies, and I think we'll get frozen out of the blog for a week or two.

    1631:

    Bowel Prep: I've got Crohn's Disease, and have had a few clear-outs over the decades. The stuff they use, here and now, is a doddle compared to the older stuff.

    I had one two weeks ago, they've used Moviprep (https://www.norgine.com.au/our-products/moviprep) the last few times, it's basically gentle, and the worst part of taking it is drinking the last 500ml at 4AM!!

    And the "Twilight Sleep" level of anaesthesia they use now works really well on me, a little bit of the white stuff in the back of my hand, and the next thing I know I'm waking up and asking, "Has it been done yet??"

    Sadly, last time I wasn't able to have the 'scope as the dehydration and stress and lack of exercise due to lock-downs triggered a nasty thing called "Atrial Fibrillation" so now I have to see a cardiologist. Hopefully it can be managed without having to go on the rat poison (Warfarin), I may find out next Tuesday :-)

    1632:

    whitroth Mime treats Siegfried like dirt & plans to kill him, actually .... Then, having been on-stage in "Rheingold", I have a different view .....

    1633:

    To add to the interesting digestive thread.

    Schedule as early in the morning as you can find a slot. Purging your digestive system overnight then not eating all day can just add to the grumpiness of the situation.

    1634:

    Yeah whatever old man. I note you talking about the exploits of a British person as definitive of the Australian experience, as though we don't actually exist. I'll just point out that today rather a bit more than 85% of Australians live in cities, and the "bush" you're talking about isn't even relevant for the majority of the rural experience either. But I'm inclined to forgivingness here: it's hard to get around the concept that land and population are really, really different here, in a way that probably makes no sense at all for you.

    Of course, and if you're paying attention you'll realise I'm undermining my own point here, the whole concept of Australianness dates from the late 40s, and up into the 50s "Australians" were British subjects, not some other nationality. In the 20s this meant that anyone your uncle encountered here thought of themselves as British. In the 30s it meant that Menzies would say "it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that ... Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war".

    And also of course, I'll still hold that "shoot everything that moves" is quintessentially British, even if there are some inheritor cultural contexts

    1635:

    Well Wagner was a bit of an arsehole, but made a lot of nice music. Bit like Morrissey in that respect. Poses a dilemma where you want to respect the music and what it means for you without celebrating the man, or at least without celebrating anything about him other than his ability to create amazing music.

    One helpful perspective I've come across is the idea that your experience of a piece of music is something that you own, that is it's part of you, not something the author/playing continues to own or have any stake in. I guess it ends up being a lot of hair splitting and this isn't to deny there can be some deeply problematic aspects to continuing to have anything to do with certain creators. But it's an important point: the part of you that drew strength from a work doesn't need to lose value, even if you lose respect for the creator of the work.

    Not saying there isn't value in seeing creators in their context, but some of this is less even than you think (you have to compare with others from similar contexts who perhaps did something different). If you could make a sail out of all the papers written comparing Jane Eyre with Wide Sargasso Sea you'd be able to power a pretty large ship.

    1636:

    I remember inhaling about a cubic metre of drive-through junk food after mine, but that was a few years ago.

    I have to say, I suppose I'm among the younger regulars (I'll be 50 in a little over a week). But is bowel prep really going to be a frequent topic for discussion here? It's not that I mind, I don't, it just seems out of the ordinary and drifting into a sort of unconcern for dignity that can be refreshing but sometimes is a bit confronting...

    1637:

    up into the 50s "Australians" were British subjects

    With the usual caveats, as we see in England with the Windrush scandal and sundry other accounting tricks to avoid recognising the "universal" human rights when they're incompatible with extractive empire. Late 40's we were running concentration camps for undesirables, some of whom were British subjects but not British citizens. Others, of course, were Australian citizens but that only entitled them to the label "enemy alien" ("take me to your leader" hadn't been invented yet) and a uncomfortable stay at HM pleasure.

    One thing that keep cropping up is that the systematic wage theft from indigenous Australians wasn't actually racist - the rich will steal wages from anyone. It was also offensive but not illegal - as with so many government actions. And right now those bastions of intellectual ability and systematic genius, our universities, have admitted widespread wage theft and are promising to repay some of the money. The criminals get to decide how much was stolen, from whom, and how much should be (re)paid. Strangely the reports I've read don't mention anyone being charged with theft, let alone convicted and imprisoned. You'd think with our 'three strikes' laws some people would definitely be going away.

    Ah, the British legal tradition. I suppose at least they don't hang innocent men any more. Progress?

    1638:

    Stories about pooing at a rate that could be used to hover on a low gravity planet make an interesting change from the usual strange attractors.

    1639:

    Quite: almost a new definition for reaction mass.

    1640:

    Well yes. All part of the expanding circle of rapacious cruelty and viciousness. But at least in theory there is (or at least was, until Howard) an opportunity to break the cycle. Doesn't appear to be airborne yet, we clearly have to flap harder. That isn't even supposed to be funny, and is it part of the general universal despair? Shit yes, an especially heartbreaking part.

    1641:

    But is bowel prep really going to be a frequent topic for discussion here? It's not that I mind, I don't, it just seems out of the ordinary and drifting into a sort of unconcern for dignity that can be refreshing but sometimes is a bit confronting...

    I doubt it will become a strange attractor like nuclear vs. solar power or how to fly between the stars but at times the discussion here drifts into odd corners. Like is it really OK to compare the life cycle of a beetle in Oregon to one in Scotland and how will that impact the cost of housing in Australia in 40 years?

    1642:

    One helpful perspective I've come across is the idea that your experience of a piece of music is something that you own

    Which is important as well, because not everyone gets the same experience. There's also the dubious pleasure of digging into the life and background of anyone you are tempted to admire to make sure they're not actually a horrible person. Anne Frank... a selfish, self-absorbed child or a marvellous diarist?

    I'm also aware of the purity bar being raised, and quite where it ends up. There's also problems around opportunity: you just don't get the same chances to support mass-murdering dictators these days (the House of Saud, and Putin... maybe? Saud definitely host a lot of pop stars)

    Especial for egalitarians like me, where I don't accept that we can just whack a hierarchy of oppression onto the scales and say "Janet Jackson does love her some war criminals, but she is also a black woman in a sexist society, ... so it's ok to like her music"? Nah, if you're going to "Wagner was a Nazi" you need to "Jesus was a scofflaw and a fraud" and "QEII is a genocidaire and a thief". Whether that invalidates anything else they've done is up to you.

    It gets quite challenging when someone like Chumbawamba puts out an album with homophobic banter and an anti-homophobia track. Can they be merely human or do they have release only perfection?

    1643:

    "Strangely the reports I've read don't mention anyone being charged with theft, let alone convicted and imprisoned. You'd think with our 'three strikes' laws some people would definitely be going away."

    But most of them can't be deported to Aotearoa, so what else could be done with them?

    JHomes

    1644:

    But most of them can't be deported to Aotearoa, so what else could be done with them?

    I dunno, deportation to the UK would be a pretty strong deterrent these days.

    1645:

    I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that my earliest specific memory of OGH is from an alt.peeves/alt.tasteless crosspost back when he was an IT guy who had committed fiction but not yet sold any describing his own generalized personal experience when he had a stomach virus which involved the obviously memorable phrase, "If there's a thrust imbalance, I do cartwheels." The logistics of the plumbing use involved in this description is left as an exercise for the reader.

    1646:

    As has already been pointed out, Sigfried kills Mime in self-defense, in direct response to Mime admitting that he will cut Sigfrieds head of next time he lays down ("I woll das kind nur die kopf abhauen!")

    As for Sigfried not humoring Wotan:

    That is crucial event where Wotan finally realizes the fatal flaw in his own demented plan: When you "build" a hero "who fears nothing", then "nothing" includes Wotan himself, much to his dismay.

    By misunderstanding this situation, and suggesting that Siegfried should have respected Wotan, you expose yourself as somebody who has never actually paid any attention, but just read a summary and jumped to invalid conclusions.

    As for "doing things to Norse Myths", you should have seen the Ring in Århus in 1985, staged by Klaus Hoffmeyer (DK) and conducted by Christofoli (DK/IT).

    It left no light between the Norse Myths and Wagners Text, and was a forceful argument that Wagner knew exactly what he was doing with the Norse Myths, not to them, and an equally strong argument that most of the people who stage the Ring do not.

    1647:

    In the 20s this meant that anyone your uncle encountered here thought of themselves as British.

    At least until they tried to go to Britain, at which point they would discover that they were just a colonial, not really British.

    1648:

    Dmaina This WAS in the peiod 1922-30 - some time ago. Though one of my other unlces went to AUS in ( I think ) 1924 & rejected "dirty old England" permanently, to the extent of almost cutting off communication with te rest of the family ... And, NO - "shoot everything that moves" is not quintessentially British. Maltese, perhaps or the other who slaughter migrating inedible songbirds. As for Wagner - yes, he was an arsehole ( So, in some circumstances was Mozart, actually ) The Opera of his I can never come to terms with is "Parsifal" - the overweening christianity is quite revolting.

    P H-K Well, my first experience of Wagner was also almoost the last time I actually watched TV - back in the 1970's when the controversial "Hydro-Dam" production was staged & televised ... yes the stage opened with the river damned by a modern concrete structure ... And they carried on from there. Re-forging the Sword was done with a replica Nasmyth Steam Hammer ... But it worked - partly because the singing & playing was really good. Which really matters - I walked out of a production of "Hollander", which was A Nazi rope-factory, EUW .... As opposed to the one where (Sir) Willard White played the Dutchman - a superb singer & total scene-stealer & a true gentleman ( Yes, I've met him - production of "Fidelio" where he played the "Minister" )

    1649:

    Back to the original subject .... Let's assume one of the various really expert teams working on C-19 do come up with a working vaccine. "What is to be done" about the inevitable screaming anti-vaxxers who will attempt to disrupt people going to clinics, surgeries & mass-vaccination stations? What measures to protect the public from these arseholes & what sanctions should be applied - remembering that keepin people in prison is expensive, but letting the, loose is dangerous. Answers on a postcard, please?

    1650:

    Cough on them.

    1651:

    "the controversial "Hydro-Dam" production"

    The Chéreau/Boulez ring in Bayreuth was by and large my gateway drug to Wagner, because it was transmitted in Danish Television.

    In difference from many other "lets move this opera to ..." that one held it well together, but as to be expected with two frenchmen at the rudder, the norse mythology aspect was very attenuated.

    As for Holländer I'm torn between the one I saw live with Aage Haugland as Daland and the 1968 Klemperer/Talvela/Silja vinyls.

    (In the Århus Ring Haugland was a magnificient Hunding)

    1652:

    . . . and here's a bit more on the situation in Lebanon. Hezbollah may find that trying to go "legit" is more of a headache than they imagined.

    1653:

    @1651: And the prize for the most ludicrous take on the Ring Cycle goes to: Das-Barbecü, which I saw staged as a (very!) amateur production by Army MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) in Stuttgart.

    1654:

    "And the prize for the most ludicrous take on the Ring Cycle goes to"

    Nope:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN5dAQLYYrs

    1655:

    @1654: But neither is as classy as the Looney Tunes version.

    1656:

    With another slight diversion, did Mighty Mouse show up in Europe and other places around the world? A 40s, 50s, & 60s cartoon where much of the dialog (all?) was sung in operatic style.

    1657:

    David L @ 1614:

    worst part of the process

    On the flip side was when I was told I looked so good that I didn't need to come back for 10 years. When everyone I know was told to come back in 3.

    Yeah, that's what they told me too after my next-to-the-last one. They're lyin' to ya'. They're gonna' call you back in 5 years and tell you that it's time for another one and hope you've forgotten.

    1658:

    Tim H. @ 1618: Jerry Pournelle's "King David's Spaceship" used a launch vehicle powered by a rapid firing cannon, I understand that he was a retired artillery officer, so the idea might've come easy...

    He was Spec Ops; "Iron MacKinnie" & MacKinnie's Wolves from the Kingdom of Orleans. The rapid firing cannon idea, besides being within the technological capacity Haven's burgeoning world government, came from the late 19th Century, before an Imperial Navy imposed ban on 20th Century Earth Technology (because nuclear weapons,

    It's a great story if you can make allowances for some of the proto-fascist politics.

    1659:

    Pournelle wasn't as far gone as what we've got now, so, yes. He was pretty much the last conservative I could bear to read.

    1660:

    Allen Thomson @ 1622:

    I'd be leery of having either of them in my checked baggage. They'd probably be stolen.

    FWIW, Although not a frequent flyer, I've put my Victorinox Spartan in checked luggage > 100 times US domestic and international since 911 and never had a problem. Probably isn't sexy enough.

    Actually, I've never had anything stolen from checked suitcases.

    If they wanted one they probably have already had plenty of opportunity to acquire one. The Benchmade Auto Stryker is a bit more difficult to get hold of ... especially the older pre-tanto design that was available through the GSA catalog while I was in Iraq.

    I don't really have a whole lot of use for it, nowadays it stays on my desk so I can open junk mail with it, but it does have sentimental value. And it's expensive as hell if I have to replace it, not to mention how long I'm going to have to wait for another Dixie Classic Gun show.

    1661:

    Charlie don't surf!

    1662:

    Damian @ 1636: I remember inhaling about a cubic metre of drive-through junk food after mine, but that was a few years ago.

    I have to say, I suppose I'm among the younger regulars (I'll be 50 in a little over a week). But is bowel prep really going to be a frequent topic for discussion here? It's not that I mind, I don't, it just seems out of the ordinary and drifting into a sort of unconcern for dignity that can be refreshing but sometimes is a bit confronting...

    This too shall pass.

    1663:

    The Benchmade Auto Stryker is a bit more difficult to get hold of

    "As low as $275.00"

    Eek! What are its virtues to go for such a price?

    1664:

    They're lyin' to ya'.

    For a considerable time I've had the suspicion that most colonoscopies fall into the "lucrative racket" category, at least in US medibiz. Which would be a pity, because they actually do have value in the right circumstances.

    1665:

    Allen Thomson @ 1663:

    The Benchmade Auto Stryker is a bit more difficult to get hold of

    "As low as $275.00"

    Eek! What are its virtues to go for such a price?

    I have no idea. It was a GSA Catalog item and I don't think the government paid that much for them. Again, my reason for keeping it is sentimental attachment because it was issued to me while I was in Iraq.

    1666:

    So, now that I can eat....

    They gave me this mostly-empty but for the powder 4L (actually, 1 US gal) of Gavrilyte-C, with a lemon flavor packet. It actually wasn't that bad, sort of a salty-lemony-sweet taste, Just so much of it.

    They told me it would be partial anesthesia, but I'd been off to the factilies until 02:00-ish, and didn't sleep well. I remember them starting, and then I'm coming out of it. I NEEDED that sleep.

    The joy of a hoagie/Italian sub...)

    1667:

    Wait: Mime takes in his pregnant human mother from the snow, she has him and dies, he raises the kid.

    Real nastiness there.

    I was watching the Niebelungenlied on TV around '77, and got pissed at Siegfried, and didn't want the fourth.

    And "not being afraid" is not anywhere near "being nasty because yoo're not afraid".

    Actually, when my kids were little, they heard my revised version of Jack and the Beanstalk. I was casting around for a story to work on a few weeks ago... and I just submitted it Monday, I think, to Cricket (9-14 yr old audience). As an example of what Siegfried should have done, in my Jack, he's not stupid (really? his mom is going to trust someone that stupid to sell the cow?), but rather, who really dislikes giants, and tends to give humans weapons to kill them?

    The picture for the story in my mind for decades is The Scream, as Jack approaches the crossroads... and there's a tall graybeard there, with a patch over one eye... and HE'S POLITE TO THE MAN.

    For a really better dealing with Norse myth, I recommend my friend Sassaffrass' "Sundown, or echos of Ragnarok". https://sassafrass.bandcamp.com/album/sundown-whispers-of-ragnarok The composer and singer is writer and historian Ada Palmer.

    Oh, right, I need to compose a query to the Peabody Institute, of Johns Hopkins, and run it by Ada, who went there, to see if they could manage, next year, if we have an in-person Discon III, to do it as an actual opera.

    1668:

    ANNA RUSSELL!

    I have the album - it was my late wife's.

    "This is a story about the Rhinemaidens, remember them?"

    1669:

    »And "not being afraid" is not anywhere near "being nasty because yoo're not afraid".«

    You really need to pay better attention to that exchange:

    Wotan tells Sigfried that he has already once broken that sword, implying that he killed Sigfrieds father. ("Noch hält meine Hand der Herrschaft Haft: // das Schwert, das du schwing’st,// zerschlug einst dieser Schaft: // noch einmal denn zerspring’ es am ew’gen Speer!")

    1670:

    I had a colonoscopy at 49 because it turned out I'm at high risk of hereditary colon cancer (granddad died of "generalized carcinomatosis of the abdomen" in 1963; dad was a colorectal cancer survivor in this century; one sibling had a malignant polyp removed, but is a 5-year survivor with no come-backs, so got lucky). I had rather more polyps than normal for my age, but nothing hinky.

    Scotland has a 24-month stool sample program to screen the entire over-50 population for occult blood in their stool, which is the #1 early warning sign for colon cancer and spots something like 80-90% of them in stage Ia; I'm serious about sending back my samples on schedule, and so far I'm negative. (It's a little icky, but way less messy than bowel prep and a colonoscopy.)

    1671:

    Anti-maskers, Warfarin, Bowel Prep, Covid-19...

    I do have a story from last week covering all of them.

    I've been on Warfarin for quite a while. No real problem, except for the occasional dramatic nosebleed. Easily solved with surgical gauze, followed by drinking a great deal of red Gatorade. The Gatorade helps with fluids, the red helps hide the blood from rinsing your mouth out.

    Sunday night, with a 'scope scheduled on Monday morning, I managed to hit myself with a box of books.

    Truly dramatic nosebleed. There is no gauze in the house, and all the Gatorade is red...

    Tissue to slow the flow, mask on to cover the tissue, I go off to 7-11 at 2am for gauze and an appropriate color of Gatorade.

    Standing in line, 2 meters away, the customer in front of me turns, holding her two large bottles of beer, and says "That mask won't protect you!" I'm already in a mood, so I start the standard reply of "I don't wear it to protect ME...."

    And I sneezed.

    Tissue, blood, and I don't know what else, filled the mask and started dripping down my chin. She screamed, dropped the bottles and headed for the door.

    It was fifteen minutes before the clerk and I stopped laughing and cleaned up.

    1672:

    Wow, real national medical care.

    A couple polyps removed and a something, otherwise, I'm fine.

    Great, diverticulosis. Could be caused by... ibuprofin? Like I took for a couple+ weeks, for what my doctor diagnosed last week as busitis?

    Told y'all all that I'm an ancient of days.

    1673:

    I've never read the libretto, only the captions, and it's been a couple years.

    However, now we're back to what Wagner did to Norse myth.

    1674:

    OK, you win. :-)

    1675:

    whitroth I prefer Pterry's take on "Jack & the Beanstalk" in "Hogfather" .....

    Talking of the "Ring" cycle, there is, of course the other way to view it, as in the book that set Tom Holt off ... Expecting Someone Taller"

    Oh yes, referring back to the "Bugs Bunny" version ... many years back we went to a performance of "Bugs Bunny goes to the Opera" at the Royal Festival Hall, with all the appropriate cartoons & a live orchesta ... Staggered out, hurting from laughing so much & repaired to a hostelry for resucitation ...

    Oh yes, the first time I Was in "Rheingold" the late-lamented Philip Langridge was playing Loge - & he laid it on with a trowel, as really creepy & untrustworthy as you could imagine - like BoZo on steroids, but plausible with it. Vile sense of humour, too .... He died during a run of "Hansel & Gretel" whilst playng the Witch - he knew he had fatal cancer & just kept on playing until he keeled over - between performances, not on-stage.

    1676:

    Ah, but you've never seen mine. Actually, when I wrote it up, a few weeks ago, I like mine even better than when I told it to the kids - I could do more. Came out to about 3600 words.

    Both someone on this list, who's seen it, and one of my daughters, both really liked it.

    1677:

    Talking of the "Ring" cycle,

    Summarized in All the Great Operas in 10 Minutes by Kim Thompson. The Ring cycle is about 5:50 in.

    1678:

    Another reason I am glad we bought a bidet.

    (My wife and I had been considering a bidet for a long time, and COVID-induced run on toilet paper finally made us act on it.)

    1679:

    That's hilarious. Thanks for brightening my day.

    1680:

    It was fifteen minutes before the clerk and I stopped laughing and cleaned up.

    Made me laugh out loud. At least I wasn't drinking my soda at the time. Hope I didn't wake my wife.

    1681:

    It's a little icky, but way less messy than bowel prep and a colonoscopy.

    Every time I do this I wonder about that meeting years ago in some company conference room.

    How can we design a kit that lets people collect uncontaminated poo samples? And how do we round up the office volunteers for alpha testing? Do you think Bill will do it? He's twice his ideal weight and eats 3 burgers for lunch every day at McD's.

    1682:

    My thought last night (prompted by some murmuring from our "leaders" that the vaccine would be as close to compulsory as possible) would be to take the same action that's applied to drunk drivers. It voids your insurance.

    So if you're offered a vaccine and you refuse, you pay the full rate for your medical care. No national health, pay in full as if you are a foreign citizen.

    I'd also put in legislation to allow anyone you infect to sue you personally for damages, including on going health issues. Including the national health being able to sue you for the cost of health care provided to the people you infect, should they be covered by the scheme.

    That seems fair. You have the right to choose, and take the responsibility for your actions.

    1683:

    It was very, very well done.

    1684:

    to allow anyone you infect to sue you personally for damages

    That's scarily close to being possible with the DNA testing that's being done. They can rule out many possible sources of infection that way. But of course absence of evidence, not to mention the legal "beyond reasonable doubt".

    There's a huge ethical argument to be had about that sort of change, too. As we see with a abortion debate, what's perfectly fine in the eyes of one citizen is grounds to torture someone to death in the eyes of another. Your plan would obviously rule out drinking alcohol and any kind of smoking, but could easily be used to deny medical care to people who travel in cars, sit on chairs or eat meat. Where you personally happen to draw the line today doesn't stop medical research from showing that the activities listed are definitely harmful and definitely cost the state healthcare system money... so why shouldn't they be banned?

    1685:

    England however only gets going at age 60. I presume Scotland uses the same home kits where you post off sealed vials with what's effectively a miniature bog brush inside.

    1686:

    Another reason I am glad we bought a bidet.

    Trust me, unless it's the kind of Japanese-style water jet equipped seat-rim that bolts to your toilet, you may well jam the bidet. (I'm more familiar with the French style separate mini-bathtub style appliance. Combining one of those with bowel prep would be nasty.)

    Seriously, it ain't working unless it feels like you're pissing through your ringpiece and you're too weak and exhausted to stand for fifteen minutes afterwards. MAke sure you've got a stack of good books close to hand!

    1687:

    The first couple of times they used a horrible card-based thing with windows for you to smear shit on then cover with adhesive film -- shit to be collected using two-inch long cardboard "fingers" from, I guess, a pile of crap you just delivered on your bathroom floor (bog water is an unwanted contaminant).

    Most recently however they switched to screw-top vials with a miniature turd-stabbing sampler needle protruding from inside the lid. Much easier to use/less offensive.

    I think NHS Scotland picked the lower age cut-off because of a slightly higher bowel cancer rate up here: IIRC it's mostly treatable with 5-year survival rates around 80% (of those who get diagnosed in time rather than ignoring the symptoms indefinitely), but costs roughly £80,000 per patient. And for USAns, that's actual cost price for treatment, with monopsony buying power, a socialized system pushing prices down as hard as possible, no greedy insurance cos in the loop, and no baked-in incentives for hospitals to order suplicate/spurious diagnostic tests for fees.

    1688:

    I'm not sure about using Morrissey as an example, seeing how terrible his music was. As Viz memorably asked, "Morrissey - Pop Genius or Twat?" and found the answer to be the latter ("both" not being an option).

    I'd rather choose Pink Floyd, and in particular Roger Waters. Great music coming out the front but the "greater" members of the group being utter shits to the "lesser" behind the scenes all the time. The interesting thing is that even with the tensions at their worst, they still made better music working "together" (FSVO) than the solo efforts either of Roger Waters or of David-Gilmour-calling-himself-Pink-Floyd following the break-up in the 80s.

    1689:

    My experience is dissimilar in almost all respects! My problem is IBS, which is medical jargon for "unidentified gut-rot".

    I had a colonoscopy for persistent diarrhoea and intestinal pain, so they told me to eat nothing, and take whatever laxatives I kept in the house. My response (which baffled the person on the telephone) was "There are no laxatives in the house; why would we need them?" Our diet is high in roughage, out of preference :-) But I had Epsom salts for gardening, so was told to use that. The result was I had painful, continual stomach cramps, no food or sleep for 24 hours, and was kept waiting for ages. I had warned them I was not in good shape, and the nurse said loudly in the waiting room "Which is the patient with diarrhoes and pain?" They pumped me full of barium and air from the rear and, despite my warning, threw me out of the attached loo before I had finished flushing it out; luckily, I found a free one close by.

    Despite that, I preferred it to the endoscopy.

    I found those cards a bit tricky the first time, but had no problems subsequently, provided that I avoided my frequent spells of diarrhoea. You catch some on some bog-roll on your hand. Slightly distasteful, but nothing noteworthy.

    1690:

    My experience. Vaccine Trial. Got a call around end of business today that said wait, we'll get back to you. The explanation given was a "technical issue" with the study that needed to be fixed.

    That was my experience Aug 4.

    A friend who lives nearby who has signed up for a different trial. He was supposed to go in this morning at 8:00am for the physical and a shot. He got a call this morning at 6:59am saying there was an issue and the study is on hold. And they will get back to him.

    Interesting. Not in a good way.

    1691:

    But of course absence of evidence, not to mention the legal "beyond reasonable doubt".

    "Beyond reasonable doubt" is the criteria for criminal cases. "Balance of probabilities" is the standard for civil cases, and it's a much lower bar.So they wouldn't need to prove that you were the source of infection, just that it was more likely than not…

    1692:

    "How can we design a kit that lets people collect uncontaminated poo samples? And how do we round up the office volunteers for alpha testing?"

    I've been to those types of meeting during my time as NHS lab research coordinator in Leeds. I was actually due to work on the initial trials of what would become the national screening programme but managed to talk my way out of it. However trials of novel markers in faeces are much worse. In the 1990s I was involved in early pan-European trials of faecal calprotectin (an inflammatory marker useful for early detection of tumours). For the prototype assay we had to emulsify a 25g sample of faeces using a high speed lab mixer and then perform an extraction before running an immunoassay for calprotectin. This was an incredibly messy procedure. I used a dedicated fume cupboard lined with two layers of plastic bin bags with mixer placed in a cardboard box. The analyst wore a tyvek suit with a hood and disposable tyvek sleeves. After the initial training course in Oslo all the participants were given a package containing shower gel, deodorant, cologne and soap. The modern assay in use today has a cleverly designed sample with a built in emulsifier.

    1693:

    Sounds like what I did to my utility room and myself when I had to cut into the clogged toilet drain line in the ceiling. I had tarps spread around and when done everything was folded inward then into five gallon buckets with lids then into the trash bin.

    1694:

    The 'stabber' sounds like what I got. Serrated plastic to gather faecal matter between the ridges.

    from, I guess, a pile of crap you just delivered on your bathroom floor (bog water is an unwanted contaminant)

    Unless you have one of those loos where you effectively crap onto a shelf, and the flush then rinses that away.

    (I'm guessing that wouldn't be acceptable to F, judging by what I remember of her previous comments.)

    1695:

    Unless you have one of those loos where you effectively crap onto a shelf, and the flush then rinses that away.

    Shudder. Are those even legal in the UK?

    1696:

    Y'all referring to those German things?

    1698:

    @1697: It really does solve the "splash" issue. One other thing of note is that every German loo I encountered had a brush in a holder next to the bowl, and you were expected to clean up if your, er, process left excess waste.

    1699:

    EC I THINK I had the beginnings of IBS, some years back ... grumbling guts, getting slowly worse on-&-off. Until I eat something which REALLY disagreed with my insides. Cleaned me right out, including whatever was attacking me. Not a day's problem, since. So ... you probably have unwanted/bad-reaction gut flora, & the cure is .....

    1700:

    Why use a reproducing Von Neuman Machine on a probe? Well, one reason could be to look for habitable planets. I don't expect they'd ever find any, but it's an approach that might eventually find one.

    My hypothesis, though, is that: 1) No planet is going to have a viable biosphere without first having life that evolved locally, and 2) If life evolved locally, it will secrete chemicals throughout the biosphere that anything evolved elsewhere will be allergic to.

    So I consider space habitats a much better option. Besides, by they time your colonists get to the new planet they'll have spent several generations living in the space ship, and that will be the environment they're adapted to. Planetary systems will just be rich sites for resource acquisition to build new habitats.

    1701:

    re: Ayn Rand was also an abominable human being, and of course not a Christian: she was a Mammonist.

    Many noted Christians were also Mammonists. Certainly most of the popes, also Calvin...or at least the theologian that created US Calvinism. I don't know enough to speak on most of the other famous Christians, but I've got strong suspicions.

    1702:

    Re: 'So ... you probably have unwanted/bad-reaction gut flora, & the cure is .....'

    Finally read the book below which has been sitting in my bookcase for a few years now. Quite a lot of what he said back in 2014 has since been borne out and become accepted medical practice.

    Boils down to: the younger you are when you're exposed to broad spectrum antibiotics, the more/broader and potentially irreversible the physiological consequences. Recall that he mentioned some sex differences, e.g., because modern Western folk no longer have as great a number and diversity of microbes in their bodies (esp. gut) this means that when they eat, they're eating for fewer entities. More of the nutrients go directly into the human metabolism instead of being shared across hundreds of microcritters plus the human. Result: increased height, weight gain and because digestive process has become more efficient (more % straight to human) an excess of calories which means more storage, more fat. This efficiency translates into about 40% more fat for males and 100% more fat for females.

    The author is an MD with 30+ years of research ... 'Missing Microbes' (How the overuse of antibiotics is fueling our modern plagues)by Martin J Blaser, MD

    http://www.missingmicrobes.com/

    He discussed this book on this American Society for Microbiology YT video:

    Missing Microbes with Dr Martin Blaser (1:00:57)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwK_O0ahDKo

    About the colonoscopy ... underwent this a couple of times when something weird showed up on an X-ray and my GP decided to check further. Interestingly it was only after all of the pre-colonoscopy followed a couple of days later by an even more thorough emergency GI surgery* prep followed by large doses of antibiotics that my insides started spasming something fierce. Took over a year before the gut spasms/pain subsided - long after the surgical scars healed.

    • Turned out to be a weird version of an on-again, off-again appendicitis so they didn't need to haul out most of my GI tract as discussed/feared. Because this diagnosis was determined only after they opened up, it still meant having to undergo all of that super intensive/thorough GI cleaning, very long incisions, lots of tissues cut into, etc.
    1703:

    whitroth @ 1666: So, now that I can eat....

    They gave me this mostly-empty but for the powder 4L (actually, 1 US gal) of Gavrilyte-C, with a lemon flavor packet. It actually wasn't that bad, sort of a salty-lemony-sweet taste, Just so much of it.

    Tastes like Gatorade. I hate Gatorade.

    1704:

    The last time I had to get a sample, uncontaminated by city water, I used wased paper on top of the toilet lid. Waxed paper is, of course, flushable.

    1705:

    Unfortunately, color me utterly surprised.

    NOT.

    They're not working with viruses they have long familiarity with - flu.

    I keep hoping to see more announcements of better treatment.

    1706:

    re: Sorry, but I loathe what Wagner did to Norse myth, twisting it into something to say what he wanted... which I have issues with, anyway.

    Well, the Norse myths weren't all that great anyway. There were a few honorable characters in them, but something vile tends to happen to them. Tyr has his hand bitten off by a wolf, etc.

    1707:

    In case it has escaped Charlie's attention (unlikely), bold mine: Leaders Of ‘We Build The Wall’ Online Fundraising Campaign Charged With Defrauding Hundreds Of Thousands Of Donors (Department of Justice, Southern District of New York, Thursday, August 20, 2020) Audrey Strauss, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Philip R. Bartlett, Inspector-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the United States Postal Inspection Service (“USPIS”), announced the unsealing of an indictment charging BRIAN KOLFAGE, STEPHEN BANNON, ANDREW BADOLATO, and TIMOTHY SHEA for their roles in defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign known as “We Build the Wall” that raised more than $25 million. The defendants were arrested this morning.

    1708:

    There's a better version....

    The filk group Sassaffras, led by Ada Palmer, who composed the music, put out what she refers to as "a song cycle" (and I've disagreed with her - she's a friend - that it's an out-an-out opera, "tradgedie en musicae") called Sundown: Echos of Ragnarok.

    Oddly enough, if we have an in-person part of worldcon next year, I'm about to start looking to get that produced as an opera for the con....

    1709:

    One of the names in that list (also note Stephen Bannon) is Brian Kolfage. This is from 21 Nov 2019:

    Brian Kolfage, founder of the "We Build the Wall" crowdfunding grift, is claiming that the National Butterfly Center in Texas supports sex trafficking, and that he has snipers stationed in the bushes outside the Center.

    Just, y'know, absolutely normal MAGA stuff. https://t.co/pZcGHOokNk

    — AntiFash Gordon (@AntiFashGordon) November 21, 2019
    1710:

    Charles H @ 1700: Why use a reproducing Von Neuman Machine on a probe?
    Well, one reason could be to look for habitable planets. I don't expect they'd ever find any, but it's an approach that might eventually find one.

    My question is whether the planet would still be habitable after the Von Neuman Machines got through with it.

    1711:

    "Audrey Strauss, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Philip R. Bartlett, Inspector-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the United States Postal Inspection Service (“USPIS”), announced the unsealing of an indictment charging BRIAN KOLFAGE, STEPHEN BANNON, ANDREW BADOLATO, and TIMOTHY SHEA"

    The charges are for wire, fraud, and I'm really hoping that this opens them up to state charges of fraud, and state tax evasions. Those can't be pardoned by Trump.

    1712:

    Kolfage sounds like a fist-class shit, doesn't he? I mean "sex trafficking" in a Butterfly centre? And people are mad enough to believe it? Obvious diversion, simply because of where butterfly centre is of course.

    More to the point, Bannon was very largely behind Trump's srprise "victory" in '16 & now he's right out of the loop. But to be effective, the D's need not just the "House" - almost certainly even more gains, & the "Presidency" - very, very likely, but the "Senatge" as well - which is the difficult bit.

    IF they get all 3, move number one has got to be voting reform, stopping the voter suppression that's going on ( I think )

    1713:

    Bill Arnold @ 1707: In case it has escaped Charlie's attention (unlikely), bold mine:
    Leaders Of ‘We Build The Wall’ Online Fundraising Campaign Charged With Defrauding Hundreds Of Thousands Of Donors (Department of Justice, Southern District of New York, Thursday, August 20, 2020)
    Audrey Strauss, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Philip R. Bartlett, Inspector-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the United States Postal Inspection Service (“USPIS”), announced the unsealing of an indictment charging BRIAN KOLFAGE, STEPHEN BANNON, ANDREW BADOLATO, and TIMOTHY SHEA for their roles in defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign known as “We Build the Wall” that raised more than $25 million. The defendants were arrested this morning.

    Saw the headline in my morning news feed, but hadn't had a chance to read the article.

    The Postal SERVICE had Postal Inspectors long before Comstock got into the act. In fact, the Postal Inspection Service predates the U.S. - Ben Franklin appointed the first one when he Postmaster General to the Second Continental Congress.

    Next time you're in a U.S. Post office, take a look UP. Those little windows up there are there so Postal Inspectors can observe operations without being seen. They use a separate entrance so no one can see them come or go.

    1714:

    Thank you, but that much less likely than the simple explanation - it is probably a result of my fairly rough life (by UK standards), including hepatatis A, dysentry, roundworms and potentially (though temporarily) worse. But, as the dietician said, I have learnt to live with it (for over half a century) so may as continue.

    1715:

    Trust me, unless it's the kind of Japanese-style water jet equipped seat-rim that bolts to your toilet

    That's exactly the kind I have.

    Seriously, it ain't working unless it feels like you're pissing through your ringpiece

    Good to know. I thought it was just me!

    1716:

    More coals to Newcastle. Charlie thinks he has problems with stories turning real:

    Student who wrote story about biased algorithm has results downgraded

    1717:

    Given that the DoJ and USPS are controlled by Trumpees, this could be a preemptive move against unfriendly sources ahead of the election. On the other hand, couldn't happen to a nicer bloke.

    1718:

    The Postal SERVICE had Postal Inspectors long before Comstock got into the act. Well sure, but there's also this:

    THE POSTAL SERVICE CAPTURED BANNON AT SEA https://t.co/QSrTlNJfhi

    — southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) August 20, 2020
    and this (thread):

    Kris Kobach is the general counsel of the Build the Wall PAC that Steve Bannon was just arrested for being involved in as chairman. The advisory board includes Erik Prince, former CO congressman Tom Tancredo, Sheriff Dave Clarke and former pitcher Curt Schilling.

    — Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) August 20, 2020
    and this, a Postal Inspectors hovercraft (perhaps not involved in the arrest of Bannon :-)

    The only seemingly relevant google result for “postal inspector boat” leaves me with more questions than answers pic.twitter.com/Lb3QvTWtz4

    — Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) August 20, 2020
    and this. Note: the name of the boat (that he will lose) is "Warfighter":

    It gets better: Kolfage used boat he bought with illegally-siphoned "We Build the Wall" funds to sail in the July 4 Trump boat parade in Destin, Florida https://t.co/eyK1WOvWWf (spotted by @ZacAlf) pic.twitter.com/uEUuQx0Yle

    — Evan Hill (@evanchill) August 20, 2020

    1719:

    I have the best of all options... a composting loo. You poo. It sits there. You add sawdust/woodchips, occasionally using a stick to push the pile off to the side. Eventually the bucket goes out in the garden where it sits in the sun for a few months. When you need that bucket again you bury the contents, which by then is just mulch. Or, once, mulch and used tampon. Even "100% pure organic cotton" tampons don't break down in compost.

    If you're not grossed out enough yet, this short doco by/about a woman who is really grossed out by her own periods is interesting to watch. How her partner deals with it is a bit interesting. Like, when she has her period he just has to pretend not to notice?

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

    1720:

    No need to fear it being extended. The government has cleverly come up with a system where only poor people suffer, and they suffer even when their actions don't cause harm and they suffer disproportionate pain. So no need to fear that someone might have to sell their third investment property to fund the medical treatment they intentionally required. Instead the poor people won't get the payments they need in order to eat and rich people suffer no harm whatsoever from their selfish actions. Brilliant.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-20/coronavirus-vaccine-link-to-government-payments/12577618

    1721:

    Simple answer: the rest of us eat the rich.

    1722:

    Note "welfare payments", not "government payments", so the largesse paid to members of parliament is unaffected. More importantly, the wording makes me think pensions will not be affected. If only pensions were treated like all the other government payments... I note there is disquiet that due to low inflation and low wage growth there might be a zero increase in pensions for the first time ever. There is some horror being expressed, old people are entitled to a generous pension that increases every six months.

    But yeah, another way to punish the poor ticks all the boxes for the Liberal Party.

    1723:

    Re on cstross twitter about the Trump administration asking the US Supreme court to allow blocking of twitter accounts critical of the realDonaldTrump[1], the competence/curator behind DJT's twitter account is (generally thought to be) Dan Scavino. (Some tweets are DJT's, some partially his or not at all. An "intern" blamed at least once.) It is likely that he (DS) saw some things that annoyed him, or rather less likely that Trump was scrolling through responses and spotted annoying criticism. They're essentially arguing that responses to realDonaldTrump tweets, which can exceed 10K, are not "public forums", that readDonaldTrump twitter is simultaneously a private forum and the official voice of the Trump administration and political operation. Dan Scavino (wikipedia) Who is Dan Scavino? – Trump's Director of Social Media | NowThis (•Jan 5, 2018) "Better known as @realDonaldTrump" [interviewer]: "Is there anything he could say or do that would lead you to abandon him?" [Scavino}: "No"

    Scavino is the conduit (well one of them) for alt-right thoughts/memes into D.J.Trump's brain.

    A chatty profile: Trump’s social media director Dan Scavino is the staffer who's been around the longest —and he started as Trump's caddie (Michal Kranz, Pat Ralph, and Grace Panetta, May 20, 2019)

    [1] Trump asks Supreme Court to let him block critics on Twitter (John Kruzel - 08/20/20) "The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling that found President Trump violated the First Amendment by blocking his critics on Twitter."

    1724:

    The Hairball and twitter: yeah, a piece I read noted that his lawyers are arguing that a) it's an official channel of information, and b) it's a private channel....

    1725:

    Charlie,

    I'm starting to feel really bad about how much commentary is about the US and our elections, when it's your blog.

    On the other hand, I know how many of you, hell, of the rest of the world would like to have a vote in our elections, given how much it affects all of you, personally.

    But if we did that, oh, horrors, that would mean we had a world government, and, oh, think of how bad that would be, worldwide minimum wages, safety regulations, and, worst of all, how would the 1% be able to keep from paying taxes?!!!

    The dreadfulness of that thought.... [smile with lots of BIG SHINY SHARP TEETH]

    1726:

    Ellen was watching the Democratic convention. I tuned in, just in time to see the firewarks.

    And the Dems literally threw in the kitchen sink. Before it was declared closed, they had a woman rabbi giving a prayer, followed by a priest giving one, followed by an imam.

    Beat that?

    1727:

    Where was the Wiccan?

    Anyway, don't worry, there will be Brexit along soon enough. Then you can have the traditional druidic response if things go as we fear...

    1728:

    about the US and our elections

    We could talk about the impending re-election of St Jacinda instead perhaps? 😉

    Or my ongoing search for the perfect rural property that is also extremely cheap. I just rang a rural council planner and got a bit of an earful about city slickers with no idea trying to break rules that are put in place for very good reasons. I eventually said "look, thanks for being honest with me, I'll take that as a no".

    It is quite tricky trying to explain "I know it's going to burn, that's why I'm asking so specifically about earth-sheltered sheds" to someone who is triggered by anyone wanting to build anything on non-residential land. Legally you're allowed 60 days a year, no more than two nights at a time, on just about anything. Which of course means a non-road-legal caravan abandoned on the property with some shotgun-wielding Karen living in there during the fire season. Or so I gather.

    1729:

    there will be XXXXXXX along soon enough

    I think many in the UK would rather talk about almost anything except that. It's a bit like "the turkeys voted for an early Christmas, but what they got was all Christmas, all the time. Forever".

    1730:

    “the rest of us eat the rich” - I’ve been touting Soylent Gold(™) for a number of years now.

    1731:

    Bill Arnold Error there ... ... the conduit (well one of them) for alt-right thoughts/memes into D.J.Trump's brain. DT HAS A BRAIN? Who knew?

    Brexshit It's noticeable that (some of) what used to be the tories are now talking up the prospect of an agreement ... Presumably the full horror of what couild happen has finally penetrated - & they are rightly frightened of the electoral consequences. Others, of course are still accelerating towards the cliff ...

    1732:

    A quote from Jonathan Israel referring to European Enlightenment

    "...the institutions, social hierarchy, status and property arrangements on which a given society is based can only remain stable whilst the explanations that society offers in justification command sufficiently wide currency and acceptance, and begin to disintegrate when such general acceptance lapses."

    So are our glorious leaders aware of this, and ignoring it; or, are they actively pursuing so form of armageddon; or both? It's a given that Dom C is a disaster fan, but surely Bozo and the sTrumpet aren't.

    1733:

    "...got a bit of an earful about city slickers with no idea trying to break rules that are put in place for very good reasons... It is quite tricky trying to explain "I know it's going to burn, that's why I'm asking so specifically about earth-sheltered sheds"..."

    It's bloody impossible to explain anything to anyone who thinks that their crevice-narrow convention-based ideas are the sum total of all knowledge and therefore anyone with a different idea can't possibly know more than them, but must simply be wrong.

    Like the bike shop that gave me piles of grief over trying to buy two spark plugs of different sizes. They had this fixed idea that I couldn't possibly actually want two spark plugs of different sizes, that I must be refusing to admit that I didn't actually know which single size I did want and was intending to try both and bring back the one that didn't fit for a refund.

    My bike does indeed take two spark plugs of different sizes. I converted it to twin spark by drilling and tapping a hole for a second spark plug positioned symmetrically opposite the original spark plug hole. But the metal on that side of the head is thicker, so the second spark plug needs a longer threaded section to suit it.

    So I explained this to them and it didn't make any difference. Apparently since the factories don't make engines like that it's inherently impossible for any engine to be like that. Never mind that I machined it like that myself, I still can't possibly know what I'm talking about because it doesn't fit with their preconceived ideas.

    And there are a fuck of a lot of people who aren't content just to say dumb things, but insist on doing everything they can to actively prevent you doing something they don't understand, even if it has less than fuck all to do with them, purely because they can't handle the idea of a world where people do things that they don't understand.

    When, as in your case, their preconceived ideas relate to something burning, everything gets enormously worse...

    1734:

    SLightlyFoxed Scummings is a "Move fast & break things" arsehole & probably fascist, yes. DT simply does not care - if breaking things is to his "profit" hes's all for it. BoZo is absolutely out of his depth, I'm afraid ... And it's going to get worse - I am greatly afeared we will get a total no-deal crachout Brexshit, unless BoZo blinks at the last moment, which is entirely possible: TO quote from the "indy"... The new way of governing: Announce a stipd policy, abandon & repeat All too true.

    1735:

    It's bloody impossible to explain anything to anyone who thinks that their crevice-narrow convention-based ideas are the sum total of all knowledge and therefore anyone with a different idea can't possibly know more than them, but must simply be wrong.

    Which sounds rather like a new manager after a takeover, fulminating about how the bloody narrow-minded workers are opposing a reorganization…

    They had this fixed idea that I couldn't possibly actually want two spark plugs of different sizes, that I must be refusing to admit that I didn't actually know which single size I did want and was intending to try both and bring back the one that didn't fit for a refund.

    Possibly because that has actually happened to them numerous times, and they aren't paid enough to want to go through the bother again. Returns are a hot-button issue for many retail workers, based on their experiences with entitled customers.

    1736:

    I'm starting to feel really bad about how much commentary is about the US and our elections, when it's your blog.

    We could always speculate about what UK elections/society will look like when Republican tactics leak across the ocean…

    Canadian politics have become much more polarized than they were when I was young — not as bad as American politics, but we're getting there. Even things like support for public health precautions are linked to voting patterns (and surprise, right-wing Canadian voters are much less likely to support them).

    https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/higher-percentage-of-cynical-spreaders-of-novel-coronavirus-in-alberta-survey-shows

    One might argue that Brexit shows American-style politics already has a foothold, as the underhanded tactics don't seem to have affected voters' party loyalties much. (This could be wrong — I'm not in the UK and, while British, was legally barred from voting in the referendum.)

    1737:

    I doubt they get many entitled customers, they're just an ordinary small bike shop, not the kind of place that attracts nobs. I certainly don't look remotely as if I might be one. And the point is that they refused to listen even when I told them that yes it was like that because I myself personally had made it like that. It doesn't fit with their conventional ideas and therefore they must know better than the person who actually made the bloody thing.

    1738:
    He got a call this morning at 6:59am saying there was an issue and the study is on hold. And they will get back to him.

    They just found out that all the mice are dead.

    1739:
    Unless you have one of those loos where you effectively crap onto a shelf, and the flush then rinses that away.

    Ah, Germany, land of poo inspection shelves.

    1740:

    Ah ANDREW BADOLATO, mobbed up with the Gambino family, at whose address Bannon registered to vote.

    Nice chap.

    1741:

    Then you can have the traditional druidic response if things go as we fear...
    Boris Johnson lacks one of the traditional attributes necessary to be put in the wicker man.

    1742:

    forget Wagner, stick with Verdi for all your opera needs. If you haven't listened to Aida lately, prepare to be reduced to speechless whimpering when the womens' chorus and brass section conquer the mens' chorus.

    1743:

    On the Covid test front I am one of the subjects of the UK's testing research study - got my long handled nose gouges yesterday - ready to be used and collected tomorrow. There's a ten page ikea style guide to how to stab yourself in the nose and throat and then make sure that the swab is stored appropriately before collection by courier.

    1744:

    There's a ten page ikea style guide to how to stab yourself in the nose and throat and then make sure that the swab is stored appropriately before collection by courier.
    With an IKEA style faux-skandiwegian name? SWÅB ?

    1745:

    whitroth @ 1721: Simple answer: the rest of us eat the rich.

    That's going to be a problem if you're like me and trying to reduce the amount of saturated fats in your diet.

    1746:

    For some odd reason, I do not see sarcasm/ tags around St. Jacinda, as opposed to St. Raygun.

    1747:

    whitroth @ 1724: The Hairball and twitter: yeah, a piece I read noted that his lawyers are arguing that a) it's an official channel of information, and b) it's a private channel....

    His lawyers are arguing it's a private channel. The court ruling says that when HE uses Twitter to advocate official positions of his administration, HE IS THE GOVERNMENT, so the 1st Amendment will not allow him to silence his critics. It actually applies to any government twitter account.

    Twitter is free to block whomever they choose to, but the government is constrained by the 1st Amendment.

    1748:

    ROTFLMAO!!! Love it.

    1749:

    Y'know, thinking of large dinosaurs, perhaps there's one in the base of his tongue, so that it keeps moving.

    But then, unlike a dino, he might have smaller accessory brains in the base of his twittering thumbs.

    1750:

    _Moz_ @ 1728:

    about the US and our elections

    We could talk about the impending re-election of St Jacinda instead perhaps? 😉

    Or my ongoing search for the perfect rural property that is also extremely cheap. I just rang a rural council planner and got a bit of an earful about city slickers with no idea trying to break rules that are put in place for very good reasons. I eventually said "look, thanks for being honest with me, I'll take that as a no".

    I think I might have tried to explain to him I wasn't going to break the rules, I was looking for a place where what I wanted to do was lawful ... assuming I didn't just tell him to GFY.

    1751:

    Or the new managers who come in and "need" to put their own personal "stamp" on the organization, never mind the effect.

    Every few years at my last job, some idiot would move into charge in purchasing. Filling out the purchase requests, let's see, you need three quote, no, you need one quote, we'll put it out for bid, no you need the quote, three quotes, no, skip that....

    (Having never ever dealt with such things before, I became an expert in the division, what to check on the form, what to fill out, how to fill it out... then pass it to my manager to finish and sign.)

    1752:

    Robert Prior @ 1736:

    I'm starting to feel really bad about how much commentary is about the US and our elections, when it's your blog.

    We could always speculate about what UK elections/society will look like when Republican tactics leak across the ocean…

    I thought they already had?

    1753:

    Wait, you're trying to tell me the Hairball's connections to the Mob were indirect? With all the money he owed them, and all the money he'd laundered?

    1754:

    sigh

    Two stories from my personal history: One, remembering my father at the sink, doing dishes, and he could be humming the Internationale (told you I was a red diaper baby)... or the triumphal march from Aida.

    And the other is guerilla culture. He once told my mom and me about being in the locker room cleaning up, before coming home from work, and he was humming a tune. Another guy tells him that's a nice tune, who wrote it. His answer was "That good Italian songwriter, Joe Green."

    1755:

    A couple of things that amused me this week:

    From another forum describing a recent heat wave in the UK/Europe:
    "Friday a week ago in Belgium, the rattlesnakes crept into our campfire to enjoy the shadow of the frying pan."

    Microsoft Flight Simulator has a Data Glitch - a 212 story tower in Melbourne, AU.

    It's supposed to be a 2 story building ... apparently a typo in Open Street maps that wasn't caught before the data was imported into the software for Flight Simulator.

    And, of course, people are trying to land on it before it gets corrected:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhrGEdO88kE&feature=youtu.be

    1756:

    Keithmasterson For all that Verdi is good, there are two others - one only wrote one opera ... but, yes, well: "Fidelio" And of course, W.A.M. - there is absolutely nothing like a good performance of Zauberflöte to lift the spirits.

    withroth Actgually Jacinda A cannot be a "saint" - she isn't an egotistical, domineering intolerant & possibly-murdering bastard - as most actual christian saints have turned out to be ....

    1757:

    I recall an anecdote from a column written by an airline pilot during the early post-9/11 years, after the TSA materialized but also US congress legislated that pilots could carry handguns aboard: how the author carried a serrated plastic knife in his flight bag (to open his sandwiches) and had it confiscated ... even though he was about to take the controls of a loaded 767 and could legally have carried a gun on board.

    Really, security theatre would be hilarious if it wasn't so annoying.

    A similar story emerged from the early weeks after 9/11 when everyone was running around in circles and nobody had a plan for anything.

    Somehow they called up the local National Guard to stand around as extra security at airports, which presumably made sense to someone. The guardsmen showing up to watch people walk by had to go through security themselves, since they were pulling duty in a secure area. Security was very firm with one guy that he wasn't going to be allowed to take his pocketknife into the airport - then handed him back his M-16 and sent him in to stand guard.

    1758:

    Like is it really OK to compare the life cycle of a beetle in Oregon to one in Scotland and how will that impact the cost of housing in Australia in 40 years?

    All I know is that back in the '90s it wasn't hard to find a used Beetle and putter around Oregon, provided that you didn't really need to go much over 60 mph. When looking around for a used car a few years back the prices on old VWs had at least quadrupled and there weren't many to be had anyway. Pretty much everyone who still had an old Beetle wanted to hang onto it.

    How does a VW Type I handle the hills in Edinburgh, anyway? grin

    1759:

    I kinda want one of these:

    https://mymodernmet.com/volkswagen-bug-camper/

    More seriously, I'd like a small campervan suitable for one person for photography trips. Sleeps one, small kitchen (counter, space for a camp stove, food storage), water/sink, toilet, desk/table for eating at/working on. Don't need off-road capability, but poor road capability would be important as I'd like to head into Crown lands for a few days at a time, and that means dirt roads.

    Haven't been able to find anything suitable, they are either larger than I want, or too expensive, or both.

    1760:

    Don't. Get. Me. Started.

    Back on usenet in the early 90's, on alt.pagan, we decided our saint was Hypatia, a Librarian of Alexandria, who was attacked by fans of the later sanctified Cyril, pulled from her chariot, and skinned alive using some kind of shells.

    1761:

    Nahh, I'd want (to quote the late, lamented Gamble Rogers) one o' them VW macrobusses, mobile orgies....

    1762:

    SS Uphill - no problem, downhill, NOT so good & as for cornering, you don't want to know.

    whitroth Yes - she is the classic example & Cyril is still as "saint" But then there's Dominic - founder of a religious order & leader of the Albigensian crusade Or Thomas More, who deliberately had people burnt alive ... Or the recent torturer "mother Theresa"

    1763:

    I might have tried to explain to him I wasn't going to break the rules, I was looking for a place where what I wanted to do was lawful

    I started that way, and mentioned it a few times, but between "I can't give you advice, you need to hire someone who will tell you what I will allow" and "you can't build a structure on that land" I didn't feel that I was getting anywhere. So rather than buy a block of land then spend the next ten years playing silly buggers at my expense, I gave up early. Unlike Pigeon I don't already have the motorbike/land, so rather than spend time trying to persuade difficult people to give me what I want I can just move on.

    Part of the context is Australia's convict heritage. An awful lot of people operate on the principle that it's not what the law says that matters, it's what the law enforcement does. So to some extent the legal system forces everyone to operate that way, by saying things that are completely untrue but are designed to get a more or less lawful outcome after the recipient plays fast and loose with the guidelines they're given. Hence to advice to hire a liar and get them to work the system for me.

    1764:

    I kinda want one of these:

    https://mymodernmet.com/volkswagen-bug-camper/

    More seriously, I'd like a small campervan suitable for one person for photography trips.

    I've seen that! The kitchen is cute but I'd rather have someplace to sleep, since for my use cases I can often stop at a restaurant and will eat cold food other times.

    And I agree with the camper comment; either a Type II or Vanagon camping van would be everything I'd need for conventions and casual road trips.

    Greg: Uphill - no problem, downhill, NOT so good & as for cornering, you don't want to know.

    That surprises me, since both of my old Beetles tended to slow to walking speeds going up steep hills. grin

    A note on topic drift: I'm capable of nattering on at length about old Volkswagons, various multitools, and possibly repairing Volkswagons with multitools.

    1765:

    Really liked the ad campaign when VW reintroduced the beetle:

    0-60: yes. heat: yes....

    1766:

    Scott Sanford @ 1757:

    I recall an anecdote from a column written by an airline pilot during the early post-9/11 years, after the TSA materialized but also US congress legislated that pilots could carry handguns aboard: how the author carried a serrated plastic knife in his flight bag (to open his sandwiches) and had it confiscated ... even though he was about to take the controls of a loaded 767 and could legally have carried a gun on board.
    Really, security theatre would be hilarious if it wasn't so annoying.

    A similar story emerged from the early weeks after 9/11 when everyone was running around in circles and nobody had a plan for anything.

    Somehow they called up the local National Guard to stand around as extra security at airports, which presumably made sense to someone. The guardsmen showing up to watch people walk by had to go through security themselves, since they were pulling duty in a secure area. Security was very firm with one guy that he wasn't going to be allowed to take his pocketknife into the airport - then handed him back his M-16 and sent him in to stand guard.

    I guess it depended on a which airport you were at. We didn't even have to go through the scanners.

    One of my enduring memories from Desert Storm was a video of National Guard soldiers going through security at Charleston Airport before they boarded a chartered plane taking them over ... the first guy hands off his M-16 to the guy behind him and goes through the metal detector, then has to be wanded because his web gear sets it off.

    After he's cleared he walks up to the rope & gets his M-16 & the M-16 from the next guy in line ... and so it goes all the way down the line to the last guy.

    Coming home from Iraq, they did make us collect all the knives from people who hadn't got the word to "put them in your duffel bag" into a cardboard box, which was then carried onto the charter flight (where they were promptly redistributed once we got off the ground).

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